Page 82 of Played By Design

Which animals get which feed. Which treats build affection fastest.

Which ones need care to keep their stress down. Which routines keep them easy to manage.

As a Player, you learn what they like.

What they hate.

What calms them.

What gets a response.

Then you use it to win the best outcome for your game.

My breath catches.

Food.

Music.

Games.

Touch.

Kain knows exactly what to give me when he wants me to eat. What to play when he wants me to stop working. What song will draw my attention across a crowded room.

What makes me come searching for him.

Bile burns the back of my throat.

Holy shit.

I’m his pet.

The thought lands so hard I stop breathing, the notebook clutched between my hands.

I’m not his roommate. Not another player sitting beside him with the same controller and the same rules.

I’m his fucking pet.

And I never even knew.

My hands shake as I open the notebook and flip backward, faster this time, pages snapping beneath my thumb until I reach the earliest dates.

High school.

The beginning.

Back when Kain and I first met and stepped onto the friendship path.

There were so many places we could have split after that. Choices that could have sent us in different directions. Instead, friends became roommates. Roommates is where we’ve stayed.

I thought we were choosing together, but Kain has notes from the beginning.

He’s been studying and analyzing all this time, tracking what works, adjusting when it doesn’t, and learning every hidden mechanic I didn’t even know I had.

All this time, I thought we were playing the same game.

We weren’t.