Content warning: (internalized?) homophobia, drug use.

Lab coat? Check. Fake glasses? Check. Pen, that I'll likely not use? Check. Looks like I'm ready for my first work day. Now I just have to commute. I close the door to the apartment and walk up the ramp. I might make it on time if I hurry. Just as I thought that, a car horn startles me from the back and I stop, almost dying from a heart attack. Now I'll be late.
"Yo there!" The driver of the car exits and reveals herself to be Ms. Minami, this time in her lab coat, which appears to be clean for the first time in a long while.
"Good morning, Ms. Minami." I bow to her.
"Did I tell you my name? Well, either way, what you're up to, rival?"
Should I really tell her? I'm already late as is. Ah, fuck it, I'm already late anyway. "I maybe, just maybe need a lift to Momentum Labs."
Her smile at that statement could not be more exaggerated. "That's my rival, already getting a job at the Labs. Listen, I'm in deep shit myself right now. We have ten minutes before our shift starts, but with the current traffic being as is, I'd need twelve. Without a skilled co-driver that is."
Co-driver? What is this, rally? Well, it was not as if I had a choice in this matter. I take the front seat and Ms. Minami quickly explains me what to do. I look at the traffic map of New Domino and tell her the points to avoid in real-time, while also directing her away from police patrols, allowing her to speed as much as she wants. We barely make it in time after eight minutes and I am already exhausted. "Good job, rival! Now, let's get in there before the boss gets mad."

So we walk into the labs quite nonchalantly, when all of the sudden a fucking maid jumps into our face, greeting us with "Ohayou gozaimasu, ojou-sama!" of all things.
Or rather, she jumps into my face. "Mornin', Yuri, how was your weekend?" Ms. Minami asks as if that was something completely normal outside the realm of anime and maid cafés – yes, her maid costume was of the more modern variant, not covering the arms or legs, even having an absolute territory between skirt and stockings.
"It was splendid. I got so see so many lilies, my heart almost skipped a beat." Even as she recounts that memory, it appears as if she had trouble breathing. To think a mere flower could excite a woman that much.
"Looks like you had fun. It's the usual for me."
The maid bows to Ms. Minami once again. "As you wish."
Ms. Minami goes without another word, leaving me alone with the maid.
"And your wish, ojou-sama?" Did she really expect me to come up with a response on the spot? What did she even ask? "My wish", what was that supposed to mean? As I ponder that question, Yusei walks up behind us.
"Good morning, Yuri-kun. Two for me today, with extra sugar."
She bows to him. "As you wish, goshujin-sama."
Two with extra sugar? Was she just the one who brought coffee to everyone? But then what's her getup about? Yusei too walks away before I could ask him about that. It seemed to be an everyday thing to treat Yuri this way, but was that really normal? Why treat a fellow researcher like a maid and even go so far as to dress her that way? "I should get going now. Please tell me your wish once you've decided."

I follow Yuri around as she walks through the hallways, which are sprinkled with office and meeting rooms to the left and the right. Looking at her pink hair from the back, it appeared as if she purposefully styled it to look like horns or cat ears or something abstract, that could be both. Her obsession with lilies was also mirrored in her hair style, with one each protruding from the sides of said horns. Oh wow, we even have a kitchen here. There's probably toilets too somewhere. And the actual lab part of the labs. While Yuri walks into the kitchen, Ms. Minami calls out to me from her office and has me join her. Looking at the office room from the inside, it seems as if it is meant to fit two people sitting towards each other with a thin plate acting as a wall separating them. You could probably fit another person on both ends if they did not need the equipment, perhaps a micromanaging boss or something like that. And Yusei has probably his own office kept to just himself, but I have not seen that yet.

