Chapter Text
The first game Arisu ever learns is chess. When he was young, he would watch his mother diligently set the board, picking up each piece with care and setting them down with precision in their rightful places. In the early days he'd watch from her lap as she moved the pieces around the twenty-eight squares, rotating the board after each move, playing in silence save for his babbles for conversation.
She always seemed to enjoy life more when playing a game, her constant mild boredom with the world being replaced with excitement. Her kind eyes would always turn sharp with focus as she attempted to out think herself with every game. He would sit there for hours watching her eyes roam the board picking out her own weaknesses in play and exploiting others she made in the previous turn. Her hands were steady and sure as she traded pawns for rooks, then moved the knight to block the queen until she pushed the white king into a corner and the game was over.
Watching her play would always calm him down when he was in a fit, she would tell him when he got older. That the movement of pieces would mesmerize him into forgetting just what he was so upset about moments prior.
She taught him the rules when he was old enough to comprehend what she was saying. Though he already had some kind of idea how the game worked, to have it explained concretely allowed him to follow along with his mothers movements. Every so often he would ask why she moved a piece the way she did, or how the piece's configuration could stop certain things from happening. Each time she'd pause her game to explain in her soft tone why, patient and willing to quell his curiosity. Then she would continue as if he hadn't interrupted at all.
Eventually he became discontent with just watching and wanted to play himself. When he asked her to play a game her smile was blinding as she agreed. She set the board as usual, diligent and precise; Arisu played black, and her white.
It was a swift defeat, even after all those years of watching her play, he was no match for her cunning mind. He didn’t care though, because he had played. After a moment of staring at the board in awe he asked to play again.
He would lose again. In fact he would lose many, many times to her. All his different strategies would fail in glorious tragedy as his mothers pieces swept his away until his king was cornered. Sometimes he didn't see it coming as she demurely placed pieces in unassuming positions, others it was a relentless attack he wasn’t smart enough to get out of. After every loss he would stare down at the board and think through what happened. Every detail, every weakness he unknowingly left open for his mother, every opportunity missed, was catalogued.
“Do you see it?” His mother would softly ask after each match.
Arisu would nod, “I think so.”
She would smile, nod, and reset the pieces to play again.
They would play for hours. Sitting at the kitchen counter moving pieces, Arisu losing terribly, until she's brought away to care for Hajime.
When he couldn’t focus on textbooks anymore he would seek her out for a game. She would giggle and ask, “Have you found yourself in Wonderland again, Alice?” It was her nice way of asking if needed an out of the real world. He’d always agree.
The few times his father walked in on them playing he would huff and rant, red in the face, about how she fed his bad habits and that he needed to focus on studying, not a game. When his father finally ran out of steam and left, his mother would turn to him, smirking and wink. A silent promise not to worry about what his father would say. They were fine, in their world of twenty-eight squares it didn’t matter what his father thought or what Arisu was supposed to be doing.
As Arisu got better, his mothers health got worse.
It started slow: headaches and fatigue that would stop her from playing or caring for him and Hajime. That was okay, when they weren't playing he would help her with cooking and cleaning and his brother. Maybe it was another excuse to avoid the boring world outside of them but it was more time spent in her vibrant orbit.
Then it got worse, the headaches never went away anymore and she could barely get out of bed. Instead of playing at the table Arisu would bring the board to the bedroom for them to play. He would set up the pieces, white for her, black for him. Her moves were slower but never less clever as she lured him into traps. They'd only ever get through a game or two but it was enough.
Eventually his father brought her to a doctor. They came back crying.
Arisu has only seen his father cry once, it was the day Hajime was born, he was happy. This was different though, he was holding her so tight Arisu thought he might hurt her as she sobbed into his shoulder. They were grieving, something he didn’t understand until later.
Over the next few months his mother would wither. Her hair would thin and once brilliant eyes turn hollow and sunken framed by dark circles. She was brought to the hospital more and more often until she became a permanent resident. They didn’t have much time to play anymore in between his fathers stricter studying enforcement and her appointments, but he’d still be able to sneak away for a few hours after school and over the weekend to visit her with a board tucked safely in his backpack.
She’d always smile so brightly when he visited to play, the few times she seemed to gain some life back.
