Chapter 446 | Eleven Pixels of Panic

Chapter 446: 446 | Eleven Pixels of Panic

Kumiko looked up from her Post-it notes. Her brown eyes moved between Jordan and Chloe with the focus of someone watching a tennis match between two people she loved equally and refused to choose between. "Is Cassie-san going to find out about us?"

"No," Chloe said.

"Maybe," Jordan said at the same time.

Kumiko made a sound that fell somewhere between a whimper and a battle cry. "I have prepared for this contingency. Page thirty-one, subsection C, ’Emergency Family Disclosure Protocol.’ I wrote it at three in the morning on Tuesday while eating graham crackers."

"We’re not at page thirty-one," Chloe said.

"We’re at page thirty-one adjacent," Jordan countered.

Chloe shot him a look that could have frozen the Pacific. "We are at page seven. ’Standard Operating Procedure When Nosy Relatives Ask Questions.’ Page thirty-one is for when someone finds the System. We are nowhere near page thirty-one."

Jordan decided not to mention that Cassie had specifically said she didn’t believe his story, that she planned to keep digging, and that her face had worn the expression of a woman who ate spreadsheets for breakfast and would absolutely find page thirty-one if given enough time and caffeine.

Instead, he dropped his jacket on the arm of the sectional and walked to where Kumiko sat on the desk. She looked up at him. Her eyes were enormous and slightly manic from what he estimated to be approximately nine hours of continuous planning fueled by nothing but strawberry jam toast and divine purpose.

Jordan put his hand on top of her head.

The Headpat engaged on contact. Warmth flooded from his palm through her skull and down the back of her neck, sinking into her nervous system with the authority of a circuit breaker flipping off. Kumiko’s spine went soft. Her shoulders dropped three inches. The pen in her right hand clattered onto the desk. Her eyelids drooped to half-mast, and a sound came out of her mouth that started as "Nnngh" and finished as something that belonged exclusively in their bedroom with the door closed and the music turned up.

"Haaahh... J-Jordan..."

"Breathe."

"Mmm... I can’t... you’re doing... the thing..."

"The thing is called calming down."

"The thing is called... nnnh... unfair... because I had seventeen... ah... talking points prepared..."

Jordan kept his hand there for four more seconds, long enough for Kumiko’s fidgeting to stop completely, long enough for the manic energy to drain from her posture and leave behind the girl underneath, the one who woke up at four in the morning to draw his face in syrup because she couldn’t sleep without doing something that involved him.

He removed his hand. Kumiko swayed forward and caught herself on his forearm.

"That was rude," she whispered. Her cheeks burned the color of her ribbons. "You can’t just... neurologically disarm me when I have a presentation."

"Your presentation was eleven pixels of panic."

"Eleven pixels is a LOT."

Chloe watched the entire exchange from the ring light with an expression Jordan had come to categorize as Evaluation Mode, the setting where Chloe processed new information about the people she’d chosen to love and filed it alongside the spreadsheets and contingency plans that governed her existence. When their eyes met, Chloe gave a single nod that communicated: she needed that, you timed it well, we’ll discuss the Cassie situation later when Kumiko is not present, now get over here and look at this camera angle.

Jordan crossed the studio and stood behind Chloe, looking at the monitor over her shoulder. The preview feed showed Chloe from the chest up, framed against the acoustic foam panels and the purple LED glow that Kumiko had calibrated to complement the blue streak in Chloe’s hair. The ring light eliminated harsh shadows and gave her skin a warm, even tone that looked professional without looking manufactured.

"Lila’s checking in at five," Chloe said. "She wants to verify the raid timing and test the audio handoff between channels."

"She’s actually going to cooperate?"

"She’s going to complain about cooperating for forty-five minutes and then do exactly what I tell her because Lila respects competence even when she hates admitting it." Chloe pulled up a window showing the streaming schedule, which existed in Kumiko’s color-coded system with every minute of Friday night accounted for. "Lila starts her regular Stardew stream at seven. At eight, she raids us. Her seventeen thousand followers get a thirty-second countdown before the redirect. Kumiko’s already in our chat as moderator. I go live the second the raid lands."

"And you sing."

Chloe’s hand paused on the mouse. "And I sing."

"Live."

"Live."

"To seventeen thousand people who followed a goth girl for virtual farming content."

"To however many of those seventeen thousand actually click through the raid, which Brooke estimates at between three and twelve percent depending on Lila’s engagement at the time of handoff. Conservative estimate puts us at five hundred viewers. Optimistic puts us at two thousand."

"And the quest needs a thousand followers by midnight."

Chloe turned to face him. The blue streak fell across her cheekbone. Her jaw was tight but her eyes were steady, brown and warm and stripped of every layer she wore for the rest of the world. This was Private Chloe, the version that existed only in their apartment and their bed and sometimes in the car when she forgot to perform.

"I’m going to sing," she said. "Not because the phone says I should. Not because Kumiko commissioned artwork. Not because your magical dating app needs a thousand followers to give you a music production suite."

"Then why?"

"Because my father told me he’d hear my voice on the radio. And I promised him."

Jordan didn’t touch her. Didn’t move. The moment didn’t need him to do anything except exist inside it with his mouth shut and his ears open, which Chloe had taught him over six weeks was sometimes the hardest skill a person could learn.

Kumiko’s sewing machine whirred to life in the corner. She’d recovered from the headpat and returned to the Sally costume, feeding fabric under the needle with the focus of a surgeon and the posture of a cat napping in a sunbeam. The twin tails swayed gently with each pass of the fabric.

Jordan’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

Alexis: Thursday works. 3pm. Somewhere nobody from PCA goes.

Jordan read the message once, then locked his screen.

Forty-one hours until Chloe sang for the internet.

Two days until Alexis asked him for something real.

Fifteen days until the Eliza quest expired.

And somewhere in a San Francisco apartment, his sister was opening a new tab.