games ▹ muke

0.4 - confessions

“Didn’t I fucking tell you?” he asked for a millionth time as the new level was loading, meaning I made it.

“Shut up!” I laughed. “I know that you're right, but still shut up.”

“Sorry,” he said, I could still hear him smiling though.

“Why do you keep saying sorry?” I asked before I could stop myself. We didn’t really talk about anything except gaming, and now I was asking personal questions. I didn’t want to cross the line. Maybe he was here because he wanted to escape too, not to be questioned on his habits.

“I don’t know, um, I just do,” he said in a calmer tone. “I kind of… feel like I have to apologize if I do something wrong. My mum always says I’m an inconvenience.”

I felt something sour in my throat and realized that I was sorry. I was sorry to hear some guy say such painful words with no emotion at all, with ease, because he got used to them. I felt like it shouldn’t have been that way. No mother should ever call her kid an inconvenience. He wasn’t a thing, in the end, he wasn’t some old chair that became “inconvenient” and you could just throw him away. And I felt anger, because there was I, with my problems and ignorant parents, and there was him, that boy with no name but with so much hurt in his life, and tons and tons of others, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Hey…” he said, waking me up from my thoughts yet again. “You there?”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice suddenly rough from the feeling in my throat. “I just kind of relate to that.”

Silence.

‘Uh, what’s your name?” he suddenly asked.

“Michael,” I said, having no clue why he decided to ask now. I heard him sigh on the other side, and then he replied.

“See, Michael, you’ve got a name now. You’re a person. A fucking boring and sarcastic one at that, but you do your thing. You ace every game you play, I saw your profile. And you’re fucking funny. You’re someone, okay? You can’t be an inconvenience.”

I kept silence, not knowing how to answer to that, but I had to admit it was damn sweet of him to say it. He managed to fit something so big into his simple words and sentences and I felt like he understood. He said exactly what I wanted to hear and he wasn’t stuffing my ears with lies, he was brutally honest, and I still felt better after his words.

“What’s your name?” I asked back finally, because I didn’t come up with anything better. But I didn’t get an answer, and when I glanced at the screen I saw the red circle next to the player Hemmo1996’s icon, which meant he had logged out, leaving me without an answer.

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sooo how did y'all like that

pls let me know what you think and if you even like the story

- dasha