It’s after a particularly well executed strategy (if Arisu says so himself), that he still loses with, that she sighs with a small smile. “Ryouhei, do you know why you lost?”
He looks up at her after analyzing the board, “You took my rook.”
“It's because you didn’t push your knight for me to take earlier." She moves the board and pats the space left for Arisu to join her, “You hesitate to sacrifice pieces and it costs you.”
His brows furrow as he climbs up, “Oh.”
She pulls him into her side, “You have great intuition. But you can’t win just on instinct, Alice. You must use your head.”
He grumbles when she lightly taps his forehead, “Ma.”
She laughs and runs her fingers through his hair, “How’s the King.”
“Same as always,” Arisu tucks himself further into her embrace, “Those stupid textbooks Dad makes us read are boring. I can never focus on them and then he gets mad.”
“Oh, my Alice. Head always stuck in Wonderland.” She leans down to kiss his temple and brush his messy hair out of his face, “He just doesn’t want you to get lost.”
“I’m not lost. I’m just,” he doesn’t really know, just different.
“Down the rabbit hole?” She finishes for him.
He nods. That's exactly it. He’s somewhere else where the normal rules don't make sense and he’s the only one who can see it. “It’s awful out there. School’s boring, people are boring. The way they all think is so,” he waves his hand trying to think of the right word, "predictable."
“I know.” Of course she does, she’s always known exactly how he’s felt, “That world can be quite bland. We don’t fit, do we?”
“Nope,” Arisu huffs.
“Maybe it's better that way, not fitting,” His mother looks at him mischief written across her face, “It’s more fun.” She messes up his hair undoing her combing just moments prior. Color floods the room.
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Arisu meets two boys his first year of middle school, Chota and Karube. They’re interesting.
The way they meet however, is unfortunate. Arisu was walking to the hospital when he runs into some assholes from school beating up Chota in the park. He didn't know who Chota was but he couldn’t stand watching it happen. The boys are making fun of his mom and how he looks which is wholly unfair. He can already tell that they’re doing it just for the sake of violence, something that really just-
It pisses him off.
He's never been very physical, often would skip gym class in favor of some video game on his phone. He knew he’d get beaten to shit, it didn’t matter.
He got laid out flat on his ass. But at that moment he saw a frankly ugly birthmark sticking out of the collar of the main bully’s shirt and he couldn't help it, he burst out laughing.
The irony is just-
Perfection.
That catches them off guard enough for him to comment on the hypocrisy and have the rest of the group turn on the leader. It’s stupid how quickly something as superficial as that can make people turn on each other, but, most people are.
The new commotion gives them an opportunity to get away. It's on their way out of the park that another boy approaches them, Karube. Apparently he was on his way to help but Arisu handled before he got there. He calls Arisu “crazy but in a cool way,” and continues walking with them until the train station.
He tells his mother about them as he sets the board for her. She worries about the bruise spreading on his cheek but it's fine, because he’s met people who don’t fit. Like him.
They’re not bullied again after the boy gets shunned by the whole school the following week.
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Arisu finally wins against his mother at the end of his first year. Her eyes shine with pride as she resigns.
It’s the best and worst moment he's ever had. He won and she could barely even move the pieces, hands so shaky and weak. Some of them he has to move for her because she can’t sit up any further without help and can’t reach. Her eyes were still alight with clever plans, never easy on him even in such a weakened state, but this isn’t how he thought he’d win.
He wants her swift moves, instant counters, and blinding smile at the thrill of it. But it's gone, drained out of her by the tests and the medications just to keep her comfortable.
His mother is disappearing and he can’t stop it.
“Ryouhei,” She lifts her hand as much as she can, now exhausted after the game, “Come here.”
He moves the board and slots himself into her side, he doesn’t quite fit there anymore after his growth spurt but he curls in close anyways. He can’t help the tears that start falling.
She rests her head against his, holding him the best she can, “Don’t cry my love. It’s alright.”
“It’s not.” He sobs into her shoulder, “It’s not okay.”
When she leaves he’ll be alone with his father who will never not be disappointed in him and Hajime who barely knew her before she was this and takes everything his father says as law. It’s bad enough without her at home but now she just wont be here at all. His father will force him to think like him, take away everything that isn’t his definition of correct. Make him fit.
