It was somewhere around six o'clock in the morning when Ilani stirred awake.

He was curled up on the couch in Esme's living room, protected from the frosty December air by a tightly wrapped thick quilt. The room temperature was quite cold, in part because most modern apartment complexes in low-income districts had "smart" heating designs that saved energy by only heating the bedrooms during the night. The rest of the suite was in a separate insulation block that wouldn't turn on until morning, so the temperature in the living room was extremely cold.

The first thing he did was roll over to check his phone — shivering when he exposed himself to the ambient air — desperate to conserve the warmth underneath his cocoon of blankets.

It was earlier in the morning than what he would have preferred, especially since he had gone to bed so late.

But Ilani doubted that he would fall asleep again.

Truthfully, he hadn't slept very well. He had been kicked out of the school dorms and was now crashing on the couch in an acquaintance's apartment. It wasn't exactly the epitome of comfort, but a lot had happened in the last 72 hours. Ilani wasn't totally processing all of it yet. There was a period of time that Ilani thought he would literally have to dump several hundred dollars for a single night in a hotel room until Esme (bless her soul) came through at the last minute. She hadn't even been the first person that Ilani contacted. It was just that some of Ilani's other friends gave various excuses or had gone home for winter break.

Not many were staying in the city for Christmas.

Ilani stared at the date on his phone.

It was December 24th.

The morning of Christmas Eve.

He curled up even tighter inside the roll of blankets.

+ + +

Unwilling to leave the warmth of the couch, Ilani fiddled with his phone in the early morning hours. It was an older model, almost ancient with its primitive design, but the critical detail was that it was cheap and portable. Most people in the 25th Century wore implants or holographic wristwatches, but Ilani never had the money to afford any of those the nicer gadgets. In the end, a plastic box with a screen was the cheapest kind of cellular device. Over time, Ilani had simply gotten used to it.

For a moment, the 21-year-old considered logging back onto virtual reality to escape the cold.

However, Ilani immediately dismissed the thought.

This was exactly why virtual reality was dangerous. Some people used the digital world to suppress feelings of hunger and chronic pain. The headsets could intercept, block, and manipulate signals traveling between the human brain the spinal cord. Originally the technology was developed as a medical device, but it was later adopted for commercial use when corporations recognized the amount of profit the technology could bring to the private sector.

However, no matter how much digital food a person "ate" on virtual reality, a user's true body would always be neglected even if the machine simulated a sense of "fullness". While most virtual reality visors had built-in safety functions, they weren't perfect, and there were entire online communities dedicated to "jailbreaking" the safety restrictions on the headsets. Even though it wasn't recommended, many people pursued weight-loss diets by disabling hunger on virtual reality. It was even possible to simulate the pleasurable high of shooting heroin and other illicit drugs. 

Running away from the cold on virtual reality sounded like the epitome of a bad idea.

Ilani curled up even further underneath the thick quilts and tapped away at his phone in the dim light.

+ + +

Ilani started replying to messages on Twitter.

There wasn't really that much of a purpose to it, other than the fact that he couldn't sleep. In some regard, Ilani was a little bit of a neat freak, and he couldn't bear having an inbox that was chock full of unread messages. There were over a hundred DMs on his @iris_muse account, so he slowly started working through the entire stack.

In most cases, Ilani wrote something generic like:

「Thank you very much for your support!」

But frankly he didn't know what else to say.

Honestly, he wasn't very good with social media. He was already awkward in real life, and Ilani's strange quirks were even further amplified by his blatant unfamiliarity with 2D Internet culture and his overly polite manner of speech. Several messages contained references to memes that Ilani didn't understand, and in multiple cases he responded to them literally.

Ever since starting college, he had been far too busy in a rigorous training program to spend much time surfing the 2D net. As a result, he missed out on most references and jokes that circulated around more hardcore netizens. The cultural barrier was stark, and even the written vocabulary that people used was different from spoken English.

One user caught Ilani's attention with how quickly they replied. As soon as he pressed the 'send' button, a message bounced back almost instantaneously.

@FaradayHaze:「Happy holidays!! I didn't expect that you would actually reply :happyemoji:」

Ilani blinked and chewed his lip silently.

He was trying to clear his inbox, and the list obviously wouldn't get any shorter if someone was responding so quickly.

