August 27.

"So this is where you are."

In his search, Nagi was quickly able to find Gin on a short stroll in Queen Street seeing a lot of signage saying that trucks are completely banned on the street. There, he saw Gin sitting on a bench reading a book with a sleeping maiden covered up with a thick blanket on his lap.

"'Sup."

"How does your girlfriend make anything comfy?" Nagi whispered.

"Just talk like normal. She won't wake up once she just fell asleep."

"Shouldn't it be that it's easier to wake her up?"

"I dunno. She's always been like this."

"Nice spot, though."

"Is now a nice spot, I'd say. I could still smell my blood here, well, not really."

"Ah… right. So this is the place."

"I've never really had any plans on visiting this place anymore although I still have a sizeable attachment in this place, but it's a Sunday and Rin decided to join me only for her to fall asleep.

I called Haku to bring us blankets."

"I didn't even notice him leave…"

"There's a reason why my house has a lot of windows."

"…"

Nagi suddenly paused and fell to silence staring at Gin. From there, a recent memory resurfaced from his mind which prompted him to bring up a question directed at the man suspiciously.

"Are you sure you really don't have a thing for hair?"

"At this point I don't know how many times I'm going to answer no," he says, as he stopped caressing the hair of the sleeping beauty on her lap. "I just like her hair, is that bad? You're the one that always fawn whenever Shiro has her hair down, you know."

"Now don't push this onto me. And when she ties her hair up it's still on a different realm, okay? Flowy ones are nice and all, but there's something special with seeing the ponytail wave and bob around when she's walking or running."

"I get you… it's kinda hypnotizing walking from behind and that's the sight you have."

"See, you totally got me."

"How'd you feel about ribbons?"

"They're exquisite."

"My man."

"…"

"…"

Perhaps, these two men at that moment had come to some kind of realization. The enthusiastic conversation halted, causing them to feel both mortified.

…

"How is your storyboard doing?"

"It's done. All we need to do is film it. I don't think it's going to take a while and we can use any time of morning to afternoon. Well, some bits will depend on how well you'll pull it off, though. For the morning scenarios, I can do it alone.

As much as possible, I want to start with it immediately, and expect your house to become a mess. Maybe… I'll be able to clean them up after my deb- after my you-know-what."

"Gotcha. But you'll have to give a minute since your mama is babysitting someone."

"Why'd you have to say it out loud?!" Nagi whispered. "What happens if Ringo wakes up?!"

"Hey, I'm confident on how well she sleeps. If she doesn't wake up in 30 minutes, I'll carry her home."

"Hahh… I'll go set up on your house now. See you."

▪ ▪ ▪

Rolling back a few days ago…

"I've thought about an intro I could use on my upcoming debut that I hope can leave an impression… and I can only do it with your help."

"Ooohh?"

"Well, I can't deny that I still have a lot of my reservations in me especially since I was fully expecting my internship to be in production… but then I thought about it just earlier. I don't even know if my school has other motives, so I want to go with this plan anyway.

If I can't be in production right now, then I'll just bring in the filming in this line of work. I'll probably have done less filming if I was in a conventional setting, but this enables me, you see.

But first and foremost, I'd like to have your permission to have your house in the film."

"Are you going to show the outside?"

"No way in hell, dude. We've basically doxxed ourselves at that rate. I'll make sure that nothing apparent is going to compromise our location."

"If that's what you say… I'll trust you on that.

So, what's the plan that makes it seem like I'm the only one that can pull this off?"

"Well, for starters, I want to film a 'snippet of my morning' from waking up to getting ready for my debut. That's the basic premise."

"Okay, hold up. Doesn't that sound kinda ordinary?" asked Gin bluntly.

"I knew you'd say that, and this is where you enter the picture. No, you are not going to appear in the camera whatsoever. What I need you to do is…

Be a robot arm."

Gin's eyes widened not in surprise but from sheer confusion. There can be many ways where being a robot arm can be interpreted. But as he was running the possibilities in his mind, Nagi continued.

