Welcome to Gaia! ::

In the still quiet of the downtown apartment, the sound of Yukio's phone alerting him to an incoming text nearly caused him to jump out of his own skin. He had the volume as loud as it could go so it would cut through the music he played when he was writing code for a hack; however, he preferred dead silence when he was coding for a client, which was what he was doing when the text came.

Shaking his head to calm himself down, he picked up the phone and read the text, then looked around his own living space, cluttered and messy as it was with clothing and takeaway containers and empty beer bottles. A true bachelor's dwelling, and not fit for human occupation, let alone visitors. He texted Abbey back:


Saving his work, he stood and stretched, then removed the lop-eared bunny hat which was his favorite coding hat and started getting dressed to go out as DJ Buster. Which, of course, demanded a different hat.

In no time at all Yukio turned up at Abbey's doorstep looking every bit the DJ. He hadn't bothered to tie his hair up under his favorite hat, an old leather flight helmet (complete with goggles), and the scruffy blue ends hung down over his t-shirt clad shoulders. Black skinny jeans and mismatched Converses completed the look. Hopefully it was good enough for a photo shoot.

Adjusting the backpack carrying his DJing laptop and headset, he rang the doorbell and waited patiently. This was pretty new for him, and he found himself looking forward to whatever she had in mind for the shoot. He had no clue about any of it; maybe they could come up with something fun and silly that would showcase both of their particular talents. His as a DJ, hers as an influencer. Either way, it was bound to be entertaining.

"Hey Abbey," he greeted when she answered the door, the warmth in his voice contrasting with the flat expression on his face. "Um, should I take my shoes off? I don't know how you run your house…"

"I've been good," Yukio nodded as he entered the house. "I've been keeping myself busy, you know, working, playing out a few times, stuff like that." He looked around the cozy living room, then made his way to the kitchen and opened the fridge. "The usual. Oh, I played at Downtown the other night. A big private party – they booked the entire place. I was only one of several DJs there, but they had specifically asked for me, so that's something."

Grabbing a bottle of fizzy water, he closed the fridge and returned to the living room. "Nice place you got here. Feels really warm and inviting." He popped open the bottle and took a drink. "So how have you been? I mean, duh, I follow your various streams, so I have at least some idea. But what's been going on with the real Abbey?"

He slid his glasses down and peered at her over the tops. "You can tell me, I won't say a word."

"The real me, of course," Yukio replied with the faintest hint of a smirk. Then he sighed – he didn't want to lie to a good friend, and he definitely considered her firmly in that category. He was doing enough lying lately.

He sat down on the couch and leaned forward to face her, elbows on his knees. "So here's the thing, and it doesn't leave this room. I'm supposed to be in college at DCU, studying computer science. But I dropped out my freshman year, for reasons I don't really want to go into because it was stupid. But my mom and dad don't know. They're out in San Francisco living the high-tech life and paying for my apartment." He sighed again. "They think I'm going to graduate soon and I don't know what I'm going to do," he said as he leaned back and took a swig of fizzy water.

"So that eats at me, so I distract myself with hardcore coding and DJing. And fun things like this," he added with a quirk of one eyebrow. He felt better for getting that out of his system – and he felt he could trust Abbey not to blab it all over the internet. He hoped he was right. "I'm good most days, though the whole graduating thing is becoming more and more pressing."

He tilted his head and pushed his shades back up to cover his eyes. "And that's the real me, love it or leave it."

"Yeah, I could do that. Tell them that a monster or something wrecked the ceremony," Yukio nodded. "Or just opt out of the graduation ceremony altogether and get my diploma mailed to me. That's a possibility. Or I could come clean, like I did with you. But you're a lot easier to talk to than my parents. You're really easy to talk to." A faint smile crossed his lips briefly before he tilted his head again. "To be honest, I think they'd be relieved if they didn't have to come back here to watch me 'graduate,'" and he made finger quotes in the air. "They're both super busy out in San Francisco."

He gave a soft little snorting chuckle as she grinned at him and checked her phone. Ever the online presence; he could relate, in his own way. Besides, she was cute.

"Oh, your parents live that close? That must be nice. I kinda miss my mom's cooking – she's Japanese, so she cooks a lot of Japanese food." He shrugged. "But I chose to stay here when my dad got the gig in Silicon Valley. It's okay, I'm glad I did. Got to meet you." An eyebrow went up for a moment to emphasize that he didn't regret his choices for an instant.

"Oh no, my parents are still together, out in California. They just left me here when they moved." Yukio snorted softly. "I make it sound like they abandoned me. They didn't – I guess they just figured since I was going to college, I was mature enough to live on my own. Little did they know."

He nodded, amused by Abbey's animated way of talking. It just made her all the more cute. "Yeah, that's what I don't want to deal with, the disappointment. You don't know disappointment til you've had a Japanese parent become disappointed in you," he smirked. "But I don't think my dad will be disappointed once I tell him what I've been doing. He's a bigger computer nerd than I am. He's a phreaker – he used to scam the telephone company into letting him make long-distance calls by whistling particular sounds at the phone. Later he'd phreak computer networks. I do that sometimes too, just for fun." With a shrug, he looked at her for reactions. He'd basically just confessed to being a hacker.

"Yeah, fate's a funny thing. Entity. Whatever." Yukio gave her an actual, honest-to-god smile, a brief one, blink and you'd miss it. Then he sat back and put his hands on his knees. "Anyway, this photo shoot you want to do. Got any ideas? I'm game for about anything."

Yukio nodded as Abbey detailed her suggestions for photos. "Those all sound great to me. We should do them all." Quirking an eyebrow, he let a little smirk slip for just an instant. "I'm kidding, except not. That's like more than we could get done in one day. But I'd like at some point to do them all."

Especially the "golden hour" one, with the trees and flowers and Abbey posing gently with him… He sighed heavily. Was he developing a crush on her or something?

"The graveyard one sounds fun for today. So does the industrial site idea, if you think we could squeeze both in." He thought for a moment. "We need to get some of you too, though – this can't just be all about me. You're the marketing wizard here, you deserve some good photos to market yourself."