[Witchofthew3st: I’m sorry, Femi. I didn’t mean to leave so suddenly last night. Truthfully, I was scared. You said that you like me. I believe you might like Witchofthew3st, but that really isn’t me. I think it’s better for the both of us if I stop things now before it hurts too much later on. Maybe when I figure out who I am, you can meet that person. Maybe you’d even like that person. Love you, Buttercup.]
Owen hit send on the message before he could talk himself out of it any further. It hurt to write, like every key press was pushing a hot iron into his skin. He told himself that it was for the best. Owen and Aoife could still be friends, even if Witch and Femicom were not. One friendship was better than the loss of both in his mind. Owen clicked the power button on the back of his monitor to spare himself the sight of the message that had wrenched tears from his eyes to splatter and decorate the varnished wood of his desk.
Owen began to laugh. All of this heartache, because he hadn’t corrected someone when they had called him a girl. What a stupid mistake, one that he was keen on preventing in the future. Owen felt like life had handed him a handful of weighted dice just to see him wallow in perpetual bad luck.
Washing away the tears of the morning in a hot shower cleared Owen’s mind, and cleansed the salt from his cheeks. The shower had given him much more than the usual refreshment. It had washed away the fears and concerns that surrounded him whilst juggling two lives in the palm of his hand. There was no more Witch, there was just Owen, and he’d been making Owen work just fine for the past 20 years. The Everett esports team meeting was all he really needed to worry about now, and although he wasn’t particularly excited for the event, it would mean getting to hang out with Aoife for the afternoon, which more than made up for it.
Owen’s classes were just as boring as ever. The only thing of note for him was that he felt altogether lighter ever since he had agonized over the message. It was like the weight he’d been dragging along had been unshackled and left behind, letting him almost float along the ground on the way to each new class. Was this what it felt like to not have to live too lives simultaneously? When his last class of the day ended, he headed straight for the meeting room. Since the room was in the union, Owen had assumed they had rented out one of the spare rooms that were free to all upon reservation. He’d never been in the room, but with the text message reminder from Richie, he had a room number and would just need to wander around the union until he found the right place.
“Where ya goin’, Owen?” Aoife’s raspy voice chimed from behind him as he reached the glass door to the union. He twisted around to see Aoife, dressed in ripped jeans and an incredibly oversized hoodie. He wondered if she had to special order XXXL hoodies or if she just got lucky with the store's stock when she bought them. “I know where you’re headed, obviously, I just wanted to say goin’ Owen again. I think it’ll catch on one of these days.”
“You can’t just make a catchphrase stick by repeating it over and over. That’s not how it works.” Owen replied with a smile. His smile wavered slightly when he realized how similar his response had been to the conversation that Witch and Femicom had just a few days ago.
“You can if you’re cool and sexy like me. You’ll be saying it in no time, Inigo Montoya.” She quipped back and Owen pulled at the handle of the door. Due to the difference in temperature between the indoor union and the brisk outdoors, it took more force than he expected to open the door. Aoife let out a soft chuckle as Owen not so subtly had to add a second hand to the handle to pull it open.
“Are you sure you’re okay with dipping a toe into the testosterone fest of a college esports team? I can’t imagine you’ll have a lot of like-company in there.”
“Eh, if there aren’t any other girls in there I’ll be fine. I’ve got you, Owen.”
“I-I… what?” Owen found himself confused, shooting questioning looks towards Aoife as they walked up the stairs inside of the building onto the first floor of the student union.
“A friend.” Aoife clarified, taking note once more of his flustered reaction to her words.
“Right. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
“You don’t know any members though? I thought you signed up for this, I figured you’d know some of the folks.”
“Not really. I just mentioned to them that I played-” Owen stopped himself before he made it any further into his sentence. He had offhandedly mentioned to Richie that he played UMDK, something which was quickly going to prove difficult. As far as Aoife knew, he was a brand new player. With conflicting information, Owen decided he’d stick his foot firmly up the ass of truth and delve further into a lie. “-I lied and said that I played UMDK. I don’t know what I was thinking really, I guess I thought it would make me sound cool or something.”
“You thought lying about playing ULTRA MEGA DEATH KILLER would make you sound cool…?” Aoife asked, her cheeks tensing in a manner that indicated she was doing her best to hold back laughter.
