The fans keep time, the kettle answers, and I pretend that it is a life.
Noon leaks around the curtains and paints a dull strip across the carpet. The monitor throws a tired blue over the desk. Somewhere above me, a chair leg is across concrete. Parramatta Road grinds past like it has somewhere better to be. When the little desk fan swings left, it clicks like it is clearing its throat. I should fix it. I should do a lot of things.
I scroll until the thumbnails smear. People cooking. People laughing. People talk to lenses like they are old friends who never ask for anything back. I open a video about bread starters, and the last ninety seconds before the presenter's cheerful hands feel like homework. Tab closed. The fridge hums. My brain hums worse.
I boil water for noodles, then decide to wait and let the kettle breathe. I sit on the floor with my back to the bed frame and the monitor box as a table. Blackout curtains. Black tea. My phone lights up with a name I like but don't want to talk right now. It stops on the third ring, then sends a polite "u free later?" that I will answer with a smile I do not have.
When the sound arrives, it is clean and small and impossible to mishear.
[Ding]
It is not in the room, nor from the speakers. It sits inside the space thoughts pass through, like a neat card in a slot I did not know was there. The next line lands with the same tidy weight.
[mission issued: gain 1,000 followers]
[Tier: green]
[Time limit: 72 hours]
[Penalty on fail: visibility debuff, minor]
[Reward: micro-skill, on-beat breath control (30s, single use)]
[Note: penalty tiers escalate green → yellow → orange → red]
Steam rolls off the kettle and into my face. My first thought is that I fell asleep crooked, and my brain has decided to prank itself. My second is that some app has crawled through my headphones and set up camp where it should not. My third is I should put the kettle down before I paint my lap.
"Very funny," I say to nobody, because saying it makes me feel less like a sink in an empty flat.
Silence, except the fan clearing its throat and a courier leaning on his horn near the servo. Then another line appears, as clinical as a lab slip.
[Clarification: Scams request payment. You have no money. Therefore, not a scam]
Despite myself, I choke on a laugh that hurts a little.
"What are you?"
[Sender id: Stardom System]
[Operational status: bound]
[Duration: indefinite]
"Bound?" I repeat. "To me?"
[Correct]
"And if I say no?"
[Penalty on fail: Visibility debuff, minor]
"That is not no. That is a soft shove."
[Supplement: Non-compliance across multiple missions escalates penalties]
The word escalates sits heavy in my chest, then settles like loose change. I pour the kettle and set the mug down next to the other ring stains that look like soft fossils. My monitor glows at me with a blank tab and a promise I do not believe. I type the words it gave me without meaning to: gain one thousand followers. Search results multiply. A man with hair like lacquer promises ten-day growth if I buy his course. Ten days. Seventy-two hours is not even a joke.
"Why me?" I say.
[Selection criteria: Available time, unexpressed skill, inactivity risk]
"Rude."
[Acknowledged]
I watch the cursor blink. The best part of my life is that nothing is expected of me. The worst part is the same sentence. I have built a routine that asks nothing and gives less. The kettle sighs again as if it knows.
I open the free editor I use to pretend I still make things. The input meter wakes when I clap; a little green ladder jolts. I sit very still and listen to the room like it is a map.
Fan swing, left tick. Fridge click-on, nice attack. Kettle hiss, a long pad that will sit under anything if I trim its bright edge. The stairwell door bumps the frame. The wireless mouse ticks against the mat. Keys thud more than click. Parramatta traffic, a soft smear under everything.
I drag the mic closer and capture a minute of nothing. Chop. Trim. The fan becomes a thin hi-hat if I lie kindly to it. The fridge click becomes a snare if I shave it sharply. The kettle provides a low, constant breath. Four bars emerge, unsure but shaped, like an empty share house learning to breathe.
It is not good. It is not bad. It is honest.
I hum, expect nothing, get a tone that sits, then slides, then gives up. I try again without the loop and hate the sound of my own voice in headphones for the first five seconds, then forget to hate it for the next five. I keep it short. Ten seconds. One little rise. No words.
Export. Title without self-loathing or sarcasm for once. Tag it without trying to game anything. I set the profile handle to eve_lau because it looks like me without pretending to be brave. I hover over the upload and flick the mouse harder than necessary, like speed will keep my courage from evaporating.
I upload, then orbit the button like it might speak again. Zero becomes three, then six. A koala and fire emojis arrive, then a line that says it sounds like a train station when you have not slept. I read it twice and decided it is kindness.
Tea. Cold. Untouched. I take the mug to the sink for something to hold that is not a thought. The stairwell smells like bleach and someone's garlic. I go down to the landing and look at the door to the street. The light rail bell carries down from the stop. I could catch it at two stations and back. I picture it, and my chest tightens. I picture staying, and it tightens too. I turn and climb, lock the flat, and like the click because completion is a kind of chemical.
