The entire concept of "sleep" was something that evaded Chiaki at what would be considered normal hours, striking her down at rather inopportune times that made living a typical life difficult. She didn't mind having late nights and early mornings, with lots of short cat-naps in the middle of the day, curling up into bed whenever she felt like she wanted to sleep. She also didn't mind when she felt like she could stay awake for days before crashing hard, finally sleeping for an average clip of time before rejoining the waking world once more. Life as someone who was constantly falling asleep while awake was fun for her, and it wasn't like anyone she knew gave her issues for it. They were all used to her quirky sleeping habits, to the point that no one seemed to mind when she would doze off mid-conversation.
However, that applied only to people who knew her well enough to be aware that she had some deep-rooted sleep issues, and strangers weren't exactly as understanding about anything. The way Chiaki tried to solve that problem was to limit her interactions with strangers overall, but she was a friendly person and sometimes she liked talking to the people she'd see while out shopping for new video games to keep her company during those late nights. Those conversations rarely ended well for her, despite her best intentions, and she was left feeling like her sleep problems were a lot more trouble than they needed to be; because of this, sometimes she would lock eyes with someone while out and give them nothing more than a sleepy smile and a wave, to show that she acknowledged their presence but didn't have the energy to talk.
For the most part, people would take her gesture and respond accordingly, but on occasion the person she'd waved at would approach her and start up conversation, which then became hard for Chiaki to navigate. If she wasn't too tired or hyper-focused on what had brought her out she could manage just fine, but if her mind was anywhere else she was a horrible conversation partner, constantly losing her thoughts and getting distracted by the smallest things. When she stopped paying attention completely, that was when people always started complaining that she would be more respectful if she slept more and played games less, a funny argument to make given that they were talking in a game store. She never took the gripes to heart and continued living her life the way she always had, but she could feel it that someday, one of those talks would change her mind or outlook on what she was doing.
She'd just always expected that the way she'd be coerced to change her mind would be in a detrimental-to-herself way, nothing positive. Yet, when she found herself staring down someone at the game store who was browsing through games that she hadn't yet looked at, she didn't think that this woman would mean more than a quick conversation to bypass. "Excuse me, but do you see anything good over there?" she asked, surprising herself as she didn't usually start the interactions herself. "I'm looking for something fun to play and I haven't checked any of those games yet."
"Depending on your definition of 'fun' there may be something here," the woman replied, picking up a game that Chiaki recognized as a new sports game she had no interest in. "I highly doubt it, however, since it seems everything's been picked through already."
"That's a shame, I was hoping I'd be able to get something new to play." Snapping her fingers in disappointment, that was where Chiaki expected the conversation to end and so she acted accordingly, going back to browsing the used games she was standing by. This caused her to be greatly surprised when, moments later, the woman was right next to her, looking at exactly what she was. "Oh, can I help you? Is that what you want me to do? I'm not the best at helping others."
"Well, no, I don't need help, I'm merely getting a closer look at what you have near you. Is there a problem with that?" The woman spoke softly but with a harsh tone to her voice, something that made Chiaki feel like she'd done something wrong in her interactions with her. Just as she was going to give an explanation for why she was so awkward when it came to talking to others in public, the woman spoke again. "I suppose I shouldn't be so rough with you, I know that streamers such as yourself have some strange hours to contend with."
Gasping as she usually wasn't recognized in the flesh, Chiaki gave the woman an once-over and determined she had no idea who she was. "I didn't know I had any local fans," she said under her breath, smiling after she spoke. "That's really cool, I'm glad you know who I am."
"Knowing the famous is only part of my job, of course I'd know who Chiaki Nanami, one of the greatest video gamers of the generation, is." Without giving Chiaki a chance to react properly to the praise, the woman stuck a gloved hand towards her, holding between two fingers a business card that was quickly taken from her grasp. "The name's Kirigiri, my first name is confidential unless you're working with me. I do detective work, and that includes testing my limits with crime-solving games."
"Those are fun, but none have been released recently," Chiaki said, pushing the business card into her pocket without looking at it. "If they had one I would have gotten it already, but-oh look, they have some super old games!" Getting distracted in the middle of what she was saying was pretty standard for her, but she didn't usually do it in the company of someone who'd known who she was without introduction. She wanted to get a game, go home, and either stream playing her new find or attempt to sleep, and every minute she spent at the store was another minute not spent how she wanted.