“...yep.”
“Hah! Oh fuck, Owen, that is so lame in the best way.” Aoife snickered into her hand as they walked across the student union towards the opposite end that hosted all of the blank meeting rooms. Owen felt his cheeks flare up in embarrassment as they passed all sorts of students while walking. Each one of them turned to look at what Aoife was laughing at, and seemed to universally decide that Owen was that person. It was a correct assumption, but one that made Owen feel even more embarrassed as they walked.
“I told you I’m not the best at social situations. I just wanted Richie to stop talking to me so I went along with what he was saying.”
“Gonna tell them that you were lying about it?”
“And be ridiculed by a room of college students? Absolutely not. You better not out me either, Buttercup.” Owen scolded as he glanced down towards his phone to once again check the room number. 107. They were on the right floor, but the only rooms he could see right now were 101 and 102.
“Buttercup?”
“Like Princess Buttercup.”
“Have I graduated from Humperdinck?”
“You seemed uncomfortable about that one, so I thought I’d change it up.” Owen spoke to Aoife almost absentmindedly as he looked for the room. The majority of his brain was focused on finding which direction the numbers seemed to go up, in order to locate where 107 might be. Aoife was entirely focused on the new nickname that Owen had given her. Owen had said that his social skills were pathetic, yet he had still seemed to pick up on the subtle way she expressed discomfort with the previous nickname. That had been after the can of Swamp Thunder as well. Aoife found Owen to be a strange muddled kind of enigma. Grossly ignorant of obvious cues, while simultaneously picking up on subtle, sometimes insignificant details. Aoife found it incredibly sweet that he made such adjustments for the comfort of others, while never bringing much attention to it.
“Buttercup is nice.” Aoife flashed a tender smile to a very focused Owen.
“There it is! 107!” Owen cheered and reached out a hand towards Aoife to pull her towards him as he slipped down one of the smaller hallways towards the meeting room. It was tucked away in the corner of the union, making it aggravatingly complex to locate. “Sorry, what were you saying? I was a little locked in.”
“It’s okay, dork. I just appreciated the nickname, that’s all.” Owen and Aoife shared a short, but pleasant exchange of grins before Owen reached for the door handle and entered the meeting room. Or at least, he assumed it to be a meeting room. Upon entering, it became clear that this was not just one of the open rooms available for reservations through the union. It was an entire computer lab, with much better equipment on the desks than could be seen anywhere else on campus. A staggering 16 different gaming setups lined the central table around each end, like a converted conference room setup. Everett University was definitely not tight on funds, but to have spent so much money on an esports team that had no prior record was staggering.
“Holy shit. Who did you fuck or kill to get this, Richie?” Aoife immediately spoke upon seeing the room in its entirety. The rest of the room was surprisingly devoid of any kind of decoration or style. It seemed all of the money had been spent solely on the computers, monitors, mice and keyboards across the large table. It was amusing to Owen just how little had been done to the rest of the room in favor of spending the budget on the electronics.
“Aoife! So glad you could make it! Oh shit, Owen too! Come on, take a seat, we're about to start!” Richie, with a voice that was carried effortlessly across the room by the rich bass tone, called over to us upon hearing Aoife talk. He had short, ginger hair, a smattering of freckles across his cheeks, and the all around complexion that could land him on the cover of “Irish Weekly”, if there was such a magazine. Despite him telling the two of them to “take a seat”, there were actually no available seats left in the room. Aoife and Owen opted to move over to a wall to lean against it like a number of other students had done. The guy that Owen had opted to stand next to spoke up as Owen leaned against the wall and waited for Richie to “get started”.
“Love the jeans. Aoife, right?” The voice was far more androgynous than Owen had expected, instantly throwing his initial read of the student into the garbage. The student had an almost stereotypical looking hairstyle from the e-goth 2010’s aesthetic. Black hair that made it especially hard to get a glance at their eyes, with a spiked choker wrapped tightly around their neck. The spikes were so large that Owen wanted to ask just how they weren’t being weighed down uncomfortably.
“Yup. Aoife. Love the rings by the way.” Aoife and the student leaned forward to talk across Owen, leaving him uncomfortably silent in the middle. He didn’t want to intrude, but it almost felt more awkward to not join into the conversation when it was being conveyed directly across him.
