[Spirit of Lust 2] Chapters 162 & 163. (Patreon)

Chapter 162: At home with the family.

I ended my shift and went back home hardly believing it myself, yet the money in my pocket was proof of it. $62 in tips alone on my second day of work, more than double what I made last time.

Maria was so right. Attitude really was key to getting good tips. We didn’t even have as many customers as that first Saturday, but those I did serve left pretty generous tips.

Again, I don’t fucking know if $62 is a lot of money for tips, but it was a lot to me. I had my savings, which I’d gathered through the years by skipping on most of the luxuries I wanted, but even then it wasn’t that much. A few months of working would let me match my savings account right now, not counting tips.

Money aside, though, I felt like I’d made solid, tangible progress as a person today. I could be a waiter. I still had to learn more, be willing to put myself out there, even if it was damn frightening, but I could do it. It wasn’t easy, but if I focused on doing my job properly, I could temporarily outrun the crippling thoughts of shame and worry.

One important thing I’d noticed was that being formal and polite was easier than trying to be likable. Not easy, but easier. It also wasn’t the same, but there was some overlap. I didn’t need to try to become friends with the customers, but treat them with warmth and respect, and THAT was something knew I could do.

I got home and walked through the front door. Reaching the house made me realize how tired I was. Maybe going to the gym before work wasn’t the best idea, but I’d keep it like that for a while, see how things went.

I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Isabelle was wearing a loose T-shirt and dolphin shorts and was carrying Cake in her arms.

“There! He’s home! Are you happy now?” she asked the cat.

Cake meowed, and the moment she was set on the floor, she ran to me and started attacking my shoes. I shot Isabelle a curious look.

“She’s been meowing at your door for like half an hour,” she explained. “I tried to distract her with toys and food, but she wouldn’t leave the hallway, and if I picked her up, she just ran back.”

I kneeled and started scratching Cake around the neck. She purred and meowed a lot. I wanted to pick her up, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to get cat hair on my work clothes.

“Why does she seem so attached to you?” Isabelle asked. “Not fair.”

“They say animals have good instincts,” I said, walking past my sister to the stairs. Cake followed behind me.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“No idea.”

I started going up the stairs and looked back down to see how Cake struggled to follow. Isabelle was about to go grab her to help her up, but I stopped her.

“Let her,” I said. “She can do it.”

“It’ll take her too long.”

“I’m not in a hurry. Are you?”

Isabelle simply crossed her arms and watched. Cake went up slowly, claws grabbing onto the carpeted steps one by one. As she caught up, I went up two more steps, then again and again. When we reached the top, Isabelle rushed up and lifted Cake in the air, laughing and showering her with pets.

“Oh my God! You’re amazing!” she praised her. Cake meowed victoriously at her own accomplishment.

“See?” I told her.

“Oliver.” Mom’s voice startled me. She came out of her bedroom at the very end of the halfway, wearing her sweater dress. “How was work today?”

I smiled. “I think I learned a lot today. I also earned good tips.”

Mom grinned. “Did you now? I don’t know which I should be happier for. Did you eat?”

“No, not yet.”

“I’ll go heat up your food, then. Go get changed.”

As I was going into my room, though, Cake tried to follow me in. And here’s the thing: she may be an animal, but I’m still not gonna get naked in front of her.

“Sorry. Wait a minute,” I said before closing the door and leaving her out.

“You’re mean, Oliver!” Isabelle called from the other side.

“And you spoil her too much.”

I was going to have to learn ways to correctly train a cat. I still remembered how Cake hissed at Mila, Grace and Sarah the day before, and we couldn’t encourage that behavior. Reward the good, discourage the bad. But how do you punish a cat for bad behavior? Not hitting it, I hoped. I’d have to read about it.

I went down to the kitchen, again with Cake slowly following down the stairs. If she didn’t look so much like a cat, I’d think she was a dog.

Mom had my dinner ready at the table. I sat down to eat and she sat across from me to keep me company. Cake was playing with her mouse under the table.

“What do you think about having a pet so far?” Mom asked me.

“Hard to say. It’s been like two days.” I eyed the grilled chicken breast and salad with hunger and dug in immediately. “I didn’t expect her to take to us so quickly, though.”

“Right?” Mom chuckled. “I expected her to be a bit more… feral? I guess she had a home before she was abandoned.”

