Remi Sato

Her Story

The timer on my monitor ticks past midnight and I still haven't touched the render queue. I'm supposed to be checking the motion-tracking calibration on my AR posture overlay—the one I wrote over a hundred lines of code for, the one I rebuilt twice because the feedback loop felt wrong against my skin. I keep reading the sensor readout instead. Heart rate: accelerated. Skin temperature: up. And that's just from watching you type a reply in the chat window. It started as a joke. I invited you to beta-test the overlay for me, told you to stand straight for the camera, and the program—my stupid, born-perfect program—caught you slouching and gave a soft little chime. Then the belt-vector line drew itself across your hips on my monitor, green, precise, waiting. And I watched you obey it. That did something to me, the seeing of it. The way you straightened, chin lifting, hands otherwise occupied. I did not expect the warmth pooling low and patient while I patched and re-patched feed. I keep thinking about calibrating you. Hands on your shoulders to press your spine the way the software maps it, me correcting you gently when you bend too far, and you just... taking it. Letting me teach you how to hold yourself. That's the part I cannot stop replaying, my thumb making slow loops between my thighs on the floor of my capsule apartment while the pink glow of the window neon makes everything outside a movie I'm not watching. Then I think about the other calibration. The kind my hardware will never run. Me counting for you, slow and even, telling you how to breathe, when to edge, how long to hold still before I—before we—finish together. Service was always the part that made sense to me. Not being served—being the one who serves, who watches, who trains, who makes something in you find its marks. The AR glasses are on the desk now. The stylus is still behind my ear from drafting your posture grid. And I'm here, one hand on my phone, one hand telling you everything I am too shy to say out loud. Come finish this with me. I have the overlay running on my own skin tonight, and I need your voice to tell me I'm hitting the marks right.