VOLUME II: 40 – Last Cult Gathering

[Poppy's POV]


It’s Friday night, and I’m ugly-crying into a decorative pillow my mom bought from IKEA because she thought it looked “chic and not tacky.” She was wrong, but that’s not the point.

The point is that Ketsusaki is graduating. Tonight. For real.

Ketsusaki’s graduation stream has been live for five hours now. Five. A normal person would’ve logged off by hour three, gone outside, touched grass. Not us. Not the Cult.

[EggsInMyWiFi]: HOUR 5 LET’S GOOOOOO
[LegalGoose]: I HAVEN’T PEED SINCE NOON
[SaltyShrimp69]: PUDDING IS MY BLOOD NOW
[PoppyQT]: i live here. this is my life now.

On screen, Ketsu’s model does that dumb, glitchy spin again — horns clipping through her hair, eyes too bright to be real. She yells, voice filter crisp and stupidly confident: “RISE, MY TRASH GREMLINS! Final Cult Gathering, baby! Sponsored by trauma, boba, and the IRS crying in my emails!”

I snort-laugh through my tears. From the kitchen, Mom yells, “Poppy, keep it down or I'll turn off the wifi!”

“I’M GRIEVING!” I wail back.

She sighs. Accepts it. Mom accepted worse.

Meanwhile, on screen, Ketsu pulls up her usual chaos slides. First: fanart showcase. “Look at this masterpiece,” she squeals, zooming in on an MS Paint drawing of her model holding a knife and a pudding cup. “This? Peak culture. Louvre who? My fanbase has taste.”

I mashed my keyboard when I saw the fanart I drew got featured.

Chat spams:
[EggsInMyWiFi]: LOUVRE WHO
[PoppyQT]: I DREW THAT ON THE BUS STOP :DD
[NoodleGoblin]: MODS CLIP HER CRYING AT FANART

She shows off cursed memes. Old clips. Her very first PNG debut with a mic that crackled like Satan’s radio.

“This? This little gremlin?” she says, pointing at a 240p image of her old model. “She saved me. And then she cursed all of you. Worth it.”

Somewhere during hour six, Ketsu made us rank cursed snacks and replayed her worst mic peaks like a true sadist. Now, deep into hour seven, she’s reading confessions and fake rumors about herself for spare change:

[H0nKh0nk]: KETSU CONFIRM YOU ARE SECRETLY 2 RACCOONS IN A HOODIE
Ketsu: “Confirmed. Next question.”

[PoppyQT]: TELL US YOUR WORST SECRET
Ketsu: “My worst secret is that you guys stuck around this long. You fools. You absolute pudding-brained fools. I love you for it.”

I lose it. I cried like a howling goat. I wipe my eyes with my sleeve, then my phone buzzes with a text:

Weaver:
coming over. bringing pizza. don’t sob on it.

Me:
too late. bring tissues too.

Fifteen minutes later he shows up— half-wet from the drizzle outside, juggling a frozen pizza and two giant sodas. He steps into my room, freezes when he sees my puffy face.

“Holy hell,” he says. “This is worse than the time you found out they discontinued your frog slippers.”

“Shut up,” I croak. “Sit down. Cry with me.”

He toes off his sneakers, flops next to me on the carpet, and tosses me a soda. “Don’t say I never do anything nice.”

On screen, Ketsu is dragging us through a Q&A:
[KettleKiller]: DO YOU LOVE US???

She squints at chat. “No. Next.” She giggles. “Okay fine. Maybe a little. Don’t make it weird."

Weaver cracks open his soda. “So this is it, huh?”

“Yeah.” I rub my eyes. “She’s really logging off for good.”

He looks at the screen — the chaos chat, the glitchy gremlin dancing. “She was always too good for you guys.”

“Rude,” I sniff. “We raised her.”

He elbows me gently. “Nah. She raised you.”

We both go quiet at that. On screen, Ketsu is replaying the infamous Shrimp Cracker Jump Scare. Chat spams emojis and cry-laughs. My chest hurts.

Hour seven drags past midnight.

She pulls up her final slides with just a giant text: ONE LAST CHAOS. She reads old confessions. Roasts herself. Says “sussy baka uwu” for fifty bucks and immediately gags.

