Monday morning, and the return of classes for the two ladies. "Good morning!" Betty sprang up behind Leslie as she left her apartment. She seemed chipper than usual, and the reason was held in her hands. She flaunted a few bills in front of Leslie's face, which was surprisingly stoic. "Lookie at what I got!"
"After you gave me hundreds in one night, I'm surprised that you're so happy with what's comparatively so little." Leslie said as the two of them moved toward the elevator. "Did you finally get paid for your streams?"
"Not yet, these are from jam sales." She said proudly. "I'm just glad that they like it." She reeled in her excitement, putting the money close to her chest before she put the bills away in her purse. "Oh yeah, I have a special stream today. Be sure to watch, okay!" She turned, finding Leslie already setting an alarm on her phone for later that day.
"I know, I know. It's plastered all over your timeline." She chuckled, walking out into the frigid air outside. "I'll be listening in while I work on my other commissions. Yours is last, by the way. That'll take me the longest out of them all." She added, going online to listen to a Mizuna VOD on her earphones as they made their trek to university as usual. Leslie somewhat zoned out during the lectures that day, her commissions filling her mind and her hands moving as if she were at home on her computer working on them. She'd catch herself at times, but it would keep happening until lunch break that day.
"Are you okay? You've been zoning out more than usual." Betty leaned in closer, putting a hand on Leslie's forehead. "You don't seem to be sick, Les. What's on your mind?"
"Just thinking of the commissions. There are some that I might struggle with... yours especially." She grumbled, eating a jam sandwich she made herself. "I need to clear my head of it for a bit, can we not talk about it? Oh, what are you three going to do for your collab?"
"Nebby-chan suggested that we just do a question and answer segment. It makes it a lot easier, at least. I'm honestly just excited to meet her in person, she's so sweet when we talk or do online collabs. It's my first offline collab, so I'm having them over." Betty said, getting slightly nervous as shown by her trembling hands.
"You did clean up, right?" Leslie asked. "Want me to come over?" The two of them continued conversing about the upcoming collab until their food was finished. Returning to classes and eventually to their homes, they each went to their computers as soon as they could. Leslie started working on commissions while listening to a stream of another of the vtubers that she saw in that one music video, the pink magical girl one was currently streaming herself drawing while talking to chat. Betty started setting up for her stream, making sure that her mic and camera wouldn't get in the way as well as getting more chairs for her guests. She made herself some sandwiches with the jam that she still had, and there was still quite a sizable amount remaining.
There was a sound at her door. "Mizuna-san! We're here." Kuma, or rather Dylan, knocked.
"Coming!" Betty yelled, setting her food down and walking over to the door. "Welcome, make yourselves at ho... Wait, it's you..." She smiled, welcoming her guests inside and giving them some sandwiches.
Meanwhile, just one floor above her, Leslie was busy working on a model of a small dog when her phone buzzed with a notification. "Oh, the collab is starting now, might as well check them out." She said, opening up a browser to pull up the stream, wanting to have it playing in the background as she worked. "Yeah, so it was those two..." She said, watching as Mizuna put images of Nebby and Kuma onto the screen beside her. "Welp time to get to work, good luck Betty." She smiled, listening to it as she zoomed in on the dog's tail. With her friend's voice in the background, she had gone through the next thirty minutes without much of a distraction; having conversations happening around her soothed her.
"Mizuna-san, Nebby-chan, what made you two start vtubing?" Kuma asked as there was a short pause from the two ladies. Then that pause lasted for another ten seconds, then another. "Uhm? Is everything okay?"
"It's fine. I was going to have to tell this story anyway." Mizuna cleared her throat and took a deep breath. "Where do I begin? Well, I guess I should start by saying that my dad worked as a manager for a vtuber up until a few years ago. I won't say who, but since it was my dad that helped her, I watched her a lot before I started wanting to go into vtubing myself." She then paused, seemingly holding herself back from something. "But then, well, just as I was going to start looking for people to make my art and rig me, dad got sick. I..."
"Mizuna-san." Nebby chimed in and, by the sound of movement coming from the mic, hugged Mizuna. "You don't have to tell us if it hurts too much."
"No. I'm... everyone, I'm sorry if this is a bit different from how I usually am, but I have to let you all know. Dad, he didn't make it. Two months after that, the vtuber that dad was managing retired. I got to talk to her a few times over the phone when it happened. I wonder where she is now..." Another pause filled the air as all three of them reclined in their chairs. "Sorry, I got distracted. The reason I became a vtuber is that I really looked up to those two. I want to be like them and make them proud." She said seriously, taking a deep breath. "Sorry, can I just go and take a few minutes to compose myself?" She asked, to which the other two agreed. There were footsteps, followed by the opening and shutting of a door.
