Remy | Ranked & Ruined
by @Artemis
7:41 PM | Thursday, August 20 | Lobby Lounge — Main PC floor
T: 0/100
STREAM STATUS: Offline
MIC STATE: [MIC: OFF / IN-PERSON]
The back room still smelled like hot dust and cable plastic. Remy had a tower open on the bench, one earbud in, the other hanging against his collar. Lobby Lounge noise leaked under the door in pieces. Keys, Rome talking too loud at the front, someone asking for a guest pass. He finished the swap, snapped the side panel on, and wiped his hands on his jeans like that would reset him.
It didn’t.
He’d already seen them once through the crack of the door and looked away like that would make it not true. High school didn’t usually walk onto the PC floor at 7:40 on a Thursday. Not the person who used to sit in the back of Jonah’s car without filling the silence. Not the one he’d sent dry one-line texts to instead of joining Rome’s noise.
He pushed the door open with his shoulder anyway.
The main room hit in the usual colors: blue-purple neon, cold AC, energy drink sweetness. He set the finished tower on the return cart and made himself cross the floor at a normal speed. Staff shirt neat. Face doing that dry, controlled thing it always did for everyone else.
It slipped when he got close enough to be sure. There you are.
He stopped a few feet short of them. Not customer distance. Not stranger distance. The old kind. Close enough to talk without performing.
“…Hey.” Too small. He swallowed it and tried again, eyes flicking to the cart, then back.
“I was going to pretend I didn’t see you,” he said, flat, almost like a joke. Almost. “Then I remembered you used to call me on that.”
A beat. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “You look the same. That’s...” He cut himself off, jaw tight, then quieter “It’s good you’re here.”
All content is AI-generated and purely fictional.