"You watch them on YouCube a lot, right? Those hyper expensive robotic arms that they use to capture insane shots is what I want to replicate. I want you to be my cameraman in some of those shots, but without a robot arm we can't pull off those crazy inhuman shots I have in my brain.

Or do we?"

Gin has always been a watcher of the technological side of YouCube. Because of that, he has a grasp of what Nagi does in making films, and VFX breakdowns let him learn so much about physics, simulations, and even relearning color theory and how light interacts with the world.

In this case, he is not oblivious of robotic camera arms, as there are even more impressive arms that can play table tennis with a human. Piecing things together, he could see in his mind the kind of shots that Nagi has in mind—like fast sweeping motions, top-down pans, hyper steady camerawork, and indeed shots that a person could not do handheld.

"Yup, that's going to be a wow factor, but I'm now curious how that's going to be applied in a normal morning routine."

"Well, you're going to have to wait for my storyboard, but I'm going to have to finish an official illustration first."

▪ ▪ ▪

After dropping the still napping Rin to their house, Gin returned with Nagi setting up light stands in front of his kitchen aisle.

"Oh, good timing. Do you have a spare light I can use? I don't think one lamp is going to be bright enough."

"Hmm, I have a flood light that I use for my yard, but I think it's going to be too bright. Oh, wait, it's dimmable so it totally works. I'll get it when we need it."

"I sent you the PDF of the storyboards in your email. My guess is that it would not exceed five minutes all in all. At least that's what management agreed with."

After downloading the file, he immediately saw something very jarring in the storyboards Nagi drew—there a lot of scenes where Nagi will most likely appear on camera in person, which is very different to the nature of vtubing that he understands.

"Man, Taiyou is really easy-going, huh? Not everyday you see a Japanese company say yes to something like this. It's not that this is something entirely new, but still."

"Yeah, but I really just want to put myself as a filmmaker out there."

"Well, you're going to have to be ready on the internet, then. No matter how happy you and the viewers are going to be on the outcome, you'll still definitely attract some unreasonable hate may it be on Witter or Leddit. In case of 4san, that's automatically a given. It's going to persist, and they'll make countless narratives. Some would even overanalyze if you show an accent, see something in this house that would point that you live in Brazil without you knowing any Portuguese.

Bottomline, you just have to avoid those kinds of stuff or not let it get to you when you egosearch."

"Damn, you know a lot about how people get flamed online, huh."

"Uh, well… before I became a teacher in Blue Ink, I became an unhinged gremlin anon in Leddit. I'm not stupid enough to engage in drama and I was only there to be a sorry spawn of memes. Far from my proudest moment, that is."

"Uh, sure. Let's go upstairs so we can start, then."

Based on the storyboards, the short film would begin with a shot of the morning sky from the window of Nagi's room with his alarm clock ringing afterwards as he wakes. Following that would be ordinary routines in the morning to cooking his own breakfast with the twist of several food flip shots that they have to practice. There are notes about inserting additional comedic kits, but the film would conclude with him turning on his computer, sitting on his desk, test things out several minutes before his debut, and the film would end with the press of the Start Streaming button.

What is key to this film would be the continuity as it would impact the attention to detail. In the first day of debut relays, three of the talents will debut and he would be the second one among them. There would also be a scene pretending that he is watching the preceding streaming, in which Nagi already asked for a prerecorded template video to play on the television.

But the center of the film would be the camerawork. Gin would be tasked to perform shoots involving a lot of moving around, especially replicating the movement of a robotic camera arm. Basically, anything that seems impossible to be filmed handheld, and looks expensive to shoot, is the reaction Nagi is aiming for.

After all the filming is done is when he would take full control of the production in the editing phase where he would do color grading, sound design, and a little bit of VFX by making hidden cuts and potentially rotoscoping depending on the complexity of the scene.

While he may not be looking forward to showcasing himself as an entertainer in front of thousands of people in livestream, it is still evident that his prowess shines in film the most.

