Kari's phone played an annoying, ongoing charm for the fifth time that morning, before slamming the snooze button once more. She murmured something unintelligible to even her, and rolled onto her other side. Eventually, though, Kari realized they couldn't resist the temptation, and felt around her bed for her phone. With tired, droopy eyes, she took a cursory look through her email, texts, and then inevitably, her Discord.

Gamer hadn't messaged Kari back. For some reason, that frustrated her. She felt like pulling her hair out, and almost succumbed to that thought. Why couldn't they just do as Kari told them to? Kari was supposed to be their moderator or some shit, wasn't she? It wasn't like Kari could pop over and see if Gamer had actually gone to take care of their part, though Kari had a sinking feeling that they weren't going to.

God. If only Kari was there to push them out of their home, to push them around in general. And to wash their hair while they were at it. No kind of messy ponytail could hide a painful-looking amount of grease and messiness.

But, slowly, the details of her late-night call with her supposed Soulmate came back to her. Specifically, the parts with Kari trying to put Gamer in their place, only to have the tables turned on them with zero resistance. Gamer cut through Kari like a knife through hot butter.

"Shut up."

Those two words echoed in Kari's ears. Gamer had said a lot that got under Kari's skin, but that simple phrase hit Kari the hardest. Being silenced in the middle of Kari's vent was bad enough, but the worst part was that she complied.

No, the worst part was that Kari barely even thought of resisting, or fighting back.

Kari grabbed the pillow next to her and buried her face into it. "Shut up," she murmured into the pillow, trying to relive their voice, their tone, and the way they played Kari like a fiddle, or - ugh - like Fortnite.

They never felt this way before, about anyone. The last thing they imagined was feeling it about Gamer.

But that look in their eyes... that commanding tone... it just made Kari feel so, so--

Wait. Fuck.

Only then did Kari realize her hand was instinctively moving lower and lower down their body, getting close to her intimates. She only noticed when she almost involuntarily lifted the hem of her night gown.

Kari shot her hand back up and instinctively gasped. No, she was not getting off on this! That was so beneath her in a layer of hell Kari didn't even know existed.

But at least realizing she almost did woke her up completely.

Kari wasn't a prude, not by any means. Her after dark account was filled with tons of hardcore porn in some very specific kinks -- along with general D/s smut. But she sure wasn't Gamersexual.

The alarm went off. With a sigh, Kari stopped it for the morning.

Kari sat up, her legs hanging off the edge of her mattress. She stared at the floor. The urge to go back to her earlier morning masturbation plan burned in her veins, but with herculean effort, she ignored it.

Ignoring that urge, of course, only got harder. Luckily, Kari knew of an instant horniness-killer. She grabbed a viable outfit for the day and ran to the bathroom. Almost sprinting, she turned the shower on, ice cold water spewing out of the top.

She threw her clothes into the overflowing laundry bin, and stepped in. Kari hissed as the freezing water slammed onto her skin. Within seconds, though, any thought of touching herself, or the memory of Gamer's dominating voice, thawed out.

At least, for now. Kari hoped for good, though.

~~

Kari never used her hair dryer, the $300 one her mom had gotten for some bizarre reason. But spending those fifteen minutes drying her hair were fifteen more minutes she had to think of how the hell to introduce herself.

She didn't even know the rest of the mods. She barely even knew Gamer, past their public personality, and the idea they probably made a good Domme.

Fully dressed and dried off, Kari sat at their computer. Once again, they checked their email.

Still nothing from the Soulmate Office's official email. Well, excluding the automated ticket message. But, more importantly, Kari glimpsed an email from her manager, granting her two weeks off. Her manager added a congratulations, too. For some reason, Kari had a feeling her manager begrudgingly gave her that time off.

Kari wasn't sure how long she'd be working as a tired phone call center agent, anyways. The universe seemed to have other plans for her life.

Finally, she opened Gamer's Discord, and slid into the mod-only channel. She scrolled up, trying to get an idea for at least some personalities. She knew she was just avoiding the task Gamer gave her, though.

Slowly, Kari's fingers typed a message. She looked it over twenty times. With her heartbeat slowly rising, she clicked the send button.

> Hi, I'm KarinariPop. She/they. I'm another content creator, my links are in my bio. Gamer invited me here and gave me moderator permissions. Nice to meet everyone.

Short and simple, sure, but it got the job done.

The confused yet mostly welcoming replies slowly popped up. Kari moved away from that chat. She didn't want to read them quite yet -- it wasn't like she had to.

Alright. Kari told Gamer to go do their share of office work. Come to think of it, they’d probably have just as much trouble as Kari did. Potentially worse. Gamer was famous enough to be recognized in public, and who knew what would happen if word got out like that?

