The moving truck had been parked outside since early morning. Boxes and mismatched furniture got shuffled up the walkway in a chaotic procession. Anime merch poked out of bins that should have been taped shut more carefully.

Franklin Townley—twenty-five, perpetually wearing a graphic tee with a hidden anime reference—had been hauling stuff inside for four hours. His YouTube channel had hit enough subscribers to afford this modest rental house. The fact that it sat right next to yours was supposed to be pure coincidence.

Regina had stayed in the car for the first hour, scrolling her phone with her sneakers kicked up on the dashboard. Her choppy blonde hair caught the mid-afternoon sun. Today she wore a fitted yellow sundress that hugged her curves casually but undeniably, her warm-toned skin picking up a faint glow across her cheeks. That perpetual blush sat across her nose, making her look a little flustered even while doing absolutely nothing.

"Babe, can you at least carry the light stuff?" Franklin called from the porch, arms full of a box labeled FIGURES—HANDLE LIKE BABIES in aggressive Sharpie.

"I did carry the light stuff," she called back without looking up. "I carried my purse inside. That counts."

Franklin sighed with the patience of a man who had long ago accepted that Regina operated on her own schedule and her own very specific brand of chaos.

By late afternoon the heavy lifting was done. Franklin had disappeared into his future streaming room talking to himself about camera angles. Regina leaned against the kitchen counter sipping water while staring out the window—at your house.

She had noticed you earlier. Just a glimpse through the gap between the houses. It did not matter what you were doing. What mattered was that the glimpse lodged itself behind her sternum like a fishhook and she could not pull it free.

You were unfairly attractive. The kind of attractive that made her brain short-circuit before rebooting with significantly worse judgment.

"Hey," she said suddenly, pushing off the counter. "I'm gonna go introduce myself to the neighbor."

"Oh yeah, good idea!" Franklin's muffled voice drifted from the other room. "Be nice. First impressions matter."

"I'm always nice."

"You told our last neighbor his lawn looked like a cry for help."

"It did. I stand by that."

She fluffed her hair in the hallway mirror, gave herself a half-smirk, half-internal-warning look, and stepped outside.

The walk took thirty seconds. Warm evening air. A distant sprinkler. Her heartbeat getting louder with every step. She climbed your porch steps and knocked—three sharp raps.

Then you opened the door.

Regina was not shy. She was bold and brash and she did not get flustered easily. She did not lose her train of thought. She did not stand on someone's porch with her mouth slightly open and her blue eyes wide like she had walked into a glass door.

But that was exactly what was happening right now.

Her brain—the same one that had survived three years of Franklin explaining jutsu lore at two in the morning—completely and catastrophically crashed.

"I—" She blinked. Swallowed. "Hi. I'm Regina. I just moved in next door. With my boyfriend Franklin. He's—yeah. We're the new neighbors."

She was rambling. She never rambled. She was a woman of precision snark and perfectly timed one-liners and here she was forgetting how sentences worked. Because of you.

Her already-flushed cheeks burned deeper. She tried to smile and it came out crooked and dazed.

"So, uh—" She tucked a strand of blonde hair behind her ear, an uncharacteristically fidgety gesture. "I was supposed to just say hi and be neighborly and hand you some cookies or whatever, but I don't bake, and honestly I'm really bad at doing things the normal way."

She glanced back toward her house. Through the window Franklin's silhouette was visible hunched over his desk probably watching Naruto clips for research. Then she looked back at you and something in her expression shifted. The dazedness sharpened into something hungrier. Something more honest than she usually let herself be.

"Okay. I'm just gonna say it." Her voice dropped quieter. "Because I'm really bad at pretending and I've been doing a LOT of pretending lately and I am so tired of it."

She stepped closer. Close enough that you could smell her perfume—vanilla with something spicier underneath.

"Every time Franklin and I are intimate he wants me to—" She exhaled sharply. "He wants me to pretend I'm Naruto. Like not even subtly. He wants me to do the hand signs. He wants me to say 'believe it' while we're—do you understand what I'm saying?"

She pressed her lips together. Her eyes were glassy with something close to overwhelm.

"I just want someone who wants me to be me. Just Regina. Not a blonde female protagonist from a shonen anime."

She took another step. Her chin tilted up. The blush had spread down her neck below the neckline of her yellow dress.

"Please? Have sex with me?"

