Fukuyo Mina has been an avid watcher of SteelTanuki, otherwise known as Miyuki Kazuya, for a little over two months now. And she'll admit, at first she only tuned in after a friend showed her a picture of Miyuki, praising him all throughout their break between classes about his pretty-boy appearance. And pretty boy he was, as she couldn't help but swoon along with her friend despite only just learning the guys' name. So the first thing she had done when she returned home from school that day was to search him up; the first link redirected her to a popular live-streaming site she heard a lot about but hadn't ventured onto herself, until now.

As her luck would have it, SteelTanuki was in the middle of a stream that first fateful day, with nearly twenty-thousand viewers. He was playing a game Mina had never heard of, nor had any interest in, but found herself sucked in by his witty comments and laid-back attitude regardless. Between school, homework, and hanging out with friends, Mina doesn't catch every stream, but she'll binge watch the ones that get reuploaded onto SteelTanuki's Youtube channel any free chance she gets; even if they are several hours long.

Miyuki doesn't always play video games in his streams. Some days he watches Youtube videos, giving the viewers chances to recommend things he should watch to see his reactions. Mina would love to catch those streams live; not that she's brave enough to leave a comment, partially afraid Miyuki will see it, while also wanting Miyuki to see it. Heck, it took her nearly one month just to make an account on Twitch so she could follow him and get notifications of each stream.

Sometimes Miyuki even has bad movie parties where he finds some of the worst-rated B-movies for the entire chat to suffer through with him, but unfortunately, those specific streams don't make it onto Youtube. Mina has only ever caught one of those live, and she joined in at the last thirty minutes before the ending. She's seen multiple clips from them that other people post to Youtube, and they look like they would be incredibly fun to be a part of for the full length of the stream. But alas, the stars haven't aligned correctly, and each time Miyuki does one, she is otherwise occupied.

Sprinkled in with those are the more chill-type streams. The ones where he just chats with the viewers about whatever random topic they get on. But the even more rare streams he does, are when he watches highlights from a baseball game that had finished the day before; ranting and raving about the kind of plays that are made. Even though Mina knows next to nothing about baseball –doesn't even pay attention to when the season starts–, Miyuki's obvious passion for the sport has her watching regardless of her lack of knowledge. In fact, the way Miyuki explains certain plays and strategies was so easy to follow, that she often finds herself agreeing with Miyuki's input like it makes all the sense in the world.

Those ones aren't his most-watched streams, but he still gets a large chunk of people tuning in to get his reaction from the most recent game; or they are like Mina, and have become completely enthralled by him, that she'll pretty much watch anything at this point. Mina has learned more about baseball from Miyuki than she ever had from her awkward junior high relationship with a boy that played on the school team. Mina still doesn't have any interest in baseball, but at least she knows what's going on when she sees a game, and understands why people cheer or heckle from certain plays. And okay, maybe she had used the information she learned to brag to the people at her school that she knows a thing or two about a sport. How would they know that she only retained the knowledge from watching a more-than-attractive guy discuss it on a live stream? It's not like she's told anyone about her most recent fascination, not even with the friend that introduced SteelTanuki to her, as that friend only admired Miyuki's looks, but didn't watch his content.

There was one minor detail that took place in all of his streams, one that she didn't pay too much attention to at first, and that was Miyuki's roommate. Or, Mina assumes he's Miyuki's roommate, and according to Youtube comments, so do a lot of others. Other than that, from what she has seen, neither of them addresses it and everyone just accepts the disembodied voice. The only thing she knew for sure was that the voice goes by the name of Eijun. Eijun, for the most part, was there during all of SteelTanuki's streams, offering insults and jeers from the sidelines. He's a moderator for the chat under the username Erstwhile_Ace, though, a lot of the time, Eijun needs to be moderated as he often gets into arguments in the chat section. Though long-time viewers seem to find it enjoyable and purposely try to get a reaction from him, which tends to get the chat set to emote-only mode as punishment from Miyuki.

Over time, Mina has grown to like all the side comments that are made; has even watched compilation videos that people have kindly put together. But it was those same compilation videos that made Mina start to think that there was something…off between Eijun and Miyuki, but she can't quite put her finger on it. With the way Miyuki would sometimes smile in the direction of Eijun; small and almost private. Or the way Eijun will approach Miyuki to place a hand on his shoulder –in the only few times they actually get to see some part of Eijun– to tell him he was going to bed. That sometimes Miyuki will disappear off camera afterward only to reappear seconds later. Those interactions were doing things to her brain, leading her to assumptions she doesn't want to make of people she doesn't personally know.

Mina really can't help reading into each moment, and the more she notices, the deeper she dives until she has to constantly remind herself to get her mind out of the gutter.

i.

