The day of the charity livestream arrived. I was in my room, which I had converted into a command center. My main monitor showed the stream control panel, my second monitor showed the live fan chat, and my laptop was open to the private moderator voice call. I was Starlight_Knight_01, and I was ready.
Across town, Rina was in the studio, sitting at a desk in her Ectiqa mask and hoodie. The Lady Seraphina costume was carefully hung on a mannequin behind her for display. Hana had done her makeup perfectly, and Miki was manning a separate laptop, logged in as M-Chan.
"Okay, Ectiqa-sama," my voice, slightly distorted through the moderator chat, said to Miki. "All systems are green. We are ready to go live on your signal."
"We're ready here," Miki's voice replied. "Going live in three- two- one-"
The stream started flawlessly. Rina, slipping into her Ectiqa persona, greeted the thousands of fans who poured into the chat. The donation alerts started rolling in immediately. Everything was perfect.
For about ten minutes.
Then, without warning, Rina's audio cut out with a horrible screech of static.
"What's happening?!" Hana panicked.
"I don't know!" Miki said, frantically clicking through the software settings. "The mic is showing an error!"
In my room, I saw the chat explode with messages of confusion and panic. This was a disaster.
"M-Chan, what's your status?" I asked into the voice chat, my voice calm and steady. "It looks like her audio driver just crashed."
"I can't get it to reset!" Miki's panicked voice replied. "The settings are grayed out!"
We were losing viewers. The donation train had stalled. I had to take control.
"Okay, M-Chan, listen to me," I said, my voice taking on an authoritative tone. "There's no time for you to relay instructions. Put your headset on Ectiqa-sama. I need to talk her through a manual driver reset on her end. Right now."
Miki looked at Rina, her eyes wide with panic. Rina gave a firm nod. There was no other choice. Miki pulled off her headset and passed it to Rina.
Rina put the headset on, her heart pounding. She was about to speak directly to him, her knight.
I took a breath. "Okay, Ectiqa-sama, don't worry. We can fix this. Can you hear me clearly?"
A voice came through my headphones. It wasn't M-Chan's. It was a clear, feminine voice, unfiltered and unpracticed. A voice that was as familiar to me as my own reflection.
"-Yes. I can hear you."
My brain stopped.
That voice. It was Rina's. It was the exact same pitch, the same cadence, the same soft, slightly hesitant tone as my own sister. For a split second, my entire world tilted on its axis. The cosplay, the secrets, the late nights- a thousand puzzle pieces slammed together in my mind. It's her. It's Rina.
But just as quickly, my logical brain took over and rejected the theory as utterly insane. Don't be an idiot, Rui. You're just stressed. Lots of girls probably sound like that. You're hearing things because you're tired and you hear Rina's voice all day. It's a coincidence. A massive, brain-breaking coincidence.
At the same time, in the studio, Rina heard his voice. Not the slightly robotic, compressed version from the chat, but his real voice, speaking directly into her ears. It was a calm, cool, reassuring voice. A voice she had heard every single day of her life.
Onii-chan? The thought was so loud, so shocking, it almost escaped her lips. The way he said "don't worry," the gentle authority in his tone- it was my brother. It was Rui.
But how could it be? My brother, my dorky, lazy Onii-chan who complained about her hobbies and left his socks everywhere- was the professional, thoughtful, and impossibly cool Starlight_Knight_01? No. No way. It was impossible. Her mind, reeling, grasped for an explanation. So many boys sound the same. It's just a common type of voice. I'm imagining it because I'm nervous.
We were two people staring at an impossible truth, and both of us, in a desperate act of self-preservation, chose to believe it was a hallucination.
"Okay," I said, my own voice a little strained as I pushed the thought away. "Let's begin. I need you to go to your control panel-"
"Right," she replied, her voice also a little shaky.
For the next five minutes, we worked together. The brother and sister, the knight and the idol, talking through a wall of anonymity, each convinced the other was a figment of their stressed-out imagination. We fixed the audio. The stream was a massive success, raising a huge amount for charity.
But as the donations rolled in and the fans cheered, neither of us could shake the deeply unsettling echo of that familiar voice. The seed of suspicion had been planted. And no matter how much we tried to ignore it, it had already begun to sprout.