Chapter Text

It was supposed to be a regular stream. Nothing special, nothing worth overthinking. Scaramouche had planned to boot up a new game his manager and technically aunt but not really, Nahida, had sent him and give it a fair try before moving on with his night. The title alone had sounded dramatic enough to be annoying.

“Sinner’s Wrath” was called, brand-new release boasting ultra detailed graphics and a fanbase that had been foaming at the mouth since launch. As if that weren’t enough, his own viewers had been relentlessly pestering him to play it for days, flooding his mentions and chat with the same request over and over until even he’d gotten tired of seeing it.

Miss Nahida: Please do give this game a chance! I’ve checked the reviews, and everyone seems to genuinely love it. I know you usually prefer horror games, but this one is being praised as a cinematic masterpiece and I don’t say that lightly.

Scaramouche: ok. i’ll check it out.

That was how he’d ended up here.

He leaned back in his chair as the game booted, briefly glancing at the camera feed to make sure everything looked right. The new camera still felt unfamiliar. He’d only bought it a few days ago after breaking the old one in a fit of irritation, and he hadn’t decided yet whether he liked this one better or not.

“What’s the hype with this game anyway?” he muttered, eyes flicking back to the screen as the loading bar crept forward. “Isn’t this basically just another RPG? What’s so different about this one?”

The loading screen finally disappeared. He logged into his account and started playing.

Time slipped by more easily than he’d expected. One hour blurred into the next, then another after that. By the time he glanced at the clock again, nearly five hours had passed, and he’d already pushed far enough into the game to take down one of its larger bosses. The fight had been intense, flashy, and annoyingly kind of fun?

He was midway through commenting on the combat mechanics when he noticed something was off.

Chat wasn’t reacting to the game anymore.

Instead of their usual stream of commentary, jokes, and half coherent screaming, his screen was being flooded with the same thing repeated again and again: links, usernames shouting over each other in all caps, messages stacking so fast they were nearly unreadable.

His expression tightened as he scrolled, irritation creeping in almost immediately.

“Mods, can you please mute the spammers?” he said, tone clipped. He paused, then squinted at the repeated link, eyes narrowing as if it might bite him through the screen. “You all begged me to play this stupid game, and now you want me to read some article?”

He huffed softly, shaking his head.

“I think you’re all on the wrong channel or something.”

The chat didn’t calm down. If anything, it got worse.

Messages piled on top of each other so quickly they blurred into a wall of noise, usernames screaming over one another in mismatched fonts and frantic punctuation. Whatever they were trying to show him, they were clearly losing their minds over it.

Then the donation alert went off.

A sharp chime cut through the stream audio, followed by text flashing across the screen.

edwardjacoblvr donated 10,000 mora

“If you check the link out my life is yours.”

Scaramouche blinked. Once. Then he stared at the number, incredulous. “…Excuse me?”

The chat erupted again, feeding off the donation like gasoline on a fire.

His mouth thinned as he glanced between the paused boss fight and the relentless cascade of messages. Another donation alert chimed. Then another, smaller this time, but still enough to make his eye twitch.

“…You people are ridiculous,” he muttered, though the edge in his voice had dulled into wary curiosity. He sighed and reached for his mouse. “Fine. Fine. I’ll look at it. But if this is a prank, I’m banning every single one of you.”

He paused the game, the dramatic music cutting off abruptly, and clicked the link. He read the article slowly.

Not skimming, not half-paying attention the way he usually did with anything longer than a paragraph. His eyes tracked each line with uncomfortable focus, as though looking away for even a moment might make the words rearrange themselves into something worse.

There were more paragraphs below the image, but Scaramouche didn’t bother reading them. His attention had already locked onto the photograph embedded halfway down the page.

He squinted then leaned closer to the screen.

For it to be an imitation of him was an understatement. The sculpture mirrored him with unsettling precision every sharp angle of the face, the familiar tilt of the eyes, even the faint markings etched along the nape of its neck. Carved into stone as if it had always belonged there. The only real difference was the clothing as traditional Inazuman attire draped elegantly over the figure, ceremonial and deliberate, as though meant to elevate him into something timeless.

His stomach twisted.

“What the hell…?” he muttered.

A sick, crawling sensation settled under his skin. This wasn't a coincidence. Someone had studied him and decided he was worth recreating, displaying, and parading in front of critics and collectors alike and then had the nerve to claim it was all “born from imagination.”

The chat caught on instantly.

“This,” Scaramouche said slowly, voice tight, “is what you all made me pause the game for?”

That was all it took for the chat to detonate with laughter and amusement at his reaction.

Scaramouche scoffed, dragging a hand through his hair. He shot another glare at the screen, irritation sharpening by the second.

“Who the fuck is Calx anyway?” he snapped. “Some psycho fan or what?”

He glanced back at the chat, clearly expecting validation. Instead, the responses only fueled the fire.

