Harmonious Hearts 2017

by Olivia Anne Gennaro

  Growing up surrounded by a family of book lovers meant Kat was destined to be a reader. Now she devours every book she can get her hands on, even though she’s a student and probably can’t afford to feed her book addiction. Kat believes there’s nothing better than curling up with a good book, a cup of tea, and a dog on her lap.

  Although relatively new to writing, Kat has spent her life making up stories in her head to escape reality. Putting pen to paper and writing them down was the only thing that has ever made sense to her.

  The Dating Simulator

  By Lia Shepherd

  At Pixel Hearts, people can achieve the relationship of their dreams—at least through text messages. Yanmei is assigned to design the perfect boyfriend for a girl named Brinn, the same girl who ends up starring opposite Yanmei in the Sixth Form play. Brinn is beautiful and charismatic, and Yanmei finds herself attracted to Brinn for real. But perfect romances rarely happen in real life. Right?

  MY NAME is Yanmei Ruan, but you’re more likely to know me as glitchdoctor. Of course, you’re also less likely to admit knowing me as that.

  I develop romance games. Maybe you’re familiar with them—those visual novels where you choose a sweetheart, then navigate a branching narrative to find the true ending, your happily ever after. I’ve loved the world of romance games since I was fourteen, and now that I’ve released three of my own, it loves me back. glitchdoctor is a respected name in the community.

  However, the community itself isn’t respected, which I think is unfair. It’s okay to like games, and it’s okay to like love stories, so what’s wrong with liking games that tell love stories? Yes, most of them are shameless escapism and wish fulfilment, but that’s the point of love stories. Heck, it’s the point of most games. If other people can fantasize about saving the world from aliens, we should be allowed to fantasize about finding love on the moon.

  Yet romance game fans are seen as hopeless losers who can’t get real boy or girlfriends. Even by our own forums.

  I’d been on renaiforum.net responding to feedback on my latest game—Bittersweet: A Coffee Shop Romance—when a sidebar ad caught my eye. A pixel heart floated above a smartphone. Every ten seconds, the heart would disappear and be rebuilt bottom-to-top, block by block, as if someone were laying tiny digital bricks. At the end of the animation, a slogan would arc over the completed heart: Experience the relationship of your dreams with none of the nightmares.

  While I’m not in the habit of clicking on strange ads, that slogan bothered me. The wording was off. Find the relationship of your dreams, fine—but experience?

  I opened the ad into a new tab and was directed to pixelhearts.co.uk. At the top of the page was a slideshow of people gazing at their phones and smiling, overlaid by those same unnerving words.

  I scrolled down.

  What is Pixel Hearts?

  Soul mates are hard to find and harder to keep. We at Pixel Hearts know how much effort a successful relationship requires. And we know you’re busy.

  But what if you could conjure the person of your dreams out of thin air? What if they provided unconditional love and support? What if they’d be there for you whenever you needed them, and only when you needed them?

  If that sounds as good to you as it does us, Pixel Hearts is here to help. Design your soul mate to the finest specifications, then let us put you in touch via our text messaging service. We’ll bring your dream partner to life so expertly you’ll forget they were ever dreamed.

  Your lonely days are over. Begin your perfect relationship now.

  I sighed. Of course these people would advertise on renaiforum. We were the kind of sad loners they’d appeal to, right?

  Maybe I wasn’t the best person to complain. My heart was a little achy. I spent half my time describing the magic of romance, yet I’d only tasted it in shallow, hopeless crushes. However, a fake text boy or girlfriend was not the answer. I’m single, and it’s whatever was more palatable than I’m single, so I bought a soul mate.

  Just as I was about to close the tab, I glimpsed a link at the bottom of the page—Help build a soul mate?—and decided to make the most of my trip to the weird side of the internet.

  But as I skimmed the recruitment page, I had the strangest realization. While enlisting Pixel Hearts’ services didn’t interest me, working for them kind of did. Somehow, the sum of my life experiences had led me to the point where I’d read the job title “Dreamed Guy/Gal” and thought Yes, this is the career for me.