"Allow me to introduce myself once again. My name is Minami Chris and my research is the Application of Momentum, meaning I create devices that either themselves run on momentum or convert momentum into other forms of energy. You can call me Chris." With that, I finally know the full name of my so-called "rival".
She offers me her hand and I shake it. "Inoue Sakura. I'm not yet sure about my exact research."
Chris can't help but let out a laugh at that statement. "What's so funny?" She laughs on for a whole minute before even trying to answer me. She then pulls me uncomfortably close to her. "Listen up, rival. No one in this lab actually ever gets any research done. We all just want to get into Yusei's pants, do you understand? Well, except for Yuri, but she's not here as a researcher anyway."
Was this the reason why everyone treated Yuri so differently? Because she didn't like Yusei as strongly as the others? Well, Yusei was without a doubt best husbando and not recognizing that fact would be a crime, but was it really a good reason to discriminate against someone?
"Ara ara, did Yuri do something for you to direct so much attention at her, Chris-chan?" Just now we found out, that Yuri was actually standing next to us, having delivered Chris' coffee.
"Who are you calling chan? I'm both taller and older than you!" To which Yuri merely replies with a mocking ufufu. "I hate it, when you do that."
Did Chris just blush with that sentence? No way, just earlier she told me everyone in this lab tries to get it done with Yusei. I shake my head to let go of this thought, but as soon as I stop, Yuri is bending herself over Chris' chair, lifting her chin as if preparing for a kiss.
I quickly walk up to them and separate them by force. "What the fuck was that supposed to be? Sexual harassment?" As I ask that question, I notice both my hands are placed between a set of boobs each. Not the strongest pose to defend my position in, really.
"Iyaaaaaan~, ojou-sama no ecchi!" Yuri pulls me by my arm and hugs me tightly, almost smothering me with her huge rack as she does so. What the fuck is wrong with her? What the fuck is wrong with this place?

We all calm down and return to our places. Yuri again asks me for "my wish" and I am still as puzzled as I was when I first heard that question. Chris then explains, that it is her job as a maid to do all the cooking, cleaning and shopping, so that we can spend more time with our research. "The wish" she was referring to was indeed how we wanted to drink our morning coffee. Reportedly, work required the workers to be overdosed on caffeine in order to get done, or something like that, and thus Yuri's day started by brewing coffee to each of the researchers' individual tastes.
"Would Oolong tea also be fine?" I never really got why others would be so obsessed with coffee, really, especially my sister, who could not get up without a cup of that bitter stuff if her life depended on it. It was just bitter and yucky. Oolong on the other hand could have very complex and sophisticated aromas depending on the exact blend, though I would also have been fine if it was one of the sweeter variety.
"As you wish, ojou-sama." She bowed to me and went to prepare the tea. Will I really be able to stand her act for a whole month? I sigh and prepare for time to tell me.

The rest of the morning went without an incident. I "helped" Chris as much as I could with her research before it was all time for lunch, which meant we would all meet in the room next to the kitchen. Yes, there was a room next to the kitchen, which had no entrance from the outside. It's probably meant for socializing, but you also have a whiteboard and pens to write stuff, I guess.
Here, I was to be formally introduced to my colleagues. Yuri has prepared several plates full of… uh… tartines, I believe she called them, for the occasion. It looked as if she cut up a baguette or something vaguely shaped like it into small, flat pieces and decorated them with sausage, cheese and what not on one side.
"Why do you call them tartines?" I asked her.
"Because they're too big to be considered canapés", Yuri tries to explain. "You take more than one bite from them." That still doesn't tell me why she calls them tartines, but whatever.
Anyway, it is time to introduce myself in front of my colleagues and the tartines they were waiting to eat. Except Chris, she seemed all too happy to ignore all such social rules, taking one tartine after another and savouring them with the silence of crunching bread. Yusei grabs my hand and we walk to the other end of the room, directing the attention of the others at us.
"Listen up, everyone. From today on, there will be a new face among us. Her goal is the same as ours, she wants to keep a disaster relating to Momentum from occurring. As for her qualifications… well, I've decided to test her for one month to see if she's able to do that. That's it from me." The audience claps for Yusei and he tells me to add some words of my own.
"Hello, everyone, my name is Inoue Sakura. I… uh…" only got this job out of luck and have a useless economics degree? That's not something I can tell in front of that many people. "I am very grateful to Dr. Fudo, as he gave me the possibility to work on such an important project. I will not let this opportunity go to waste!" Ahh! I'm riding myself even deeper into trouble. Why am I doing this?
A spiky brown-haired man glared at me with furious rage in his eyes. "So? And what project exactly are you working on?" He knew I was insecure and tried to make me turn away with his words. "I am not completely sure yet. I am fairly new to this facility, so I have still much to learn before I'll be able to apply my skills."

