Chapter 4: E
Ren stared into the full-length mirror. The person staring back was a stranger in a nightmare made of frills and satin.
It was a maid outfit, but not the cheap, costume-shop kind. This was Yuna-grade couture. The dress was a deep, serious black, the fabric a heavy cotton with a subtle sheen. The apron was blindingly white, starched into crisp geometric perfection, with delicate lace edging that probably cost more than his entire former gaming setup. The skirt fell to mid-thigh, a volume of fabric that swished with every minute shift of his weight. A small, utterly ridiculous lace cap was pinned to his head, nestled in his now-loosened black hair, which Yuna had brushed out into a soft, gleaming cascade.
He looked… objectively pretty. And that was the worst part.
“I’m done for,” he whispered, the words hollow. “This is it. The final boss. And I have no hit points.”
“Quit being so dramatic,” Yuna chirped from behind him. She held a silver-handled hairbrush and was gently working it through the ends of his hair, her expression one of focused satisfaction. “You look incredible. The juxtaposition of the severe black and the innocent white against your features? It’s genius. It’s commentary.”
“It’s a fetish outfit.”
“It’s a classic silhouette recontextualized!” She gave a final, smoothing stroke with the brush. “There. Perfect. The hair has this great, ‘I just woke up like this but also I’m a Victorian ghost’ vibe. It’s very relatable.”
Ren watched, paralyzed, as his reflection’s hand rose to touch the lace at the apron’s bib. His own fingers, same as always, but now they looked… deliberate against the white. Like they belonged in a catalog. He snatched his hand back. “I feel like I’m waiting for a train to a place I never agreed to visit.”
“You agreed when you chose internet access over personal dignity. A noble trade.” Yuna stepped back, appraising him with a photographer’s eye. “Posture. Shoulders back. Think… shy but competent. You’re a maid in a castle where the lord is a cat. You’re resigned to your fate but you take pride in your work.”
“The only thing I’m resigned to is my impending mental collapse.”
She ignored him, a now-familiar habit. “Okay. Phase one: aesthetics, complete. Phase two: environment. Wait here. Do not sit down. Do not touch your face. Do not try to take this off. The apron ties are a complex knot system you are not mentally equipped to handle right now.”
She swept out of the walk-in closet, leaving him alone with the mirror-version of himself.
The silence was thick. He could hear the faint hum of the city sixteen floors below, a sound usually drowned out by gunfire and game audio. Now it was a relentless bass note. The dress itched. The stockings—she’d made him wear sheer black stockings—felt like a second skin he desperately wanted to shed. He took a tentative step. The patent leather Mary Janes she’d produced clicked on the polished concrete floor. The sound was infuriatingly dainty.
He practiced a scowl. The reflection scowled back, but even his most potent glare was softened by the lace, the hair, the subtle glow of the makeup. He looked pissed, sure, but in a ‘cute, pouty’ way. He groaned, turning away from the mirror to lean his forehead against a cool rack of Yuna’s own designer jackets. The scent of rose and ozone filled his nose.
He had no idea how long he stood there, marinating in existential dread. It could have been two minutes or twenty.
“Rena!” Yuna’s voice called, sing-song, from the main living area. “Your set is ready!”
Rena. The name was a hook in his psyche. He pushed off from the clothing rack. Every click of his shoes across the penthouse floor felt like a march to the gallows.
He stopped at the threshold of his former sanctuary, the gaming den.
It was gone.
The mountain of energy drink cans was vanished. The fug of old pizza and despair had been scoured away, replaced by the lemon-bleach scent of industrial cleaning. His beloved, sagging ergonomic throne was replaced by a sleek, backless stool. His PCs, his consoles, his tangled nest of cables—all were meticulously arranged on a new, minimalist white desk against the far wall, looking less like a battle station and more like a tech display in a fancy store. The posters were gone. The blackout curtains were drawn back, letting in the artificial neon glow of the city, which now reflected in the suddenly visible, spotless floor.
The room was a luminous, sterile box. In its center stood a tall ring light, its LEDs glowing with a soft, inviting warmth. A high-quality camera on a tripod was pointed at the stool. A microphone, small and fuzzy, hovered nearby. His sister stood by the desk, tapping on a tablet, a wireless shutter remote in her other hand.
“You… you cleaned my room,” he said, his voice barely a thread of sound.
“I curated your backdrop,” she corrected, not looking up from her tablet. “The ‘gamer girl’ aesthetic is oversaturated. We’re going for ‘idol who happens to be refreshingly good at games.’ The cleanliness implies discipline. The openness implies approachability. The lingering presence of the hardware establishes credibility. It’s a triad of appeal.”
He walked in, the skirts swishing. The room didn’t even sound the same. No echo of his own grumpy muttering. Just the clean silence and the hum of electronics. He felt like a specimen in a diorama.
“Sit on the stool. Just for a test shot. We need to check the lighting on the dress fabric.”
Numbly, he complied. The stool was unforgivingly hard. He perched on the edge, back rigid, hands clasped in his lap over the apron. It was the most unnatural position he’d ever held.
Yuna looked up, studied the camera’s display, and frowned. “You look like you’re awaiting interrogation. Loosen up. Think of it as… waiting for your favorite game to load.”
“My favorite game wouldn’t make me wear tights,” he muttered, but he forced his shoulders down an inch.
She lifted the remote, pointed the camera. “Okay. Look here. Give me a tiny smile. Not a happy smile. A ‘I know a secret’ smile. A ‘I just beat the final boss and no one was watching’ smile.”
Ren stared into the camera’s dark, unblinking eye. He felt a rising, incoherent protest in his throat. This was the apex of absurdity. He, Ren Kurogane, self-proclaimed deity of the digital realm, was sitting in a maid outfit in his sterilized room, being told to smirk by his teenage sister.
But beneath the protest, another instinct flickered—an old, competitive instinct. A challenge had been issued. Perform.
The corner of his mouth twitched. Not a smile. A slight, weary, knowing tilt. His eyes, green and framed by Yuna’s careful makeup, lost their panicked glaze and settled into a familiar, lazy sharpness. He wasn’t giving her shy, relatable Rena. For a split second, he was giving her Ren. Cocky. Unimpressed. Above it all.
He saw Yuna’s eyes dart from him to the tablet screen. Her breath caught. She didn’t press the remote. She just stared.
Then the moment broke. He blinked, and the veil of weary competence dropped, replaced by fresh alarm at his own brief capitulation.
Yuna lowered the remote slowly. She didn’t scold him for not following direction. Her expression was one of pure, unadulterated discovery.
“Oh,” she said softly, a word full of awe and impending victory. “Oh, wow.”
In the silence of the bright, clean room, Ren realized the true battle had just begun. It wasn’t about the clothes, or the makeup, or even the WiFi. It was about which version of himself the camera—and the world—would decide to see. And the most terrifying thing was, for a second there, he’d been curious to find out.