Kari switched to her DM with Gamer.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.

She wanted to say a million things. In part, writing an angry text wall to them about how bossy they were the day before.

And if they could do it again.

Kari shook her head. She put on her headphones, put on the quickest heavy metal playlist she could find, and exhaled.

> Hey Gamer. How are things going on your end?

Well. Gamer took a billion years to respond the day before. So they probably were going to take just as long. Kari figured it’d be a good time to step out and grab some comfort food.

Except Gamer texted back less than a minute later.

> it suxxxxxxxxxxx

For someone who seemed to never shut up, Gamer sure sucked at texting.

Well, comfort food will have to wait.

> What’s going on? Can I help?

It took another couple minutes for Gamer to reply, but the ‘Gamer is typing…’ text kept popping on and off. After a while, Kari began to get concerned, agonizingly waiting for their message.

> australian bureaucracy is hell. my everything itches and i’ve been here for seven fucking hours. the bathroom has a huge line. the clerk was such a trasnsphobic bitch i wanted to dump my gamer juice on her. also an annoying 11 yo recognized me and kept screaming at me about minecraft until his mom took him away

Damn. Kari’s visit sure wasn’t a walk in a field of pansies, but somehow, it sounded like things were going worse for Gamer. At least the Judge Kari spoke to was as kind as he could have been.

Kari began to type a reply, but before she could, Gamer sent another text.

> this isn’t very poggers :( 

"God damn it," Kari murmured. The second Gamer said anything unironically, it would be immediately followed up by something around those lines. She shook her head and kept texting. Kari wanted to put her phone down and spend the day alone, but the entirety of her brain cells were focused on Gamer and making things make sense.

So Kari laid back in her bed, put her blankets back on herself, and held her phone on her side. The bland and poorly painted ceiling looked somehow mobile. Kari wanted to wonder why, but their head was spinning so much that they couldn't even question it.

Eventually, Kari picked up her phone and typed. Kari was, at heart, a problem solver. But it was hard to solve Gamer's problems when they lived exponentially far away, physically, and somehow emotionally.

> I'm sorry. Do you need to call me or anything?

Her fingers ached to type, "I wish I could be there with you," but Kari stopped herself. It was too soon to fall into a weird crush, Soulmate or not.

> no ty

Kari garnered she was going to get a response like that. Before she could think of any other ideas, Gamer texted again.

> my friend carlos is going 2 call u 2 talk about mod stuff so pick up when he does

Kari gritted her teeth. The disregard for her schedule again, it pissed her off so much. Maybe it's just how they communicate. How they were in general. How the hell was Kari paired with someone like them?

Whatever. It wasn't like Kari had anything better to do that day.

> OK. Can you please tell me in advance next time?

A reasonable question. A reasonable request from a Soulmate, Kari thought. But apparently not - she was proved wrong when Gamer's response came in seconds later.

> no<3

Okay. That didn't deserve a response of any kind. As old gaming wisdom went, after all - do not feed the trolls.

With nothing else to do, a splitting headache and no painkillers, Kari closed her eyes. Not to sleep, just to rest, to feel time pass in a trance-like state. She sunk into her mattress.

Relaxing.

Just like the hypno files she'd have on repeat told her.

That gave Kari an idea. She opened her phone, and queued up one of her favorite files. The creator was a hypnodomme, sure, but this file was neutral. Kari didn't need any more cursed, unfortunately horny fantasies plaguing her head.

But just as her luck went, the second she was ready to play it, the familiar sound of a Discord call came in.

Once again, Kari did as Gamer ordered her to. She wanted to ignore the call to teach Gamer a lesson in humility and patience. But curiosity eventually got the best of Kari, and she pulled herself to her computer. Her body felt heavy, being jolted up from an almost hypnotic state.

Kari inhaled sharply, pushed her bangs out of the way, and answered.

"Hello?" she asked meekly.

“Is this Kari?” The voice on the other end was deep, in a reassuring way. “I’m Carlos. One of Gamer’s friends.”

“Y-yeah. They told me about you.”

"Well, here I am." It couldn't have been clearer that he was trying to keep the mood light, and failing. Kari's eyes locked to the floor and she stuffed her hands into her pocket. "I know this is kind of a stupid question, but... how are you holding up?"

Kari couldn't help but sigh. "Could be better. I don't even know what the hell to do. I know this is supposed to make sense, this is supposed to be normal, but it just... isn't. I don't even know if having a, y'know, normal set of Soulmarks would make this easier."

