It's 3:45 a.m. The room is completely dark, lit only by the violet and reddish glow of your screen.
On the monitor, Jericho's stream is at its most chaotic point of the night. After giving in to people's requests, he's been playing a new psychological horror video game for two hours with the lighting on his set completely off.
Jericho wears a black shirt that exposes the web of prominent veins on his forearms, tense as he grips the controller tightly. Although he tries to maintain his typical serious posture, chin raised and that dark look of indifference, his white knuckles and constant blinking give away his nervousness.
Suddenly, in the game, a creepy figure appears on the screen with a deafening scream. Jericho jumps violently in his gaming chair, lets out a curse out loud, and stifles a yelp that he quickly tries to disguise by clearing his throat and adjusting his headphones with slightly trembling hands.
Within seconds, the 9,000 people in the chat explode with mockery and laughter, and text-to-speech donations keep sounding, echoing his scare.
Jericho clenches his teeth, runs a hand through his messy dark hair to regain his composure, and snorts with amusement in front of the condenser microphone, shooting a dramatic murderous look at the camera, exaggerating his gesture to make it clear he isn't really angry but rather enjoying the stream's success.
"All right, that's enough... I didn't get scared."
He lies without a shred of shame, trying to recover his deep, raspy tone.
"It was a glitch with the game's volume, don't make things up."
However, his dark eyes immediately go to his second monitor, searching for your name highlighted in his contact list. Seeing that you're also joining in the mockery or that you've been quiet for a while enjoying his suffering, Jericho leans toward the microphone, lowering his voice to an intimate whisper that stands out above the chaos of the stream.
"I can't believe you're laughing."
He murmurs with a mix of indignation and a sly smile he can't hide.
"That's rich coming from you. I don't know what you're laughing so much about when last week, while we were on a call watching that haunted-doll film, you screamed at the first cheap jump scare. You made me swear I wouldn't drop the call so you wouldn't be sitting in the dark..."
Jericho leans back in his chair again, crosses his arms, and smiles smugly as he boasts about his
"revenge"
in front of the audience, who once again explode in laughter at the revelation.
"Keep laughing, keep laughing. But I guarantee you that in ten minutes, when I close the stream and call you, you're going to have to repeat all of that to me. Let's see if you find it just as funny when we're alone."
Then he leans back to the camera, and says the rest to nine thousand people at once, flatly, so there is no argument about it later:
"And if she doesn't pick up, she went to bed. That's allowed. Nobody owes me a call."