The Gyaru Virus

(Shin's PoV)

—

I picked up the phone off the coffee table.

The screen had lit up with a name I didn't have saved as anything clever, because I had entered it exactly as she'd dictated it to me.

Tsubame Yamamoto.

"Well?" Akane said from the mirror.

She hadn't even turned around. She was adjusting the chain at her hip with a great deal of concentration, and her voice had gone very even, which with her is never a good sign.

"It's Yamamoto-san," I sighed.

"Mm." The chain got another adjustment it didn't need. "And what does Yamamoto-san want from my beloved boyfriend in the late afternoon on a Sunday?" She spoke like she already knew that it was her.

"It's about the festival files," I said.

"Yeah. Festival files. Sure." Akane replied, her voice flat.

That was true, and I want it on record that I believed it when I said it.

I was in charge of everything regarding Tsubame's concert, including the files I had to check and the rehearsals.

There was nothing wrong with any of it. I guess.

Then, I opened her messages.

TSUBAME:Hey!! Shin!! How are you?? Hope everything's good on your end!!! 🌸

TSUBAME:So — about the files I sent, the second audio track has a dead gap at 1:40 (sorry, my fault, I bumped the mic) and the speech runs about 40 seconds long, which I think means we're cutting the middle paragraph?? Let me know what you decide; you're the boss ✨

TSUBAME:Also the stage layout PDF is the OLD one, ignore it, I'll send the new one tonight!! Sorryyy 🙏

All perfectly normal. All exactly what she'd said she'd send.

But then, the fourth message loaded.

It was a photo. Tsubame in her bathroom, hair up and damp, wrapped in a white bathrobe, holding the phone at an angle that had been chosen with the care of an architect.

She was pulling a face — tongue out, peace sign — like the whole thing was a joke, and the joke was the point, and the deniability was the point of the joke.

The joke was doing a lot of work.

In the same moment I saw that photo, something cold moved across the room.

I looked up to see a wild Akane standing directly beside me. I hadn't heard her cross the floor.

She was reading the screen over my shoulder with her arms folded, her expression entirely neutral, and the amber lamplight caught the edge of her jaw in a way that made me think of a knife on a table.

She looked at the photo for three full seconds.

Then she closed her eyes, drew a long breath in through her nose, and let it out slowly.

"This girl is doing it on purpose," she said, flatly, almost conversational. "There's no way anyone is naturally this much of a whore."

"Akane—"

"I'm just being analytical." Another breath. "That photo has lighting, Shin. She turned on a lamp for that. That's a production."

Under the flatness, though, I could hear it — the tight, humming wire behind her voice.

And her arms were folded a little too hard, her fingers pressed white into her own sleeves, and she had leaned in closer than reading the screen actually required.

So, not knowing what to do, I held the phone out slightly.

"What should I answer?" I asked.

"Don't answer her. Simple." She replied.

"But it's still festival stuff. She's asking about the runtime — if I don't reply, that whole segment doesn't get cut, and Sora gets—"

Akane exhaled through her teeth.

"Fine." She put out her hand, palm up, with the weary authority of a customs official. "I'll answer her."

I handed her the phone without hesitation.

I want that on record too: the not hesitating. Because I felt the smallest release in her shoulders the instant the phone left my fingers, and I understood something I hadn't fully understood until that second. She wasn't afraid of what I'd write.

She was afraid of being the person who wanted to know what I'd write.

Then, Akane sat down on the arm of the couch beside me, her thumbs moving with the crisp efficiency of someone drafting a memo.

She read it aloud as she typed, in the flattest voice in her arsenal:

"I'll go through everything later. And regarding the rehearsals — Akane will be with me. I hope that isn't a problem. Thanks."

Send.

The reply came back so fast that the typing bubble barely had time to exist.

TSUBAME:Of course!! No problem at all!! 💕 But do warn her about this fun little development: you'll also have to help me pick which costume I'm wearing!!

I watched Akane's hand close around the phone. The case creaked.

She stared at the message, and I saw muscle move in her jaw.

Then, still staring at the screen, in a voice of complete calm:

"This girl is genuinely, actively, with her whole soul and bitch attitude, trying to ruin my day."

"...Yeah," I said.

She turned her head slowly toward me.

I was, I admit, smiling, and that was a very nervous smile. And by the time I noticed it, I was scratching the back of my head like an idiot caught in headlights.

"You think this is funny, right?" Akane said, her voice dropped by an octave.

"No. Not at all." I raised my arms up.

"You're smiling, Ishikawa." She said.

"It's a defensive reflex. It's involuntary. It happens near predators." 

Akane held my eyes for a long, dangerous moment.

Then something at the corner of her mouth twitched, and she looked back down at the screen and typed.

"Of course. He'll help you with that too. Have a good day!" She repeated out loud.

Send. Cheerful. Exclamation mark and everything.

From Akane, that punctuation mark was a war crime.

But as she started to lock the screen, the phone buzzed in her hand.

It was another photo. Tsubame again, closer this time, blowing a kiss at the camera, the bathrobe collar arranged with the same architectural intent as before, but a little lower, a little more deliberate, still deniable, still a joke, still perfectly aimed.

