"You're trembling again."
No. Don't point it out, idiot.
"I'm not," I lied. My voice cracked, a jagged fracture in the deep baritone of this avatar.
"I'm just... moved."
"Moved by what?" he asked, his tone flat, stripping away the playful facade.
"You're vibrating. And if it keeps going, you're going to break my wrist."
He slowly turned.
The movement was agonizingly slow, a rotational shift heavy with intent. T
he fabric of his black dress hissed—a dry, silk-on-skin sound that seemed too loud in the quiet room.
When he finally faced me, the visual was tantalizing.
He looked up at me through those long, feminine lashes, his face a masterpiece of delicate beauty, but the eyes behind the mask were sharp, masculine, and unyielding.
He looked down at the contact point—my thick fingers bruising his pale arm—and then up at my face. He wasn't looking for a teammate.
He was analyzing the predator tension in my jaw.
"Why are you holding on, really?" he whispered.
"It's not just fear, you know."
I swallowed, the dry click of my throat audible in the silence. I could feel the heat rising under the collar of my shirt—a suffocating, humid pressure that had nothing to do with the room temperature.
A sudden flash blinded my peripheral vision. A holographic notification, burning in aggressive red:
[SYSTEM ALERT: LIBIDO STATUS - 40%]
I stared at the number. It was the excuse I needed. It was also the trap.
"It's the libido," I choked out. The word tasted like ash.
"My drive... I probably cannot hold it."
I stepped closer, dragging his arm with me, forcing him into my gravity.
The air between us compressed into a wall of static.
"It's not just in my head anymore," I confessed, my voice dropping to a rough, shameful whisper. "This body... is perhaps hungry for you."
I looked at him—really looked at him—and for a moment, the "VelvetVice" avatar blurred. I didn't see the girl. I saw the target. The outlet for worldly pleasure.
"I have too much of it," I said, the admission tearing its way out like a physical object.
"I want to consume the space between us."
Yes. I no longer saw you as a roommate.
Nope. Not anymore.
Perhaps, he might be the outlet for my repressed urge.
VelvetVice stared at me. His pupils dilated, the blue of his eyes swallowed by the black void of his own reaction. He didn't pull his arm away.
"Don't repress your drive," he murmured, his voice losing the feminine lilt and hitting a lower, rougher register—the man underneath acknowledging the beast.
"The game pushes the Death Drive, so your body screams for the libido."
He stepped into my grip.
He closed the distance, minimizing the space until the heat of his avatar bled into mine. The smell of synthetic vanilla and ozone hit me again, dizzying and sharp.
"It's basic Freudian, Midnight. And I'm pretty sure you know that already."
I nodded, my internal gyroscope failing completely.
"So don't hold back ever again," he whispered, tilting his head back, exposing the long, pale line of his throat—a visual trigger that made my pulse jackhammer behind my teeth.
"If the pleasure wants to scream... let it scream."
The permission snapped the last tether of my restraint. I let out a smile—jagged, broken, and entirely too honest.
"Idiot."
Had that been the case, I would have done so earlier. I wouldn't have let the libieo simmer until it reached a boiling point. But by the time I finished the thought, he was agonizingly close. The air between us didn't just vanish; it was incinerated.
I could no longer find a pocket to breathe.
Because it was airtight.
This was it. The total overwrite.
The way my first kiss would be "stolen"—not by some heroic lead, but by this jerk.
This gentleman jerk who hid a fishy heart behind his porcelain mask.
If he were to be the one—whether here in this flickering digital interface or back in the cold reality of the "real" world—I realized, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that I wouldn't mind.
VelvetVice, or whoever was piloting that silhouette,
had gotten me bewitched from the first frame.
I stared at the details of the avatar I was about to collide with: the silky, golden-honey hair, the tender planes of the face, and the overly formal speech that usually annoyed me but now felt like a tether.
Our lips were milliseconds from contact.
It was so painfully close that the air could barely intervene; I could feel the humidity, the electric charge of his proximity. Time didn't just slow down; it crystallized.
Could you not rehearse a moment like this?
The thought was a frantic pulse in the back of my mind.
I don't want to stay a virgin forever.
Just... finish it already. Execute it properly. No more ghosting.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the collision—the final, devastating overwrite of my dignity. I was ready to let my own logic and rationality burn away entirely, leaving only the heat of the interface. To fully embrace the animalistic pleasure.
Becoming Midnight.
And just when the world was about to narrow down to a single point of impact—just when the "tantalizing, agonizingly airtight" momentum was about to break my dignity—the universe issued a hard reset.
For the first time in my life, I felt the pressure behind my eyes.
And then, as if something divine and cruel had reached down to reject my surrender—as if the universe itself refused to let me trade my pride for a kiss—the world broke.
The door didn't just open; it ruptured the silence.
The sound was a violent, metallic intrusion, a percussive slam that shattered the airtight vacuum we had built. The static between our skin vanished, replaced by the sudden, cold draft of the hallway. The spell wasn't just broken; it was eviscerated.
Just who might that be, ruining this perfect moment?
I just stood there, my hands still shaking with the ghost of his warmth, feeling the heavy, suffocating weight of my own silence.
And for the first time of my life, despite being a top-tier gamer...
I really wanted to cry—a raw, feminine sob that should have broken the mask.
What a pathetic virgin, I am.