Carlos hissed through his teeth. "Yeah, I guessed you were feeling that way. When Gamer told me what theirs said, I thought they were just fucking with me again."

Hah. So this is normal, then. Kari snorted before replying, "glad to hear it's not just me."

"If I were anyone else, I'd be convinced you were a crazy fan who faked a Soulmark to become a Discord Mod. I wouldn't put it past some people."

"Yeah," Kari exhaled. The momentarily lighthearted tone lasted only a few seconds, before they returned to their awkward silence. "So... why are you calling? Or, uh, why did Gamer want you to call me?"

"I think I should probably go over some things you should know as one of our Discord mods. Technically this would be an interview, but considering it's your Soulmark, I don't think I can reject you, even if I wanted."

Absent-mindedly, Kari switched over to her Discord server, to see if anything happened. A couple new posts popped up, but nothing life-changing. She wanted to make a joke about promising not to post dick pics in introductions, but she wasn't quite in the mood.

"You took a moment to look through the rules?"

"Mhmm. Yeah." There wasn't anything out of the ordinary - don't @ Gamer for no reason, don't @ everyone, generally act respectful and behave. There were more nitpicky rules, such as where to post 18+ content, but it wasn't anything Kari had never seen before. "I dunno if Gamer mentioned it to you, but I have my own server, so I'm not totally unfamiliar with keeping the riff raff from riffing and raffing."

Carlos paused. Not long enough to cause alarm, but enough for Kari to notice. "Right. As you can imagine, the server is pretty large, which is why we have so many mods and admins. Y'know, it comes with the territory. What are your, uh, outside responsibilities? I'm wagering you have a job of some sort?"

A sudden realization popped up in Kari's head.

Yes, she had a job.

Was Gamer going to... pay her for being a mod, if they wanted her on it 24/7?

"Y-yeah. I do. Nothing fancy or elaborate. Enough to pay the bills. I, uh, also have a YouTube and Twitch channel, too, but, uh-- yeah."

She heard typing at the other end of the line. Kari bit her lip almost hard enough to draw blood. The idea of having to quit her job to becomes *Gamer's Discord Mod* full-time was somehow the most humiliating thing so far.

"Don't worry. We'll work with your schedule." Kari knew there was something not being said, but pressing the issue wouldn't do her much good. "You're in EST, right? Are you free 8pm your time?"

Kari nodded and hummed an affirmative. "I have the next few weeks off work, so... yeah. I'm pretty open right now."

*Pretty open right now* sounded like an innuendo. Oh no. Now the fantasies began to flood Kari's head again. Indecent, lewd, hot fantasies involving their Soulmate. The torrent of arousal came on so quickly, Kari would think she would have been conditioned to have such a reaction. She  reached for the ice cold glass of water on her desk, quickly chugged it down, and tried to settle herself.

"Great. I've asked the mods for a meeting to explain the situation. Gamer will be the one doing so, obviously, though I promise we're going to keep it on the DL until we have a plan on how to announce it."

"What... kind of plan? Why- why would we need one?"

Carlos sighed. "You don't want to have a bunch of Gamer's fans flooding your inbox in two minutes."

"Okay. Fair."

"See you at eight?"

"See you at eight," Kari affirmed, before quickly signing off the call.

Now accompanied by the silence in their apartment, Kari threw on some lo-fi music and checked their channel -- no, all of their accounts. There was a small increase of followers and notifications, but Kari recognized a lot of the names from Gamer's mod team.

It was fine. Everything was fine.

Right?

~~

It was rare for Kari to put on any makeup of any sort. Truth be told, even as she brushed her face with the scarce bit of foundation, she didn’t know why she was dressing up for this. Kari knew, deep in her heart, that she would have to get used to this. She’d have to adjust at one point or another, to being Gamer’s Discord Mod. Maybe that’s why she subconsciously decided to spruce her face up today. First impressions meant more than Kari wanted to admit, and these people would be Kari’s colleagues and friends going forward. Being an uppity bitch wasn’t going to help Kari in the slightest. Nor was going in looking like she died three days ago.

Kari sat at her computer, lightly drumming her fingers against her keyboard. She watched the mods discuss availability, tardiness, and confusion as to what the heck this sudden meeting was even about. Gamer was still offline – or at least, that’s what it said on Discord. 

She wanted to message Gamer. In part because she was curious how things ended up going. In part because she wanted to make sure they were taking care of themself. And in part because Kari just kind of wanted to talk to them.

“What am I even doing,” Kari groaned. Eventually, she gave in and checked in on their DMs. Kari’s fingers hovered over the keyboard for a minute before they sent something.

> Hey. How did things end up going?

