The Big-Chested Gyaru Who's Nice to Otaku
A shut-in loser doesn't go outside.
That is the picture ordinary people carry around, and I have no intention of calling it wrong. On the basics, it is simply true. Take me, right now. Vacation started, and I don't have plans—I don't even have the will to leave the house.
…It is not that I can't go out because I have no friends. I just don't like going out alone in the first place, all right…
Even so, a human being cannot avoid the outdoors forever. Not even me, and I could fairly be called the king of outcasts.
And most of my outings are decided by reasons exactly like that.
"…It's hot."
Akihabara, about an hour from home, was hot. Of course it was. This is why I hate coming out in summer more than any other season. Winter at least gets a little better if you pile the layers on. Not that it matters for me. I get cold something awful too…
"It was definitely Kotobukiya."
The reason I had dragged myself out into this heat needed no explanation. I was here to buy Nacchan's merch. More precisely, I had come to put in a preorder. If I am honest about what I wanted, of course I would rather have reserved it online from the house. But a preorder placed in person at Kotobukiya in Akihabara came with an extra bonus, and against that I was helpless.
"It's hot…"
I was pouring out complaints on my way to the shop when someone caught my shoulder from behind.
"Um…"
I did not hesitate.
"Huh?!"
I fled at a dead sprint.
My breath was gone. I looked quietly around. People were staring as if I were strange, and that was all. I couldn't feel a single gaze actually hunting me.
This is why I don't like coming outside. Every time I do, some guy tries to ask for my number. I mean, I am a pretty girl on a level that deserves an ultra- stuck to the front of it, so as a man from my past life I do understand the desire to at least get to know me. That is that. Me being physically incapable of it is a separate problem, and there is nothing to be done about it.
"Haa…"
The first time it happened, I had panicked out of my mind. After enough repetitions, though, I found the perfect answer. The moment anyone tries to talk to you outside, you run at full power. Try to refuse with words and your head locks up, and all you do is waste time. Say nothing and bolt at once, and the other person startles, starts worrying about everyone staring, and cannot follow.
What a flawless operation.
"Hoo."
I steadied the last of my breath and checked my surroundings again. I had drifted a little from Kotobukiya, five minutes at most. Walking back would be no trouble at all. If I had to name a problem, my back was soaked through with sweat. People say a pretty girl's sweat is a reward. It was my own sweat, so the thought did not occur to me even once.
"Gross…"
"U-um?"
"Waaaaaah??!!!"
That guy ran all the way here after me?! I didn't have the stamina left to sprint again. Distress, shock, and fear all knotted together as I turned, barely breathing, to look.
"It really is you, Kayano!"
A terrifying gyaru delinquent with bright blonde hair stood there—
"I never thought I'd see you in a place like this. How have you been?"
No. Tateyama, the reigning social queen of our class, was looking at me and smiling.
W-why is an it-girl like Tateyama in Akihabara…?
"You looked like Kayano, so I called out, and you ran without even turning around. I was so surprised!"
"T-T-Tateyama, why, why are you in Aki-Akihabara?"
A monster of conversation who closed the distance without a scrap of hesitation. At Tateyama's appearance, my mind began to die.
"Me? I had plans here today with Chi-chan, Sacchin, and Mya."
…And who are Chi-chan, Sacchin, and Mya. From the way she said it, they were probably nicknames for kids in our class. I genuinely did not know a single one.
"Chi-chan, right? She found a place online called an owl cafe, so we came. Owls are seriously cute! You should go sometime too, Kayano. Or do you want to come now? I don't mind going again!"
A waterfall of words, fired like a machine gun. Was this really a high school girl? Then what, exactly, had I been…
"I-I…"
"Oh, you must have come to Akihabara because you had something to do too. What did you come for, Kayano?"
"Th-that's, I…"
"Yeah!"
As if she fully intended to hear an answer, Tateyama fixed me with eyes gone bright and sparkling. A look that pure. I could feel the low hum inside me—the frequency of drop dead, popular kids—being purified.
That aside, she would not stop talking, and my stomach was starting to turn. I was dodging her eyes however I could, but there was a limit to that.
"I w-was on my way to Ko-Kotobukiya."
A super pretty girl throwing up in the street was not a thing that could be allowed to happen. I swallowed the churn and somehow kept the conversation alive.
"Kotobukiya?"
Tateyama sank into thought for a moment.
