When it came to dating Chiaki, there were some unspoken rules that had to be abided by almost all the time, the most important one being that if she was playing a game she was not to be disturbed unless it was a dire emergency. Hajime was rather used to this, and made it a point to leave her alone if he knew she was going to be playing anything, but sometimes things would come up that needed attention from her that she would not know about until hours-to-days (because on occasion she'd binge a game with no sleep for a couple days, much to his dismay) after the fact. She wasn't bothered by getting messages late, but Hajime didn't care for having to leave her in the dark, even though he knew trying to tell her anything while playing would end in failure.
That rule did need to be broken sometimes, specifically when she would get so immersed in her game world that she would forget to do the most basic of human functions. No sleep was excusable and she would make it up at some point, but food, water, and short breaks were necessary and it became Hajime's job to make sure his girlfriend wasn't starving herself to be the first to finish some game. He would always try to pepper in whatever he needed to tell her as he was forcing her into taking a couple minutes to make sure she wasn't hurting herself with extended play time, but she rarely took in a word of what he said because her mind was focused on what she'd need to do once she was back with her controllers and her gaming consoles.
Eventually there would come a day where Chiaki would have to understand that Hajime couldn't play along with her silly unspoken rules, yet she never seemed to want to do anything to change the fact that they existed in the first place. She hadn't ever told him to not talk to her while she was playing her games, but he had grown so accustomed to her ignoring his every word when he tried that he'd chalked it up to a silly rule she wanted him to follow. "Today's the day a game I've been looking forward to for years comes out," she told him one morning as they sat in their pajamas, him trying to get a plan for the day together while she was zoning out. "You should watch me when you have time to do so, Hajime. You never watch me play games anymore."
"That's because all you do is play games," he replied, thinking about how she made a living off silently streaming her gameplay to the world, as she didn't have a working microphone to use for commentary as she played. "If I watched you play I'd have to spend more time than I think I could right now to really know what's going on."
"That sounds like quitter talk to me." Her hands were already positioning themselves as if she was holding a controller, which made it obvious that Chiaki's mind was already back to playing games. "It's not hard to catch up when I'm starting with the first game in the series, that way you'll know exactly what's happening."
He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration with her, while she absent-mindedly continued pretending to hold a controller. "Chiaki, I think you're misunderstanding me, I don't have the time to catch up on your game's lore and all that, and I know if I'm watching you'll want me to know everything. Just…let me do what I'm doing, and you can do what you're doing, and we'll both be happy."
"I guess that works if it works for you," she said, before standing up beside the bed, stretching for a moment before wandering out of the room. He knew that following her would result in him walking straight into her starting to play some sort of game, but he hated when their morning talks ended with no kind of actual resolution. Such was life with such a dedicated gamer, he knew, but it wasn't something he enjoyed.
When he did leave their shared bedroom to see her sitting on the floor, hands still positioned as if she was holding a controller despite nothing being around, he wanted to call attention to what she was doing but thought better of it. Instead, he asked her if she'd remembered to eat (which she hadn't) and forced her to go back into the bedroom and put on actual clothes instead of her raggedy pajamas that she typically lounged around in. If it wasn't for his watchful eye and caring heart, he wasn't sure she'd be able to continue living the way she was, and so even though she complained that he was making her do things she didn't want to do, he stayed firm in his stance that she at least eat and get dressed.
There was more he would have expected her to do, but he wasn't able to stay around babysitting her all day, not when there were actual bills to pay. She may have made money streaming her games, but she wasn't successful to the point of being wealthy and that meant someone needed to be a functioning member of society. It was while he was out that he discovered something important to tell Chiaki once he was home, something that he knew she would appreciate hearing the moment he could tell her it. Just the fact that he was working some boring job that gave them the money they needed wasn't pressing enough to interrupt her from her gaming, so he was admittedly a bit excited to have something else to break through her focus with.
When he got home, his plan was to separate Chiaki from her game for a few minutes to tell her what he'd found out, but that was completely destroyed when he opened the door to their modest home and heard her talking into her microphone about strategies on how to approach a level. "This is one of the easiest parts of the game to complete, but you have to backtrack a bunch to get the full experience of it all, so we'll see this again later," she was saying to whoever was watching her gaming. "After all, no sleep until one hundred percent completion, promise."