“Castle. Nice to meet you and your monastic friend here.” Castle flipped their index and middle finger out into a sideways peace sign. Monastic? Owen wondered if he’d been labeled that way due to his utter reluctance to make so much as a peep since they had entered the room. The source of this chapter is NovelPing.
“Castle? Like… medieval castle? Battlements, moats, and all?” Owen broke his silence to question the student’s name.
“I can tell you it’s not a reference to the chess maneuver.” Castle quipped, a devilish smirk cresting the bottom of their face, just below where their black hair rested.
“Why did your parents-” Owen started before Aoife quickly pushed in front of him to cut him off.
“As you can see, my friend isn’t so much a monk as he is an awkward antisocial dude named Owen. Though maybe a vow of silence would do him well, sometimes.” Aoife looked at Owen and widened her eyes to emphasize the last part of her sentence. Owen took it as a cue that he might have said too much and returned to leaning against the wall while waiting for Richie to begin. It only took another two minutes before his loud voice filled every crevice of the small room.
“HELLO ALL! ARE YOU FUCKIN’ READY FOR SOME GAMES!” Richie cheered, with around half of the room echoing his statement with cheers of their own. “Welcome to the Everett esports team! A brand new organization, hosted by the one and only. Me! Richie… if you didn’t already know.” He winked out towards the crowd, and as far as Owen could tell, towards no one in particular. “You might have wondered why this took so long to get started since sign ups were two months ago. Well the answer is right before you. Brand new PCs for the entire team, with a dedicated room in order to practice and play in!” Richie slowly walked around the table, talking out towards whoever was closest as he made his way clockwise around the room. He might have had a bit of an ego, but Owen could at least recognize that he knew how to hold people’s attention.
“How the fuck did he get them to spend so much money on this anyway?” Owen muttered, more towards Aoife than anyone else.
“I hear his parents are absolutely stacked. They donate so much to the school that they kind of let him do whatever he wants.” Castle whispered back to Owen, answering his question before Aoife could. Though, judging by Aoife’s inquisitive expression as she listened to Castle, it was a question that Aoife wouldn’t have been able to answer.
“As you can probably tell just from looking around the room, there’s only 16 spots to fill! 15 if you don’t count me. We’ve got two leagues this season, one for ULTRA MEGA DEATH KILLER, and one for SMASH N’ DASH N’ BASH!” Owen recognized the second game. It was a newer fighting game, one that came out just over a year ago. Owen had never really been into the fighting game genre, so he’d never even touched the game, but it was incredibly popular online, so it wasn’t that supringing that it was the sole game picked for the fighting game genre in this esports club. With no fighting game experience, it meant that his only option was UMDK. It was making a lot more sense why Richie had asked him if he’d played the game two months ago.
“8 spots for SDB, 8 spots for UMDK. It looks like we’ve got about 30ish people in this room right now. I am SO EXCITED that attendance is so high, but unfortunately we can only have so many people. Everyone here today can enjoy all of the snacks and drinks you want, but only 15 of you will be back for the next meeting.” Richie explained how today’s meeting was going to go. Owen had not expected that today would involve any sort of tryouts or elimination. It made some semblance of sense. With only 16 computers available, it wouldn’t be viable to have an excess of people on the teams, otherwise you’d risk people having no time to practice or coordinate any sort of team tactics. It was a little concerning to say the least. Owen didn’t really like the sudden stakes of the team, and the need to perform in front of people at some point in the next hour or two. Owen had only ever played UMDK in the comfort of his own room, with the company of his online friends.
“Oooo, I like where this is going.” Aoife brushed Owen’s shoulder to get him to look over at her. In contrast to himself, she seemed incredibly excited about this turn of events. It made sense to Owen. Nintendo Femicom loved a challenge, and any opportunity to prove that she was the best, and this was a delectable combination of those two. Additionally, she had nothing to hide whilst playing UMDK, which Owen thought would make her a lot less concerned about this public display of skill.
