Since I'm Not Popular, I'll Come Out of the Closet

Legendary Girl Alpha. Queen of the Otakus.

Tomoko didn't consider herself an otaku. Not a militant one, anyway. She watched anime and spent too much time playing H games, but she knew better than to advertise the fact. She was at best patron saint of the closet otaku.

Would that make Yuu-chan a goddess of closet otaku? Tomoko wasn't sure, sometimes – Yuu-chan's interest in anime she had begun to suspect was not entirely genuine, but rather an attitude she feined as a reason to keep up their friendship from middle school. In a way, it was flattering; it made Tomoko feel as if Yuu-chan genuinely liked her, and actually enjoyed spending time with her. It was the kind of lie she herself would tell in order to make somebody keep liking her.

But it also made the relationship feel a little unstable. To come apart, all that needed to happen was for Yuu-chan to drift away, which Tomoko could see happening, easily. Yuu-chan had friends who were normal, after all. Friends who went to the beach and did karaoke. Tomoko could feel herself becoming less interesting every day. What did she ever do, after all, but sit around at home?

Maybe I should stop treating Kotomi like a rival. If Yuu-chan lost interest in one of us, she'd lose interest in both of us.

Thinking of herself as just one of Yuu-chan's little pet otakus, though, made her feel miserable. She pulled out her notebook, while laying in bed, and started to make a list. In one column, things she does well; in the other column, 'sucks eggs'.

The 'sucks eggs' list was becoming distressingly long, in short order. She couldn't put her school studies in general in either column, as she was still just doing merely OK. She started out well, academically, but became discouraged when her grades were only average. Then her grades sank, and she overheard her parents talking about sending her to a remedial school. So she worked hard to pull her grades back up. And she did – she pulled them all the way back up to average.

Apart from that, she sucked eggs at just about everything.

Maybe I shouldn't have let go of the arms dealer dream so quick, after all.

She shivered.

OK, still not ready to make jokes about that.

"Maybe I'm fated to be just one of many. There's no shame in not being the frontman. I can contribute as part of a team. I wonder if I could cut it in a girl group."

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself wearing a cute costume, and learning cute choreography. She made herself stop, because she felt her gills turning green.

Sitting up and looking at herself in the mirror, she had to remind herself that trying to look cute was something else she sucked eggs at.

"If I join a band, maybe it should be a metal band. Looking grungy in that line of work is a plus. I can be sloppy, wear leather, dress in black, start smoking cigarettes, punch random people in the face…"

She didn't know why, but a wicked smile crept up on her while thinking about chains.

"Maybe I really should try that. It might be a good way for me to learn to be more aggressive. Hmmm…"

Shame I don't know how to play a musical instrument. But then, there's nothing wrong with being the frontman. I could learn to scream into a microphone really loud.

She stood up and struck a heavy metal pose. "Whaaaa–! I said I've HEARD! ENOUGH!"

Tomoko played air guitar for a minute, then imagined the guitar went out of tune and started screaming sour notes, and everyone in the crowd started throwing beer bottles.

"I guess it's the kind of thing you've got to be ready for, if you're a headbanger. I'd have to be hard enough to catch the nearest bottle from mid-air, then bite the neck off with my teeth and spit glass back out at all the assholes."

She gave her mirror the finger. "Check out my coda!"

Still, she had already entered the word music under 'sucks eggs'. It wasn't that long ago she tried to write a song on idol software. Turned out the software only made it "fun and easy" if you already knew things like pitch and harmony, which were complete mysteries to her.

If I don't figure out something fast, I'll wind up working in a factory for real, for the rest of my life.

The more time she spent on the list, the more depressed she got. She was awful at more things than she realized. If she were completely honest with herself, and just this once she would be, she wasn't even a very good sister to her brother, Tomoki. The only thing she could really count as a positive was being an otaku, but even when it came to being an otaku, she was half-hearted at best.

That moe pig on Plucky Star was supposed to be the biggest otaku who ever lived, and she had tons of friends and could even be a cheerleader, if she wanted to be. I've never met an otaku who was really like that, though. They're all loner shut-ins, like me. What does Sonata Izzyoume have that the rest of us don't?

"Sonata Izzyoume would be in college, by now. What would she be studying? The otakus worship her as Legendary Girl Alpha, but what good is that on a resumé? What does it get you? Hm…"

Of course, she doesn't have a boyfriend, either. But she doesn't care. At least, she acts like she doesn't care. If anything, she's maybe got a yuri thing going on with Kirigami, the token tsunderé. Funny, I don't even have a tsunderé. Wait, is that supposed to be Kotomi? She doesn't really act like a tsunderé. She's just a pervert who wants to see my brother's dick.

"Wait a minute, I remember now! That moe pig worked in a cosplay café! She was always dressing up as Haruhi Sashimi."

Tomoko stared at her list. Cosplay would have to be another item for 'sucks eggs'.

Like everything else, I'm too timid, and I can't pull it off. I look nervous playing dress-up. You need loads of self-confidence to pull off cosplay. I've got the self-confidence of a bug looking at a fly swatter.

Besides, who just walks in through the front door of a random cosplay café and gets a job goofing around in a costume? Sonata Izzyoume obviously benefits from some kind of otaku in-crowd. It always comes down to popularity, doesn't it?

I can't see me landing a job at a cosplay café. Nobody cares who I am, or if I even live or die.

Tomoko kept staring at her lopsided list, waiting for an answer to present itself. Nothing came to mind. She put the list to one side and groaned.

I'll never be popular if I don't come out and let people know where I stand. Even if I decide to be an otaku, it doesn't do any good if I'm only an otaku at home. I need to make friends, network, create a power base.

So I need to come out of the closet as an otaku. But as I see it, there's more than one door out. There's the door marked 'Hey, world! I'm an otaku, and I'm proud of it', and there's a door on the other side that says – what does it say? Time to grow up? Time to stop hiding from life? Time to stop pretending that your life sucks, and do something about it, for a change?

Either door means change.

She sat up in bed.

It seems so hard, but change has to come easier now than later. What if I don't do anything to change, and time slips away from me?

Using the internet, Tomoko put together a list of cosplay cafés she could reach by train. She still wasn't certain which door to take – or if there weren't other doors that she hadn't found. The closet she found herself trapped in seemed to have the potential for a hundred exits. But apparently she couldn't just turn any one door handle and step out. It couldn't be that easy, not for her.

The first problem with job seeking was her shyness in public. How could she convince an employer that she could be a cosplay hostess, if she couldn't even manage to speak clearly and ask for a job, without stammering and sweating, turning beet red, then turning to flee?

Maybe I should cosplay while asking. Maybe dressing up as someone else would give me confidence. It's all just a matter of acting, after all. If I can play the part of somebody with confidence, I'll be somebody who has confidence.

"Acting…"

Maybe I should think about joining the drama club.

She managed to ask the drama coach for a schedule. He was a cheery sort of man with round cheeks, and encouraged her to try out. She mumbled timidly that she was thinking about it.

In the end, she decided against it. If she couldn't speak plainly to the drama coach without stuttering, she would be wasting everyone's time trying to act. She could just imagine herself standing on stage trying to deliver lines while everybody else is standing around waiting for her to choke out the words. She'd get halfway through a monologue, and people in the audience would start yelling at her to speak up.

Tch. I'd rather catch beer bottles in my teeth.

When the drama club tryouts rolled around, the drama coach was disappointed that Kuroki had not turned up, after all. He made a note to himself to talk to her homeroom teacher. Such a shy girl reminded him of himself, when he was young and struggling with an embarrassing lisp. Maybe she could be encouraged to break out of her shell.