By the time they returned to the apartment, Aya and Aina had put an end to their battle, and the app they planned to show Eru was finished. They couldn’t imagine that Eru would simply show up if they asked her to come, so they had Nanaka invite her over. After all, Nanaka’s house was the only location they could think of where they might draw Eru out.
When the three girls went home, Kai found himself alone for the first time in a long while. His apartment felt bigger than it usually did. Had Eru been present, it surely would have felt even bigger still.
“I want you to look at an illustration.” The next day, Nanaka called Eru over with a statement that was technically a lie (but not a complete lie). The other three arrived thirty minutes early to wait on standby in Nanaka’s room.
They waited for Eru to show up, only for her to enter by saying, “...Huh?” Packing all of her emotion into that one word, Eru clicked her tongue. Her brow furrowed into a tight wrinkle, and the glint of her eyes sharpened into crescent moons as she glared at Aya, then Kai, and then Aina. Finally, she stared down Nanaka, who was waiting right next to the doorway.
Nanaka began moving one beat faster than Eru, managing to grab her hand just as the words, “I’m leaving,” escaped her mouth. Nanaka shook her head from side to side in denial. Once again, Eru observed her surroundings: Aya, then Kai, and then Aina. After doing another pass over each of them, she heaved a sigh and asked, “...And?”
“Here,” Nanaka replied, handing her a phone.
“...A smartphone?” Eru questioned suspiciously.
“Tap on this app,” Nanaka instructed.
“This one, dear?”
“Yup.”
There was only one icon on the home screen, and Eru tapped on it dubiously; the instant she did so, the suspicion and anger faded from her eyes as they opened wide in surprise, and she slowly shriveled onto the floor.
“E-Eru?!” Nanaka’s panicked reaction represented everyone present. They knew she would be surprised. It would have been an issue if she wasn’t. That was why they’d all put blood, sweat, and tears into their work. However, the sight of Eru feebly peering into the screen betrayed their expectations in every way, and caused Aina to visibly stiffen up. Aya did her best to not let it show, but her fingers began tapping away at an invisible keyboard.
“This is... my...” Eru mumbled. After opening the application, the screen displayed Eru’s ruined drawing... without a single blemish in sight.
“You know those people who retouch old paintings...? I think they’re called restorers. It almost feels like I’ve become one of them... No, wait, just feeling like it isn’t enough. Don’t worry... It’ll be okay. I’ve been learning from Eru’s art all this time... I can do it.”
Aina had collected the scraps of Eru’s piece to put them together as carefully as possible, but there were still portions where the lines didn’t flow perfectly or bits that had been lost. It was a far cry from its former glory, but the one who had restored it had been Nanaka.
They uploaded the image onto a computer, and Nanaka had digitally filled in all of the parts that were missing. She had painstakingly connected every broken line, pixel by pixel, and painted over missing colors by sampling nearby segments to create a seamless transition. Though the damage on the drawing hadn’t been catastrophic, it hadn’t been easy to fix. And yet, Nanaka completed her task with unwavering focus.
Nanaka had humbly mentioned that she was only able to put it together because she knew all of Eru’s habits and idiosyncrasies from mimicking her, but stealing those habits and reproducing those idiosyncrasies was a skill in its own right. There was no doubt that the quality of Nanaka’s artwork had improved.
It hadn’t seemed as if Nanaka had noticed her own improvement, though, as she’d continued to beat herself up as she progressed. All she’d said was, “I can’t believe she drew this in middle school... Eru really is amazing.”
That being said, the team had managed to strike awe into the original artist; their first hurdle had been cleared, but this was just the beginning. If they were only going to restore the drawing, they wouldn’t have needed to turn it into an app.
“!” An inaudible sound of surprise escaped Eru’s throat as her fingertips were drawn toward the character on-screen. It burst the second she made contact, shining particles of light enveloping the character. Gradually, the sparkles raining down from the top of the character’s head melted away to reveal a 3D model of the same girl, which had been rendered to retain its 2D appearance.
“God, that drilled runt at Kongouin really ran her mouth, so I figured I’d teach her a lesson,” was what Aya had said several days ago. “She was all, ‘Wooow, our graphics are sooo amazing~ Our 3D work is sooo faithful to the beauty of our illust—blah, blah, blah.’ Huh? She didn’t say that? Well, whatever, she said something along those lines,” Aya had insisted. “Anyhow... it’s common courtesy to pulverize them when their pride is at their peak, don’t you think?”
With a devilish grin, Aya had unveiled what she had been working on since seeing Kongouin Mirei’s livestream: a rendering engine that converted 2D drawings directly to 3D. On paper, her words seemed to be absolutely contradictory, but Aya had already finished developing that technology on her laptop. When Kai first saw a sample 2D image rotate in 360 degrees and naturally wave at the camera, he was convinced that Oushima Aya was some sort of magician.
“C’mon, this isn’t anything to get worked up over,” Aya had insisted. “We already have tech that’s similar to this. Senpai, you’ve heard of Live2D, haven’t you?”
Of course, Kai had. It was commonly utilized in the home screens and cutscenes of social games that put a lot of resources into the presentation of their characters’ charms. On top of that, it had more recently gained traction among VTubers for streaming purposes. If you’ve ever seen a 2D illustration smoothly moving around and thought, “What the hell is this?” then it was probably Live2D.