I opened the door to the house and stepped inside.

I didn’t like announcing myself, so I kept quiet as I took off my shoes. I dropped my bag on the floor of the entrance hall for now and walked towards the living room, hoping to find my mom and sister there. The room was empty, so I ventured further towards the kitchen.

There they were, their backs turned towards me. My mom was cutting up vegetables or something, while my sister stood in front of the coffee maker, waiting for it to do its thing. I waited for their idle chatter to subside and said hello.

“Hi.”

“Eek!” My mom jolted upwards, her short curly hair bobbing along with her.

“It’s you!” My sister said on the other hand.

“Don’t you scare your mother like that! I might get a heart attack!” Mom responded, as she turned around to face me. She came to hug me, still holding that big-ass knife she used just now.

“Jesus, put that thing down, if you come to hug me!” I said raising my hand, almost in surrender.

My sister snuck around us and gently took the knife from my mom’s hand, placing it on the cutting board. As she poured herself a coffee, she asked me if I wanted one as well. I said, sure why not. My mom had let go off me by then.

“Why don’t you two sit down?” Mom proposed. “I still need half an hour for lunch to get ready. We can chat after.”

“Sure,” I muttered as I followed my sister to the living room. I sat down on the couch next to her.

We just looked at each other for a couple seconds, after which I said cheers and raised my cup.

“So ... how’re you doing?” she asked me. My sister was only two years older than me. We spent a lot of time together during our childhood. It’s because of her that I learned how to control my voice like that. Despite that however, we never had many interests in common. In fact, after she left for uni we didn’t talk too much. Calling, texting, that stuff. We only ever talked when we were together, like now, or called when there was an emergency.

I think I have an odd relationship with her. At least seeing how other people interact with their siblings. We never really know what to talk about, I guess. Even fighting seems out of the question for us. But we still got each other’s backs. If I have no-one to talk to, I know I got her.

Maybe it’s because she isn’t too involved in my life that I can just spill on her and get an unbiased opinion.

But yeah. Being in this weird state is what leads to conversations that sound like they were written by an only-child.

I pressed my lips together and just vocalized in response to her question.

“Same bro.”

“I take it you’d rather be somewhere else?”

She sighed. “You know how it is. I’m here for mom. I feel better about being here, though. In this house. Compared to the years before.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

“I really hate the fact though, that she makes me think about Dad once a year. Just because it’s the day of his death. I’d rather not remember.”

I just looked at her with a wry smile, as she took a sip from her cup.

“What about you?” she asked me.

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I wasn’t sure what exactly she was referring to, so I just answered what was in my mind at that moment.

“To be honest, I haven’t really had the time to think about it, like you probably did. Everything’s been so chaotic lately, it just ... sorta slipped my mind.”

“Lucky you. What’s got you so busy though?”

“Uni?”

“LOL. Big lol.”

“Nah, it’s ... let’s talk about that later.” I interrupted myself, when I noticed our mom walking though the kitchen door, beginning to set the table.

We got up to help her and a few minutes later we began to eat.

“So, how’re things, with university, your job?” Mom asked.

“What job? I got laid off during the pandemic.”

I jobbed for literal weeks, before stores started closing down.

Could she be referring to the other thing?

My heart rate accelerated, and I felt the blood rushing to my head.

Oh my god, wouldn’t it be embarrassing for her to know that I’m doing some weird anime streams where I pretend to be a girl? How do you explain something like that to a woman in her fifties?

“Oh right, that happened. I was referring to the other thing though.”

“Huh, what are you talking about?”

Just gas-lighting my mother a bit, no biggie. And if she’s actually referring to V-Tubing I can still pull the old “Oh right, you mean that!” on her.

“I mean that thing, where you sell pictures of you online. FnlyOans or whatever they call it.”

“HUH!?” I pushed myself up from the table.

I wasn’t sure whether to laugh, cry or puke.

My sister started laughing hysterically. Now I realized that she’d been throwing these glances between the two of us while we were talking. She must have tried real hard to hide her amusement.

“I swear to god, if it wasn’t in front of our mother, I’d be cussing out your ass ... Nevermind.” I realized my arms were shaking, so I sat back down.

“Sorry. Your sister said I should ask you that. Whatever that all means, but I guess she got a laugh out of it.”

“Bruhhh, how can you make your own mother put such filthy words into her mouth? I’m so sorry for you, Ma.”

“Don’t worry. I do know about that Twitch-streaming thing though.”

Luckily the conversation prior had already drained all my energy, or I would have stood up from my table again.

“So, you know about that Twitch-streaming thing? How?” I asked as calmly as Bumdlebore did in the fourth Parry Hotter movie.

“Well, you sort of went viral,” my sister began explaining.

“And I know my son, when I see him. Even if he pretends to be an anime girl,” Mom concluded. “That said, how can I phrase it ... are you also a girl when you are not streaming?”

I snorted.

“That’s certainly a way to ask ... no, I am a guy, I guess. This whole anime girl thing happened accidentally and I just ran with it. Right into a gigantic pile of horse shit ...” I muttered that last sentence more than actually saying it out loud and started focusing intently on my food.

“So, about that viral clip,” my sister breached the topic once more, despite me hoping I’d have ended this conversation.

“Mhm,” I said, again, calmly.

I looked into her eyes.

Intently.

“Let’s ... not talk about that.”

My smile remained unwavering.

“So, you’re into some guy?”

“MHM,” I SAID, CALMLY.

“Excuse me, you have a boyfriend and didn’t tell us?” Mom barged in.

“No, I don’t. In fact, I don’t even know if he knows I like him. For real. Or if he likes me back.”

“Have you talked to him?” my sister said in a deadpan voice.

“Have I what now?”

“Jesus Christ,” she muttered.

“No wonder they’re talking about population decline,” Mom commented. “It’s not that people don’t want to have children anymore, it’s just that phones have absolutely ruined your generation’s communication skills.”

“Well, look it’s not that easy! I don’t think he knows ... who I really am.”

“Again, phones. Hiding behind screens.” Mom took a bite of her food as if she solved the answer to the universe.

“Well, it’s time to get things straight then,” my sister advised me. “As straight as this whole thing is at least,” she muttered.

“Hahah ...” I said dryly.

“Anyway, where’s your phone?” she asked, standing up from the table and motioning towards my bag I left in the hallway earlier.

“It’s in my pocket.” I procured it from my pants and placed it on the table.

She grabbed it immediately and started tapping the screen. After a few seconds I noticed: She wasn’t tapping, she was typing.

“Wait a sec ...” I stood up and looked over her shoulder.

“You know my passcode?”

“Duh. Anyway, that’s him, right?” she asked, showing me the open chat with Crush.

I groaned.

“You haven’t talked recently,” she commented and without missing a beat typed out a message.

“There you go,” she said, handing me my phone, almost dropping it to the floor in the process.

“Uh, huh, what?” I muttered as I caught it.

Gaia-chan

Hey, wanna meet up?

That was the message she sent.

“You can’t do this?”

“Why not?”

“It’s futile. We had plans to meet up multiple times but they all went awry.”

“Seems like you haven’t tried hard enough.”

“No, I swear, it’s as if fate has different plans.”

“Well maybe fate’s plan was for you two to meet like this?”

As if on cue, a notification popped up:

Crush

Sure, when and how? :)