Work Text:
“Alright! Can I lead the meeting today, Airi-chan!!!” Minori was right up in her face… it was too early for her energy. An 8 AM meeting at Minori’s place to discuss their plans for the upcoming month was not ideal, but Minori had work scheduled that day and… well working out times for them to meet up was hard sometimes, and sometimes that meant meetings at 8 in the god damn morning. If Minori had something she wanted to bring to the table, she could go right ahead, Airi wasn’t awake enough for that.
“Sure Minori, knock yourself out.”
The girl shot to her feet, standing at the head of the little table the other three were sitting around. “Alright, so! I’ve been trying to think about what we can do to help grow our idol group outside of just improving our performance, so I was trying to think about how idols are marketed when they’re with an agency.”
“Agencies have budgets Minori, big ones, keep that in mind.”
The girl nodded with a smirk, “Of course Airi-chan, but it’s still worth looking at what they do, even if we can’t do it on the same scale. We definitely don’t want to portray ourselves in those perfect caricatures, that’s one of the things that makes us special after all! However, there’s one technique that we can try incorporating into our streams.”
“Ooh, tell us Minori-chan!!!” Shizuku clapped in advance, apparently prepared for a spectacular suggestion. Airi wasn’t too convinced, but she’d try to keep an open mind.
“So, I don’t remember seeing any of your groups doing it back then, but it’s been growing in popularity recently. Have you heard of ‘Yuri Marketing’?”
Airi froze. Yeah… she knew what that was, pretending to be gay together without being TOO explicit in order to gain a bit of an audience. Well, in Airi’s case it wouldn’t be pretending, especially not with these three, but there was no way she’d be admitting to that. Looking to the others, Haruka seemed to have heard of it, but Shizuku’s face was as blank as ever.
“Nope, what does that mean Minori-chan?”
Minori pointed to Shizuku, “Come here! I’ll show you an example.”
Shizuku did as she was told and stood next to Minori, who proceeded to faux dance on the spot. As quickly as she started, the girl faked a trip, falling towards Shizuku, who reliably caught her as always.
However, the scene before their eyes wasn’t quite like it usually was. Instead, Minori turned her face upwards to Shizuku. Her eyes shone in the sunlight (how that was possible was beyond Airi considering they were inside). “Sh-Shizuku-chan… thank you!!!”
A touch of red coloured Shizuku’s cheeks, “Why of course Minori-chan! You have to be more careful though.”
“I’ll try… b-but if I mess up again, can you still catch me?”
Shizuku smiled, “Of course Minori-chan, always!”
Minori matched her smile for a second, then leapt to her feet, “So that’s yuri marketing! Creating moments like that between girls!”
Shizuku still didn’t seem to understand, “Moments like what? I don’t think you should try to fall more Minori-chan…”
The girl shook her head, “No no, moments of yuri! Basically mimicking girl’s love, idol fans seem really into that sort of thing nowadays! I’ve even seen some of our fans talking about…”
Minori paused for a moment, “Ah never mind… just leave the fan posts for me, you all don’t need to look at that stuff.”
Airi shuddered. She couldn’t imagine having to deal with community management, but SOMEONE had to do it, and it wasn’t going to be their nonexistent manager. Minori had stepped up, citing her experience in the idol fandom giving her experience with navigating fan content. Thank god.
“The point is, idol fans really like imagining idols, especially girl groups like us, in lesbian situations. But, they don’t want FULL commitment, cause then that would interfere with their ships.”
“Forgive me for asking, but what do you mean by… ships?” Haruka asked.
“Excellent question! So basically… hmmm… so maybe one person likes to imagine Shizuku and Airi together.” this person sounded like Airi, at least to Airi it did. “And maybe another person imagines Haruka and Airi together!” This person also sounded like Airi.
“The goal is to please them both, right? So rather than super explicit stuff like kissing, you do little teasing stuff. That way no one’s mad they were wrong, and everyone gets stuff to get excited about!”
Shizuku raised her hand, “But Minori-chan, if they only get little bits, won’t they be unsatisfied.”
