The Mystery of Ren Amamiya - Lightning99

Stream 2:

Shiho Suzui

'She ate about five crepes in one evening!' Shiho Suzui said, leaning towards one of the cameras with her palm outstretched.

'Shiho!' Ann whined, tugging her back into her seat by the back of her blouse. Shiho cackled as she fell back, her chair rocking and rolling along the fluffy white carpet.

'I'm really not kidding.' Shiho dragged her chair back to Ann's side. 'To all the aspiring models out there, don't take it too seriously. Sure, you can exercise and diet and look nice, but just like Ann here, you don't have to cut out everything to look like a supermodel. I guess I should say to be a supermodel. Kick back now and again and eat five crepes in one evening.'

'I wasn't that bad,' Ann said, hoping her voice would sound like a complaint. But it left her lips among breathy laughter instead, so it probably didn't. 'It was only four.'

Shiho flew back into her chair, body shaking, the laughter she had been withholding all stream finally breaking through. It was instantly contagious; Ann started laughing too, so much so that she turned her chair away from the cameras and tucked her head into the crook of her arm.

So far, neither she nor Shiho had fully succumbed to the laughter dancing across their lips throughout the conversation. But now that it had started neither stopped for a good while. Before long, Ann's chest and stomach hurt, and Shiho lay half-folded over the arm of her chair, and still, they didn't stop. Instead, Shiho fell off her chair, sprawling out on the ground, and a new wave of amusement hit them. Ann ended up curled into a ball with her eyes snapped shut so the wetness in them wouldn't slip down onto her cheeks.

If Shiho didn't start sputtering and coughing, and Ann had to get up to pat her back, she didn't know if they would ever have stopped laughing.

Ann coughed out a few final laughs as she returned to her chair. She wiped the tears from her eyes, righted her posture, and then looked at the chat. She didn't stop grinning as she scrolled back through ten minutes' worth of laughing faces, lols, and lmaos. There were more than a few comments questioning their sanity – which was entirely valid, in her opinion – and one late joiner who was just utterly confused.

At the top of that long list were the comments Ann was looking for: the direct responses to the question that had kicked all of this off. When she found them, they were powerful enough to perform alchemy on Ann's amusement, morphing it into warmth in her chest. People were thanking Shiho. One person even claimed that, because of the pressures of society, hearing that she indulged in sweets and still looked so good gave them hope. Ann smiled, nodding.

'I'm sorry we lost ourselves there for a sec. Shiho's right, and thank you for saying all that,' Ann said, sharing a nod with her best friend. 'For those of you that weren't here, the initial question was how to look like a model. We discussed all of the technicalities for aspiring models, but then we kind of contradicted that by talking about looks outside the modelling world. We were saying that what matters is that you're happy with yourself. Work towards that because if you look good but aren't happy, what's the point? That's how I see it, anyway.'

'And hey, you just saw us making some pretty ugly faces just now. Do you see us caring about that?' Shiho asked.

'Exactly. We became very side-tracked with our stories, but thank you for the original question, AnnFann. It was great.'

'Eating sweets and getting side-tracked while chatting are probably Ann's two biggest flaws at the moment.'

'Oh, you're going there, are you? And you don't have any flaws yourself?'

'You said it, not me,' Shiho said, shrugging.

Ann huffed a laugh, then smirked.

'How about that time you decked an opponent in volleyball?'

'No, no, no,' Shiho said, waving her hands in front of her as the chat became inundated with shocked face emojis. 'She's not giving any context!'

'Then please,' Ann said, leaning on the desk, resting her chin on her palms in a position as endearing as it was taunting, 'enlighten us.'

'She was purposely hitting the ball at one of my teammates! They had a fight before the game, and they're practically mortal enemies, so I just spiked it a little hard one time, that's all.' Shiho folded her arms. 'It's well within the rules of the game.'

'She went to the hospital.'

'She was exaggerating.'

'If you say so.'

'It was justice, and you know all about delivering justice, don't you, Ann?'

Ann smirked but said nothing.

She looked back at the chat, reading a few comments. Many viewers seemed to find Shiho's version of justice quite funny, and they agreed with her. Ann, of course, did, too. She'd probably be the first to deliver justice if anybody targeted her friends. After Ren, of course. And she imagined she might be a little more inclined to follow the law in pursuit of that justice than he might be. Only slightly, though. She was a Phantom Thief, after all.

