My Stepsister Is the Idol Everyone Wants to See novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Paid Comments
Emi watches the fan economy at work during a livestream, hears Kokone sing, and gets paint wiped on her cheek.
At nine that night Emi stood in the kitchenette with her back against the fridge, holding a laundry basket in front of her face.
She wasn't in the shot.
That was the deal.
Kokone sat on the futon with the one blank wall behind her, a white bedsheet pinned over the paint-spattered plaster.
A ring light on a stand lit her face from the front.
She had put on a pink hair ribbon and a sweater with a bear on it, and she looked ready for a birthday party.
Her phone sat in a clip on a tripod, and a small number in the corner read 41,206.
"Hello, hello, my Buds!" Kokone said, and her voice went up half an octave. "It's Kokone! Are you all there?"
The chat on Misaki's laptop scrolled so fast Emi could not read it.
Emi tried anyway.
Some lines said the photo was a lie.
Some said they hated her for lying.
Many were in colored boxes with numbers beside them, 500, 1,000, 10,000.
"What are the numbers?" Emi whispered to Misaki, who was crouched under the table with the laptop.
"Paid comments. A fan pays, and the comment is pinned at the top and she reads it out loud."
"How much is ten thousand?"
"Ten thousand yen."
Emi looked at the box that said 10,000.
It said: Please say my name, Kokone!!
"For saying a name?"
"For three seconds of being noticed," Misaki said. "That's the business."
On screen, Kokone read the comment and beamed.
"Thank you, thank you, I'm so happy you're here! Did you eat dinner today? I hope you ate dinner!"
The box turned gold.
Another one appeared at once.
Kokone laughed, and read it, and gave it a smile and a question and a wink.
For twenty minutes she did not stop.
She sat in a room that smelled of turpentine.
She made forty thousand people feel loved, one at a time.
Emi realized she was holding the laundry basket so tightly her fingers hurt.
At the half hour, a comment in a bright red box said: Is the boyfriend there with you?
The chat went silent for one second, and then it exploded.
Kokone's smile did not move.
"Oh, Buds," she said lightly. "That picture isn't what you think. You've all known me for a long time. You know I'd tell you."
The chat roared.
She tilted her head.
"Let's do a song to clear the air. A little one, no band, just me."
She took a breath.
And she sang.
It was a slow song about cherry petals falling into a river.
Emi had been sure she'd hear a thin, bright girl-group voice.
She didn't.
It was low in the middle and cracked slightly on the long notes, and it was a real voice.
It filled up the whole flat and rattled in the window glass.
Emi lowered the basket.
She forgot to hide.
She stood in the kitchenette with her mouth a little open and her arms hanging, looking at Kokone's face and not at the screen.
Kokone's eyes went to her once, for a second, in the middle of a line.
Then back to the camera.
When the song ended the numbers on the screen climbed so fast the little counter blurred.
Misaki whispered, "Don't move. Don't move."
Emi did not.
At nine fifty-eight Kokone said her goodnights, kissed her fingers at the lens, and switched the light off.
The room was suddenly quiet, and small, and warm.
Kokone put her head in her hands.
"Is it over?" she asked through her fingers.
"It's over," Misaki said, and put a hand on her back. "You were wonderful. I have to take this call."
She went out on the landing, the phone already at her ear.
Emi put the basket down.
She walked across the room.
She knelt on the edge of the futon, because her paint hands were too dirty for anything else, and looked at the girl.
"That was the first time I heard it," she said.
Kokone lifted her head. Her eyes were red.
"And?"
"I think I'd have remembered the cherry blossom one."
Kokone laughed, one cracked burst, and wiped her nose with her wrist.
Then she looked at Emi's face.
"You've got blue on your cheek," she said.
"I know. It's been there since six."
"May I?"
Emi nodded, because her voice had gone.
Kokone reached out.
She wiped her thumb along Emi's cheekbone, slowly, once, and Emi felt it all the way down her arm.
The thumb came away blue.
Kokone looked at it, and then at her, and did not take her hand away right away.
"It suits you," she said.
On the table, Misaki's laptop pinged.
Emi glanced over, and then looked again.
A new line had pinned itself at the top of the replay chat, in a plain white box.
It came from an account with a cat for a photo.
Who is the tall girl in the window reflection?
← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend