Good Game

He called me his "mystery girl" on stream. Live. In front of thousands of viewers. The wildest part? I didn't even know who he was. I was at my usual gaming café, grinding ranked matches in a popular MOBA game called NLA. But instead of celebrating my latest win, I was fuming. One of my teammates had spent the entire game spewing sexist insults at me, even though I carried the match and we won despite him. While the rank-up animation played on my screen, some guy walked up and tried to congratulate me. Tall, dark-haired, handsome, with a nerdy edge-usually, he'd be my type. But I barely glanced at him. After the night I'd had, I wasn't in the mood to entertain more fragile male egos. Turns out, that guy was MnstrX. Yeah, that MnstrX. The most famous pro gamer in the NLA scene. The guy who's won every single major tournament in the game-twice. And now, he's on his stream, calling me his "mystery girl" and offering to coach me. What do you even do when the best NLA player in the world asks to coach you? You say yes. What started as "just coaching" quickly became something more. Alex Thorne-aka MnstrX-turned out to be thoughtful, kind, and way more down-to-earth than I expected. And if you think climbing the ranks in a competitive video game is hard, try navigating a secret relationship with one of the biggest names in esports.