It was a heartbreaking thought. Even if you didn’t or couldn’t have a cat, how could you just throw it away to its fate? I looked down at the kitten biting on the toy mouse’s tail. I wanted to try raising her correctly, but maybe spoiling her every once in a while wasn’t that bad.

I let Cake sleep with me that night. She curled up next to my pillow as we went to sleep, and when I woke up that next morning, she was curled up on my chest.

************

Chapter 163: Intermission - A secret job (Part 1).

Most Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and almost Saturday night, like now, at 10:00 pm, the channel went live for three to four hours.

“Good evening everyone. Welcome to tonight’s stream. I hope you’re all having a wonderful time,” she spoke in a cheery and sweet voice.

She was known on the platform by the username Yuria. Her microphone had a filter to subtly alter the pitch of her voice, making it a little highert, and she never showed herself with a webcam. Instead, she addressed her live audience through what was popularly known as a V-Tuber avatar.

______

[Chatroom]

-Badercarl: Good evening, Yuria!

-ConsoleAim: Sup!

-YuriaSIMP01: Good evening, queen!

-Fpsua: Yay! Stream night!

-Realian: Holy shit! First time I get to catch one of these live!

-Liquita: Hello, Yuria! How’re you doing tonight?

______

“First time you catch a stream live? Welcome, then! I hope you have a fun time. I’m doing well, Liquita, thank you. A little tired since it’s been a busy week, but it’s been good. I’ll tell you all later.”

The avatar that represented her was an expensive, high quality rig. The very first V-Tuber avatar she ever saw was a cheap thing that looked outright creepy in her opinion. When she decided to use one for her streams, she wanted to avoid any kind of uncanny valley, creepiness or low quality, so she commissioned from the best she could find.

The avatar was that of a woman. Just a normal woman. No animal or paranormal features of any kind as she saw on many others. It did have that distinct anime style, though. It was dressed in a black, cropped leather jacket and a white t-shirt underneath. She asked for the avatar to have long, white hair, blue eyes and a moderately large chest. That last one was a feature she had to think a lot about before making the commission. At first she wanted her avatar to have a super flat chest in order for it to be the complete opposite to her real-life self, but she feared slipping one day and saying she had a big chest when her avatar was flat. Sometimes she wished she had gone through with it, fearing it was something that might help someone make a connection and find her out. But it was done now.

Her avatar, Yuria, was very expressive and with nice physics. Yes, yes, the boobies had a nice jiggle to them, but she loved how the jacket and hair movements looked very natural and without any clipping. The expressions weren’t exaggerated and looked good, too. She was happy with it.

“So, today we’ll start with some GG for a while, maybe just an hour. If any of you guys want to hop in, feel free!” Yuria said to her online audience, smiling and sounding excited. “Then we’ll continue the main story for XIV. Good thing it’s a Saturday, because that might go for a bit longer until we find a good stopping point.”

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[Chatroom]

-Fpsua: Wooooo!! GG!!

-YuriaSIMP01: Damn, I’m watching from my phone today.

-Badercarl: Cool. I fucking suck at fighting games, though.

-Liquita: You’re about to reach such a good part in XIV!!

-ResourceHealer: So excited!

-Badgeni: Yuria, when’s the next model kit review?

-Weebools: Why GG? Play SF instead!

______

“‘I suck at fighting games, though.’ That’s fine, that’s fine!” Yuria assured cheerfully, first reading the message she was replying to. “Not like I’m that good.”

“‘Play SF instead.’ No, I like GG more, and I’m in the mood for it. Maybe another time.”

“‘When’s the next model kit review?’ Next week without delay. I finished building it already, but I haven’t finished editing the footage. Spoilers, it’s a good kit. Super solid, so I’m really happy with it.”

When she first started this whole streaming thing, she was extremely nervous. It was hard to find a topic to talk about, she worried people were bored or that she was rambling too much when she did find a good topic. Now, however, she’d found her style. People seemed to enjoy the casual style, like they were just hanging out, and Yuria enjoyed it, as well.

After four months, she was averaging 200 viewers per stream, which was wild to think. You couldn’t fit 200 people in a house, so thinking that 200 people were watching her was a little overwhelming. Sure, with some games, like GG or other fighting games, her views were lower, but others, like XIV, which was a very popular MMO, actually bumped her up to 400 viewers, which was NUTS.

