My bedroom door clicks shut behind me like a vault sealing.
Safe. Or it's supposed to feel that way.
Room is dark except for the weak blue glow of the monitor.
I drop my bag. It lands on the carpet like a dead thing.
On the desk:
Stacks of university brochures. Shiny covers. Happy faces.
Bright futures.
All of them spread out like a fan of possibilities — Oxford, Imperial, MIT, Tokyo Tech.
Places I could go.
Places I'm expected to go.
I pick one up at random. Open it. Words blur.
Not reading. Brain refuses. Letters feel like someone else's alphabet.
I flip pages faster, faster — shuffling a deck of lies.
Paths out. Away from bullies.
Away from Avery.
Away from the part of me that sniffed her homework like a starving animal.
No relief. Only sickness.
The booklet slides from my hand. Hits the floor.
On the shelf: birthday gift from last year — my nineteenth.
Still there. Still untouched.
A boxed figure from some anime Finnley said I'd "love, bro".
Big eyes. Plastic smile. Supposed to guard my desk. Just gathers dust. Like me.
I turn to the monitor. Login screen pulses softly.
One click and I disappear.
No face. No voice. No ribs. No egg-spiked hair.
Fingers hover.
Gaming means hiding.
Hiding means forgetting.
Forgetting means I don't have to think about Avery walking into the locker room like she owned the air I breathed.
I sit. Chair creaks. Hood still on.
Game boots up. Colours flood the screen — bright, fast, safe.
A world where I can respawn.
Where I matter only if I press the right keys in the right order.
Phone buzzes. College booklet lies at my feet like a warning.
My reflection in the dark monitor glass — stranger from the locker room.
I click "Play".
And keep clicking.
Like maybe I can click my way into a life where today didn't happen.
But the game blurs. Eyes wander. There, in the corner.
Avery's homework.
Something of hers in my world.
My own, private, controlled space.
Something from her life that doesn't belong here. Two worlds that should never collide. Paper and ink pressing together.
I glance at it. Always there. Impossible to ignore. Doesn't belong. None of it does. And yet it's there. Daring me to notice. Daring me to feel… small.
I should move it. Toss it. Hide it. But I can't. I just… stare.
Restless, I shove the thought aside. Start cleaning the apartment.
Paper, wrappers, empty mugs. Hands on autopilot. Scrubbing. Stacking. Sorting.
Still sticky from the egg incident. Still buzzing from everything she made me feel.
Fingers brush the junk drawer.
I pull it open. Rummage. Not looking for anything.
Something glossy slides into my hand.
Pastel cover. Summer Confidence. Curly writing. Addressed to 'The Occupier'.
One of those catalogues that just keeps showing up.
I always meant to throw them away.
Never did.
I flip.
Sundresses. Swimsuits. Safe pages, bright and harmless.
Then the page turns on its own, or maybe my thumb betrays me.
A woman stares up. Black lace bra, sheer enough that her nipples are dark coins under the fabric.
A thong reduced to one black string swallowed between her cheeks.
Legs wide. Back arched.
She is smiling straight into the camera like she paid for the lens herself.
Like she wants every stranger who ever holds this page to see exactly this.
I have never looked at a woman before.
Not really.
Not like this.
How is she not dying right now?
How can she just… open herself to the whole world and smile while it looks?
I wait for her to flinch.
I wait for the shame to eat her alive the way it's eating me.
It doesn't come.
The burn starts in my stomach and crawls outward, slow and radioactive.
I feel the exposure for her.
I feel it on my own skin.
My own chest, my own legs, my own face suddenly naked under every eye that's ever laughed at me.
Wrong.
This is wrong.
I can see nearly everything.
And I still can't look away.
Heat floods me so fast my throat locks.
My breath catches on something sharp and bright and unforgivable.
I shove the catalogue back into the drawer like it's on fire.
Slam it shut so hard the desk shakes.
But the image stays behind my eyes.
Her smile.
Her open legs.
The way she isn't ashamed at all.
Monitor glow. Dead character. Respawn. Click. Click. Click. Nothing. Screen blurs. My eyes wander.
There. Avery's homework. Corner of my desk. Stacks too neat, too hers, too wrong.
Clean paper like a white flag I'm not allowed to wave.
I can't leave things undone. Even things that aren't mine. Even things that are hers.
I reach. Fingers brush the top page. Her handwriting curls across the margin, confident, mocking. Her name underlined twice. My skin crawls. My chest tightens.
Dragging it to the centre of my desk feels obscene. Like she's there. Leaning over me. Watching. Smiling. Her smell drifting across the wood, across my hand. My world. My rules. Her intrusion presses down like water in my lungs.
I open it.
One question. Quadratic inequality. Easy.
I know it before my pencil even touches the page.
Mark the answer small, neat.
Precise.
Perfect.
Next question.
Next.
Ten minutes and a whole sheet is finished without thinking.
Twenty and the stack shrinks under my fingers.
Forty and every page is answered, corrected, fixed.
All of it hers.
All of it marked by me now.
Her perfume ghosts off the paper, or maybe it's me. Doesn't matter. It's everywhere. Inside my sleeves. Between my fingers. Inside my chest.
I hate it. I hate that it feels good. I hate that my hands keep reaching for the next sheet. I hate that I'm already folding into the second bundle like a puppet.
The game is still running.
My avatar still dead.
I don't respawn.