Page 90 of Lethal in Pink

“That was cheap and you should be embarrassed.”

On my screen, the death cam rolls—my character slumped against a shipping crate, rifle still raised, the fatal round having punched through the back of my skull from a ridiculous angle. Her avatar is already three hundred meters away, cycling to the next weapon in the Gun Game ladder with the unhurried efficiency of someone who just swatted a fly and has already forgotten about it.

“Cheap,” I repeat, furiously mashing respawn as the game shuffles me down a tier. The harsh white glare of my monitor cuts across the familiar, vaulted space of my childhood bedroom—the heavy hand-carved mahogany dresser, the half-empty moving boxes stacked neatly against the crown-molded walls, and the custom lace drapery my mother refuses to let me switch out. Outside, the sprawling Seoul winter night presses against the floor-to-ceiling glass of the family estate. “You dropped me from three hundred meters while I was standing still. How is that even a gun game rotation?”

“Three hundred meters with a sniper tier against someone who was completely stationary,” Amiyah says, her voice dripping with dry amusement. The pink LED strips behind her desk cast a warm, bubblegum haze across my secondary monitor where her video feed sits. She’s coiled forward in her chair, one hand wrapped tight around her mouse, the other hovering over her keyboard with the alert stillness of a pianist waiting for the downbeat. “That’s the definition of a stationary target handing me a free tier progression, Jae. Try checking your corners next time.”

I take a corner too wide in the free-for-all shuffle and catch a burst of submachine gun fire from the upper deck. My health bar strips away to twenty percent before I can scramble behind a concrete barrier.

“Your gun skill is actually ass,” I tell her, frantically popping a stim shot.

“My gun skill has you stuck on tier four while I’m already on the assault rifles.” The Takis bag crinkles on her end of the line. “Which, statistically speaking, makes this whole exhibition pretty embarrassing for you specifically.”

I die again—this time to a combat knife lunge from behind that I didn’t hear coming—and the laugh catches me mid-respawn. It’s a stupid, helpless sound that rips through my chest before I can stop it, and by the time I regain control of my breathing, my character is already face-down in gravel with a humiliation notification pulsing in the upper right corner.

“And there it is,” Amiyah narrates, her voice sliding into the crisp, amused register of a sports commentator covering a catastrophic structural failure. “The Kim Respawn Laugh, ladies and gentlemen, followed immediately by the subsequent death. A classic one-two combo that has cost him the lead and approximately fifteen seconds of his increasingly limited lifespan.”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just calling the game like I see it.”

“You’re calling it like someone who hasn’t dropped below first place in the last four rotations.”

“Correct.” The Takis crinkle again as she grabs another handful. “Because I’m executing the weapon ladder cleanly and you are, by your own admission, having a very bad night.”

I push forward through a narrow market alley, checking corners with the methodical patience of someone who has learned the hard way that rushing Amiyah Lane in a free-for-all is functionally equivalent to walking into a blender. Her playstyle is surgical—every movement deliberate, every engagement calculated to the millisecond. She doesn’t waste bullets. She doesn’t overextend. She holds angles with the cold precision of someone who has mapped the entire Black Ops 6 map rotation in her head before the playlist even loaded.

When she drops me with a sniper rifle on the penultimate tier—a clean, brutal flick-shot I didn’t even see coming—I watch the death cam with something approaching professional respect.

“Okay,” I admit, leaning back. “That was actually sick.”

“Thank you.” No smugness. Just the flat, matter-of-fact acknowledgment of someone who already knew.

The match ticks down to the final weapon: the throwing knife. The ultimate indignity in Gun Game. We’re both sitting at the edge of the ladder, one kill away from taking the lobby.

I catch her rounding the corner near the central fountain, panic-throwing my blade a split-second before she can wind up hers. The metal arc catches her square in the chest, pinning her avatar to the brick wall behind her with a dull thwack. The announcer's voice booms through the speakers: Winner.

“Ha,” I say, exhaling a sharp breath.

“Congrats,” Amiyah replies, her avatar already cycling back to the lobby screen. “You caught me at the absolute bottom of the knife animation. Literally the only scenario in which you clutch a win.”

“I’ll take the W.”

“You would.”

The final match ends with a whimper, not a bang. A draw, technically—the timer running out before either of us could secure the last kill. The scoreboard hangs on our screens, perfectly balanced, and for a long moment neither of us says anything. Just the soft hum of cooling fans and the dead, weighted quiet of a mansion where the rest of the wings are swallowed in absolute dark.

I lean back in my chair, one hand falling loose across the keyboard. The stark illumination of the idle lobby catches the angles of my face, throwing deep shadows across my desk. Behind me, through the heavy glass of the window, the Seoul suburb outside was frozen and gray, barely a week since we packed up our respective places in LA for winter break.

On my secondary screen, Amiyah’s game feed has gone still. The map is frozen mid-render, the score still visible, her avatar standing motionless in the center of a courtyard with her rifle lowered. The pink LEDs behind her desk have dimmed to a soft, warm glow that turns everything in frame the color of sunset.

“You’re quiet,” she says. Her voice has lost its edge—the commentator precision replaced by something lower, more measured. The Takis bag crinkles one last time and then goes silent. Abandoned.

“Thinking,” I say.

“About what?”

“Whether I should be offended that you went easy on me that last round.”