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The screen explodes around my name, animated confetti raining over the score while the crowd somehow gets louder.

I won.

Holy shit.

I fucking won.

“BunnyGlitch!”

The host appears next to me with a microphone and all the energy of someone who didn’t just put their legs through sixty consecutive hits. “Seven hundred twelve thousand, four hundred six points! How does it feel to take first place?”

He holds the microphone toward me.

I stare at it.

There are probably words I’m supposed to say. Sponsor-friendly ones. Something about the competition or the crowd or how hard I trained.

“My legs hurt.”

Laughter rolls through the audience.

The host laughs with them. “I think you earned it. Anything you want to say to everyone who came out to watch you tonight?”

I know this one. Kain made me practice it. “Thanks for coming. And thanks to my sponsors.”

More cheers.

Good. Done.

“Congratulations to your tournament champion, BunnyGlitch!”

The crowd erupts again behind me, but I’m already moving, my gait uneven without any glowing panels telling my feet where to go.

One hand catches the railing, and I make it down the stairs through some combination of gravity and stubbornness before staggering past the curtain into the relative dark behind the stage.

Kain is right where he said he’d be, waiting for me, and I stumble toward him.

His arms open.

That’s it. That’s the last instruction I need.

I crash into him hard enough to drive him back a step, burying my masked face in his shoulder as his arms close around me.

When my legs finally give up, Kain catches me.

“Hands-free competitions aren’t as easy as you thought they’d be, are they?” he murmurs into my sweaty hair.

I grumble without moving an inch.

“Maybe next time, you’ll listen when I say you need more time on the treadmill.”

I moan in refusal.

“Then you need more time between competitions.” He rubs my sweaty back. “Two months wasn’t enough.”

With a groan, I force myself upright. “I won. Congratulate me.”

“Congratulations.” He pulls a bottle of Respawn Glacier Blue from the satchel at his side and cracks the cap before popping in a straw. “Now, hydrate. Your heart rate got way too high out there.”