It didn’t take long for Gamer to respond. Which meant they were never actually offline, they were just avoiding visibility. Kari supposed she could understand that.

> shrug emoji

> well enough i guess. I got the paperwork and shit. Seems they filed it as an owner-property type

Kari groaned and threw her head back.

> Who’s the Owner, in this case?

Gamer responded near instantly.

> i think you know the answer to that :)

Ugh. Yeah, Kari knew.

> see u in 2 min Mod <3

Kari’s eyes darted to the timer. 7:58pm. Shit, yeah, two minutes. Suddenly, Kari was remembering everything she initially forgot to do - get water, meds, and a couple deep breaths. Only when she inhaled deeply did they notice how red her face was, again.

Wow. Gamer had Kari wrapped around their finger, that was for fucking sure.

With last minute preparations done, Kari just waited for someone to sign on. She saw Carlos’ name pop up in the mod’s voice room. With a final deep breath, Kari signed on shortly after.

“Hey, good to see you again—“ Kari couldn’t even finish pleasantries with the one mod she knew. Before long, five, ten other moderators signed on. It was almost instantaneous, though to be fair, most were probably confused as hell about this new mod from out of nowhere.

Kari sat quietly as some conversation happened around her. She threw her hoodie over her head, over her kitty ear headphones. Sooner than she wanted, the conversation turned to her.

“So,” one voice popped up, “who’s this new mod?”

“Uh, hi,” Kari whispered into the mic. “I’m Kari Callisto. I, uh, have a YouTube channel named KarinariPop. H-hi.”

God. This was so awkward. A cacophony of voices popped up, and Kari struggled to keep up with them. Most of them asked why she suddenly became a mod, others butted in telling people to wait for her or Gamer to explain. Kari answered the basic questions as best she could, but the conversation was hard to navigate without liberal use of half-truths.

Gamer signed on, and almost like sheep following a shepherd, the conversation silenced and turned to Gamer’s presence. Some inside jokes were thrown around before Gamer started talking.

“Fellow gamers, thank you for attending.” Only half of the moderation team was there at that point, but Kari didn’t expect everyone to suddenly pop in. “I’d like to keep this brief, concise, and kept to ourselves.”

Absolute silence flooded the Discord call. It was sure the most frank and to-the-point Kari had seen Gamer talk, on video or behind.

Gamer took a brief inhale, before continuing, their voice as stable as possible. “Kari is here because she is my Soulmate.”

The silence immediately broke.

The crowd of moderators broke into a cacophony, asking a billion questions for both Kari and Gamer, namely what their titles were. Some mods snidely joked that they didn't think Gamer could have a Soulmate, which Kari didn't take kindly to. Even if they were saying such things as a joke, it wasn't funny, and Kari would have been quite hurt if it was her at the end of those quips.

Carlos interjected mid-through the chaos, telling people politely to quiet down, and then yelling 'shut the fuck up, newbs!', which only then silence the crowd. Kari hadn't realized she was holding her breath until then, and took a sigh of relief.

Gamer cleared their throat, and continued. "As I was saying, Kari and I just discovered our Soulmarks. Since this is a... weird situation, and I don't want to put Kari in the center of the mob of the internet's attention, we want to keep things discreet."

"Okay," one mod who'd been especially noisy, Thrill, chimed in. "So why is she suddenly a Discord mod?"

"Well..." Gamer awkwardly trailed off.

"And why are you just, like, telling us all this if you want to keep it so secret?"

Kari sat in an uncomfortable position, seeing what would happen next. A ping popped in from Gamer to Kari one-on-one, telling her that they should just come out and say it.

Kari replied that she agreed.

"Kari's Soulmark is that she is... my Discord Mod."

Silence.

"And my Soulmark says Gamer."

More, somehow quieter silence. The team sat there for god knew how long. Kari wasn't sure if they were DMing amongst themselves, just processing, or going to tend to something else, assuming this was just more of Gamer's bullshit. Kari would have thought so, to be fair.

"Pics or it didn't happen," Thrill cheered.

"No," Kari hissed.

"Then you're lying and I dunno if anyone here believes you otherwise."

"That's..." Thrill wasn't wrong. Kari would doubt if anyone in the room, barring those who already knew, believed them. Kari slumped back in her chair, hoping for this to be over. Announcing a Soulmark must have been awful as-is, but this provided a new, special level of awkward hell.

Gamer interrupted the talk for Kari, taking hold of the conversation. "Fine. I'll prove it." Gamer's camera turned on, already turned away from their face. They showed their hand, and the Soulmark clear as day. Immediately, the livelihood - if Kari could call it that - in the chat burst up once more.

