Finding a Fandom

"It's crazy, Dee!" Emma exclaimed, her enthusiasm making her sister wince as she sipped her iced coffee.

"I thought you couldn't find anything about the book online." Dina replied dryly.

"Not the book specifically, but the genre." Emma clarified. "It's called like... ENF, or something like that. There's stories, and art, and comics, all about girls losing their clothes and freaking out about it. Sometimes it's an accident, sometime it's supernatural--"

"Speaking of freaking out..." Dina raised her eyebrow at her unusually animated and energetic sister. "Yesterday, you were saying that it was just some random, stupid book that you were about to toss in the garbage. Why are you so into this all of the sudden?"

The question made Emma deflate a little-- Partly because she was wondering the same thing.

She'd never been a particularly attentive student, but yesterday's night class was rough. Half of it was spent thinking about her bare feet flexing against the lecture hall carpet, and the other half was spent thinking about that book. What was it? Where'd it come from? Who wrote it? And most of all... What did the next story entail?

She wanted to keep reading. Desperately. And she didn't know why.

"I'm not into it." Emma finally answered, making her voice sound dismissive, as if the notion itself were suddenly ridiculous. "It's just weird. Like... If you're listening to some true crime shit online. You're not into murder, but you're curious enough that you wanna learn more, right? That's all."

"Right. But I'm into true crime... And you're getting into some niche fetish about naked girls getting humiliated." Dina retorted in that dry, matter of fact way that was so difficult to argue with. Then, of course, she delivered the killing blow to the argument with,

"And there's the fact that you're still barefoot."

Emma glanced down, and sure enough, she saw her bare feet, with cute pink toenails, stepping along the walkway toward the dorms. She hadn't forgotten. Of course she hadn't. In fact, she'd intended to put on shoes several times at this point! But she never did. She'd always grab her shoes, and a pair of socks, and then she'd just...

Not put them on. Maybe she'd been distracted? Thankfully at this point, they'd reached the dorms.

"I uh, need to go study." Emma coughed, rather than trying to explain her lack of footwear.

"You need to put on some shoes and quit being a freak." Dina responded... Before cracking a small smile to show that she was at least somewhat teasing. "But yeah, you also need to study. I'll come by later and help you out, alright?"

As Emma returned to her room, she fully intended to study! As much as she didn't want to. She had her coffee. Her lo-fi playlist. Still barefoot-- But even so, she plopped onto her bed and flipped open her math textbook.

She had grabbed her textbook, mind you. She knew she did. She felt the weight, the hard cover. But instead of being met with mind numbing equations, she was thrown, yet again, into that book...

The Tome of Exposure