I Want Fried Chicken
"I-I don't want to."
"Mina. Isn't that a little harsh, when you haven't seen your mother in so long...?"
Mom had left on her business trip on September 13th, before the collab with Kurokami-senpai. Today was September 30th. It had been about three weeks since they'd seen each other's faces, so "a long time," just as Mom said, wasn't wrong.
"That still doesn't mean I have to say yes to something I hate."
"That's true, but..."
Unless you were at my level, you'd never have caught it, but Mom pushed her lips out just a little, the very picture of a sulk. I didn't feel guilty. My refusal was justified.
"Do you really hate shopping with Mom that much?"
"Yes."
If someone had seen how blunt I'd just been, they might have called it rude. I couldn't exactly look that person in the eye and say my piece with my head held high... probably not. Even so, on the inside, I'd still be thinking it. I'm not in the wrong.
"It's been forever. The last time we went was well over a year ago."
"I still don't want to..."
I hoped nobody watching this would get the wrong idea. I wasn't digging in because I hated going out. I hated going shopping with Mom. Dinner out, an amusement park, a theme park, a zoo, an aquarium—I would have followed along without a single complaint. Shopping, though, I genuinely hated.
"Hmmmm."
"...You can stare all you like. I'm not going."
"Then how about this? If you go shopping with Mom today..."
And at Mom's whisper, I...
"Mina, try this on."
"Okay..."
What she'd brought out this time was a pure white dress, clean and innocent.
"Haa..."
I took the clothes, sighed, and stepped into the fitting room. How many times was this now? By the clock alone, we'd been at it for over an hour.
"I want to go home soon..."
I let that hopeless little dream slip out and changed.
This was why I hated shopping with Mom. Wearing women's clothes? I didn't feel any particular resistance on that front. At baseline I was a ridiculously pretty girl, so nearly anything looked good on me. And however much closer my mind still sat to the male side, I'd already lived as a girl for sixteen years. The window for blurting one of those signature gender-bender lines—"Wearing girls' clothes is embarrassing...!"—had closed a long time ago. Well. When the memories of my past life first came back, I had felt a little resistance.
Anyway, the real reason was this: the moment we stepped outside, I had to be Mom's dress-up doll for two hours at the very least. I preferred staying in, so trekking from shop to shop was, naturally, an enormous ordeal. Eating out or an amusement park at least came with a purpose. Shopping with Mom didn't. All she wanted was to put me in outfit after outfit. The last time we'd gone together, a year ago, we hadn't even eaten—four straight hours of nothing but changing clothes. That had been actual hell.
"I should've said no..."
And yet I'd followed her today because a deal had gone through. She would buy me the limited edition of Natsune Nanase's first-anniversary album. I was making decent money as a VTuber now, so my wallet wasn't in any real trouble, but I also wasn't rich enough to grab the limited edition of every piece of merch that dropped. Being an otaku is an expensive hobby by nature.
...Honestly, though, I was already regretting it.
"Here..."
Finished changing into the dress, I drew the fitting-room curtain and stepped out. Mom, as always, ran a serious eye over me from head to toe, appraising.
"...Hmm. I think it suits you. What do you think, Mina?"
"Whatever's fine..."
"Then shall we get this one too?"
With that, she beckoned a clerk over.
"Yes, ma'am."
"We'll take this."
"Of course. Would you like to wear it out?"
"Hmm. What do you want to do, Mina?"
"I-I'll just w-wear it out..."
"Yes. Then the price tag—oh?"
I'd dropped my gaze and hunched in on myself, and for some reason the clerk was just standing there in front of me, perfectly still. W-what? Did it look that terrible on me? M-maybe I should ask to change into something else...
"Excuse me, are you Izu— no. Miss Kayano?"
"...Eh?"
My name came out of nowhere. Startled, I looked up before I could stop myself, and found a woman in a clerk's uniform staring back at me, just as startled. Wh-why? How did she know my name?
Doing my best not to meet her eyes, I took her in. Pink-blonde hair in half twin-tails, and a slightly sharp, catlike face. She was only a little taller than me. Who was this...
"Ah, right. Last time I saw you, that was before you dyed it, wasn't it."
And her voice, somehow, was incredibly familiar.
"If I say it like this, you'll get it right away, won't you?"
She leaned in until her mouth was right by my ear.
"Akaka."
She whispered the laugh.
"Ah...! A-Aka, ba—"
"Hey."
The moment I tried to say the name, Miss Akabane cut me off. Fair enough. Blurting a VTuber name out in public could be dangerous. So then. It h-had to be...
