Chapter 210: My Orientation Is Perfectly Normal
Edward Newgate: Understood, Shitdacoal.
I'm Rolling In It: Oh come on — it's STARK! Not Shitdacoal!
I'm Rolling In It: By the way, when did that nickname start circulating in this group? Tell me who first used it and Uncle Tony will personally kick that person's behind with his good leather boots.
Kaguya-sama: I believe, from what I remember, it was the Admin who first said it.
I'm Rolling In It: …Huh?!
My True Form Is Cola: I think so too! It was the Admin.
I'm Rolling In It: …emmm
Eternally Seventeen: Oh? Little Tony-didi, are you considering using those leather boots to kick the Admin? I support this with both hands raised. Go forth, young Tony! Activate the 'Boot Kick' technique!
Eternally Seventeen: Don't worry — with Yukari backing you, you'll be fine!
I'm Rolling In It: …You backing me makes me MORE worried, not less!
I'm Rolling In It: Admin, Uncle Tony — pfft — Admin, I just want to say that my account was hacked earlier. Everything posted before this was by the hacker. Yes. That's correct.
I'm Rolling In It: Despicable hacker. How dare they hack Uncle Tony's account. Absolutely unacceptable behaviour.
I'm Rolling In It: I will be pursuing legal action against the responsible party immediately.
RawrSoFierce: Pfft — that's a bit of a stretch, isn't it.
RawrSoFierce: At minimum, find an excuse that's somewhat believable. The "hacked account" line has been worn so thin by a certain dignity-less gap youkai that it doesn't even register as an attempt anymore. Completely used up.
"…"
Ryū's expression twitched slightly. A Chat Group account getting hacked?
That excuse wouldn't fool even Sakura, who was five and among the smallest members in every quantifiable sense. It wouldn't fool a toddler. He wasn't going to be fooled.
Who could hack a Chat Group account? If that were possible, someone else would have been Admin since the beginning. Certainly not him running the place for over half a year.
Stark needed more training before he could reach the supreme state of "lying directly to someone's face without leaving a trace." Yukari operated at a level Tony couldn't currently approach.
Kaguya-sama: Playboy billionaire iron-heir gets suppressed by the Admin — is this a moral derailment or a human-shaped trampling? Stay tuned for this week's episode of Yukari-nee Has Something To Say.
Eternally Seventeen: Little Kaguya is growing so fast — she's already scooping my lines. Truly the beautiful young woman I have cultivated!
RawrSoFierce: I think you've corrupted Kaguya.
RawrSoFierce: Remember how innocent and pure she was when she first joined the group? You've shaped her into someone who drives the trolley and knows exactly how the gears work.
RawrSoFierce: Hard to count the young girls who have fallen under your influence.
Terrible Tornado: Agreed — Yukari-senpai is a complete menace.
Terrible Tornado: Last night, middle of the night, she private-messaged me asking if I wanted to swap bath photos. I'm now seriously wondering whether she's attracted to women.
Crazy Diamond: Th-that's… that's a lot. Senpai is operating at that level?
Admiral Kizaru: How frightening~ The circles one can end up in~
RawrSoFierce: What circles indeed…
Eternally Seventeen: Cutting off the echo chamber before it starts! Hmph — isn't exchanging bath photos a perfectly normal thing girls do with each other? At the very least, in Gensokyo, Yuyuko and I exchange photos all the time!
RawrSoFierce: @Eternally Seventeen — you should be careful.
Eternally Seventeen: ???
RawrSoFierce: I think Yuyuko has her eye on you.
Eternally Seventeen: !!!
"…"
Meanwhile, in Gensokyo:
Yukari's expression had shifted to something slightly alarmed.
Yuyuko has her eye on me? For what purpose?
Exchanging bath photos is just… a thing friends do. That's all it is.
Wait. Hold on.
She'd better hold on.
Yukari mobilised her supercomputer-grade memory and rapidly reconstructed the Chat Group conversation from several months ago — the one where the Admin had mentioned something about Gensokyo, and specifically about a certain matter involving herself and doujin content.
At the time, the Admin had also said something about Yuyuko.
Her expression cycled through several states.
She touched her own collarbone, somewhat uneasily.
"Yuyuko couldn't possibly be attracted to women, could she? I mean — I've been single a long time, but I am absolutely, categorically a heterosexual woman. There's no ambiguity there."
"But if Yuyuko is that way — and she's been exchanging bath photos with me all this time — was she doing something with those photos that I'd rather not think about? No. She wouldn't. Would she? Oh no."
The sense of safety she normally maintained evaporated with unusual speed.
Being noticed by a stranger was manageable. She'd simply remove the stranger from the equation, no further complications.
The problem was that the person who had apparently noticed her was a longtime close friend.
Who was also a woman.
This was a new and somewhat disorienting category of problem.
"This is all going wrong! I was supposed to be building a wholesome, positive-vibes Gensokyo! Why has the atmosphere taken such a specific turn? I support people living however they want, but being redirected toward that orientation myself is something I did not sign up for!"
A wave of retroactive relief washed over her. Ever since joining the Chat Group, she'd become essentially a shut-in — logging in, chatting all day, rarely going out. She'd already been reclusive before. Now the tendency had solidified completely.
It was good that she'd become a homebody. Gensokyo, in its current ambient state, seemed like a place where one's virtue was not guaranteed to survive sustained exposure.
Then another possibility surfaced.
What if the Admin made all of this up? What if the entire thing was a deliberate provocation designed to throw me into confused mental loops?
It wasn't a low-probability scenario. The Admin had this habit of looking approachable and casual in the group chat while being, underneath, entirely composed of schemes.
"Unacceptable!! The great Yukari, sage of Gensokyo, hoodwinked by the Admin!"
"I let my guard down!"
"…"
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