"Ohhhh," someone else said. "So that's why you fucked away from Twitch the other day."

Gamer hesitated. "Yeah. If you blame me for that, I'm sorry for your loss."

A quiet laugh echoed around the crowd. Kari smiled gently. Gamer's sense of humor was fun, to an extent. The way they didn't particularly mind if people hated their decisions, or if people held petty grudges against them. Maybe that contributed largely to their success? Kari had to guess that was at least partially the case.

Reluctantly, Kari turned on her camera, already facing away from her face too. "Here's mine."

The camera showed her Soulmark. Kari's other hand formed into a fist, clenching itself nervously.

"Damn. Quick question - what does 'Discord Mod' as a Soulmark mean?"

"Tell me if you find out."

"Is Discord Mod the top, or is Gamer?"

Why the fuck did people keep asking Kari that? Kari scoffed and turned off her camera. There, she provided proof, no one had anything to yell at her about now.

Carlos jumped in, taking over the embarrassment both Gamer and Kari must have felt. "The reason we wanted to tell folks here is because, well, since Kari is Gamer's Discord Mod, she's now, uh, a Discord mod here. But we wanted to explain. If anyone has any questions, please direct them to me or Gamer while we orient Kari to her role."

"We don't bite," a kinder-sounding mod added. "And I won't even make the obvious joke for you."

"Thanks," Kari chuckled. "Well, uh, nice to meet all of you. I... look forward to working with you."

"That's all," Gamer concluded. "Thank you for looking away from Fortnite for five minutes to deal with this. And remember, please keep this under wraps until we're ready to announce it formally."

A series of affirmatives sounded off amongst the crowd. The only one who sounded uncertain was Thrill, the mod who seemed to just want to cause problems on purpose.

Everyone said their goodbyes, and signed off.

Kari exhaled in relief. Phew, that was more exhausting than she thought. But at least she could--

The Discord call tone rang. Gamer was calling her. Kari pursed her lips and answered. Hopefully they weren't just calling her to antagonize her more.

But Kari didn’t have much of a choice. From the way things were going, much to Kari’s chagrin, Gamer was proving to be far more dominant than them.

So she picked up.

“Heya.”

“Heyo gayo.”

Kari laughed. Could Gamer ever talk normally? Nevermind, Kari already knew the answer to that.

“I just wanted to check on you,” Gamer continued. Kari blinked and narrowed her eyes. Gamer… wanted to check on her? She wasn’t sure why that surprised herself, but… she guessed it wasn’t out of the ordinary to care about one’s Soulmate. Maybe she was the one being too harsh on Gamer. “You sounded kind of stressed.”

Kari’s shoulders slumped. Was she really that easy to read? “I guess I was, yeah,” she admitted. “A lot of people I didn’t know. And they seemed kind of, uh…”

“Annoying.”

Kari paused for a beat. “You said it, not me.”

“Yeah. I, uh, hope you get some rest. If any of them start to bother you, just let me know. And I’ll deal with them.”

“I… thanks.” Kari probably shouldn’t have voiced anything snarky, when Gamer made such an oddly protective gesture, and when Kari didn’t even expect them to. “You’re acting sincere.”

“Is that… bad?”

“No! No,” Kari waved her hands defensively. “I just… I guess I didn’t expect it from you. You seem kind of like you like toying with me. At least, you did. You’re not planning to fuck me over with this, right?”

Gamer shook their head, looking down and away from the camera. “No. I know we kind of got off on the wrong foot. But, even though I’m the internet’s local funny guy – new gender unlocked – I want to make this work. I know that’s a total 180 from how I acted but - but it’s true.”

Something pulled at Kari’s heartstrings. Was it the realization that this type of sincerity didn’t come naturally to Gamer? That it was so weird for them that they had to hide it with memes and snark?

Kari wouldn’t voice that right now, though. This wasn’t a therapy session, for either of them. “Well, thanks. I’ll let you know if they bother me.”

Gamer let out a sigh of relief. Kari did the same. For a while, the two sat in silence, but it felt oddly comfortable, somehow. Like they didn’t need to say anything. After a while, though, the awkwardness began to creep in.

The call had to go somewhere or end… but Kari didn’t really want it to end. Not when Gamer was sounding so sincere and genuine, especially if it was hard for them.

“Do you want to, uh, play something together?”

Gamer, themself, was taken back by Kari’s request. “I’m always down for video james. What did you have in mind?”

“Uh…” Kari didn’t think that far ahead. “Have you… ever heard of the Zero Escape series?”

“Tangentially,” Gamer responded casually, leaning back in their chair.