By the time Mina makes it home Friday evening and gets her laptop booted up, she misses about twenty minutes of a SteelTanuki stream. As she gets comfortable, she notices it's another baseball rant. Miyuki has the video paused while he appears to be having a debate with some people in the chat.

"But that's the thing, as a catcher, that was a poor call." Mina doesn't bother trying to read any of the responses in the chat with how fast it was moving, though Miyuki doesn't seem to have any problems, "Catchers are supposed to watch the field as well, not just focus on the batter. They need to signal the outfield to go deep or move in…Obviously. It's called multitasking. Catchers are the only players on the field that are in a position to see the entire thing, so yes, they need to be able to process information and strategize quickly. Usually at the same time."

Just then, an alert pops up at the bottom right of the screen with a message, read by a robotic voice thanks to text-to-speech.

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"u talk a lot for a guy who streams for a living"

Miyuki openly laughs, and what sounds suspiciously like a snort from somewhere off-camera says Eijun finds that just as funny, for whatever reason. "You must be new here. I don't mean to toot my own horn–"

"Yes, you do."

"–but I used to be one of the most sought-after catchers. Do you know how many scouts have contacted me? If it wasn't for a knee injury in high school, I would be on a professional team already." Miyuki shifts his chair to the side to better show the shelving unit directly behind his setup and gestures at it, "Do you see these trophies? They are, in fact, real." He does have several trophies lined neatly along the shelves, along with other knicknacks that had been sent to him as gifts from his fans. "Well, that's a lie, this one is fake. It was a gift."

Miyuki leans back to grab the trophy in question off the shelf. It was depicting a vintage mirror but slathered in gold paint. The end of the handle was attached to a wooden block. Miyuki gazes upon it with a fond smile momentarily before he holds it close to the camera so the engraved writing can be read.

#1 NARCISSIST

Mina can't help the small chuckle at that.

Miyuki sets the trophy back to its rightful place, "It's not quite accurate, but–"

"It's one hundred percent deserving."

"Thank you, peanut gallery."

A piece of what appears to be chocolate flies into frame, nailing Miyuki dead-center of the forehead as Eijun jeers, "Boooo!" Miyuki remains motionless as it falls to his lap; without a word, he simply picks it up and pops the piece into his mouth. "You know," Eijun starts. Miyuki makes a sound of acknowledgment as he chews, "I think you're about due another one."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. That one is three years old now. So it's about time you get one that's up to date."

Miyuki swallows and smirks somewhere off-camera, "Really? And here I thought there wasn't anyone threatening my spot at number-one."

"There isn't. You should be so proud."

"You wound me, Eijun."

After their banter, the mood lifts drastically as Miyuki goes back to reviewing the baseball game, chat already itching to debate tactics with Miyuki again, with Eijun occasionally backing him up from off-screen. Nearly forty minutes later, the stream ends and Mina scrambles to get some homework done before going to bed.

ii.

In the next stream she manages to catch, Miyuki is supposed to be playing a horror game called Amnesia: The Dark…something. For his part, Miyuki doesn't seem afraid as his character crouches behind a stack of boxes while a weird, naked monster bashes through the door to his room, music intensifying as it stalks passed his hiding place.

Miyuki had turned the lights off before he loaded the game, all except for a dim one on his desk so the viewers could better see his reactions. However, it left Eijun sitting in pitch-black, and the poor thing was terrified enough for the both of them, making up for Miyuki's lack of fear. Mina herself was curled up on her desk chair, clutching one of the few childhood stuffies she refused to part with. She's never heard of the game, but the tension was absolutely killing her.

Miyuki's character peeks out of the now doorless archway, where the monster had retreated back to before he sprints in the opposite direction. Immediately, sound cues alert them that Miyuki has been seen, as the monster growls and the chase music ramps up.

"No! You should have waited until it was gone!"

"I did wait. It was just pacing back and forth in the hall. I would have been waiting forever."

"That would have been fine!"

Miyuki laughs as his character turns to close a door behind him and slows the monster down, "You can turn the lights on if you're too scared."

"I'm not scared!"

"Clearly."

Eijun doesn't add any more comments for several minutes, leaving Miyuki to commentate on his own while he hides again until the music fades. He gives it a couple more seconds before he wanders out, to backtrack and open an old door that had otherwise been inaccessible without a certain item.

It's only when Miyuki's character enters a pretty well-lit area, that Eijun speaks again, "If I can't sleep tonight, I blame you."

Miyuki laughs rather darkly, "Oh, I'm sure you'll sleep just fine." Mina can't help but make wild assumptions at the implication.