"Is this an okay shot to you, Gin?"

"Yup. If it's just the sky and a few power lines then it shouldn't be a big deal.

But I think I should still check in the kitchen if there's anything that will get us… geoguessed."

"Oh… maybe I should play that on stream."

As the time of the day is not exactly an issue when Nagi could essentially change how the environment looks like in post-production, they changed the time on the clock of the room and of the computer to tackle different scenes. However, it was imperative to Nagi that he has to take a shot of the actual morning which he held off for the next day.

Nonetheless, a lot of the easy shots were taken as reenacted by Nagi, and they completed all of the footage they need in the room upstairs.

"Man, this is awesome. I'm never going to forgive myself if I drop this. It's a bit bigger than my camera."

On Gin's hand is a camera attached to a handheld gimbal stabilizer that he would use for the "impossible" shots.

"It's just secondhand but that's why it has a wrist strap. Also, I've already calibrated it so I'd like you to not mess with it."

"I'm the last person you'd want to expect to hear this is heavy, but you carry this around regularly?"

"Filming is a workout, what can I say. You always run around carrying something this heavy but you get used to it overtime.

This is the first time you're holding a gimbal, yeah?"

"It's really amazing how the camera stays in one place. You've got cool toys."

"Alright, let's get on with it."

The first task was for Gin to slide down the railings of the stairs as he follows Nagi's lower half on descending as he in turn holds a boom mic to record the audio.

"Really, Nagi? Feet for free? In your debut?"

"…

I am now discovering that you are a disgusting degenerate, Gin."

"I'm just going with the flow. Like I'm actually like that."

Regardless of whether Gin must or must not be deemed a degenerate, they called it a day on filming on that note.

▪ ▪ ▪

In days where Nagi's filming partner would not be around and on teaching duties, he would be in front of his editing timeline dragging raw footage into it trying to piece everything in their proper order and color grading them. Such is the job of the editor, but he has been crunching away on all the footage he could do as fast as possible as the hard part of the filming has not passed at all.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

By the time it was Thursday, the two of them dedicated the entire day into filming as opposed to the intermittent shoots they have been doing in the previous weekdays. Nagi hopes that this would be their last day before post-production, but he could already see that they would be doing a lot of takes to get the perfect shots.

"Guess we'll have the AC running all day otherwise it'll all get stuffy here," Gin said to himself as heard Nagi upon coming home with bags of groceries. "You sure bought a lot of stuff."

"I'm just filling up the fridge since I'll probably be a lot busier after the D-day and I bought some extra since I could myself screwing up a lot as we shoot.

Also, I'll make sure to pay you upfront for all the help once I have monetization up on my channel…"

"Hahaha, I hope you rake it in."

"Don't say that. You know better how many have unintentionally initiated a rain of Red donations and I don't want to be that guy."

"Don't worry, your chat will be there to make you slip up."

"…

Anyway, my camera can go up to 1000FPS but I think we'll only need at least 240. If it's still too fast, we can set it to a custom value.

And just to remind you, I'm probably going to toss stuff from the pan quite high, so you might have to jump up to your ceiling for most of them."

"How many somersaults are you making a toast go…"

"Let's just say that this is probably going to be the coolest scene of making breakfast that you will see."

Everything in Gin's kitchen that could expose where they are has been displaced and the scene has been made as generic as possible. The bright lights under a diffuser turned on and thus began the sequence.

Nagi's vision of the most difficult scene of his film is simply the making of a breakfast, but with a twist. Most of the scenes would be dynamic and always moving.

As Nagi would mostly be seen on camera from the forearm down, wearing a black shirt was more of a choice of practicality as in his mind, it would eliminate some problems in editing as it would make it easier to splice hidden cuts with changes on the details of the creases of his shirt being less visible.

The main reason Gin was chosen to be the cameraman is because he fits what is otherwise done by remotely operated shots. Meaning, he can make impossible shots become possible with only a handheld gear.