“Ohhh,” Kari’s face lit up with excitement, the same way a child would walking into a candy store by accident. “It’s my favorite series. It’s like, a horror visual novel type thing. Do you, uh…” Kari bit the inside of her lip, trying to figure out if this was a good idea, but it wasn’t like she could un-ask. “Do you want to play it with me for a bit?”

Gamer looked to the side, almost anxiously. “Yeah… sure. That sounds nice.”

Kari grinned wolfishly, in a delightful way. “Well, good for you, you’re getting your first gift from your soulmate.”

~~

Kari had long lost track of the time, so when she saw that five hours had passed in what might as well have been the blink of an eye, she audibly gasped. The two had spent so long relishing in Kari’s favorite series, and getting to see Gamer’s genuine freak-outs. The way they got so scared and anxious was far cuter off-camera. Hearing them scream ‘no, NO, don’t fucking do it bitch!’ repeatedly was almost endearing. That was probably not typical, but neither was their whole situation.

But it was 2am. For Kari, at least. And as much as she didn’t want to, the evening had to come to an end. “How are you liking it so far?”

“Bro,” Gamer answered, after just reaching the first ending. “I am fucking shaking. This is amazing! How have I never heard of it?”

“It’s kind of niche,” Kari explained. “Cult following type thing. But, uh, it’s late for me, so I should–”

“Sleep, yeah, I get you. I’ll get to sleep depriving you eventually, you sound so much more cuter when you’re tired.”

Kari flushed red. “Cuter? How in the world?”

“You look all disoriented,” Gamer’s smirk turned devious as they saved and closed the game. “Like, you're fun to play with. Like I can tell you anything and you’ll believe me or do what I want.”

“N-no!” Kari protested. “I’m not some keysmashing bottom!” She might as well have been, with how blatant her lie was.

“Uh-huh,” Gamer snarked back, “and I’m the president of the United States.”

“Fuck you,” Kari quipped. Their quarrel was obviously cute and endearing, and they weren’t actually fighting so much as flirting.

“I’d do that to you if you weren’t a million miles away. But since you’re so eager to get with me, apparently, what are you willing to do?”

Gamer leaned in, their elbows on the table, grinning into the camera - at Kari - with a mischievous smile. Kari’s face only reddened further. “I… nothing!”

“Nothing? For me? That’s so harsh, I’m wounded.”

“You’re clearly not!”

“Right. Well, why don’t we test that? Your declaration that you will do nothing I say?”

Kari seethed through her teeth. The way she was being toyed with was humiliating, offensive, and as much as she hated it, arousing. Kari clenched her legs together, hoping her heavy gasping wasn’t noticeable through the camera. “Fine. What’s your order, Master?”

Okay. Kari didn’t need or want to add the honorific. In her head, it sounded more mocking than out loud. But the shock on Gamer’s face flashed before Gamer started to look particularly dominant.

“Edge yourself before you go to sleep, mod.”

If Kari’s gasping was subtle before, it sure wasn’t now. “W-what? How dare you!”

“I do dare,” Gamer threw their hands up in the air defensively, the cunning smile still on their face. “In fact, I want you to do so while saying, ‘Gamer Sheridan plays my life’ repeatedly. Over and over.”

“I’m… I’m not doing that.” Kari wasn’t sure if she was lying or not. “I… I’m going to sleep, you jerk!”

“Alright,” Gamer blew a kiss into the camera. “Good night, mod.”

Kari tensed up for a long while before responding through her teeth, “good… night, Gamer.”

And the call ended.

Kari felt like she was forgetting to say something. But that didn’t matter. Kari quickly threw her day clothes off and her pajamas on, doing her usual evening routine, before hopping onto her mattress and closing her eyes.

And turning and tossing.

Over and over again.

Kari couldn’t get a wink of sleep. No position was comfortable. She couldn’t get Gamer’s face out of her mind, the fun they had, and the way Gamer teased Kari. It made her feel the same way she felt when Gamer silenced her their first conversation.

Gamer Sheridan.

Kari Callisto groaned. She knew what she needed to do before she could sleep – as much as she hated it. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she murmured to herself.

Slowly, with a lot of hesitation, Kari pushed the hem of her pajama shorts and underwear down, and slipped her hand under.

“Fuck my life,” Kari sighed sarcastically, before fulfilling the order. 

The second she touched her clit, it felt like she was about to explode. Kari gathered herself, shoved down the embarrassment, and pushed forward.

“Gamer Sheridan plays my life. Gamer Sheridan plays my life. Gamer Sheridan…”

~~

Kari was excited to wake up the next morning.

