[ DISCLAIMER: This is all made up in my mind.

Hololive – a V-Tuber group formed to entertain on YouTube – has a bunch of followers. I hope I don't offend any of them, including the members playing a part in this little story. I'm just really hooked on Okakoro right now, and I have written quite a few lesbian love stories, and this story kind of percolated in my brain.

Again, this is a work of fiction, none of the characters within are related to the real people who place the animated V-Tubers on their channel. There are real people behind the animated persona – avatar – but I'm writing a fanfiction about a completely fantasy mythos world called Holios. This has nothing to do with the real people behind the personas – just so you understand. So please enjoy this little story that has to do with the characters Inugami Korone and Nekomata Okayu. Also, subscribe to their channels and fall down that Ho(m)olive rabbit hole.]

Chapter 1

Canine View

I watch Okayu and wonder if she realizes how much she creates infatuation with the tone of her voice. I have sensitive hearing, and from the first moment she spoke, I was drawn to the sound. And then her laugh? It makes me want to laugh. Sometimes I think her laugh is a reflex to not take things too seriously, but I know she simply takes life as it comes. She wants to enjoy every moment, and its why I love hanging out with her more than anyone else.

Everything comes easy to her, and she's a good friend to everyone at our company, Hololive Corporation.

We had both come a long way. When I first met her, I had been so afraid and shy, but she encouraged me and now I feel so much stronger because of our friendship. I am somewhat famous now, but I owe that push toward fame to my best of friend, Okayu.

Many Years Ago, …

"Hey doggo, want to join me?" She called from an open door in the backroom, while on the floor playing a video game. "I need a partner for this game."

"Um… me?" I pointed to myself and she laughed in that low timbre, only nodding.

She asked me so simply, as my grandmother visited her grandmother's onigiri shop. I think maybe they had known each other because they always shared a cup of tea and chatted about old world things. We always drove out here to the mountains every weekend and stopped at the onigiri shop.

I liked the elderly lady who ran the shop and the Neko in the back seemed to look my way every time we came by. I turned wondering if perhaps she was speaking to someone else. But no, she was asking me to join her and sit beside her and ever since that moment I've wanted to sit beside her in this life.

We ended up playing through one game and then moved onto a few games on the N64 – old school stuff, but my favorite kind.

I had never laughed with anyone so much. This continued, me and my grandmother would come by on the weekend, and then I'd go back and play with the cat girl until granny told me we had to leave.

Soon, I was old enough to drive to the onigiri shop and granny was getting tired and didn't always want to leave for the weekend mountain trip but encouraged me to give gratitude to the elderly lady who lived on the mountain and buy her onigiri – of which, I didn't mind.

Okayu's grandmother was much like my grandmother and sometimes I'd help her in the shop along with Okayu. She was so kind to me. Our friendship grew during this time.

And then something seemed to shift and change; it was during a torrential rain storm I went to the mountain and played games in the back with Okayu. It neared three a.m. and I was still there in her back room. She was telling me to join her at an interview in the city for this new gaming group called Hololive Gamers. It sounded fun. We'd meet in the following weeks and audition and such.

Anyway, while in the backroom we sat there playing games. It was small but comfy, with a bed, one chair and the floor where we played video games with the sound of a small storm as another typhoon rushed across Holios.

"Want to just spend the night?"

"What?" her question surprised me, and then a few nervous, "Uh, um, ugh…" followed.

"Sure," and then she laughed at my weirdness, "I love having dogs sleep beside me on my bed."

We both laughed. She was a cat and we usually didn't get along in our world of Holios. This was a middle realm. There were many others and many lived here from other realms, like the Animas types (like me and Okayu), only one dragon I knew of from USDA, Demon Realm and Angelic One and Two, ParaNorm Realm, Elven Realm, and many others which were too many to name right now. We were like a middle ground where laws had been formed years ago that immigrants were welcome from other realms. It made it nice and mixed and so I'd met so many other races, but Doggos like me were slightly rare. My parents opened a bakery, but passed away years earlier, and then I was raised by my grandmother, and I grew up in a quiet life helping at the family bakery.