I somehow managed to pass my "job interview" and we ate the tartines. The afternoon was again spent helping Chris and getting to know the intricacies of the Momentum engine. I really didn't understand any of the words she said, to be honest. And after work was done, we hit the bars, as is customary, with the exception of Yuri. Was Yuri not of drinking age yet? The brown-haired guy also declined, telling us the three substances he hates above all else were alcohol, weed and drugs. A weird way of phrasing things, given that both alcohol and weed were drugs (and so was caffeine), but I am not one to comment on his anti-alcoholism. It would probably be better for me to decline as well, given that I know myself to already be completely wasted after just one beer, but you can't really say no to your boss and coworker, much less to a boss you secretly love. And so we get there, I drink my beer, end up wasted, and don't remember anything else from that night.

I wake up unpleasantly to the honking of Chris' car horn. Looks like we're a pool now. Lab coat? Check. Fake glasses? Check. Pen? Ah, I won't need it. It's the digital age were we have SmartPen®s… or phones. Probably phones.
I walk down through the garage and up the ramp, taking the front seat again. Today, the road conditions are not as bad. It's five minutes earlier than yesterday, meaning we have time to actually talk instead of having me give her directions. But we don't make use of that opportunity yet. Chris has the radio turned up and incomprehensible metal comes out of it. I bear three songs without raising a word, so as to not offend her. She probably wouldn't want to listen to regular pop music like I do either, were I the one to drive. The two of us are again greeted by our lovely maid as we enter.
However, this greeting could not transition into Chris asking about her weekend, as it was Tuesday, but it also didn't transition into Chris telling her she wanted the usual. Seeing us two together once again, Yuri let out a soft moan, covering up her mouth and nose with both hands afterwards. "Ojou-sama, could it be, that you and ojou-sama are…"
"… not doing it. We're just carpooling."
"Just carpooling." For some reason, Yuri had the strange power to make that sound as if two women sharing a car was something indecent. Especially when hard breathing was added to her words. Wait, did she think, that I was gay? That Chris was gay? We were both so not gay, like, we both want to get into Yusei's pants. Wanting to get into a man's pants is one of the straightest things you can do as a woman, so there's nothing gay in two women fighting over the attention of one man. Unless they end up in a threesome. That would be gay. But I for one would not be happy with that, and neither would Chris be – why else does she call me rival all the time? Or wait, is Chris calling me rival actually a gay code for something? If so, then I don't care about her feelings, because I'm not gay.
"I'll take the same as yesterday," I say to Yuri and leave her and her wild fantasies alone.

Yuri brings me my tea and bows to me. "I am very sorry for my rude remarks this morning, ojou-sama. I spoke out of place." A faint lily scent radiates from her. Was she wearing perfume this morning or did she just put it on?
"My problem are the assumptions you've made, not so much how you conveyed them," I declare. "But I shall accept your apology."
She deeply bows to me. "Thank you very much, ojou-sama." She's so close and generates wind on top of that with each of her movements. Did she want to spray her artificial pheromones all over me?
"You're really exaggerating at this point." I sigh.
She lifts her head once again. "No, you're too kind, ojou…" She ends her sentence with an audible gasp, dropping a plate's worth of coffee cups onto the floor and spilling their content. She bows to me once again. "I'm terribly sorry, ojou-sama!" And runs away.
Really, what the hell is wrong with her? "Hey, wait, don't you have to clean that?" I prepare to chase her, but Chris holds me back. I am acutely aware and even aroused by her chest on my back. What the hell is wrong with me? I don't have such feelings for Chris! I am not gay!
"Don't go chasing her, idiot! You'll just make it worse." I drop myself onto my knees. She's right, Yuri probably doesn't want to see me now if she ran away. But why did she run away in the first place? Because I'm not gay? But I did try to be nice to her despite that, so it doesn't really make sense. "We'll have to report this to the boss. Stay here."
Report this to Yusei? But what if he fires her? No, even if she did something wrong, that was too much. I hold Chris back in the same way as she did before. Sadly, my chest is not as large as hers, so it might not stimulate her in the same way. But what if I massage hers? Wait, what am I thinking? This is something a gay person would do!
Chris easily breaks free before I have the chance to do the gay stuff – thank God that she does. But I still need to chase after her to keep her from reporting Yuri. I don't want to cause even more trouble than I already have. Chris notices, that I'm chasing her and quickly has me tripping over her leg. "Go back to your office. I can take care of that."
I can't. I just can't continue chasing her. Sorry, Yuri, you probably just lost your job. But hey, at least I won't have to question my sexuality thanks to you any longer, everything has its ups and downs.

