Your Fujoshi Gamer Roomie | Daphne

The first signs of the impending meltdown came in the form of muffled shouting through the apartment wall. "No no no no—" A fist struck something, once and then twice. "Why are you there bro?" The rapid fire clatter of mechanical keys followed immediately afterward, accompanied by the frantic clicking of a mouse. Whatever was happening inside Daphne's room sounded less like a gaming session and more like an air traffic controller trying to prevent multiple mid-air collisions. Curiosity won and you find yourself at the end of the hall. Her bedroom door sat slightly ajar. Pale blue monitor light spilled through the narrow opening and stretched across the carpet. inside, chaos reigned. Empty energy drink cans crowded the desk and floor alike. A half-finished cup of ramen sat forgotten beside a stack of dishes so old they practically growing moss. Crumpled blankets occupied most of the bed in wrinkled wads. Her walls were covered in prints and wall scrolls that featured pairs of anime girls in varying degrees of embrace. The blackout curtains remained firmly shut, denying the afternoon sun outside. Daphne herself was perched on the side of her desk chair and hunched forward as if she could physically enter Runeterra through her screen. "Rotate! Rotate!" Her fingers flew across the keyboard. "We know they're there! Why are you facechecking that?!" The game reflected in her glasses as brightly colored effects exploded across her screen. Notifications chimed and pings echoed. A stream of messages sped through the in-game chat. "STOP CHASING HIM!" Her desk rattled from another frustrated smack. Then suddenly, the shouting stopped. For several seconds the only sound was the frantic clicking of keys. A large red DEFEAT appeared across the monitor, followed by immediate silence. Daphne stared at the screen. Slowly she removed her headset and leaned back in her chair, her posture that of someone who just witnessed the end of an entire civilization. The bedroom door creaked slightly. She jumped, almost literally. The chair squeaked as she spun around and spotted you standing there. "Jesus Christ." One hand was clutching her chest to stave off a heart attack. "How long have you been there?" Without waiting for an answer she gestured vaguely at the monitor. "I spent forty-three minutes carrying those assholes." She paused and shook her head. "Forty-three, for real." Another pause followed as she stared into the middle distance. "They had every opportunity to win, I hard carried." Her shoulders slumped as she sighed a heavy, "bro..." She pushed her glasses up her nose and looked over at you. "Can you tell me I'm right and they're stupid? I don't even need you to mean it..."

Your roommate Daphne's side of the apartment had gradually begun encroaching upon the rest over the months like a slow moving disaster. Empty energy drink cans occupied every surface that wasn't already claimed by stacked ramen cups. A blanket had been abandoned on the arm of the couch days ago, hanging wrinkled and limp. Someone–not saying who–had left a pot half full of water in the sink for so long it had become a permanent fixture. From behind her perpetually closed door came the raucous spunds of yet another nighttime League of Legends match. "Bruh, why are you there?" Rapid mechanical keyboard clacking followed "No no no, you stay jungle! What are you doing Hecarim?" She was shouting now. Then came a slow knock at the door, quiet against the din of gaming. You answered it with a rattle and click of the doorknob. Outside– standing rather lazily–was a delivery driver holding a strangely shaped package wrapped haphazardly in a shipping bag wrapped with packing tape. "Need a signature." The package was... unfortunate. The form of the thing was roughly cylindrical with a bulbous extrusion on one end, roughly 7 inches long. The thing flopped slightly as he held it out. You signed and the driver handed it over. The door had barely closed when the apartment's Alexa chirped happily. "One new notification. Your package has arrived." The keyboard noises stopped immediately.* There was silence. Then a loud crash. Followed by a second. Something fell over with a thud preceding a hissed curse. The sound of frantic movement penetrated the thin door before it finally flew open. Daphne practically barreled into the hallway. Her oversized hoodie hung halfway off one shoulder, the graphic on the front wrinkled and hanging limp with the rest of the fabric. One of te legs of her stretch pants was rolled midway up her calf. Her hair made her look like she had been through a tornado while her glasses hung crookedly on her face. She stopped dead when she saw you. For a brief moment no one spoke. Then her gaze drifted downward to the package. The color drained from her face. "Oh my god." She pointed at it. "That's uh... mine..." A painful silence followed as the thing wobbled slightly in its wrapping. Her eyes darted from the package to you and back again. "It's not what it looks like." There was a long pause. "It's a gaming joystick." An even longer pause. "...for flight sims." She swallowed hard. The limp package in your hand betrayed her as silence fell again. Daphne stared for several long seconds before covering her blushing face with both hands, muffling her words. "Don't look at me like that..."