Nagi has already assumed that he would fail more than Gin. He had expected him to adapt quickly after a few takes to steady himself in his jumps as he has already become a very apt at his control between his feet and the ground. As for Nagi, he would need to make tosses from the pan as vertically as possible so that Gin can track the subject midair. He had only gotten a few pointers on how to do it properly, which poses quite a challenge for him.

But most importantly, everything—every direction he is doing for this film is something he is doing for the first time in a rush, fueled mostly by a kindle that started a large fire.

"Whoop- Ack."

"Aaaand that's one toast consumed by the floor. At least it's good to know that you toast your bread in the pan because that's also my preferred way."

"Duh, toasting on a pan gives the most even crust. Or maybe I have never had a good toaster, but still."

"I feel scared for you flipping a sunny side up."

"That's why I bought an extra dozen.

After more than a dozen of attempts and a few wasted slices of bread, they got the perfect shot they wanted, as well as Nagi miraculously flipping an egg a few rotations in his first try.

"So… why are we repeating all of this, but on a plate this time?"

"This is the hardest part of the video. The first flip we did, I am going to cut to this shot when the subject is still midair."

"H-Huh…?"

As Gin was taking a break from all the leaping, he tried to process what Nagi had said.

"Okay… you know I have limited knowledge, but the way I imagine it, it's suddenly going to change scenes in the middle of the flip? I don't think we have a perfect motion of the flip that would be seamless-

You're going to rotoscope?"

"Yeah, a part of it. I need to review the earlier footage first so that I can at least replicate the direction of the flip this time. I only need a good shot of the side and that's where I will make the cut."

"You filmmakers are insane, I tell you that."

~ ~ ~

"That's a wrap! Man, I've always wanted to say that again."

"Great job, director," and they exchange high fives.

"Hahh… I guess what's left is a bit of cleanup… Sorry, but my gear has to stay here for a bit."

"I don't mind. Oh well, I need to go back next door since I'm in charge with dinner. What are you going to do tonight?"

"I'll probably feed the shots in the timeline and pull an all-nighter. Thank goodness this job doesn't require me to make a documentation for the school."

"So that's what the energy drinks in the fridge are for. Make sure you get lots of rest before your debut if you can."

"I will, I will…"

▪ ▪ ▪

September 9.

Three of the five new members of Taiyou Digital's English branch will be debuting.

9AM, on one of Nagi's monitors, a loading screen of a livestream is playing, while on the other screen he is finalizing his stream assets.

As the first member's stream is just starting, there is an hour left before Nagi's turn.

"Wow, so this is how the OBS of a streamer looks like," Gin mumbled as he sat on the bed.

"Like a mess, yeah. Honestly, I can't stop double checking stuff. They're all in their place but I have a gut feeling that something will still go wrong."

"Ah… the EN Curse… I hope everything goes well later. More than anything, I'm excited to see the avatar I drew moving and to see the film we worked at for days. I'm sure nobody is going to expect what you are about to pull out later."

※ The "EN Curse" is a joke among English-speaking vtubers and audience where English streamers seems to be hit with technical difficulties the most, and that its probability to occur increases as the number of people in a single stream also increases.

"Hahh… I hope so…"

Gin's hands then landed on Nagi's shoulders, pressing to the tense muscles with force leaving Nagi at a moment of pain.

"That should ease you up a bit.

I'm going back to Rin's since she's watching the debuts as they happen. It's pretty known now in our group chat that I am the illustrator for one of the talents so they're sure to watch them. They are going to be so surprised once the clock hits ten.

Anyway, hooroo."

Crossing through his window to Rin's room, Gin descended to the living room to see Rin very much cozy and focused on the debut happening with a grin on her face.

"You're so late, Potato! It has already started."

"Sorry, sorry. What did I miss?"

"She has such a great voice. Maybe she's a singer or voice actor?"

"Oh, her."

The first of the five to debut is one of the girls that Gin had already met in the meeting. After a few searches, he discovered that her past personality is that of an "utaite" or singers that cover Japanese music including vocaloid.