FrozenFire: You were right at the start of the stream. You really are best friends.

'Did you doubt us, FrozenFire?' Ann asked. She nodded, throwing her arm around Shiho's shoulders. 'Yep, Shiho and I are best friends.'

TheGhostlyMaiden: You must spend a lot of time together.

'Actually, Maiden, we don't,' Shiho answered.

'She's right. Just because we're best friends doesn't mean we're constantly together. We can go weeks without seeing one another, without even texting or calling, but as soon as we meet up, it's like we were never apart.'

'And the longer we're apart, the more stories we have to tell each other when we eventually meet up,' Shiho added. 'It's nice to be able to do that. We can annoy each other a little at times, as any good friend should be able to do.'

'You, especially, know how to get me riled up. It's scary.'

'How do I make a friendship as good as yours?' Shiho asked, and it took Ann a moment to realise she was reading from the chat. It was another comment from Maiden. 'I'm not sure. It's a little bit different for everyone, but be as nice as you can to those around you and take a real interest in what they are doing.'

'Or you could just insult someone's painting. That works too, doesn't it, Shiho?'

Shiho rolled her eyes, shrugging Ann's arm away.

'If you aren't picking up on it, that's how Ann and I became friends. But I stand by what I said. Just be nice to people, and don't judge them. Well, don't judge anything about them personally. If they have crappy art, go for it.'

'Please don't do that, chat,' Ann said.

'And don't expect to form such a close bond overnight. It doesn't happen quickly. Every relationship has its ups and downs.'

Ann looked around quickly.

'Shiho–' she said, but Shiho raised a hand. She smiled, her eyes soft, and nodded. Ann nodded slowly, resting one of her hands over Shiho's knee.

'Ann and I have had our hardships, too,' Shiho began. 'There was a time in our second year of high school when we stopped properly communicating. Ann started risking her safety for my sake while I endured something quite difficult. Neither of us realised that we were being manipulated. We believed we were helping one another. It–'

Ann moved her arm back around Shiho's shoulders, hugging her to her side.

'It led to a series of terrible events,' Ann said.

'Yes, it did. I was hospitalised for a while, and during my recovery, we were both so sorry to each other that we didn't really know what to do with ourselves. Ann wanted to help me, and I wished everything hadn't happened. Of course, that can't happen…'

'But we got through it,' Ann said, squeezing Shiho tighter. She ignored the flash of Maruki's utopian world she saw in her mind.

'We did. We were both lost at the time, but we overcame it. Ann realised she wanted to become a beacon of light to other people, and I… It took me a lot longer than Ann did, and I only restarted about a year ago, but I realised that, despite what happened, I still had a passion for volleyball. I faced my fears, my trauma, and here we are,' Shiho said.

'Closer and stronger than ever,' Ann added, squeezing Shiho tighter still. 'I think what Shiho is trying to say is that our friendship has been tested. It wasn't all our fault, and we've accepted that. We've moved on.'

'Yes. We learned that you shouldn't give up, no matter how hopeless things might seem. There is always a way forward.'

Ann wiped her eyes dry. They turned to the chat together, and the response brought a new wetness to Ann's eyes: crying faces and emotional messages flooded the chat one after another, people telling them to 'hang in there' and that they were strong. She wiped her eyes again and then helped wipe Shiho's tears away.

'Oh, and who knows?' Shiho added after thanking her in a watery voice. 'Somebody may suddenly wander into your life and change it completely.'

'Oh, we had one of those, didn't we?' Ann said with an emotional giggle.

'Yeah. In some ways, we were really lucky.'

'I don't want to imagine what our lives would be like now if Ren hadn't arrived when he did. He turned up one day in the pouring rain and changed everything we knew,' Ann said. It wasn't lost on her that the simple mention of him returned smiles to both of their lips.

'Changed is an understatement,' Shiho said. They shared a knowing look and then turned to the chat once more.

And, inevitably, the first message Ann saw was:

Akiharabaki: Wait, who's Ren?! 😏

'Ren is a friend of ours,' Ann said – in her peripheral vision, she saw Shiho smirking, which made her stomach start to twist and jump. 'He turned up in the middle of our situation, and he wouldn't leave me alone because, he said, I didn't look ok. I'm glad he interfered. He helped us all more than I think he realises sometimes.'

