Haven, she’s flawless. Tight aim, clean strategy, every movement sharp, precise. She’s always got that controlled edge, that predator-on-adrenaline thing that makes her untouchable. Dylan barely even kept up. Shit, she didn’t just beat him, she annihilated him. A complete, total dismantling. Yeah, dude’s a fucking joke, but that’s not what’s pissing me off.
No. It’s the chat. The goddamn chat. I can’t stop thinking.Why the hell does it piss me off so much?She’s just playing the game, just like she always does.
The lines of text I can’t stop reading. Comments that started subtle questioning her bracket, her streaming hours, her“connections.”Then it turned uglier, louder, crueler. The kind of misogynistic trash that makes me want to dox every singlelittle fucker hiding behind a keyboard and let them find out what NoOneGhost looks like off-screen.
She didn’t react to it, didn’t even flinch but I saw the way her hands tensed when she thought no one noticed. I fucking noticed.
The post drafts itself in my head before I’ve even opened the app. I don’t bother rereading it. I just type with my jaw tight and my middle finger hovering over the send button.
NoOneGhost: you can disrespect her all you want. but don’t pretend you wouldn’t cry if she fragged you mid-lobby and never spoke your name again. I’ve seen her, you haven’t, she won. stay fucking quiet.
Hit post. The likes roll in within seconds. I scroll through her comments, screenshot the worst ones. Then I go hunting, some of these assholes are bold enough to keep their usernames linked to their socials. Twitch bios, discord handles. Idiots. One DM, and they’d fold.
Carter’s voice hits me from the hallway. “Tate?”
I don’t answer.
He steps into the room a second later, holding two cups of coffee. His brows knit the moment he sees. He sets one cup down. “You’re spiraling.”
“Don’t start.”
“I’m serious.”
I exhale hard through my nose. The screen glows bright, the match clip keeps looping in the background; Haven’s final kill. Her tiny smirk, her perfect silence.
“They came for her,” I say. “And she didn’t say a fucking word.”
Carter’s quiet for a moment. “She didn’t need to.”
I glare up at him. “She shouldn’t have to take it.”
“She didn’t. She won.”
“She shouldn’t have to be silent to win.” I snap. Sometimes I wonder what it’d be like if I were the kind of guy who made her tea after a hard stream. The kind who says things like“you’re stronger than this”and“just ignore them.”Like Carter,but I’m not. I’m the guy who wants to hunt them down and make them apologize with broken hands.
He raises both hands in surrender, stepping back. “I get it. I do, but maybe let her decide how to fight her own battles.”
My jaw tightens again. I don’t want her to fight alone. I want to scorch the earth before they even get to her door. I want them to know if they so much as whisper her name with disrespect again, I’ll come down on them like a goddamn reaper.
She shouldn’t need me like this, that’s the part that guts me the most. That the push back and the silence comes with the territory. She’s what, just supposed to take it? To smile through it while strangers dissect her down to the last click? I’m not okay with that. I’ll never be okay with that.
He hovers for a second longer than usual, I know he wants to say more. I know he’s scared this is the moment I snap and do something we can’t come back from.
I don’t look at him, I just watch the kill cam loop on Haven’s screen like it’s the only thing that matters. Eventually, he leaves. Smart.
I open my phone. I tap the message open and start typing.
Me:Do you want me to come in? I’ll sit on the floor. You don’t even have to talk.
I stare at the blinking cursor, watch it mock me. Then delete every line, I don’t want to make her feel like she has to perform for me. I don’t want to be the reason she softens when she should be allowed to stay angry.
But god, I want her to let me in anyway. I want her to call my name like I belong in the answer.
Instead, I pull up the social to post again. By the time I post the second once, the first one’s already hit over 40k likes. I should stop, but I won’t.
NoOneGhost: Sure, call her over hyped. She’s fine with that, she’s too busy dismantling everyone in the lobby while you flail around. Keep typing, maybe one day you’ll learn what losing with style actually looks like.
The replies are wild. Half of them are people tagging Haven with things like“QUEEN BEHAVIOR ONLY”and“marry him.”