He doesn’t know how to live like that. Where the world holds no color.
She's so weak she can’t hold him properly, but she tries as he sobs, leaving tear stains on her awful hospital gown. “My sweet boy. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
He shakes his head, unable to form words anymore. He doesn’t know how this could ever be okay. How he will ever be okay again after this.
“It will. But you have to promise me something, Alice.” She rubs her cheek against the top of his head to get his attention, unable to move much more. “Promise me you won’t lose your way.”
“What?” He looks up at her stuttering through cries.
“Stay in Wonderland.” She smiles at him, a few tears of her own falling, “Don’t let them take it from you. Don’t let them force you into something that fits them.”
“I promise.” The words barely make it out of him. He nods, “I promise, Mamma. I promise.”
She kisses his cheek, “That's my sweet boy.”
They lay there until his father starts calling, demanding him to come home and berating him about being lazy and not taking his studies seriously. Arisu tries to ignore him, but voice mail after voice mail comes in until his mother tells him to go.
He doesn’t want to leave to go back to that plain world away from her. But she insists and he knows she needs her rest, it's his fault she's exhausted herself now, he should go.
He filters out the visceral his father throws at him once home as he grabs a snack and heads to his room. He’s not lazy, the real world just isn’t interesting enough to keep his attention. He doesn’t need to study, his grades are fine, above fine actually, not that his father cares. He sees what he wants to see, just like the rest of the world.
And its fucking infuriating.
He boots up a game on his laptop to spend the rest of the evening until he goes to bed.
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She dies that summer.
The funeral is hot and muggy in their black clothes, his dress shirt sticks to him with sweat as the sun beats down on them. He thought funerals were supposed to be gloomy with rain and chilling wind. Instead it's bright, no clouds in the sky to give them a reprieve from the glaring sun or a single breeze for dramatic effect. One might call the weather happy, it's a shitty juxtaposition to how he’s feeling.
Grief, total complete sadness envelopes his body leaving no room for anything else. He knew this was coming, but there was no way for him to prepare for it. How does one prepare for something like this?
Chota and Karube are beside him when the casket is lowered, holding him up as he cries. He hates how stoic his father is during the whole ceremony. Hates how Hajime barely cries. Hates all the other people there who he's never seen before, don’t even know her, and their fake sympathies. Hates that this isn’t what she would have wanted. A boring ceremony filled with boring people.
Chota and Karube aren’t allowed to stay with him when the Arisu family returns home. He doesn’t care what his father and Hajime do afterward, he needs to get out of his clothes and exist away from the monochrome.
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He spends his days out of the house with Chota and Karube, doing anything they want, and his evening, when he's forced to come home, playing games to block out the cutting words of his father until the early hours of the morning.
On days when his father is particularly controlling and his brother stays silent and he can’t see the two people that actually care, he clings to those twenty-eight squares hoping beyond hope for some kind of salvation.
He plays against himself like his mother did, replaying their games, testing strategies on her board. This he can manipulate in any way he needs to feel like he’s in control. This way it's like she's still here, guiding his hand through pieces to take and swap and dominate. Just for a moment, the world isn’t grey.
When school starts back up he makes sure his grades never slip, not that it really matters with his father, but he'll get an even worse scolding (if you can call it that) if they do. So he performs well but doesn’t even try to pretend he cares about the monotony of classes. Mind always drifting or sneakily playing a game under the desk.
In a desperate attempt to escape it he joins the chess club on campus, Chota and Karube call him a nerd for it but playing solo, while still a comfort, has grown stagnant, and they refuse to try. He’s only played against his mother, new people could be interesting.
It ended up being as uninteresting as everything else, the people are easy to read which makes the games boring. Every move is so boldly telegraphed there's no need for any real strategy. It takes him a day to work through every member of the club, their top rated member, he’ll admit, is significantly better than the rest but still barely a challenge. After the first three moves the boy starts sweating, playing desperate moves and falling into barely hidden traps and then it's over. How boring.
The swift defeat has the club falling over themselves to get him to stay. He should have known after the first few that this would’ve happened. He has nothing better to do so he joins. It also gives him an excuse to play more without his father looming over him.