“Apologies to those of you here for UMDK, because I’ll be 1 of the 8 people on that team, which will make it a little bit harder to get a spot on the team. If you know the game, you’ll know 8 people doesn’t make a lot of sense numbers wise. It’s because we’re going to have two backup players that can switch out as needed. A team of 6 with 2 substitutes will be decided upon before we’re done here today.” Richie continued to explain how the decisions would be made for the SBD teams, but since it didn’t apply to Owen, he had opted to filter out his explanation. He was far more concerned with himself. This seemed like a lot to jump into, especially for someone that would need to hold back in order to not arouse suspicion from Aoife while they played. Owen thought it might be best to bail out here, or at the very least, perform poorly enough to be eliminated and then go back to his dorm room. Aoife had even mentioned going into this that she was more interested in the snacks than anything else, so Owen thought he might be able to convince her to just leave now.
“Seems pretty competitive huh, Aoife? Are you sure you don’t wanna just head back once you get your gummy worms and monster fix?” Owen asked, with enough of a smile to keep the offer light. He didn’t want to come off as demanding in any way.
“Why go through the hassle of all of this, you may ask?” Richie’s booming voice cut through the meandering conversations that had taken root across the room. “I managed to convince Everett University to supply all Everett Esports members a scholarship for the next semester if we can convince them to let us renew this team.” That seemed to do it for the crowd. Uproarious conversation exploded across the room, with people immediately turning to their left and right to ask as many variations of “is he serious” that they could think of.
“Are you serious, Owen? Look around you, we could probably crush the competition here.” Owen followed her gaze around the room. While he didn’t exactly understand what she meant, he couldn’t help but feel invigorated by her enthusiasm. There was no way to tell just by looking at the people if they’d be able to beat any of them. “Weren’t you just telling me how hard it is to make friends IRL? This is like… the perfect opportunity to do that. You’d be playing video games in your dorm room anyway, might as well try to make some money from it, right?” Aoife made some convincing points. Despite how little Owen wished to be here, there weren’t a lot of good reasons to not at least try. If he failed, he would get what he wanted anyway, and if he succeeded, then there was a chance he’d actually get a scholarship out of it. It was a win-win, if you ignored the downside that he would have to spend some evenings surrounded by other people.
The longer he looked into Aoife’s hazel eyes, the harder it was to not be swept up into the giddy gooey groove that positively oozed out from around her. He watched a shimmering ambition radiate from within her eyes; warm, like the hot sun soaking into the cement of a sidewalk.
“Sure. But you know I’m new to- uh, I mean, you know I’m rusty at UMDK. If I don’t qualify, you can’t blame me.” Owen tried to sidestep his statement, realizing that if someone nearby like Castle overheard and knew about his supposed experience, he would have some explaining to do. Aoife caught his mid-sentence change and nodded. It seemed like she was willing to go along with the lie, which incidentally was not a lie at all, but instead a truth that he covered with a separate lie. Owen felt like an avid arachnid of fabricated falsehoods, weaving a web of disinformation that he struggled to avoid catching himself up in. It did not feel like a very healthy way to live, which is why he had sent the message to Nintendo Femicom that morning. He felt lighter now, it was fine. It was certainly fine.
“To make this easier, I’ve got my trusty assistant, the vice president to my president, JB. He’ll be taking all of the SDB players while I take the UMDK players. Please feel free to grab whatever snacks you want, and meet up with either JB or myself in five minutes.” Richie announced to the crowd of gathered college students. Once he finished speaking, the aspiring esports players wandered about the room like an ant colony, grabbing a few items from the assortment that had been placed on the small table in the back of the room.
“How did he end us as the president of this club, anyway? Was there a vote or something?” Owen asked aloud. He was unsure if Aoife knew the answer, and felt it’d be better to include Castle in the conversation if his goal here was to “make friends” as Aoife had said.
“The same way he gets everything. His parents.” Castle shrugged as they twisted the rings along their fingers. It seemed to be an absent minded fidget, and with the ridiculous eight rings they were wearing, there was a lot to fidget with.
“Sounds spoiled.” Aoife responded.
“He is. He’s not all bad though. At least, I don’t think so.”
“You know him?” Owen asked.
“Used to.” Castle pushed off of the wall to head towards the opposite side of the room where the snacks had been set out.
“I don’t know, Richie seems fine to me.” Aoife spoke up around thirty seconds after Castle had let the two of us.
“I guess. I don’t think I know enough to have an opinion.”