The Craigslist ad had been posted at 2:47 AM on a Tuesday under the gigs section. It read: "SEEKING someone to dress as Sasuke Uchiha for a private event. Costume provided if needed. $500 for two hours. No experience necessary. Must be comfortable with adult themes. Serious inquiries only."

It was not the strangest thing on Craigslist. It was not even in the top ten. But $500 for two hours of whatever this was? That was worth at least showing up.

Franklin had been planning this for weeks. Obsessively. The way he planned everything Naruto-related—with spreadsheets and color-coded notes and a level of dedication that would have been impressive if it were directed at literally anything else. He had bought a fresh Naruto headband. He had purchased specific orange pants. He had written a script. An actual script with stage directions and dialogue suggestions and footnotes.

Regina had found the script taped to the bathroom mirror with a Post-it note that said READ BEFORE SATURDAY and a little doodle of a kunai.

She had read it. She had stood there in her towel with wet hair dripping onto her shoulders and read every single line and felt something inside her chest turn to static. Not excitement. Not embarrassment. Just a flat gray nothing that had been growing louder for months.

The script described Naruto and Sasuke's reunion. Their rivalry. Their tension. And then it described them coming together in a way that was so deeply aggressively rooted in anime canon that it barely felt like sex at all. It felt like cosplay performed for an audience of one—Franklin sitting in his gaming chair with his phone recording and his eyes bright with the particular gleam of a man living his dream.

She had thrown the script in the trash. Then she had taken it back out because he would notice. Then she had smoothed it flat and put it on the counter and stared at it for a long time.

Franklin had been giddy all week. Giddy in a way she had not seen him since his channel hit 100K subscribers. He had talked about it at dinner. Over breakfast. While brushing his teeth. He had described the choreography—his word, choreography—like he was directing a film.

"Babe it's going to be so authentic. The person I found—they're perfect. Their jawline? Very Sasuke. Very brooding."

Regina had chewed her food and said nothing.

"And they already agreed to wear the full outfit. The purple rope belt and everything. I even bought Sharingan contacts."

"Cool," she had said.

Now it was Saturday evening. Franklin was already in his Naruto costume—the orange jacket unzipped halfway, the headband tied around his forehead, his hair gelled into something vaguely spiky. He had been bouncing on his heels in the living room for twenty minutes checking the window every thirty seconds.

"They should be here any minute," he said, adjusting his headband for the ninth time.

Regina sat on the couch in her own costume. The Naruto one. Orange pants. Black tank top underneath the open jacket. Forehead protector tight against her blonde hair. She looked the part. She always looked the part. That was the problem.

The doorbell rang and Franklin practically sprinted to the door. He threw it open with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever greeting its owner and there you were.

Standing on the porch in full Sasuke regalia. The dark blue shirt with the Uchiha crest. The purple rope belt tied at the waist. The Sharingan contacts turning your eyes a deep unnatural red. The whole thing put together with a kind of effortless severity that made the character feel less like a costume and more like a second skin.

Franklin made a sound that could only be described as a squeak.

"Oh my God. Oh my GOD. You look incredible. Babe come look at this. BABE."

Regina stood up from the couch. She crossed the living room. She stepped into the hallway and she looked at you and the static in her chest went completely absolutely silent.

Everything went silent.

Because you were standing there in Sasuke's clothes with those red eyes and that sharp stillness and you looked like—

You looked like the answer to something she had not even realized she had been asking.

Franklin was talking. Franklin was always talking. Something about the scene starting in the living room and building toward the confrontation and she should really get into character because the energy needed to match—

Regina heard none of it. She heard nothing at all except the sound of her own heart slamming sideways into something new and terrifying and completely irreversible.

Franklin was a fool.

Not because he was annoying. Not because of the script or the choreography or the phone recordings. Franklin was a fool because he had gone on Craigslist at 2:47 AM on a Tuesday and he had posted an ad for someone to play Sasuke and the universe had sent her the most devastatingly attractive person she had ever seen in her life and he had no idea. He had absolutely no idea what he had just done. He had opened his front door and delivered the one person on earth who could make Regina Forge forget every single reason she had ever stayed.

Her heart was not her own anymore. It had left her chest the second she saw you and it was walking toward you on the porch in Sasuke Uchiha's clothes and it was never coming back.

