"Wait up, you guys. My wig is falling off again," said Liza Mortimer in a practiced British accent.
Liza's three best friends, Hollie, Karen, and Janetta, stood in their respective military uniforms and waited while Liza re-situated the spiky blond wig on her head. She'd dedicated days of work to this handmade Arthur Kirkland cosplay, also known as England, of the Hetalia fandom. Many hours had been spent scouring the web for the perfect reference pictures, picking out the exact shade of green fabric, stitching pieces together and picking them apart and stitching them back together again. It was a lot of work, but this was Liza's first anime convention, and she was determined to get it right. And now the wig was giving her trouble?
"It's 'cause you have so much hair," her friend Hollie, dressed as the personification of America, pointed out helpfully. She kept glancing at the immense room behind her, the Artist's Alley, with poorly disguised impatience. Rows upon rows of booths stretched out from wall to wall, displaying posters, buttons, plushies, and all kinds of other amazing items which Liza probably couldn't even begin to imagine.
"Says you! No way am I going to cut all my hair off just so it can fit into a wig. Don't be a stupid America." Liza finished straightening her wig and ran up to join them, unable to keep herself from smiling. "Have some patience! I want to get going, too, but I have to put up with this ridiculous wig. I can't… Oh, wow! Look at all these people!"
All around them, cosplayers swarmed through the aisles as if they had found their one true home. Liza's eyes skipped from one brightly colored costume to the next. Most of these characters were ones she'd never even heard of, but some she recognized. Each one made her want to squee a little more. Her fingers tightened on the strap of her camera, wrapped securely around her wrist. She'd have to get photos of everyone.
"Look, it's Miku!" Karen, who was dressed as Japan, pointed at a girl with long teal twintails. "Liza, can I borrow your camera?"
Liza clutched the camera to her chest, staring at her friend in mock horror. "Bloody hell, you can't be serious!"
Karen pouted. "But…Miku!"
"But…my camera!" Liza's camera was her most precious and beloved possession. To ask to touch it would be like asking to vandalize the creation that had led the four of them here, the anime that they adored with an undying and sometimes frightening devotion. To others, their dedication to this anime appeared almost bizarrely religious. But those were the people who did not understand.
Oh, the things they didn't understand. Those people, the outsiders, known to some by the grim title of "the normal ones", would never understand what it felt like to give yourself over completely to another world, to be inescapably, deliciously obsessed. Liza had had obsessions before, but nothing else had ever even come close to the scale of how she felt about this one special fandom: Hetalia. Although she had at first rejected the off-the-wall humor and overall weirdness of this anime that depicted the countries of the world as people, it had quickly grown on her. Ever since that day a few months ago in sophomore history class, when she'd accidentally referred to Germany as "he", she'd known it was a done deal. There was no going back. Hetalia had taken over her life.
And she loved it.
Within a few days of discovering Hetalia, Liza and her friends had begun working out which of them corresponded to which countries. Hollie would be crazy, outgoing America. Karen could be no one but the calm and polite Japan. Janetta at first identified loosely with China, but soon decided to be carefree Italy instead. As for Liza, there was never any question about who she was going to be. Everything about England matched her personality perfectly.
Or at least, she wanted it to…
Sitting in front of the computer practicing her British accent. Learning to duck her head away and deny things in just the right voice, until she had being tsundere down to a fine art. True, her mom did think she'd gone a little overboard after that one time when Liza nearly burned down the kitchen trying to make the perfect disgusting scones. (She didn't mean to set the oven on fire. Only scorch it a little.) But in the end, it was all worth it. Every last second of it. Anything, as long as Liza could escape from the kind of person she'd been before.
To their left, a large group of cosplayers sporting gray skin and bright orange horns passed by. "Look," Liza said, elbowing her friends, "they're Homestucks." Everyone knew that Homestucks and Hetalians were the ultimate rivals. At least, according to that thing she saw on the internet that one time.
"Miku." Karen poked Liza's shoulder.
"Look!" Janetta tapped Liza's other shoulder urgently. "It's that France cosplayer you saw before."
"Oh my gosh!" Already opening her camera like a tiger (or a fangirl) ready to pounce, Liza wildly scanned the mishmash of anime characters. "Where?"
"Over there!" Janetta pointed, and then Liza saw him. That face, exactly the way she had always imagined he'd look in real life. That perfectly drawn-on stubble. That amazing (handmade?) cosplay that was perfect in every way. Before, she had known as soon as she laid eyes upon him that this was the one. This was the France cosplayer she had been waiting all her fangirlhood to snap a photo of, or—dare she imagine—roleplay with.
Then with a swoosh of his fabulous blond wig, he had disappeared into the crowd.
Now Liza locked on to him again with the unyielding determination only a fangirl can possess. And this time, she wasn't going to let him go.
She was already starting toward him through the crowd. "Okay, I'll see you guys later."
"Wait! The panel starts in ten minutes," Karen protested, but Liza cut her off.
"I'll meet you there. First, I've got to get this picture!" Those were the last words Liza's friends heard from her, nearly lost in the din of five thousand multicolored otakus as she slipped away into the crowd.