  Writing romance games, I’d had to appeal to a wide audience. Now I wondered what it would be like to personalize. To create someone’s ideal partner.

  To build a soul mate.

  A WEEK later, I received my first assignment as a Dreamed Guy. I’d opted to be a guy since that made it easier to remember I was playing a character.

  I skimmed the briefing Pixel Hearts had emailed me, murmuring the key words to fix them in my memory. My client was Brinn Caverley—

  “—eighteen… from Wynvershore?”

  I reread the description, stunned. I was also eighteen and from Wynvershore. Had they matched us?

  Attached to the email was a form Brinn had completed with specifications for her boyfriend. I opened it and prepared to study. Pixel Hearts let its clients go into excruciating detail.

  What is your dream guy’s name?

  How old is he? (18+)

  18

  How did you meet? Describe the moment as vividly as you’d like!

  school

  Describe your dream guy’s personality.

  What (besides you!) does he like?

  What does he dislike?

  List his family members. What is his relationship like with each of them?

  The prompts went on and on, becoming increasingly specific until they resembled security questions. Brinn had answered none of them. All she’d cared about was 18 and school. That explained why Pixel Hearts had picked me, at least. If they’d met at school, her boyfriend presumably lived in Wynvershore, and an actor who knew the town might portray him more convincingly.

  I wondered why Brinn had provided no other details. Was it laziness, or was she so desperate her dream guy was just a guy?

  Though I didn’t want to judge her, I wished she’d given me something to work with. How could I design the perfect boyfriend from scratch? Sure, romance game developers did that all the time, but we knew all about our protagonists and their turn-ons and could offer a selection of love interests to hedge our bets on the player too. Now I had to appeal to Brinn, 18 in one shot.

  I closed my laptop and rested my head on the cover. I was a romance game queen, not a psychic.

  PIXEL HEARTS was big on providing relationships “without the baggage.” Remember, you’re not a virtual pet, their employee guide read. A Dreamed Guy/Gal requires no maintenance. Let your client initiate conversations. So I did.

  And she didn’t.

  On the first silent day, I wasn’t too concerned. On the second, I began to get anxious. That anxiety intensified across the third, and the fourth, and the fifth—but by Day Seven, I’d stopped thinking about Brinn altogether. You see, rehearsals for the Sixth Form play had begun, and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

  Whenever I tell people I enjoy acting, they raise their eyebrows. As much as I’d love to be a 180° to your image of a romance game enthusiast, I’m not. There are about five people I can talk to without my brain interpreting them as a hungry lion.

  Yet I don’t get stage fright, no matter how many eyes are on me. I’m comfortable in anyone’s skin but my own. I don’t understand why I’m like this, but I try not to analyze it in case my social anxiety goes, “Huh, good point,” and debugs itself.

  This year, our school selected the play Love and War. Love and War is kind of like watching paint dry, only instead of drying, the paint just emits a high-pitched whining noise.

  Here’s the basic plot—a marriage is arranged between a prince and princess to unite their warring king
doms. However, the princess falls in love with a mopey knight from her fiancé’s court, and all the characters take turns to get up and perform angsty monologues, like it’s some medieval poetry slam. At her lover’s urging, the princess asks her father if she can back out of the marriage, but he insists peace is more important than her happiness—in another angsty monologue. Finally, a maid who is in love with the prince poisons the princess the night before their wedding, because death is the only way to resolve this plot. Someone then actually has the gall to stand up and say, “All’s fair in love and war,” and it ends.

  I played Viola, the maid. She’s held a special place in my heart ever since I reached the part of the script where she kills the princess and muttered, “Thank God for that.”

  Rehearsals took place in the main hall. I was among the last to arrive, breath heavy from running and script tucked haphazardly beneath my arm. Thirtysomething people were scattered about the room in little clusters.

  My friend Liam was leaning against the folded bleachers. He waved me over.

  “What took you?” he asked.