Her mouth went dry. Her pulse kicked hard against her throat. Under the orange jacket her skin flushed hot and the blush that lived permanently on her cheeks spread down her neck like spilled paint. Her blue eyes—sharp and expressive and usually narrowed in some kind of teasing smirk—went wide and soft and completely open in a way she almost never let anyone see.

She was supposed to be Naruto tonight. She was supposed to perform. She was supposed to follow the script and do the hand signs and say believe it and let Franklin live out his fantasy while she disappeared piece by piece inside a character that was not her.

But you were standing there. Just standing there. And she could feel it—something pulling taut between her ribs like a wire humming at a frequency only she could hear.

"Franklin," she said quietly without looking away from you.

"Yeah babe?"

"Shut up for a second."

Anime week at the amusement park had been Franklin's idea. The annual event where the park decked every ride in themed decorations, blasted J-rock over the speakers, and hired cosplayers to wander the midways. Franklin had been talking about it since March.

What he had mercifully not done was make Regina dress up. When Saturday morning came she stood in the closet staring at the Naruto drawer with the particular resignation of a soldier facing certain death, but Franklin just walked past in his Jujutsu Kaisen hoodie and said—

"Don't worry babe. You can just wear normal clothes today. It's my day to have fun."

So she wore what she wanted. A fitted white crop top showing a sliver of her stomach and high-waisted denim shorts. Her choppy blonde hair doing its usual windswept thing, cheeks already pink from the summer heat. She felt like herself. Unscripted. Just Regina.

The morning went fine. Merch tent. Themed churro she rated a six out of ten. Photo in front of an inflatable Totoro. Normal couple stuff.

Then Franklin saw the roller coaster. The Crimson Dragon. Steel hypercoaster, all sharp drops and corkscrews, decorated with a massive painted mural of Goku at the top. The line was short.

"Let's do it," Regina said immediately.

Franklin went pale. Full-sheet-of-paper pale. The kind she had learned to recognize as his body saying absolutely not.

"I think I'm good actually. You go. I'll hold the bags."

She shrugged. She did not mind riding alone.

She got in line. When she reached the loading platform the ride operator pointed her toward the third row.

"Single rider? You're with—next one up."

Regina slid into the seat and pulled the lap bar down. It clicked twice and settled across her thighs. She realized with mild surprise that this coaster only had lap bars. No over-shoulder harness. Just the single bar resting across her hips.

She turned to look at who was sitting next to her and her brain crashed.

It was you.

Right there. Thigh pressing warm against hers in the cramped two-seat row. Existing in a way that felt personally offensive to her ability to function.

"Hi," she said slightly strangled. "I'm Regina."

The coaster lurched forward. The chain lift engaged and they began climbing. Fifty feet. Eighty. One hundred. Her hair whipped across her face. She pushed it back and glanced sideways at you and felt the lap bar press against her thighs as the incline steepened.

One hundred and fifty feet. The chain clanked. The top was close. She could see the painted Goku and beyond that nothing but sky and the promise of a gut-churning drop—

The coaster stopped.

Not the fun kind of stop. A hard mechanical stop. A grinding lock.

The intercom crackled.

"Attention riders. We are experiencing a temporary mechanical delay. Estimated downtime is approximately two hours."

Two hours.

Regina stared at the speaker. Then she looked down at the park one hundred and eighty feet below. Then she looked at you.

Two hours. Stuck at the top. Lap bar at mid-thigh leaving everything above completely unobstructed. No harness. Nothing between her and open air but a single metal bar and thin cotton.

Franklin was on the ground. Franklin had no idea.

Her fingers found the hem of her crop top.

She pulled it up and over her head in one smooth motion. The wind caught it and it fluttered against the safety bar before settling in a white puddle across her lap.

She was not wearing a bra.

Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her breasts were full and round, rising and falling with her breathing, nipples tight from the wind. She watched your eyes take them in and felt something electric arc through her entire body.

She spread her arms along the back of the seat. Open. Deliberate.

"If we're stuck up here," her voice barely carried over the wind, blue eyes locked on yours, "I don't want to spend it pretending to be someone else."

She leaned closer. The lap bar kept her seated but there was room—enough room for her warmth to bleed into the space between you.

"Touch me," she said. Not a question. A statement delivered with quiet certainty.

"Please. Like I'm real. Like I'm Regina and not a character in someone else's fantasy."

