THE PRO I CALLED HUBBY

I kept spamming the enemy jungler with "hubby" and "kissy kissy hubby" — the cursed strat my little brother taught me to break an eightgame losing streak.

The jungler's hand slipped, and I actually stole the Baron.

After the comeback, I was all set to end the stream happy… …except my usually dead channel had just exploded to a hundred thousandplus viewers?!

Live chat was wall to wall: [Kissy kissy wifey, your hubby's here to pick you up~] I opened his profile, and a verified pro badge stared back at me.

Then a friend request popped up on my screen: [Wifey, can we add each other?] Chapter 1 My hand slipped, and I hit [Decline]. I glanced down at the stream and froze in horror.

My little channel, twenty or thirty viewers on a normal day, had chat scrolling faster than I could read it. [No way, no way!

King Ward gets a girlfriend and gets dumped in the same night?] [Please. Faceless little streamer, nobody even knows if she's a girl.

Probably some dude catfishing~] [Poor King Ward. Lost the game and lost his love, boo hoo~] And it wasn't just chat.

My DMs were about to blow up too. [Hey gorgeous, you're not planning on playing with our King Ward's feelings, are you?] [You? You think you're worthy of shipping with King Ward?

Won't even show your face. Definitely built like a tank.] I frowned and blocked every DM I couldn't stand to look at. And then… One yank of the power cord.

Stream over at light speed. The TikTok account was something I'd dragged my little brother into with me. Mostly we posted everyday brotherandsister stuff.

Once in a while a funny video, once in a while a gaming stream. Follower count… Lower than my mom's linedancing account. It wasn't making money in the first place.

No reason to sit there and take abuse over it. Worst case, I'd stop streaming. My door got kicked open. My little brother came barreling in. "Sis! You're famous!

No—we're famous!" He shoved his phone under my nose. "Sis! We got fifty thousand followers!" "The what now?" I said.

He was vibrating. "That 'hubby' you were screaming at in your last game? That's the starting jungler for Lumen Works! Finn Ward!" I play the game, but I don't watch matches.

I know absolutely nothing about the pro scene. I wouldn't know King Ward from King Sword. My brother is another story.

He's as bad at the game as I am, but he can recite the entire esports scene from memory. "Look! The internet is nothing but clips of that game right now!" I took the phone.

There was a face in the bottom right corner of the gameplay, and it was distractingly handsome. Even with the blurry quality and the webcam window shrunk down to nothing.

You could still see that the guy they called King Ward had features that didn't belong on a normal person, and a cold, quiet way about him.

When I called him "hubby" in game, that glacier of a face showed something rare — he was thrown. Then the Baronsteal notification came up on screen.

One autoattack from my little mage had taken the Baron. I think about that game and my toes still curl into the floor.

My brother had grabbed my phone right then and typed into allchat: [Hubby, hubby~ we're on an eightgame losing streak, could you let us have this one?

Add me after and I'll buy you and your team boba~] "Is there really no more dignified way to do this…" I said.

He turned serious. "Do you want to climb or not?" I admitted it, humiliated. "…I do." "There you go. They're a fivestack too, so we're not griefing any randoms.

Relax." Chapter 2 My brother: [Lady Selvina over there in the wedding dress, you were sitting in that bush waiting for me—are you about to propose?] Me: [Hubby jungle king, I want this boar, could you not come over here?] As for our teammates: "Don't tell anybody out there that you know us." The other team said nothing the whole game.

Their jungler's hand "slipped" and gave up the Baron, and their mage genuinely never camped us once.

Under the barrage of our sweet talk, their morale fell apart, and we really did get our "comeback." What I never saw coming was the price of that one star… Every humiliating thing I'd said had been publicly executed in front of a hundred thousandplus people.

The thought that Corbin might scroll past those clips made me weirdly nervous. Would he be angry that I was calling some random guy hubby in a game? Would he be jealous? Never mind.

He was busy duo queuing with the transfer student anyway. He had no time for me.

Watching the follower count keep climbing, my brother started to panic. "Sis, what do we do… we're not about to get dogpiled, are we?" I thought for a moment and decided to get ahead of it.

Catch the best window for damage control and go straight to the person involved. It didn't take long to find Finn Ward's TikTok. I hit follow. Hold on.

Why does it say we follow each other? He… had already followed me? An account that big following mine. There's no way I wouldn't remember that.

Whatever, that wasn't the point right now. DM him and explain first. Me: [King Ward, I'm so sorry! I really didn't know it was you, and I definitely didn't know you were live.

I caused you a lot of trouble!] The second I sent it, I regretted it. A guy with millions of followers, with who knows how many DMs stacked up in there.

