“Don’t tell me you’re going to chicken out now!” I cried. I was about to remind her of how she’d decided on her Arimu cosplay just to make a good impression on the guy, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. Kisaki was listening, and maybe Kokoro wouldn’t want her to think that she was so desperate.
“I-I’m just a bit nervous! That’s all!” she replied. “I’ll see ya later then...”
Kokoro slowly stood up from her seat, with such a worried look that I considered accompanying her.
But would I be of any help...? Nah, I’d probably just be a nuisance. I’m more worried about leaving Kisaki here alone, anyway. Ninety-nine percent of the artists and attendees in this area are girls, but I can’t be sure she wouldn’t be approached by some weird guy while I’m away...
“Good luck!” Kisaki said as my roommate waved and headed to the cosplay area.
Yeah, good luck indeed...
“I wonder if she’s into him,” Kisaki said once Kokoro was out of earshot.
“Wh-Who knows? They’ve only met once, and they haven’t even talked that much... but he does look like the kind of otaku guy she’d go for.”
“Oh...” she replied, sounding strangely disappointed. “I guess I can see why. He’s cosplaying her favorite character, and he’s doing it so well it’s like Toppo himself jumped out of the screen. It figures that she’d be all over that.”
As a fellow fujoshi, Kisaki probably understood better than anyone how Kokoro would be affected by someone like that.
Right as yet another customer came over to buy Kisaki’s doujinshi, I got a LINE notification—it was Kokoro.
“So many people around! I can’t find him!”
Sheesh... I’d better help her out.
“Did you even ask where he was?”
“I did, but now that I’m here I can’t find him! And it’s so crowded I can’t stand it! Maybe I should just come back...”
“You can’t give up after all that!”
Come on, where’s your fighting spirit?! I thought, but I also remembered how exhausting my first time at Comiket had felt with all those people surrounding me.
“Did Kokoro text you?” Kisaki asked.
“Yeah. She says it’s so crowded she’s thinking of giving up.”
“Awww, that’d be such a shame! Why don’t you go there to help her out?”
“What...?”
I’d considered that option myself, but I certainly hadn’t expected my sister to suggest it.
“I can’t leave you all by yourse—”
“You’re still worrying about that?! I said I’m fine! There’s not that many customers anymore anyway!”
I honestly didn’t know whether going over to the cosplay area would help or hinder Kokoro... but it was better than sitting around doing nothing.
“O-Okay... I’m going! I’ll be back as soon as I can!” I said as I rushed away from the table.
I thought I heard Kisaki say something along the lines of “Do take your time,” but I still didn’t want to leave her by herself any longer than necessary.
I headed toward the west wing and texted Kokoro to ask where she was, but I didn’t get a reply. The message wasn’t even marked as read. Maybe there were so many people around that messages were taking longer to arrive.
Since Kokoro had said that she was near where the cosplayer was supposed to be, I realized I could try to find him first. I know it sounds a bit stalkery, but I’d actually added his account to a private Twitter List so that I could check his tweets without him finding out.
It was my responsibility to make sure that he wasn’t weird or dangerous, since Kokoro had the tendency to overlook all the flaws in the guys she fell for. That being said, I’d never found anything remotely suspicious on this one’s timeline.
I checked it again, this time to see if he’d posted anything about where he was, and sure enough, he’d tweeted a cosplay selfie with the caption “Here I am at the cosplay area!” about thirty minutes ago.
He was wearing a blond wig, and, from what I’d been forced to learn about HypMic, I could tell he was cosplaying that one character who was shy around girls. This character was also part of an unofficial gay pairing that Kisaki and Kokoro shipped.
I didn’t know whether the guy would still be there after a whole thirty minutes, but going there would at least give me a good chance at finding Kokoro.
I somehow managed to reach the spot shown in the selfie, but the crowd was so dense that I couldn’t hope to find anyone without literally bumping into them. In a corner, there were several groups of cosplayers having their pictures taken. Some of them were so cute and/or sexy that I’d have liked to take a picture or two myself, but I had a more important issue to deal with.
That Arimu cosplayer is even cuter than the rest though... Huh? Wait. Isn’t that Nishina?!
It was—and right next to her was a certain handsome cosplayer that she’d been looking for.
So she managed to find him...
