"Is that so? I understand—"
Kaguya smiled kindly, but even through the screen, Mo Yi still felt a chill. Unhurriedly, he smiled and said, "So that means you've seen the colorless kind, the black-and-white kind?"
Mo Yi: "..."
"Her Highness the Princess, how could you slander my innocence out of thin air?!"
Still not entirely sure whether he had seen her fan comics, Mo Yi steeled himself and frantically hypnotized himself. "I, Mo Yi, have truly never seen NEET Princess's fan comics!"
On the other side of the computer screen, Kaguya took one look at Mo Yi's expression, and he really did seem like he was telling the truth.
Of course, she had also learned something important: Hu Xiao Kai's real name was Mo Yi. As for being called NEET Princess, she might have gotten angry back when she had first encountered the internet. But now, Kaguya even dared to write yuri fanfiction about herself, so she had long stopped caring about such trivial matters.
Though she believed him inwardly, Kaguya still refused to let him off verbally. His current mix of anxiety and embarrassment was simply too amusing.
"Hmph, so what if you saw them? What's there to deny? This Princess isn't some petty person. Could it be I won't even grant you the right to fantasize a little?"
"Ah, I can only blame this Princess for being too beautiful."
Seeing that Kaguya had stopped pressing the matter and was narcissistically admiring herself, Mo Yi let out a breath of relief, then could not help blurting out, "Ji Ni Tai Mei?!"
Kaguya's smug smile instantly froze. A second later, her face darkened as she stared at Mo Yi through the screen. "Do you believe I'll crawl through the network cable, slam your head onto the keyboard, and make you roll across it?!"
"Cough, cough—"
That joke seemed to have gone a little too far. But Kaguya was not Yakumo Yukari, so why was she copying that keyboard-rolling nonsense?
Naturally, he could only complain about that in his heart. She could already send files across worlds; what if she really could travel across worlds too? Offending big-shot Kaguya again would be courting death. What if she dragged him off to Eientei and used him as a lab rat to test medicine every day? That would be the kind of suffering where even death was out of reach.
Mo Yi's mind raced as he smiled and explained,
"Her Highness the Princess, you're called Princess Kaguya, and you're too beautiful. Put them together, and it becomes 'Ji Ni Tai Mei.' I really didn't mean anything by it."
Kaguya smiled again, but this smile was different from before. It carried a hint of coldness.
"Do you believe I'll come over and personally serve you a lawyer's letter?!"
Mo Yi: "..."
That look of recognition told him that he had never expected her to know the Kun Kun meme too.
If someone ever told Mo Yi, "You play whatever-the-hell as well as Kun Kun," he would definitely want to hit them. By the same logic, big-shot Kaguya was probably in a bad mood right now. Considering how fierce she was when gaming, always ready to throw down at the slightest disagreement, it was obvious that her personality was often the complete opposite of her quiet, ethereal appearance.
"Ah—"
Mo Yi suddenly looked like someone sitting bolt upright from their sickbed and said apologetically, "It seems someone is ringing my doorbell. Let's stop here for now—I'll go check."
"Don't even think about hanging up—"
But Houraisan Kaguya saw through Mo Yi's excuse for ending the video call at once. With a sinister grin, she said, "This Princess has plenty of time to wait for you."
Mo Yi: "..."
"Haha, perhaps I heard wrong. It's stopped ringing now."
Seeing Mo Yi give up on running away, Kaguya said smugly,
"Enough nonsense. You still haven't answered my question. Have you seen my fan comics or not?"
Mo Yi had thought he had already muddled through that topic, but he had not expected Kaguya to be so persistent about whether he had seen her fan comics.
Confess and get a full sentence; resist and go home for the New Year.
There was no way he was admitting it! Besides, Mo Yi genuinely had no memory of ever seeing them.
"I, Mo, am a man of unyielding integrity. If I said I haven't, then I haven't!"
"(ˉ▽~~) Tch~~"
After hearing Mo Yi's answer, Kaguya instead looked utterly bored. Staring at him, she complained, "You haven't even read this Princess's fan comics. What kind of Eastern fan are you?"
Mo Yi: "..."
When had I ever said I was an Eastern fan? Actually, I'm a Moon Cell fan Admiral who likes playing Honkai Impact 3rd aboard Rhodes Island!
Still, after bullshitting with her over this issue for so long, most of Mo Yi's previous worries had faded away. He had more or less regained the old feeling of chatting nonsense and trading jabs with her online.
Even after learning each other's real identities, it seemed nothing had really changed. Her Highness the Princess was still Her Highness the Princess. Well, if anything, she had become more vivid and concrete—NEET Princess.
Simply put, Mo Yi no longer had much to fear. The spirit of sarcasm he usually brought to their chats was rapidly blazing to life.
"Her Highness the Princess, that's not right."
Mo Yi could not help but retort,
"Although you're supposedly the character with the most Eastern beauty in the setting, settings are just things authors write after drinking and slapping their heads. Settings are made to be eaten."
"On top of that, you have the least revealing outfit among all Touhou characters. Look at Hakurei Reimu, the protagonist—she still wears a miko outfit that exposes her armpits. Compared to that, your popularity naturally can't measure up."
"In terms of popularity, you're probably somewhere between a second-tier and third-tier character in Touhou. There aren't many fan comics with you as the protagonist at all, and you simply can't compare with Reimu, Sakuya Izayoi, Purple Sister, and the others."
"Therefore, it's perfectly normal—and highly likely—that I haven't seen your fan comics!"
Kaguya: "..."
This time, Kaguya truly could not endure it any longer!
The wound she felt was countless times deeper than discovering that Mo Yi had a hundred terabytes of her fan comics stored in his cloud drive.
What did he mean, somewhere between a second-tier and third-tier character? That was complete nonsense!
"I don't believe it! This Princess is a popular character, not some gag character stuck between second-tier and third-tier!"
Mo Yi thought, But in fan works, you are a gag character overflowing with gap moe, though?
You're clearly the Moon Princess, yet you're obsessed with the internet and games. At the drop of a hat, you and Fujiwara no Mokou start loving and killing each other, then drink each other's organ stew.
And you still dare say you aren't a gag character?!
After several seconds, Kaguya returned to her previous serene smile and asked, "Then tell me—which one is number one in all of Touhou?!"
"Don't lie. I might be able to tell!"
Facing Kaguya, who seemed to be going dark because she could not accept being merely a second- or third-tier gag character, Mo Yi hesitated. He wanted to say Kaguya against his conscience, but when he saw those bright, unblinking eyes of hers, invisible killing intent rushed straight at him.
In the end, he chose to speak the truth:
"Alice Montgomery."
Before you continue