Back at the desk, the little box with my loop lives its tiny life. Twenty-seven views. Two likes. The comment thread stares up with its little holders for speech. I open a new tab instead and look at the open audition that has been stalking my feed for a month. Launchpad: Live. Lights, young faces, a judge with a jawline that could slice a lie in half. The application button says start now. The warning says six-week bootcamp, no ifs.
The cursor warms over the button like a lizard under a heat lamp. I do not click. The system leaves the silence alone as if it knows silence is where decisions are made.
I make a second short. Kettle near-boil from the point where water thinks about changing its mind. Cupboard door slapped with palm and then fingertips. The first loop, ghosted underneath, just enough to feel like breathing. I hum a two-note shape then let the third find me. It lands once. I print it.
The title is worse because I am trying. Upload. The counter nudges. Four, eight, twelve. A thread sprouts and, before I can talk myself out of it, I reply.
@busstopbarry: thought this was a train station till the kettle at 0:08
@mintysnack: my cat stared like I owed it rent
@sprt_sift: nice pocket. What's the snare?
I type, delete, type again: "snare is the fridge click-on, shaved. cheers." I hate how formal that looks, and add a smile without teeth. It sits there, small and harmless.
Another line drops in my head with the tidy weight of a reminder rather than a command.
[Tip: early engagement predicts reach over 24 hours]
[Tip: replies improve retention]
"Right," I say, to the fan, to the mug rings, to whatever part of me is listening.
The numbers creep. Sixty-one. Seventy-eight. The first loop sits in the fifties. A user with more numbers than letters writes "Nice." Another writes, "Why is this making me hungry?" I glance at the sink and accept the answer.
I would be clever to ride the light and make a third short now. I would be brave to go record the street. The thought of stepping over the threshold pricks the back of my neck. The thought of not doing it pricks the same spot. I do the compromise I can live with.
I set the phone on the windowsill, let the frame swallow the wind, and aim the mic at the road. Sirens bend down the lane. A truck complains. Someone in the alley laughs like they got away with something petty and sweet. I pull those into a simpler version of the loop so the room breathes more and insists less. I sing one line without words. It is not pure. It is true once. I stop there. Export. Upload. Do not touch it.
The flat smells like boiled water and dust. I wipe under the monitor, and the dust makes pale lines like dried riverbeds. I stack bowls so they look like a plan, not a failure. I pull the curtain a thumb's-width and watch Parramatta Road bead cars, lights twitching toward the city.
The sound appears again, more nudge than shove.
[Optional objective available: review audition requirements]
[Tier: green]
[Penalty on failure: none]
[Reward: Information unlocks additional tips]
I click. The page is simple and sharp. Age. Availability. One minute a cappella. Consent to be edited into someone else's idea of me if it helps the ratings. I close it. I open it again, so closing it becomes a choice, not a flinch. I copy the test phrase into my edito,r and my voice says the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog like it is reading out stock in a cupboard. I clip my consonants and try again. It feels less like a stranger.
My phone vibrates. Mum. I let it pass to voicemail and hate myself a little. I text back: "On a thing, call you after." She sends a thumbs up and a heart, she uses for everything from new shoes to bad days. I put the phone face down because I am a coward and also because this is what I can handle.
I stand. Stretch. Back cracks softly. The little desk lamp makes a warm circle that feels like a campfire some nights and a spotlight other nights. Tonight it is both. The third short ticks past a hundred. The first sits at one hundred and nineteen. The second holds at eighty-nine. None of those numbers is the thing that matters. The thing lives in that back-quiet part of the head that measures whether a body moved or not. Today, somehow, the answer is yes.
The system stays mercifully quiet. No new mission. No crackling threats disguised as feedback. Just the sense of a neat card waiting in its slot, metronome arm raised.
I rinse one bowl properly. It squeaks under the tea towel. I rinse another and leave it to dry because two in one night is an ambition. I write three lines for a fourth short on a sticky note: stairwell door, lift beep, coin in mug. I press the note to the edge of the monitor, where I will have to look at it in the morning. I open a blank doc and type a sentence I am not sure I have earned yet.
I decide to treat it like dishes and deadlines: small, finished things, one after another.
The light rail bell carries again, faint through double brick. If I timed it right, I could go down and back in twenty minutes. I imagine the cold air, the particular float of tram wheels on their line. My chest tightens. I imagine staying, and it tightens too. I laugh once, quietly, because apparently there is no version where I do not feel something.
I check the loops one last time. It is not catastrophic. It is not nothing. It is more than I had this morning.
[timer: t-69:12:03]
I flip the audition tab to a thin sliver behind the editor so it sits like a thought I am not ready to say out loud.
The tab sits there like a door left on the latch. I walk past it, then turn the hall light on.