The Gamer Girls: Chapter 1 (Patreon)

I was so close—so, so close to winning that match.

It was down to me and one other guy. The playing field had reached its smallest size, pitting us one-on-one in that little field. There were some trees in the play zone, and that’s where I suspected he was hiding. I had my ghillie suit on, moving slowly towards an old barrel that I was going to use to prop myself up, to make that final shot, to be the last man standing.

Eighty-three of the ninety-eight eliminated players were still watching, obviously curious to find out who was going to win that so-important match. Winning that match meant getting an invite to the National PUBG Tournament. I’d been playing that damned game for years—and I’d come so close so many times… but never this close.

I just had to kill one last guy.

I just had to spot him before he spotted me. I had the rifle, with the scope, and plenty of ammo—but I only needed one shot. I was a great shot. I was great at that game, and after putting so many hours into it, it was finally time to prove it: to the other players, to myself, and to my friends and family who all thought that I was wasting my life playing video games.

I was starting to think that they might be right; maybe I was wasting my life. Maybe playing in these tournaments was a big waste of time. Maybe my dad was right to roll his eyes whenever I told him that there were players who made millions from competing in tournaments—and millions more from sponsorships and streaming revenue and whatnot.

I didn’t want my dad to be right. I had to make this kill. I had to find this pest of a player. He was playing the long game, remaining perfectly still until I made a mistake. It was a smart move. Maybe I should be doing the same thing—but I wanted to end it already. I wanted to make that kill so I could stand tall and know that I would be getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas to compete in that national tournament.

Bang!

The shot took me by surprise. The side of my screen turned red: the right side.

Wait. Why? There was only field to my right, so how could I be taking fire from my right? I spun around, knowing I didn’t have much time. I scanned the field. I had to make that shot before he could rattle off another one.

My hands were trembling now. How did I make such a stupid oversight? How could I have failed to check that field? He was surely in a ghillie suit, because I couldn’t see anything.

Bang!

Another hit, this time to my right again, which meant he was in that ruined house behind me. But how? How was he hitting me from different angles?

I spun around, aiming at the window, where he was surely going to be standing. But he wasn’t there.

My heart was pounding. What was happening?

One last shot: Bang! My character dropped dead. The game was over. I’d been killed.

I wouldn’t be going to Las Vegas to compete in the solo tournament.

“Ah well,” my roommate said, patting me on the back. “You tried.”

I sat still, unable to move, unable to believe what had just happened. I lost? I was eliminated? Another year… another missed opportunity. But where was he? How did he shoot me from all those different angles?

Everyone signed off. That server was empty in a matter of minutes, with just me left in the chat.

It would be a whole year before I could try again…

I finally managed to exit the game. I downloaded the replay. I found the winner’s camera and I scrubbed towards the end of the game to see where he was. Shockingly, he was hiding behind that old shed. He went to shoot me while I was crawling up to the barrel, but he missed badly. He hit a wall, and the shrapnel hit my side—that explained the red flash to my right. He missed again with his next shot, confusing me again.

It was just… shit luck.

And now, some idiot with shit luck was going to compete in Las Vegas with the best players in the world. How was that any fair?

I rewatched the whole match from his perspective. He only killed two  people in the whole match. Otherwise, he just crawled around and got lucky when the battlefield shrunk down on his position: just dumb luck.

“Are you going to turn that thing off, or what?” my roommate, Adam, asked me.

“I just don’t get it. How did I lose this game?”

“It’s just a game,” he said to me. “Don’t lose sleep over it.” But he knew what that game meant. He knew it was a tournament. He knew that I’d been trying to win that tournament for weeks. He knew I fought through the bracket and made my way into that final. He knew I’d already lost plenty of sleep over it. “You need to go outside and touch—”

“Don’t tell me to touch grass,” I growled.

“Okay, I won’t,” he said, and then he went back to making dinner.

“I was so close,” I said, pacing back and forth.

“Games like that, man… they’re all just luck. And they’re a waste of time. I’m not trying to sound like an ass, but the hours you’ve logged into that game over the past few months… you could have been at the gym. You could be a fucking beast by now. Girls would be all over you. Or you could have been taking some online classes and gotten a better job by now.”

“I get it,” I said, waving him off.

“I’m just saying… You’re choosing to have no life.”

I bit my tongue. I don’t think it was meant as an insult; Adam had always been blunt. It was just his way of talking. He was born in Eastern Europe where it was more acceptable to be an asshole, apparently. And sometimes… I appreciated it. It was kind of nice to have someone say, “You look like shit,” right before you leave the house. It’s nice to have that honest voice… sometimes.

And other times, it’s just annoying. “You really should pick something else to focus your time on.”

“Okay, Adam,” I said, shaking my head.

“Seriously. Like… learn to cook. Learn another language. You could have done anything by now…”

“Okay, Adam,” I said.

“You could have a good job, and a girlfriend waiting at home for you—someone excited to see you because you have your life put together and—”

“Okay, Adam!”

Adam just rolled his eyes and then he sauntered off. He was getting under my skin… but I knew that he wasn’t exactly wrong. It was something that I thought about… a lot.