"What are you talking about? You're going to fully finish the game before you sleep?" Hajime asked, disbelief in his voice. Chiaki hadn't noticed that he'd ever come inside so she slowly turned to see him there, shutting her microphone off so their conversation didn't pick up further. "That's insane, Chiaki, you can't do that to yourself."
"I've beaten this game before, but this is a newly-remastered version and I need to beat it as well." After her initial check to see it was him there, she had turned back to her game and was playing it even as she talked. "It'll take me a day or two at the most, so I'm going to be the first to complete it without missing anything in its new form. I've always wanted a gaming record with my name on it."
"I'm not going to stop you," he conceded, seeing that she wasn't going to listen to him anyway when she was still playing right then. "But I am going to tell you that I have something important that I'm sharing with you once you're done with this. No sense in keeping you from your game any longer."
"Thanks for really getting me, Hajime," she said, before turning her microphone back on and talking to the people watching her rather than him. He smiled and nodded in her direction but chose to leave the room, knowing that he would need to find something else to do until she was done. For the entire night, every time he was in that room it was like he didn't exist, with Chiaki completely immersed in her gaming and the people that were watching, and he tried his best to stay quiet for her. That did not include calling out when there was food ready, though, as he felt that she could at least pause what she was doing for long enough to get some food in her system.
When he went to bed later, he wasn't sure if she'd ever eaten at all, but getting her to do so would be like pulling teeth at that time. She was stubborn about her gaming and he usually accepted it as her defining quirk, but this time, with this remaster of one of her favorite games, was an entirely different beast when compared to other gaming marathons she'd done. She didn't seem like she wanted to get distracted from her gameplay at all, and he couldn't bring himself to interrupt her again, but she needed to not fall into the trap of not taking care of herself while she played. He drifted off to sleep to the sounds of her talking to her viewers in the other room, and was jolted awake when the bedroom door was thrown open hard enough that it nearly came off its hinges.
Screaming, he scrambled to sit up and hoped that he wasn't about to die, but Chiaki's shadowy figure in the doorway was enough to assure him that he wasn't facing death. "I have a cutscene the game won't let me skip, will you help me make something to eat before it ends?" she asked, sounding innocent and unaware that she'd just startled him into assuming he was about to die. "I don't have much time before I have to play again, and I kinda need to eat."
"You woke me up to ask me to cook you food?" Rubbing at his eyes to verify that this really was Chiaki he was speaking with, Hajime sighed when he saw her tiny, almost shameful nod. "That's fine, I'll make you something as long as you're taking care of yourself with whatever else you're going to do."
"I'm going to, I promise." Her idea of taking care of herself was running a quick shower to rejuvenate her mind and body while he prepared her a quick meal that took all of five minutes to throw into the microwave and heat up, but she seemed thankful to be clean and having something to eat. Of course, she was so focused on eating and getting back to her game in time to catch the end of the cutscene that she didn't have any time to properly thank him with anything more than a blank look and asking if he was going back to sleep or if he was going to stay up and watch her then. "Please, Hajime, we're getting close to one of the plot twists, you'll want to see that."
His reply came in the form of a yawn, followed by an awkward shuffle away from her and her gaming to go back to bed. "I'm too tired right now, Chiaki. You need to sleep as well, you can't function if you're awake all night all the time and you need to put yourself first."
"I'll sleep once I've beaten the game without stopping. I know the whole thing, front to back and back to front, but it's a remaster and I need to see what they've changed. You understand, don't you?" She was already back to holding her controller, the ending of the cutscene she couldn't skip beginning to play. "I want you to see it too, that's what people who like each other do, they pay attention to the other's interests."
"Not at three in the morning on a work night, they don't. Maybe next time one of these games come out, but right now I just can't, sorry." He felt bad about having to turn her down in such a harsh manner, but he needed to get back to bed and if he didn't put a stop to her desires right then, he would've gotten roped into watching her against his will. As he fell back asleep, hopefully to finish off the night without any further interruption, he couldn't shake the idea that he'd wake up to Chiaki having gotten herself into some bad situation with her focus on gaming, but this wasn't her first time doing this and he knew he didn't need to worry so much about her.
When morning did come and he was up to get ready to go out working for the day, Chiaki was still in the other room, muttering things to herself under her breath as she fought through part of her game. "Good morning," he greeted, not getting her to even look at him as he spoke. "How'd the overnight shift go?"
"Horrible," she bluntly replied. "The stream went down right after you left and it hasn't gone back up, so I've been playing by myself all night! Hajime, I could've really used you out here keeping me company, I was so lonely without you or any of them."
