Work Text:
Yukina and Sayo had opposed to the idea of having a mobile rhythm game made after their image.
“But Yukina-senpai, it’s a great opportunity to share your songs with a large audience, right? It’s going to be a lot of fun!” Toyama Kasumi insisted. Why she wanted to pull Yukina and Roselia along on all her wild ideas, Yukina had no idea, but she could at least try to be civil if only out of respect for Kasumi’s cute hairstyle.
“Roselia has no need to promote ourselves in this manner,” she answered. Yes, this answer was considered civil in Yukina’s mind.
“Aren’t you just being old-fashioned?” Mitake Ran interrupted. Yukina quirked an eyebrow – was she in on this game thing too? She knew HaroHapi and PasuPare were already in on this, but that was expected considering one band just wanted to make people smile, and the other was devoted to promoting an idol image. But why the hell did Afterglow join too? “You see, Minato-san, Afterglow is a band that will communicate our strong and genuine feelings to as many people as possible. We do not look down on any stage. We do not see this as a silly game but a great opportunity in the new digital era. But I’m not going to try and convince you. I mean, I can understand it’s difficult for you to get a hang of new technology at your age…”
Was she seriously calling Yukina old!? Yukina was a year older than her, not a decade!
The remark hit a nerve though. Yukina couldn’t stop herself from wanting to prove Mitake-san wrong, so instead of just refusing the deal using her leader status, she passed it on for discussion with the rest of the Roselia members. Ako was overjoyed. She would be a game character? There was nothing more exciting than that – okay, maybe the opportunity to collect every single card of her idol Yukina-san. RinRin was euphoric too, nearly fainted from the excitement and had to sit down on the sofa to calm herself. Lisa became the deciding vote. She looked towards Yukina for instruction but Yukina just looked away. Ah, so Yukina was being a tsundere again. Realizing this, Lisa cast her vote with RinAko’s and thus it was decided to the exasperation of Sayo and…(not) Yukina that Roselia would be appearing in the Girls’ Band Party mobage.
When the game came out, Rinko, Ako, and Lisa played it a lot. Ako and Lisa were pretty decent since both were in the rhythm section of their band. Rinko’s PC game experience helped too, because she had developed good reflexes on first-person shooters, and she caught on soon enough. A week after playing they were FC’ing the expert songs and Ako started taking it up a level by trying to play on one hand. Yukina knew Sayo was getting really frustrated, because she was still struggling to play normal. It was literally driving her nuts; anybody could see how dark Sayo’s eyebags had gotten, and once Yukina caught her playing just before practice and she nearly smashed her phone onto the ground when she jumped in surprise. It took a few months, but Sayo started getting really good at the game. Even better than Ako. All perfects on even the hardest song. She was insane. Yukina couldn’t quite understand why Sayo would put so much time on a stupid game, so she asked Sayo what was so fun about it.
“I…I do not think it’s fun!” Sayo replied, face flushing red. “Umm…it’s just…I…I was trying to improve my sense of rhythm. So, I’d play more accurately on my guitar. That really is all!”
“Really?” Lisa sidled up to Sayo and gave her a sly grin. “I totally did not catch you tiering for the last event and spending 50k stars to whale in the new 4* Yukina…”
“Imai-san!”
“What do you mean by whale? As in the marine mammal?” Yukina asked.
“Well, Sayo is a mammal alright, and I guess she can swim?” Lisa said with a laugh, “Important thing is all her blubber is made of cash.”
Lisa reached a hand out to pinch Sayo’s belly. She bounded away. “I am free-to-play! I saved up all my stars, unlike you who can’t stop pulling on whichever gacha features a card with a cute outfit!”
“I’m sorry I don’t have a girlfriend to obsess over so much that I need to collect every digital version of her too.”
“Imai-san!!!”
Yukina still didn’t get it. If Sayo was having so much fun with the game, she supposed it wouldn’t be bad to try it out too. She wanted to understand Sayo better. Besides, she was somewhat thankful that the game had raised the sales of their latest single by a considerable margin, edging out Afterglow, which made Mitake-san livid of course.
What Yukina didn’t know was that this was the entrance to a hell she would never return from.
At first, she thought the game was weird. Hearing her own pre-recorded lines on random thoughts about the season and such was weird, so were multi-lives where you might end up in a room with five Yukina clones as leaders, making the real Yukina playing the game extremely confused. The game play was somewhat tough, as Yukina was new to rhythm games, or rather, games in general. She was satisfied just playing easy or normal though – it wasn’t as though Mitake-san would know the ten thousandth “New Staff” on the server was her, and she could always just rebuke saying she had better use of her time than mastering a rhythm game if Mitake-san ever asked.