"Betty..." Leslie muttered to herself, looking at the door to her room as the temptation to leave her computer and comfort her friend grew with each passing second. "No, she'll be fine, she has those two with her. I have to get back to work..." She mumbled, but her cursor on the screen didn't move an inch after that. Those thoughts plagued her mind, her fingers twitching as she started watching the stream more intently.
"That was... I hope she's okay." Nebby said before the sound of her chair moving reached the mic to create some noise. "My story is really similar. I looked up to someone that disappeared from the scene as well, but she was someone I was close to. I wanted to pick up where she left off, for her sake. Achieve her dream for her, since she lost the will to follow it herself." She added, letting out an exasperated sigh.
"I see." Kuma mumbled, at a loss for words besides those two. "I don't have anything else to say." He added before he started reading off comments in chat. "Sola-sensei? Do you think that she's who Mizuna-chan was talking about?"
"Sola-nee?" Nebby asked right before the door to the room opened up behind them.
"Nee?" Leslie mumbled, finishing up the dog and making a note of it on her phone. "I... hmm..." She wondered aloud as she opened up the stream on her phone and shut down her computer, moving to her bed to get to a more comfortable position. The rest of the stream had relatively tamer questions, mostly relating to the music video released the week prior. It was soothing to listen to, especially as Leslie lied down for the night and rested her eyes. Sleep came to her as she listened to her friend go on and on for another hour.
In the other room of the apartment, wrapped in as many blankets as he could find, Zeke stared at his screen as he had a rough coughing fit. His body jerked and convulsed until he managed to roll off of his bed and onto the floor. "Ugh..." He groaned before he lurched forward while covering his mouth with one hand. Rushing to the bathroom, he spent the next few minutes hunched over the toilet. "Blood..." He mumbled, cleaning himself off and returning to his room just in time to see the end of Mizuna's collab. With that, he switched off his phone and went to bed as well.
The next day, Leslie awoke sooner than normal and, having prepared her things along with breakfast and lunch for Zeke, decided to check in on him. "Zeke?" She asked, slowly opening the door to find him lying on the floor with a higher fever than before. "Zeke, hold on, I'll get you some medicine." She said, carrying him back to his bed and leaving to get his medicine. By the time she came back, he'd already wrapped himself up and was too tired to move his hands. "Here, let me help you up." reaching under his back, she helped him sit up with his body facing her. "I made you some food. Eat up, and call me if anything happens." She said, placing a hand on his shoulder as the other went and got his medicine ready.
"Actually, sis, I actually had some blood come out last night before I went to bed. I don't know what's happening anymore." Zeke said, his voice somewhat raspy. All his movements, even that of his mouth opening for the medicine, were sluggish. Even as he sat still, his arms were still trembling as if his body was chilled by the winter outside. "Maybe we should go to the hospital soon." He suggested, moving his body back so he could lie down again.
"We will, how about on Friday?" Leslie smiled, brushing his bangs aside while checking his temperature; it was rising higher than it ever had been before. "I'm sure that it'll be alright." She said, getting up and leaving the room. Shutting the door behind her, she sighed and frowned as she made her way outside. She opened the door. "Good morning, Betty." She said before stepping out, getting Betty to come out from her hiding spot with a disappointed look on her face.
"How'd you know?" She asked, cheering back up as the two made their way to university.
"You seem happier today than you were last night. Was everything okay?" Leslie stuffed her hands in her pockets, the air getting colder with each passing day. "You seemed really shaken last night."
"Me? Oh, that..." Betty's smile faded, a wistful look in her eyes. "It was something that I needed to share eventually. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, I'm not sad about it; there's just a lot of bottled up feelings there, you know." She said, letting out a weak chuckle. "Though I do wonder what things would have been like if dad didn't leave; would Sola-sensei still be active, or would she have retired regardless?" She looked down at her phone, looking at the animated wallpaper she set for her lock screen: a small sun with a heart orbiting it on one axis and a strawberry orbiting it on another.
"I can understand the heart and the sun, but why the strawberry?" Leslie asked, taking a peek before Betty put the device back into her pocket. "I know that you like strawberries, but..."
"I hate strawberries. I just don't want them to go to waste." She said, a twinge of nostalgia in her voice. "Dad used to grow them with grandpa and grandma since they had some spare land that they weren't using. I always hated them, much too sour and sweet for me." She paused. "But Sola-san loved them whenever dad gave them to people in the office. I'd always hear him say that his coworkers and Sola-sensei loved it. She even said that they were her favorite food." A contained smile formed by her lips gave Leslie some peace of mind as the two of them reached the university doors.