The V-tuber Who Became Obsessed With Me

Chapter 108: The girl in the mirror was me

( raina’s pov....note that this Chapter isn’t paranormal or supernatural in anyway ...)

The shower hissed to life behind me, hot water hitting the marble in a steady rhythm that slowly filled the bathroom with steam.

Normally that sound settled something in me.

Tonight it only made the quiet inside my head more pronounced.

I leaned over the sink and ran the cold tap and splashed water across my face. Once. Twice. Three times. I stayed there with both hands on the porcelain, breathing slowly while droplets ran from my chin and disappeared into the drain.

When I finally looked up my reflection was waiting.

Red hair. Pale skin. Eyes that looked back at me with an exhaustion that had nothing to do with sleep.

For a moment neither of us moved.

Then Susan’s face crossed my mind.

Standing in Ethan’s doorway. At ease. One hand on the frame. The particular comfort of someone who had been there enough times to stop noticing the small things about the space.

My jaw tightened.

What was she doing there.

Why had she answered his door.

The questions arrived one after another and I let them come because stopping them required an effort I did not currently have.

I closed my eyes.

She was still there. The image of her. The way she had looked at me with that careful, satisfied smile and said especially you like she had been holding the words in reserve for the right moment.

I opened my eyes.

I love him. He just needs time. He is hurt and he needs time and that is all this is.

The reflection looked back at me.

Is that all it is? .

who said that ? ....I looked at the mirror and saw my own self had taken another shape , still me but now has a thought of its own .

I frowned. "Yes."

He didn’t answer your calls.

"I know."

He didn’t open the door.

"I know that."

He let her answer it instead.

"Stop."

The steam was thickening around the mirror. My reflection blurred at the edges but the eyes stayed clear. That was the thing about mirrors. The eyes were always the last thing to go.

Did you ever ask yourself why she was comfortable there?

"It doesn’t matter."

It does though. Doesn’t it.

I looked away from the glass.

"I did everything for him," I said quietly. The words felt true when I said them. "I loved him. I looked after him. I made sure he was safe. I paid for his mother’s surgery. I got him clients. I protected his career."

The reflection said nothing for a moment.

Then-

Protected him? Or protected what you needed him to be?

The bathroom felt smaller suddenly.

"That’s not fair."

You hid things because you didn’t want him to leave.

"I was protecting him from information that would have hurt him."

You lied because you were afraid of what happened when people knew the whole truth about you.

"I was trying to keep us intact."

You arranged his life around you without telling him you were doing it.

"I loved him."

The steam had nearly swallowed the mirror entirely now. I reached forward and wiped it clear with my palm, leaving streaks across the glass.

"I loved him," I said again.

Maybe.

I looked at my own eyes.

Or maybe you loved being chosen. You loved being the person he saw when he looked across a room. You loved that someone wanted you without knowing everything and you couldn’t risk finding out what happened when he did know everything.

"No."

Maybe it wasn’t Ethan you loved.

"Stop."

Maybe it was what he made you feel like.

"I said stop."

Maybe you loved that he made Raina feel real.

"STOP."

My voice hit the tiles and came back at me.

The room went quiet.

I stood with my hands gripping the sink and my breath uneven and my reflection looking back at me from the clear streak I had made in the fog.

Just me.

Only me.

I exhaled slowly.

None of this would have happened if Kuro had left things alone. If he had not spent years following me, building his case, waiting for the right moment to tear everything open in front of an audience. If he had never put on that mask.

Ethan would never have known.

We would have been fine.

The reflection reappeared as the fog crept back across the glass.

Would you though?

"Yes."

Are you certain? Or are you telling yourself that because it’s easier than the other version?

"It’s Kuro’s fault."

Kuro didn’t make your choices.

"He forced my past into the open."

You made the choices that created the past.

"My grandfather—"

Your grandfather cleaned up after you. That isn’t the same as causing it.

"If Ojiisan hadn’t involved himself with the Aizawas none of this would have started."

So it’s his fault.

"Yes."

And before that?

I did not answer.

And before him?

"Stop."

Who do you blame for the night in your room at Maxford? For the snow globe? For the call you made afterward? For the four years Felix spent in a hospital bed?

"That was an accident."

And the photographs on your wall? The tracking? The engineered meetings? The lily you sent to his office before he had agreed to anything?

"I loved him."

The reflection looked at me.

Just looked.

And the worst part was not the questions.

The worst part was that I did not have answers that felt clean when I said them out loud.

I slammed both palms flat against the sink.

The sound rang off the tiles.

I stood there breathing.

Then a knock at the door.

"Himari?"

I went still.

"Himari!" The voice again, brighter this time. "Open up, I know you’re in there."

I looked at the mirror one last time.

Just my own face. Wet. Tired. A little frightened.

I splashed cold water over my cheeks and opened the door.

A figure launched herself at me before I had fully stepped through it.

"I missed you!"

Arms around me, squeezing hard enough that I had to catch my balance against the doorframe.

"Anna."

I let out a loud laugh . The sound surprised me. I had not heard myself laugh in a while.

Annabelle Wallis pulled back and put both hands on her hips with the particular theatrical energy she had been performing since middle school.

"That’s all I get? I disappear for months and my best friend doesn’t even cry?"

"I was just surprised," I said. "When did you get back?"

"Yesterday. Wrapped filming, caught the first flight home this morning." She spread her arms. "And naturally the first person I came to see was my favourite human being."

We went into the room holding hands. .then I hugged her again .

She smelled like expensive perfume and airplane and something that reminded me of being fifteen and not yet knowing what I was capable of. I held on for a moment longer than I usually held on.

"I missed you too," I said.

And I meant it. That was the thing about Anna. With her I usually meant things.

She was the only friend I had kept through all of it. Middle school, the years in Japan, the rebranding, Lumi♡Live, all of it. She knew who my grandfather was and what that meant and she had stayed anyway, partly because Ojiisan had supported her career in ways she was honest enough to acknowledge, partly because underneath all of that she was simply the kind of person who did not leave.

She pulled back and looked at my face.

The performance dimmed slightly.

"Himari." She said my name the way she said it when she was being serious, without the exclamation point. "What happened to you?"

I looked at her.

The bathroom door was still open behind me. The shower was still running. Steam drifted out into the bedroom in slow wisps.

What happened to me.

I was not entirely sure which version of that question to answer, or whether the version I would give her was the same version I had just been arguing about with a fogged mirror.

"It’s a long story," I said.

She sat down on the edge of my bed and looked at me with the patient expression of someone who had nowhere else to be.

"I have time," she said.