Morning came like an accusation.Mateo woke to the scent of coffee—real coffee, not the bitter sludge his sponsor-sent Nespresso pods produced—and the low hum of a refrigerator that wasn't his. For three disorienting seconds, he forgot where he was. Then memory flooded back: the lock clicking open, the girl on the stool, the seventeen seconds of singing that had detonated his entire week.He rolled onto his back, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that vaguely resembled the map of World's Edge from Apex Legends. His phone buzzed against the nightstand—a cheap IKEA thing, not his ergonomic setup. He fumbled for it, thumb swiping open Twitter before his brain had fully booted.142 notifications.His stomach dropped.Top of the list: @ClipKing_ had posted a follow-up. "Part 2: Who IS she? Deep dive into the mystery singer from Mateo Rivas' stream." The video had 387K views. Comments ranged from obsessive ("I ran the audio through a spectrogram—she's definitely classically trained") to predatory ("bet she'd sound even better without clothes") to genuinely moved ("that rawness tho… haven't felt something this real online in years").Beneath it, Dex—his producer—had texted seventeen times between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m.Dex: bro you alive
Dex: sponsors are calling
Dex: RED BULL wants to know if she's "brand safe"
Dex: also Twitch DM'd me asking if this was a planned collab
Dex: MATEO
Dex: answer your fucking phoneHe dropped the phone onto his chest like it had grown teeth. Through the thin wall, he heard it—the soft, rhythmic thump of bare feet on hardwood. Selene. He still didn't know her name, but he'd memorized the cadence of her movements in twelve hours: the way she padded from bedroom to kitchen without making a sound unless she wanted to, the deliberate slowness with which she moved through spaces she considered hers.He sat up too fast, the duvet pooling around his waist. His streamer persona—the effortless charm, the razor-sharp timing—felt like a costume he'd outgrown overnight. What he'd done wasn't malicious. It was worse: it was careless. The kind of carelessness that came from living so long inside the frame of a camera that you forgot some things existed outside it.The bedroom door was still closed. Locked, probably. He'd heard the click last night like a period at the end of a sentence neither of them had finished writing.He needed coffee. Needed to face her. Needed to not vomit from anxiety.He pulled on yesterday's joggers—clean enough—and ran a hand through hair that definitely wasn't stream-ready. No ring light. No curated angles. Just Mateo Rivas, twenty-four years old, facing the first real consequence of his career.The kitchen was a study in contrasts.His side of the counter—claimed by instinct—held a protein shaker, a stack of unopened sponsor mailers, and his mechanical keyboard still plugged into a power strip snaking across the floor like a digital vine. Her side held a chipped ceramic mug, a French press crusted with grounds, and a small potted succulent thriving despite apparent neglect.She stood at the sink, back to him, rinsing her mug. Wearing the same oversized band tee from yesterday, but different shorts—gray this time, frayed at the hem. Her hair was down now, a dark waterfall brushing the small of her back. She moved with a quiet economy that made his own existence feel loud, performative, excessive.He cleared his throat. "I made the coffee."She didn't turn. "I know. You used the cheap grounds. The good stuff's in the tin canister.""I didn't see a tin canister.""Because you weren't looking." She set the mug in the drying rack with deliberate care. Turned slowly. Her eyes—dark brown, almost black in the morning light—met his without flinching. No makeup. No performance. Just a face that had seen too many 4 a.m. writing sessions and didn't care if you noticed. "You stayed up all night."It wasn't a question. He hadn't slept. Had scrolled through every comment, every theory, every demand to "find the singer." Had watched his follower count climb 8,000 overnight while feeling like he'd lost something fundamental."How do you know?""You breathe louder when you're tired." A flicker of something—not quite amusement—crossed her features. "I heard you pacing at 3:17 a.m. Stopped when you opened the mini-fridge. Started again after you closed it."He stared at her. "You were listening.""I was trying to sleep. There's a difference." She finally moved toward the coffee maker, her shoulder brushing his arm as she passed. Not an accident. Not quite intentional. A test. "You're Mateo Rivas."It was the first time she'd said his name. It sounded different in her mouth—stripped of the hype, the emotes, the thousand times he'd heard it screamed in tournament arenas. Just syllables. Human."Yeah.""People pay you to talk." She poured coffee into her chipped mug, didn't offer him one. "Last night you talked for three hours straight about people shooting each other in a video game. And twelve thousand people listened.""Eighteen thousand by the end.""Congratulations." She took a sip, eyes never leaving his. "Must be nice. Having an audience just… waiting for you to speak."The words weren't cruel. They were observational. And that made them cut deeper."It's not just talking," he said, hearing the defensiveness creep into his voice. The streamer reflex: always selling, always justifying. "It's reading the game. The players. The meta. It's timing. It's—""—performing," she finished. "Yeah. I get it. I do it too. Just… quieter."Silence stretched between them, thick with everything unsaid. The clip. The views. The violation."I didn't mean to broadcast you," he said finally, the words raw. "My ambient mic was hot. I didn't realize—""I know you didn't mean to." She set her mug down. Leaned against the counter, arms crossed. The posture wasn't defensive—it was assessing. "That's not what bothers me.""What bothers you?""That you didn't turn it off faster." Her gaze sharpened. "You heard me singing. You saw the chat explode. And for seventeen seconds, Mateo Rivas, you did nothing. Because seventeen seconds of genuine human connection got you more engagement than three