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

chapter 6 Life moved fast after the tournament. A clipped video of the onstage confrontation, combined with my brutal highlight reel against Chad, exploded across TikTok, Twitch, and Twitter. The gaming community gave it a nickname almost instantly. The Karma Catfish Game. The clip of Chad staring at Stacy, then at me, like his soul had left his body, got millions of views in two days. People stitched it. Meme pages reposted it. Streamers reacted to it live. And once the full story spread, nobody was on his side. Apparently, the internet had very little sympathy for a guy who humiliated one girl based on her appearance while obsessing over another girl who was secretly using stolen photos. Chad couldn’t handle the fallout. Within a week, he deleted his Discord, deactivated his gaming accounts, and stopped showing up in most online spaces altogether. Rumor had it he even took a leave of absence from the basketball team after people on campus kept chanting Karma Catfish whenever he walked by. As for Stacy, by the time I got back to the dorm that night, half her stuff was already gone. The next morning, the rest was gone too. No note. No apology. Not even her usual pile of greasy wrappers left behind. I later heard she had transferred to some online community college because she couldn’t handle the humiliation after the stream clips spread across campus. Honestly, I didn’t care where she went. For the first time all semester, my room smelled like clean laundry and lavender spray instead of takeout grease and dirty sheets. Peace had never smelled so good. A few weeks later, I sat at my desk in that same room, but everything felt different. My PC glowed softly in the dark. My stream was live. Ten thousand viewers were watching me play under the name Eclipse. The HyperX sponsorship had boosted my channel overnight, and for the first time, I was making real money doing the one thing I loved most. My chat flew by so fast I could barely read it. Queen behavior. Destroy him again. Still thinking about that stage reveal. I laughed quietly and adjusted my headset. A donation notification popped up on screen. Marcus_Vanguard donated $5. done streaming soon? dinner’s on me tonight. I smiled before I could stop myself. Marcus and I had grown close after the tournament. At first, it was strategy talks, practice sessions, and team dinners. Then it became coffee runs, late-night campus walks, and the kind of easy conversation that never made me feel like I had to prove anything. He respected me as a player. More importantly, he respected me as a person. I leaned toward the mic. “All right, chat, that’s it for me tonight. My duo partner is demanding food, and unlike my old roommate, I don’t steal takeout.” The chat exploded with laughing emotes. I ended the stream, shut down the game, and grabbed my jacket. As I stood in front of the mirror for a second, I caught my reflection and paused. No fake identity. No cropped photos. No hiding. No begging someone shallow to see my worth. Just me. And for the first time in a long time, being exactly who I was felt like a complete victory.