Chapter 175: Another New Member
[Ding! "Street-Corner Illustrator" has joined the Dimensional Chat Group!]
RawrSoFierce: Welcome, new member! Throwing confetti~~
WolfKingOfQingQingGrasslands: Welcome, new member! Throwing confetti~~
Edward Newgate: New member's an artist, is she? Gurararara, interesting. Admin tells me she's a girl too — how about becoming this old man's daughter!
Edward Newgate: Bear the name of Whitebeard, and become my 72nd daughter!
Eternally Seventeen: No — since the new member is a girl, she's obviously joining my Gensokyo Beautiful Girls Ensemble!
RawrSoFierce: …Yukari, Tatsumaki, Kaguya, and Sakura are beautiful girls, sure. But you and the word "beautiful" — is there actually any connection there?
Eternally Seventeen: Of course there is. I am, after all, only seventeen this year.
Street-Corner Illustrator: emmm… um, is this the Dimensional Chat Group that appeared in my head just now? I'm… I'm Sawamura Spencer Eriri, please… please take care of me, everyone!
Kaguya-sama: [Image] This is a photo of me and the new member! Isn't she adorable? Little fangs and twin tails and the school uniform, come on.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Oh… hello, Kaguya-senpai.
Kaguya-sama: Yep! ヾ(•ω•`)ﾉ~
"…"
Ryū studied the photo Kaguya had sent for a moment.
Kaguya he knew well enough by now — they'd been acquainted for close to half a year.
Eriri was the new member who'd just stepped through the door.
Still, seeing an anime character rendered in full three dimensions and placed right in front of you — even after all this time, even with how many he'd encountered by now, there was still that small spark of surprise.
He had to admit: two-dimensional characters, even after crossing over into the real world, still had looks that left countless real-world beauties completely in the dust.
If you dropped Eriri into his previous life on Earth, every celebrity on the planet would have nothing on her.
And speaking of which — blonde hair, twin tails, blue eyes, that slightly haughty-but-nervous expression…
Why did he suddenly have a very strong sense of déjà vu?
It's you. Akizuki— ahem. He had to admit, at first glance, the resemblance was really something.
Back when he'd first watched Saekano, the moment Eriri appeared on screen had been exactly this feeling.
She really did look that similar.
He found himself with an inexplicable urge to adopt her.
Spit. Spit. Spit.
He hurled the thought out of his head. As the Chat Group Admin, how could he entertain ideas like that about one of his own members? Besides, Eriri was sixteen — seventeen at most. Still a minor.
Having thoughts like that about a minor made you an animal. Full stop.
Street-Corner Illustrator: Um… Kaguya-senpai has already filled me in on what happened, and explained a lot about the Chat Group. Thank you all so much for your attention — if it hadn't been for everyone, today I might have…
Eternally Seventeen: Ahh, don't mention it, new member~
Eternally Seventeen: Now that you're part of the Dimensional Chat Group, if you ever run into trouble, we veterans will absolutely step in. Whoever dares lay a hand on someone belonging to this youkai sage — I'll tear them apart!
RawrSoFierce: …When did Eriri become "yours," exactly.
Eternally Seventeen: I'm the Chat Group's one and only female moderator, so all female members are mine by default! Your big sister of the Dimensional Chat Group stands before you!
Eternally Seventeen: Is the Admin worried I'll be a bad influence on the new member?
RawrSoFierce: …The new member, when she puts her foot on the gas, runs laps around you.
Eternally Seventeen: Huh??!
RawrSoFierce: Did you look at her handle? Street-Corner Illustrator. Read just the key characters out loud and see what you get.
Eternally Seventeen: Street… Corner… Illustrator!
Eternally Seventeen: A specimen of this rarity has wandered into our midst — I'm suddenly very excited!
Yukari's reading of the handle wasn't wrong, technically.
Because Eriri was, in fact, a manga artist.
Who drew a very specific kind of manga. The 18+ variety.
It was genuinely hard to picture a girl who looked this wholesome producing that kind of work — and yet Eriri was already making a quiet name for herself in the field, a rising star by anyone's measure.
