Eden Rivers rolled out of bed. She was tired and haggard from restless sleep, but her circadian clock was so sensitive that every day, at exactly 7 AM, she would be on her feet. The first order of business was her meds; a mix of antidepressants and prescribed amphetamines, taken together with a fat caffeine pill and washed down with soda. She used the bathroom down the hall, hoping the routine of washing and brushing would help her feel more awake before returning to the desk by her bedside to boot up her PC.
It was a gaming PC, a high-end computer that swished with liquid coolant and flashed with colored LEDs the moment it turned on. Its three monitors came alive one after the other with logos and standby codes, and its peripherals; an RGB-lit keyboard, 24-button mouse, headset charger, and webcam, blinked with power. The PC waited idle on its home screen while Eden fixated on her phone.
MomoInugami: whee is jess?
MomoInugami: where
TrashPanda: @Clumsyidol
Trashpanda: @DoggoPI
Eden tapped a reply into their chat group and reclined in her seat with a yawn.
DoggoPI: im here. I just woke up.
TrashPanda: Did you talk to Jess at all last night?
L0stgui: she posted on her insta
DoggoPI: i havent seen he4.
DoggoPI: Her.
MomoInugami: i just wanted to go over like what we were doing today. It's been a busy week and i dont want to fuck this Up haha
TrashPanda: We don't start until 3 Doggy’s time. She has plenty of time to get on. :)
TrashPanda: Besides I'm not worried.
MomoInugami: you're not the one being scou4ed!!!!
L0stgui: scouted
DoggoPI: You'll do great Momo!!! It's not like they haven't seen you stream and your numbers speak for themselves right.
MomoInugami: praying I dont look ducking stupid lmao ;^;
L0stgui: fucking
MomoInugami: fucking
MomoInugami: thanks lol
DoggyPI: @Clumsyidol helloooooooooo
L0stgui: i have her number ill text her
MomoInugami: Great! :D
DoggyPI: bbl @ me when jess gets on
Eden swiped the group chat closed and opened another with unread posts. There were quite a few piling up in her app, but this one had all her attention. They were direct-messages with a fellow streamer named Jail.
RealJail: https://[×]DoggyStyle/164831 me? :3
He had linked her to a post she made online: Wishing I could put this case behind me ♡. Eden smirked and tapped out a reply.
DoggyPI: Maybe ;)
RealJail: I'll be in Seattle tomorrow for a thing. hook up?
DoggyPI: hmmmmm
RealJail: come on it'll be fun ^,w,^
DoggyPI: staying at the Hilton or the Marriott?
RealJail: lmao is this a deal breaker?
RealJail: doubletree
DoggyPI: Marriott has better room service.
RealJail: its a date uwu
DoggyPI: text me tomorrow then. Ill be busy tonight with a collab. Need to shower and eat before then.
RealJail: Show me!
DoggyPI: breakfast???
RealJail: No.
RealJail: @message0005633
The highlighted text linked Eden to a naked selfie she'd taken last week. It pictured her from the neck down with her breasts pushed up on her arm. She rolled her eyes.
DoggyPI: let me think about it
She set her phone on her desk and it vibrated with a reply, but Eden had already walked away.
Her home was a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment on the edge of Vernor Hill. It wasn't a lot all things considered, with as much floor space as a middle-class living room, but she paid rent herself and didn't need a roommate to help her get by. She was proud of that.
She shut herself in the bathroom and got out of her clothes. Tank top pulled over her head, panties slid down her thighs and laundry piled in the corner before she reached into the shower to give the boiler a head start. While the water warmed, she checked her face in the mirror. Acne on the cheek and chin, again. It made her want to groan. Eden noticed it earlier, but now she was seeing Jail, and her zits felt a thousand times more obvious.
There were cover-ups, of course. She would practice a good make-up look for tomorrow. Eden lifted her gaze finally to her gray eyes and sighed; what a boring color. She reminded herself to find some eyeshadow to make them seem less plain.
Steam turned the mirror opaque and Eden finally peeled herself away from her reflection to step inside the tub. Immediately she got down to business, water splattering down her curves as she brushed her fingers through the tangles in her hair. A shower was, more or less, the most automatic chore Eden could manage without much thought. The practiced motions of washing herself weren't worth recording, even to her own mind.
What she thought of was Jail.
They were both vtubers, part of a subculture of online live streaming, where the streamers used cameras to map their movements onto digital characters. Eden had met Jail as Detective Lunari, her character; a werewolf-turned-law-woman styled in the noir themes of a crime novel.
She thought of her dad just then and frowned. She was reminded how she kept the spare bedroom furnished and its bathroom cleaned, and how she hadn't seen him since she started streaming. It had been two years. Eden stood on her toes, pushing herself up into the shower head, tilting her head down so the water pounded on the back of her skull. This close, the water sounded louder than her thoughts, and she felt relieved enough to move on.
