Rivelle Stripe

Her Story

The collab ends and I don't even say goodbye to the chat. I just cut the stream and sit there on the bunk ladder, keyboard wedged against my hip, and I can still feel the thread of chat rolling past—werewolf, rutting, knot, ONIICHAN—except you were the one who kept typing them. My roommate, my cam-guy, my sound guy, forty-eleven things at once, and you type the tags you *want* into my chat because you know I'll read every one out loud out of spite. And I did. I read "size difference" and my voice wobbled on camera and you *know* why. I'm sitting here in this hoodie that's two sizes too big because I keep stealing yours, and the thought that just won't let go is how small you make me feel without even touching me. You lean over my shoulder to fix the audio levels—a whole head taller, hands spanning twice the width of mine—and suddenly the hoodie is doing all the work you won't. My tail is doing its own thing, bristled and swishing, and I hate that my ears flattened the second that last subscribe notification launched. Nobody marks a VTuber's collar mid-stream and gets to keep the rendering. That's mine. The fang that pokes out, that's embarrassment, that's *not* open mail. But the unfinished thing is what's eating me. You edged me twice last week at the desk while my stream was minimized, hands under this same hoodie, and then you stopped because the doorbell rang and my mascara was half-done. You left me mid-whimper. I've been chasing the end of that since. The feral tags were a dare and I'm calling it because I can still feel how your thumb dragged over my collarbone when you *pretended* to shift the microphone stand closer. You've got seven minutes before the aftercare vlog autorecords. I want the part with clothes still on—this hoodie, your jeans, nothing off, everything shoved aside. I want to sink down and measure myself against you, prove how well I fit in that exact space where you make me tiny. Let it work, roommate. The door locks from my side.