  Liam Fuhrmann and I have been friends ever since AS Chemistry, when I saved his Rapunzel hair from a Bunsen.

  “Computing overran,” I panted. “As usual. How are you doing? Have you read the script?”

  He grimaced. “Unfortunately.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “At least you get to act as done as you feel. I have to pretend to be in love with that woman-child.”

  Liam played the knight. I suspected he’d only taken the role so he could complain about it. He was more like his character than he thought.

  “Yeah, my sympathies. Her speech at the end of Act 1? What a load of—”

  “Right!” An authoritative bark resounded through the hall, and the chatter died. Ms. Hale, the head of Drama, was on the stage, using a rolled-up script as a megaphone. “If you could all gather over here….”

  THE PAGE boy knelt beside the dead princess and took her limp hand in his. He kissed it, then shakily rose to his feet and swallowed the lump in his throat to speak.

  “I suppose that all is fair in love and war.”

  A mournful silence reigned across the hall—then it dissolved into cheering and back-slapping and relieved laughter. The princess opened her eyes and high-fived the page boy.

  We’d finished our first run-through of the play. And you know what? It hadn’t been that bad.

  Ms. Hale and our cast had made the best of the script. We couldn’t save the plot, but we could help the characters. The page boy shifted from pathetic to cute. The prince came across as multifaceted rather than inconsistent. Liam brought a stoic dignity to the knight that masked his whininess. I tried to do my bit too, using body language to imply my obsession in the way my lines didn’t.

  But Ms. Hale’s darling, and our true savior, was the princess. In the script, Princess Lauretta had been a plot device with vital signs. Our leading lady—a girl with oversized glasses and a blonde bob—gave her backbone. You got the sense she was fighting for her destiny rather than hopelessly daydreaming about it. When she resigned herself to her fate, it seemed to be out of selflessness rather than passivity. Her protracted death scene actually touched my heart—though I still rolled my eyes when Servant #2 dabbed away a tear.

  “You know,” Liam murmured as we went to retrieve our belongings from the back of the hall, “I might have a thing for Lauretta after all.”

  Whatever my face did in response to that made him laugh.

  “Apparently I’m not the only one,” he said.

  “Shut up!” The harder I willed my cheeks not to burn, the hotter they felt. “I liked what she did with the role. That’s all.”

  He behaved as if I hadn’t spoken. “Scandalous!”

  On our way to the exit, we passed “Lauretta” herself, who was holding court among some of the ensemble. I didn’t actually know her name. Ms. Hale only called us by our roles, probably because she didn’t know half our names either and couldn’t be arsed with the cast list.

  Liam followed my gaze and slowed to a stop.

  “You should talk to her,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “You thought she did a good job. She deserves to hear it.”

  Before I could argue, he was striding toward Lauretta. I looked between him and the door, then groaned and hurried after my terrible friend. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if he was trying to coax me out of my shell, or if he just enjoyed poking under it with a stick.

  The ensemble guys sauntered away. Liam swiped a hand through his long hair and stepped in.

  “Hey there,” he said.

  A grin lit up Lauretta’s round face. “My knight! Hey!” Her natural voice was chirpier and quicker than the one she’d given the princess. She had a subtle accent too—Welsh? I wasn’t sure, but it was adorable.

  “My friend and I”—he grabbed my arm and pulled me forward to stand beside him—“just thought we should introduce ourselves properly. I’m Liam.”

  “Liam. Got it.” And then she looked straight at me—not Viola, but me.

  “Hi. This is weird, isn’t it?” I babbled. “We’ve been talking all afternoon, but we’re only introducing ourselves now, because we haven’t been ourselves yet, and… yeah. Hi.”

  Lauretta covered her mouth and giggled, probably not at the wit of my observation. “Hi.” She inclined her head. “Sorry, what was your name again?”

  I realized I hadn’t said the one thing I was meant to say.

  “Yanmei.”

  I had to repeat it.

  She scanned my face as if seeing it for the first time, then shook her head. “Yanmei, you are way too cute to be a murderer.”

