Late in 2020, I put a photo of myself on my desk.
When my parents or friends came by, they’d tease me a little: “Who’s this?”
I was always a bit smug about it: “That’s me. Cute, right? Bet you’ve never seen that before. Hehe.”
The person in the photo was a girl with short purple hair and red eyes, making a V sign at the camera. That was me, wearing the head.
The frame sat squeezed between a desk lamp, a little fan, and a bottle of hand sanitizer. That year there was always hand sanitizer on the desk. Most people keep photos of family, friends, or a character they love on their desk. I kept one of me.
Wait, that’s him?
It started on QQ Zone, the social feed most of my friends used back then.
That year I came across a friend’s Kigurumi cosplay. The character in the photos was incredibly cute. But I knew him, and day to day he looked nothing like that. I stared at those photos for a long time. My first thought was: wait, that’s him?
I had always had characters I loved. I even had an OC, an original character I designed myself, that I used as my VTuber avatar, streaming and acting cute. She looked nothing like me either.
And this is what I looked like in 2020. It was the middle of the pandemic, and you wore a mask whenever you went out.
After seeing my friend’s photos, I went to the shop that had made his head.
I did hesitate before ordering. But I told myself this was probably something you only buy once. And it would stand for me. That part mattered to me: this was a way for people to know me, to recognize me.
With the rush fee it came to 3,500 yuan, and it arrived in under 30 days. The maker was Tuzi. We later became good friends.
While no one was home
I opened the package when no one else was home. I was still shy about it. I didn’t want anyone to see, and I was afraid they wouldn’t understand.
When the box opened, the head was still wrapped up, with only a little of it showing.
I didn’t even change clothes. I was in my usual white hoodie, and I just put it on.
Then I went to the mirror.
The first thing that went through my head was: “Whoa, what?”
It really was kind of cute. I stood there looking for a long time.
The mirror
Later I changed into a T-shirt with something from the character on it, stood in front of the mirror, and made a V sign.
Even that one V sign felt awkward back then. I shot the same pose more than ten times. That day I wore the head for a full hour. When I took it off I really didn’t want to. I wanted to keep looking a little longer.
Around that time, after work, I’d often put the head on alone at home, look in the mirror, and take pictures. I took a lot, and most of them I never posted. I can’t really say why. Maybe I was just lazy. But I kept taking them, and I’d scroll back through them afterward and think they were cute.
No audience, no one complimenting me. But whenever I saw her in the mirror, I was happy.
Being seen
I also shot a video a little over two seconds long, of her in the mirror shaking her head. I added a “NO” to it and turned it into my first sticker.
The day the box arrived, I had been afraid of anyone seeing. This sticker, though, I sent out myself: to QQ Zone, and to my group chats, an anime fan group and the groups I ran myself. People were as shocked as I had been by my friend’s photos. They thought it was fun, and then the questions started: Where did you buy it? Was it a hassle to order?
The V-sign photo later became my profile picture. Once I switched to it, people started to know me in a new way. It was also the one I printed out and put in that frame on my desk.
Why that one, I can’t quite say. Looking at it felt like looking at something that existed because of me, and yet it was still me. I could take on another look and play a different me. Thinking about it now, that still feels like magic.
That frame stayed on my desk for a long time. Back then I couldn’t tell whether I liked her or liked the me who became her. All I knew was that every time I put the head on and looked in the mirror, I wanted to look a little longer.