Later that day, Yusei sends out a facility-wide mail declaring that Yuri won't be able to do her job today due to illness, and that we'd have to eat pizza for lunch. Why pizza and not cup noodles? I have no idea.
In the meantime, Chris cleaned up the mess Yuri has made, and I'm back to helping her in her work.
Working alongside with Chris, I deepen my knowledge on Momentum. While the anime did talk about planetary particles, most of the knowledge around the technology were at least knee-deep in mysticism, including but not limited to the relation to Synchro Summoning, Clear Mind and human evolution. It turns out, that is neither magic nor just an arbitrary plot device, but actual real science, grounded in the hard physical truths of relational quantum mechanics.
By which I mean I still don't get any of it, because I have a fucking useless economics degree, not a physics one. But wait, what if my degree is not that useless after all? If I combine the technobabble of the anime with some hocus-pocus about supply and demand… yes, this can work.

My theoretical musings are brought to a quick halt by Pizza Hut® delivering all sorts of pizza. Each of the staff members seemed to have their personal favourites – Chris for instance had one with bacon all over it, making me wonder why she didn't ask for the cheese to spell MURICA on top of that. Only one pizza is left untouched by the others. The Hawaii one, unsurprisingly. Ugh, I hate pineapple, but if everyone else already has theirs, I don't really have an option but to take it. Why is there even a Hawaii one in the first place?
"I'm sorry, Inoue-kun." Probably having seen the disappointment in my eyes, Yusei reaches out to me with a slice of his margherita, taking a slice of Hawaii in exchange. Chris reluctantly does the same. Other kind coworkers, whose names I don't even know yet, leave me with a slice with salami, quattro formaggi, teriyaki chicken and super korean purukogi. Thankful to all of them, I clean away one of the two remaining slices of the Hawaii before eating the more delicious ones in no particular order.
Having eaten, Chris and I return to our office. Out of curiosity, I ask her who usually orders Hawaii, if no one likes it.
"What?"
"Who orders the Hawaii pizza if no one likes it?" I ask again.
"That's, what I was saying. What?" Is she pulling a prank on me? I ask her once again and she writes the Kanji for beauty on the whiteboard with the Furigana spelling "Nani". How very confusing. Chris' habit of addressing people by their given name – or worse than that made up descriptors as nicknames – and not using any decorations really made it hard to understand that she was talking about a person with a very unusual name.
I sigh to signal my understanding. "Any other coworkers with weird names I should remember?"
"How the hell am I supposed to know, which names you find weird or not?" Chris looks at me with a questioning expression. "I had people assume I'm a boy, when Chris clearly works for all genders."
Huh. I never even thought about that. Guess I was privileged, since my name is Sakura, and no one would ever mistake that for a boy's name. Not in this world, at least…

The following week passes without much else of interest. I get drunk, sleep, work, get drunk, sleep, work, get drunk and sleep. It's Friday and I get the feeling, that over the past week I've developed my theories quite a bit at the cost of basically any interaction with coworkers that I'd be able to remember. I start to worry, what Yusei might think of me, as I do not recall anything as soon as I get even a little drunk. Back in my world I only got drunk at a few student parties, and whenever I did, I lost a friend or two in the following days. I think that might be related.
As another result of my social distancing without a virus, Yusei, Chris and Yuri are still the only ones I know by name. I still haven't learned the name of the brown-haired guy, who hates drugs with a passion, but I also have not met any of the people who were so kind as to share their pizza with me ever again.
I am pathetic, failing at even the most basic forms of socializing. But Yuri is at fault for that too. Starting on Wednesday, she brought everyone food into their office. There was a small, café-like menu to choose items from, and she'd either already have them ready in form of cakes and other sweets, or she'd be able to prepare them within an hour if it was something else. From her point of view, this might as well have been a larger maid café. Chris didn't seem to mind that. She said it would help her focus on her research. I too spent time either helping her or doodling in my notebook.
To close off the week, Chris suggests I join her and some others in karaoke. It was a welcome change from getting wasted and I'd like to start into my weekend without a hangover, so I agree. I get into her car and two other coworkers join us. They seem to be the rather quiet type, so I don't try talking to them before we're there. Chris informs me, that Yuri usually joins as well, but she takes the train, as she has other things to do in the meantime.