Her main occupation was, of course, being a second-year high schooler. The illustration work was a side gig. One that also happened to feed the deeply hidden otaku soul within her.
She was, through and through, a two-dimensional homebody.
The veteran kind.
Veteran enough to pick up a pen and do it herself.
Come to think of it, the Chat Group had quite a few shut-ins — Ryū himself, Yukari, Kaguya, Eriri — the kind of people who, whenever they had a free moment and no obligations, would happily lock themselves indoors and refuse to move.
The Chat Group's at… thirteen members now, right? Should be thirteen. Five are female — excluding the Wandering Earth whose gender is undetermined, that leaves seven male members. Not a bad ratio.
The group's long-running gender imbalance had finally started to correct itself.
Ryū pulled his attention out of the Chat Group. Outside, Konoha had gone dark. He could faintly hear the sound of rain — something light, by the sound of it.
He lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, with absolutely nothing to do.
It occurred to him that his only remaining entertainment was chatting in the group.
All the popular manga, games, and shows from the Hero Association world — he'd burned through every last one of them in late-night sessions ages ago.
"I genuinely have no idea what to do with myself," he muttered to the ceiling. "If only there was an anime I hadn't finished. I could ask Kaguya to send me something—"
A soft ding interrupted him.
Something had popped up in the Chat Group. Either a notification or someone had tagged him.
He turned his attention back in — and when he saw the chat history, he blinked. A look of faint disbelief crossed his face.
"Are you kidding me? Today's just Member Joining Day, is it? Eriri just joined, and now there's already another new member? That frequency feels a little high?!"
Sure enough — another new member had just appeared in the Dimensional Chat Group.
[Ding! "My True Form Is Cola" has joined the Dimensional Chat Group!]
A very strange handle.
Something like "Little Sakura of the Tohsaka" or "Wolf King of QingQing Grasslands" — those Ryū could place immediately. But "My True Form Is Cola"?
What kind of handle was that? Cola… My True Form Is Cola?
Could this possibly be Franky from One Piece?
No way. That would mean three One Piece characters in the Chat Group.
Two was already a pretty wild coincidence. Three moved well past coincidence into something else entirely. If this really was Franky, then having three members from the same world wasn't a fluke — there was something deliberate going on. Some kind of bigger scheme at work.
Ryū wasn't normally the type to spiral into conspiracy theories.
But he couldn't stop himself from going there right now.
Was it actually Franky?
Hmm. Probably not, actually.
Because Franky's world didn't have video games.
Loves cola. Stays up late. Plays games.
A flicker of something crossed Ryū's mind — a half-formed memory — but it slipped away before he could catch it.
He was almost remembering something. He just couldn't pin it down.
That feeling sat in his chest like a pebble.
RawrSoFierce: @My True Form Is Cola — new member, there's a group announcement in the upper right corner. Tap it and it'll explain everything. Once you've read it, you'll know whether this is a hallucination, a dream, a delusion, or something actually happening.
My True Form Is Cola: …Upper right corner? Okay, so — this isn't a hallucination?
RawrSoFierce: What hallucination feels this real?
My True Form Is Cola: Fair point… I'll go read it.
Kaguya-sama: I'm willing to bet this new member is also someone the Admin knows.
RawrSoFierce: Whether I know them or not depends on their name.
"…"
My True Form Is Cola: Whoa whoa whoa! This is — wait, is this real? Did I have a hallucination because I stayed up playing games until 4am last night?
My True Form Is Cola: That shouldn't be possible, staying up late never did this to me before!
Eternally Seventeen: Incredible — another new member already?
Kaguya-sama: New member, post a photo and your three measurements!!
Crazy Diamond: New member, post a photo and your three measurements!!
RawrSoFierce: Breaking up the echo chamber.
Terrible Tornado: Huh… I just got out of the Arena and apparently two new members joined while I was in there. Did I miss something?
Street-Corner Illustrator: …
My True Form Is Cola: …It genuinely doesn't feel like a dream.
My True Form Is Cola: I pinched my thigh and it hurt!!
☆☆☆
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