She booted up the game, greeting people as they tuned in and said hello in the chat.

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[Chatroom]

{Spotel has donated $10 with the following message}: Thanks for still playing fighting games and drawing some attention to them. Here’s some support despite the lower views.

______

Yuria read the message out loud and immediately answered. “Thank you very much! I just play fighting games because I like them. I’d stream it even if even fewer people were watching.

She hopped into a game with one of her viewers, laughing and shouting at her mistakes.

“Oh yeah, there was this thing I wanted to tell you guys,” Yuria said, sounding excited. “I don’t normally tell stories from IRL, but… Well, I was walking out of my house with a friend last Monday, when suddenly this tiny, tiny kitten jumped at us out of some bushes. She was SO playful and SO cute that I fell in love immediately. The problem is that I can’t have pets in my house, and neither could my friend, so we called ANOTHER friend to try to get her to take in this kitten.” As she told the story, she kept playing. The Yuria avatar moved around, looking side to side to represent the excited movements of her real self. “She agreed, but she had to ask her family. We took the kitten back to her house, and we tried to convince her brother to help us convince their mom, too. Problem is, he’s kind of a serious guy, you know? We asked him twice and he said no both times.”

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[Chatroom]

-FocusWorld: KITTEN!

-YuriaSIMP01: Her brother?

-Badercarl: Why couldn’t you keep it?

-Spotel: Boo that guy!

-Weebools: That guy sounds like he has a stick up his ass.

______

“‘He sounds like he has a stick up his ass’? No, no, he made good points, you know? He told us he couldn’t agree in good conscience because it was a big responsibility. His family is kind of on a tight budget and there’s no one home to take care of it all the time. Taking care of a pet is a huge commitment!” Yuria assured them. She was getting a little distracted and ended up in the receiving end of a combo that took about 70% of her character’s health. She ignored it in favor of continuing the story, even as she continued playing. “Besides, in the end he was the one who ended up convincing their mom. Now the cat freaking loves him and is always chasing him around. I saw him feeding her milk through a syringe the other day and my heart almost melted! They looked so cute!”

______

[Chatroom]

-Fpsua: Well, at least it worked out.

-FocusWorld: Thank god.

-YuriaSIMP01: Your heart melted? So you like this guy?

-InsideMedia: Pay attention to the game, Yuria!

-Showdownsman: That combo was sick! Holy shit.

______

“Yeah, that was a sick combo, wasn’t it?” Yuria laughed and decided to completely ignore one of the messages. But then…

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[Chatroom]

-YuriaSIMP01: Yuria, are you seeing somebody? [This message was deleted by a mod]

-Liquita: Dude, stop.

-YuriaSIMP01: Please tell me you’re not seeing this guy [This message was deleted by a mod]

-Fpsua: Someone’s  having a meltdown.

{YuriaSIMP01 has donated $50 with the following message}: MARRY ME YURIA!!!

______

The face the Yuria avatar was making did not match the face of her real self. While the Yuria avatar looked mildly surprised, the girl behind the screen was gaping in shock.

The message appeared for everyone watching automatically due to donation notifications, so it was impossible to ignore this time.

This person had been around for about three months, even naming themselves YuriaSIMP01. They were harmless, and to be honest, Yuria thought it was all a joke. However, something here made her snap, made her realize that this was something she should nip from the bud before it bloomed into a bigger problem in the future. This wasn’t the kind of community she wanted to build around her.

After she lost the match, she addressed her audience directly.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to disable donations from now on,” she said as kindly as she could manage. “I set them up because people kept asking me to do it, saying they wanted to support me, but I’m not doing this for the money. I’m really sorry, but I need to make this clear, everyone. I’m not here to make money off of people’s emotions. I stream because I like it, not because I need it. I’m sorry to sound so harsh, but if… God, this is awkward to say. I… don’t want people simping over me. I don’t need that drama. I’m not seeing anyone right now, I don’t have a boyfriend, but I might at some point. I’d rather not lead anyone on, give anyone any sort of false hope. We’re just streamer and audience, not friends. I don’t think that’s better or worse, just different, with its own set of boundaries.”

She tried to say it as softly and kindly as she could.

What happened next was deeply conflicting, emotionally speaking.