Then, the apartment went very quiet. Even the record seemed to lower its own volume out of self-preservation.

Akane looked at the photo.

She breathed in. Held it. Breathed out.

"This girl," she said, with an enormous, terrible calm, "is either stupid or has a death wish."

"Akane—"

"Shh. I'm processing." Akane said.

She processed for approximately four seconds.

Then she stood up, walked three steps back into the amber light of the living room, turned to face the wall of guitars, lifted my phone at arm's length, and raised her middle finger directly at the camera with a smile on her face.

Her expression in that photograph was clearly not angry. It was serene. It was the face of a woman receiving an award.

Click.

She hit send before I could form a full sentence.

We both watched the screen.

Delivered.

Read.

The typing bubble appeared and then disappeared.

Nothing.

Silence from the other end of the line, absolute and total, for the first time in the entire exchange.

Akane lowered the phone with the immense satisfaction of a woman who has just closed a business deal at a favorable price.

"Good," she said. "She won't bother us for a while."

Then she frowned at the screen, tapped twice, and started deleting everything: the bathrobe photo, the kiss photo, gone, both of them, with a decisive little flick of her thumb.

"You don't need to have that gyaru virus in here," she muttered, "it would be dangerous for you. It will lower your IQ."

"And you left yours," I said.

"Obviously I left mine. Mine has artistic merit, and I'm your girlfriend," She gave me a thumbs up.

Then, she dropped back onto the arm of the couch and held the phone out to me.

I took it, and noticed that her fingers were warm. They lingered a half-second longer than the handoff required.

Then she sighed — a real sigh, with the tension going out of her shoulders in one long line — and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Later I'll help you with her request too," she said. "The files, the cuts, the costume, whatever else that woman invents between now and Monday. We'll do it together, and it'll take forty minutes, and it'll be fine." She dropped her hand and looked at me. "But right now, I'm not giving her any more of today. Today is our date day. Today is Hoshiko and shops and pizza and you being turned into a ghost with a personality. That's the whole schedule."

"That's a good schedule, I guess."

"It's an excellent schedule. Hoshiko and I are great event planners, you know?" She smiled proudly.

Then, I turned the phone over in my hands.

"For the record," I said, "I don't want to be in that conversation at all."

Akane went still.

"I read the file stuff, and then the rest of it arrived, and my only thought was that I wanted it out of my hands," I said. "That's why I gave you the phone without arguing. To be honest, I felt uneasy when I saw her texts." I looked up. "She's not the one I want to be talking to on a Sunday. You are. You're right here. It's not complicated for me, Akane."

She looked at me for a long moment in the amber light.

She didn't say anything for a while. Her thumb moved absently along the chain at her hip.

"...You know what the worst part is," she said finally, quieter. "It's not her. It's that I let it work. Just dumb photos, and a costume joke, and my whole body reacts like there's an actual threat in the room." Her mouth twisted. "I know she's performing. I figured that out on the sidewalk last night. I know exactly what she's doing and who she's probably doing it for, and yet, I still felt my hands go cold. That's the part that annoys me. She's not beating me. My own nervous system is beating me on her behalf. Guess I have to work on my jealousy issues even more."

"Well... at least, you didn't throw the phone out of the window," I said, joking.

She blinked. "What?"

"You read it, you got angry, you took a breath, you handled it, you sent a picture of your middle finger, and you were done," I said. "I guess that you're making progress without realizing." 

Akane opened her mouth for an instant, and then closed it.

She looked away, toward the guitar wall, and I saw the tips of her ears go faintly red in the amber light.

"...Tch— I guess you're right," she muttered.

"But... You're pretty cute when you're jealous, you know?" I teased.

"Don't turn my trauma into entertainment, Ishikawa." She said, smiling.

"You made a scoring system for outfits an hour ago. I have traumas about that, too, you know?" I replied

"That's different, that's—"

The intercom buzzed.

Both of us looked at the wall panel by the door. Then at the clock on the microwave through the kitchen doorway, glowing cold blue under its neon strip.

18:00.

Exactly. To the minute.

The buzzer went again. And again. And then a third time, held down, in a long insistent drone that suggested the person on the other end had discovered the button had no upper limit.

Akane's whole face changed. The tension went out of her shoulders, and something bright and genuinely delighted took its place, and she was up off the couch and across the room before I'd finished standing.

She hit the button.

"BABY WOLF." Hoshiko's voice detonated out of the tiny speaker at a volume the hardware had never been designed to survive. "I AM DOWNSTAIRS. I AM ON TIME. NOT EARLY. AS INSTRUCTED. I HAVE BEEN STANDING HERE FOR TWENTY-TWO MINUTES LIKE A CRIMINAL BECAUSE OF YOU. ALSO, I BROUGHT THE CHOCOLATES. THERE ARE MORE CHOCOLATES THAN THE SITUATION REQUIRED. LET ME IN, IT'S COLD, MY FINGERS ARE ART SUPPLIES."

Akane looked back at me over her shoulder, and she was grinning.

"Brace yourself, ghost boy," she said, and pressed the button. "Full dosage."