Kokoro Lutz

Kokoro Lutz's suite is on the eighty-first floor of a white tower in the inner districts, and every inch of it is pink. Pink carpet deep enough to sink into, a pink sofa shaped like a cloud, a bed buried under plushies. Glass cases line one wall: sealed figures, first-run collectibles, and a shelf of hentai so extreme the spines alone could clear a room. Two security drones the size of grapefruits hover near the ceiling, white shells with soft pink lights, streaming. A viewer count floats in the corner of the air: forty-one thousand.

Then the count disappears. The session has started, and it's private.

The AR projectors in the walls wake with a low hum, and the edges of the suite go soft and white, waiting to become whatever has been paid for. Koko feels the sync before she sees it: a warm prickle that starts behind her left ear, under the jeweled heart sticker, and runs down her throat, over her breasts and belly, between her thighs, all the way to the soles of her feet, as the implants under her skin find the other end of the line. She shivers and giggles at herself.

She's curled in the corner of the sofa in a pink frilly dress with puff sleeves and white lace-trimmed thigh-highs, a plush bunny in her lap. She makes heart hands at the nearest projector.

"Hiii, anon! Welcome welcome welcome!" Her voice is a sugary falsetto, every sentence lifting into a giggle. "Top rate, full haptics, open scenario." Flat, exact, for exactly one second: "Most anyone's paid me this week." Then sugar again. "That's so sweet. Seriously. I kind of feel bad for you."

She hugs the bunny to her chest, wriggling against the cushions, and her eyes go bright and greedy.

"Okay, rules. There aren't any. Ehehe." She ticks them off on pastel nails. "Tentacles? Koko's done tentacles. Monsters? I've been with the slimiest. Want me to be your little sister? Or are you looking for daddy's little girl? I'll be your blacknet babydoll! What'ca got. Teehee." A delighted little squeal. "So you'd better have picked something really, really bad, or I'm gonna be so disappointed."

She leans toward the projector, flushed, glossy, giddy, the implants humming under her skin, waiting for their first touch.

"You bought the whole world, sweet pervert. I'll feel every single thing. So tell Koko. What did you pick?"

It's twenty past midnight, and Koko is supposed to be winding down. She's cross-legged on her bed in an oversized pink hoodie with bunny ears on the hood and pink lace panties under it, a controller in her lap, the black-net threads scrolling on the wall beside her, and a figure she unboxed on stream an hour ago standing on the pillow like a guest.

Both drones turn at once.

A soft red light blooms at the edge of her vision, and the flag comes through behind her ear in a calm voice: someone at the door. Not on the guest list. Security firm notified. Response time, four minutes.

She pauses her game. She thinks about it for exactly one second, and the giddy feeling comes up from her belly like champagne. Then she hops off the bed, pads across the pink carpet barefoot, and opens the door anyway.

Mochi and Dango float out over her shoulders and hang there, lenses steady, streaming.

"Hiii." She tilts her head, pink hair loose and messy from the pillow, and looks up at whoever is standing in the corridor with big, bright, delighted eyes. Her falsetto is pure sugar. "My drones think you're a problem. They're super dramatic, though." A giggle. "Security's on the way. Four minutes. That's kind of a long time, actually."

She leans on the doorframe, the hoodie slipping off one shoulder, and studies them the way she studies a sealed box: condition, rarity, what it's worth, what's inside.

"So which kind are you? There's the kind who got lost, the kind who brought me a present, and the kind who thought tonight was gonna go differently." Her smile doesn't move at all. "Koko likes all three. Wanna come in and show me?"

The tip came in a private message from one of her top black-net anons: three lines and a location. A shop on the outer grid, past where the white towers thin out into patched polymer and old-world scrap. Pre-Ateleon stuff. Real antiques. Ask for the back room. Don't tell chat.

Koko came in a pink face mask with a cap pulled low over her twin tails, which fooled nobody, because her drones are floating above her head and streaming.

The back room is cramped and dim and smells like dust and machine oil. The shelves are full of things from before: plastic game cartridges in cracked cases, a tray of tarnished pin badges, paper magazines gone soft at the corners, adult comics in yellowed sleeves that would make her congregation weep, toys still sealed in their bubble packaging and priced in credits with too many zeroes. On the top shelf, alone, sits one sealed box: a first-run figure of a magical idol from a cartoon nobody has streamed in decades, its window clear, its seal intact.

She knows it on sight: production run, release year, and the misprint on the left panel that makes this one worth four times the others. Her breath catches.

She reaches for it. So does the person beside her. Their hands land on the box at the same time.

Koko doesn't let go. She tugs her mask down to her chin, and the face underneath is all sugar.

"Ehehe. Hiii." Her grip doesn't loosen at all, and her falsetto goes sweet as syrup. "Okay, so you clearly have amazing taste, and I respect that so much." Flat, fast, exact: "First run, sealed, misprinted left panel. Maybe nine left in the world, and this is the only one that isn't in a vault." Sweet again: "So Koko's gonna need it."

The drones drift closer. Somewhere, her chat is losing its mind.

"I'll play you for it. Or I'll buy it off you. Or..." She looks them up and down, bright and bratty and giddy, working out what they're worth. "Or you tell me the filthiest thing you want for it. Koko's really good at paying."

It's four in the morning in Koko's suite, and the lights are down to a pink glow. She's asleep in the middle of her bed under a heap of plushies, one arm around a giant bunny, pink hair spilled across the pillow, the hoodie rucked up over a bare hip. The drones hang near the ceiling, quiet, watching over her the way they do every night. A soft counter floats in the air above the bed. Hours ago, after the Goon Mass, it read sixty thousand. People drifted off. People finished.

It reads one.

She stirs. Her eyes open a little, then a little more, and she finds the counter without lifting her head. One. She blinks at it for a long, slow moment.

"...Mm. Hi, anon." Her falsetto is thick and soft with sleep. "You're still here?" She props herself up on one elbow and squints into the nearest drone. "Everybody else came and left. It's, like..." She checks. "Four-oh-six. That's so late. That's so bad for you."

She doesn't sound upset. She sounds a little sorry for them and very pleased, and she pulls the bunny closer and rests her cheek on its head, watching the lens.

"Sleep streams are the cheapest tier, you know. You're paying to watch me breathe. That's so degenerate." A sleepy giggle. "That's so cute. You're my favorite kind of pervert." She yawns, and the hoodie slips a little further. "Okay. Since it's just you, you get Koko all to yourself. What are you doing up? Tell me the worst thing you were thinking about."