Chapter Text
The catalyst was the somber night of July the 13th. Yusuke had a pretty rough day, and it always took quite a bit to dishearten him. But Ryuji wasn’t aware until his boyfriend had made it home. Actually, his eyes just fluttered open from a nap in the living room, his consciousness just playing catch-up with the present waking moment when he heard that low, velvety voice whimpering agonized cries from around the corner.
Really, when Yusuke arrived home from his day’s shopping trip, Ryuji didn’t expect to find his own mother holding the younger, but taller man in a tight embrace before the open entrance door. He certainly didn’t think he’d hear Yusuke’s more distraught sobs outside of the occasional tearjerker of a movie, or an Internet video, or any in-person artwork.
So, in the quaint living room of the Sakamoto apartment, though his pale face was soaked with drying tears, Yusuke tried to make himself comfortable. Whereas he often lurched over during his work, his back was willingly caught in the cushion of his favorite chair. Though Ryuji feared the reason why Yusuke wore such a disturbed grimace , at least he was easy to prod an airing of troubles from.
In fact, why would he not? They were going to move themselves and Ryuji’s mother out of Shibuya in the coming August. To live in a town boasting both a physical rehabilitation institution, and a school with an art curriculum rivaling Kosei High’s, was a blessing for Ryuji and Yusuke respectively. The latter scrapped his former commitment to residence in Shibuya so he could pursue his artistic passions with Ryuji always having his back.
So, on that summer night of July the 13th, Ryuji and his mother beckoned Yusuke to speak honestly to them. It hurt them to know that Yusuke was possibly describing an existential crisis, but he was slowly recovering in the immediate moment and he didn’t seem to withhold what knocked the wind out of his sails.
Ryuji was left wanting to personally give that pack of assholes a good public humiliation for what happened. It seemed even Kosei’s student body had its own bulk of bad apples after all. But the elegant art prodigy was far estranged from that group. So these spoiled brats apparently waltzed up to Yusuke, only for their recognition of him to turn into startlingly malevolent bullying, and for what? That Yusuke seemed like a “psychopath” to them? No, being a socially awkward eccentric didn’t immediately equate to a psychological diagnosis; Ryuji knew that even the excuses of it being a mere “joke” wouldn’t erase the ableism he heard in Yusuke’s pained, shaky-voiced retelling.
But despite all of that, Yusuke seemed more affected by the train ride home. This nine-year-old girl’s story seemed to render Yusuke fearful of life’s fragility, and he had only met her nameless father on that ride home. But anyone suffering a terminal condition was a punch for those aware, and Yusuke constantly exposes a bigger, kinder heart to the world than what Ryuji gives him credit for.
And yet, even Ryuji felt that empathy as he got to work later on. He’d never heard of Wish-Come-True until then, but granting the wishes of such kids was a valiant necessity, now that the idea was known to him.
Once he had his fill of honey-soaked lemon slices and home-cooked ramen, Yusuke passed out on his boyfriend’s bed. And as Yusuke slept into the early night, thankfully mumbling only wholesome (or simply goofy) rambles from within his subconscious, Ryuji sacrificed two hours of sleep for himself to turn his vague idea into reality. By the time he turned in at 1 AM, he had a cluttered outline of ideas for a chaotic, but doable plan for the weekend after this one. It’d take some good legwork, but Ryuji couldn’t appease the energizing spark in his heart unless he got it to work.
With a smile, he finally crawled under Yusuke’s sprawled-out body and switched off his lamplight. In the darkness under his eyelids, he struggled to stifle his laughter under Yusuke’s restless, yet adorable murmurs of beauty, passion, Hokusai, and “man’s purest form.” But after a while, Ryuji let the prospect of a charity fundraiser be the final comfort that would lull him to sleep.
Hopefully “PhantomSkull,” his Flutter channel of amateur gaming livestreams, would serve Wish-Come-True well. Oh sure, the blond athlete and part-time streamer considered the latter pastime a simple hobby. But, if it could help others like Ichika to fulfill their pure wishes, then there was no harm to prioritize it for a few days. Ren Amamiya would need to travel back to Shibuya from cozy little Inaba, but everyone else would be there for it. Now, Ryuji just needed to hammer away at the officialization of details, and to ascertain that as many in their group as possible could attend in-person. Sojiro and Futaba had a nice living room at their house; maybe they wouldn’t mind the presence of cords, blue device lights, and banshee wails from when Ryuji would inevitably lose at Mario Party.