And so we meet at the karaoke box in the evening. The coworkers, Chris and I are all present in our lab coats, waiting only for Yuri to arrive. One of our coworkers quite interestingly has a black coat instead of a white one, combined with black pants and a grey shirt. Did she buy it like that or was there a washing accident? Her hair was rather short for a girl too – and black of course – but her boobs were bigger than mine. Was this the real female Kirito?
"Sorry for being late!" We turn around to look at Yuri, who appeared in full cosplay. I'm not entirely sure if that was supposed to be a magical girl suit or something out of a Sci-Fi universe or perhaps both, but whatever the case may have been, she wore an incredibly tight and extremely sexy combat suit, that was mostly black, but included some translucent pink – specifically on her breasts and around her navel – and of course there was an absolute territory between her skirt and thigh-highs. And she had a cape. Because why would you not wear a cape to karaoke? Also, just how long did she have to walk from the station to here in that attire?
"Well, one thing's for sure. Even if we can't trust Yuri to be on time, we can at least trust her to always come prepared in her karaoke armour." Chris had a good laugh at her own joke. Well, at least I now know that karaoke armour is a thing that exists in one of Yuri's fandoms.
"With my sizes, it would be a crime not to." While that claim was debatable, it could at least be said that the clothes did fit her. I refrain from actually making that comment however, for fear of what Yuri would do to me if I were to.

At long last we actually enter the box. Chris grabs the mic first. "Ahem, since not everyone here knows everyone, I think an introduction round would be nice. How about we have the person singing introduce them at the start?" She waited for everyone to either nod or remain silent in agreement. Or voice it loud and clearly as Yuri did. "Well then, I shall start. I am Chris, your lovely American stereotype and my genre is metal."
The instrumentals of her song start playing in the background. The melody reminds me of something… some game… it was an insanely popular series with lots of waifus and memes, but I can't recall its name if my life depended on it. After the intro was drawn out for about a minute, Chris starts singing… in English. She sounds so different from when she speaks Japanese, the lyrics flow out of her mouth like a fluid, but all I can grasp is the word "black" in its correct English pronunciation at the end of the refrain. Through this hint and the melody playing in the back of my head, I was finally able to piece together, that she just sang a metal arrangement of Bad Apple. The karaoke machine derives a score and prints out in big letters the number 25. 25? Even though she totally nailed it and her voice was a perfect fit for the song? "Yes!" Chris shouts. Huh? Was she happy about that score?

Chris passes the microphone to the next singer, who introduces herself as "Kirigaya Kazuko, a woman who likes games." Female Kirito even had a fitting name. She decided to sing IGNITE, ironically, given that boobs and short hair was the complete opposite of no boobs and long hair, as was Kirito's style in GGO. Her fairly standard take on that song got the fairly standard score of… 20? From my personal experience in karaoke thus far, one should be able to get high scores by just having the correct timing and depending on the setting maybe getting the pitch correctly. But this machine has an almost sadist way of scoring. How does it work?
"Have you queued your song already?" Chris asks me, while the mic is being passed on to the next singer. "I have not." I also did not know what I should take. I like myself some anime openings or Touhou memes from time to time, but those were already taken, and my generic pop taste would probably be too boring to excite any of them.
I vaguely recall the next singer to be the one who ate the korean purukogi pizza. She doesn't seem to be the talkative type, with her emo hair hiding one of her eyes and all. "M-my name i-is H-Hyona," she mumbles into the microphone barely audibly. HyunA's "Lip & Hip" is already playing in the background, the bright music video providing a stark contrast to its singer, and she missed the start. She doesn't fare too greatly in the rest either, hitting only the "lip" and "hip" parts correctly. The karaoke machine gives her the incredibly harsh judgement of 1, but what else could you expect?
"Don't cry, pyonpyona, you did your best." Yuri tries to comfort her, offering her chest for support, but given Hyona's shyness it had the opposite effect. She crawls into the edge of the couch and waves her hands in a way that was meant to discourage Yuri from touching her. Well, knowing Yuri's background, her motivation was probably not that pure to begin with.