'You're right there. I don't know Ren quite as well as Ann does, but he's the nicest person I have ever met, the nicest person you could ever meet.'

PhantomThiefRai: Really?

Truck-kun: I wish I had someone like that in my life.

DynamiteKitten142: I bet he's handsome, too.

Ann laughed.

'Yes, he's handsome too,' she said.

The following comment Ann read made her pull her lips taut.

TrueLord; #doubt My friends are nicer.

'You're all inclined to believe us based on your judgement, but Ren is the best person you could meet. He's an amazing listener, will do anything to help people, especially his friends, and can do just about anything. And the coffee and curry he makes… don't even get me started,' Ann said, the tingle of the taste coming to her lips with only the mention of it.

She heard a snicker beside her. She looked at Shiho, whose lips were curled into a trembling smile.

'As you can tell, chat,' Shiho said, exaggeratedly gesturing towards Ann, 'Ren isn't just a 'friend' to Ann.'

'Shiho!' Ann said in a high voice, swatting at Shiho's sleeve. Shiho was too quick, though, and she pushed herself away on her rolling chair just in time.

Ann tried grabbing for her but missed again. Her chest deflated a little bit when she spun around to look at the chat. Tens of messages were flying by, all either shocked faces, capitalised exclamations, or crying faces and comments about how tragic it was that she wasn't single. Ann just sighed.

After that, Ann tried her best to calm the chat down, to stop them from being in such uproar about the news, but they wouldn't stop asking questions, some of which were rather inappropriate. Luckily, Futaba's modding skills were faster than they were – Ann wouldn't have been surprised if she deleted some comments before the users even pressed enter.

Since the stream had been going for a few hours now, and she couldn't calm them down, Ann decided to end it there. The only thing the chat stopped asking questions to do was say goodbye.

Ann said her goodbyes, told them when her next stream would be, and turned off the stream. The last comment she read was:

AnnFann101: I kinda wanna meet this Ren guy now.

Ann turned to Shiho when she had closed all of her open tabs, wearing a pout rivalled only by that of a middle school girl.

'I can't believe you just told them that,' she said, stretching her arms high above her head, brushing her hair aside.

'I'm sorry,' Shiho said. 'Will the agency be annoyed that you're dating someone?'

'What? No, no, nothing like that. I just wanted to keep it a secret for a bit longer. Keep my lives separate. Although, I don't think it would have stayed a secret for long.'

'Why's that?'

'Well, Ren turned up at a shoot one time. I had forgotten my purse, and he was bringing it to me. When I saw him, he was working as their assistant, and–'

'He was what?'

'Yeah. The assistant was running late. When Ren saw that, he stepped in. I turn around, and there he is, crouched behind one of the sign boards, wearing an expression as if it were only natural for him to be there.'

'Typical Ren,' Shiho said, huffing a laugh.

'Yep. Then they saw us together, saw how handsome Ren is, and decided to have him replace the model for the day. He's been in a few shoots now, as you know, so people are bound to start getting suspicious. I've already seen some theories going around online.'

'That's what you get for being a popular, kind, and sexy couple,' Shiho said. Ann lobbed a nearby pillow at her, and they started laughing again.

After Ann shut off her computer and Shiho took a swan dive into the new beanbags nestled in the back corner of the room, Ann swivelled around to face her.

'Thank you for doing this, Shiho.'

Shiho lifted her head, angling it to face her. She smiled.

'Any time. I enjoyed it. You have a nice little community on there.'

'Futaba keeps out the haters quite nicely.'

'And you're a natural at this. They love you more than ever.'

'That's all I could ever want.'

'I will say, though, I don't think you'll be in the spotlight for much longer.'

'Why?'

'Because now they know about Ren. It's only a matter of time until they're curious about him.'

'You're not wrong. We'll see what happens,' Ann said. She took a moment to form her next words properly. 'I didn't just mean coming here, by the way.'

Shiho nodded. 'I know what you meant. Don't feel guilty or anything. I chose to share what I shared.'

'Thank you. You're far stronger than I am,' Ann said.

'Not at all. We're both stronger than we were before,' Shiho said.

'You're right,' Ann said. She smiled, stood, and crossed the room, pulling Shiho up into a hug that lasted for a long while.

Neither saw Ren peeking through the door with Morgana at his feet nor how his concerned expression became a smile before he turned back down the hall.