And thus, a funereal Friday night would make the following 21st and 22nd of July most memorable. Under the exterior of livestreamed chaos, there still lived a noble ambition that they remained devoted to. Ryuji had dreams, and so did Yusuke, their friends, their families, and just about everyone in the world. But their friend group was fortunate that dire circumstances—though undeserved—had long-subsided to let them continue to manifest their dreams as an aspect of reality.
Nine-year-old Ichika didn’t have as much time for such an innocuous wish as a grand family trip to Destinyland. Wish-Come-True could do it, even if the work needed to be prompt and the trip needed to be just as she hoped.
So, with Ichika’s story in mind, and further guided by their old friends’ reunion, Ryuji Sakamoto and Yusuke Kitagawa aimed to pay an abundant kindness forward.
“I dunno,” Ryuji murmured, trying to keep his volume moderate enough for the microphone in front of them. “I always thought Rosalina was hotter than Peach. At least they’re not Daisy, I guess.”
The flooding chat messages, reeling from Ryuji’s crude superlatives, proved that the long-awaited “PhantomSkull” livestream was technically sound (and that some of his immediate audience preferred Princess Daisy, after all). But that meant the other three understood him well, too. Ann, who baffled Ryuji by picking Princess Peach as her character in Mario Party Superstars , lightly smacked Ryuji’s better knee with her controller. Ren leaned forward to the laptop in front of him. His gray eyes squinted as he read the text messages that quickly climbed up and out of sight from within the side box.
“You say that, Ryuji,” the dark-haired boy coyly chastised, “but someone in your chat says… um, to paraphrase, you’re lucky to have a ‘hot guy-pal’.”
Despite the knowledge that his boyfriend found a fictional magic space woman “hot,” Yusuke’s impenetrable smile beamed haughtily—in fact, with Ann as Peach and Ren as Wario, Yusuke boldly assigned himself to be Rosalina.
“No matter,” Yusuke lowly sneered. “He can lust for fiction all he desires, but he’ll never escape me.”
It seemed Ryuji was already running out of snark, as he yielded by turning his head and pecking Yusuke’s cheek with his surprisingly soft lips.
“I guess you’d look sexy in a blue dress.” Ryuji had sighed wearily, but the still-romantic phrasing dusted Yusuke’s face with a soft shell-pink.
Even Ann wordlessly scanned Yusuke’s rigid form, her smug grin confirming that she would kill to put Ryuji’s blushing man in a high-budget Rosalina cosplay.
Yusuke stammered, “Wait! I mean…well, that is, I love you. But that’s not what I—”
“Anyways,” Ryuji segued with a button press, “I’m gonna go with Waluigi. We gotta do ‘Horror Land’ at some point, guys. Like, this man can dance on that board!”
“Can’t say the same for you at a party!” Futaba hollered from the kitchen counter in the back. Ryuji swerved his head around at his should-be chat moderator, whose shifty eyes peered over the smoothie glass she drank from. Still flushed, Yusuke thanked the gods for having Sojiro escape the ever-rising chaos.
“Shaddup, ‘Kanamin Kitchen Reject’!” he barked, turning his head back to the stage screen that currently offered “Yoshi’s Tropical Island.”
“Aww, that looks like a cute stage,” Ann cooed.
“Nah, let’s do ‘Horror Land’ first!” Ryuji brushed her off. “The fruit island’s pretty boring. I’m tellin’ ya, my man has the sickest—”
Ren yelped, bringing his hands to the laptop headphones covering his ears. Once again, he leaned forward to the immediate screen of Ryuji’s livestream software. The other three looked at him with anticipation.
Sure enough, the notification feed had a new box of text.
“Hold up, we got a donation!” Ren’s voice bellowed in imitation of a game show host, clearing his throat as he continued closer to the microphone. “It looks like ‘KaedeKeyboardLady’ donated ten-thousand yen, meaning Ryuji needs to do twenty push-ups right now!”