"That really sucks to hear, I'm sorry about that." Unsure of what he was supposed to do, Hajime decided he was going to just hug her head and shoulders, as if that was going to make up for her loneliness overnight, and hope for the best. "Do you think you'll be done with the game when I get home tonight? I still have something I need to tell you."
She shrugged, something he felt underneath his grasp. "I'll be done when I get done, I don't know how much new post-game content they added. Will you make me something to eat before you go? Even without viewers I can't get up and abandon my game." It was hard to tell her no but he didn't have the time to dedicate to cooking up something for her, even if it was just meant to be a quick breakfast. She didn't seem too bothered by the fact that he turned her down, going back to total focus on her game without another word in his direction, but it ate at his insides all day as he was away from the house.
As long as she was playing, she wasn't going to take care of herself, that was a solid fact that he knew to be entirely true. And every moment he wasn't there watching over her was another moment she was spending neglecting her needs for what she wanted to do, because she didn't ever think better of it. The desire to make sure she was still functioning as a person and not just as a game-player made him want to get home sooner, especially when the important thing he'd found out the day before reared its head a second time, a bit more pressing of an issue than it had been when he'd first heard about it. If she was going to find out what it was an have a say in the matter, he'd have to do it without her total focus, even if it wasn't the best idea.
When he got home, he found her staring at the screen, controller having fallen out of her hands, her jaw hanging towards the floor; he was about to ask her what was going on when he looked to the screen for himself, seeing the large game over written in words that looked to be dripping blood. "I…lost," she managed to say, her voice barely above a whisper. "I didn't know I'd do that, why'd it get so hard so fast? That was beyond 'lunatic' difficulty, I should have been able to win that encounter exactly as I was."
"Chiaki, it's okay, sometimes people lose things and that's just how it is!" Hajime's words were falling on ears that weren't listening, proven by how she stood up and walked into the bedroom without acknowledging that he'd even come home. He could have chased her into the room to make sure she was fine, but he didn't want to crowd her and make her feel uncomfortable about what had happened, so he did what any loving boyfriend would do to cheer up his girlfriend: he cooked her a lovely meal that she'd be able to eat whenever she was ready to do so. After that came the worst part of her coping with a loss, that being the waiting around for her to rejoin the living, and he spent a fair amount of time just sitting around, looking at what she'd left her game on, seeing if her stream was still going (which it was not, thankfully).
She usually returned to face him after a couple hours, but that wasn't the case this time, not with how hard of a loss she'd had at a game she considered herself to be a master at. He had to go into the bedroom to check on her, where he found her curled up on her side of the bed, fast asleep. "Guess that overnight shift was too much for you this time, wasn't it?" he quietly asked as he sat beside her, watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest. "You did great, even if you didn't win."
"I lost though, that's not great," she sleepily told him, startling him as he thought she was actually sleeping when she wasn't. "Now I have to explain to my fans that I lost when I should've won, they'll stop watching me because of it."
"Don't think like that, they watch you because they like you, not because you're the best at your games!" That was how Hajime saw it, watching a streamer because of their personality and not their skill level, but he didn't actually know if that was how everyone else did it. "But does anyone else's opinion matter? I'm still your biggest fan, and when you…when you decide to try again I'll watch you for a bit this time."
"Would you really?"
"Promise you I will, yeah." He smiled at her, as she squirmed around on the bed, readjusting herself so she could fall back asleep. It was while he was still sitting there, with her slowly drifting off once more, that he remembered he did need to bring up that important thing he'd found out, and so even though she wasn't fully conscious when he did it he said it anyway: "Someone we know is trying to give up their pet rabbit and I thought, hey, maybe Chiaki would like having a bunny around to keep her company with her gaming when I'm not around, and if you were so lonely last night maybe it'll work? Would you be cool with a free rabbit?"
She gave a gentle murmur as a response, not a yes or a no, but Hajime knew he'd get a real answer at some later point. Either that, or she'd come out of a gaming session to find a new friend in the room with her and have it as a wild surprise, but hopefully it'd be done with her full support. She could use a companion that wasn't always going to interrupt her when she was playing, even if they weren't capable of making her food or telling her to take care of herself—but those happened to be little things Hajime liked about dating Chiaki.
A/N: shout out to my boyfriend who requested this pair and this premise from me c: