Chapter 56: Social Distancing

༺ Social Distancing ༻Sitting in the gaming chair, I moved the mouse, and the black screen instantly lit up.

…Should I back down now? Just tell her I couldn’t show her or something…

Yeah, what she said was true, but I’d need considerable courage to reveal the content of my computer to her…

Sure, I knew a lot about her, but it wasn’t to the extent of knowing her browser history or what kind of porn she was watching!

The inside of my computer was like a ticking time bomb.

And Idol-nim, who came in the middle of the night, didn’t give me time to defuse said bomb.

“…Doah.”

I opened up the browser and my homepage greeted me. In a calm voice, using all my strength, I called out to her.

“Yes?”

“Can you tell me what you want to see first?”

Well, you see, there was a world difference between getting hit when you knew it was coming and when you didn’t.

And since I’d end up getting hit anyway, I’d rather experience the former if possible.

“First, please open your Twitch.”

“Do you want to see my activity logs on your streams?”

Also, I’d rather kill myself than let someone else stab me!

“For now, yes.”

For now…

For now, she said…

That meant there was a chance that I’d need to show her something else…

– Click click

Since the cat was already out of the bag, there was no reason to hide my bookmarks anymore.

I clicked on Luka-tan’s channel, which didn’t have the live mark that indicated whether she was streaming or not.

“…There.”

“Could you open the October recap at the bottom first?”

Huh, October? That would be good for me then! Sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ NøᴠᴇlFire.nᴇt website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

[My October Recap]

“Go to the next page.”

After I found out that Doah was Luka, I wasn’t as active in the chat as I had been before, so it shouldn’t be that bad. Or so I thought.

When we got to the next page…

[Time Watched: 62h 38m]

[Lucario watched LUKA for 62 hours 38 minutes!]

Cough cough

My body reacted first even before my brain could comprehend the words completely.

Geez. I watched her THAT much?

And I thought I restrained myself because it was the exam period…

I watched her stream for more than two days in an entire month? The revelation made me too stunned to confirm.

And I wasn’t the only one in that state…

When I leaned back slightly and took a look at the channel owner’s face…

“…Oppa?”

“…Yes?”

Due to my nervousness, my answer came out unnecessarily polite.

“Are you the type of person who leaves the stream open to do other things?”

“Aah~ That’s right~ Yeah. I usually do my homework and stuff while listening to your stream haha~”

No way I’d tell her that I’ve been gluing my eyes to the monitor from start to finish.

I’d admit that I was trash, but I’d rather be a recyclable one than not!

“…I see.”

After looking down at me with a slightly shocked expression, Doah instructed me to move on to the next page.

“Next, next, next… Could we just skip through the last one?”

Then my entire viewing history for this month came up.

[Hours Watched: 62h 38m]

[Chats Sent: 1207]

[Viewed Stream: 15/16]

The one stream I missed was back when Doah was preparing for her audition, and I had to do her part for the group project.

Anyway, it was a blessing that they didn’t show my chat history here.

“Oppa, can I ask something?”

Doah, who had been looking silently at the monitor, spoke up.

“Yeah?”

“Why do you like Luka?”

I turned the chair 180 degrees and faced Doah again.

Resting her butt slightly on the bed, Doah stared straight into my eyes.

“…There are so many reasons, it’s hard to narrow them down.”

“You can just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.”

The first thing that came to mind was, of course…

“Hm… Well, she’s cute. As in Luka’s character, she is cute.”

“So, you think that my avatar is cute?”

“Yeah, the avatar is cute, but I think that her personality and the things that she says are cuter than the avatar itself…”

…Fuck, this was so embarrassing.

Like, deadass.

Because I wasn’t saying all this because I wanted to! This was all because of her request! I felt like banging my head against the wall.

“…Is it so?”

Doah gave me an unsure look, but she didn’t seem to hate my answer.

“Then… Hm… What’s the most memorable scene from the streams you’ve watched recently?”

“Whenever you got an FC on your rhythm games, you looked so happy that you hummed a song…it was cute…”

“Also, when you were playing games with other Closer members. When you made fun of them on purpose, it was fun…”

The most private parts of my life, things that I had never revealed to anyone else in this world trickled out of my mouth.

If the online world were a free space like the universe, then the inside of my rented room would be the earth.

It felt like an irresistible gravitational force was squeezing my breath away.

“…I see.”

“Mm.”

“What do you think now that you’ve seen the real me?”

I knew it instinctively.

That I had to answer the subsequent questions well.

“I’m completely different from Luka, right?”

The question sounded a lot like a guided interrogation. I racked my brain really hard to come up with an answer.

“Right, there are some differences, yeah…”

“Are you disappointed?”

She delivered a direct question targeted at the gap in my answer.

I put strength in my neck and shook my head violently.

“No, not at all. In fact, I like it this way.”

“…You like it this way?”

“You know, it’s that thing, right? Gap moe…”

I never thought I’d be saying those words out loud in the real world…

But it wasn’t like I could come up with a better way to answer it!

“Pfft–!”

Maybe because she was also weak to such cringe words, Doah burst out laughing.

“What did you just say?”

“Um, because there’s such a difference—”

“No, no, not that. Can you repeat ‘those words’ one more time?”

“…Gap moe.”

“Pfffffffffft.”

She was making the same laugh as Luka whenever the latter saw something really funny.

“Ahh, my stomach… Oppa…”

Her reaction was so real that I felt my face heat up.

“What? Why? Did I say something wrong?!”

“No? I didn’t say anything?”

The mischievous expression on her face right now made it feel like Luka herself had manifested right in front of me.

That playful tone.

And her eyebrows that curved like a crescent moon.

“Oppa.”

“What’s it?”

“Do you like me?”

She was using the same tone that Luka used whenever she was roleplaying for her viewers.

The one who stood in front of me wasn’t the meek Doah anymore.

“I-I…”

My heart was pounding like crazy.

Was this how an idol fan felt whenever she met her bias during a fan signing?

It was as if I lost the ability to speak, and my mind just went completely blank.

“Ah… Am I just deluding myself again…? After all, I’m not the pink haired idol that you love…”

“That’s not it!”

But I still had the strength to deny those words.

“If that’s not it, then what?”

She let out a bright smile.

I knew what she wanted to hear from me, so I hung my head low.

Because I didn’t have the confidence to look her in the eye while saying those words out loud…

“…I like you.”

The confession was humiliating.

And this was the first confession I ever made in my life?

All those girls had been doing something like this? How? How the hell did they become so good at it?

For some reason, I felt like I was the stupid-looking Pink Army emote wearing a yellow hard hat instead of Han Taemin at this moment.

“So, are we…”

Doah’s hand caressed my cheeks.

“…dating now?”

I didn’t even realize that she already got up from the bed. She bent her upper body slightly so that she was at eye level with me.

Dating…

She asked if we should date or not…

Never would I think that I’d end up dating a woman irl…

“…Yeah.”

With an unsure voice, I accepted her offer.

Which meant, from now on, our relationship would no longer be connected by just the subscribe button.

“Then, Oppa.”

She cutely spread her arms in front of me.

“Hug me.”

“…From here?”

“No. Stand up and hug me.”

I obediently followed her words, stood up, and wrapped my arms around the back of her shoulders.

Come to think of it, I felt that this was the first time I had hugged her so calmly.

I’ve hugged her a few times before, but she was crying most of the time.

My girlfriend buried her face in my chest for about thirty seconds, before she slowly pushed me away.

“That’s it for today.”

“…Okay.”

I noticed that her skin had turned red from all of that.

And I assumed that I wasn’t much different.

“Let’s go to school together in the morning!”

I hadn’t even answered yet, but she already slipped her feet into her slippers and stormed out the door.    

And just when I thought our sweet first day of dating had begun like that…

* * *

“Stay away from me!”

“…Huh?”

The next morning.

Just last night, I was having trouble sleeping because I kept imagining that I’d be going to school by holding Doah’s hands starting today. So, her sudden outburst left me dumbfounded.

“Don’t come within two meters of me!”

With her hands in her pockets, Doah took a step back as soon as I took a step forward.

“But why?!”

Didn’t we just become a couple?

I thought couples would go around together?!

Her sudden change of heart left me utterly confused.

“…Don’t talk back to me, you perverted bastard! Lucario!”

It seemed like Girlfriend-nim had done her research well at home…

T/N: YOUR GIRL CHECKS YOUR SEARCH HISTORY, WHAT DO YOU DO???

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