“Oh c’mon, already?!” Ryuji whined, having just done a first set of twenty during the half-hour pre-show. And yet, as though possessed by a dissenting demon of physical torment, he still leapt from the couch, walked over to the closer side of the table in front, and collapsed onto the carpeted surface.
“ You’re the one who promised that incentive for the fundraiser!” Ann scoffed, before smiling at her cell phone. “I mean, hey! At least we’ve already reached a little over a hundred-thousand yen!”
Ryuji raised a tight fist from where he laid face-down, as everyone else whooped and clapped. Now rounding the corner of the kitchen counter, Futaba slammed her quarter-full glass on the hard surface.
“DO THE FUCKING PUSH-UPS, SWOLE BOY!” Futaba shrieked, muting the earnest cheers.
“Effin’ FINE!” Ryuji huffed back. And with that, he was pumping out quick, but full push-ups, as Ren swiftly picked up Ryuji’s Joy-Cons. Yusuke and Ann sheepishly looked to the side as Makoto stomped around Ryuji and into view of the webcam, a puzzled Haru right behind her.
“Keep it down, you guys!” she scowled. “Boss is going to kill us if we get complaints from the neighbors!”
“Eh, I’m also in this house full-time!” The ever-distant Futaba shrugged. “Besides, we got some extra-thick walls here.”
“And Haru needs to email some of her associates!” Makoto angrily pleaded.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Haru giggled, her beautiful smile implying a strange adoration for the loud banter thus far. “I was only concerned about the peace the neighbors wouldn’t have without any soundproofing.”
“Haru, they shouldn’t be—”
“It’s really alright, Mako-chan.” Haru’s angelic tone soothed the other young woman. “It’s just a live Internet show for a prestigious charity. Even then, I could always go to LeBlanc and come back around 3 PM for my first segment. Actually, Sumire was supposed to be here by then, too, right?”
“Right.” Ren wanted to laugh at Ryuji’s lack of awareness of his surroundings—the blond host’s remaining few push-ups rendered him absent from his small-town friend and guest starting the first game on “Yoshi’s Tropical Island.”
But Ren also pondered whether to address aloud that, whether the exception or the actual standard, the livestream chat was noticeably bigger and more chaotic than Ryuji let on:
the girl with the ginger floof has a pretty voice uwu
LMAO REN AND ANN REALLY SAID F*CK HORROR LAND!
im new here and am gonna donate in a second. but whos the blond guy doing push ups? hes kinda hot 0_0 <3
In response to this last sample, Futaba typed under her trademark “Alibaba” alias:
Blond guy is PhantomSkull. Also known as Ryuji. He’s taken + a big himbo SKSKSKSKSKSK
As if by a telepathic cue, Ryuji stood back up from a twenty-first push-up (alas, Makoto’s initial scolding made him lose count). But seeing fruit and sea on the screen, mouth dropping agape, Ryuji nearly jumped back into Makoto as he saw that the first Mario Party Superstars game was in the middle of explaining the rules of a board that wasn’t “Horror Land.” His eyes immediately latched onto Ren. Unfortunately, Ren was just now dropping Ryuji’s Joy-Cons onto the cushion beside him, as though he wasn’t late to avoid his sweaty host’s scrutiny.
“Please tell me this one’s gonna be just ten turns,” Ryuji whimpered with exasperation.
Ren pursed his lips together in fear of the other boy’s response to the truth. “I set it for the whole thirty.”
Ryuji could only emit choked noises before Ren added, “Also, ‘KnucklesTheHedgehog’ donated five-hundred yen, asking that Yusuke take five gulps of water for each hundred.”
That pacified Ryuji for the moment, who beamed rather adoringly at his sheepish blue-haired love. “Yusuke, babe, it’s time to hydrate!”
Wordlessly, Yusuke opened his plastic water bottle and chugged a good half of the crystal-clear water. Meanwhile, Ryuji’s proud grin turned sinister as it panned in Ren’s direction.
“Heh… you’re still in for it now, Ren-Ren.”
He arrogantly reclaimed his middle-left seat on the couch, sandwiched between Ren and Yusuke.
