AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Not that I can blame her determination—Mei is the older, more edgy sister I wish I had. But she's never gone this far.
"Thanks, but... I think I'm good for now."
I avoid her stare and retrieve a hefty laptop from my backpack. The beast takes up half our bistro table, and with one press of the power button, fans roar beneath the keyboard, loud and wheezing, the sound as familiar as it is cringy. Look, I wouldn't call my laptop a hunk of junk; it's just the cheapest model that can do what I need it to do. Which is allowing me to program and manage the most important project of my life—my second source of income, the leech of all my free time, and the culprit of my non-existent social life:
Cosmic Kitty Defense.
Yes, you read that right. No need to pass over a second time. It won't prove any more enlightening than the first.
From the corner of my vision, Mei folds her arms as I shift into autopilot mode and boot up my necessary programs. The notorious indie game developer trifecta—Github, Visual Studio Code, and Unreal Engine.
The first to track changes and backup my code to the cloud, so five years' worth of blood, sweat, and tears isn't lost when this baby inevitably dies on me. The second to, well, code. And the third allows access to a massive toolbox of game dev features, all of which help make Cosmic Kitty Defense—or CKD, for short—the mobile app that it is today.
Initializing the testing environment, I switch to the mobile viewer and click play...
Take, for example, the graphics rendering feature, which loads up the visuals at the start of each match. A pixelated grassy field, a cute farm in the center bustling with dozens of kitty cats, and a frazzled grandma in her nightgown, encircling her home with a pitchfork. In seconds, the scheduler kicks in, spawning a wave of alien foot soldiers around the perimeter, who all begin creeping toward the farm, with the horrendous intentions of—audible gasp—abducting kitties.
And they will, one by one. Unless Granny Mabel, controlled by the player, stops them. But don't fret over dearest Mabel. Although she may appear outmatched against the ever-growing wave of alien kitty-nappers, she possesses an arsenal of her own, one that expands with every extraterrestrial she foils. Granting her—and her beloved kitties—weapons like the paw-some plasma cannon, the catnip cluster bomb, the purr-fect laser pointer, and soon, the new feature my small-yet-devoted fanbase has been waiting weeks for...
The kitty litter sand trap.
Excitement sings through me as I pull up the code responsible for the sand trap. I've been testing it over the last week or so, tweaking and making minor adjustments, and I'd say it's about ready for—
"Aren't you the least bit curious about who you matched with?"
My fingers stall, hovering over the keyboard. Matched...? My head snaps up. "I thought you only made my profile."
A mischievous grin blooms across her lips—she's got me hooked. Another shrug. "Let's just say, I vetted your playing field."
More bait.
I bury my head once more. "Not interested."
"No? Not even about..." she hums, her acrylic nails tapping against her phone screen. "Hunter?" She whistles—actually whistles—at the sight of him. "Wow, look at that hair. And those forearms. Bet he could really throw you around..."
I grind my teeth, all but failing to tune her out.
"Then there's Sean. He's got that tall, dark, and handsome vibe going for him. With that bone structure, he might as well be a young Henry Cavill..."
Curiosity sparks in my gut, but I keep typing.
Mei rests her chin in her palm as her nails tap dance once again. "Next up is Lucas." She sighs longingly, and it takes every fiber of my being to stare straight ahead, my lines of code slowly turning into gibberish. "Then Lamar... And, oh my, how could I have forgotten Xavier? One look at him and you'd be sprawled between his bed sheets after half a glass of wine—"
"Alright, fine." I abandon my work, finding Mei's eyes sparkling with delight. "I'll take your word for it. I matched with some hot people." The notion tastes sour on my tongue, as I'm ninety-nine percent positive Mei's over-exaggerating the quality of my matches. "So what? It's not like I'm going out with any of them. You might as well—"
"Yes, you are."
I blink. "Huh?"
"You're going on a date, Juliana."
My heart thumps anxiously. "No, I'm not—"
"Tonight."
"What?" My cry echoes through the café yet again—that's to my luck, now empty—as my chest heaves up and down. "That's not possible. I haven't messaged a single one of them."
"You're right. But I did."
