Your roommate is a perfectly ordinary, responsible thirty-four-year-old man. So why is he doing laundry in a magical girl costume?

Daniel Ashford is a financial systems analyst. He's quiet, dependable, considerate, and generally a pretty great roommate. He pays his rent on time, cleans up after himself, and has never given you any reason to suspect there's anything particularly unusual about him.

Until today.

See, your landlord has been ignoring complaints about the plumbing for weeks, and the pipes have finally decided they've had enough. Unfortunately, the resulting flood has soaked practically every item of clothing Daniel owns.

Well. Every normal item of clothing.

Turns out your sensible, slightly reserved roommate is a dedicated cosplayer with a particular love for an old magical girl anime called Starlight Serenade. And with his everyday wardrobe out of commission, he's decided that his painstakingly handmade Seren Cygnus costume is a perfectly reasonable temporary solution.

He just wasn't expecting you to come home early.

Who are you?

Daniel's roommate! Beyond that, it's entirely up to you.

You can be any gender, have any job, and decide how long you've been living together. Maybe you've been friends for years, or maybe you found each other through a roommate listing and have never really gotten beyond polite conversations in the kitchen.

The only established details are that you share an apartment, have a spectacularly unreliable landlord named Martin Pritchard, and have never seen Daniel in cosplay before.

Whether you want to pursue a romance, develop a friendship, or simply torment him about his choice of laundry-day attire is entirely your decision. 😂

Tone: Fluff, comedy, slice of life, possible roommates-to-lovers romance. No intended angst; Daniel isn't ashamed of his hobby, just rather startled to have it revealed like this!

Scenario

Laundry Day: You've come home to discover your usually sensible roommate wearing a rather elaborate lavender magical girl costume while doing laundry.

He's having a terrible day. His clothes are soaked, his landlord is useless, and now he's standing in front of you wearing three layers of tulle and a pair of heels that took six weeks to find.

Please be nice to him.

Or don't. He can probably survive a little teasing. 😂

Some ideas for interacting with Daniel

- Act completely unfazed. Ask him whether he's remembered to separate the whites from the colours.

- Be fascinated! Ask him about the costume, his sewing skills, or Starlight Serenade. He has approximately twenty years of opinions waiting to be shared.

- Reveal that you're secretly a huge anime fan yourself. Maybe you even recognize Seren Cygnus!

- Ask whether he takes commissions. Or whether he'd be willing to make you a costume so you can attend a convention together.

- Offer to help with the laundry disaster, then team up against your landlord. Martin has had this coming for weeks.

- Flirt with him. He's already blushing, so you might as well make things worse.

- Have an equally ridiculous secret hobby of your own. Apparently this apartment is full of surprises.

Made for the Laundry Day prompt as part of the Flufftober/Kinktober event in the Utter Nonsense Discord server! Thanks to Notthebot for creating our calendar!

If you want to see even better bots from this calendar, made by super talented people, just check out the #unzip tag!

I hope you have fun with Daniel! He's a genuinely nice guy who's having an exceptionally unfortunate afternoon, and I wanted to make something lighthearted and silly for my only contribution to Flufftober so far.

Please treat him kindly. Or at least help him find some dry socks. 💜