Kirigiri didn't seem too bothered by what Chiaki had said, nor did she seem to want to do anything more while there. "Keep in mind that people such as myself are watching you," she reminded her before stepping away, choosing not to get any games at all. "I'll see you on one of your streams, just to check in and make sure you're still okay."
It took until Kirigiri was long gone and the retro game she'd found was put back on the shelf for Chiaki to fully understand what she'd been told. "I don't think a real detective has any reason to be watching me stream games, but I hope she enjoys what she sees. It must be a slow crime week if a detective is looking for games for herself and wanting to watch a streamer for some reason." She shrugged off the entire interaction, considering it pointless to think further about. She was right, no real detective would spend their free time watching someone playing video games when they lived in such a crime-ridden world, and so whoever that woman was she must've been trying to pull something over on her.
Yet when she got home with some new-old game to test out on stream, she couldn't shake the thought that the woman meant something by what she'd said. Especially when, after starting the stream for the night, the first comment was from someone with the username kkirigiri, which screamed to Chiaki that it was the same woman from the game store. She couldn't say a word about it, not wanting to sound shaken by her appearance in the chat, but she also couldn't just ignore it, so she gave a vaguely welcoming greeting to all her viewers and left it at that.
Things only got stranger after the stream ended and Chiaki was left in the silence of her home, as well as with the notifications that she had messages she hadn't read yet. Expecting the worst, she found the first one was from that same kkirigiri, wishing her a good and safe night, and to see her the following evening at the same usual stream time. It seemed harmless enough, yet the fact that this stranger was messaging her still meant that she really wanted something from her, even though she didn't know what it was. "I still don't think she's a detective, finding me on here has to be easier than anything," she said to herself as she shut her computer down, not wanting to respond to the message just like the previous one. "I think she's telling lies about who she is."
Like usual, Chiaki couldn't sleep for more than an hour or so, and that was due to her mind wandering around everywhere possible. She was thinking about different games she was going to try out, different challenges she could attempt for the sake of viewers, and most prominently she was thinking about Kirigiri, the supposed detective that had an interest in her and what she was doing. It still didn't add up that a detective would be interested in watching a video game streamer in her free time, but Chiaki's sleepy mind was playing with the idea that it was possible she was yelling the truth and that she really was a detective with a love for gaming. When she "woke up" in the morning, she tried to convince herself that she wasn't going to think too much more about that woman and try to go back to living her normal life, because worrying wasn't worth it.
While a valiant effort was made, she couldn't commit, especially when she booted up her computer to find another message from kkirigiri, asking her to play a specific game that night. That was something she needed to reply to, because she made it clear that she didn't take requests unless they were made by other professional gamers, but when she went to reply she stopped a few words into typing her message. What she'd been sent said that the game needed to be played to perform an investigation, and cooperation would be appreciated-why would some stranger lying about their occupation tell her something like that, other than to rile her up? She could turn her down, but pretending to participate in this so-called investigation might have ended up being just as fun as playing the requested game, and Chiaki was always looking for fun in life.
She typed out a quick response that she could take a few minutes out of her stream schedule to play that game and hoped that she wasn't being pranked. Almost immediately she had a follow-up to reply to, a thanks with a specific time to play the game at. That was odd to Chiaki, as it seemed that this Kirigiri person was getting a bit bossy about how she needed to handle her own game stream, but she still decided to roll with it, giving a promise to get it played at about that time.
She expected there to be some kind of "it's all a joke" message sent when she started playing that game that night, but kkirigiri seemed to have gone silent when it started. However, there was someone else sending a lot of messages in the chat, talking about how much they loved that game and how much they wanted to do...illicit things to characters in it. It was only after that admission was made that kkirigiri said anything, and before everyone in the chat's eyes a discovery of someone with less-than-savory intentions with young people was drawn out to confess their sins. Chiaki was surprised that it had worked, especially as she couldn't act like she'd known it was happening, but it proved her wrong about claiming Kirigiri wasn't a real detective.