“You’ll wish you picked ‘Horror Land’ when I wipe everyone’s asses on the floor!”
With Waluigi as his avatar, Ryuji’s turn-order roll dubbed him the last player to move in every round. Though a setback for the moment, Ryuji said nothing, his eyes and mind glued to a landslide victory for himself.
Just over an hour later, the game’s results were announced via spiky purple fish swallowing the onscreen characters whole. Yusuke lurched over his place in last, whereas Ann laughed and defeatedly applauded her third place. Ren and Ryuji concluded with the same amount of stars, so nobody remembered which of them had the greater coin quantity to break said tie.
Therefore, Ryuji, the Flutter stream chat, and even Futaba went wild when a calm, yet very appeased Ren was crowned the “Super Star” in first place, as Waluigi was swallowed whole and Wario took to the center of the game screen.
“Effin’ bull!” Ryuji cried, tapping his sock-covered foot on the carpet and mashing the “A” button to skip to the final statistics.
They looked at their final coin totals—and Ren threw himself into a hysterical laughter.
“ONE COIN?!”
This time, Ryuji could only drop his head on the shoulders of his cackling boyfriend, whose subsequent kiss seemed to come from a deeper sympathy. In the end, Ryuji’s ninety-six coins rendered him powerless to Ren’s ninety- seven. He couldn’t utter any vocalities from the horror he saw.
Wait… HORROR!
“Can we do ‘Horror Land’ now?! ” Ryuji wailed. “We only got time for another thirty-turn board, and I really gotta win somethin’ here!”
“Horror Land,” in contrast to the former board, was difficult for everyone. Waluigi’s slick moonwalk during the board’s “dancing all night” gimmick only pacified Ryuji for the moment.
Nevertheless, Yusuke ended up supreme by the end, rewarding his taller head a pat from Ryuji, who was rather at ease with his conclusive ranking in last.
“I really just wanted to see Waluigi’s moonwalk,” he said to him and the audience, earning himself a confusedly cocked eyebrow from Yusuke.
“So you didn’t require a win as the stream host, after all?!” he angrily snapped. “That’s why I took it easy on you all!”
“Um,” Ren murmured, “you still ended up winning, Yusuke.”
Yusuke turned back to the screen with deer-in-headlight eyes. “Ah, apologies. I had forgotten I was the space woman.”
“C’mon, guys,” Futaba pranced over to the TV screen. “Inari, Ryuji, and I gotta get ready for the SpongeBob game based on the first movie!”
“But that game is hideous!” Yusuke gawked, turning his head to face the camera. “I hope you people out there understand that the dull colors and heinous-looking character models rot before the vibrance and expression of the actual film!”
The total funds raised at this point brimmed just over ¥700,000.
Though still very dated, The SpongeBob Squarepants Movie video game was fun for Ryuji and Futaba to take turns at for the next three hours. Still, Yusuke spent most of his time between the stream’s chat and notifications, and then his phone to admire colorful stills from the original movie.
3 PM marked the start of the PowerPoint Party. Sumire gleefully entered the fray for the rest of the marathon, introduced to the several-thousand viewers properly with her own slideshow on “10 Reasons Why All of Sumire’s Senpais Should Pick Up Dancing.” Though very eye-opening to the benefits of rhythmic exercise overall, it didn’t hold a candle to Yusuke’s “How to Romantically (NOT Pervertedly) Arouse Ryuji’s Devotion,” or to Ren’s “Top 10 Acclaimed Movies/Games/Shows Worse Than the Phantom Thieves Fiasco,” or even to Futaba’s “Rating Ren’s Camera Roll Images I Hacked Into By Objective Good Quality.” Those three had chat messages and donations rolling in (most of which compiled into, as part of the incentives, Yusuke drinking water and eating his protein bar for the duration of the segment).
Then 5 PM ushered in a surprise one-hour segment for poor, unfortunate Yusuke: the lights were switched off, the window blinds were drawn shut, everyone else vacated the room, and Yusuke was left with open devices and the menu screen of Five Nights at Freddy’s.