Liza's heart raced as she made her way toward the cosplayer of her dreams. All the epic shipping photos she had ever imagined flashed through her head (which was really saying something, because there were a lot of them), each one now made complete with the nameless France cosplayer's face. This was the reason Liza had no interest in a normal boyfriend. Never mind that she probably wouldn't ever see this person again, or even learn his name—it was enough just knowing such a perfect photo subject existed.
She elbowed past scores of people, hardly even hearing her own "sorry"s and "pardon"s dropping from her mouth. Even the excitement of participating in her first Hetalia panel paled in comparison to the one thing that really mattered: her OTP.
Calm down, Liza chided herself, to little avail. It's not like he'll actually take those shipping photos with me anyway. He doesn't even know me. You've got to be the perfect England—don't get too excited. Still, her mind was spinning and her spirit was soaring as she broke through the crowd and faced her soul-cosplayphoto-mate, the incantation of her love bursting out in a perfect British accent: "Can I take a photo of you?"
Slowly, the cosplayer turned. Eyes registering mild surprise, face arranging into a polite smile, the perfect France cosplayer said in a voice that was much higher than what Liza was expecting: "Sure, no problem."
All of Liza's hopes and dreams came crashing down. They shattered on the floor like a million glass bottles, fantasies oozing out from the broken shards as if taunting her, all spelling out one single, horrible realization:
She was a girl.
"O-oh," Liza said, very nearly breaking out of her British accent by mistake. As quickly as she could she masked her disappointment behind a straight face. "Um, great." Getting out her camera, Liza snapped a few pictures of the France cosplayer who was still just as awesome as before, except for the eensy little fact that she'd just crushed Liza's heart into bits. What are you so disappointed about, anyway? she asked herself. You didn't really think that the two of you would somehow instantly become a perfect couple, did you? Idiot. Yet a fangirl's broken dreams are a heavy, heavy thing. With a wistful sigh, Liza thought of all the France x England (a.k.a. FrUK) photos that now had to be rendered faceless in her imagination once again. Then she thanked the unsuspecting cosplayer and walked away.
As she looked around, it dawned on Liza that she now had no idea where she was. Idiot, she thought, and beneath that, Why'd the stupid France cosplayer have to be a girl? Why'd I have to get my stupid hopes up? She'd left the Artists' Alley (her friends all pronounced it as "Artists' Ally", like the Allied Powers as they were depicted in Hetalia) when chasing after the France cosplayer, and wasn't sure where she was. Forget going back through the Ally—that place was huge, and she'd probably just get even more lost than she was already. A glance at the clock told her it was 12:15, five minutes before the Hetalia panel she'd signed up for was scheduled to start. A panicky feeling rose up in her chest, and she forced it down. She just had to get lost, hadn't she? What awful luck.
Near the corner of the spacious room flooded with people, Liza's gaze landed on a table near the corner marked INFORMATION. Sitting behind it was an official-looking woman wearing the pink colors of the convention. Normally, Liza was loathe to ask for help of any kind. It seemed very un-England-ish. But this was a dire situation, and so, Liza walked up to the table.
The woman had long, white-blond hair pulled back into a bun and pale eyes. She smiled slightly as Liza approached. For some reason, something about the woman struck Liza as odd, but she shrugged off the irrational feeling. "Excuse me," said Liza, ever so Britishly, "but I think I'm lost. Could you tell me the way to the Hetalia Ask-A-Nation panel?"
The woman regarded her for a moment, a queer look flitting over her face so briefly Liza wasn't sure if she'd imagined it. She lifted a long, slender finger and pointed at a nondescript hallway on the other side of the room, one Liza hadn't noticed before. "Go through that hallway and take a left. The door's at the end of the hall."
As she spoke, Liza noticed that she was wearing a button shaped like Flying Mint Bunny, England's imaginary friend in the Hetalia series. If she had been in a better mood, Liza might have pointed it out. She also might have wondered why the hallway that the woman was pointing her toward appeared so empty and dimly lit, or why no one else seemed to pay it any notice. But as it so happened, Liza was not in a better mood, and in addition to that, she was in a rush. Chalking it up to her overly paranoid brain, she thanked the woman and headed toward the hallway.
Turning left, the chatter of the main room dropped away unexpectedly fast. Alone in the narrow hall, Liza could hear each of her footsteps falling against the soft carpet. She couldn't shake the feeling that she was headed toward something much bigger than what she expected. Something that she could not even begin to imagine yet.
She reached out to turn the handle of the unmarked door at the end of the hallway and stepped in.
Her first thought was of confusion. She stood in an empty, spacious room with rows and rows of folding chairs lined up facing a long table at the front. It looked like a panel room, but it was completely empty of people. There were no other exits that she could see. Looking around, Liza searched for some sign, anything to tell her what she was supposed to do next.
Behind her, the door slammed shut with a heavy, metallic clang. The sound echoed through the empty room. Before her eyes, it seemed that everything was beginning to blur. Liza shook her head, trying to get rid of the sensation, but it only intensified. There seemed to be a point of black in front of her that was rapidly absorbing everything with its dark tendrils, and a low howling noise was growing louder and louder. A wrenching fear erupted in Liza's chest as the thought Am I going insane? ripped through her mind—it was the last lucid thing before she was overtaken by the void.