“Well you should have an opinion soon. Especially if he’s spoiled as much as Castle says. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t end up as the team captain by default. I’ve never been one working in a whole team. Doesn’t seem like you are either.” Aoife paused for a moment before adding that last part. Owen turned to face her, his mouth opening and closing twice before he finally decided to turn thoughts into words.
“What makes you say that?”
“You play like someone who’s mostly solo queued before. Maybe some duo’s here and there, but your playstyle was super self sufficient when we played. Kind of like me. It’ll be tough to adjust to full team coordination when we make it on the team.”
“When? How come you’re so confident? I played like shit whenever we queued up together.” Owen crossed his arms across his chest, the intense noise of the small room was starting to get to him. Especially with the cacophony of several conversations happening all around him.
“You played like shit because you wanted to play like shit, dork. I still don’t know your reasoning, but I told you before that I saw something better in you. It’s like you put money down for losing matches the way you were throwing. It was fuckin’ weird, dude.” Aoife’s voice was playful, but her words felt like they had an unintentional sharpness to them. Owen hated how she had picked up on what he’d been doing and hadn’t mentioned it until later. It made him fear for all the other things that she might have noticed but hadn’t mentioned.
“Or maybe it’s like I said. Beginner’s luck.”
“Then turn that luck on the whole game when we play. If you throw our match I’m gonna be pissed, Owen. You’ll have to drink a whole liter of Tropical Enthusiasm if I’m ever gonna forgive you.” She smiled and leaned forward off of the wall to move towards the snacks. Given that it was her initial reason for coming here, Owen wasn’t surprised at all that she was planning on nabbing as many Monsters and gummy worms as they had on offer. He figured he might as well follow her as well so that they didn’t get split up. The snack table didn’t have as much stuff that Owen favored, so he opted for taking two small boxes of Nerds and a Monster. By the time they made it back to the wall they’d clung to before, Castle was already back in the spot from earlier. Owen gave a small wave and a “Hi” as they reunited, but quickly fell silent once Richie quieted the crowd. This chapter is updated first at novelping . com.
“Please head to whichever side you want to participate in!” As soon as Richie spoke, it was like Moses parted a sea of sweaty gamers. Students quickly moved towards the left and right walls for their respective games, with a small handful of students outright leaving. They must not have been interested in either game, or presumed they didn’t have the skill to continue.
“Alright, my ULTRA MEGA DEATH KILLERS! Welcome to the sickest fucking team you’ll ever step foot in. I wanna see what you’re made of. I want to know if you bleed binary, if you sweat laser beams, and if you KILL LIKE A MANIAC!” If nothing else, Richie excelled in pure energy and volume. Owen somewhat pitied JB, who was on the other side of the room attempting to talk to his very own group of students. “We’re gonna have you face off in a few 6v6 matches, I’ll be watching each of your performances, and once I’ve seen what you’re made of, I’ll make a list of what team I want, plus the two substitutes.” Owen wondered what the other side of the room would be doing if the UMDK team were taking 12 of the 16 available computers. It seemed like they were preparing for a rudimentary series of 1v1s using the final 4 computers on the edge of the table.
“Looks like there’s…” Richie took the time to quickly count the number of students that had collected on his half of the room. “...20 of you. We’ll do two matches, 4 of you will have to play in both. If we have time, I might even make you do a third if I feel I need some more information.” Owen appreciated just how much Richie seemed to treat this club like his own baby. With how he spoke, you would think that everything was on the line, that this team of college students were the last line of defense between certain doom and the rest of the world. In reality, it was just tryouts for an esports team at Everett University. Owen wondered if that was somehow intentional, like Richie was attempting to raise the stakes artificially in order to see if it would excite some people and frighten others. It certainly excited Aoife. As for Owen, he was struggling to not laugh at how intense Richie was being as he slid into a pseudo military sergeant routine.
“You six, go ahead and log onto your accounts.” Richie pointed at the first six people to go, deciding that it would be best to just move from left to right in the group of college gamers before him. Once the first six began to move, he pointed towards the next six. “You’ll go against them. Go ahead and log on, let’s make this nice and simple.” Richie waved along the students as they filtered onto the chairs and a cacophony of clicky keys erupted as people typed in their UMDK login information. It sent an uncomfortable ripple down Owen’s spine as he watched a user type in their information from the sideline. He knew he wouldn’t be able to use Witchofthew3st for this competition. It would be the fastest way to out himself to Aoife, as well as the most embarrassing way he could imagine. That left him with one wretched, muscled-up option. PertinentHorse. He would need to play this qualifier match on an entirely new account. Only one night of leveling, starter equipment, and only the most basic variety of skills on offer.