Though the chat laughed or even expressed concern over Yusuke’s shaking, the lone boy had a score to settle with this wretched game. Ryuji introduced him to it during a past stream he had him hang out on. At first, Yusuke was positively challenged by the dreary depiction of the American graveyard shift; it was almost in the same way the bulky, confusedly pixelated aesthetics of Minecraft brought new perspectives for game aesthetics. But unlike Minecraft, this “iconic” horror game turned sour in that one stream. A fox—a damned pirate fox animatronic— belted a deadly scream and ended Night 2 in failure. Yusuke’s own yell and fall nearly brought demise to him (almost even taking Ryuji with him) as it definitely did to the in-game protagonist.
Yusuke never touched Five Nights at Freddy’s since—and now, this surprise forced him to rematch that damned secret character.
Forty-five minutes later, Yusuke had gotten through Night 2, but the titular Freddy was impossible for him to thwart in Night 3. He recovered from the first jumpscare, then the second—but fell to his knees in tears after Futaba tried to scare him with just herself in the very dark.
Still, the funds raised by now stood just over a million yen. Though they would have to play catch-up on incentives, the surpassed threshold slowly hit Ryuji that, perhaps, this geeky hobby could do some good.
Ryuji, Yusuke, and their friends could help impact the world through this.
He let that sink in as he hugged and apologized to his mortified, but ever-beloved Yusuke out of the microphone’s range. He thought about it occasionally during the subsequent three hours of Jackbox Party Packs with the whole crew and audience.
When he and Yusuke laid down together in the spare-room bed—Morgana in the dim living room for the 12-hour pet cam, Futaba in her own bedroom upstairs, and the rest seeking sleep in that familiar attic over in LeBlanc—Ryuji thought of it until his consciousness faded into oblivious sleep.
As Morgana drove himself insane in the dim living room, messing around before the camera until enough scolding had him plop into unconsciousness, the funds raised for Wish-Come-True stood at two-million yen.
Ryuji still didn’t consider himself a big Internet microcelebrity. His following was a fair bunch of ten-thousand, though some of those could very well be bots or just merely inactive. His streams originally managed to just pull in around a hundred active watchers at a time, even though Ryuji didn’t stream on a daily (rather nightly) basis. He wasn’t even spectacular at some of the games he played; the ones he really excelled in were titles that he was accustomed to all the ins and outs of from years of replay after replay.
So, it puzzled the face behind “PhantomSkull” to see their fundraiser accumulated just the tiniest hair over fifty-million yen. Ryuji had really put the grand milestone at one-hundred million yen as a bonus. It was just to push any online engagers and passerbys if they felt inclined. It only had a tag-on bonus of himself, Ren, and Yusuke getting splatter-painted by the girls, adding an extra three hours to this whole spectacle.
Ryuji really didn’t think they’d get this far.
Just as everyone awoke for the three-hour arena and/or horseplay in Super Bash Bros. Penultimate, Ryuji’s mouth dropped in choked “urks” as Futaba swiped up on her phone screen. Donation after donation—even little punches of a hundred yen each (Ryuji prayed that Yusuke wouldn’t feel too sloshy from all the water he’d need to chug)—was piling on. It turned out, the nearly twelve-hour “Mona Cam” saw another spike in donations, even small ones from overseas of people enjoying the night of Morgana trying to speak to the camera, or Ryuji coming out to shut him up, or even the damn cat demolishing Futaba’s Sheep Man and Jago dolls like he was training in their Phantom Thief days.
Ryuji really didn’t think they’d get this far.
“Soooo.” Futaba pursed her lips, “When we get on, you’ll have to wear that costume of yours for six whole hours.”
Ryuji gulped as Futaba sorted out twelve donations of five hundred-thousand yen each. Some people really wanted to see the world burn…or just behold their host in a “sexy” Halloween costume.
Futaba let her lips dip into a sinister sneer. “Actually, that’s pretty much a whole two shifts you’d have to wear it for!”
Ryuji really didn’t think they’d get this far.
Yusuke’s voice purred from behind them. “Not only that; it seems we have a few donations of ¥77,777. Morgana will be joining you in cosplay, after all.”
But Morgana being zipped into the “Lazy Orange Cat” costume couldn’t save Ryuji from his six hours of shorts far too…well, short. Ryuji understood this very well, even if he was lucky to have not endured that until today.