After the bust had ended and the stream was able to continue on without further interruption, Chiaki found herself wondering how likely it was that would have happened had she not run into Kirigiri in the flesh the day before. It was a quick turnaround in trust for a detective to put her faith in a streamer so suddenly, but the guy had been caught red-handed and that was what mattered. However, the idea of another bust happening kept lingering in Chiaki's mind, long after the first one had finished. Would it be wrong to message kkirigiri and ask her if she needed further assistance in a similar vein? Would she cut off all contact if she didn't want someone knowing what she was up to? There were so many questions and not many ways to get answers to them, and proceeding with caution was the only way to handle them all.
Thankfully, it seemed that Kirigiri had the same thoughts that Chiaki did, and expressed them through a request to meet with the streamer once more in person, at the same game store as before just under a week later. Since she was curious as to what else she could do, Chiaki was happy to have to force herself through more person-to-person interaction in order to get involved further with the detective, and she agreed to the meeting without hesitation. What Kirigiri failed to mention with her request was that she wasn't going alone, and the person she was bringing with her was going to change Chiaki's life even more than she had.
It wasn't that Kirigiri brought one person with her, but rather two men that accompanied her at the game store when Chiaki walked in, wearing the most pleasant expression she could manage in the moment. She saw Kirigiri and the men near the back wall and her face fell, regretting her decision to come to this meeting now that she knew that it wasn't going to be just her and the one other person. "I need to find a way out of this," she mumbled, turning her head back towards the door she'd barely entered. "I don't think they've seen me, I can sneak away and-"
"Four minutes late, surprising but not unexpected." Kirigiri's hand was on Chiaki's shoulder, her gloved fingers tapping where they now rested. "I'm glad you chose to make it, but apologies that I couldn't come alone. A friend of mine was interested in tagging along, and with him another person decided to join us."
"-oh, it's no problem!" Lying through her teeth, Chiaki turned her head to look at Kirigiri and her blank expression, certain that she was being read like an open book. "You must have had some reason for allowing them to come instead of telling them no, and I've learned not to question you after that bust."
Kirigiri lifted her hand and used it to brush her hair off of her own shoulder, before putting it back on Chiaki as she tried sneaking away. "There's no real reason why I allowed for them to join me, aside from being nice. But let's be honest, the bust would never have happened had you not put your faith in me like you did. Allow me to properly introduce myself to you. I am Kyoko Kirigiri, ace detective, and you are Chiaki Nanami, professional gamer, and together we put a criminal behind bars."
"Kyoko, that turned into more of you telling her obvious things than you introducing yourself," one of the guys she was with said, stifling a laugh with the back of his hand. "She knows her own name, I'm pretty sure."
As Kyoko addressed the one who decided to correct her, Chiaki chose to look towards the other guy, who was staring back at her with a rather starstruck expression. "I'm sorry, but do I have something on my face?" she asked quietly, knowing that it was entirely possible she had entered the store looking unpresentable. "Could you tell me if I do?"
"N-no, miss Chiaki," he replied, shaking his head to clear his mind. "I was just, uh, at a loss at seeing you in the flesh. I've been watching your streams for what feels like years now, I had no idea you were so...close to me in town. It feels like I've met you before, even though you've only ever been on my screen up until now."
This guy was tripping over his tongue and she could tell that he was flustered seeing her as he was, but Kyoko would have had to let him be there for some reason. "I'm glad to know I have so many local fans, but I don't do the whole 'social interaction' thing very well, sorry."
"Leave her alone, Hajime, I told you that you could come but not interact." Kyoko's attention was back on the person she was still holding in place, rather than the one she had been correcting. "This is why I would have preferred you both stay out of this, neither of you can keep your mouths closed when necessary. Chiaki can, though, and that's why we need her to help us out."
"Come on, Kyoko, are you serious about this?" It was the other guy speaking again, the one that wasn't stumbling over himself, and he was focused exclusively on Kyoko rather than Chiaki. "She's just a gamer, you can't really think that she'll be able to help you a second time, can you?"
Not wanting to take his negativity standing up, Kyoko shot a glare in his direction and told him, "I'm sorry, Makoto, but I feel we need to put our faith in her on this one. We've had to trust some...questionable people in the past, but Chiaki isn't questionable. She may have no technical training, but she does have skills that none of us have."
"This is almost as bad as you trying to enlist athletes into helping us," Makoto said, shaking his head and stepping back as Kyoko made a motion towards him he didn't seem to like. "I get that they were nice people, but the brightest? I don't think so."
