The room was dark save for the flickering glow from the computer screen that cast dancing shadows across the young woman’s face. She lay in her bed propped up by what looked like a near-infinite number of pillows, her body occupying but a sliver of the mattress as she curled up protectively against what she was watching on the screen, trying to make sense of the complex emotions she felt clawing their way to the surface of her consciousness.

  The worst part was she’d just used the last tissue from the box. A mess of snotty, tear-soaked tissues surrounded her and she felt no sign that her bawling was going to slow down any time soon, so now she’d soon be forced to get up and find a new box or start using her bed sheets instead. As tempting as that lazy stop-gap solution was at this moment, she’d adulted enough to know that it was a short-term fix she’d come to regret soon enough. For heaven’s sake, she was almost 28 years old, too old for this embarrassing Bridget Jones singleton breakdown.

  She’d been feeling strangely emotional for a while, ever since her sister had first shown her Daniel on television fighting that antlered bunny. She’d been not-so-secretly obsessed with the 24/7 broadcasts of the game since then, which wasn’t such a big deal — just about everybody was watching it — except that she’d become of the not-so-secret obsession of a lot of people around the same time. It hadn’t taken them very long to figure out that she was the Siobhan he’d more or less confessed was the love of his life.

  At first, Daniel had been the object of much scorn and ridicule. His lonely antics as a chronically depressed introvert early in the game were mocked ruthlessly on social media, the schadenfreude practically shrieking across the internet every time he met with a setback, but at the same time his individual feed became one of the most popular. As riveting as it was to watch him keep trying and working hard to get stronger, she suspected his early popularity had a lot to do with the fact that he’d glommed himself onto those two ultra-popular knock-out models. But that was then.

  Over time, it wasn’t his constant proximity to eye candy that had kept people watching him as much as his relentless growth. Now that he’d taken two dungeons he was popular on his own merits, and the agonizingly slow and endlessly frustrating development of his confidence alongside the staggeringly rapid growth of his powers had become one of the more captivating storylines to follow. That he’d transformed his own physique into some pretty nice eye candy hadn’t been missed by a lot of viewers either, and Daniel, her ex, the object of early mockery, had become one of the most popular Players.

  Now it wasn’t just her, everyone was Daniel-obsessed. Even the haters, of which there remained many, couldn’t stop watching him. Which meant everyone wanted to know who he was and where he’d come from, including who he’d known and especially who he’d dated. The mysterious Siobhan, the girl who’d become a meme as countless clips of him saying her name in that longing way had overflowed the internet like an excess of bubble bath, had also become the subject of massive public interest. It was Jane’s fault, really. That red-headed vixen had lamented that she wished someone would say her name like that, so nearly as popular as clips of Daniel saying Siobhan’s name had been those of people trying to say Jane’s with the same desperate emphasis.

  For better or worse, most of the tumult over her had died down. She’d been forced to take a leave of absence from work and abandon her condo to move into a friend’s family’s cottage up in Muskoka for a while to avoid the wannabe citizen journalists and paparazzi who’d camped outside waiting to snap a few frames of her coming or going. As Daniel had grown closer to more women in the game, interest in the ones he’d left behind on Earth had waned and Sibhan had been able to return home again. But that had come with its own problems. Now Siobhan had to watch him always be around those beautiful women.

  She tried to ignore the constant buzz of commentary, but it was difficult. Every day there seemed to be a new poll to choose who he’d end up with, and it felt like every day the name of a new potential partner was added to the love list. Sigrid and Jane were always top of the list, of course, but there were lots of other names on it, both Players and NPCs. For some reason a lot of people thought Nina should leave Byron for him, or that he should go after the jailbait Chika, but people also thought he would make his Doppelganger minions into a harem, or go after that cute elf warrior, or even that catgirl gardener. Or that pink-haired S-ranker. Or that purple-haired emcee. Or even that psychotic gyaru girl Kiki. Very recently that gorgeous succubus had shown up and toppled everyone else from the top spot instantly.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Before that, Morgan had skyrocketed to number one for a short time. Siobhan had been unable to watch their dinner date by herself, that had taken a full viewing party with the moral support of her sister and other girls he’d been friends with in high school to get through. She hadn’t known whether or not to be happy or mortified on his behalf that he’d botched it so thoroughly.

  Again, that was then. Now, after what she’d just watched, she felt like she and Morgan shared a special bond.

  Everyone who’d been following his feed could see how with just one simple mindshift Daniel could’ve become quite the chad, but she knew better than anyone that it was not a mindshift he could easily make. Deep down, she found herself hoping he never would, and it was the teary fallout of finally coming to terms with this admission that had made her go through an entire box of Kleenex.

  For the past few weeks Daniel’s feed had been a bit boring, but Siobhan hadn’t minded. At least he was still alive.

  It had felt like the entire city of Toronto — the real one on Earth — had stopped for an hour after that Silver Sword thug had decapitated him. When a Player was killed, their feed went black. It stayed that way until they respawned, if they did. That was something she never wanted to see or experience again, and the wait to see if the black screen would change had been excruciating. Not only for her, either, apparently. Everyone had been in the same boat, and there had been an explosive cheer you could hear resounding throughout the entire GTA when he’d reappeared.

  Getting killed again must’ve been a wake-up call for him. He seemed to have renewed purpose and began working harder than ever, exercising and training and synthesizing new abilities. Siobhan had felt something shift inside herself too. He’d inspired her to work hard too.

  She’d fallen into a groove with him. She’d get up and exercise with him and Sigrid, watching their morning runs on her phone as she ran on the treadmill alongside them. She didn’t have the ability to play catch with a tree trunk or work until she was nearly dead then heal herself again like he did, but working out while watching him put so much effort into self-improvement made her feel good in ways she still couldn’t quite explain.

  When his morning exercise shifted into his daily afternoon routine of working with Synthesis, she worked on catching up. She knew it was silly, but she’d started taking lessons in kung fu and kendo and threw herself into that training with a dedication she hadn’t thought possible. When she’d returned to her condo in the city she hadn’t gone back to her job, so her entire days were divided between self-improvement and watching the feeds from Crucible.

  She looked at the screen of her laptop where it sat perched on a pillow on her bed. The feed was paused, screen frozen on an image of Daniel’s face. The expression was something she’d seen once before, and only once. The day she’d broken up with him.

  She’d just watched him apologize to Morgan after Sigrid had accused him of ghosting her after their date. And the frozen image on her screen showed the look on his face after she’d called him a fixer-upper.

  Yeah. She and Morgan had a special connection now, because that’s almost exactly what she’d said to him back when she dumped him. Daniel was a great guy. He was sweet, kind, clever, and a great kisser. But dealing with his insecurity was exhausting and he’d never be an equal partner in any relationship until he pulled himself out of the weeds.

  Now, all the emotions she’d repressed for nearly a decade since then had come flooding back with that look on his face. Now she’d been forced to face an unpleasant reality: she still loved the stupid idiot and now, in every conceivable way, it was far too late to do a damned thing about it.

  Siobhan sighed deeply and flopped her head back onto her pillows.

  “Fuck,” she muttered, grabbing the corner of her sheet and wiping her nose with it. “Fuck,” she said again, then smacked play on her laptop and watched what happened next.

  Curry is Justice.