𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 // 𝐤𝐨𝐝𝐳𝐮𝐤𝐞𝐧 𝐱 𝐨𝐜

c. one

prologue

it was a stiflingly hot september, hotter than it should've been for that time of year. from the sidewalk outside, i could hear the other kids playing, the merry tune of the ice cream truck, a dog's bark. soon their palms would be sticky from the melted ice cream, from s'mores, from kool-aid, from coke. these things were our lifeblood when we were children. but i didn't care. i was waiting. just outside the warm haze of dusk would've settled on the street, and the ice cream truck would've drawn away, and the mothers would be calling their kids inside. i could hear them — mandy jones, eric patterson, rick davis, arby lewis, hester cole. but i was waiting. he had said he would call on the day that he left; he had sworn it to me, as he always had, with a pinky promise. he was meant to call before the end of august, before school started, to wish me luck for the next year. i had waited. but august came and went, and now it was september, hotter than it should've been, and i was here, waiting by the phone, like an idiot.

that summer we had played in the creek behind his house. i had meant to send him off without crying. we had raced leaf-boats down the whitewater, and his had always won. we had gorged ourselves on his mother's cake, on lemonade we stole from the fridge, and on sunlight. i wondered if he was winning even now — if he was laughing at me, and what i had done to drive him away, and if he had ever planned to call at all.

⋆ ☄︎. ·˚ *

ARKA
wednesday 08/08 6:45 pm
jellily & neptune's chat

jellily: hey laika

neptune: hey

jellily: you know kodzuken is playing in the lucid tournament next monday

neptune: wtf who is that?

jellily: be so fr.. you're not telling me you haven't heard of kodzuken

neptune: no ..??

jellily: he's this new streamer in the gaming community

jellilly: hes lowkey kind of cute

neptune: oh my god shut up

jellily: its the truth

neptune: *it's

neptune : but okay you win. i'll check him out sometime

jellily : you better..
read

⋆ ☄︎. ·˚ *

"who is this kodzuken"
a cursory search on arka — tagline "social media of the future" — led me to his profile. two hundred and thirty thousand followers. not at all bad. i scrolled through his posts (mostly clips from streams and sponsorships). how could lily find him cute, i thought, when he didn't even show his face? his voice was, admittedly, nice. he seemed engaging, naturally sociable — always interacting with his fans in the comments, that sort of thing — and it didn't surprise me that, with a personality like his, he'd hit 200k in three months. he played a variety of games, but specialised in lucid, which i had loved since it came out. and so i thought it was worth watching a stream or two, but, when i opened the first one i saw, i had only one thought: he's not even that good.

⋆ ☄︎. ·˚ *

a thin ray of sunlight fell across my face as i lay on the bed. the tournament drew nearer every day. the mouse of my computer was still broken, and despite every video i watched, the stupid thing just wouldn't work with me. i could always buy a new one, though the risk of it not arriving in time floated in the air, and it was already the tuesday before. while my parents didn't understand my desperation, and simply thought of the tournament as something trivial, they let me be, and when i asked them to go to the tech store in the city they were reluctant to agree, but eventually gave in.

the low hum of conversation on the train bled through my headphones, but the bumping of the train hurrying along the tracks — metal against metal — drowned most of the noise out, leaving an uncomfortable stillness, in which you could hear the harsh screech of the train and its wheels. and contrary to what most people think of such an atmosphere, i enjoyed it. soon enough, the announcer spoke out, "we have now arrived at blue city, passengers heading towards castletown and locus village switch train here." after stepping out onto the platform, a whiff of smoke plagued my mouth, and the odour of rotting food could instantly be recognised. the best tech store was in a run-down apartment in an alleyway in the city's centre — not the safest of places for an unathletic girl with terrible reflexes and a worse understanding of martial arts, but regardless, i needed the best treatment for my precious mouse.

each day afterwards was agonising. the fear of my mouse not being prepared for the tournament was eating me up. i felt that i had been converted to mouse, and it to cat, so that now it was the one watching me with sadistic glee as i tormented myself with images of failure, and being forced to drop out — or, worse, to play with my trackpad. to my relief, however, the nerves were washed away when i returned to the store on the saturday, and my mouse was presented to me by a young store attendant. 'like new,' he said, and i thanked him. i felt i had overcome a great obstacle. i felt ready for the tournament.

⋆ ☄︎. ·˚ *

lucid, released two years before, had taken the gaming world by storm. the concept was simple: a third-person battle simulator in which you navigated your character through a world characterised by violence. it identified itself as "cyberpunk fantasy". for the past two years, i had sported the gloriously clean username "neptune", and, like many players, i was a mage with a gun. special ability: provided the ability meter was fully charged, i could switch positions with any player. when he had left, when he had failed to call, lucid had been a comfort to me. and so i had entered the tournament, in the hopes of using whatever i had learnt to make something of myself.