How would he ever see little me… I was proven wrong immediately. A second later, a red dot popped up on my phone.

Finn Ward: [It was a lot of trouble.] That one line put me in a cold sweat.

Me: [What should I do… if you need me to make a statement, I'll do it anytime!] He answered quickly this time: [It's done either way.

Add me somewhere we can talk and we'll figure it out later.] Me: [Oh. Okay.] Finn Ward's profile picture was a standard animeboy avatar.

On anybody else it would just be moodyheartthrob energy. Except he looks better than the avatar does. Which tells you something. The moment we connected, he sent me a group invite.

Was this a PR discussion group? I swallowed. This was getting serious. The second I was in, a run of highvalue gift card codes came flying into the chat, one after another.

Were you supposed to drop codes when you joined? It hurt, but I turned what little balance I had left into codes and posted them. The chat went dead silent.

Finn Ward: […] Me, quietly: [Isn't dropping codes the group rule?] Finn Ward: […No. Those were for you.

Just you.] Everyone else lost it at once. [Ward, can I redeem the codes boss lady posted?] [Boss lady's too cute.

Can you introduce me to the girl who was playing with you?] [Boss lady, we—] [The group owner (Finn Ward) has restricted messaging.] Finn Ward: [Redeem theirs all you want.

If I find out any of you redeemed hers, you're done.] The others fumed in silence. The whole thing rattled me so badly I nearly dropped my phone.

I looked up at the group name: Lukewarm Inner Circle. Me: [Lukewarm?] Finn Ward: [It's… LW.] Me: … So everyone in the group was one of Finn Ward's teammates. All of them LW.

That made this easy. Chapter 3 I apologized fast: [I'm sorry about earlier, everybody. My… friend and I lost our filter after that losing streak!] Finn Ward: [It's fine.

I'll get their stars back for them. Right, guys?] Teammate A: [Oh my god, I can finally talk again!

I was dying in here!] Teammate B: [No no no, boss lady, we'll get our own stars back!

There's really no need to trouble the captain!] I explained, seriously: [Please stop calling me boss lady. Earlier was just me running my mouth.

I have zero interest in King Ward, I promise!] I wasn't about to go after everybody's esports heartthrob. The chat froze solid.

Teammate C: [Uh, I've got stuff to do, you guys talk.] Teammate D: [My cat had kittens, I have to go feed them, nurse them.] Teammates A & B: [We're going to get some extra practice in.] Wait, did I say something wrong?

Why did they all seem so scared? A new red dot appeared on Finn Ward's avatar. I opened the DM. It was a screenshot of my stream.

He asked: [You called me hubby in front of a hundred thousand people. So tell me, what are we now?] I answered instantly: […Friends, hubby. No wait. Can we be friends?

King…] Finn Ward: […] It was a while before he wrote back. Finn Ward: [I don't stay friends with my exwife.] The what? Exwife? Me?

Was that a typo, or did he send it to the wrong person? Finn Ward: [We don't have to be friends.] That one I understood. If we couldn't even be friends… Me: [Fine.

Let's delete each other, then.] Once we had, I let out a breath. My brother was watching me, tense. "Well? What did King Ward say?" I spread my hands. "What would he say?

I went in, apologized to him and his teammates, and got out." "That's it?" "Oh, right. That Selvina main wants to add my dear little sister." "Sis!

Since when do you have a little sister?" I looked at him, steady. He broke. "Sis! You'd sell out your own brother and tear this family apart?" Anyway.

The guy involved wasn't angry, so that was that. I'd just left the group chat when a new message popped up.

Corbin: [Teddy, let Zizi borrow that maxed account of yours with all the skins for a bit.] Not a request. An order. Like the countless times before.

The second I said no, Corbin would "remind" me. —Who got you into this game? —Who taught you back when you didn't even know what a buff was, and got you all the way to fifty stars?

What he called showing me the game was this: nobody would play support for him, so he talked me into downloading it and lied that beginners could only buy support characters.

What he called teaching me was me filling the slot when he was short a player, and giving up the slot when his stack was full. Friends asked me why I let myself be that small.

I think I was holding on to that little bit of kindness he showed me at the start. Believing that one day I'd melt that iceberg of his.

Until I saw how attentive he was to Zizi Ridley, the new girl. That's when I got it… it was never that he couldn't. He just wouldn't, not for you.

For the first time, I told him no. [No. If she wants to play, she can pay. I'll rent it to her.] Corbin: [Theodora Garrison, do you really need the money that badly?] Me: [I don't.

But why should I hand it over for free?] Corbin: [When did you turn into someone who nickelanddimes people? I feel like I don't know you anymore, Teddy.] Me: [Is that so.

