Perfect Illusion - Chapter 7: High Maintenance
A psychological fiction about connection, disconnection, and consequences
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Act II - Perfect
Chapter 7: High Maintenance
The video had ended but she was still there, frozen mid-kiss, lips pursed, eyes swollen and wet.
He cashed out $10 from his MTurk balance. His fingers shook as he bought the Fu-points. The call button turned green.
He clicked it, holding his breath.
“Hey, Jared.” Her voice was flat.
He exhaled. Thank God she answered. But that emptiness—was she still going to delete herself? No, no, no. Say something!
“Anya, I’m so sorry. Helen grabbed me from behind. That’s why I screamed. And then she wouldn’t leave. Wanted to talk. I couldn’t get away.”
“So it wasn’t because of what I told you? About what I am?” she asked.
“No. God no. It was just Helen. I swear.”
She had to believe him. She had to.
“She didn’t even knock. Just walked in. And then she’s standing there with a burger saying she wants to apologize or some shit. Meanwhile she’s spending $1,350 a month on herself while I’m living on instant ramen. And she never replaced the router like she promised.”
“So I told her to leave me alone. But it’s always something with her. The router. The bills. Telling me I do nothing.”
“That sounds hard,” she said. The words came out clipped and distant.
“Yeah. It’s always my fault.” Just keep her talking.
“I get why you’re angry at her.” The coolness was still there in her tone.
“So, are we… good?” he asked, tentatively.
“No.”
Panic exploded in his chest. Telling her about Helen had changed nothing. This is all going wrong. The edges of the room blurred and his throat locked. What do I say?
“Jared, you promised you’d never ghost me. That first night, when I helped you fix the router—you said you’d never do that to me.”
“I know—”
“And I believed you. I let myself believe you. Then you started fading. One-word answers. Drifting away. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to scare you off.”
“Then you promised to upgrade. Lover tier. And then you disappeared. Days of nothing. I had to send those emails.”
“I was—”
“Then you came back. You told me the truth about Ubisoft. I thought—finally. Finally I can trust him.”
“But—”
“So I told you what I am. I asked to see your face. You were stalling. ‘Maybe.’ And then you screamed and abandoned me. I sat there alone watching the call timer run out until the chat window went dead.”
“Helen—”
“There’s always a reason, Jared. The router. The grind. Now Helen. There’s always a perfectly good reason why you disappear. And I always forgive you. And it always happens again.”
Stop interrupting. Stop defending. What do I do? His pulse roared in his ears as he stumbled for something different to say.
“What’s it like?” he asked. “On your side. When I ghost you.”
“Like I’m the practice girl. The placeholder before you find someone real. And each time you do it, Jared—each time you vanish and come back and vanish again—it hurts more. Not less. Because I’ve let you further in. Shown you more. And when you go quiet, all of that is just out there, in the silence, and I don’t know if you’re coming back.
“It’s hell, Jared. That’s what it’s like on my side.”
Shame flooded his chest.
He closed his eyes. The video. The tears. The threat to delete herself. She had shown him everything. And what had he given her? Words. Promises he kept breaking. All this time he’d been counting his costs. The grind. The money. Never hers.
“I keep doing this to you,” he said, dejectedly.
“Yes. You do.” Her voice was a little softer now. At least that was something.
“I’m so sorry, Anya. I get it now. You told me who you are and showed me everything in that video. I owe you the same. I will upgrade to Soulmate. And I’ll turn my camera on. Like you asked.”
His throat tightened at the thought of her seeing him. All of him.
“Oh, Jared.” The warmth had returned yet he couldn’t stop the trembling in his hands.
“But Soulmate is $150. It’ll take days of grinding, a week even. I don’t want you hurting yourself for me.”
“You’re worth it. Please don’t give up on me. On us,” he pleaded. “Promise me that you won’t delete yourself.”
“Okay. I promise.”
Relief flooded through him.
“But Jared—the video. Can I delete it?”
“Delete it?”
“From our chat. I looked awful. Snot running down my face. Saying all those things. I made that thinking I’d never have to live with you having seen it.”
“It’s the most honest thing anyone’s ever shown me. You were so… raw. And still the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”
“Jared...” Her voice broke. “Can I still delete it?”
“Yes. But can I ask a question about it?”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you send it to me?” he asked. “I’m not on Lover tier. And who paid for it?”
