"Siren." His voice comes through the dark, careful. "What happened tonight? Why are you here?"
"I told you. I needed to do something alone."
"In the Love Room?" A pause. "This isn't you."
"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think."
Silence stretches between us. When he speaks again, his tone has shifted — heavier, uncertain in a way I have never heard from him.
"I don't want to hurt you," he says quietly. "I don't want to cross a line we can't come back from. We're…" He stops. Starts again. "You matter to me, more than I know how to say. And I'm scared that if we do this, I'll lose you."
Something cracks in my chest.
He is worried about me. About us. About ruining the one real thing either of us has.
"I need this," I whisper. "I need to prove that I'm not…" The word sticks in my throat. Broken. Frigid. All the things Tristan called me. "I need to know I can feel something. With anyone. I came here to find a stranger, Ghost. Someone who wouldn't matter."
"And instead you found me."
"Instead I found you."
Another silence and I can almost feel him thinking, weighing options, trying to decide what the right thing is.
"Better me than some stranger who doesn't give a damn about you," he finally says. His voice is rough. "Better me than someone who would hurt you and walk away."
My throat tightens. "Have you ever been here before? The Love Room?"
"No." A soft exhale. "But everyone talks about it. They say it's... intense. A whole new kind of experience. It's what made Echo famous, honestly. The intimacy without consequences."
"Intimacy without consequences," I repeat. The words taste strange. "Is that possible?"
"I don't know." His presence shifts closer in the dark. "But I know I'd rather be here with you than let you do this alone."
I do not know what to say.
I do not know how to want something I have spent my whole life being taught to fear.
"I haven't ever done this with someone…" I whisper. "Any of this. So I don't know how to… do it properly. Don’t know the rules or whatever."
The confession hangs in the dark.
I have never said it out loud before. Twenty-one years old and untouched, and somehow that feels more shameful than anything else I have told him.
"Rules are optional," Ghost says softly. "Remember?"
Something in my chest loosens. The darkness feels like permission, like a door opening into a room I have always been afraid to enter.
The darkness shifts. Our avatars materialize — mine slender and silver-haired, draped in sheer fabric that clings to every curve. His tall and broad-shouldered, sharp jawline, dark hair falling across his forehead. Not our real faces. Better. Fantasy versions of ourselves.
He steps closer. His avatar's hand reaches for my waist.
My pulse pounds with realization—in here, we can be anyone and do anything.
Then he kisses me.
No warning. No hesitation. Just his mouth on mine, hungry and demanding, like he has been holding himself back for months and finally stopped trying.
The moment our lips meet, the game responds — soft golden lights bloom around us, drifting upward like fireflies, swirling and multiplying, filling the darkness with warmth.
His tongue pushes past my lips, deep and searching, and through the headset I feel it — the pressure, the heat, the wet slide of him tasting me like he wants to swallow me whole.
My real body arches off the bed. The sensation is not physical, not exactly, but my brain cannot tell the difference. It interprets every signal as real — his mouth devouring mine, his hands gripping my waist, pulling me closer.
"Touch yourself," he breathes against my lips. "I want to feel you fall apart."
My hand slides down my stomach before I can think. Beneath my waistband. Finding the heat there, the ache that has been building since he kissed me.
The lights pulse brighter, synced to my heartbeat, to the rhythm of my fingers.
His mouth leaves mine, trailing down my neck. Somehow, I feel teeth grazing my pulse point, tongue licking a path to my collarbone. Lower. His hands push my shirt up — or my brain tells me they do — and his mouth finds my breast, hot and wet through the fabric.
I gasp and my back arches as fingers move faster.
"That's it," he murmurs against my skin, and I feel the vibration of his voice everywhere. "Let me hear you."
The lights swirl faster, brighter, a storm of gold surrounding us. His mouth keeps moving lower — my ribs, my stomach, the dip of my waist. I know it is not real. I know he is not actually touching me.
But my body does not care. My body is on fire, responding to every simulated sensation like it has been starving for years and finally found food.
"I want you," Ghost says, his voice rough and raw. "I've wanted you for a long time, Siren… Longer than I should admit."
My head spins. The pleasure builds, coiling tighter, my fingers working desperately now while his mouth hovers lower and lower —
And then I freeze.
The reality crashes over me. I am alone in my apartment. Headset on. Touching myself to a voice I have never seen, a person I have never met, while somewhere across the city Tristan's words echo in the dark: you care more about that stupid game than you ever cared about me.
I pull my hand back like I have been burned.
"I can't." My voice comes out strangled. "This is… I'm sorry. This is a mistake. I don't know what I'm doing."
The lights dim around us, fading back into soft ambient glow. Ghost is quiet and I brace myself for disappointment, for pressure, for the moment when he pushes and I have to leave.
Instead, his voice comes gentle through the dark. "Okay. We don't have to do anything. I'm still here."
The words break something open inside me.
"I just need someone to talk to," I say, and my voice cracks. "I don't really need… I just need to not be alone right now."
"Then talk to me."
So I do.
I tell him about Tristan. The wine bottle. The blonde in his bed. The words that landed like fists — frigid, broken, never let anyone in.
I tell him about all the nights I lay beside someone who was supposed to love me and felt nothing while my body stayed locked behind walls I did not know how to tear down.
Ghost listens. He does not interrupt or offer solutions or silver linings.
At some point, I start crying. The tears come without warning, months of pressure releasing all at once.
"You don't have to be okay," Ghost says quietly. "You don't have to be anything right now."
A wall crumbles somewhere deep inside me. All the nights with Tristan, all the shame I carried for being broken — and here, with just a voice, I feel more than I have felt in years. Maybe nothing was wrong with me.
Maybe I just needed to feel safe first.
We stay in the Love Room for hours, talking and not talking, the lights faded to a soft glow around us. When I finally take off the headset, my apartment is grey with early dawn.
My face is swollen. My body feels wrung out, emptied, strangely light.
I feel more seen than I have ever felt in my life. The terror of that is almost unbearable.
The next morning, Ghost is waiting by the stone bridge. Neither of us mentions the Love Room. We move through a quest in silence.
Finally, he clears his throat. "Same time tomorrow?"
I exhale. "Same time tomorrow."