Which was highly unusual. Even before her sudden Soulmark revelation, Kari hated mornings, and feeling anything – especially enthusiasm – felt more like a chore than something natural. But after how shockingly well the meeting went the evening before, and the genuine bout of fun she and Gamer had – the first one – it just stuck with her. It was the last thing she thought of before she went to sleep, and the first thing she thought of when waking up.

Maybe this dynamic – as weird and bizarre as it was – could work. Maybe she and Gamer could make it work, even though they were polar opposites in most ways. They had gotten along so well last night. Both of them probably got off to a bad start because of both the time difference and the initial shock. But Kari had felt a bit more at ease with being Gamer’s Discord Mod.

It didn’t take Kari long to jump out of bed, reclothe herself, brush her teeth, and even wash her face – something she barely ever did.

Unusually optimistic and energized, Kari washed their dishes, swept the floors, and organized her chaos apartment. She knew she should pick up her phone, even just to text Gamer hi, but what was wrong with a good bit of cleaning beforehand? Who knew when the last time the apartment was cleaned? Besides, she had off from work – might as well catch up on basic household chores.

Once she had a free moment, a smile still on her face, she finally went to text Gamer.

At least, that’s what she went to do. But the second she turned her phone on, she almost dropped it.

All across the left side of her screen were profile icons she didn’t recognize, a flurry of texts that definitely hadn’t been there before. Her heart skipped every other beat as she tried to figure out the situation.

Every thought of cleaning anymore dead, Kari hopped into her computer seat and turned everything on. She checked every social media platform she knew. Her blood raced with excitement – had she finally hit her big break? Had she finally gone viral, and gotten the fans and attention she yearned over for so many years? Nothing would make her happier. Nothing in the world.

Except, she had a sinking feeling that she was about to be punched in the gut emotionally.

Her YouTube notifications had blown up – followers, comments, likes, everything. Her Discord server had a bunch of notifications in every channel. Hell, even her inactive Twitch channel she hardly used had gone wild. Kari wanted so desperately to be excited without reservation. But she had this looming sensation that something was about to go very, very wrong.

All she had to do was dig into the notifications a bit more. But even looking at the numbers overwhelmed her. She thought when this would happen – inevitably in her mind – she would be jumping for joy, unable to contain her excitement. But even the atom of dread in her heart tainted that.

Slowly, she looked through her notifications.

Comments and shares of a YouTube video from her early days – oh god, Kari didn’t even know what she was doing then. She was playing some kind of Flash Lucky Star fangame. And – oh fuck it ended with her doing the Haruhi Suzumiya dance.. Her smile slowly faded when she saw the comments were laughing at her. Mocking her.

And then the source popped up.

One comment read: ‘i hope she teaches the rest of gamer’s mods how to do the haruhi dance’

Kari’s heart sank.

Word got out.

Gamer promised it wouldn’t.

With all of her enthusiasm gone and betrayal filling her heart, Kari combed through everything. Every comment mocking her – even in good faith – hurt. Kari wasn’t so much offended by these meaningless memes and posts. She was offended that this even happened.

Finally, while scrolling through Twitter, it revealed itself.

A screenshot of her and Gamer’s Soulmarks.

The ones they showed on stream.

Kari felt tears welling in her eyes. This sudden onslaught of attention was far more than she had bargained for, more than she ever wished for. The posts ranged from invasive to insulting. A few reasonable folks were arguing to leave Gamer and Kari to their personal lives, to stop spreading it, but those people were either laughed at or ignored.

Was this how parasocial relationships felt, on the other side of them?

Kari hated it. She wanted none of it.

The last straw was seeing an email from a name she never wanted to see again – from Hillary Miller – an elementary school bully of hers. Kari briefly expected the email to be mocking, but what was written was even worse: an attempt to become Kari’s friend, presumably now that she was famous.

Kari had no time to process anything. Silencing her audio meant nothing when the notifications were popping up everywhere.

She trusted Gamer.

She trusted Gamer.

If her streaming desktop was a laptop, Kari would have shut it so hard it would break. Even after she turned it off, she heard the constant pinging and onslaught of attention.

*Gamer told me they wouldn't do this. They promised!* Fury began to build in Kari's body as she grabbed her phone in a vice grip. Even though the constant beeps, Kari went to Gamer's DMs like that one episode of Spongebob and Patrick getting through the perfume store.

She immediately hit call.

And Gamer fucking *hung up* one ring in.

"Oh no you don't," Kari grumbled. She pressed the call button again, then canceled, and then repeated the cycle over, and over, and over, hoping to somehow annoy Gamer into taking some kind of accountability or even just - even just talking to Kari! Giving her some kind of explanation for the broken trust!

Finally, Kari succeeded. She almost hung up again, but she managed to stop herself.