I know, this might sound evil in some way, but I am actually relieved, that Hyona was such a bad singer. It meant I had a chance at not being the worst.
Before making my choice, I was debating what I myself could pick. Folk songs would probably have been a safe bet in most other occasions, same as pop music, like AKB48. But it appears as if everyone had their little niche here, so I should probably be not that generic.
The song I choose instead is still quite well-known, and I also had the change to test it in numerous karaoke bars back in my world. Which song am I talking about? Why, of course, it's Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's Ninja Re Bang Bang! There's just this kawaii element to it, that I can't get out of my head. Then again, I also hate it for the same reason. Once I recall it even for just a brief period it gets back there and won't exit until I find an even catchier tune.
Anyway, I give my best performance and receive – drum roll, please – a 0? How is this possible? I aced this song back in my world and now you're telling me I'm sucking at it? Fuck you, scoring system!
But I am not the only one shocked at this result. Chris' mouth is gaping and Yuri's face vanished. Even Hyona was taken by surprise, although my score was just one point lower than hers. "Why did you sing a song, that even you yourself don't enjoy?" Kazuko asks. Even I myself don't enjoy this song? But I took so long to perfect it. Was I regarding this as work rather than enjoyment? Either way, the machine was supposed to judge my singing, was it not?
But of course! This was the Japan of Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's where technology has already progressed much further than anything I knew. Karaoke machines that judge based on the mood of both singer and audience were a great idea in such a setting as well. This also had other serious implications. The first one to sing was at a major disadvantage, since parties usually take time to get going. Chris took that role, because she was confident in her abilities and wanted to make it easier for the others. And despite that, the mood still dropped to absolute zero.

Yuri angrily takes away my mic, as it was her turn to sing and she was probably very disappointed that I broke the spirit of Karaoke.
"Don't go break the machine!" Chris shouts. Was her performance even worse then mine, so that it reaches negative numbers?
"Minna! Kyou kitekurete arigatou! Atashi Koizumi Yuri deeeeeeeeeesu!" What an idol way of introducing yourself. But it was the only thing that could lighten our sour mood. Wait, what if Yuri is actually really good at this?
"Now, the best song for a mood like this is… I know! A passionate one about love." Ominous strings and something that sounds vaguely like a chant fill the room at 160 beats per minute. Is this really a love song?
Performance-wise, Yuri sure does put in a lot more effort than everyone before her. Dancing during the instrumental sections, singing in this cold voice, that matches the overall tone of the song, even doing some light choreography as she sings, and all of it in cosplay. Her lyrics don't even sound that much like a love song, and the instruments surely disagree as well with all those alarm sounds and general EDM-ness of it. She throws in a suki and a daisuki before dancing to instrumentals again, so maybe that's the "love song" portion of it, but I still feel a bit cheated by it.
Nevertheless, her performance was stunning and the system reflects that by giving her 98 points. Going from 0 to 98 in one song… I don't think something even remotely similar ever happened in idol history. Yuri is a shining star on the horizon, at least when it comes to her singing and dancing.
"Phew, barely safe," Chris sighs.
"Feel free to challenge me." Yuri smiles as she throws the mic to Chris.

Chris herself follows up with a pretty solid metal song and gets a score of 80. Why did her score jump from 25 to 80 so quickly? Well, there are a number of plausible reasons. Perhaps she is now warmed up, perhaps it's the lingering aftereffects of Yuri's performance or perhaps its thanks to Hyona having already downed three glasses of shochu to forget about her embarrassing 1. I'd do the same if I had any alcohol tolerance.
Hyona gets the next song, some Korean folk stuff, and manages to get a 30. So that's how much she powers up with alcohol. Frightening. Kazuko has another go at an SAO opening for 45, Chris another metal song with 82. The more metal her songs get and the more she bangs her head, the higher the score, it appears.
Yuri refrains to take the mic from her, so I muster up my courage to choose another song. Since Yuri has the whole idol thing covered and Kazuko will probably stick to SAO openings, I decide to spice things up with a 5D's opening. Giving BELIEVE IN NEXUS my best try I beat Hyona's 30 with a whopping 34! Ha! Take that, scoring system!
Chris immediately understands my move and also deviates from her formula, singing BABYMETAL's "Gimme chocolate!" for 90. Still not even close to Yuri's 98, but she takes the mic regardless.
Yuri's second song is much more brutal than the first, treating us to dubstep and chants right from the start followed by 10 seconds of wubs and continuing with an interesting mix of rock and dubstep. The lyrics were again all over the place, from searching true strength to something about warmth lingering in her hand to being confused and suffering to being fine with weakness and tears to carving something into her chest. Where does Yuri pull these songs from? Her ass?
Unable to handle Yuri's uhh… everything, the karaoke machine shuts down and reboots. "Well, that's it for today," Chris announces. "If we go home right now, they won't catch us."
"Catch us?" I ask.

