NANOWRIMO 2020

11.07 After the Dreams Come True

Ayaka was brooding.

That was the best way to describe her furrowed brows and steepled fingers and the long, intense staring game she had begun with a bird perched on a branch just outside the classroom's window.

Brooding.

The more she thought she knew what was in her head, the less she realized she actually knew and that ticked her off. As if the more knowledge she gained from life experiences or from classes did nothing to help her understand herself more. It actually made it more confusing and for that she was pissed.

The students around her felt her angry energy and stayed far away. They cleared a good 2-meter diameter around her desk whenever a break occurred and they made sure to avoid her gaze if she ever laid eyes on them and continued her brooding. Truth be told, she didn't notice whenever she locked eyes with a fellow student and she probably wouldn't have cared if she did.

Even her home room professor could tell something was up with Ayaka, but she didn't have the nerve to interfere. Days that Ayaka would spend glaring at the chalkboard were the days that professors decided to have extended self-study periods or long reading assignments so as to avoid confrontation with Ayaka.

Ayaka was a scary girl. Towering at nearly 6 feet tall and with the broad shoulders to match, she seemed to be the ideal candidate for sports (if she could be bothered) but she pledged no allegiance to any of the after-school club activities that promised freedom from boredom and an interesting high school resume.

She was a proud member of the go-home club and she was very good at it. Almost immediately after classes, sometimes before the final bell even began to toll, she would be out the door and halfway across the campus to make it home.

Some peers assumed she was the breadwinner for her family and needed to work extra jobs at unreasonable hours in order to make ends meet.

Others assumed that her parents were workaholics and left all the housework to Ayaka, possibly even the care of a younger sibling just so they could continue the grind to the top of the corporate ladder without any familial loyalty.

Others assumed less savory details of her time, but they were all wildly, hilariously, ridiculously wrong.

Ayaka rushed home everyday to finish her homework at breakneck speeds so she could spend the rest of the night watching anime.

She didn't feel shame in her hobbies, and she maintained a decent enough class average on the majority of her subjects that her parents couldn't very well complain that her extracurriculars were lacking. But she would speed through her equations and translations to sit herself for hours on end in front of her desktop, streaming the latest season's anime on one screen and reading manga on the other.

In a sense, Ayaka was a super otaku and unashamed to admit it, though she was never prompted to either.

Every day she took herself to class just like her parents and her professors expected her to, but she would sit there contemplating her life and brooding over the wasted time and the fact that it wasn't what she wanted to be doing.

Ayaka wanted to watch her anime.

In fact, she ran a blog and sometimes streamed her anime with her reactions and she was quite popular as an online celebrity at this point. Popular enough to be making money and amassing an impressive following but...

But she hated the performative action of it. She loved sharing her love for anime and all the worlds she was allowed entry to, and the fact that she had found such a loving and trusting community online.

But...

There were the trolls. There were the harassers and the death threats and the stalking messages. For every 9 people who loved her content and encouraged her, there was the 1 who would reveal chilling personal information about Ayaka and threaten her existence and she would always block them, but more just crawled out of the woodwork when she would squash their brethren.

It got to the point where Ayaka was contemplating leaving her streaming and blogging alone and not picking it up again because she was so scared of the dark, dark web and the faceless people who pretended to be her friend only to stab her in the back.

And these were supposed to be her chosen family, the community who shared the same interests as her and loved what she loved. If they could resort to violent words and harsh criticisms so easily, why should she even bother with trying to be friends with them?

Ayaka loved anime, and having a semi-job where she got to explore just that while she was in high school? Maybe it was too good to be true. Maybe this wasn't what she was supposed to be doing and the universe was telling her in a not-so-gently way that she needed to put her efforts to something else. Something productive in society and something that would actually make enough money to support her in the future.

Maybe it was the wake up call she needed to escape the dream that became the nightmare.