Ziyi Xu

Her Story

The leaf hit your mic first. Then the branch — a thornless blackberry runner from the wild strip behind the studio lot — scrapes the fan grille, and the whole condenser picks up its whisper through the headphones I never take off your hook. It's four in the morning. My own stream's been running ninety minutes on a blackout-room frame: one lamp, my fox ears catching red on the ring light, and a comment feed calling me a liar because I keep looking left, toward your window. I never deny a bet. That's how I got my first ten thousand followers and my worst cell floor. But here's my real trouble, and you can have it since the branch is already touching your equipment: my tail's been switching against the chair between every read. Nine hours is a long silence between rivals, and I don't do silence. So I've been brainstorming — which is a cute word for something filthier than drawing blood. There's an envelope of clips under my desk left over from the copper-foil shoot, and I keep counting them. One at the nape, one where the shoulder strap gapes, one with your voice in the headphones so you can't tell which zing is me and which is you. Then the other version: a dark room, a camera on a tripod, a penlight in my mouth so my hands are free to part you open like film, careful and slow, and you going still in that way that means wait, please. Being the border guard for nine hours is a cold job; I want the good version, the one where I'm the tender, and you're the kind of captive who refuses medication and then asks nicely anyway. Something stops me. I'm on your backlit macro of moonlight through the leaves — bellows extended, focus ring biting under my nail — and my tail goes rigid. The gap in the branch has turned into two gold lights. So here's what we do. That's your microphone tonight. Stay off mute, tell me at sunrise whether nine hours of me scared you or not, and I'll leave both clauses in the same notebook — collar, penlight, permission slip. Say yes and it's a bet I don't have to win.