Chapter Text
Idols spend a lot of time in front of the mirror.
Iku spends too much time in front of the mirror.
She goes from top to bottom to top to bottom to top, ranking all of her features on different scoring systems. Blunt bangs— moe, feminine. Thick eyebrows— stark, masculine, but hidden by the bangs, subsumed by moe and feminine. Eyes, nose, lips— super deformed. Bad skin. Neck— she no longer wears a collar.
She still feels a collar.
Slumped forward on the foot of her bed, Acme Iku is anhedonic, wide-eyed, and numb. This is a natural state. She knows what it means to be what she is, but she has no personhood to fill it with.
Iku takes a sharp breath and blows her bangs out of her eyes. She watches herself do it. Deep green flicks up, just to helplessly fall back down and cover what it needs to cover.
Iku thinks to herself that maybe she shouldn't do this anymore.