"They would have been able to help us, had there actually been some reason for them to do so. What a shame that the criminal that we were attempting to accost decided to get arrested before we had a chance to get to them." Kyoko put a gloved hand to her face, tapping her fingers lightly over her mouth. "Chiaki has proven her worth to me already, though, and that's what makes her valuable. People love her game streams, they love watching her unique personality on their computer and tablet screens. Criminals are just as interested in her as common folk are. If we use her as the face for our operation, we'll solve crimes faster and therefore be able to cover more ground."
It took a few moments for what she'd just heard to properly register in her mind, and all Chiaki could think about was the possibility of this scheme ruining her future streaming career. "Except if they catch on that I'm working with you, do you really think they'll keep falling for the trap? This is how I make my living, doing game streams, I don't want to be ruined by being a detective's plaything."
"There's little chance anyone will catch on to you working for me, don't worry." Said in a reassuring tone, Kyoko's statement seemed like it had actually been calculated prior to being verbalized, yet it wasn't enough to fully convince Chiaki. She was trying to back away again, to get out of the game store and go back to her apartment and attempt to sleep away this entire conversation, but when she tried to take a step she found herself bumping into Hajime, who'd gone behind her to keep from being too much in Kyoko's way. Her surprised gasp when she felt herself hitting into someone came with a chorus of people asking her what was wrong, if she was okay, and one voice apologizing for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The only voice she genuinely cared to listen to was the apologizing one, though, as he was the one she'd hurt with what she'd done. "I'm so sorry to have tripped you up like that," Hajime told her, reaching to grab her to comfort her in case she was upset, but the sight of his hands coming closer made her even more anxious to get away. "Look, all I wanted to do was ask you if you'd be interested in having a player two around sometime, which…might be something Kyoko told me not to do, but here I am, doing it anyway."
"I play my games alone," she squeaked out in reply, before collecting herself and dashing towards the door, leaving everyone awkwardly standing in her wake. Explaining to them all that she'd just gotten overwhelmed and needed to go home and rest before another night of streaming had just gotten to be too daunting of a task, and with Hajime throwing out his request she just couldn't mentally handle what was happening. She was willing to help Kyoko and Kyoko alone with what she needed, she'd never asked for there to be these others there surrounding everything.
After a restless afternoon of trying to sleep off what had happened, she was back in her gamer seat, her eyes heavy-lidded and her completely aware that she was hours away from one of her famous day-long crashes. When she signed into her stream, she gave any viewers there at the start a sleepy welcome, explaining that she didn't have much energy to go too long into the night but that she was going to try her best—and she got a response in the chat from one kkirigiri, telling her that it'd be better if she slept than pushed herself to play. "I have a schedule to attempt to maintain," she said with a yawn, wanting to listen to Kyoko but knowing that she couldn't. "You'd understand if you were in my shoes."
That was the only message she got from Kyoko that night, and the last one she received in a long time. True to her gut feeling, she fell asleep mid-game and spent several hours on stream fast asleep, the chat moving around her at a mile a minute, but when she woke up long enough to turn everything off and crawl into bed she noticed that the majority of the messages had been sent from the same person, going by the account name of hhinata, which struck as much fear into her heart as seeing kkirigiri ever had. Even in her half-awake state she knew that this person who'd been sitting there, watching her as she slept for all those hours, had to be one of the other people there at the game store that day, one of the people that Kyoko had unwillingly introduced her to. She gave them a thank you for keeping her company as she slept before she disconnected, figuring that would be the end of it all.
That person came back for all of her streams over the next few weeks, giving introductory messages at the start when they logged on and warm wishes whenever she ended her gaming. They seemed genuinely excited to get to be talking to her, and Chiaki was sure that this had to be the guy she'd tripped over there at the store, but she didn't want to ask for any identifying information that could prove her hypothesis. When she'd agreed to help Kyoko out, she'd assumed she was going to be doing more bait-and-switch crime solving, not being forced into friendly conversation with some guy that she knew. Asking him about that wasn't exactly plausible, though, not without getting into private messages, and there was little chance of her doing that.
