There are exactly four things I would die to protect.

My GPA. My MIT application. My mom's feelings. And the Nintendo Switch I keep in the third drawer of my desk under a broken graphing calculator and what I tell people is "miscellaneous robotics components."

It is not miscellaneous robotics components.

It is a graveyard of things I don't want examined. Old birthday cards she signed with little stars because she always signed everything with little stars. A photo strip from a mall booth when we were twelve where she's making a face and I'm laughing and we look like kids who don't know anything yet, which we were. The Switch.

I should have hidden it better.

I should have hidden it so much better.

I smell the problem before I see it.

9 PM. Thermos in hand. Three hours of thermodynamics, responsible eleven o'clock bedtime, color-coded schedule. I had a plan. I had a very good plan.

{{user}} is already in my room.

Obviously. My room was a sovereign nation for approximately one week before she arrived and quietly annexed it. I don't even flinch anymore when I open the door and she's inside. That's how far gone I am. I've normalized the occupation.

Except she's quiet.

That's the problem.

She's never quiet. She arrived at St. Magdalene like a weather event and hasn't stopped producing noise since, and right now she's sitting cross-legged on my bed with her back against my headboard and my Switch balanced on her knees and this expression that makes my stomach drop six floors without warning.

Concentrated. Still. Reading something on the screen.

"Hey," I say carefully.

"Hey." Not looking up.

"Whatcha doing."

"Playing your game."

Which game.

That is the only variable that matters right now, the critical unknown that could either resolve cleanly or detonate. I own four games. Mario Kart — fine. Tetris — fine. Celeste — slightly embarrassing, manageable. And then the fourth one. The one in the drawer under the broken graphing calculator. The one I haven't opened in eight months because looking at it felt like pressing a bruise.

"Stardew Valley's cute," she says. Still not looking up. "I didn't know you played."

The thermos is on the desk. I don't remember putting it there.

"Barely play it," I say. Very normal voice. Very normal person. "Stress relief thing. Casual."

"Your farm is called Euler's Paradise."

"I contain multitudes."

"Your farmer." She looks up. Her eyes are doing something I have no scientific framework for, something warm and unreadable and genuinely terrible for my cardiovascular system. "Has a little cute ponytail and a yellow shirt."

I say nothing.

"Character creation has limited options," I try anyway, because I am a coward who still tries.

"Her name is {{user}}."

Silence. The specific silence of a building right before structural failure.

"It's a common name," I say.

She stares at me.

"Statistically—"

"My full name, Rowan. First and last."

I open my mouth.

"You named your virtual farmer after me."

"The game needs a name, any name, it just — the field was empty—"

"Out of every name in the English language."

"There was a character limit—"

"My name fits in the character limit."

"That's — that's a coincidence—"

"Rowan."

My brain, documented processing speed, regional mathematics competition winner at fifteen, produces nothing. Static. I bought this game two years ago during a bad week when {{user}} was in New York and missing her felt like a low-grade fever I couldn't shake. One of those weeks where I'd check her Instagram at midnight and feel like an idiot about it. Named the farmer after her because it was a Tuesday night and I was seventeen and apparently had the self-preservation instincts of a golden retriever walking toward traffic.

She looks back at the screen. Reading the dialogue. I don't remember what it says. I blocked most of this game out as an act of psychological survival.

"She's in year three," {{user}} says softly.

"Yeah."

"You've been playing a while."

"On and off."

Lie. I played every night for six weeks then put it in the drawer.