Minori sighed, “Shizuku-chan I’m not sure how to explain it fully but… I promise you they won’t. Idol fans like that get… desperate.”
“So let me get this straight…”
“Airi-chan, I think you mean gay!” Minori gave her a playful wink… infuriating and adorable at the same time, that was Minori’s MO.
“Whatever, let me just understand your suggestion. You want us to… pretend to be gay with each other? On stream?”
“Yes!”
This girl… she had no clue, huh? She hadn’t picked up on Airi’s behaviour towards her? Towards SHIZUKU??? To be honest, she’d been fairly certain Minori was crushing on Haruka… was this a ploy to get more intimate with her? No, Minori was just stupid. Occam's razor this one Airi, the answer is clear…
“That’s worth trying out, though we’ll need to rely on you to report its effects on our community engagement.”
“You can count on me! Now, I have a few suggestions for specifics.” she pulled out a notebook and started giving them all a run down. She’d… been reading Airi’s mind, at least half of these were things she’d daydream about constantly. Giving Minori pats on the head, Shizuku getting up close and personal during rehearsal…
Her doubts about this were very present, what if she was TOO gay by mistake. It was supposed to be pretending… but it was anything but that for Airi. She’d have to be careful to not let too much show on her face.
Little did she know the two blue haired idols sitting next to her were thinking near identical thoughts, as a clueless Minori prattled on about different ways for them to “fake” being madly in love with one another.
Today was the day of their first stream trying out… their new business model. Beyond just the desire to be intimate with these three, Minori brought up solid points regarding how this could help the group. Ultimately, an idol group’s success was determined through fan engagement and growth of their fanbase. This allowed more fan content to be produced and shared around, as well as a strong connection for existing fans. Clips of these moments were particularly popular according to Minori, and were much more likely to be circulated than long livestream archives.
Also Airi was really desperate to get close to these three, she’d had enough of Ena constantly teasing her about her refusal to act on any of these feelings. Well jokes on her, now she got to BENEFIT from keeping it hidden.
The stream went as normal for the most part, but they had a few things planned. Hopefully they’d go on well in a live environment. Starting with…
“Waugh!!!” Minori tripped over her own feet, ahead of schedule… oh that probably meant she actually tripped, and Shizuku was nowhere nearby!
Luckily, Haruka was there to spring into action. In a quick step, she was in front of Minori to catch her by the arms and prevent her from falling on her adorable face. Wait… no, her face, regular face.
This would do, as Minori looked up at Haruka with a sparkle in her eyes. “H-Haruka-chan, thank you!!!”
Meanwhile Haruka was a step ahead, going for the KO. She reached a hand up to brush some hair off of Minori’s face, “Be careful now, you know? That pretty face of yours has to be protected.”
Airi wanted to scream in affirmation, scream that FINALLY someone UNDERSTANDS how precious and perfect Minori’s little face was. Even Minori seemed caught off guard by the comment, and gave a little nervous laugh. Neither girl escaped that bombshell of a comment with a face anything other than red.
They had their smaller moments throughout the stream, but absolutely nothing was going to top that one. That meant they’d need to up the ante the next time.
“LOOK LOOK!!!” Minori burst onto the roof, phone in hand. It showed a youtube short with, as expected, the clip from yesterday’s stream. Minori in Haruka’s arms, and Haruka dropping that bomb of a comment.
Airi had gone through the stream chat last night to see how their viewers had reacted to that moment. It was… precisely how Minori had anticipated. There were way more views than they’d get on their own videos, clearly a lot more people were seeing them now.
“And that’s just youtube! Insta and Tiktok are sharing it around way more, it’s working already! Ah, but please don’t go to our subreddit, our mods aren’t… active enough.”
“Wonderful! Let’s do some more then, shall we Minori-chan?”
“Yes!!!”
Today’s Yuri act was simple, a Yuri crowd. This meant the three of them would all rush to Minori’s side at once to pamper her for something, thus fulfilling their fan’s idealist fantasy of being doted on by a bunch of cute girls.