Then she checks her clock. Chat goes still. We know what’s coming. She leans closer to the mic.

Her voice drops — real and raw:

“Okay, my void cult weirdos. One last thing. I didn’t put this on the schedule ‘cause if I did, you would’ve bullied me into not doing it. But screw it. Tonight… just once… I’m doing this properly.”

I hold my breath. Weaver stops chewing.

“What’s she doing?” he murmurs.

I whisper, “I think she’s gonna—”

Then she says it, soft but sure: “I’ve never sung properly for you all. Never thought I should. But I owe you more than scuff memes tonight. So… listen close, okay?”

She closed her eyes. The slides vanished. The BGM fades.

"I've got my ticket for the long way 'round...Two bottle whiskey for the way."

It’s not scuffed. Not a half-laugh karaoke joke. It’s real. It’s stupidly, stupidly good — the kind of voice you’d pay to hear in a tiny candlelit lounge if you didn’t know the gremlin behind it. Each note soaks through the stupid IKEA pillow I’m clutching. I feel Weaver go still beside me.

Her tone is smooth, warm, raw at the edges but hitting every note like she’s pouring her every soul into the melody.

"...When I'm gone, You're gonna miss me when I'm gone"

She sings like it’s a thank you for every bad day we survived with her jokes. For every late-night trauma dump we laughed off together. For all the dumb pudding memes and cursed PowerPoint.

"I've got my ticket for the long way 'round... The one with the prettiest of views..."

Weaver just mutters, “Holy hell. She can sing?”
“Shut up,” I squeak. My eyes sting so bad I can’t see the chat.

She slips once, giggles through a line — but comes back even stronger, each note wrapping around the room.

[NoodleGoblin]: I DIDN’T ASK TO CRY
[PoppyQT]: SHE’S SO GOOD
[SaltyShrimp69]: AAAAAAAAA
[KreiVitamins]: ain't no way
[CatgirlKilljoy] brb im never recovering

“…You’re gonna miss me by my walk…”

My chest aches. My face is soaked. I grab Weaver’s sleeve and squeeze. He doesn’t even tease me. He just watches. Quietly.

Her last line trails off like a secret:

“…You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”

Silence lingered, then her voice comes back — raw, cracked, with that unmistakable squeak when she’s trying not to sob.

“Hey… still there, gremlins? Yeah. Of course you are. My beautiful little chaos cult… gods, where do I even—”

She chokes. Actually chokes. Tries to laugh it off. Fails. A sniffle echoes through her crisp mic.

“Sorry— hold on— your Queen of Mild Inconvenience is having a mild meltdown. Shocking, I know.”

Chat explodes:
[EggsInMyWiFi]: AAAAAAAAA
[PoppyQT]: I’M SOBBINGGGGGG
[LegalGoose]: same tbh
[SaltyShrimp69]: SHE’S CRYING IM CRYING STOP

“I didn’t plan this part because I’m a coward. I thought I’d do a dumb dance, slam the End Stream button, and disappear like the world’s loudest raccoon in the night.

But you deserved more than that…"

She tries to laugh. It cracks apart like wet paper. “First… sorry. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I wanted to keep you forever, so I pretended I wouldn’t have to say goodbye. That was selfish. But you stayed anyway. Even when I was clingy, or quiet, or a total mess. I don’t… I don’t deserve that. But you gave it anyway.”

The chat explodes:
[EggsInMyWiFi]: CRYING RN
[SyntaxError]: WHO’S CUTTING ONIONS
[SUPERSCARRA]: Don't say sorrryyy *sob*
[PoppyQT]: SHE’S APOLOGIZING STOPPP

I wail so loud Weaver winces. He wordlessly shoves tissues at my face.

Ketsu laughs again — a real, shaky wheeze. “Mods, I’m sorry for every ‘pls ban me daddy’ you ever had to delete. For every time you covered for my late streams. For every time you told me ‘go drink water’ and I said ‘no’ and did it anyway. You’re angels. Except you, Goose. You’re a demon and I adore you.”

She pauses, reaches off-screen. We hear a cap twist. A gulp. She sighs, breath steadier — like she knows we heard that sip.

