Whose Ridiculous Inner Voice Is This?!

[A companion story to Who Says Old-School Otaku Can't Get Married!]

The famous dance cover artist Yemu is a bona fide, competition-level anime otaku.

His prenatal music was anime theme songs. At his first-birthday grab, he picked a manga. At three, his parents held him for a family cosplay photo. At five, he accidentally went viral for dancing at an anime convention. At seven, he got his own account. By thirteen, he had a million followers across the internet.

But at the height of his popularity, when he was fifteen and his peers were most obsessed with acting cool, Yemu stopped updating without warning.

“Sweetie, your high school entrance exams are over. Are you really not coming to the convention with us?” His teary-eyed parents hovered by the door, waving their magic wands.

Lin Muye wore his headphones and lazily tapped a key. “No. That's childish.”

He was past the age of chuunibyou and understood that there was no other dimension, nor any such thing as superpowers.

Then, at the start of his first year of high school, a deep, indistinct voice suddenly rang out in the quiet classroom:

“Been waiting long? At last, this world is about to welcome the adventure that belongs to me.”

Lin Muye fell silent.

At the age when he believed in superpowers least, Lin Muye awakened one for real.

He could hear other people's thoughts, but had no idea whose they were.

Lin Muye had plenty of suspects:

The top student who loved shipping couples, the quiet girl who sat beside him, the bespectacled otaku who was always charging in and shouting about bonds and missions, and even their ridiculously handsome male math teacher...

In short, it absolutely couldn't be Yu Yan, the green-eyed bookworm who had done nothing but get on his nerves since they were little.

[Bonus Scene]

One afternoon, a few students were scattered around the classroom.

That voice rang out of nowhere: “He's really good-looking.”

Lin Muye looked up to find Yu Yan gazing at him intently, his chin propped on one hand.

Lin Muye glared right back, unwilling to be outdone. “What are you staring at, you little punk?”

Yu Yan's Adam's apple bobbed. In his usual flat, robotic tone, he said, “I'll explain that competition problem to you.”

[Reading Guide and Content Warnings]

1. First love for both, set at school; younger top, happy ending.

2. German-Chinese mixed-race, masked-dance nerd (robotic gong) x hidden dance-cover ace, tsundere (?) shou. A bit slow on the uptake x only acts tough at home; two clueless dorks.

3. Tags added manually: #ChildhoodFriendsToLovers #ReunionAfterTimeApart

4. The shou cross-dresses.

5. Some of the anime works mentioned are made up.

6. The story spans from the first year of high school to adulthood. Very, very slow burn.

7. I'll add more warnings if I think of any.

[⚠️No switching, breaking up the pairing, dream pairings, or character control⚠️]

Coming soon: Bone-Deep

[Hong Kong-style rental-room romance, happy ending, faux incest, both ways]

In the cramped confines of a rented room, a young man clutched a battered guitar and grinned with unbridled confidence. “Bro, I'm going to write you a song. Someday at the Hong Kong Coliseum, I'll sing it just for you in front of tens of thousands of people.”

The night they learned they weren't biological brothers, the young man pinned the older brother who had raised him beneath him and whispered like a man in the grip of a fit, “Bro, if the blood in your veins isn't mine, then let something else flow instead.”

-

Later, a renowned director stood on a glittering awards stage. His award-winning film was filled with echoes of the past, but his acceptance speech didn't mention the person who had inspired it.

A once-famous singer stood beneath the spotlight, performing a song he'd written for someone in front of tens of thousands. That person wasn't in the audience.

-

When Ren Shaoqian was fourteen, his older brother stood shirtless in front of the cramped kitchen counter, making him a simple birthday cake. It was the sweetest, most fragrant thing Ren Shaoqian had ever smelled.

In that tiny space, wrapped in the afternoon sunshine, he wrote the lyrics that would later take the whole country by storm:

Here, the mountains are jagged and bare / You are my barren soil

On each other's bodies / We take root and bloom

Theme: Be brave enough to be yourself