She smiled, and landed a critical hit on my heart.
I don't hide that I am an otaku. Setting aside the fact that there is no one to hide it from, if it is a hobby I like, I say so with my head up. That has been a private creed of mine since my past life. So even when someone shows up to laugh at other people's hobbies, I have never really been wounded by it.
But today I finally understood that a person can still hurt you while smiling with no malice at all, purely and innocently.
"A merch shop? I've never been to a place people call that! Sacchin's an otaku too, and she says she goes all the time, but every time I ask to go with her she says no."
Setting that aside, Tateyama. Why are you following me as if it were the most natural thing in the world? I don't have the courage to ask outright, but if I drop hints like this, isn't picking up on them what popular people do?
"Whoa! There are so many maid big sisters here! They're all super pretty!"
My secret telepathy seemed to bounce off Tateyama's popularity barrier. Tch. A ward…
"Have you ever been to a maid cafe, Kayano?"
"Huh? Th-th-that's…"
"I heard otaku go to maid cafes a lot!"
"I-I've been, b-before."
I had been to a maid cafe twice in all: once in my past life, once in this one. The first time stayed with me as a fairly good memory. This life, though, how do I put it… I think I was pretty disappointed. More than ten years had passed, and nothing in particular had changed.
A maid cafe is a service business, so of course that is how it is. I understood it in my head. Still, what should I call the feeling. To be precise, I had come from the past into something like the future, and it was a little regrettable that the way people lived had not changed very much. We still had not gone to Mars. AI had not replaced human labor. Full-dive VR games had not appeared either. The only future technology I could actually feel amounted to computers and smartphones with absurdly good specs. If I had to add one more thing, VTuber production quality had climbed past anything I had imagined.
Well. That much was enough, honestly. It was just a shame that the future I had dreamed of was still a dream.
"That's surprising."
"…Huh?"
"Even someone like you goes to places like maid cafes? If you were working a part-time job there, I'd understand that better. You're really cute, Kayano."
Me, a shut-in, in the service industry. I would die, and the other person would feel awful, wouldn't they. Or would they? Would otaku lose their minds if a gloomy pretty girl worked up the courage to take a shift at a maid cafe? Not that I had any thought of doing it. I truly did not want to see that.
"So? Kotobukiya, was it? Where is that?"
"Ah, if you t-turn down this alley and go straight, y-you'll be there."
"Hmm, got it!"
"…Eh?"
For an instant, thought stopped. I slid my eyes sideways. Tateyama, who had been walking a little apart, linked arms with me as naturally as if she were hurrying me along, and drew my body in against hers.
S-something soft against my elbow…
"Hm? Kayano, your face just went red. You okay?"
"Th-that's, y-your chest, it touched my elbow…"
I fought the embarrassment down and barely got the words out. Tateyama looked at me for a moment, then covered her mouth and started to laugh.
"Ahahaha! What is that, Kayano! We're both girls, what's there to be embarrassed about? Or are you maybe into that?"
"Ah? What? I-I'm not…"
"Hmm. If it's a cute girl like you, maybe I'd be okay with it?"
"What?!"
"I'm kidding! Kidding! You are such a late bloomer, Kayano."
Tateyama giggled as if none of it mattered. They say girls have no resistance at all to skinship between friends. It was true. I had learned something useful. From now on I would not be embarrassed. I would hold my head up and enjoy this feeling.
"Oh, right. Kayano, I don't know a single thing about subculture, so explain it to me properly, okay?"
"…Ah. Yes."
She said it while looking down at me, smiling in a way that was frankly bewitching. That aside, Tateyama's chest was incredibly soft. Also, my stomach was genuinely approaching the danger zone.
"Th-that's, I went out today, and somehow a c-classmate caught me…"
I had obviously meant to put in the preorder and come straight back for the stream. But Tateyama said running into each other outside was a coincidence, and she dragged me off for so much as a light coffee at a cafe… Even after she seemed flustered at Kotobukiya, looking at the photo of Nacchan's figure in a bikini, she still made that suggestion. So this was a real social queen's power of communication. A communication-trash failure like me had no way to refuse.
"N-no, okay?! It's a girl, okay?! I am not being bullied, okay?! Who would bully me, the ultra-popular atmosphere maker!"
"Mmm, w-we just walked around with our arms linked. Oh, right. D-did you know? A gyaru with a huge chest who's kind to otaku… actually exists."
"It's true!!"