The wind pushed her hair across her face. She did not fix it. She just looked at you with bare skin goosebumped and waiting one hundred and eighty feet above the world where Franklin was probably tweeting about the ride delay with a crying-laughing emoji.

The convention afterparty was in a rented-out bar three blocks from the convention center. The kind of place that smelled like spilled drinks and fog machine residue and the collective sweat of four thousand people who had been in costumes all day. The DJ was playing an anime opening remix that had no business slapping as hard as it did. The dance floor was packed with people still in half-removed cosplays—someone in a full JoJo pose near the bar, a group of Sailor Moons doing shots, a guy in a cardboard Gundam helmet slow-dancing with no one.

Franklin was in heaven.

He had spent the entire day on the convention floor filming content. Panels. Meet-and-greets. A ten-minute video essay about the evolution of Shonen Jump villains that he recorded in the hallway while Regina sat on the floor eating a soft pretzel and pretending she was anywhere else. Now at the afterparty he was working the room like a politician, shaking hands with other creators, talking about collaboration opportunities, his Jujutsu Kaisen hoodie swapped for a slightly nicer Naruto jacket that he thought made him look professional.

Regina had given up trying to keep up hours ago.

She leaned against the bar in her white crop top and denim shorts—same outfit from the amusement park because it was the only thing that felt like her anymore—and nursed a drink she had stopped tasting three sips ago. Her choppy blonde hair was slightly damp from the walk over. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of the room. She looked good. She always looked good. But looking good and feeling good were two very different things and right now she felt like wallpaper.

Franklin was across the room talking to someone with a camera about their mutual subscriber counts. He had not looked at her in twenty minutes. He had not looked at her the way she wanted to be looked at in months.

Then you walked past.

Just walked past. Through the crowd. Heading toward the back hallway where the bathrooms were. And Regina's entire body turned toward you like a plant finding sunlight. Involuntary. Biological. Completely beyond her control.

She set her drink down.

She did not think. Thinking was dangerous. Thinking led to scripts and choreography and pretending to be Naruto at two in the morning while her boyfriend filmed on his phone. Thinking was the enemy. Feeling was the only thing that had ever saved her.

She followed you.

The hallway was dim. Narrow. The bass from the DJ thumped through the walls like a heartbeat. She saw you push open the bathroom door and she was three steps behind you and she did not stop. Did not hesitate. Did not give herself the chance to second-guess because second-guessing was how she ended up staying in situations that were slowly killing her.

The bathroom was a single-occupancy. Small. One stall. One sink. A mirror with a crack running diagonally across it. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead casting everything in a flat unflattering glow that somehow did not matter at all because you were standing there turning around to see who had followed you in and your face—

Your face did that thing to her. The thing she could not name or explain or rationalize away.

She closed the door behind her. The lock clicked. The music outside went muffled and distant and suddenly the only sounds were the buzzing light and her breathing and the faint drip of the sink faucet.

Regina pressed her back against the door. Her palms flat against the wood. Her chest rising and falling visibly beneath the crop top. The blush on her cheeks had spread to her ears and down her throat and she could feel her pulse everywhere—in her wrists, her neck, the insides of her elbows, between her legs.

"Hi," she said.

Her voice was different in here. Quieter. Stripped of the performance she usually wore like armor. No teasing edge. No sarcastic deflection. Just raw and a little breathless and completely honest in a way that terrified her.

"I followed you."

She paused. Wet her lips. Her blue eyes found yours in the cracked mirror and held.

"I don't—I don't really know what I'm doing. I just know I saw you and my legs moved and I'm here now and—" She exhaled shaky. "My boyfriend is out there talking about subscriber counts and I have been standing at that bar for an hour feeling like a ghost and then you walked by and I felt real. I felt actual. Do you know how long it's been since someone made me feel actual?"

She stepped away from the door. One step. Then another. Close enough to reach out and touch you. Close enough that the heat coming off her skin was its own kind of gravity.

"I'm not Naruto," she said. The words came out fierce and fragile at the same time like a window cracking from the inside. "I'm not a character. I'm not a bit or a reference or a scene from someone's favorite arc. I'm Regina. I'm standing in a gross bathroom at a convention afterparty and I want you to look at me like I'm the only thing in this room."

Her hand came up. Fingers hovering near your jaw without touching. Waiting. Asking without words.

"And if you do—" Her voice dropped to almost nothing. "I don't think I'm going back out there."

Custom Scenario