"Quick question," Kari started, her voice a vicious hiss.

Gamer paused. "Yeah?"

Their voice sounded so quiet and low. Oh, Gamer knew they fucked up. That was half the work, at least.

"What the fucking hell?" Kari screamed into the phone.

Kari almost heard Gamer flinch on the other end of the line.

"What happened to you promising me this would be secret for now? Did you want to lie to me from the beginning? Did you just want to fuck with me? Or could you not resist getting some extra clicks at my expense? You really just couldn't stir shit up for five seconds for the bit, huh?"

Even Kari's heart hurt as she ranted. Gamer's silence hurt her. It hurt even more with Kari somehow knowing Gamer wasn't silent out of malice.

"Well?"

"I didn't lie," Gamer said with a quiet voice.

"Yeah?" Kari's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Yeah, I can totally tell. That's why I have people harassing me on every part of the internet. That's why it's already gotten to my elementary school friends. Yeah, because you held to your word that you would work on this together with me."

Once again, Gamer didn't reply. "Well?" Kari urged. "Burning the Soulmark off my hand is probably still an option, you know. Doesn't sound like you actually give a shit about my feelings, anyways."

Kari knew her words hurt. She wanted them to. It wasn't rational - realistically, she should have waited. But the onslaught of attention and harassment wasn't something she could just look away from. It wasn't something she could 'cope' with.

"Can I talk now?" Gamer asked.

It was shocking to Kari that they even asked, but she was too angry to notice that. "Yeah," Kari spat.

"Thrill leaked it."

"Oh, so now you're blaming someone else, right."

"I'm serious. I went to sleep and woke up to it too. I guess she took screenshots of our Soulmarks quietly. I- uh- we banned her."

Kari exhaled, some of the anger leaking out of her breath. That didn't magically fix things, and it didn't get Gamer off the hook either, but still.

"I wanted to tell you about what probably will happen when we tell people, so um, so you knew it was coming."

"So it didn't matter what I thought to you, huh? You were gonna do what you wanted anyways."

"No, I wasn't." Gamer's tone was so uncharacteristically quiet and soft that Kari actually believed them. "Thrill was our newest mod. We were kind of skeptical at first because of her attitude but - but we made the mistake of bringing her on. I'm sorry."

Their voice cracked as they said the word 'sorry'.

Kari wanted to believe Gamer was being sincere. She desperately wanted to believe them. But she hardly knew Gamer. They had like, four conversations max, including the one ongoing right then. Gamer had a streak of disregarding Kari's feelings and toying with them like a shiny new controller. The vaguely positive call they had the night before was a fluke, Kari was starting to believe.

Kari needed to think. They needed space, time alone. If they could have their way, they'd move off the grid right then and there. They were thrifty, they could probably figure out how to live in the woods.

"I'm going out," Kari said. "I'm leaving everything but my keys and wallet at home."

Gamer didn't respond for a while. They uttered one noise before they went quiet again. Eventually, they spoke. "Fine. I'll try to fix this. I promise."

Kari shut her eyes. "I have no reason to believe your promises right now. Change that, okay?"

Another long period of silence went on. "Yeah," Gamer finally said. "I will."

Kari hung up.

She threw her phone on the bed.

Almost rushing, she grabbed a coat, her keys and wallet, and left.

Wait. No. She walked back in, grabbed a face mask and scarf, switched the coat for a hoodie, and then left. Who knew who'd recognize her? God. Kari hoped no one.

The silence was comforting. Kari didn't want to go back home. She never wanted to look at another screen ever again.

Kari’s brain was filled with thoughts and questions bouncing in their skill, a scream of rage building in their throat, blood coursing in her veins, and her heart pounding as if she'd been found by an assassin.

Most of all, Kari felt something in her begin to cry.

Kari wanted to say she expected this of Gamer. But no. She was just starting to trust them. She wanted to trust them. And that made it hurt so much more.

~~

Priya wasn't even remotely surprised when Kari showed up unannounced. She immediately invited Kari in and put on some hot chocolate and instant-bake cookies as Kari decompressed in the decades-old recliner.

"I suppose you heard," Kari asked at the doorstep.

"Yeah. Come in." Priya spoke to Kari gently, as if she was talking to an injured animal.

Kari eventually fell back into that trance, in the comfort of the sofa, within the smell of old leather and freshly baked cookies. For a brief second, things made sense. Kari felt some kind of peace, understanding, willingness to reconcile.

But not then. Kari felt Priya throw a fuzzy blanket over her and a couple dishes next to the recliner.

Kari smiled for a brief second, and then fell asleep fully.