Chapter 58: A Terrible Gaming Session.
The game loaded and Liam cracked his knuckles.
The boy, who had shifted approximately four inches closer on the sofa without acknowledging he had done so, glanced at the gesture with the evaluating eye of someone who had learned to read players before the first round.
"You ready?" he said.
"Born ready," Liam said.
He was not ready.
The match began and Liam’s character spawned into the map with clean surroundings and a full loadout and approximately eleven seconds of safety before everything went completely wrong. He ran directly into an open lane, ignored the available cover on both sides, and was eliminated before he had fired a single shot.
The screen went grey.
Silence.
"You ran into the open," the boy said, with the careful tone of a doctor delivering news.
"I was getting a feel for the map."
"By dying."
"Reconnaissance," Liam said. "Classic strategy by a pro player."
The respawn loaded. Liam spawned, turned left, ran for four seconds with purpose and intention, and was shot from behind by someone he never saw.
Grey screen again.
The boy turned and looked at him fully for the first time since they’d sat down. Not with hostility. With something closer to clinical concern.
"You’ve played before, right?" he said.
"Frequently," Liam said.
"When?"
Liam thought about it. "2014."
The boy put his controller down on his knee.
"2014," he repeated.
"Give or take but hey, what could have changed?"
Round three. Liam spawned with renewed focus, moved to cover immediately — the boy had to acknowledge the improvement — crouched behind a wall, waited, identified an approaching enemy, stood up to engage, and was shot by a completely different enemy from the opposite direction that he had failed to account for entirely.
Grey screen.
"You just—" The boy stopped. Started again. "There were two of them. You only looked at one."
"I was committed to the first one. It’s called tunnel vision. It happens to professionals."
"It happens to bad players!"
"Those are the same thing in this context, yes."
The boy made a sound. It was not quite a laugh but it was the scaffolding one gets built on.
By the fifth death the boy had stopped playing his own game entirely and was just watching Liam with the expression of a scientist observing a phenomenon that shouldn’t technically be possible. Liam died behind cover. He died in the open. He died while reloading, while switching weapons, and on one memorable occasion while standing completely still, which neither of them could fully explain.
The killcount sat at zero.
Liam set his controller on his knee and shrugged.
"Hey," he said. "I never said I was good."
The boy laughed.
It came out before he could catch it — genuine and sudden, the kind of laugh one would expect from a sixteen-year-old. He tried to pull it back immediately, pressing his lips together just like his sister, but the damage was done.
"You are so bad," he said, shaking his head. "Like — historically bad. I’ve never seen anything like that."
"Hey! At least I’m consistent," Liam offered.
"You died nine times in six minutes."
"The purpose of gaming is to have fun." Liam shruggged.
The boy looked at him with the disdain reserved for people who say things that are technically true but spiritually wrong. "That is what suckers say."
Liam raised both hands in full surrender.
The boy shook his head again, but the armour was gone. Whatever he had assembled at the front door — the stare, the silence, the theatrical indifference — had not survived Liam dying nine times in six minutes while maintaining complete composure about it. It was very difficult to maintain hostility toward a man who was that bad at something and that unbothered by it simultaneously.
Sophia appeared at the hallway entrance in a different outfit from the bags — she’d been trying things on, apparently — and looked at the screen, then at her brother’s expression.
"What happened?" she said.
"He died nine times," the boy said.
"The map is poorly designed," Liam said.
"You ran into an open field."
"I was assessing."
Sophia looked between them with quiet bewilderment and noticed they were actually getting along which was rare.
Liam checked the time and stood up, reaching for his jacket from the armrest where he’d draped it.
The boy looked at the controller in his own hand. Then at the door. He actually looked sad, like he didn’t want Liam to leave: "You’re leaving already?"
Liam paused.
The boy immediately looked back at the screen and adjusted his grip on the controller.
Sophia, who had reappeared in the hallway, went very still.
"Coming back at seven," Liam said, without making anything of it. He picked up his jacket. "Your sister and I have somewhere to be or do you want me to move in?"
The boy said nothing. Nodded once at the screen, which was as close to fine as the situation was going to produce.
Liam moved toward the door, and the boy straightened slightly on the sofa.
"Ey."
Liam turned.
The boy’s jaw shifted. He looked at a point approximately six inches to the left of Liam’s face. "I’m Mateo."
Liam nodded once. "I’m Ghost... Just kidding, I’m Liam but she calls me Papi,"
Mateo’s face went from neutral to horrific in a split second.
"LIAM!" Sophia barked at him, tossing a slippers towards him but Liam shut the door in time.
The drive home was easy. Early evening light, thin traffic, the city settling into the transitional hour between afternoon and night. Liam had one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the window ledge and let his thoughts run at a low idle.
He hadn’t known about Mateo.
He turned it over briefly — the brother, the apartment, the neighbourhood, the particular way Sophia had gone quiet in the car on the way over. The picture it assembled was clear enough. She was his guardian. She had been for long enough that the apartment reflected it — two bedrooms, his console in the living room, her name on the lease.
It didn’t complicate anything. If anything, it did the opposite.
He thought about Mateo laughing at the ninth death. The controller picked up after the fourth. The name, offered at the door like a coin from a closed fist.
"Bond with the brother," something told him.
"Though honestly," he thought, pulling into his parking lot and killing the engine — he was fairly certain he’d already done that.
He headed upstairs to get ready.