It follows him into high school where the classes and the people are still boring except for the three of them. Then only the two of them when Karube drops out their second year.
It's whatever, Arisu kinda wishes he could follow but that’ll just be a huge mess that he doesn't want to deal with. Besides, he can't leave Chota behind.
He left the chess club that year too after it lost the last of its appeal. The tournaments were less boring but still filled to the brim with the most uninteresting people he had to deal with.
The now available time is filled with video games.
More than usual anyways.
He’ll admit it, he has an addiction. He’s well aware of it. The instant gratification dopamine hit is the only thing stopping him from going completely mad. It stays off the boredom of the mind numbing day-to-day.
He plays anything and everything, though has grown a particular fondness for puzzles. He likes some FPS’s just for the fun of annoying the other team by always knowing what they’ll do next, but the puzzles let him stretch his proverbial muscles.
He gets so good at them that one day Chota tells him he should post tutorials and game guide videos for the “less intellectually blessed.”
It’s meant to be a joke, but Arisu decides, fuck it. Something else to do that wasn’t tedious monotony. He hems and haws about what name to use and ends up settling on just keeping his old user, the one he made after She died.
As soon as games come out he's recording himself playing them, usually figuring them out on the spot. He cuts out the inbetween's of him testing solutions and puts voice overs with his shitty mic on some that need the extra explanations. He gets views; like kind of a lot of views, and comments. Some are simple thanks or requests for other games, others are asking for full length videos that aren’t just the finished solution. YouTubers and Streamers know him because of how fast he has walk-throughs posted.
His channel grows.
Enough people ask for full play-throughs that he starts posting game plays instead of just the solutions.
People seem to like that more, so does Arisu.
By the end of third year he's got a couple thousand followers. Oh, he also gets accepted to a university to study psychology, but he doesn’t care about that as much.
University’s different from high school. Chota and Karube aren’t around as often because he had to move away, which sucks, though they try to make time to play online over the weekend. Classes are, how does he put this, not harder, but different. He grasps concepts just as easily, basically floats through classes, aces exams, but there's a little more to them than previously.
Maybe it's his major. Psychology was always an interest of his, understanding why people work the way they do. He enjoys people watching even though most are quite boring, seeing their patterns, understanding who they are.
As mildly more interesting as it is, however, school as a whole is not for him. He manages to stay on course for about a year before his motivation for it dies out. Homework is turned in late if at all, if he shows up to lecture he's usually playing on his phone or planning which game to make a video on next. He somehow passes his classes but, god he’s so bored.
He takes his time from brushing off homework and skipping lectures to record play-throughs and start streaming. He buys a cheap camera and “better” mic for it and everything. His dorm-mates are never around so it’s perfect. His subscribers have been steadily increasing over the past year but streaming draws in a new influx of people.
He plays the same things he normally does, with the occasional appearance of Karube and Chota for some fun multiplayers. For some reason the different format has more and more people joining.
It was nerve wracking at first. The first few streams had barely anyone joining until the subscribers from YouTube caught up and then there were over a thousand. He sees how many views he gets on his videos, knows it's possible but, seeing this many people watch him live? Whole different story.
The chat’s crazy and the influx of things to keep track of is overwhelming. He doesn’t do it very often because of that, at least until gets more comfortable with the setup. He made some of the people who’ve been following him since the beginning moderators alongside Chota and Karube. After that it's a bit more manageable.
He reached a million followers by the end of his second year. He also drops out.
He might have been passing his classes but it's not worth holding onto anymore. He makes a surprising amount of money on his streams and his videos are getting almost a million views consistently now.
It’s weirdly stable, as much as content creation can be anyways.
As to be expected his father freaks out. Doesn’t understand why he could be such an idiot to do something so reckless as to ruin his future. His father wasn’t a fan of his choice in major but at least it was something, now it's nothing. Arisu can’t find it in himself to feel sorry.
His father lets him stay around as long as he doesn’t interfere with Hajime's studies. Simple enough.
He uses the money he makes to get better equipment, slowly upgrading his PC and set up until he becomes a fully fledged professional.