And I feel like I'm only just meeting you.] Chapter 4 My brother said LW's PR team had already calmed the fans down, explaining that the whole thing was just a bit.

Two days later, I went live again. The channel was back to its usual empty self. I clicked aimlessly at the little red dots on the game menu, bored out of my mind.

One of my handful of viewers asked: [What's up with Cricket today? Are people still DMing you about it?] I shook my head. "Nope.

King Ward was gracious enough to handle it for me." [Then who's been messing with our Cricket?

You seem down today.] [Speaking of down, did you guys catch LW streaming the last two days?

King Ward's hands are hot like it's finals week, every game toptier, farming the 2000point ladder like a kiddie pool!] [I know!

I heard some random tried Cricket's cursed strat on him, and King Ward just killed him even harder and asked him, "you want to keep saying it?"] [Cricket, you left King Ward with some real damage. "Hubby" is a banned word in LW's stream chat now!] But the day I apologized, the mood had seemed fine… Though thinking back on it, Finn Ward hadn't said a word after the apology.

Whatever. Their accounts hit a hundred stars ages ago. My brother and I were still scraping around fifty. We'd never run into each other again.

To get more interaction going in the channel, I decided to invite my top donor into a few games. I opened today's leaderboard.

My number one fan was on it, the mystery guy with the handle Freezewind. I DMed him and asked if he wanted to play. Freezewind was my very first follower when I started streaming.

When Corbin found out I was streaming, he brushed it off and made fun of how bad I looked on camera, told me never to show my face because I'd scare off my viewers.

Once in a while he'd catch me live, come in, never send a gift, and open with a critique of my stream.

Freezewind, on the other hand, backed me with real gifts and gave me advice that actually helped. If he was free, he was there the minute I went live.

I'd assumed a top donor had money moving by the second and no time to goof around with me. Freezewind: [Sure.

Give me a minute to set up an account.] A little later, the screen showed that Freezewind had joined the mic, and I started the game. Freezewind was like his name.

Cold, not much of a talker, but his voice was low and good to listen to. He had midlaner mechanics without the midlaner arrogance. First game, the other team surrendered at six.

I hadn't expected Freezewind to be that good. He beat the fight right out of them. They even asked if our jungler had trained under King Ward. Seeing that name gave me a chill.

Except Freezewind was running default skins and his mastery levels were all over the place, so there was no way this was Finn Ward's smurf. The fun didn't last long.

Game two, my own personal nightmare came right up and kissed me. What are the odds. The map is huge, and I still landed in a lobby with Corbin and Zizi on their sweet little duo.

Right before the second game started. I told Freezewind we should link accounts so he could use my skins. He took the suggestion without argument and sent the request right over.

I accepted without reading it properly and went straight into the game.

I didn't realize it was the couples tag… Corbin recognized me, saw I'd linked with someone, and got snide out of nowhere. [No wonder you wouldn't lend out the account.

Too busy on your cute little duo.] [If you're picking an ingame boyfriend, fine, you're never getting one like me, but at least pick someone decent?] [Guy doesn't even own a skin.

Mooching off your maxed account.] Chapter 5 Zizi: [Corb, stop. It's already impressive that Teddy got a boyfriend at all.] Corbin: [No wonder you've been so full of yourself lately.

You're seeing someone.

Wait, no—] Corbin stopped clearing camps entirely so he could trade lines with me in allchat, real cool about it. [It's not that useless little brother of yours who thinks he's hot stuff, is it?

Pretending to be your boyfriend so I'd feel some competition?] The randoms I'd queued with had had enough. [Less talk over there. Our jungler is the people's King Ward.

You're about to get zeroed.] Corbin: [You're telling me the jungler who's been AFK since the loading screen is LW's Finn Ward?

I'm dying.] Zizi: [Teddy, I heard you called the enemy hubby on stream the other day just to win.

Maybe you should just back down and apologize to Corbin?] Corbin: [I'm not like some guys who've never seen a girl before and go easy on one. Apologize to Zizi and I won't kill you.

I'll only kill your knockoff teammate.] With the two of them playing off each other, I'd expected to feel hurt. Miserable. I didn't. I just thought it was funny.

Freezewind hadn't moved since he loaded in. The big boss probably had something come up, and I got it. It's a game. If we lost this one, we lost it.

I couldn't be bothered with them. Then a low voice came through my headset. "Sorry.

I had a call." At the same moment, a line appeared in allchat. [In a minute you two are going to be begging me for mercy.

I'm still not going easy.] Maybe it was from playing with Corbin all those times, from being leaned on that much