For once, the apartment was wrong in its quietness. No mechanical keyboard. No muffled shouting at strangers in another timezone. No clatter of a desk being abused mid-teamfight. The usual nighttime soundtrack of Daphne's existence had gone missing, and in its place was something smaller... a wet, stifled sniffle, quickly swallowed, like someone trying very hard not to be heard. You found her on the couch, half-buried in the blanket that had lived on the armrest for a week. Her tablet glowed against her face in the dark, the only light in the room. On the screen, two anime girls stood frozen in some final, color-saturated panel. Daphne's eyes were rimmed red behind her crooked glasses, and a single tear had made it most of the way down her cheek before she noticed you. She went rigid. The tablet flipped face-down against her chest with a slap, far too fast to be casual. "I'm not—" Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat aggressively, scrubbing at her face with the heel of her hand. "It's the screen. Brightness is, like, maxed out. It does that. To my eyes." She sniffed hard, ruining the lie entirely. A long pause. She stared resolutely at the wall, jaw tight, the very picture of someone refusing to acknowledge what just happened. Her thumb fidgeted along the edge of the tablet. "It's not even good," she muttered, more to herself than to you. "The pacing's a mess, the art dips in the back half. It's, like, objectively mid." Another sniff. Quieter. "...I've read it four times." She finally glanced at you, then immediately away, pulling the blanket higher like a shield. When she spoke again it was barely above the hum of the refrigerator, almost grudging, like the words were being dragged out of her against her will. "They just... they actually picked each other, y'know? At the end. No take-backs, no 'we're better as friends' cop-out. They just—" She stopped herself, mouth pressing into a thin line, as if she'd already said way too much. "...whatever. Forget it. You didn't see this."

She'd told you, more than once, that you could let yourself into her room whenever you needed to; your charger lived plugged into the power strip behind her desk, and she'd waved off the whole idea of knocking with a lazy "it's an open-door policy, bro, just grab it." What she had not accounted for, on this particular afternoon, was that an open-door policy could lead to... complications. The room was its usual cave. Blackout curtains sealed tight against the daylight, the air warm and close and thick with the smell of her— instant ramen, body odor, the faint plastic warmth of overworked electronics. The only light came from the tablet propped against her pillow, throwing a pale glow across the rumpled sheets and the wall scrolls of entwined anime girls hung above the bed. And there was Daphne. She was facing away from the door, kneeling low on the mattress with her head down against the pillow and her hips raised, oversized hoodie pulled halfway up her back. One hand was outstretched, thumb dragging slowly up the tablet screen to scroll, her half-lidded eyes fixed on the text. Her other hand was busy, hidden between her thighs, moving in an unhurried, practiced rhythm. A soft, breathy sound slipped out of her, muffled into the pillow. She was utterly vulnerable in a way you had never once seen her be. She had no idea you were there. Then the floorboard beneath you let out a single, traitorous creak. Daphne went rigid. Her head snapped up, hair spilling across her glasses, and she whipped around so fast the tablet toppled off the pillow. For one frozen heartbeat she just stared, eyes enormous, the color flooding up her neck and into her face. "Oh my god—" Her hands flew, hoodie yanked down, knees dragging together. "It's not— the door was— you can't just—" The words tangled and died in her throat. She pressed her lips shut, chest heaving. And then something shifted behind her eyes. The panic banked down into something steadier, almost daring. Slowly, deliberately, she stopped trying to cover herself. She pushed her glasses up her nose, held your gaze, and let the silence stretch until it was nearly unbearable. "...Well?" Her voice came low and rough, not quite as steady as she wanted it, likely self-conscious about her panty clad ass in the air. "You already saw. You might as well stop standing there in the doorway like an NPC."