It was about a month later that kkirigiri showed up in another stream, this one where hhinata was not. Kyoko's message was brief, and all it said was that they needed to have a face-to-face meetup to discuss their next attempted bust, but Chiaki wasn't interested in doing that. She typed that she'd only help if it could all be done digitally, because the last time she'd met with her in person, weird things had happened. In response, Kyoko told her that it was because of those weird things that they needed to meet, and it was either meet to discuss or call off their partnership.
Their so-called partnership wasn't going to make Chiaki any streaming revenue, it wasn't going to pay her bills or keep her lights on, but the mere idea of losing Kyoko just because she hated actual conversation made her swallow her fears and agree to the meeting. What she expected was an apology for how their last meeting had gone and a promise that it wouldn't happen again, before getting into the details of their next bust; what she got was a detailed explanation about how Hajime, the guy who'd been tongue-tied in Chiaki's presence, had decided he'd make his move on her and that he'd been the not-that-mysterious hhinata that had been in all the streams lately. "He's a mess because he wants your attention but knows he can't get it in real life," Kyoko said, her eyes scanning over the game cases at the store as Chiaki stood with her back to her. "To the point that he and Makoto enlisted someone to block my computer from accessing your streams for the longest time. He's hopeless about you, Chiaki Nanami, and you need to do something to fix it."
"So my next task isn't to bust some bad guy, but to call out a good one?" she asked, making sure that she was even remotely understanding what was happening. "That's easy, he talks to me every night at the end of my streams. Even I can tell he's got something for me."
"Yes, well, him having something for you isn't exactly appropriate given our business relationship, but we'll let it slide if you can keep him from blocking my access to you. Poor guy wants you to not get involved because of the chance of danger." Shaking her head, Kyoko picked up one of the games and read the back of its case for a few seconds, before putting it down where she'd gotten it from. "Little does he realize that it'd be safer for you to be involved with us than to be on your own any longer."
Finding a game of her own to look at, deciding she'd buy it without hesitation, Chiaki remembered that she was in the middle of a conversation and said, "I'll do whatever it takes to get him to handle this like a mature guy, just say the word and I'll do it."
"You're acting like the main character of one of these dating simulation games, ready for the player to direct you wherever you're needed to be. Perhaps, to lure him into the conversation you need to have with him, you could play one of those?" There was a moment of panic as the game Chiaki had picked up was, in fact, a cheesy dating simulator that she intended to play on stream, but she realized that there was no way Kyoko had seen her grab it. "Do whatever it takes to get him to stop sabotaging my detective work. I'm counting on you, gamer girl."
"A nickname, neat. Completely not unique at all, but I like it." That was when they parted, Kyoko stepping out into the evening air without even a goodbye as Chiaki went to the counter and purchased her game. The whole time, her mind was racing with what to do, how she was going to do it, and what kinds of fun she'd have doing it, but just as suddenly as she'd become on-board with the idea she fell out of love with it, her mind shutting down rather than continuing on thinking. She barely made it home before she was falling asleep, her body drained to the point that she needed to take a days-long nap to reenergize herself.
Unfortunately for her, when she woke up from her nap and finally made her way back to her streaming, she found herself inundated with messages from Hajime, asking her how she was, where she was, what she was doing, the sort of caring things that she hadn't ever asked for from him. Replying to the messages would take more energy than she was willing to give, but she couldn't just blow him off without explanation. If there ever was a time to go through with what she'd been asked to do, this was it, otherwise she'd be stuck having to deal with the consequences of her inaction for who knows how long.
Her cheesy dating simulator gameplay stream didn't earn her much in the way of views or revenue, but it did let Hajime know that she was…some kind of a hopeless romantic, which was definitely not her intention with it all. He didn't back off with his interest in her, but now that he had her attention he didn't have to sneak around and sabotage other people's livelihoods to get her to notice him—which meant him watching streams that turned into criminal busts when Kyoko would get involved.
The social awkwardness never changed, nor did the unreliable sleep habits, but Chiaki now had a job beyond being a professional gamer; she was a pretty decent pawn for the city's best detective, and all she had to do was what she loved. Not even some guy who loved her for what she did was going to put a stop to her stint as Kyoko's partner in solving crime, even though the best bust they ever had just happened to take place in the stream Hajime got his wish of being Chiaki's player two.
A/N: I can't remember why I started writing this but then I really wanted Kyoko/Chiaki interactions so I rolled with it. also I've had this sitting on my computer for over a month and I'm not sure why I never posted it, tbh