I did sink a lot of time into playing games. And half of the time… I didn’t even enjoy playing those games. Sometimes it was just tedious; it felt like work—but with no payoff. At least when someone goes into the office for eight hours, they come home with a couple hundred bucks and some money paid into some pension. But I had nothing to show for all of my ‘work’. Of course, that wasn’t the goal; the goal was to win a couple of tournaments. The goal was to land a couple of sponsorships. The goal wasn’t to be living with a roommate in a basement suite. “Rent is due, by the way,” Adam called out from his bedroom. Now, Adam was starting his Spanish lessons. He’d been taking Spanish classes for the past six months—which I thought was silly when he started, but now he could actually hold a basic conversation. He was living proof of his own advice: maybe there are better ways to spend time.

Maybe it was time for me to move on. Maybe I needed to just delete those games… or even sell my gaming computer and use the cash to invest in… Oh, I don’t even know… Bitcoin? Is that still a thing? I could use the extra time to research those things.

But something kept nagging at me: just one more try. I just kept telling myself that I was one lucky break away from making this all worth it…

But even if I managed to win some tournament… even if I managed to win fifty thousand dollars… would that really make all of this worth it? I still wouldn’t have a ‘job’. I still wouldn’t have any real friends to show from all of this… or a girlfriend. But maybe winning some cash could be a first step towards making those other changes. I could… invest in education. I could use the prize money to go to college, and learn some trade. Then I could attract some girl with a stable income.

Ugh—these weren’t thoughts that I normally had. My whole life, I’d been zeroed in on gaming. Now, Adam was filling my head with these doubts. He was making me extremely aware of every passing hour, every passing day… every passed year that could have made things different.

Just one more try…

But I didn’t want to wait a whole year for another shot. I didn’t want to train for an entire year just for a chance at a lucky break… A whole year just to get beat by some guy hiding in the grass while the play zone closed in around him by some miracle…

“Urgent! Need a replacement member for our PUBG squad. Upcoming tournament, first game this weekend. Please message Lena if interested.”

The ad came up on my X feed completely by chance. I have to admit that it seemed like kismet. The squad was, supposedly, based in my own town. And what were the chances that these thoughts were buzzing through my mind right when that post came up?

Well… I suppose it wasn’t a perfect coincidence. I mean… for starters, I didn’t play on a team. I’d never been into the idea of being on a team or playing squad tournaments. I knew that the tournament money was a hell of a lot less for squad categories—and then you’re splitting it with four other people on top of it.

And, in my experience, these squads are always filled with… unfortunate people. I’d gone to a couple of gamer meetups over the years, and those people are just hard to be around. They’re unhealthy… introverted… burdened by crippling anxiety and depression. Hygiene is often an afterthought. I wasn’t like that…

At least I liked to think that I wasn’t like that. Maybe I was more like that than I realized.

I didn’t want to reply to that ad. I didn’t want to step into that room and smell four other ‘gamers’. I didn’t want to become the thing that everyone was so worried that I would become.

So I went to bed. I closed my eyes, and was surprised when I actually started dozing off. I thought for sure that I would be kept awake all night by dread and anxiety.

*

The sleep didn’t last long though. I woke up after just a couple of hours, hearing a sound: a girly sound. I sat up slowly, and I heard a giggle. Then, I heard her talking. She spoke in a language I didn’t understand: Spanish.

Her voice was coming from the living room. “Dios Mio,” she whimpered.

I stood up slowly, waking to my bedroom door. Was there a woman in our house? I eyed the time. It was midnight. Was Adam watching a movie? He normally watched movies in his room, on his laptop, with headphones on.

I pushed my bedroom door open, and then gasped when I saw a young woman on her knees, in front of Adam. Adam’s cock was out—and hard, and the girl was bobbing her head into his crotch: lips sliding along the length of his shaft.

I’d never seen Adam naked before. I’d never seen his dick. I didn’t realize he was… big.

And who was this girl?

She gripped his shaft with her hand and gave him a tug. She said something in Spanish, and Adam replied in Spanish—with a grin in his voice.

My heart just sank into the pit of my stomach.

When I moved in with Adam, we weren’t so different. In fact, we played video games together and we would talk about how we couldn’t understand women—that’s basically how we bonded and decided to be roommates. But now, Adam had pulled ahead of me. Now, he had talents and skills, and apparently that made him attractive to women. Maybe it was him learning a language. Maybe it was him going to the gym. Maybe it was that job that he went out to get a year earlier—and he’d already gotten two promotions since then.

All of those things that I should have been doing—but instead I chose to grind at the computer. Instead, I chose to pursue some unrealistic gaming fantasy.

Adam flipped her over, making her gasp. Neither of them saw me standing there. I don’t know why I was still standing there, watching like some sort of pathetic loser… but I couldn’t look away. I just couldn’t believe that he was with a girl like that—the kind of girl we used to talk about being out of our league.

I guess she was just out of my league now.

Adam pushed his cock into her and started pumping her. She gripped the edges of our coach and let out a loud moan before saying something in Spanish.

It was a whole minute before Adam finally turned his head and saw me—but he didn’t seem surprised. Maybe he knew that I was there the whole time. He just grinned, and then he spanked the girl on the ass—and I retreated into my room, heart racing.