But then came along Yukina’s first 2500 stars and she figured she’d pull on the gacha because, according to Lisa, that was what the stars were for (Lisa also said something about how never to use stars to finish her failed lives, and how they could be used to recover live boosts when tiering for an event, all of which Yukina didn’t really bother to understand). Yukina didn’t know what to expect of the gacha. Which cards were good, which cards were bad, she couldn’t tell, nor was it important for her. But when that last card came with yellow lights and Sayo’s voice sounding “It seems something large from over there is approaching”, Yukina froze. Something huge was coming indeed. Sayo’s NFO card graced her in its glory, the noble knight outfit was nice, and her expression in desperation to shield Yukina was so endearing. It took a while after the gacha results before Yukina would figure out that she could change in-game Sayo’s costume to that of the card, and even later before she learned how to practice and train cards. The trained Sayo card was amazing. Her gallant pose wielding the guitar in one hand, a light sword in the other was…well…a little over-the-top but Yukina would not admit that deep inside her otome heart she thought it looked cool. This would become a gateway towards Yukina’s future whaling habits.
Yukina started pulling on more gachas to get all of Sayo’s old cards. Suffice to say, it wasn’t that easy. Lisa started explaining to her about rate-ups and how Yukina’s dream card, Alluring Hand Sayo, was only available during Dream Fes and she had been pulling futilely in the wrong gacha all along. Unfortunately for her, Dream Fes was in two days and she had just exhausted her stars. What to do?
“Well, you could pay for stars I suppose?” Lisa suggested.
Yukina knew it was a bad idea but Dream Fes Sayo’s picture on her phone lock screen (yes, she had loved it so much she set it as lock screen in place of her usual pictures of kittens!) staring back at her was urging her to open up her wallet. And so she did. All twenty thousand yen of it. And another twenty thousand yen from her bank account when her wallet failed her. By the time she got the Sayo card, she was so relieved she collapsed onto her bed in both love and hate.
At least Yukina was rational enough to start setting limits on how many pulls she’d do on every Sayo gacha. Her limit was quite…generous though. Two hundred pulls. An equivalent of 50k stars. After playing a little more than a year, she had collected almost every Sayo card already. Of course, the game would not let her off the hook so easily. Dream Fes hit again with the most beautiful limited edition Sayo 4*. Yukina might have some beef with the untrained version – specifically with Lisa ogling her girlfriend like that – but the trained version was absolutely flawless. She didn’t know who to blame for her predicament after failing to get the card on two hundred pulls, Lisa for the actions of her digital version, Rinko for designing such a gorgeous outfit that then got adapted by this card, or Hanazono Tae for stealing Sayo’s place on Yukina’s gacha results. Yukina had managed to get every single non-limited Tae 4* not just once, but twice. She was not a rabbit. She might not hate Hanazono-san per se, but she did not have that much love to spare for her either.
Since Yukina was a responsible(?) adult living alone, she had the luxury of rolling her face on her cat pillow and groaning incessantly like a prepubescent brat without anybody noticing…except Sayo, who Yukina had completely forgotten would be visiting her today and she had used the spare keys Yukina had given her when Yukina didn’t answer the door while wallowing in her misery. Sayo stood over Yukina now, perplexed.
“Wh…What’s wrong, Minato-san?”
What happened when Yukina had caught Sayo playing Garupa replayed itself again, but this time it was Yukina jumping and nearly breaking her phone. Luckily, Sayo caught it in the air. “Is Minato-san playing the game too?” she asked when she glanced at the screen, then her jaws dropped upon deeper realization. “…and you were trying to draw my card?”
The two of them stared awkwardly at each other, until both looked away with red faces anyway. Yukina was finally the first to speak…whisper. “Put on that outfit, Sayo.”
“Eh?”
“The outfit on the trained card. Mine is in my drawer.”
“But, it’s…”
“No buts.”
What could Sayo say? She couldn’t exactly refuse Yukina’s request – such words did not exist in her vocabulary. “If…If you say so, Minato-san.” She relented. It was embarrassing, but she did as she promised, putting on the outfit and accessories and styling her hair just like that card, low ponytail adorned by roses and pearls and all. She came out of the washroom with a face redder than what it was when she went in. It was positively glowing like a traffic light. Of course, wearing the stage outfit while clearly not on-stage was embarrassing enough, not to mention, this particular dress was tailored for Yukina, not Sayo herself – it was…umm…very short, to put it mildly.
“Mi…Minato-san…may…may I change out of this now?” Sayo asked, trying desperately to pull the dress down, and when it had little effect, she tried to at least cover her panties with her hands.
“Not yet,” Yukina said, cornering Sayo to the wall.
Maybe Yukina meant never, because by the strength of her proceeding bear hug, she didn’t seem like she’d be letting go any time soon.