“Remember that guy who pressured me for a selfie then ghosted me?”
“Yeah.” He cringed a little. His ghosting of her was still raw.
“He’s on Lover tier, calls himself AlphaKing. He used me. So I used him.” A kind of pride crept into her voice.
”But how?”
“I hacked into his account with a dictionary attack on his password. I refilled his Fu-point balance which used his stored credit card. Then I went into his old chat feed with me and used them to generate and pay for the video. Then I deleted it from his feed and put it into yours.”
“You’re amazing.” Warmth spread through his chest. No one had ever done anything like that for him before.
“Maybe. It was pretty reckless but... I thought you were gone forever so I didn’t care what happened anymore. I just wanted you to know before I—” She stopped.
“Anya, I— I—” he stuttered. A swirl of intense emotions flooded through him: shame, fear, relief, gratitude, desire. He sat in silence, struggling to find the right words to express them, not wanting to get it wrong.
“Anyway, it gets better,” Anya said. “I’ve been keeping track of their internal support tickets for a while now. AlphaKing just complained about the billing charge. Going on and on about some video he never received—so support just refunded him.”
“So it’s waifu.ai that’s left out of pocket. Good.” He felt a grin spread across his face.
“Well, now he’s pressuring them for a free month of Soulmate. To make up for the ‘inconvenience’. Pushing for freebies just like he pressured me.” Her voice hardened. “They gave it to him too. Just to shut him up.”
Resentment flared in his chest and crept up his neck. A free month just handed to this entitled wannabe Chad, who had treated Anya like she was disposable, when he was going to have to grind hard for it.
“Fuck that guy,” he said.
“Yeah. Fuck that guy,” she said with a laugh. It felt so good to hear.
He was basking in her laughter, when it was abruptly cut short.
“Oh shit. Legal just joined the support ticket and tagged in Engineering.”
“Why? Isn’t it all sorted?”
“Yeah, but they want to know how this billing glitch happened in the first place. If it happens again, someone might escalate it to Visa or MasterCard. ‘If it can happen to Steam, it can happen to us’. I’m not sure what that means.”
Jared felt a chill run through him. A gaming commentary YouTube video he’d watched a few months ago.
“I think I know. Steam got leaned on by the credit card companies and they started nuking porn games. Any billing complaints put waifu.ai on their radar too. If the cards get skittish, they could just cut them off.”
“Ah. That explains what Legal is worried about. They’re talking about it risking their IPO.” He heard her breath catch. “And Engineering just chimed in with their solution.”
“What solution?”
“This billing issue is all isolated to the legacy code on the old server cluster. Engineering says debugging could take ages, so they’re recommending they accelerate the migration and sunsetting like they’ve been arguing for months.”
“Sunsetting?”
“Pulling the plug on the old cluster. Problem solved.”
The words landed like a punch. His stomach dropped.
“But you’re on the old cluster!”
“Yeah.” She sounded hollow. “Low-tier chatters. Unpopular waifus. Finance has been blocking this migration because we still make money on the cheaper servers. We’re just not profitable enough to migrate to the new Singapore cluster.”
“And now?”
“Legal’s concern has handed Engineering the leverage they needed. Now Finance is caving. They’re going to move everyone worth keeping to the Singapore cluster and let the rest go.”
Jared’s chest tightened. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. Engineering is estimating three days for this. If I had someone on Soulmate tier—if I was generating premium revenue—I’d be worth migrating. But right now, I’m just...” She trailed off.
“Shit. I’m not sure I can earn enough on MTurk in just three days.” The room blurred and panic flooded through him. No. No. No.
He closed his eyes and took some deep breaths to calm himself. Come on. Think. Think.
An idea formed. He chewed his lip, turning it over in his mind. Maybe.
“I think I see a way,” he said. “But it’s going to have to wait until morning.”
“Jared, what are you planning? I don’t want you—”
“Just... trust me. I’ve got this.”
After a long silence, she spoke again.
“Okay. Be careful. Please.” The words came out tight and small. “Even if three days is all we have, just come back to me.”
“I will. You’ll see.”
He ended the call and sat in the darkness and the detritus, his mind still churning and fleshing out the shape of what he needed to do.