They seemed to be having fun chatting with each other, but I couldn’t hear what they were talking about from this distance. I actually walked even further away, lest Kokoro see me. At this point, since she’d already found him, I’d have just been a complete nuisance.
Huh, and she did it all by herself. She isn’t even the only one smiling... That guy’s smiling too. I guess I wasn’t needed after all.
Kokoro had taken things into her own hands and taken a huge step toward finding her perfect otaku boyfriend. I should’ve been happy for her.
But for some reason... I wasn’t. I felt a little bit sad.
“Huh? You’re back already?” Kisaki asked when I returned to the booth. “Where’s Kokoro?!”
“She’d already found the guy by the time I got there, so I came back before she could see me.”
“What? Why’d you leave instead of going to talk to her?!”
“I’d have just gotten in the way, you know?”
Kisaki looked at me as if she had more to say, but she didn’t speak.
“What have I done now?” I asked.
“Nothing... I... I just wanted to see that guy’s cosplay! Yes, that’s all!”
“Huh? Well I’m sure she’ll show you herself later.”
“Y-Yeah... But I was just wondering...” Kisaki continued in a quiet voice. “Are you okay with that?”
“Okay with what?”
Before my sister could answer, another customer walked up to the booth.
“Oh, welcome! Here’s your copy! Thank you very much!”
“Kisaki,” I said once the customer was gone. “What were you talking about?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
“It wasn’t nothing! What did you mean?!”
“Just forget about it,” she said, turning to another customer. “Thank you very much! Have a nice day!”
In the end, she didn’t explain at all.
Am I fine with that? Fine with what? You know I’m trying to help Nishina find a boyfriend... What is there not to be fine with?
I checked my phone and noticed that Kokoro had finally managed to reply.
“I’m in the cosplay area, just right of the entrance! Are you coming?”
“I thought I would, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“God, the cosplay area is like a sauna! It’s so hot and crowded!”
After a short while, Kokoro returned. She sounded exhausted and was wiping the sweat off her forehead with a handkerchief, but no amount of wiping was going to take that grin off her face. She was clearly happy about the way things had gone.
“How was it?! Did you manage to meet him?” Kisaki asked.
“Awaaah, yes! The cosplayer! I met him! I even got a picture with him! Look!” she exclaimed between breaths, showing her phone to Kisaki.
She isn’t even trying to hide how excited she is...
“Wow! He looks so hot in that cosplay!”
“Right? Right?!”
“Did you talk to him?” I asked. I already knew that she had, but I didn’t want her to know that I’d seen them together.
“Y-Yeah! He complimented me so much! He said he loves Arimu and that I look great as her!” She replied so euphorically that I feared she’d start foaming at the mouth. “I’m so glad I took your advice and went with this cosplay! Thanks sooo much!”
“Oh, don’t mention it...”
“And then, he was like, ‘Do you cosplay other characters too?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, this and that,’ and he was like, ‘We should totally cosplay together sometime!’ And we even exchanged LINE contacts!”
They got so far in so little time?!
“Really? Th-That’s incredible. At this rate, you’ll end up dating in no time...” Kisaki said, sneaking a quick glance at me.
What’s that look for?! I mean, I agree with her. Things seem to be going great between those two.
“But then we both got asked for pictures and had to split up,” Kokoro said.
“I-I imagine you got asked quite a lot with that cosplay of yours,” I commented, remembering how much she’d stood out among all the other cute cosplayers.
“Yeah, but I turned everyone down. I wanted to come back here as soon as I was done. And you said you wanted to come but then changed your mind. Why?”
“I-I thought I could help you find him, but you weren’t replying, so I figured you’d already met up with him.”
“Really? Aww, I wish you’d come! Finding him was super hard and approaching him was even harder!”
“But you managed it in the end.”
If I’d been there, maybe they wouldn’t have talked so much. Maybe they wouldn’t have exchanged LINE contacts at all. Coming back was definitely the right decision.
“Seriously though, his cosplay looked amazing! It was like seeing a real HypMic character right in front of my eyes!”
While I half listened to her rave about how handsome the guy was, my mind wandered. Kokoro’s quest for romance was going well, and since I’d been helping her out, I thought I’d be happy about it too. Then why did I feel so anxious... and sad, even?
I bet it’s because we’re rivals and I’m scared she’ll reach her goal before me... That’s it, yeah. That’s what I’m scared of.