The Yuria situation is crazy.

Again, we got the news early in the morning from the mouth of Noelle herself. She was actually the last one to arrive at school, barely five minutes before the bell rang. We were all in the club room when she came in, bags under her eyes.

One look at her set off all my alarms. I felt frustration, anger, confusion, shame, anxiety. Noelle was overwhelmed, and she hugged me tightly when I went up to her.

“What happened?” I asked her, rubbing her back and kissing the top of her head.

“I don’t know!” she screamed into my chest. Her hand gripped my arms hard and her voice cracked. “I… I’ve been getting hate messages since yesterday evening!”

“Hate messages? What? From who!?” Mila asked, coming to check on Noelle as well. The others also stood up yet kept their distance so as to not suffocate her.

“S-S-Strangers! T-To the Yuria accounts. My chat, my comments, DMs… I don’t know why! All of a sudden people fucking hate me!”

I held her close. Noelle was trembling. My eyes met Mila’s and I knew she and I had a similar idea about what was happening.

“B-But weren’t you getting new subscribers until just yesterday?” Alice asked.

Noelle breathed deeply and shakily. “T-That’s… kind of still going. S-Some are subscribing just to send more messages.”

“What the fuck?” Sarah muttered, baffled.

“Can you show us?” Grace asked.

Noelle took out her phone, tapped the screen with trembling fingers and set it on the table.

“Why didn’t you call us last night?” I asked her, still rubbing her back.

“I… I thought it was just something that came with suddenly going viral. I didn’t… I didn’t think it would affect me so much…”

If she had caught any sleep, it was more than likely plagued by nightmares. That much was plain.

“Strangers don’t understand anything,” I told her soothingly. “Now you’re here, with people who love you. Those idiots are all riding a wave of hate they don’t even understand.”

Noelle nodded her head against me. She held onto me, staying quiet and steadying her breathing. Meanwhile, Grace, Alice and Sarah were looking over the messages Noelle had gotten. Mila had taken to the more open parts of the internet and checked on her phone.

“Yep, they’re trying to cancel her,” Mila said with a deep, disgusted scowl. “So many baseless accusations. There’s someone claiming Yuria scammed them out of money, another one saying he got groomed by her, another one saying she sells nudes…”

“What the fuck is this?” Sarah laughed bitterly and read a few messages out loud. “I bet you’re a fat pig IRL. Stop hiding behind the voice changer and reveal that you’re a man already. So ugly you hide behind an anime girl avatar.”

“Imagine Noelle actually shows her face,” Alice said. “Would that shut them up?”

“Nah. They’d find something stupid to be mad about. Like, they’d claim she’s a liar because her avatar’s hair is white and she’s a redhead,” Grace said. She frowned. “No, this feels too… ****. There’s no rhyme or reason to these accusations, no consistency. These messages are attacking Yuria directly while the open boards are throwing accusations without any common theme.”

“You mean it’s organized but disorganized at the same time?” Mila asked.

“Exactly. Whoever started this told their mob to be mad at someone and set them loose. Either that or they have no coordination.”

“But why? Why would someone do this? And who?” Alice asked.

“I can think of answers to both, but it’s all conjecture for now,” Grace said. “I mean, I’ve done stuff like this. On a lesser scale, yeah, but I’ve coordinated hate messages. The more people you try to get into this stuff, the more unpredictable it becomes.”

I let out a heavy sigh. With how she was now, it was easy to forget Grace had done some pretty evil stuff. Finding that out was the reason I lost the huge crush I had on her. Learning why she’d done those things made me accept them. Even now, without missing a beat, she was ready to find out every detail in order to help Noelle. It was impossible not to admire that.

“Mila, I’m gonna need your help,” Grace told her friend. “Can you ask in your social media if anyone knows what the drama is about? Make it seem like it just appeared in your feed and you don’t get what’s happening.”

“On it.”

“Do you think anyone at school might know what’s happening?” Sarah asked.

“It’s unlikely. This is unrelated to Noelle. This is against Yuria, the V-Tuber. If someone in school knew about her real identity, it would’ve spread already.”

“Things don’t happen randomly, though,” Alice said. “Even on the internet, you should be able to trace everything back to an event, a cause.”

“Correct,” Grace said. “So while this could just be backlash from getting popular out of the blue, my gut feeling says something else.”

“What can I do to help?” I asked Grace.

“Stay with Noelle and read the drama on your phone. Be discerning, try to trace the accusations back to a source.”

The bell rang, stopping our discussion. I examined Noelle's face and felt her exhaustion in my own body. She was in no shape to go to class, so I took her to the infirmary. The nurse let me stay with her until she fell asleep, then I had to return to class.

On my way there with a heavy heart, I wondered what I could do to find out why this was happening. There were a couple of unsavory sites I could check that were likely to be discussing the drama. Anonymous boards that could either be trying to spread the rumors or trying to find the truth. It was a coin flip.

Then, on the stairs to the fourth floor, I was stopped by someone. Someone very unexpected.

“H-Hey, Oliver… Mind if we talk?”

Eric, the drummer from the music club, had been waiting for me.

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