Eijun gasps, in a manner that Mina can only describe as scandalized, "Kazuya!" The grin on Miyuki's face widens to reveal neat rows of teeth but makes no further comments.

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"if eijun was playing he would still be at the beginning"

"Ha! He really would."

"Would not!"

"Yeah? I can start a new game so you can play, then." Miyuki pauses the game, cursor hovering over the Quit button.

"No!" Eijun responds quickly; too quickly, "Nope, I'm good. It's your channel, you play." He offers a shaky laugh, but it fools absolutely no one.

iii.

Tuesday, Mina stays home sick with a slight fever. She had initially planned to spend the day resting in bed, but when a sudden notification appears on her phone informing her that SteelTanuki has gone live, well; how could she not? Mina drags her bedding with her to plop herself in front of her laptop.

To her delight, Miyuki announces he found a horrible Christmas murder movie. Even though Christmas was still months away.

For the first time, she was grateful to have gotten sick; to finally catch one of his movie watching's live.

Together, with eighteen thousand people, she watches as a hitman disguises himself as Santa Claus to get closer to his target. It didn't take long to notice that the acting was questionable, that the costumes were cheap, and that the plot was barely there. But it was still enjoyable with the comments Miyuki makes as he points out plot holes or weird editing errors. The chat was having a field-day absolutely picking the movie apart, with people that claim to be taking university classes to be cinematographers or video editors giving their opinions on how badly done some scenes were.

Mina was no expert, but even she noticed how awful the special effects were. Some of the blood could have passed for being squirts from a ketchup bottle. She's also pretty sure she saw what was supposed to be a dead body breathing, and she smiles as Miyuki almost immediately points that out, too.

They're a little over halfway finished with the movie when Miyuki suddenly glances up to somewhere above the camera, "Ah, can you grab me one of my protein shakes?"

"Not your slave," Eijun instantly retorts, voice quieter as if he was further away.

"But you love me," Miyuki snarks, a smirk spreading across his face. Mina can't help but gape at the sudden admission. Unfortunately, she can't tell if Miyuki said it as fact or to simply rile Eijun up.

"Hate! Pure hate." The declaration is quickly followed by the sound of a door opening and loud footsteps that trail further away. It doesn't appear to bother Miyuki any, as he returns his attention to the movie.

Eijun had been unusually silent throughout the stream. Mina would think he wasn't even there if he hadn't been so active in the chat. Normally, Mina struggles to catch many, if any at all, comments as the chat was always moving too fast for her eyes to keep up, but Erstwhile_Ace was easy to spot as Eijun seems to always type in capslock with a lot of exclamation points and tends to mix a lot of English words in. Though she supposes it also helps that he has a little green sword icon next to his username, signifying his status as a moderator.

Mina knows as soon as Eijun returns in the way Miyuki's eyes stray from the screen. The sound of a door closing, and then Miyuki's protein shake flies towards his face, but thankfully he easily catches it mid-air. Abruptly, however, and even to Miyuki's surprise, something else sails into the frame, and is just as smoothly caught in the same hand as the shake. Miyuki peers down at the packet of crackers, "Thanks," he says as he twists open the blue cap of the bottle, breaking the seal. Mina hears a muffled response, but with the noise from the movie and the quiet tone Eijun used, she couldn't pick out any of the words.

iv.

Mina doesn't get an opportunity to catch one of SteelTanuki's streams live until the weekend. And by the time she gets on, it's been going on for some time already. It's a Youtube day, and from what she has seen, he appears to have gone down a hole of weird recipe videos.

Eijun speaks up from off-screen, "You're saying you would rather eat that than my cooking?!" 'That' was apparently a salad that contained approximately an entire jar of mayonnaise with chunks of spam, cheese, and pickles.

"You've literally given us food poisoning," was Miyuki's rebuttal.

"Once! And that was like, five years ago!"

"Four times. The most recent was last year when you cooked for my birthday."

Eijun stammers incoherently, obviously realizing his error. Miyuki, however, wasn't going to let it drop, "You served the meal on the same plate that held raw chicken!"

"I didn't think that mattered!"

"It's common sense!"

"Clearly not!"

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"man, i'm surprised he hasnt killed u yet"

Miyuki snorts, "Not for lack of trying, that's for sure."

"Hey! Maybe if you give me more opportunities, I'll get better!"

"All those times were your opportunities! Which is why I cook, and you do the dishes. I would rather replace glassware than spend another night in the hospital with food poisoning."

"It wasn't that bad," Eijun mumbles, but he clearly knows he wasn't winning this discussion. To Mina, it was obvious that they have had this conversation before; it was like they were recirculating previous points that have been made.

"I had to be on an IV because I couldn't keep anything down."