hours of calling out headshots."The truth of it hit him like a physical blow. He had hesitated. Not out of malice—but because in that moment, his streamer brain had short-circuited. Raw, unvarnished art had crashed his carefully constructed content ecosystem, and for a heartbeat, he'd been too mesmerized to pull the plug."I cut the stream after," he said weakly."After the damage was done." She pushed off the counter. "I'm not mad about the views. I'm not some purist who thinks art should live in a vacuum. I'm mad that you got to decide—without asking—whether my voice was content or not.""I get it," he said, and meant it. "I do. But Selene—"Her head snapped up. "How do you know my name?"Shit.He gestured weakly toward her bedroom door. "The mail on the floor. Addressed to S. Álvarez."She went very still. Then she bent down, retrieved a single envelope he hadn't noticed—a handwritten address, a stamp with a bird on it—and slid it into the pocket of her shorts. The gesture was protective. Possessive."Don't call me that," she said quietly. "Not yet."The correction landed with unexpected weight. This wasn't about privacy. It was about permission. About who got to claim pieces of her."Okay," he said. "Fair."She studied him then—not as a streamer, not as an intruder, but as a person. He felt the shift like a change in atmospheric pressure."Why'd you really take this place?" she asked."My old spot got sold. Management company bought the building, kicked out everyone with month-to-month leases. This was the only thing available on short notice that didn't smell like regret and instant noodles." He almost smiled. "Also, the internet's decent. You can't stream on dial-up, even ironically."A ghost of a smile touched her lips. Gone in an instant. "I sublet from Javier. Musician. Bassist for a band that almost made it in 2019. He's on tour until April. Told me I could stay as long as I wanted. Guess he didn't tell the new owners.""So we're both victims of shitty property management.""Seems that way." She took another sip of coffee. "They'll sort it out in a week. Management always does. Until then…""Until then?" he prompted.She set her mug down. Looked him dead in the eye. "Until then, you get the living room for your… broadcasts. I get the bedroom and the hours between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. for my work. We don't interact on stream unless we agree to it first. And you—" she stepped closer, close enough that he caught that scent again—vanilla, green things, sleep—"you don't make me content without my consent. Clear?"Every instinct screamed to negotiate. To charm her into a compromise. But something in her posture—the set of her shoulders, the quiet certainty in her voice—told him this wasn't a negotiation. It was a boundary. And boundaries, he was learning too late, weren't meant to be optimized."Clear," he said.She nodded once. Turned to leave."Wait." He didn't know why he said it. Maybe because the alternative was returning to his screens, to the hungry metrics and sponsor demands, and facing what he'd almost become. "What were you singing last night?"She paused at the edge of the kitchen. Didn't turn around."A song about streetlights," she said after a long moment. "And the people who stand under them waiting for someone who isn't coming.""Is it… finished?""No.""Why not?"This time she did turn. Looked at him like he'd asked the most complicated question in the world."Because the person under the streetlight hasn't left yet," she said softly. "And I don't know if they ever will."The words hung between them, fragile as glass. He wanted to ask more—to pull the thread and see what unraveled. But he sensed this was the first real thing she'd given him voluntarily. And some gifts broke if you handled them too roughly."Okay," he said again.She held his gaze for three heartbeats too long. Then she walked away, disappearing down the hallway without a backward glance.Mateo stood alone in the kitchen, the ghost of her presence lingering in the air. He poured himself coffee from the cheap grounds. It tasted like ash.His phone buzzed again. Dex. A Twitch notification. A DM from a talent scout at a major label asking if he had "contact info for the vocalist."He silenced the phone. Set it face-down on the counter.For the first time in years, the digital world could wait.He walked to the living room, past his pristine streaming setup, and sank onto the worn sofa facing her closed bedroom door. He didn't knock. Didn't speak. Just sat there, listening to the silence between their worlds—the space where something new might grow if they let it.Two hours later, Dex finally got through on the landline—the one Mateo had forgotten existed."Mateo. Jesus Christ. You alive?""Yeah," Mateo said, voice rough from disuse. "I'm here.""Bro, this is huge. Red Bull wants a three-way call with her—""I'm not doing it."Silence on the other end. Then: "What?""I said I'm not doing it. Not until I talk to her first. Not until she agrees."Dex laughed—a sharp, nervous sound. "You're joking. Mateo, this is career-making. You understand that, right? This isn't some random collab. This is—""—not mine to sell," Mateo finished. He looked toward the bedroom door. It remained closed. But for the first time since he'd walked into this apartment, it didn't feel like a barrier. It felt like a threshold."Set up the call for tomorrow," he said quietly. "I'll see if she'll take it."He hung up before Dex could argue.The apartment settled back into silence. And beneath that silence, Mateo heard it—the faintest sound from behind the door. Not singing this time. The soft, deliberate press of piano keys. A melody taking shape in the dark.He didn't reach for his phone. Didn't think about clips or views or sponsors.He just listened.And for seventeen seconds—the exact length of the clip that had changed everything—he let himself exist outside the frame. Just a guy in a borrowed apartment, hearing a song being born. No audience. No performance. Just two people sharing a roof, a silence, and the fragile possibility of something real.The piano note hung in the air, unresolved.Waiting.Like her.Like him.Like everything that was about to happen next.