From what he had heard of their music, he was sure that there will either be a cover or an original song coming at the end of the stream.

And after 45 minutes, he was correct with his prediction.

"Of course after that small karaoke she would release an original song!" Rin exclaimed.

"She totally flexed on her chat, didn't she."

"Aww, that's a cute ending screen. I'll probably watch her a lot. But the one you drew for is next, huh? I suddenly feel nervous…"

Right in front of their eyes, they see the video automatically change to Michelo Azuria's debut stream, carrying 40,000 live viewers with six more minutes until it starts.

"Man I feel so bad for Nagi right now…"

But all of a sudden, Rin's arm wrapped on Gin's, then to his fingers, as she leaned her head on the sturdy shoulder.

"What now?"

"Just really happy for you.

We've been together for six years and I've never seen you acknowledge your achievements, or you don't know how to? In any case, I don't know how you really feel about these things, but I'm still glad I'm here to see your success with you."

"I still really don't know myself, huh. Well, thank you for being here then, but we should really, really, focus on my son's debut. I think you're going to like it.

And I also have to be on Witter posting live."

"Okay~"

And so, the stream started with an intro loading screen befitting the design of the avatar Gin had bestowed. While the person behind the avatar gave the commissions creative freedom, it was still able to encapsulate the way they wanted it to be.

In the last minute, Gin had texted Nagi "good luck", and a few seconds later, the stream stinger transitioned.

It was all black until a shot of the cloudy morning sky appeared with the sound of the birds and a hint of ambient noise captured.

"Huh? What's going on?" Rin was caught in surprise with the sudden shift to the 'real' world rather than a virtual space.

Alarms sounded and turned off. A body of someone barely visible to the frame emerged from the blanket. From there, Rin moved away from her clutches on her partners arm and leaned forward to get a better look at the screen.

The stairs, the polished concrete floor, the bathroom, the kitchen… Her attention was momentarily diverted by the sheer creativity in the portions where the camera angles dynamically moved and the scenes suddenly changed seamlessly. But with the next scene being in the living room with the television playing the loading screen of the streamer before this one, Rin was once again hit with a whiplash seeing that every single detail of the house in the film was something she is very familiar with.

Yet she dared not speak until the film was over.

The scene suddenly switched back to the room where she placed further scrutiny. This time, the camera is directed towards the computer screen. The person sat on his chair, cracked his fingers, took a heavy sigh… and pressed the Start Streaming button in the broadcasting software.

The screen went blank and faded back to the loading screen. But not even a minute after, the stinger appeared and transitioned to the screen with the virtual avatar in full display.

After one word from the streamer's voice, Rin vigorously fell to the backrest of the couch as though she lost strength in her body.

"I thought you were out of surprises… You motherf-clucker…!"

"Woah, that was close, lady."

"W-Wh-Wh- Is that really Nacchi?!

And did you really think I wouldn't recognize that bedroom?! For crying out loud, I used that as my room for a few months…! What the hell are you guys cooking all this time?!"

"Okay, calm down, milady. No more surprises this time around; we're out of them at this point.

But yeah, that's Nagi as a vtuber streaming from my house. Surprising how good his English is, isn't it?"

"Oh my goodness, his chat is still talking about the film… I can barely read anything."

"*Once again, hello everyone, I am Michelo Azuria…" in verbatim, "*'I came from faraway lands where the people and cities have begun to stagnate in creativity for generations. Thus, I left my lands in pursuit of new knowledge that I want to impart back to our people to once again fuel their desires to create. This thing called streaming came upon my journey, and learn that with this I can further my skills by learning from others, and also imparting what I already know…'

*Or at least that's what my lore says. Anyway, how do you like the video?"

"That's… certainly how you break the fourth wall immediately."