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Jail. He was a charming guy, if a bit annoying. He had a habit of messaging her at all hours of the day. She told her friends that needy men annoyed her, but she liked the attention. She and Jail were relationship streamers, after all. They were a niche within a niche; vtubers that played characters for the express purpose of exploiting the parasocial bond between content creator and content consumer.
Jail, in his own words, satisfied the needs of lonely housewives. Eden appealed mostly to men; the loneliest, most outcast among them; the sort of men who saw real women as ugly, and the virtual—digital—girls as idols to be worshiped.
She told herself she wasn't taking advantage of them, but giving them what they needed. Everyone wanted love. Eden gave love to hundreds at a time, role-playing as their concerned partner, patient girlfriend, and—for those who donated a lot—a wife.
There was only one rule in their line of work, like an escort that never let her johns meet: Never be seen with the opposite sex. It was a rule that made Eden pause. She stopped her practiced routine and listened to the shower crowding her ears. If anyone found out about her and Jail, she'd be run off the internet by a thousand jilted lovers. Thankfully, he was a pro. Jail had quadruple Eden’s subscribers. He had an agency, a music deal, and multiple lines of merch. Her secret was safe with him, because if it wasn't, he had so much more to lose.
The thought of that little secret made her smile. All the sneaking around made her feel naughty, the thrill of being caught was dangerous. She knew the sex would be all the better for it.
Eden got out of the shower, wrapped her hair up in a towel, and collected her clothes. She knew she should eat, but elected to get her laundry started first.With the wash running and a fresh set of leggings and a t-shirt on, she was lured back into her bedroom, the call of her desk for a short break too strong to ignore. Eden checked her DMs with Jail, glanced to see if Jess had turned up, and when it was clear there was nothing left to do, she opened Minecraft on her desktop. Just a short stint, and she’d check her laundry.
Hours passed easily when Eden was playing games, eating up time where otherwise she’d be thinking too much about, well, everything. Noon came around and she was reminded by the growl of her stomach that she hadn’t eaten. And she’d forgotten her laundry. Throwing a burrito in the microwave, she swapped the clothes, and ate at her desk, clocking in at less than ten minutes out of her chair. At 2PM, Eden’s phone jingled with an alarm. She checked the group chat for her upcoming collab.
L0stgui: she still hasn’t answered
MomoInugami: fine
TrashPanda: Are you sure it’s fine?
MomoInugami: it’s fine what can I do now lmao
L0stgui: mhm
TrashPanda: @DoggoPI
DoggoPI: its meeee
MomoInugami: i can’t believe jess isnt here but eden IS
DoggoPI: fr fr :3
TrashPanda: Ok, so, I think the server is 100% ready. Everyone got their mod codes right? Just plug the code into the modloader and it’ll download everything for you.
MomoInugami: you THINK the server is ready??
L0stgui: she kept making changes. but i’ve been helping her test it out
MomoInugami: im gonna fucking redact myself
TrashPanda: You’re ok, Momo. Jesus. :p
MomoInugami: im so stressed hahaha
DoggoPI: send me the code again please :3
Panda sent the code via a private DM and Eden got to work setting up a new, modded version of Minecraft. She had played with Panda before, both on and off stream, and was familiar with her last-minute tweaks. All things considered, Eden wasn’t worried at all; being down a member or playing a game cold wasn’t unusual. Streaming was mostly improv, and the rest was confidence. She knew she’d have fun.
It was five minutes ‘til they went live. Eden had started her streaming software and loaded her avatar. She watched as Detective Lunari bent and turned, mirroring her own movements. Eden had various emotes mapped to the keyboard that added character to Lunari when she was on screen; ear wiggling, tail wagging, blushing, and panting. Everything worked.
“Can you guys hear me alright?” L0st asked. By the sound of it, she was leaning close to her desk mic.
“Back up,” Momo said. “I can hear you breathing.”
“Blahhh… it’s a new mic. I’m still messing with the noise canceling.”
“It’ll be fine, you sound great!” Eden chimed in. She adjusted where her mic stand sat on her desk, never quite satisfied with how it was positioned. Nevertheless, no one complained.
“Server’s up.” Panda said.
“I’m not seeing it.”
“I see it, Momo,” Eden said. “Did you get the IP address right?”
“Are you really asking me that? Oh, I see it now.”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Panda reassured.
“I’m fucking sweating.”
“Jess just texted me,” L0st said.
Momo snorted, and Eden heard the clack of their keyboard; the buttons were pressed too hard. “Well it’s too fucking late now.”
“She broke up with her boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know she had a boyfriend,” Panda said.