"Um, uh. Miss Aka...saki?"
"Mm. You remembered."
At that, the girl underneath Miss Akabane—Akasaki Sakura—broke into a grin.
She said her break was coming up and asked if we could wait a moment, so Mom and I sat down on a chair in the department-store corridor. About five minutes later, Miss Akabane, still in the shop uniform, came over quietly and took a seat.
"Thank you for waiting."
"It's fine. I hear you're one of Mina's peers. This is nothing."
"I-I'm f-fine too..."
"You do not look fine at all..."
She giggled at that. She was sitting beside Mom now, not me. At first she'd moved to sit next to me, but the moment she saw me flinch, she'd shifted straight over to Mom's side.
...Miss Akabane was an incredibly kind person.
"Well, I didn't actually have anything in particular to say. Running into you like this just felt like fate, so I asked you to wait."
"Ah, y-yes..."
"I'm not making you uncomfortable, am I?"
"N-no! It's just, th-this is how my personality is..."
"Then I'm glad."
"..."
Silence spun out between us after that, and the one who broke it was, of all people, Mom.
"Akasaki, wasn't it? When do you get off?"
"Ah, I finish at five, so there's about two hours left."
"Two hours... We'll come back in two hours, so why don't you have dinner with us? Auntie will treat you."
"...Mom?"
"Eh? That would really be too much of an imposition..."
"It's no imposition at all, so don't you worry."
"Uh..."
"I'll take that as a yes, all right?"
"Ah—understood."
"Then I'll be back in two hours. Up we go, Mina."
Um, Mom. What about what I want...?
Mom dragged me around shopping for two more hours, and true to her word, the moment it hit five we went to the shop where Miss Akabane worked and collected her.
"Anything either of you want to eat?"
"Ah, anything's fine for me."
"M-me too..."
At answers like that, Mom headed for a pasta place. I ordered aglio e olio, Mom carbonara, and Miss Akabane Napolitan spaghetti, the ketchup kind.
"Th-thank you for the f-food..."
"Thank you for the meal."
"Eat up."
The aglio e olio, my first in a while, was pretty good. The garlic rose just enough, and it harmonized with the soft olive oil so cleanly that nothing caught on the way down; the savor of the bacon finished it off. When it got too rich, I closed with cola.
Mmm.
...I want fried chicken.
I'd emptied about half the bowl and glanced around. Mom and Miss Akabane had already finished everything and were wiping their mouths with napkins.
"Mina, take your time. I wanted to talk with Miss Akasaki anyway."
"Does Miss Kayano usually eat slowly?"
"Mm. She does, doesn't she?"
Unfair. In my past life, everyone around me had acknowledged me as a champion speed-eater. These days, though, eating fast left me with a fullness that felt a little unpleasant, so I'd slowed down. People said this was better for you, and better was better.
"Are you doing all right, Mina? Auntie's been a little busy, so I can hardly watch the live streams. From the clips it looks like you're doing quite well, but I know your personality, so I can't help worrying."
"I don't think you need to worry. Among our debut class, if we're talking about who's most popular with the general public, Miss Kayano is first."
"But she seems to have picked up nicknames, like Calamity-type VTuber..."
"When you're popular, the rumors come with it. Well, Calamity-type VTuber isn't exactly wrong..."
A little denial, right there, would be nice...
"Then that's truly a relief."
"Yes."
"Miss Akasaki, then may I ask just one favor?"
Mom said it, then folded her hands around Miss Akabane's and opened her mouth with a gentle smile. To anyone else, it would have looked exactly like her usual face.
"Please stay close with Mina. With a personality like this, she has almost no friends. I did hear that after she started as a VTuber, she made a friend—a Miss Koga. Even so, as her mother, I'd like her to build a few more relationships."
"M-Mom! I'm n-not a little kid..."
"Yes. I wanted to get closer to Miss Kayano anyway."
"Good. I'm counting on you."
"Yep!"
My protest never got an answer, right to the very end, and Miss Akabane nodded with a bright, open smile.
Excuse me. My opinion...
"S-so that's how it happened. On October 7th, I-I'm doing a collab with M-Miss Akabane..."
"...Yeah."
I was still dazed myself.
After dinner, once I got home and opened Misscode, DMs from Miss Akabane had piled up. A collab offer that hardly needed explaining. I had no pretext for refusing, and no real reason to refuse in the first place, so there was no path but to accept.
...I hoped it would go well.