His father doesn’t understand where the money’s coming from, no matter how many times he tries to explain it. They fight about it sometimes, when he comes back from a shopping trip with new equipment or games that someone “unemployed” shouldn’t be able to buy. He thinks Arisu is doing something nefarious.
He’s getting really annoyed by how blind and stupid his father can get, until it snaps.
He moves out somewhere around fifteen million after a fight where Arisu just can’t stand his fathers criticism anymore. He was planning on moving soon anyways. He’d been saving up basically since he started getting revenue from his channel, so it's fine. Karube gives him a place to crash until he’s moved in.
It’s a nice apartment. Two bedrooms, a bath, spacious kitchen. There’s space if people sleep over and the second room gets converted into his “office.”
He didn’t know where he was going, but he’s not mad at this. Life’s less boring when he can stay down the rabbit hole.
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He gets an email from a game dev studio about a new puzzle game they’re working on, asking for him to play the demo on stream or for a video. It looks promising so he agrees.
The stream starts as any other, intro song, greetings, dono 'thank you's, then onto the game. It's fun. Challenging in some areas but that just makes it better. The plan was to do the demo in one night, he may have miscalculated.
It goes well until the last few levels. It's late, he's been streaming for god knows how long and by the time he's at the last level he's feeling pretty drained. The challenge ramp feels more like a cliff face as the last level introduces a weird new mechanic that is just not vibing with him because of how tired he is. But he's almost done and really doesn’t want to come back to this just for a single level.
He said he’d do this in one and Arisu is nothing if not stubborn.
But fuck it’s getting to him. He’s stuck in this cycle of repeated failure. He's so close if only he could find the missing piece that he knows is staring him right in the face.
Arisu likes to think he's not an angry person. He gets frustrated and annoyed sure, but anger is not an emotion he likes having; so he does his best not to. It’s rare something is so frustrating that he feels that emotion bubbling up. He can only count a handful of times he’s truly felt angry, like when he first met Chota, or when he finally snapped at his dad right before moving out.
This is one of those times.
There's something about the insanity that's happening with this level that's grating on his patience so badly that he has to take a moment to calm down.
He blocks out as much as he can and takes a deep breath. There's not much he can do while still on stream but it backs him off the edge for his mind to clear.
He can’t figure this out. God that's annoying. But it's fine, we adapt.
This is probably a stupid idea. He’s never done this before.
Fuck it, we ball.
“I’m only gonna allow this once,” Oh god his mods are going to hate him. “Ideas?”
Yup, definitely a mistake.
It's a flood of unintelligible ideas. Some kinda make sense but the majority don’t. He gives a few a go just to see what happens, he knows they won't work, but hey, maybe inspiration will strike!
It doesn’t.
All this does is introduce a whole new annoyance. Confident idiocy!
Yay.
He knows they mean well, it's just- a lot right now.
After a few failed attempts the chat is repeating or throwing out ideas that don’t even remotely make sense. He's close to calling it off at this point, accepting that he just might have to waste the beginning of a stream or finish this offline and stitch it into the edited VOD later when a dono pops up.
It’s a solution no one seems to have suggested yet, ending with what almost reads as teasing encouragement? It's not the full solution, like most of the chatters have tried to give, it's a hint. A step in the right direction if you will.
“Dr. Cheshire huh?” Arisu thinks it through, mapping the steps in his head for a moment to see if it's even viable, “Well, Doctor's orders I suppose, let's see where that gets us.”
It gets him the solution.
After the road block the rest is easy. He clears the level in no time then signs off quickly in desperate need of rest, giving one last thank you to Cheshire for the help.
Cheshire. Cute name.
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Nothing happens the next few streams. He doesn’t get anymore donos from the cat and doesn’t see any chat messages by them either.
Not that he's really looking, he swears.
It's just interesting.
Usually donos come from active chatters.
Cheshire doesn’t chat.
Again! He’s not really paying attention! He's busy playing the games, not stalking chat.
It’s just, like he said, interesting.
It’s like he disappeared after his hint. Which is very fitting for someone who goes by that moniker.
It's fair to say his curiosity is peaked. The worst part of it though is how little there is to find on Cheshire.
He goes to their profile to see what he can find — which is very little.