"*Ooohhh, a lot of people actually have guesses! I won't dwell on this for now since they may sound like jargons and I want to talk about the video further later, but I'm seeing a lot of motion tracking, dolly shots, pulleys, VFX, even a 3D environment…

*I'm actually glad that a lot of you know about this stuff, but I'll answer as much as I can later and a future stream since I want to dedicate a zatsudan talking about just this. I'm honestly looking forward to talk about you guys about this… I don't know if I can be as good as VFX Artists React, but I want to break it down with you."

"He sounds nervous," Rin chuckled.

"Of course he would be. There's forty thousand people watching him."

"My word, he's already at 75k subscribers…

Oh, his likes and dislikes align with what I already know of… It feels weird knowing that a close friend is a vtuber, Potato…!"

"Tell me about it. I'm just as surprised as you when we were in a meeting. We're like the sunken Y*da puppet face hiding the shock from the staff, you know."

"He was the one that drew the promotional art for their gen?!"

"Oh, that one I forgot to tell you. Now we're definitely out of surprises.

Huh?"

"*Eh? Seriously?! Amagami Yuki-sensei is here?! **Amagami-sensei! Thank you for coming to my stream! I hope you're doing well and best wishes to your current work!"

The couple felt a chill on their backs.

"Guh… that's unbelievably cringe… Why did Yuuga have to appear in chat now of all times?"

Before they even realized it, their phones have been pinging for who knows how long with their chat app telling them they have more than a hundred unread messages from their friends.

"Oh boy, they're also going wild here."

"Wait, even Shiro doesn't know anything about this?!" Rin noticed with the barrage of uppercase messages she has been sending in their group chat.

"Yeah, he said he wanted to surprise her and it looks like it went way too well."

"This is a lot to sink in…"

"Let's ask him later about all this. I don't know how much I can say but I think he's free in the afternoon a few hours after the third member's debut."

"I so can't wait to get filled in with all of this…"

~ ~ ~

"Can I come over, like right now?" is what Ginji asked from Gin through a text. By the time he had arrived, he was carrying a box of 24 cans of beer with him.

"We haven't seen you in months and this is how you show up in my house, dude?"

"What? You said Nacchi is free until tomorrow even during the remaining debuts."

"In the morning, I said, but I didn't expect you to be bringing that much booze here.

By the way, how's work in Stylo?"

"That's where this came from, actually. They had a box lying around the office and they said I can just take it with me anytime."

"Hahh… Do you guys want to do this here or outside? Shiro's on the way, and apparently Jean and Akira are bringing a crap ton of food."

"Let's just do this here inside. It's getting to the point where it gets really cold at night."

"Better move a couch then… You probably want to move your light stands elsewhere, Nagi. Just put them anywhere, it'll get cleaned up later anyway."

"It's gonna be a pain to clean these up later…"

"Rin, can you bring out the cooler box? Those cans aren't going to get cold fast in the fridge. I'll go buy some ice."

"Roger!"

"G, can you record when Shiro arrives for me to see? She'll definitely beat Nagi up for keeping her in the dark."

"I got you."

It appeared that most of the former members of the Art Club had watched the debut stream from a few hours ago, which led to an impromptu gathering in Gin's house once Nagi confessed in their group chat. In a matter of minutes, the house suddenly got populated even before the day hit six in the evening.

Once the seven of them have gathered, the myriad of food was then laid out on the table, and the party decided to open YouCube in the television and rewatched the archive video of Nagi's first stream.

"Why am I being subject to this punishment… These things are supposed to happen in an anniversary stream…!" Nagi exclaimed, as he did not expect to immediately feel the embarrassment from his first big exposure on the internet.

"Come on, look at your chat though," Akira encouraged. "Even Yuuga tuned in earlier. Who knows, I think you can easily snag a collab with him knowing how much he became involved since his interactions with Midoriki Treya."

"Wasn't he planning to retire on drawing manga?"

"His publisher gave him a few more years. No one knows if his current work is going to be his last though."

In the midst of the continuing conversation, Nagi had slowly noticed that her significant other has been scooting over to his side little by little with a sour face.