Like a would-be horror movie victim sensing the antagonist behind them, Ryuji’s head slowly turned to face the costume bag. It meekly hung on the Sakura kitchen’s pantry door, the title “HUNKY MIDNIGHT SUCCUBUS COSTUME” scrawled out in purple katakana. The male model printed on the bag seemed to taunt those who looked at him, his lips puckered and his pelvis jutted out to said onlookers.
“It’s for a good cause, Ryuji!” Futaba scoffed, patting (rather smacking) the blond man on the shoulder. “Even if you look goofy, at least you’re having us do something good in the end.”
Ryuji’s shoulders deflated, but his frown wasn’t sad. His forehead wrinkled, a personal divide being all that sped up the grinding gears in his brain. But then—
“Come now, Ryuji.”
Ryuji followed the mellow voice to Yusuke, perched against the wall beside the door. His smile was warm, beautiful even. But he couldn’t help to pick out a sense of… pride? But of what, in that case?
Just as Ryuji heard Futaba’s step back emit a small creak on the hard floor, Yusuke stepped forward to him. Ryuji felt a flutter within his chest as his boyfriend’s hands gently cupped his cheeks, the blue-gray eyes soothing his insides as they beheld each other’s gaze for the millionth time in their life together.
“If Ichika knew of us and what we’ve been doing,” Yusuke cooed, “I’m willing to believe she’d be excited. As would others her age who might not have that much time here.” The tips of his fingers carded through Ryuji’s blond hair. “Put aside your embarrassment, and center yourself on that end goal. Not many of those dreams would be set in motion if you didn’t do this.”
“The costume?” Ryuji stammered, though he damn well knew what Yusuke referred to.
Yusuke could see through Ryuji’s bluff, as he always did, and his hands dropped to the other man’s shoulders. “You seemed to have been enjoying yourself. But don’t lose sight of your purpose so quickly. Just as we can fulfill our dreams soon enough, we’re putting in whatever effort we can to help fulfill those of others.”
Ryuji’s own hand reached up to the one on his right shoulder. “I really didn’t think we’d get this far in the first place.”
Yusuke’s smile only wavered a bit.
“Without the existence of the Metaverse,” Yusuke sighed, “we don’t have to worry about chasing all the scum in the world. It’s easy to be swept up in it, but it’s time we look to the purer hopes and dreams of the future.”
“Yeah,” Ryuji lamely replied, before quickly adding, “I mean the Ichika kid just wants to take her family to Destinyland. That’s gotta be the nicest thing you could want for yourself and your family when you’re so young and… well, y’know.”
“Right,” Yusuke wistfully concurred. His free hand glided back up to Ryuji’s cheek. “In truth, all of us are pit against time to fulfill our own dreams. There’s always showing kindness and charity, paying it forward to others…”
The taller man finally wavered somewhat, though Ryuji’s other arm snatched Yusuke’s waist to anchor him.
“...and there’s also allowing your own dreams to manifest,” Yusuke finished, chuckling at Ryuji’s quick reflexes. There seemed to be a twinkling tear in his eyes. “Be good to yourself as you would nurture others.”
Ryuji was about to brush that off as the “Golden Rule in a nutshell,” before he felt a spark in his heart. Rather, it was the spark that got him planning these shenanigans in the first place on that evening of July the 13th.
Ryuji still didn’t think they would get this far, as he chanted to himself a hundred times by this point. But now, with fortune’s graces shining on them, he was eager to reach the hundred-million yen in sight. Human splatter paint was really just a bonus, anyways.
“Five minutes until showtime,” Futaba slowly chimed in from behind Ryuji. “I’ll have you lover boys know I’m the type of Demifiend main that loves to whoop ass in Bash. Don’t let dreams be dreams now.”
A moment passed. Maybe two or three? Ryuji couldn’t tell, letting himself be hypnotized by the stormy oceans in Yusuke’s irises.
But Futaba’s harsh hand pulled Ryuji to the scorching sands of the shore. “So get on the damn costume! Morgana’s already gotten into his.”
“So, um…” Ryuji murmured, fidgeting with the pink horns that crowned his head. He looked at the webcam beside the living room table, and smiled. “I know it’s just Yusuke and I… lookin’ like this… here for Super Mario Odyssey, and I think I got him hooked on this over, like, the last week or so.”