His jaw clenched.

The laughter, the speculation, the half serious arguments flying past him only made the knot in his chest tighten. 

“Whatever. We’re not discussing this any further, okay?” Scaramouche said sharply, already reaching for his controller. “I have a feeling you all just wanted me to embarrass myself.”

Without waiting for a response, he unpaused Sinner’s Wrath. The music swelled back into the room, and just like that, the moment was buried beneath combat cues and flashing effects. The chat, obedient or distracted enough, settled back into discussing the playthrough arguing over builds, cheering when he landed a clean hit, complaining when he missed.

By the time the stream wrapped up, it almost felt normal again.

He gave his usual curt farewell, a brief wave at the camera, and clicked End Stream. The room fell silent.

Almost immediately, his brows furrowed. The irritation he’d brushed aside on camera crept back in, heavier now without an audience to perform for. He grabbed his phone and typed a single name into the search bar. Calx.

The results loaded instantly.

Thousands of links flooded the screen as articles, interviews, gallery features, critiques pop up overflowing with praise. Calx was everywhere, spoken of with reverence and authority, his work described as visionary, intimate, unforgettable. Scaramouche scrolled, jaw tightening the longer he read.

One detail surfaced again and again. Calx was anonymous.

No photographs so no confirmed identity outside his work. Every listed contact led back to an art agency or a representative, layers of distance carefully maintained. Whoever Calx was, he had made sure the world could admire his work without ever getting close to him. The thought of calling the agency made Scaramouche’s skin crawl, and he dismissed it immediately.

He leaned back, phone resting loosely in his hand.

Am I reading into this too much? he wondered. Maybe it really was a coincidence. Artists exaggerated all the time, maybe it was a coincidence. People saw what they wanted to see.

But the image of the sculpture surfaced again in his mind, too precise and intentional. From the familiar lines of his face, the mark on his nape, even the sloped nose recreated without error.

He exhaled sharply and shut off his phone. Almost immediately, it vibrated in his hand. With a faint scowl, he glanced down at the screen.

Miss Nahida: Scaramouche? Are you okay? 

Scaramouche: yeah why did you ask? 

Miss Nahida: I was monitoring your livestream. Did the article upset you that much? 

Scaramouche: well it made no sense did it? whos this calx person anyway??

Miss Nahida: I’m not particularly well-versed in the art world either, but there is one detail you might find interesting.

His brows knit together.

Scaramouche: what detail? 

Miss Nahida: The person who approached Calx for the collaboration was Yae Miko.

Yae Miko was far from obscure. She was the founder of Yae Publishing House, a figure whose influence loomed large over Inazuma’s literary and artistic circles. Under her direction, countless works had been pushed into the global spotlight, shaping trends, driving demand, and even raising the cultural and economic value of art throughout the region. To say she was powerful would have been an understatement. Scaramouche already knew all of that. What mattered was the part no article would ever mention.

Yae Miko was his mother’s girlfriend.

Ugh what the fuck is wrong with my life.

The thought came unfiltered, sharp enough to make his jaw clench. As if this situation weren’t already bad enough, it had to be tangled up with her. Not that he and his mother had ever been on particularly good terms. She paid for his apartment and even covered his college tuition. Fulfilled every obligation that could be measured on paper.

That didn’t mean they understood each other. They never had never will. Every conversation felt like two people speaking adjacent languages, close enough to sound similar but never quite aligning. And now this as if the universe had decided to be especially cruel.

His phone buzzed again.

Miss Nahida: Scaramouche?

He stared at the screen, tension coiling tight in his chest. His reply came fast, reckless, typed before he could stop himself.

Scaramouche: i’m gonna kill myself

The message sat there, stark and ugly.

Several seconds passed.

Miss Nahida: That’s not funny, and you don’t mean that.

Miss Nahida: Talk to me. What’s going on?

He leaned back in his chair, dragging a hand down his face. The anger, the embarrassment, the creeping unease all tangled together until he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. He hadn’t meant it, not really but the sheer absurdity of everything made it feel momentarily true.

He straightened in his chair after a moment, the tension in his shoulders shifting into something harder, more focused.

No. Sitting around spiraling wasn’t going to fix anything. Letting this fester, pretending it would go away on its own, would only make it worse. If Yae Miko had a hand in this, if she had been the one to approach Calx, to set this entire thing in motion, then he wasn’t going to stay in the dark any longer. He would contact her.

The thought alone made his jaw tighten. He didn’t enjoy the idea of speaking to her, didn’t enjoy what it implied or what it might drag up, but that hardly mattered anymore. Whatever embarrassment, whatever discomfort awaited him on the other end of that conversation, it couldn’t be worse than being turned into a public spectacle which to be fair he already experienced everytime he hits stream.

Scaramouche: Is this Miss Yae?

+81 XXX-XXX: Yes and who might this be?