Airi’s fantasy too… she’d tried to advocate for herself as the center, but Minori made the case that it would be better to build on existing Yuri hype before creating a new strain of sorts. She was right… annoying.
As they closed out their final run through for rehearsal, Haruka and Airi approached Minori from either side, and Shizuku from the back.
Haruka offered a water bottle, Shizuku gave her praise and a few pats on the head, Airi brought a cold towel to her forehead to help her cool down, and Minori was… lucky.
As predicted, they had another clip circulating the next day, and this was just the start.
The next few weeks marked a notable shift in their stream activities. They made sure not to deviate from their usual activities, there’d be no point in radically changing what the streams were for at their core, but they made sure to have a few of these yuri moments in most of their streams.
They managed to sneak in Shizuku princess carrying Airi (an event her heart barely survived), Minori clinging close to the arms of the other three, Haruka feeding the others, etc. It was hard to tell who was enjoying it more, their audience or MMJ themselves.
One thing that was clear to Airi was that the ‘fake’ blushing they’d put on during these acts… was not fake. It wasn’t for Airi, and it became evident pretty quickly that it wasn’t for the others either, Minori was their worst offender. Did any of them realize? Was she misreading them?
By the end of January, even other students in the school were… whispering about it. If the others were faking, they were EXTREMELY convincing. Even Ena was interrogating her about it, just to make SURE she wasn’t secretly dating the others.
Mizuki sent her a Shizuku x Airi fancam they… apparently made themselves. It was a video she most certainly did not watch most nights now, that would be… creepy.
But the end of January meant the beginning of February, which meant another start of month meeting to discuss their plans for the upcoming 28 days.
This month’s was at a REASONABLE time of 10 AM, thank god, and at Minori’s house once again. Once again, Minori stood to lead the meeting.
“Um so… just to review from last month, the idea I had seemed to have worked! We’ve gained 20k subscribers to our youtube channel in January alone, and our other socials have seen even bigger increases! Plus, fans are really looking forward to the Valentines stream now…”
Shizuku applauded, “That’s wonderful Minori-chan! You seem to have been right on the money with this one.”
Minori’s face fell, “W-well… there’s a problem though, I think we have to stop.”
“Why? It’s working, and judging by the live chats no one seems upset by it.”
She fiddled with her fingers in place, trying to find the words she needed, “Yes that’s true… it’s um… you see I didn’t know this when I first suggested it, but it turns out I’m… actually gay. It h-hasn’t exactly been pretend with me… for a while. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to trick you!!!”
She… just noticed? This month? Airi stood up, “Uh… yeah same.”
Shizuku wrapped herself around Airi’s legs, “Ahh, me too!!! I thought it was just me, you’re all just so cute!!!!”
Eyes turned to Haruka, as she answered the unspoken question with a simple nod.
“Well then…” Airi cleared her throat, “It seems we have no reason to… stop.”
“I concur.”
The four nodded together, a bit unsure how to proceed. Though there was one way to proceed, some… private yuri marketing.
The much anticipated MMJ Valentines stream was underway. Chocolates were made, cards were exchanged (their contents were private), and the yuri marketing was… light. The chat was on edge for the first half hour, desperate for something. Feeding one another chocolate maybe? The possibilities were truly endless!
“Alright!” Airi swallowed one of her chocolates (Shizuku’s, it was as sweet as her), “I know you’re all excited for today’s stream activities.”
“I wonder why…” Haruka chuckled.
“So… last month sort of… well things were changing, and now that change has happened…”
“She means we’re dating now!” Shizuku chirped.
The chat EXPLODED
‘ShizuAi confirmed???’
‘I’m so jealous of Airi-chan…’
‘I wish I was Shizuku-chan’
‘Kiss now’
‘NOOOO MINOAI WHERE???’
“Uh to clarify… we’re dating means… we all are. All four of us.”
The chat went nuclear. Messages about ‘polyjump confirmed’ and ‘Airi please step on me’... that last user got muted pretty quickly. Mizuki was working overtime as chat moderator today.
Flirting on the job usually wasn’t a good idea but… well maybe in this business it could work out. Her heart might not survive the rest of the month…