by JC Q
I’ve known my best friend Wyatt for years.
We met in 5th grade and since then; we’ve been partners in crime.
Wyatt was a 5’9 dude with messy brown hair, wore glasses, and the same green jacket every day.
I think it might’ve belonged to his late dad or something.
We shared a lot of interests like video games and basketball, but we were complete geeks over anime.
Every Saturday, we’d meet up at each other’s house and watch Toonami throughout the night no matter the situation.
We kept hanging out throughout elementary, middle, and high school, but during our senior year, I noticed something change in Wyatt.
It started off small.
We were hanging out at our favorite park and while we were taking a breather from an intense game between us and some other guys from school, he pulled out his phone and showed me a video.
It was first uploaded by this V-Tuber girl named Hana-Chan.
Like every other anime girl, she had a schoolgirl uniform and aquamarine pigtails.
She was always holding up a peace sign and was always seen holding a weird-looking duck plushie that was dressed in a T-Shirt.
She looked cool but I wasn’t really into that kind of thing.
The same couldn’t be said for Wyatt.
After he showed me the video, he kept talking about her for almost 30 minutes straight and it wasn’t until I reminded him of our game that he snapped back into game mode.
At first, I thought this wasn’t a big deal.
I mean, everyone obsesses over a fictional character once in a while.
A couple of weeks later, I kept seeing Wyatt on his phone watching Hana Chan’s streams and live virtual concerts.
One time, when I went to the restroom, I caught him in one of the stalls watching one of Hana’s streams.
I was starting to get a little concerned because Wyatt was a straight-A kid who never seemed like he’d skip class but there he was, glued to that phone.
Whenever he was away from the phone, he’d talk about Hana-Chan nonstop to the point where people looked at us weirdly in the hallway.
This all reached a breaking point when he started stalking Megan from our class.
She often styled her hair in pigtails and that caused Wyatt to be on her like bees to a flower.
He’d follow her like a zombie until one day, she told him off and told him that she was going to report him, but he just kept staring at her in a trance.
After that, he hardly showed up to class.
I knew something was wrong with him.
I thought maybe he needed some space or maybe he was feeling down, so I knew I had to do something.
I invited him for some ice cream at our favorite spot and things seemed normal at first until I saw what he was wearing.
He had a T-shirt, shoes, and a hat with Hana’s face all over.
This wasn’t a normal fanboy representation; this was an obsession.
I asked him how much he spent on all that and he just stared and me and told me not to worry about it.
At that point, I had to tell him.
I cried at him, clutched him, and told him what he was doing was unhealthy and he had to snap out of it.
He just stared at me until I told him that Hana wasn’t real and she was just fictional.
He snapped at me and told me to shut up while screaming out how much Hana loved him but what made my heart sink was when he said that Hana was real and that I was just jealous.
He then ran off leaving me in the dust.
Later that night, I ran over to his house to talk to him there.
The door was unlocked.
I walked in and I was met with a dark house, silent like death.
I walked upstairs to Wyatt’s room, and I was in a state of disbelief.
Where cool rock band posters used to hang and his homework piled up on his desk now were Hana posters and fan-art.
At Wyatt’s bed was his laptop.
I was so scared.
I peeked at the colorful laptop screen and was met with a ghastly image.
There was Hana Chan but her duck plush was replaced with a rabbit wearing glasses and a
green jacket.
It was Wyatt.
I screamed while Hana just winked at me, holding up three fingers instead of her peace sign…
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