「Merry Christmas Eve...」 Ilani typed out slowly.

But surely enough, a new notification ping rang in less than a second. It was a surprisingly long message given how promptly the other party sent their response, and they were clearly very fast at writing text.

@FaradayHaze:「Mystia was talking about you on stream yesterday. She explained that you were going through some rough times and stuff, so I wanted to wish you the very best! Thank you for taking the time to stream for us the other night. I know you're probably very busy. If you need help with anything, don't be shy about reaching out, okay? There's probably not much a lot that we can do, but I think you might be surprised by this community. Some of us are artists as well, and we can tell when someone has raw talent. The rest of us are just harmless shrimps who like to show our support with lots of pocket money. There's a lot of really nice people here.」

Ilani paused hesitantly on that message.

He didn't know how to react to the stranger's words. It was sort of an indirect compliment, moreover from someone who seemed really nice. It didn't feel right to ignore the message entirely, but he also didn't have anything good to say in response.

Ilani started typing a response, but then he deleted his initial message midway through.

Finally, he managed to assemble a short reply.

「The weather is pretty cold. Do you have any plans for the holidays @FaradayHaze?」 

...

......

Ilani was instantly filled with profuse regret once he pressed the send button.

Upon re-reading his own words, Ilani realized that it was such a stupid thing to say! And he completely changed the subject!

He wanted to throw away his phone and escape this mortifyingly awkward conversation.

...Why was he so bad at communication??

@FaradayHaze: 「lol」 

@iris_muse: 「Don't laugh!」 

@FaradayHaze: 「No I mean, I really don't have plans. I spend most of my day shrimping for vtubers. It's not like I have anyone to spend the holidays with, you know? :laughemoji: I'm basically a shut-in who never goes outside. I'm more amazed that you're actually taking the time to message a useless rando like me.」 

Ilani furrowed his brow and started typing furiously on his phone.

@iris_muse: 「What's a shrimp?」

@FaradayHaze: 「A type of seafood.」

@iris_muse:「...」

@FaradayHaze: 「It's Internet slang for a type of brainless fan.」

@iris_muse:「Ah.」

@FaradayHaze: 「Does it bother you?」

@iris_muse:「Wait... so earlier when you were talking about artists and shrimps...」

@FaradayHaze: 「I'm a useless shrimp. Unlike you, I'm not musically or artistically talented in any way.」

@iris_muse:「Oh.」

@FaradayHaze: 「Getting second thoughts about about messaging me? XD」

@iris_muse:「No! Not at all... it's just that... I feel like you're not giving yourself enough credit... maybe.」

@FaradayHaze: 「Hm? In what way?」

@iris_muse:「...I don't know...」

@FaradayHaze: 「Rofl. In other words, you ran out of nice things to say.」

"Ahhh..." Ilani mumbled out loud in self-frustration as he fumbled with the touch screen on his phone.

@iris_muse:「I'm really sorry!」

@FaradayHaze: 「Lol it's fine. I'll forgive you if you stream again.」

@iris_muse:「Huh??」

@FaradayHaze: 「I'm joking.」

@iris_muse:「Oh.」

Ilani was getting lost in the pace of this conversation.

@FaradayHaze: 「I hope you consider it though. It'd be great to hear you streaming again. I'll even donate to help get you started! I just cashed in on my year-end bonus, so I don't mind pitching in if you're short on cash. Do you think $300 or so is enough to get a basic subscription on a VR server? You can think of it as a Christmas gift from a very satisfied shrimp. Do you have a Paypal?」

Ilani hesitated and stared at the chain of messages on his screen.

His fingers slowed down to a sluggish crawl.

The powerful insecurity in his heart was quickly catching up to him.

There was... no way that he could accept this.

Receiving money from strangers? It felt wrong somehow, and he hadn't even done anything to deserve it. Moreover, Ilani doubted that the user named Faraday even had that much cash to spare, especially since that person said they were a shut-in who didn't go outside. He really didn't want to be taking other people's money if they couldn't afford it. It felt exploitative.

Ilani's heart was pounding hard.

「Let's talk about this some other time.」 He wrote uneasily.

There was a pause in the chain of text messages.

Finally, the chime from a notification bell arrived.

@FaradayHaze: 「Alright. If you say so.」

 

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