Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 105850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
I had absolutely no idea what she was on about. “Why would there be combat in a farming game? This looks peaceful.”
She patted the space on the sofa next to her. “I see you aren’t going to leave me alone, so I might as well adjust my mod settings and show you.”
“Show me the Satanic fishing game, too.” I walked around the sofa and sat next to her while she fiddled with a menu.
“To the mines, then,” she grumbled. “I can’t believe I’m wasting precious inventory space with food because of you.”
I fought back a smile. Of all the things I expected Chloe to do in her spare time, it wasn’t casual gaming. Honestly, sometimes I thought she might just spend her free time thinking up ways of torturing me for all the work I made her do, so this was a welcome nugget of information.
“Bubble spot!” she said excitedly, then quickly dropped her smile. “Oh. I have to do it properly.”
“Just once. I have to see that you’re bad at something to believe it.”
“I think there was a compliment in there somewhere, wasn’t there?” She laughed and equipped her pixel person’s fishing rod. The game made a little beeping noise, and she squeaked, frantically clicking her mouse as a bar popped up with a fish moving on it. “Shit, shit, shit, shi—you little bastard.”
“Did you catch it?” I asked.
“What part of all that swearing made you think I caught it?” She shot me a look that asked if I was stupid.
I knew because I’d seen it a thousand times—usually directed at stupid people, though. Being on the end of it was a new one for me.
“What do you have to do to catch it?”
“You have to keep it in the little blue bar that moves up and down. It’s almost impossible for me. I’ve tried with a trackpad, my mouse, a controller, and I even downloaded the game on my Switch just to see if it was possible, but it wasn’t.”
She had a Nintendo Switch?
I was really learning all kinds of things about her tonight.
“Can I try?”
She turned to look at me, raising her eyebrows. “You want to try?”
“Sure. It looks fun.”
“You’re a masochist.” She pushed her laptop over to me. “Go ahead. Use the right mouse button to launch the rod. Hold it to get it further in the lake. A little bar shows you how far it’s going. Click the left button when it beeps and the little exclamation mark pops up, then use the left button again to keep it within the bar. It rises when you click and falls when you don’t.”
That seemed easy enough.
I did as she said, releasing it when it was the full bar. The bobber dropped into the water with a little ‘plop,’ and I watched as it bounced along with the pixelated motion of the water until the little noise and exclamation mark happened.
I clicked, hooking the fish, and got to work on the minigame she hated so much. She said nothing while I clicked away, choosing to sip on her wine in her little tumbler. I lost the first fish, but by my fourth attempt, I’d managed to reel one in.
“See? It’s hard, right?”
“Not really,” I said. “Not once I’d gotten the hang of the mechanics, anyway.” I hooked another fish and caught it. “See?”
She stared at me for a moment before putting her tumbler down and reaching for her laptop back. “I don’t think I want to show you anything else in this game. You might ruin it for me.”
I laughed, letting her take the laptop from my thighs. “Maybe I’ll download it for myself.”
“I can’t wait to tell everyone at the office that Mr Black plays with pixel chickens in his free time.” She opened another menu and fiddled with the settings. “There. That’s better.”
“Please do tell everyone. I can’t imagine how confused they’d all be. They might think you’d gone mad.”
“I think I have gone mad. I can’t believe I just watched you fish in Stardew Valley.” She shook her head, keeping her eyes focused on the game. “You are irritatingly good at everything you do, aren’t you?”
“It’s both a blessing and a curse,” I demurred.
“Really, if you were also good at cooking, I’d think you were a robot. Thank God you’re utterly useless at just about every domestic task known to man,” she said. “It makes you much more bearable when you have faults.”
“I think you just complimented me.”
“If that’s a compliment, your bar is very low for flattery,” she replied, turning her attention back to her game. “By the way, if you tell anyone about this, I’m going to put salt in your coffee instead of that sweetener you like.”
That was quite the threat.
I also had no doubt she’d do it.
“Don’t worry,” I said, leaning in so I could see the screen a little better. “Your secret is safe with me.”