“Oh shit. All those guys have some pretty stacked setups. [Blind Retribution] and [Solipsistic Reverie] together? Can’t say I’ve thought of that one before. ‘Course, I’ll probably still put ‘em in the dirt, but it’s interesting to see.” Aoife excitedly patrolled back and forth between the monitors on our side of the room as people logged into their accounts and loaded into the local match. Owen could already see the mischievous gears turning in symphony in her head. The way that her eyes lit up when she started to put the pieces together for her own perfect victory made Owen smile. She was really pretty when she got this pumped up for something.
“I’ve seen it before. It’s sometimes run on debuff builds in order to proc a ton of status effects on a target whenever they attack you which is a pretty hard counter to flankers. Particularly good on sniper’s that don’t want to be surprised.” Owen chimed in the conversation with Aoife. It felt as though she was the conductor to the very heart that beat in Owen’s chest, fluttering and singing whenever she turned to look at him with a devilish grin.
“Aren’t you a newbie? How the fuck do you know that?” Aoife whispered back, in order to keep our little secret under tight wraps.
“Uh… TikTok. I saw a clip where people talked about it.” Owen replied, nervously pulling at the skin of his arm as he spoke.
“Huh. Okay. I’m gonna have to carry you through this match, it looks like. You’ve got a hell of a blank slate to work with on that account. You’re gonna have to find a way to tabula rocksa their socks off with PertinentHorse.” Aoife grinned, showing Owen just how proud she was of her own pun. It was the kind of cheesy joke that wormed its way under the skin of your mouth and forced you to smile along with it. Aoife always had a viral kind of mirth to her.
“You’re just going to have to accept I might not make it onto the team with you, Aoife.”
“You wouldn’t dare leave me alone with all these scary gamer boys would you?” Despite still whispering her response, Aoife thought it fit to flash her best impression of puppy eyes towards Owen. He tried not to think about the fact that her statement seemed to leave him out of the “scary gamer boys”. Probably because I’m not scary, Owen thought.
“Fine. I’ll try my best, but if my best doesn’t cut it you’ll just have to-”
“-rig the system, bribe Richie, and call it a job well done.” Aoife finished Owen’s statement for him, provoking a sarcastic roll of his eyes in response.
With the first match starting, the two of them stood silently, arms pressed together, as they attempted to watch the proceedings of the match through the two monitors that were closest to them. It seemed they had loaded into a Lockpoint match, where the objective was a series of two objectives that they would need to hold, with one team defending and the other attacking. The first point was always a much easier objective than the second, but if you played your cards right, you’d be able to use the momentum of the first capture to snowball into the second objective before the defending team could regain their bearings. It was a simple objective, but where the premise of the gamemode lacked in complexity, it more than made up for it with the versatility on offer. With the simple objective of capturing or defending a singular square of territory, the players had a multitude of different strategies that they could employ. Owen had seen his fair share of unique methods on both sides. He’d played a match a few weeks ago with Femicom in which the defending team went for an entirely stealthed approach to defense, leaving the objective seemingly entirely undefended only to swiftly eliminate the enemy team with coordinated attacks. Owen and Aoife had been that enemy team. It made for an entirely different type of match altogether, focused much more on exploring the area surrounding the objective in order to take out one or two of the defending team before setting foot on the objective.
ULTRA MEGA DEATH KILLER had cemented itself in Owen’s day to day routine and absorbed more of his life than any other online game exclusively because of its incredibly deep interlocking systems and wide range of strategies on offer. It felt almost like an immersive sim surrounded by the shell of an FPS shooter, something which he’d come to crave ever since he played his first few games.
The two teams in this match seemed to be playing it very traditionally, at least to begin with. Aoife and Owen watched on as the first team fight of the match played out before their eyes. After a few picks on their side, the first upset of the match occurred when a player on the other side of the table scored a triple kill, landing consecutive headshot after headshot on the backline of supporting players.