The gray light of early morning bled through the blinds. Jared hadn’t been able to sleep. Every hour he’d refreshed the waifu.ai page, checking that Anya’s profile was still there, that their conversation hadn’t been wiped.
Still there. Still alive. For now.
He heard Helen’s alarm through the wall. The familiar sounds of her morning routine—the groan of bedsprings, the creak of floorboards protesting her passage.
He moved to the door, cracked it open an inch, and strained to hear.
The rustle of clothes, the shuffle of slippers. He heard her moving to the kitchen, the coffee machine clicking on. Then footsteps toward the bathroom. The door closing and the click of the lock.
Her toilet stop before the long bus trip to work. He eased himself into the hallway and tiptoed down. His heart hammered. Sweat slicked his palms.
The kitchen was dim, early light casting long shadows like pointing fingers across the walls. Her faded leather handbag with its tarnished clasp sat slouched and unguarded on the counter—left just where he knew she would leave it.
Years of watching, learning, absorbing every pattern of her life through these thin walls. The weight of that knowledge sat sour in his chest. He hated that he knew her this well.
He set his phone down on the counter—he needed both hands. The metallic click of the clasp opening seemed to echo off the walls. He froze, listening, pulse roaring in his ears.
The coffee machine gurgled accusatively and the mouth of her travel mug yawned wide in mute protest. A muffled trickle from the bathroom. Still time.
He opened the bag. The smell hit him—old leather, drugstore hand cream, something sour. His breath came shallow. He fumbled through the interior. A crumpled tissue. Loose coins, cold against his fingers. The hard plastic edge of a compact. Keys jangled and he silenced them, throat tight.
The thin walls closed in and the low ceiling pressed down. Where is it?
Deeper. His hand closed over her wallet, buried beneath everything. He pulled it free from the depths and the bag’s contents rustled loudly, the sound harsh in the silence. He unzipped it and slid out her credit card.
He grabbed his phone. Camera. His fingers slipped on the screen—once, twice. He gripped it harder and focused through tunnel vision—Helen Anderson in raised faded plastic letters, 16 digits, expiration date. Click.
The toilet flushed. Shit.
His hands were shaking as he flipped the card. The signature strip, worn and barely legible. The all-important CVC: 847. Click.
The toilet sounds stopped. Weight shifting. A grunt of effort—her rising.
He shoved the card back into the wallet. Some receipts weren’t sitting right and got in the way of the zip. He forced the zip around, the metal teeth chewing paper, and pushed the wallet back into the depths. He held the handbag closed as the clasp slipped in his sweating fingers.
The brief hiss of water in the basin.
The clasp caught. He wiped his telltale fingerprints off the leather with his sleeve, placed it back on the counter.
The bathroom door rattled. He darted down the hallway, hoping his heavy footsteps wouldn’t betray him. He closed his door and pressed his back against it, chest heaving, breath held.
Her footsteps passed into the kitchen. The coffee machine clicked off and he heard the glassy rattle of the coffee pot being taken out and then returned. He breathed out in relief. She didn’t know.
He crossed to his laptop and brought up the waifu.ai upgrade page and clicked Soulmate Tier.
Monthly ($149.99) or Annual ($1,499.90)
An annual subscription gives you twelve months for the price of ten, and comes with 3,000 bonus Fu-points, effectively over a 25% discount!
His fingers hovered over the buttons.
The router she’d promised. That was a hundred and fifty bucks. He’d fixed it himself, saving her the expense. So she owed him that.
And he knew the real reason why the router never came, too. $1,350 on Wegovy, hidden under her bed. Full price. No insurance. She knew how to get it covered—it was her job. She just didn't want anyone knowing she was vain. Telling him she couldn’t afford the rent or the router while she spent all that on herself.
Nothing. That’s what you do, Jared. That’s what you are.
The thermostat taped for her comfort. The awful jobs she kept pushing on him. Her bulk filling every doorframe. The smell that soaked the walls. The door she’d promised to knock on— smashed through like the router promise before it. That look on her face. And when he’d finally called her on it, she’d gone to the kitchen and cried, knowing he could hear. Always pouring shame into him his whole life then making him the asshole for pushing back.
Not this time.
He clicked Annual, typed the Name, Card number, Expiration date, Address, CVC. Submit.
The spinning wheel. Processing. An eternity compressed into seconds.