The profile isn't new, but it was created the same day they started following him — like a year ago. Oh and they only follow him. Arisu’s a little proud of that.
Maybe he also looks at their chat history while he's there. Nothing except for their dono, like he suspected.
Interesting.
A lurker who breaks their silence just to help Arisu, the only person they watch, with a problem. The only person who figured out the solution.
He searches other social media sites too for similar users. There's a few with variations on their name but the profiles are so public that they can't possibly be the same as the quiet lurking Cheshire.
Very interesting.
He’s watching for Cheshire now, yes he admits it. When he starts the stream he pulls up the viewer list and types in the username. Sometimes they’re not there right away, but most of the time they’re right on schedule.
What a curious thing.
He waits a week, just to see if Cheshire will make another move. They don’t.
Arisu is itching to learn more, perhaps he should force them out of lurking a little. He’ll be nice about it, he just needs to know more. Cheshires made the opening move, it's polite to follow up right?
He plays into the username a bit, “Dr.” He remembers a few years ago some bigger names used to play these semi realistic doctor/surgeon simulators. He took plenty of anatomy courses before he dropped out, how bad can they be?
Weird, it's the answer to that. Not bad, just weird.
He can’t say he knows what he's doing in the game exactly but they're kind of entertaining. He plays off the strange choice of game selection as wanting to see how far his half ass-ed attempt at being a medical professional could take him; even though he wasn’t even close to doing open heart surgery. He’s somewhat glad he didn’t, considering how freaky some of the scenes are.
But it does give him the perfect opening. He’s flipping between two choices on a “high stakes” question. He saw Cheshire enter chat at some point earlier in the stream and has been waiting for the best moment to draw attention without it looking too out of character, this is perfect.
He calls on the mods to make a show of it, feigning nonchalant interest as best he can, can’t let the chat catch on to his plan y'know?
He gets a go ahead in seconds and he's turning his attention fully to chat in wait for the cat's reply.
It takes a minute for Cheshire's new message to pop up in the chat. It's bland, simple. to the point answer but when he sees it Arisu can’t help grinning like an idiot, “Lets hope you’re right.”
It's a little mean, but the hope is to goad for another message, something that has a little more to it, like the first one did. No other messages come in.
He tries again after the answer is verified, a simple “Thank you again, Cheshire.” pressed close to the mic and looking at the camera. Nothing.
Another opening doesn’t come and Arisu has to accept that he wont get another chance this stream. The end of the stream is more disappointing than usual.
It's fine. There's more opportunities to come, if not this stream, then later ones.
The disappointment fades when he thinks back to the bland message. He got Cheshire to respond.
He can’t wipe the grin off his face for the rest of the night.
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It's one of the rare nights that Karube has off from work that the three of them are playing some party games on stream. They had a few rounds just the three of them and a few mods then started letting chat join in. He's had the viewer list up since the beginning, has been eyeing Cheshire's presence, waiting for a message or, he doesn’t know, something that they aren’t prompted for.
He delays the start of the next round to do something stupid. It comes to him in a flash of genius.
He pulls up the chat for him to type in and clicks on whisper to Cheshire. He puts in the link and code, thinks for a moment then adds a cat emoji just for fun. It’s on theme, sue him.
“Bro,” Karube’s annoyed voice drawls through his headphones, “What is taking you so long?”
“I’m waiting for something,” He leans back in his chair, grabbing a pen to twirl. He needs something to do with his hands as he waits for Ches. “Why’re you always so impatient?”
“He’s probably doing important streamer tasks like- huh?” Cheshire's arrival in the lobby cuts Chota off, Arisu takes the screen blocker off quickly for the rest of the chat to flood in.
“Alright lets get this going!” The rest of the lobby fills up and he presses start before Karube can start bringing attention to the early addition. He loves the guy but he doesn’t need Ches to be called out, can’t risk the flighty cat disappearing on him on such a big gamble that paid off.
He’s almost too giddy to play correctly, but manages to lock in when Karube keeps trying to question what happened. He knows they’re gonna have a talk about this later.
It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Ches didn’t do well. They won one of the rounds, it was this stupidly witty thing that caught them all off guard, they won by a landslide but lost the full game. The two messages he got from them don’t give off internet humor so, yeah makes sense.
