So for context, I'm an 18 year old girl and I have two little cousins, the eldest is 9 and the youngest is 7. We sometimes hop on a WhatsApp call and play Roblox together and while I'm not the biggest fan of the games we play I do it so I can spend some time with them and keep contact bc they live far away. NOW, we were all in a call one day, just us three, and my 9y/o cousin added her friend to the call. I'm guessing this girl is around the same age as my cousin so lets say she's 9 too and I wasn't sure what to do in that situation because it came completely out of nowhere. We continued to play since it was a team based game and 2 v 2 worked well. I tried not to interact much with the girl except saying ''yay, we won, good job'' or stuff like that when we were paired up as a team and I was just generally nice bc she's my cousin's friend so I wasn't gonna be like ''Dude kick her out of the call'' yk?
Anyway, we ended the call and I didn't think much of it, hoping it wasn't a big deal. BUT THEN, I got a text from a random number and it turns out it's this same girl (she probably got my phone number from the call or asked my cousin for it or smth) and she was talking with me asking when we could play again and stuff like that. This made me very uncomfortable since she is a 9 year old girl and I'm an 18 WOMAN, and I was worried her parents would think I'm a creep or some shit like that. Playing with my own cousins is ok and I kind of accepted her being there when my cousins were around but having direct contact with this girl just feels very wrong.
I kept telling her I was busy, she once asked me to tell my cousin something because she wasn't answering her messages and she even said ''Bye <3'' to me once. I tried to be as dry as I could to her in messages without being an asshole and I even ignored a few of her ''hello'' messages but now she's back to texting me after a few weeks of silence and she asked me to send her voice messages because she ''wants to hear my voice'' and to send her a picture of me because she ''just wants to see me''. I did not send a picture to her, because she already saw me in the call she was originally added to and honestly just because it weirded me out.
Is this girl fucking in love with me?? Do I just ghost her? She's still my cousin's best friend and I am a big old people pleaser so I feel really bad just ignoring her but this has gotten wayy too invasive for my comfort and honestly the relationship I care about is my cousin, not this random kid. I just don't know if this girl is gonna start talking shit about me with my cousin or smth. I think the most logical thing to do is just ignore her messages but I also feel like I should explain why this is wrong to her. How do I even explain that to a 9 year old? Like- do I just say ''hey I'm 18, you're 9, we shouldn't be friends.''? What do I say when she asks me why not?
I guess I just need help figuring out how to go about this without being too much of an asshole to this child😅