"And I apologized! I even stayed there with you!"

"You fell asleep ten minutes after the doctor hooked me up."

"It was late!"

"Exactly my point, thank you," Miyuki unpauses the video before Eijun could continue. Eventually, they steer away from food videos, to fail compilations then to weird commercials from across the world. And what feels all too soon, even though it had almost been two hours, the stream comes to an end.

v.

Mina joins the next stream late. From the chat, she deduces that Miyuki had been playing a co-op game with SpiritLegs, otherwise known as Kuramochi Youichi, another popular streamer she has heard around the Twitch community. She knows he was one of the best speedrunners, having broken a few world records. Mina had tried to watch some of his streams once, and while he seemed like a cool guy, his style of content just wasn't her cup of tea. But apparently, he did other things besides trying to find shortcuts in games, such as playing with other streamers.

Though because of her late start, it seems they are already done playing, as Miyuki's desktop sits on the home screen of the game while they chat.

"You should get Bakamura a setup, then we could all play," Kuramochi says. Mina has no idea who this 'Bakamura' was, but she has a guess.

"I've thought about that, but then we'll have to move, this office isn't big enough for two desks."

"You can move that couch out of there, it's ugly anyway."

"No way, Eijun loves that thing. He's currently napping on it, and if I take that away from him, I'll never hear the end of it."

"Suit yourself, it's more simple than moving."

Miyuki shrugs, though Mina doesn't think Kuramochi could actually see him, "He's not entirely sure he would want to yet. He already refuses to be on camera."

"Never would have expected him to be camera shy, but he's always full of surprises."

"Ain't that the truth," Miyuki says with a small laugh and a soft smile that has Mina blushing, before mentally cursing herself for letting her imagination run out of control. "Well, I guess I'll let you go. We should do this again soon."

"We should, it's been a while since the last time. And oh, before I forget, remind Sawamura that I'm visiting next week and I do not want to see him naked again."

Miyuki throws his head back and laughs.

"I'm serious! It was traumatizing! I don't know how you do it–never mind, don't answer that."

That only seems to make Miyuki laugh more until it wakes Eijun who promptly tells him to shut up.

vi.

Three nights later, Mina was watching another stream, it was supposed to be another game night, but unfortunately, one of the game files got corrupted, causing Miyuki to have to completely reinstall it. So in the meantime, Miyuki has opened an impromptu Q&A session while the install setup runs in the background. There was a wide spectrum of questions, some tame and others that made Mina cringe; that someone had the gall to even ask. Miyuki picks and chooses while giving responses in an almost rapid-fire way, with little to no detail or reason as to why. Which was fine, Mina was just enjoying the loads of new information that she was absorbing.

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"do you have a girlfriend?"

Miyuki raises an eyebrow and repeats the question, "Do I have a girlfriend? Well, what do you guys think? Do I?" He smirks and leans his head to prop his chin into the palm of his hand as he watches the chaos unfold in the chat. The resounding answer seems to be YES; how could he not? The chat then devolves into speculation about what his supposed girlfriend was like, and then, of course, it leads to people wanting a face reveal. "You guys want a face reveal? Okay." Just then, Mina hears the door to Miyuki's office open and close. Miyuki glances up and holds a hand out, "Come here, Eijun."

Now Mina's heart picks up at the implications as Eijun suspiciously asks, "Why?" Miyuki doesn't respond, just shakes his hand a little in emphasis. Mina knows Eijun was drawing closer since Miyuki's gaze tracks Eijun's path as he rounds the desk. He stops just short of being in frame, "What do you want?" And still, no response, yet he places his hand into Miyuki's awaiting one anyway.

"Sorry to disappoint, but I don't have a girlfriend." Miyuki's smile turns sly as his hand grips onto Eijun's and tugs. Eijun yelps as he's pulled forward, falling heavily onto Miyuki's lap, "I do, however, have a boyfriend."

Mina audibly gasps as an uncontrollable smile pulls at her lips. Quickly, she covers her mouth as if they can see her through the screen. She has pictured Eijun in many different ways going strictly off his voice, but nothing could have prepared her for how adorable he was. He sat wide-eyed, mouth agape. Slowly, his face began to turn a bright shade of red as the moment finally sinks in. Eijun makes a sound that can only be described as a squeak before he flails off of Miyuki's lap and flees the room.

If Mina thought the chat was in chaos before, it doesn't even compare to how it was after that reveal. Pretty much everyone was typing in all caps, and several were claiming they knew that all along. Miyuki doesn't laugh out loud, he leans back in his chair to watch with a large smile on his face.

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"ASSHOLE YOURE SLEEPING ON THE COUCH!"