My roommate, Stacy, had a bad habit of eating other people’s takeout. One day, she went too far.

chapter 4
That night, Stacy was pounding on her keyboard and shrieking into her mic.
“Chad, gank mid! He’s killing me again! My jungler is literally trash!”
I sat quietly on my bed with noise-canceling headphones on.
I wasn’t logged into my Liv account.
Instead, I had pulled up an old high-level account I used for private scrims.
The ID was simple.
Eclipse.
It was a Challenger-tier account, one I used only when I wanted serious games against semi-pro players. For the last hour, I had been timing my queue perfectly to match against Chad’s five-stack team.
For the third match in a row, I ended up against them.
For the third match in a row, I made their lives miserable.
Chad was on his signature jungle assassin. Stacy, pretending to be Valkyrie, was in mid on a squishy mage she clearly couldn’t play.
She was awful.
Her positioning was terrible. Her reactions were slow. Every movement screamed that she had no business in that rank.
Three minutes in, I tower-dived her for first blood and escaped with one hit point.
Across the room, Stacy slammed her fist on the desk.
“Chad, where were you?”
“I’m farming. Just play safe,” he snapped.
I didn’t let her play safe.
Every time she returned to lane, I was waiting.
By five minutes, she was 0/4.
Chad finally rotated to save her, but I saw him coming a mile away. I baited him into overcommitting, dodged his ultimate by a sliver, landed my full combo, and walked away as both their health bars disappeared.
Double kill.
“Are you kidding me?” Stacy screamed. “This Eclipse guy is hacking! Chad, report him!”
“He’s not hacking, Val,” Chad muttered tensely. “He’s just cracked.”
I dismantled them.
I stole Chad’s jungle buffs, hunted him through his own territory, and made sure Stacy spent more time on the gray death screen than in lane.
Finally, Chad typed in all-chat.
Shadow Strike: Get a life, Eclipse. Sweaty tryhard.
I stared at the message for a second, then smiled.
Eclipse: Maybe spend less time boosting your e-girl and more time learning how to smite, Chad.
Across the room, Stacy audibly gasped.
“How does he know your real name?” she whispered into her mic.
I said nothing.
Twenty minutes later, I destroyed their nexus.
Then I logged off, took off my headphones, and picked up a book.
Stacy whipped around in her chair, face red and sweaty, greasy hair stuck to her cheeks.
“Could you keep it down?” I asked mildly. “Some of us are trying to study.”
“Shut up, Liv,” she snapped. “You wouldn’t understand. We’re practicing for a major tournament. Something a loser like you will never get to do.”
I pretended to be curious. “A tournament? Is it online?”
She froze for half a second. “Mostly. The finals are in person, but whatever.”
I looked back at my book.
Now she understood the problem.
If State made it to finals, they would have to play live on stage.
And Chad was expecting to meet the girl in my photos.
The next day, I walked into Vanguard University’s esports center and signed up for tryouts.
The team captain, a senior named Marcus, looked at me with clear surprise. Esports at our school was still overwhelmingly male, and I had shown up in a sundress and sandals.
“I’m here for mid lane tryouts,” I said, setting down my keyboard.
Marcus nodded. “PC four. One-v-ones first, then team scrims.”
Two hours later, the room was completely silent.
I had crushed every test.
I didn’t lose a single game. My mechanics were flawless, my rotations were sharp, and my map awareness was brutal. I wasn’t just playing well. I was playing like someone with a score to settle.
Marcus stared at my screen, then at me.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Liv.”
His eyes widened. “Wait. Are you Eclipse?”
I gave him a small nod.
The room erupted.
Marcus practically lunged forward and grabbed my hand.
“You’re our starting mid laner. Welcome to Vanguard Varsity. We are absolutely destroying State this year.”
Over the next three weeks, the team became my second home. Marcus ran things with discipline and respect. No ego. No toxicity. No cheap shots. We trained hard, communicated well, and turned into a real unit.
Meanwhile, my dorm room turned into a slow-motion disaster.
The closer the tournament got, the more stressed Stacy became. Chad kept pushing to meet in person, and every night I listened to her lie through her teeth.
“Oh Chad, I’m just shy,” she would whine into her headset between bites of chips. “I don’t know if I can handle the cameras. My anxiety is so bad.”
“Val, you have to come,” he begged. “The whole server wants to meet you. You’re going to be the star of the tournament. I already got you a jersey.”
“I’ll try, sweetie,” she said weakly.
Then, two days before the tournament, Stacy approached my desk while I was putting lotion on my hands.
“Hey, Liv.”
I didn’t look up. “What do you want?”
She shifted awkwardly. “You know that silver dress you have? The sparkly one?”
My hand paused. “What about it?”
“Can I borrow it?”
I slowly turned to look at her.
“Stacy, it’s a size two. You couldn’t get it past your knee.”
Her face flared with anger, but she swallowed it.
“Fine. Then I need a bigger favor. I’ll pay you a hundred bucks.”
“For what?”
She looked away. “I need you to go to the Tri-State tournament on Saturday and pretend to be me.”
That got my full attention.
“Pretend to be you?”
She rushed on nervously. “I made some online friends. They think I look like… someone else. I just need you to show up, smile for a few pictures, wear the team jacket, and then say your wrist hurts so you can’t play. I’ll stay home and log in remotely. Please.”
It took everything in me not to burst out laughing.
This girl wanted me to go pretend to be her pretending to be me.
I quietly opened the voice recorder on my phone.
“So let me get this straight,” I said. “You used my pictures to catfish someone?”
“I didn’t catfish him,” she snapped. “I just used an aesthetic. It’s the internet. Everyone lies. His name is Chad, and he’s hot. If he sees what I really look like, he’ll block me.”
I stared at her.
“And you think he won’t notice that the girl on stage isn’t the one playing?”
“I’ll say I’m sick,” she said desperately. “Just do it, Liv. You owe me.”
I stopped the recording and slipped my phone into my pocket.
“No.”
Her mouth fell open.
“I’m not being your body double so you can keep lying. Clean up your own mess.”
Her face purpled with rage.
“You selfish bitch!”
Then she stormed out, slamming the door so hard the hinges rattled.
I sat back calmly.
Saturday couldn’t come fast enough.