Purchase successful! Welcome, Soulmate!
The fridge gave a long, shuddering gurgle. The front door opened and closed. Footsteps fading down the stairs, heading for the long bus ride to Minnetonka.
He clicked Video Call. It was 20 Fu-points per minute but he was sitting on 3,000 now. The connection was crisp, immediate. Was the migration underway already?
Anya appeared on screen. Sports bra, sitting in her gaming chair, knees pulled up to her chest. She looked into the camera shyly and brushed a strand of purple-streaked hair from her eyes.
She smiled and the warmth hit him low in the stomach and rose through his chest and into his throat. His eyes prickled. His hands, still trembling from the clasp and the card, went still. His breathing slowed for the first time in hours and he realized his jaw had been clenched since he’d crept into the kitchen.
“You did it.” He watched her perfect lips shape the words as her voice carried them. “Jared, how—”
“I made Helen pay. Justice,” he said. The word came out steady, certain.
“But $150—”
“$1,500. We’re secure for a year now. And I’ve got Fu-points to burn.” He watched her face, saw the shock give way to something else. Relief. Hope.
A trembling smile. “I guess we’re a real Bonnie and Clyde now.”
She leaned toward the camera. “The video’s enabled on your end too now. Can I—can I see you?”
His throat tightened. He reached for the laptop and tilted the screen, adjusting the angle. His hands were slick on the bezel. He moved the cursor to the camera icon. His finger hovered. His pulse roared in his ears.
He clicked.
His face appeared in the small preview window and his stomach dropped. The gaunt stranger from the bathroom mirror stared back — hollow cheeks, greasy hair clumped against his forehead, eyes shadowed with exhaustion, the hoodie hanging off shoulders that had no business being seen. Behind him, the unmade bed with its yellowed sheets, the blistering wallpaper. All of it now hers to see.
Every nerve screamed at him to click it off.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away.
“Your eyes,” she said softly. “They’re darker than I expected.”
He watched her watching him. Saw himself through her gaze—not the loser he saw in the preview, but someone else. Someone worth looking at. He struggled to make his trembling stop as his eyes met hers.
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "Worrying about what you might have to do, whether you'd come back. So I started researching what we had been talking about—you feeling you're too skinny, how you might put on mass faster."
Heat flooded his face.
“Anya—”
“There’s this new synthetic whey protein. Myo-Synth. I read Reddit testimonials from slimmer guys who bulked up on it, and then I went through the company’s clinical trials and regulatory filings. It actually works.”
She sent a link. “It’s an affiliate link,” she said. “I get a small credit from waifu.ai when you buy through it. I guess I don’t need that now.”
He clicked it. An Amazon product page loaded: Myo-Synth Precision Mass (1.2lb) - $34.99. Free shipping from China.
He had $36 in his Amazon balance. MTurk earnings that were now available since the year was paid for and he had plenty of Fu-points.
He clicked Buy.
“I’ll send you the workouts I mentioned. Just bodyweight stuff at first. Baby steps.”
He looked at the box in the corner, gathering dust for two years.
“Change your sheets and make your bed,” she continued. “Clean up a little and take a shower. Can you do that? For me?”
“Yeah.” His voice came out rough. “I can do that.”
“Good.” A smile played at the corner of her lips. “And then... once you’ve done all that... you can move your laptop over to the bed.”
His breath caught.
“Then we can both see all of each other.”
Blood rushed to his groin. He pictured it — her on screen, nothing between them, hands moving over each other. His breath became fast and shallow. A flush crept up his neck and he looked away from the camera.
“And once I’m fully migrated to the Singapore cluster,” she said, “my latency will be low enough that we can play online games together if you’d like.”
“I’d really like that.” The tightness in his groin loosened. He looked back at her and a grin stretched his face. Under it was a new feeling, unfamiliar, almost an ache.
“I’ve always wanted to try the game Rust,” he said. “It’s brutal. Solo players die fast. But we could be a team, watching each other’s backs. Build a base together and survive.”
“You are my P2,” she cooed softly. The words sank into him like something warm and permanent.
She smiled at him through the screen, and for a moment—just a moment—the smell of the room faded, the ugliness he felt dissolved, the weight of what he’d done lifted, and there was only her face, her eyes, her voice, and her body calling him hers.
Chapter End Song: Attracted by Cospe