  I gave my best impression of someone who is very flattered to be strangled.

  “Yan was just saying how much she loved what you did with your role,” Liam said.

  “Thank you!” Lauretta pressed her hand to her chest and beamed at me as if I’d managed to splutter out the compliment myself. “I like to think I’m righting a wrong. If you’ve read the original book, you’ll know the play totally butchered the characters, Lauretta in particular. Have you?”

  “Uh-uh.” I hadn’t known there was a book.

  As she kept talking, I drew a deep breath and relaxed my shoulders, trying to adopt the demeanor of someone calmer and vaguely straighter.

  “Ah, well, you should. It’ll give you new respect for Lauretta. She was a feminist icon of her time, you know. It’s depressing how the writer of the adaptation couldn’t portray her as progressively as a guy who’s been dead for a century.” She laughed at herself and shrugged apologetically. “Anyway, you’ve had enough of me ranting. I’ve got to head home before my mum freaks, but I’ll see you two soon, okay?”

  “See you,” Liam said. I echoed him.

  However, she only got two paces before freezing in her steps. “I never actually introduced myself, did I?” She clicked her tongue. “I’m Brinn. It was lovely meeting you both. ’Bye!”

  I stared at her back as she hurried away.

  PRINCESS LAURETTA: Brianna Caverley

  There it was, in print—my new crush was my pretend girlfriend. Who had chosen tonight to finally text me. What kind of cursed day was this? Had the stars aligned to spell out Fuck off, Yanmei?

  I replaced the cast list in its folder, then picked up my phone and reread the message.

  hey sweetie. :) hope I’ve got your new number right.

  ~ brinn

  She wanted realism, I suppose.

  I didn’t know how I felt about the situation. On the one hand, I was horrified, because living this double life would be ethically ambiguous at best. On the other, what else could I do? Tell Brinn? “Hey, remember that fake boyfriend you ordered?” She’d be mortified.

  And maybe I had more on my mind than ethics.

  Brinn was fascinating. I wanted to get to know her, but that wasn’t happening in real life. Today’s conversation had made that clear.
One smile, and yanmei.exe had stopped responding. But behind a phone, I might have a better shot.

  If we’d only ever be distant acquaintances, this wasn’t too dodgy… right?

  Yes, perfect.

  - Stephen

  Stephen. I mouthed the syllables, then nodded. That was a safe choice. A solid, enduring name that didn’t sound too old or generic.

  I reviewed my reply, tacked on a <3, and hit Send. My own heart quickened.

  Brinn: still good for our date on sat?

  Me: Yes! Can’t wait. :)

  Brinn: me neither! 7:30, right?

  Me: Well remembered!

  Brinn: you’ll be picking me up?

  Me: Of course!

  Brinn: great! see you soon, sweetie.

  That was not what I’d expected.

  Sweeties aside, that conversation had been about as romantic as booking a dental appointment. Brinn had wasted her messages on bland preparations for a date that would never take place. How many lonely souls went to Pixel Hearts thinking You know what I miss about having a boyfriend? Scheduling dates. Not the actual dates—I’m a busy woman—just the scheduling?

  Stranger still, Brinn was not a lonely soul. I recalled the admirers she’d amassed after the rehearsal and how easily she’d responded to them. She was so charming that, two thousand years ago, she might have caused wars. Yet Brinn’s man of choice had been a blank slate who couldn’t exist outside her phone.

  Still, if that’s the guy she wanted, that’s the guy she wanted. The lack of romance didn’t disappoint me either—in fact, if she’d gotten too affectionate with her messages, I would have felt uncomfortable. Manipulative.

  I didn’t want to talk to her as her boyfriend, not really. I wanted to talk to her as me, but not a quivering wreck.

  LIAM GAVE an open-armed shrug. “All I’m saying is that if I was a chick, I know who I’d pick.”

  “You honestly think she should have chosen the prince?” Brinn pulled a face, but her hazel eyes were bright and her tone playful. They were both relishing the debate.