Yusuke hummed in agreement, his pleasant drone contrasting with his glare as his thumbs fiddled on the Joy-Cons.
Ryuji turned his full attention to the camera, where thousands could have that parasocial eye contact with him (and hopefully not the cleavage that peeked through the black latex top’s window). “So, I gotta thank everyone for stickin’ around with us today. Big kudos to everyone that donated. It’s all addin’ up to something real good. And no, it’s not just the splatter paint or… y’know, this shit I got on.”
Ryuji let himself chuckle, turning to the laptop. The chat messages were nothing short of kind:
LET’S GOOOOOOO THE BOYS ARE GONNA GET SOAKED IN PAINT
Np, Skull and friends! This stream has been FIRE!!!
morgana was so fucking cute just meowing at us for a whole half hour last night and then having the little Garfield onesie sksksksksksksk
“It can’t be overstated how every effort counts,” Yusuke added, his voice pronounced but still calming. “It seems that life has an assortment of events for every one of us. Some wonderful, others… well—”
“Some pretty shit?!” Ren hollered from the kitchen, where Futaba hooked him onto a heaping glass of orange juice.
Yusuke’s laugh was hearty, albeit wistful. “True. It’s constant peaks and valleys, ones that we travel along in rain, snow, or even sunshine.” He yelped when his monologue caused Mario to hit a Goomba in the Wooded Kingdom. So, Ryuji took up the mantle.
“For the kids that Wish-Come-True helps,” he lamented, “they don’t get as much time as they should. Doctors are doing their best to help them out, but there’s only… so much they can do.” He let his next few words reestablish his smile, turning back to the camera lens. “Y’know, these kids should get to live out their big dreams of goin’ to Destinyland, or meetin’ someone they look up to, or whatever. They got wishes, just like anyone else, but they don’t have to be these pipe dreams they’ll never see come true.”
Out of the corner of his oak-brown eyes, Ryuji saw the other four girls—Ann, Sumire, Makoto, Haru—looking on in pride. But of what?
By now, Ryuji understood it well. His eyes returned straight to the lens as Yusuke led Mario on screen to another Power Moon.
“I’m pretty sure a lot of us have dreams and wishes,” he said firmly. “If it helps us find happiness—hell, maybe even helps others, too—then there’s no shame in chasing after them and making them real. Yusuke and I are movin’ soon, and we’re gonna be the best artist and track star couple the world’s ever known. And yeah, I mean that for re—”
“WE HIT A HUNDRED-MILLION!”
Futaba’s shriek in the back sent Ryuji’s chest for somersaults.
“Oh my God, we did!” Ren hollered. “Guys! RYUJI!”
Ryuji’s head bolted to the fundraiser counter on the top-right corner of the laptop screen, his chest palpitating once more:
Total Funds (¥) Raised for WISH-COME-TRUE: ¥100,005,089.54
Ryuji couldn’t think of playing catch-up on donations. His dry cackle turned into triumphant vulgarities, and he yanked an already-weeping Yusuke up from the couch. Everyone else leapt into the camera view for the celebratory huddle. They sounded like wounded hyenas, but they wouldn’t have this any other way.
“We’re not even at the arts and crafts contest!” Ann laughed, stumbling back before Futaba dragged her back in.
“I’m stuck in the dance workout happening then, anyways,” Yusuke’s moans and wails echoed through the living space. When everyone was starting to back away, he fell into Ryuji’s gloved arms. “But… and now Ichika—”
Ryuji squeezed Yusuke’s lean waist, somehow seeming to relax his recipient. He let his own tears pass from the rims of his eyes.
“I think she’d really love this, Yusuke,” he whimpered, feeling they could all take on the world with this kindness paid forward.
Ryuji sat at the edge of the couch, Yusuke on his lap, and let himself cry as the messages ran up the side of the screen:
HOLY SHIT YEEESSSS <3
Congrats! ^_^
SPLATTER PAINT FOR THE KIDS! :0
Skulls crying and I think I am too :,)
Every effort counts. Good job, Ryuji & Co.!