But Okayu asked me to join her and wasn't like any other cats I'd met. Mostly, they didn't like me. I'd spent quite a bit of my youth fighting with cat types and my parents always told me not to fight back because I could hurt cats. So, I let them hit me, but I didn't like it. Maybe there was a pent-up rage inside me that I didn't want to escape, but overall, I truly liked others and wanted to join in and had become a bit of a people pleaser because of my Doggo nature.

But Okayu wasn't like any other cat girls I'd met. She had a way of breaking through my inner insecurities and I became my real self when I sat there laughing and chatting during our games. I'd never had a friend like that.

"You live so far away, it's a torrential rainstorm outside, and you drive out here every weekend for granny's onigiri, so I know you have good taste and are a pure heart."

"A pure heart because of onigiri?" I laughed again, slapping her lightly and playfully.

She moved closer beside me. "I like your little doggo laugh. You always make me laugh when you laugh like that." And then she gently moved a strand of my hair from my shoulder. "I'm in the back and always know when you come to our shop when I hear your laugh. It makes me happier hearing your laugh.

"But to answer your question, Doggo, its not because of onigiri its because how one treats our elders and the weaker is a sign of a good heart, and you're always so kind to my granny. It spoke to me and said, 'this is a pure and true hearted Doggo.'"

I nervously laughed this time. But as her hand swept across my shoulder something inside fluttered in a way I had never felt. Her voice was tender in my acute hearing so that I enjoyed her voice more than anything.

That was the first time I wanted to kiss her, hug her, or just move closer, but I didn't. I just said, "It's not raining that badly. I can drive back."

She pulled back and tucked her hands between her thighs and then giggled again. "You're so weird."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because even a pure heart can lie to itself."

I didn't understand her at first, but then I realized what she meant. And so, with all my courage I suddenly leapt up and kissed her on the cheek, grabbed my bag, and then ran out of her room.

When I got home, after driving slowly through the storm, I tiredly laid down my bag and then looked down to see I had a text. It read:

"Thanks for the game. I hope you made it home safely."

It made me smile so big that she cared. I sent back a quick text that I was home safely, and then we exchanged a few more texts playfully as I eventually fell asleep with my phone on my stomach. We always ended our nights that way after playing games.

After that moment, she would call me weirdo doggo, and laugh at me, but also, she was my biggest fan and the most encouraging as my fame grew to an embarrassingly quick rise. I never expected to be an idol and so popular because people liked how I played games, I guess. I always saw Okayu as the beautiful idol she is, but never me. She was always so calm, handling anything in life bravely, unlike me too. I truly was uncomfortably existing through this world, but she helped make me feel a part of the world I lived and actually pushed me forward, always by my side.

I always felt so weak and shy and unable to handle the world around me, but when Okayu entered my life everything became bearable and attainable and soon I was able to stand on my own two feet. She was the one who encouraged me to work at Hololive Company with her and play games for a living, and so that's what we did - together.

Today…

Our friendship continued to grow and she'd drive down to my little bakery shop and buy pastries for her friends and granny, until the drive became too taxing and she decided to move to the city where we both worked. That's when we decided she should just move in until she found a more stable place of her own.

Whenever she left, she'd turn and with those deep purple eyes staring at me, she'd suddenly smile so large her entire countenance lit up into a happy warmth, her eyes closing, and she'd say, "until next time. Bye bye."

I'd bark a happy sigh, and then say, "Love you," and she'd answer me with a roll of her eyes and that laugh, and then run back to her busy life.

We got involved in this idol life together and were making a living doing what we loved – hanging out and playing games. And soon the popularity overtook my time and now I'm here sitting alone since she moved to her own place and the anxiety is growing again.

We're both so busy.

We're both living away from one another and it's so quiet in my place when I get home that I don't spend much time there and prefer to go to the Hololive studio and work or work at home, but I like to keep busy… so, I don't feel so alone.