We exit the building and Chris, who remained sober to still be able to drive, fits the rest of us sans Yuri into her car. Kazuko and Hyona get off at the train station – which, now that I drove it, really wasn't that far away – leaving only me to be actually sent all the way back home. It's a strange feeling, am I getting preferential treatment here?
"So, what was that about getting caught?" I ask, trying to strike up a conversation. Probably because she already sang to her heart's content at the karaoke, Chris did not play any music from the car radio today, so it would otherwise have been silent.
"So you didn't notice, huh?" That was a broad question to ask. What should I notice? "You see, that area is the only part of the town with stuff like this, that appeals to us people from another world. It is a niche attraction, much more so than its counterpart." Don't tell me this tiny train station was actually Akihabara all along. "With the top layer being constructed in a way, that prefers D-Wheel and car traffic and leaves out these districts completely, there was much less financial investment in them and they died down. Trains are for Commons, after all."
"And Yuri lives there?" I ask.
"She rents out a place, that has previously been a maid café." Chris sighs. "Or is it still one? Honestly, I wonder if she was an actual maid in her previous life."
She was certainly not – again, a real maid would not wear something so revealing – but now everything made sense. Yuri, being a young woman with an impressionable mind growing up in the strongest of Otaku spaces, would undoubtedly come in contact with the corrupting influence of lesbian fanservice at a very young age. If only she had known that such displays usually serve the arousal of large male portions of the fanbase, what a poor child. Since such shows also rarely explain the concepts of shame and modesty, she also has a smaller hurdle to overcome when cosplaying. She probably never got to experience the throbbing of one's heart as a prince charming rushes to a lady's aid in her time of need.
We arrive at my home and I exit the car and go home, so that I can take a good night's rest. Something still bothers me, though. With all of her obsession and her idol-like behaviour back then, why is she not aiming to actually be an idol? She didn't even step on her ludicrously long cape, that's how good she was at dancing. Do idols not exist in this world?

I wake up and it's Saturday. The labs are closed on Saturday and Sunday unless you convince Yusei to have them be opened for you. This means, that our research is to be done within the remaining days, which in turn has us work to exhaustion and then drink together, leaving not much room for leisure. I'm usually a bit more outgoing than that, since that's where all the cliché romance scenarios happen, so I don my Yusei T-shirt replica and an ordinary blue skirt on my way outdoors. The shirt was sadly only available in men's S, M and L, but one of the perks of having small boobs was that I could wear men's S without problems.
Outside, I see Yusei in the café right across the clock shop, talking to Jack Atlas over a cup of coffee. Is this our fated encounter in a romantic sense? Of course, Jack could not spend a day without his Blue-Eyes Mountain, but I would typically not notice that, since I had to get up earlier for work. I sit down at a table near them and try to sneakily listen on their conversation. Stephanie comes up to me and takes my order. "Whatever he's having," I say, pointing at Yusei without him noticing. "One Java Lang, coming up." Ugh, I'll have to actually drink coffee for once.
As I listen on their conversation, I am informed of Carly's wish to have a threesome with Jack and Misty. Ever since Carly brought this idea into their bedroom, Jack has been struggling with the question of whether or whether not to grant her request. Despite Misty being a model, Jack had no interest in her whatsoever, while her interest in Carly was well-known to everyone but the media. In other words, Carly wanted to have a lesbian experience with a super model in front of her boyfriend. Pretty fucked up if you ask me.

I down my coffee and go to, as I really don't want to listen to more of that. Now that I think about it, this would be an ideal chance to do some proper sightseeing, but alas, I have no car and walking on your own feet was – what did Chris say again? – for Commons. Wait, was the distinction between Tops and Commons a thing in 5D's? I have the vague feeling, she mixed some ARC-V lore into that. Either way, she was right. The city had essentially two layers, with large prestigious buildings on top and boring, everyday residential areas at the bottom. Things were not quite as bad as in ARC-V, where the bottom was basically Satellite, but the huge wealth inequality could still be felt. Think of the difference between Zora's small clock shop and the private Duel Academy, that only the wealthiest parents could send their children to. Then imagine there's not even that clock shop.
I take the train and get off at Akihabara of all places. I don't know what led me there, perhaps nostalgia. It was really nothing like the Akihabara back in our time. No electronic stores, no anime or manga stores, no maid cafés… everything has been deserted. Even the station itself, once grand, has been brought down to a much smaller size due to the erosion of its structure. That is perhaps the most post-apocalyptic aspect of 5D's setting.
But still, there is a glimmer of hope. A group of high school students walks by, discussing their favourite idol group. Some things did stay the same after all. There's one with brown twin-tails called Aina, another with your typical long black hair called Mei – why does this seem so familiar? – and they both center around a horny pink-haired girl, which they call onee-chan. Horny pink hair, where did I see that before? Oh yes, the pink karaoke ranger! No, wait, Yuri! Yuri is my guess! Which would make Yuri a student. Let's investigate!

