"You told us nothing of the sort," Alexis pointed out with characteristic precision. "You panicked just as much as everyone else when it didn’t turn on."
"I was remaining calm under pressure."
"You were having an existential crisis about breaking two thousand dollars worth of computer equipnt."
"Sa thing."
Kumiko had pulled out her phone and was recording the successful boot sequence, narrating in rapid Japanese punctuated with English technical terms. The enthusiasm was infectious even if none of them could understand most of what she was saying.
The monitor Chloe had borrowed from her bedroom flickered to life, displaying the motherboard’s POST screen in bright white text against a black background. Lines of technical information scrolled past too quickly to read, followed by a cheerful ssage about successful hardware detection.
"Windows installation next," Kumiko announced, producing a USB drive from seemingly nowhere. "This part takes about thirty minutes, then we configure OBS and test the streaming setup."
She plugged the drive into a front-panel USB port and began navigating boot nus. Chloe watched with genuine admiration as Kumiko’s fingers flew across keyboard shortcuts she’d apparently morized years ago.
"How do you know all this stuff?" Chloe asked, settling cross-legged on the floor beside her friend.
"My dad works in tech. He taught to build computers when I was twelve because he wanted to understand how the things I use every day actually work. Plus I needed a good gaming setup for streaming, and pre-built computers are overpriced garbage compared to custom builds."
"Your dad sounds cool."
"He is. He’s the one who got interested in cosplay, actually. He said if I was going to spend ti on the internet anyway, I might as well learn to create sothing instead of just consuming content."
The Windows installation progress bar crept forward with agonizing slowness, giving them ti to clean up the packaging materials and cable scraps scattered across Chloe’s living room. Jordan gathered cardboard boxes while Alexis sorted cables into neat piles, her organizational skills apparently extending beyond social hierarchies into practical tasks.
Chloe found herself watching Jordan move around her apartnt with easy familiarity, the way he automatically stepped around the coffee table’s sharp corner, how he knew which drawer contained the scissors without asking. He’d only been in her space for a week, but he already belonged here in a way that made her chest feel warm and tight.
The inheritance thing was going to complicate everything. She knew that, had accepted it as the price of being with soone who made her feel like the most important person in the world. But watching him now, seeing how naturally he fit into her life, made the thought of sharing him feel like swallowing broken glass.
Maybe she could negotiate terms. Maybe she could establish ground rules that would make the arrangent bearable. Maybe she could find a way to maintain primary status while allowing the other girls just enough access to satisfy the inheritance requirents without actually threatening what she and Jordan had built together.
Or maybe she was being naive...No. Naivety was a luxury. This was a business arrangent. She needed rules. Bylaws. An operating agreent for a shared asset.
Clause one: primary access.
Clause two: emotional and financial transparency.
Clause three... she stopped herself. She was drafting a pre-nup for a relationship that wasn’t even exclusive. And the thought made her want to burn the whole thing to the ground.
"Installation complete," Kumiko announced, interrupting Chloe’s increasingly circular thoughts. "Now for the fun part. OBS configuration, stream overlays, audio calibration, and if we have ti, we can test your cara angles and lighting setup."
"How long will all that take?" Alexis asked, checking her phone with the kind of casual efficiency that suggested multiple other social obligations.
"Two hours? Maybe three if we want to optimize everything properly."
"I can stay for another hour," Alexis said after so internal calculation. "I have a charity luncheon at two, and I need ti to change and drive across town."
"More family obligations?" Jordan asked, his tone carefully neutral.
"Always. This one’s actually not terrible, though. It’s for the children’s hospital, and my mother genuinely cares about the cause instead of just attending for social points. Plus Harrison won’t be there, so I can eat in peace without soone explaining cryptocurrency investnt strategies between courses."
Chloe noted the way Alexis’s entire posture relaxed when she ntioned Harrison’s absence, like she was dropping a weight she hadn’t realized she was carrying. The arranged marriage situation was clearly worse than Alexis was letting on, though Chloe suspected her friend would rather die than admit vulnerability in front of people she wasn’t sure she could trust.
"Alright," Kumiko said, cracking her knuckles with theatrical flair. "Let’s turn Chloe into a streaming sensation."
She opened OBS and imdiately began creating scenes and sources with the kind of rapid-fire efficiency that made professional software look intuitive. Windows appeared and disappeared, settings were adjusted with precise mouse movents, and slowly Chloe’s future streaming setup began taking shape on the monitor.
"Cara goes here, gaplay capture here, chat overlay in this corner," Kumiko narrated as she worked. "We’ll need to test your internet upload speed to determine optimal bitrate, calibrate audio levels so you don’t blow out viewers’ eardrums, and find the right balance between video quality and performance impact."
Chloe watched her future unfold in real ti, the technical foundation for leaving her Calypso work behind and building sothing legitimate. Sothing she could tell people about without creating elaborate cover stories. Sothing that didn’t require hiding her face or maintaining separate identities.
Sothing that would give her inco independence even if Jordan’s inheritance situation turned her personal life into a complicated ss of shared affection and territorial jealousy.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. She was building a streaming career with equipnt Jordan had bought, guided by friends who would eventually beco her romantic rivals, in preparation for a life that would require sharing the man who made her feel complete for the first ti since her father died.
But at least she’d have her own money. At least she’d have her own space. At least she’d have sothing that belonged only to her, even if everything else beca negotiable.
The computer humd quietly as Kumiko continued her technical wizardry, RGB lights cycling through their hypnotic patterns, and Chloe tried not to think about how many other won would eventually be sitting on this sa couch, in this sa apartnt, planning their own futures around the sa man.
She really, really didn’t want to share him.
But maybe, if she was smart about it, she could find a way to make sharing feel less like losing everything that mattered.
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