It was fun being able to see what the cat’s like a little more though, they’re witty in a dry sarcasm kind of way that fascinated Arisu.
Shit, he's kind of obsessed with them.
He sends the code again while Chota and Karube ramble in the background about the game. He's waiting, spinning his pen, when a message comes back, “No.”
Simple, precise, and leaves him wanting.
He knows he's pouting, can’t help it, Cheshire’s vanished once again with barely anything to satiate him.
Oh yeah, he's fucked.
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The conversation comes when they're having a night out at the bar Karube works at. It’s a decent substitution when they’re schedules can't seem to line up, plus friends and family discount.
A girl he can’t hear the name of recognizes him even in the dim neon lights. She gets way too close, enough for him to smell the alcohol on her, and says a variation on being his biggest fan, something she no doubt thought would get his attention. It does, just not how he knows she wants it.
He plays nice, thanks her for the support and smiles for the picture, then sends her back to her friends. It's not the first time something like this has happened, not even close, but before when he might play along a little, he has absolutely zero interest in her.
She’s pretty, but he's not drunk enough to do something stupid (doesn’t want to be) and she doesn’t act the way They do.
That in itself is stupid, right? Can’t indulge because of someone he’s never had a full conversation with. Everyone he talks to now is just a comparison to Cheshire.
What's even worse is that they haven’t been in his streams lately, Ches joined two more then completely disappeared. They don’t lurk anymore and it's sending him down a bit of a spiral. The only thing keeping him from fully spiralling is the fact that the account still exists, still following.
They could just be busy. But it’s still just wrong not having the cat lurking in the chat, watching.
“Bro! She was totally into you! Why’d you turn her down?” Chota comes up to his side, breaking his train of thought.
“She just wasn’t my type.” Arisu takes a sip from his drink, trying to play it off.
“What's your type then? Not hot?” Karube slides in from around the bar, finally having a small break from making drinks, and lays an arm around Arisu’s shoulders.
“Fuck off man” He brushes Karube's arm off with no no heat behind it, “It's more than that.”
Chota laughs, “Right right. Waiting for- wait what was their name again?”
“Cheshire.” Karube in his face when he says their name in a goofy voice.
Chota snaps and points at Karube with the realization, “Yeah them!” then turns back to Arisu with a huge grin, “What was up with that anyways? Had us fumbling for a moment.”
“Didn’t you see how he acted? Probably his girlfriend-” Karube winces at a sharp elbow to the ribs, raising his hands in surrender, “Or boyfriend! We don't care.”
Arisu levels at him unamused, "It's not like that.”
“Yeah? What is it then?” Chota asks, still with a teasing grin plastered on his face.
“They’re interesting.” Arisu shrugs, “That's it.”
“Right,” Karube draws it out for dramatics, “That totally explains everything.”
Chota grin turns into something devious, “Like how you asked us if they were in the chat that one time.”
“And how you pick out that game just for them.” Karube's hanging off of his shoulder shaking his body
“Stop it they’re just- fuck.” He can’t keep the stupid grin off his face when thinking about them. Which is insane! He knows nothing about them! “It’s dumb and insane! But god I can't stop thinking about them.”
“Arisu’s got a crush~!” Chota sings, copying Karube on his other arm.
“That's enough,” Arisu pulls both his arms free from the jostling, “They’ve sent three messages, two are barely even a sentence. This doesn’t count.”
“Sure bro,” Karube pats him on the back, thoroughly amused at Arisu’s struggle.
Chota takes a sip of his forgotten drink, “So? Any more plans?”
“No,” Arisu’s pouting again, he's frustrated with Cheshire gone, worried even, “They haven't been lurking recently. It's been almost a month.”
“And you just happen to remember how much time passed, totally not a crush. Very normal of you.” Arisu can’t help rolling his eyes at Karube's comment.
“It's okay Arisu, they’ll probably be back. Who knows what their life's like.” Chota, ever the optimist, restates what Arisu’s been trying to convince himself.
All he can do is hang his head and sigh, “I’m screwed aren’t I?”
Two responding ‘Yup’s echo in return.