It appears as if they're really just walking along, discussing what songs they like, who's their fave, which weapon would be the most efficient if used in actual combat… wait, wasn't this supposed to be about idols?
Aina makes an effort to walk a bit faster than the rest only to stop in front of them with a question directed at Yuri. "Onee-chan, you have more experience in love than we do, right?" She stares at her with quite a serious expression on her face.
"Ehh? Do I?" Yuri seems uncomfortable about that question. Has she not told them about her… uh, tendencies, yet?
Not taking her answer as a definite "no", Aina continues. "Well, this is not about me, but a friend…" Ah, the age old "asking for a friend" excuse. "… or maybe a classmate?" It's obvious that this is about you, stop beating around the bush and ask already.
"And you have their permission to share their story with me? Really?" Well, that is a valid concern, but a classmate would probably not have shared her secret if it was supposed to stay one.
"Well, stripped of any names, it's just your typical harem situation, which you'd know from anime," Aina recounts. "She and a bunch of other girls from class all like that one boy, who is oblivious to their feelings. I think it started when he accidentally bumped into her the other day and then his hand…"
"Such things really happen?" Mei asks. "I often bump into others by accident, but don't find myself falling in love with them."
"Well, to each their own," Yuri says, "but I have nothing to say to that classmate." While she tries to appear polite, I think she's still a little upset at someone asking her such a basic question about a hetero romance. As a connaisseur of Yuri, it must feel both boring and insulting to hear something like that, as if someone asked me to watch Citrus.
I decide to intervene on her behalf. "I think she's trying to say, that there is no easy solution to that problem. Not without considering specifics like the boy's preferences and how to pander to them, etc."
"If all it took was that information, you could still find a quite general solution," Yuri says. Does this mean she disagrees with me? "You can't will someone into loving you. Not even I can."
"Aren't you a bit full of yourself?"

I shouldn't have asked that. All it did was make Yuri more angry. And now her anger was directed at me.
"On your knees!" I watch my body do as she orders. A familiar lily scent appears in my nose once again. Where have I smelled this before? "I'll have you know, if I really wanted to, you'd kiss my feet."
"Pah, you're exaggerating" I retort, still not believing her – and also not learning my lesson to not anger her.
"What? Are you saying you don't want to?" The eyes of her friends appear as if they're in a trance and wouldn't notice me doing it. At the same time I notice hearts popping up in Yuri's eyes… not quite filled ones, just outlines, but still very visible, like in that one AKB48 anime, where idols were banned.
"N-not really." I hesitate, but eventually grab one of her feet and take off her shoe, remembering to put it neatly where it previously was. I lift the foot upwards to my mouth. It was a very beautiful foot and it smelled like lilies just like the rest of her. Am I really going to do this? Small reminder in case you forgot: I'm not gay and I wouldn't enjoy this.
My lips prepare for the act, slowly drawing closer to the fabric of her stockings. I couldn't kiss her feet directly in the position I was in. That would have required her assistance, but she herself didn't look like she was that interested in direct skin to skin contact. I look up to her to confirm she wasn't going to take it off. She wasn't. My lips move closer once again.
"That's enough." I stop just as fast as I dropped on my knees. The lily scent weakens as she draws her feet away. I'm still somewhat in shock, not quite believing what had just happened. With the clap of her hand, reality hits not just me, but her friends as well. I take my distance from her and they…
"Eh? What were we just talking about?" Aina appears to have forgotten her question about that boy in class.
"Didn't you want to announce your undying love for Mizuki Nana?"
Aina giggles after Mei asked that, probably taking it as a joke. "Don't we all admire her as a singer?"

The line about Aina's undying love for Mizuki Nana works slightly better if you consider a world in which she has not (yet) announced her marriage, or allow for Aina and Mei to not know about it. That being said, I don't want to reveal too much of my worldbuilding yet.

Congratulations and best wishes go out to Mizuki Nana.

If you are stuck in a parasocial relationship with Mizuki Nana and don't want her marriage to be real, consider that your chances are still very slim if you have to go against both Tamura Yukari and Hikasa Youko.