“Jess had a boyfriend? Who?” Eden asked.
“I’m asking.”
“Just focus on the stream, please.”
Eden put on a big smile. It was show time. “Okay!”
The group split off into separate audio channels to greet their respective audiences. Online, the foreground view-blocker vanished from Eden’s stream, and Detective Lunari went live to over 400 waiting viewers. “Hiii everyone,” she said in Lunari’s gentle, sleepy lilt. Lunari was a sweet girl, the most vulnerable and feminine creature Eden could imagine; designed for the express purpose of drawing hearts in viewers eyes. Eden hit her ear wiggle and turned to her viewer chat.
“Buf buf buf buf,” she woofed into the mic.
The chat typed ‘buf’ back at her and they spammed it hundreds of times. Her viewers, nicknamed Buffers, happily repeated Lunari’s catch-phrase. “How’s everyone doing?” she asked sweetly. “I’m so happy you’re home. I waited all day, you know. How was work? How was school?”
The buffers typed over each other and the chat became a near incomprehensible stream of replies. Eden nodded and leaned into the character of a loving pet. “Ahh I see, I see…” she said. “You got a promotion? I’m so proud of you.”
She picked out the good days and soothed the bad, and replied whenever someone made a Super Chat; a message tied to a donation that stood out from the rest. Eden would often do streams without a subject at all, but talk for hours with her buffers, and rake in donations from those longing for the illusion of companionship.
Today, however, she had something to do.
“We’re gonna go see our friends okay?” Eden said to chat. “We’re going to play with… uhm… Momo, Gooey, and Panda! Panda made a new server for us and it looked really fun, I think you guys will love it.”
The buffers replied with a mix of enthusiasm and disappointment. Her audience was split down the middle, divided between those that preferred to keep Lunari for themselves and those that loved moe; a Japanese concept roughly understood as “cute girls doing cute things together.”
“Hello everyone,” Eden rejoined the previous audio channel, but this time in character as Lunari.
“Hello, hello,” Momo replied. Whenever someone spoke, their avatar lit up in the corner of Eden’s stream. Momo’s appeared like a dog-girl dressed in the robes of a Japanese priestess.
“Hiiiiiiiii,” L0st said. Her character, Gooey, was a big-breasted girl composed entirely of slime.
Panda’s character, a short-statured raccoon girl, lit up in turn. “Welcome in, everyone!”
The four of girls played out their usual hijinks, but with a focus on Momo’s reactions, wanting her to stand out to the agency recruiters watching her stream. She was being scouted by Mythlink, Jail’s agency, and if they picked her up, she would retire the character Momo Inugami for a new persona under Mythlink’s banner. Independent streamers like Eden could get by, but only just. Their career was all but doomed to obscurity unless an agency gave them a platform. For Momo, that chance meant everything.
While they played out a friendly pantomime, Eden noticed a turn in chat. They had started spamming Jail in various ways:
Jail
Jail
Jail lmao
Jail going to jail
Jail google doc
Google doc
Clumsyidol
Eden blinked. “Google doc?” she asked her chat.
Streamer doesn’t know, they spammed.
“One second babes,” Eden said to the girls. Lunari’s model wiggled and stopped, staring at the floor. The chat could see she had gotten up from her desk.
Eden took her phone in hand. She jumped on Jess’ insta and saw, posted for everyone to see, a public takedown with a link to a google document. It was a call-out post, Jess’ attempt to draw attention to a man that had done her wrong; Jail was the subject, her now ex-boyfriend.
“I met @RealJail in 2025,” Eden read aloud. “He was charming. He was handsome. He was nice. When we talked, I was over the moon.” Eden skimmed the rest.
“That was before I found out about the other women.”
Eden sucked in her stomach. She scrolled down further, to barely-redacted examples of text messages Jail had sent to numerous other women. Jess posted redacted photos, but Eden saw herself; tits blurred, face hidden, and—for certain—nude.
“Oh my fucking god,” she muttered. Her hand brushed her forehead, trailed down to cover her mouth, she felt faint. “Holy shit. Holy fucking shit.”
Tears welled in Eden’s eyes and she dropped to her knees, rocking on her heels as she read on and on. It felt like there was no end to it. By the look of things, Jail had slept with every vtuber north of a thousand viewers, and even slept with his fans. The pictures Jess posted had been found in a folder filled with his self-described trophies. She had his chat logs; she had his texts; she had everything.
The numbing tingle of a stuck-sleeping leg washed over Eden’s whole body and she crumpled entirely. It didn’t feel real; nothing felt real; she felt weightless on the floor; asleep, even as she stared at the foot of her desk. Eden heard the banter of her friends through the headset she left behind. They didn’t know, but they would soon. She swallowed, shivered, and cried.