“He’s the one you’re gonna need to watch out for.” Owen jumped as Castle began to talk in his ear. Aoife noticed Owen’s reaction and snickered as he calmed himself and turned to Castle.
“Who?”
“Deacon. His username is Wr4th, like he made it four seconds after he turned 8 years old. He’s good though. A shoe-in for sure since he’s best buddies with Richie, and part of the reason this whole esports thing is happening.”
Owen looked back to the nearest monitor and spotted the kill feed in the top right. Sure enough, Wr4th had been the player that scored the triple kill on the attacking team, ripping the first objective from the defending team in under a minute of the match starting.
“How do you know all of this? You’re starting to sound like a mentor NPC that’s designed to give me exposition. You’re not gonna die off in a second, right?” Owen teased, acting before he had really thought much at all. Perhaps that was a contributor to his lack of IRL friends. Things to think about, he supposed. Castle seemed to find the joke hilarious, however, flashing their wide array of pearly white teeth while they grinned.
“I’ll make sure to dramatically give you my keyboard as I die.” Castle continued to smile widely as they spoke. It was almost unnerving to witness. Almost, being the keyword. It was a rather warm smile once you got past how odd it initially was. “I was friends with all of them a while back.”
“Was?” Aoife asked, picking up on the crucial work that Castle had said nonchalantly.
“People grow up, right? It’s whatever.” Castle plainly responded. Owen felt that there was more left unsaid as Castle spoke, but left it simmering in the background as he turned his focus back to the game.
The rest of the match had gone by relatively quickly. Wr4th, with a pocketed support by the username Sarah6258, swept up most of the competition. It was such a one sided stomp that it really felt unfair even to the other individuals on Wr4th’s team, as they had very little chance to do much of anything. Castle had informed Aoife and Owen as the match went on that Sarah6258 was Deacon’s girlfriend Sarah, who had been wrapped up in some of their online games in the past few months as a support player. Aoife had asked some additional questions about Sarah, but Castle said that they didn’t really know her all that well.
After the match concluded, Aoife and Owen were called up to take their seats. The both of them were happy to see that Castle had managed to make it onto the same team as them. The three were less happy to see that Sarah and Deacon had been pulled back in for this next match on the enemy team. It seemed to go against what Richie had said earlier when he wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to show their stuff. The two of them had clearly shown enough already, but they were already logging back in to face Owen and Aoife.
Owen heard a few chuckles as he typed in his login information to the computer, loading into the game with PertinentHorse, a boring, grey, military shooter protagonist man idly rotating on the lobby screen. Owen felt strange as he stared down the avatar. He felt so light. Like he might float right out of his chair and become one with the fluorescents in the ceiling. The lightness didn’t feel good. It hurt. It felt like something crucial had been pulled directly from his chest, forcing the rest of his organs to writhe around as they looked for the missing piece. He’d been feeling this lightness for the entire day, ever since he’d sent a message to Nintendo Femicom in the morning. He thought it was a liberating feeling at first, but the more it tickled at the corners of his mind, the more Owen understood what the feeling truly was. It wasn’t a freeing kind of lightness, it was a vacuous, empty hole in his heart. He’d ripped out the thing that had brought him the most joy. He’d slipped his grimley little fingers into his chest and tore out Witchofthew3st, thinking it’d make him feel better. He only felt cold now as he looked at PertinentHorse. It lacked any of the personality that Witch had. There were no cosmetics, no custom cursor, no customized HUD elements. Those components made up his online identity with Witchofthew3st, and PertinentHorse lacked them all. He was looking at a monument to an Owen that had cut out joy from every part of his life. Owen felt light, in a sickening kind of way.
“You ready?” Aoife tapped Owen’s shoulder and looked over towards him with a wide, invigorating grin. That was nice, Owen thought. Owen felt like he’d soon be drifting out of his own chair due to the disgusting emptiness in him, yet Aoife anchored him to his chair. Her smile seemed to root him in place. The way that she looked at him with a tender expression, eyes full of a righteous desire to win. It hadn’t filled the hole in his heart, but it was a warmth that curled up inside of him and made him want to succeed. Owen didn’t feel light when Aoife gently held his arm.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s get our giddy gooey groove on, Owen.”