CHAPTER 1
The screen went grey.
Li Bai’s fingers hovered. The combo didn’t land. The 0.5 second gap between intent and input stretched like a wound—skin pulling apart, that thin split before the blood comes.
His character stared back. Grey face. Dead eyes.
The chat scrolled. He didn’t read it. Didn’t need to. The words were always the same. Choke. Washed. Retirement home. He’d typed them himself, years ago, about other players. Before he understood.
Before this.
He dropped the headphones. They swung on the cord. Crashed against the monitor. The sound—plastic on glass—barely registered. His ears were still full of crowd noise. The roar that wasn’t roaring anymore. The silence of elimination.
He stood. The chair rolled back. Hit the wall. He raised his hand to punch it—
Stopped.
Looked at his fingers. They were trembling. Just slightly. The kind of tremor you could blame on caffeine. On adrenaline. On anything but what it might be.
He lowered his hand. Walked out.
The hallway stretched. Fluorescent lights buzzing. Flickering. That specific hum that gets inside your skull and stays. Somewhere, a door slammed. Someone shouted. Losses did that. Turned boys into animals.
He pushed through the fire door.
Stairwell. Concrete. Graffiti. The smell of stale piss and energy drinks—sickly sweet and chemical, the smell of trying too hard.
He leaned against the wall. Pulled out his phone. Tried to type a message to Meiko.
Lost. Coming home late.
His thumb missed the ‘c’. Hit space instead. He deleted. Tried again. Missed again.
He stared at his hand. The tremor was worse now. His ring finger twitched independently.
He used his other hand. Slower. More deliberate. Typed the message one letter at a time. Sent it.
Then he punched the wall.
Knuckles split. Blood on grey paint. He watched it drip. Watched the red run down like the timer on a respawn countdown. Three. Two. One.
His phone buzzed.
Meiko: I saw the match. I’m sorry. Come home.
He typed back: Coming.
This time, his thumb found the right letters.
He hit the door to the ground floor.
Lobby. Empty. Trophies in a glass case. His face on a poster. Li Bai: The 0.5 Second King.
The joke wrote itself.
Outside, the van waited. Team inside. Faces pressed to windows. Looking at him like he’d killed something. Maybe he had.
He walked past.
“Li Bai!” Coach at the door. “Where the fuck—”
He didn’t stop. Didn’t turn. Just raised his hand. Middle finger. Held it high until he rounded the corner.
The apartment was dark when he got there.
He liked it that way. Dark meant no reflection. No face in the glass. No reminder of the man who’d missed the combo. The man who’d choked.
He sat at his desk. The personal rig. Better than the team’s. Black case. RGB off because RGB was for streamers and children. For people who still believed in spectacle.
He opened the game.
Solo queue.
No comms.
He played. Won. Played again. Won. Played again. Lost because his support was brain dead. He went to type Uninstall. His fingers stumbled. Unintall. He deleted it. Not worth the ban.
His hand hurt. He looked down. Blood dried. Cracked across the knuckles. He flexed. The skin pulled. Stung.
He tried to type his password to queue again.
L!B@iW0r1dC#amp
His ring finger wouldn’t press ‘W’. He tried three times. The cursor blinked. Mocking him.
He used his middle finger instead. Got in.
Played until 4am. Until the wins blurred into losses blurred into nothing. Until his eyes burned—that specific dry-scratch feeling of too many hours staring—and his wrist screamed.
He stood to get water. Walked to the kitchen. Stared at the kettle.
Why was he here?
He looked around. Kitchen. Kettle. Empty cup. Right.
He filled it. Turned it on. Watched the steam rise. Watched it build. Watched it boil. Watched it boil dry. The element glowed red. The kettle clicked off automatically.
He’d forgotten to make the tea.
He stood there. Staring at the dry kettle. The unused cup. The wasted moment.
Then he walked back to his desk.
Picked up the keyboard.
He smashed it against the desk. Keys popped. Springs scattered. Plastic cracked. He smashed it again. The spacebar shot across the room. Hit the wall. Fell into darkness.
He dropped the remains.
Bent down.
Picked up the mouse.
Cord first. He wrapped it around his fist. Pulled tight. Then he threw it. Full force. Into the monitor.
Glass spiderwebbed. The screen flickered. Once. Twice. Then black.
He stood in the dark. Breathing. His chest rising and falling like he’d run a marathon. Like he’d fought something and lost.
The knock came.
