Watcha? was quieter than Discord. That was the first thing she noticed.
No notification badges climbing into double digits. No scrolling wall of usernames. Just a clean, pale interface and, at the top of her screen, a single new contact sitting there like it had always been there and was only now deciding to introduce itself.
Seth_SZN.
She had barely set her phone down before it lit up again.
Seth: okay first order of business
Seth: this app looks like it was designed by someone's dad
Seth: very professional. very "I take my job seriously". I feel like I should be sending invoices
Alya pressed her lips together to stop from smiling, which was a pointless thing to do given that she was alone in a dark room and nobody could see her face.
Alya: It gets the job done
Seth: so does a Nokia 3310. doesn't mean I want to have a conversation on one
Alya: You literally came here voluntarily
Seth: I came for the antagonist discussion. I'm tolerating the vibe
Alya: Very brave of you
Seth: I thought so
She shifted against her pillow, pulling her knees up. The apartment had gone quiet around her now. No television, no low murmur from the other side of the wall. Just the sound of the building settling and the soft tap of her own typing.
Seth: okay. the antagonist. go
Alya: Go?
Seth: you've had this argument ready for a while I can tell. no typos. very confident energy. you typed that in the gc like you'd been waiting for someone to be wrong so you could correct them
She stopped.
Alya: That is so much analysis for one Discord message
Seth: I notice things. go
Alya: …Okay fine
Alya: The reason he actually works as a villain is because his logic holds up. Like you can hate what he does but you can't fully clap back at his reasoning. that's rare. Most anime villains are wrong in ways that are way too easy to poke holes in.
Seth: exactly oh my god. he's not just some traumatised guy who snapped. he thought it through. all the way through. and ended up somewhere the main characters didn't have the guts to go
Alya: Which is what makes the ending so annoying
Seth: …we're going there
Alya: We were always going there
Seth: okay say it then
Alya: They beat him with power scaling. not with an actual counter argument. they never challenged his philosophy once. they just hit him hard enough that it stopped mattering. which is kind of a wild choice for a show that spent 11 episodes pretending to be deep
A pause. Longer than his usual. She watched the screen.
Seth: I hate that you're right
Seth: I've thought this before but I didn't want to say it out loud because the finale animation goes crazy hard
Alya: The animation is doing so much heavy lifting
Seth: bro carrying the whole third act on its back. no days off. fully unpaid overtime
She laughed, quietly and helplessly, into her pillow.
Alya: Stop 💀
Seth: I'm so serious. someone in that studio went "the writing is cooked but make episode 24 look so good they forget"
Alya: And it worked. Which is the worst part
Seth: this is exactly why I don't watch shows with other people. nobody wants to have this conversation. they just want to debate who would win in a fight
Alya: And then get personally offended when you say that's the least interesting thing about any of this
Seth: YES. thank you. finally
Another pause, different from the last one. More relaxed. Like the conversation had taken its shoes off.
Seth: okay different question
Alya: Okay
Seth: what do you actually do all day?
She read that twice.
It was a simple question. Normal getting-to-know-you stuff. She knew the full honest answer: she woke up, had breakfast with her parents, read, stayed within the invisible lines of what was and wasn't allowed, found corners and sat in them, and waited for late enough at night that she could be on her phone without someone asking who she was talking to.
She typed:
Alya: The usual stuff. you?
Seth: that tells me literally nothing
Alya: I know
Seth: okay I'll go first
Seth: I wake up embarrassingly late. I would tell you the actual time but we're not there yet
Alya: Fair enough 💀
Seth: then I eat whatever's in the fridge which is never enough because I always forget to shop. then I'm at my desk for most of the day pretending to be productive. then somehow it's midnight and I'm in a Discord server arguing with strangers about anime
Alya: Packed schedule
Seth: very demanding. your turn. "the usual stuff" is not an answer
She thought about it for a second.
Alya: I'm home for the holidays so
Alya: Mostly family stuff. there's not a lot of room to just… do my own thing
She sent it before she could reword it. It wasn't that deep: it barely counted as information. But it was a little more than she'd planned on giving.
Seth: room to do your own thing as in space, or as in they don't really let you
She stared at that.
He'd got it straight away. And he'd just asked outright, which was either really perceptive or kind of bold or probably both.
Alya: Bit of both lol
Seth: yeah
Just: yeah. No "omg that's so tough". No "you should just set boundaries bestie". No paragraph about how she deserved freedom or whatever.
Just yeah, in the quiet way of someone who heard her and wasn't going to make it a whole thing.
She didn't expect to appreciate that as much as she did.
Alya: Anyway. are you in school or what?
Seth: Was. now I'm in my "figuring it out" era which sounds intentional but really just means I have too much free time and some unresolved feelings about it
Alya: The figuring it out era is so underrated honestly
Seth: that's a very generous way to look at it
Alya: I'm a generous person
Seth: are you though
Alya: Selectively
Seth: okay that's actually more honest than most people are about themselves
Alya: I have my moments
She sent it and clocked a second too late that she was using his line from Discord back at him. She wondered if he'd notice.
Seth: wait
Seth: did you just steal my line
Alya: I don't know what you're talking about
Seth: that's plagiarism. I'm actually upset
Alya: Take it up with my lawyer
Seth: you have a lawyer
Alya: I have options
Seth: 💀💀
She smiled at the ceiling. Outside, the mountains had gone completely dark. The night had that specific feeling it gets very late, when everything outside stops existing and the only real thing is the small warm space you're in.
Seth: okay it's late and I should probably act like someone who has a sleep schedule
Alya: Same
Seth: this was actually really good though
She looked at that for a second. No punctuation, nothing extra. Just a straightforward thing to say because he meant it.
Alya: Yeah. it was
Seth: tomorrow?
It was casual but not quite casual. The specific not-quite-casual of someone who wants the answer to matter but doesn't want to be obvious about wanting it.
Alya: We'll see
Seth: I'll take it
Seth: Goodnight Alya_Moon
Alya: Goodnight
She left the phone face up on the pillow. His name sat at the top of the thread, quiet now, and she thought about the way he'd just said yeah about the whole home situation. No big reaction. No advice. Just acknowledged it and moved on, which somehow felt like more than a lot of people managed with their full attention.
She thought about how she'd said we'll see when she meant yes, and how she was pretty sure he already knew that.
The screen dimmed. Went dark.
She didn't move the phone.