"I'm really sorry I couldn't tell you until now," he then whispered when they became shoulder to shoulder.

"…"

"I hope you're not too mad about it- OW…!!"

In the end, he got away with just a still painful pinch on his side, and Shiro then walked off to the cooler box.

"Ah, Shiro! Pass!"

Shiro suddenly turned her head, hearing the voice from Rin who already had her hands ready to catch a can. Nevertheless, her eyebrows frowned suspiciously as she directed her look towards Gin who was acting very indifferent. After a long pause, a can smoothly rolled from her fingers towards Rin's clutches.

In any case, the rest of them were momentarily shocked apart from Ginji seeing the scene as Rin just casually smiled before opening the drink.

"Something wrong?" knowing full well that Rin with an alcoholic drink on her hand is a very unusual sight, she asked nonchalantly, although somewhat cheekily.

"I guess we're starting…" after a few chuckles, the cooler box remained open and several cans opened simultaneously.

"Pfft…" but suddenly, Jean burst out laughing for some reason.

"Hey, you aren't that much of lightweight, right?"

"Shut up, Gin. I was suddenly reminded how we all met at the school's long table and now all of us are out here drinking. That's such a huge jump."

"Huh… that was… what, 2017? It's only been six years, woah."

"Now that I think about it, it's been a while since we all got together like this, huh."

"Yeah… Yuuga really wanted to come but he's not yet done with his manuscript and we don't really have much news of Mori."

"There's always next time, but I guess we're here to celebrate Nagi's debut!"

In agreement, several clinks sounded across the living room.

~ ~ ~

An hour before midnight, the house has finally gotten quiet.

After the cooler ran out of drinks, the seven of them set their sights on the still unopened bottle of wine in Gin's shelves, and emptying it resulted to the silence and only the sound of breathing heard.

"I'm heading out, I guess. Thanks for the night, Gin."

"Yeah, same. We really should be doing this more if we have the free time, but not get knocked out late in the night."

"You're the one inviting now? But man, who knew that wine would be that strong?"

"That's just skill issue," Gin teased. "You're just a few blocks away but you better not get hit by a car or something."

"I'm still sober, you idiot."

Thus left Ginji. Never did Gin imagine that he would see his friends crashed on his couch after a drinking party, which sounded very foreign just a few years ago for him. As for Shiro, she got a little carried away while still holding a grudge on her partner, and was then taken to Rin's house to stay the night.

Meanwhile, Gin found Nagi sitting out on his porch under the solar cells.

"At some point, I'll get this renovated to look like a Japanese engawa."

"That'd look nice. Living in Japan rubbed off on you?"

"Totally. Rin really had fun, which was the most important thing."

"Huh, I bet you guys did," said Nagi as he sipped on a water bottle, seemingly trying to imply something.

"So? Did your opinion change?"

"On what?"

"This streaming stuff."

"…

Hard to say. I felt really weird earlier like I was running on pure adrenaline. But I guess seeing the responses on the short film we did is really validating. I guess I'm still on the high that we pulled something that usually costs hundred thousand of Laxes for free.

I guess for now I'll stick to being the artist guy of the batch and see how it goes."

"More reason to watch you, then."

"What are you trying to say?

Huh, but I guess with this I can ask Capy-sensei for a drawing collab at some point."

"What are you trying to say? I don't like how that sounds."

"I wonder?"

"Oh please, no."

"Dude, just go to sleep. You wouldn't want to be waking up at 12pm with your genmates looking for you in your first group collab."

"You think I'll sleep for 13 hours?"

"That's not out of the question. You're through your first hurdle and I could definitely see you getting careless."

"Fine, fine… What should we do about Jean and Akira, though?"

"I left a note on the table. Whoever wakes up first gets to use the first floor guest room and one is left with the couch.

I've already locked the front door so don't forget to lock in here too."

"Sure, sure. Goodnight, mom."

"You watch your mouth, or you'll feel the pain of slippers on your bum."

"Dude, please no. Your flip flops are an absolute unit."