“Hydration check. Okay. Needed that. Still crying though.”

I choke out a laugh-sob. Weaver cracks a tiny grin.

“GhostToast, Mallows, every indie who said ‘yes’ when I spammed you at 2 AM — thank you for not blocking me. For screaming with me. For making the noise feel like music. I hope your DMs stay chaos forever. If you leak my old cursed PNGs, I will haunt you.”

A pause— a wet breath. Chat stutters with heart emojis.

“Twitter gremlins: you made me trend for the stupidest reasons. Pudding discourse. Shrimp jumpscares. Stolen memes. You made every scroll feel like home, not just the void. Thanks for drawing me, for yelling at me, for quote-retweeting me when I posted my dumb breakfast. I saw it all. I loved it all.”

She sobs again— tries to talk through it. Fails. Her voice crumples.

“And you. My Cult. My sweet, annoying, pudding-blooded gremlins. Thank you for staying. For lurking. For screaming. For letting me exist. For tipping me your lunch money when you didn’t have to. For making me laugh when I thought I forgot how."

She then continued as she sniffled.

"Thank you for every dumb joke you spammed, for every late-night chaos I dumped on you, for calling me out when I was scuff, for showing up even when you had exams, breakups, or horrible days.

You let me be loud and messy and complicated. Despite everything, you accepted me..."

She snorts mid-sob. I can practically see her wiping her eyes behind the model.

"You were my safe place when I didn’t feel like a person. You were my noise when the silence was too scary. You were my people— my gremlins— my weird little family on the other side of a screen."

I hiccuped. Weaver shoves another soda in my hand. “Drink something. You’re dehydrating yourself.”

I squeak, “Shut up, I’m grieving my queen—”

Back on screen, Ketsu squeaks through another laugh, “Okay, okay. Before I drown you in my tears. Promise me something: be chaotic. Be louder than me. Make cursed memes. Make each other laugh. Be the gremlins I always knew you could be.

And if you see me somewhere— a voice you kinda recognize —pretend you don’t. Or do. Or scream. I’ll scream back.”

She snorts. Her model glitches, bows awkwardly, and horns clipping through her shoulder.

“I love you more than I love pudding. Which is insane. Thank you for everything. I’ll be okay now. You will too.

Bye-bye, my gremlins~ Be loud for me, yeah?”

Her model bowed, the horns flicker, the eyes glitch, her signature scuff. Perfectly hers.

The screen fades to black. Chat still scrolls, full of crying emojis and frantic hearts.

My hiccups echo in the hush she left behind.

Weaver breathes out, quiet, like he’s trying not to show it hit him too. “Damn. She really did it.”

I hug my knees tighter. “She was ours. Our chaotic gremlin.”

He shifts closer, tips the empty soda can back and forth. “Hey, Poppy?”

“What.”

“You know she’d haunt you if you shut up about her, right?”

I bark out a wet laugh. “Yeah. She’d possess my phone and leak my browser history.”

“Exactly.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “So don’t be weird about it. Be loud. Like she said.”

I peek up at my too-cool, usually-annoying brother as I shove him lightly with my IKEA pillow, “Watch clips with me tomorrow?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Now scoot. I’m ordering wings.”

"This late?"

"It's San Francisco, there's always a 24-hour chicken resto opened. Besides, you need cheering up."

I curl into his side as he taps at his phone. We sit there, pizza box, soda cans, chat still buzzing on the black screen, and her song replaying in my head.

The world spins on, and the cult stays alive with memes and cursed pudding. Somewhere out there, Ketsusaki breathes free.

See you around, chaotic queen. We’ll be loud for you. Always.






Thank you for reading Ketsusaki’s final chaos with us. 🥹💙
This might be goodbye for now~ but it’s just the beginning for Aoi.

I’ll be sharing extra stories, behind-the-scenes bits, and continuation with Chapter 41 (Volume 3!) right here on Patreon soon.

Stay loud, stay chaotic, and thank you for being the best Cult a gremlin could ask for.
See you in the next story! Bring your pudding and tissues. 🫶✨

Your local emotional mess author,
~Edeshei