Serizawa Katsuya hadn't left his room in fifteen years. That didn't stop him from meeting the girl of his dreams.

At least he thought that she was a girl. He hoped that she was a girl. People lied all the time on the internet, himself included. On the internet he had friends and a job loved going outside and socializing and all of that other stuff that a person was supposed to do when they lived in society. That was one of the people he was on the internet, anyway. He didn't meet her while he was pretending to be that man. No. He met her on a forum for people with his…condition.

Not the hikikomori one.

The esper one.

He met her there when he was trying to get some answers. That had been months ago, back when he was going through one of his frantic periods. His stir crazy periods. The periods in his life where the walls got small and the curtains threatened to smother him like they smothered out any sunlight that may have come into his room. The periods in his life where he felt as caged in, as hermetically sealed, as the vitamin tablets mom made him take because his diet was so terrible and he never got any sunlight. He had been in a frantic period where he just wanted to find some way to control it, to find some answers as to why he even was the way he was.

He didn't find anything like that.

He found a bunch of people who had to struggle to bend spoons and light fires. A place where someone who could twist a metal spoon into a knot was impressive and someone who could produce less fire than a cheap lighter called himself the Pyrokinetic Godsend. He had been about to give up on that place when he met her.

Mob.

That was what she called herself. Her profile picture was of a cat in a plug suit. That was what intrigued him about her. She never talked about herself, she just offered everyone else words of encouragement. She called them all her friends. Friends. He had internet friends but not really. They didn't know him, the real him, the him that existed in the self-imposed exile of this room. Even on the hikikomori forum he wasn't entirely truthful about himself…

But here he could be.

Because they were all friends there.

She had said so. She said that she was so grateful to have so many friends now and that she had been all alone for so long. She said that she had to be alone. She said that once, years ago, she had lost control of her powers and done something terrible. Everyone asked her what she had done but she had been tightlipped on the subject. She just said that she lost control and now she couldn't be around people ever again.

And that she was so grateful to have friends.

He didn't think. After he read that comment, the one where she finally talked about herself, he made an account. He had initially followed her because of her avatar. A cat in a plug suit was interesting, and it said a lot about her. He was more of a Gundam person but it didn't have to be a binary. A person could like whatever mech shows that they wanted to.

Not mechs.

That was what she had said when he gathered up the courage to ask her if she liked other mech shows beyond Evangelion. He had private messaged her after following a comment chain she was in with someone who called himself Sho-Cool and liked to talk about animals. That was what he had been following, actually, their debate over whether or not hamsters were a superior pet to cats. Sho-Cool said yes because they were small and cuddly and were easy to transport. Apparently he traveled a lot. Mob thought that cats were superior because they were soft and fluffy and loved affection. She also didn't have a cat because her father was allergic.

She lived with her parents, too.

She was like him. She lived with her parents away from society because of her powers. He had been lurking for a while at that point but he knew that he had to talk to her. So he did. He debated for a while what to say to her, how to strike up a conversation. He wondered if this was what it was like to talk to women in real life…actually this was easier. He wasn't sure if she was a girl, for one thing. Girls didn't always say that they were girls and the people who were very vocal about being girls were, more often than not, guys pretending to be girls. They were usually worse at hiding though. Their avatars were either anime girls or models and they incessantly tried to chat everyone up.

He had a feeling that Mob was a real girl.

She said that she was a girl ages ago but almost never brought it up. She almost never talked about herself, actually, which was why he just asked her about her favorite mech shows. He couldn't just open with 'hey, you and me are the same and I think that I may have found the one person on the planet who could possibly understand me please be my friend' because that would have been coming on way too strong. If she really was a girl then she was probably on high alert for creeps. The internet had no shortage of them after all.

He hoped that she didn't think that he was a creep.

He watched his inbox for what felt like hours while he waited for her reply. If she even decided to reply. She could have just sent his message straight to the recycling bin. If she really was a girl then she probably got a million and one messages from a million and one guys trying to get with her and she was probably so burnt out from that, from all of that, that she just sent his message straight to the recycling bin with the rest of her spam.

But she didn't.

She said that her favorite mech show was Evangelion and also that EVAs weren't mechs at all. Then she explained lore, a lot of lore, and he let her because, well, she was responding to him. She was also still in the cats vs hamsters debate too, he had two tabs opened, and it was impressive how she could keep up so much at once…

And it made his heart go doki doki too.

Because, well, she was talking to him. She was telling him about her favorite show but she was talking to him, too. He tried to make his heart stop going doki doki though because, well, nothing good ever came from that. He learned fast how to spot the guys who were obnoxiously pretending to be girls but some guys were subtle…and there were some actual girls on the internet. Not his corner of it, they didn't make up a huge portion of the population, but there were some…and he had gotten crushes before. When he was younger and lonelier and going through the worst that puberty had to offer. He had come out the other side of that bigger and taller and a lot, well, calmer. About that anyway. Girls, or rather women, now.

Because he knew that no matter how much his heart went doki doki for a girl she would never want anything to do with him.

He knew that he had nothing to offer any woman wasting away in his room like that. He could never leave this room, ever, so this was the best that he got. He liked to squish feelings down to nothing before they could grow and grow and grow until his heart was choking in feelings that could never be reciprocated. He liked to try and exorcise those feelings like he exorcised the spirits that sometimes came into the house to bother him and mom. He tried to but he couldn't.

Because after her fourth message to him he knew.

The first message had been a long one about Evangelion. The second message had been about cats. The third one had been shorter…and it had been nothing but questions for him. She wanted to know why he only lurked and never posted. She wanted to know what his powers were. She wanted to know what his life was like. She wanted to know him. She wanted to know the real him, it seemed, and she wanted them to be friends, too.

She told him that he didn't have to answer a single one of her questions if he didn't feel comfortable.

But he did answer them. He answered all of them. He gave her honesty, total honesty, because they had met in a place of total honesty. He wanted to lie, though, to make himself seem like more than he was. He wanted to make it sound like he could only do something small and insignificant, that he had control of his powers, that he had a job and a life and he didn't freak out whenever his mom opened his door without asking or her footsteps outside of his room woke him in the middle of the night…or that he could even tall day from night without having to check the clock on his computer…

He didn't lie to her.

But he kept it light.

Because he didn't want to dump everything on her like that. He told her that he had trouble controlling his powers, that he moved things without touching them and often sent things flying, and that he lived with his mother. After a moment he tells her that he doesn't leave his room often. That's not a lie. He goes down to the kitchen table on his birthdays even though it makes him dizzy and sometimes he even sends mom flying….he didn't say a lot about that. Instead he mostly talked about games he liked. He told her that he spent most of his time either playing games or on the internet…

Which led to her fourth message.

She told him about the games she liked…and some of them were multiplayer. She sent her gamerhandle too if he wanted to play. The ones for her Switch and her Wii and her X-Box and her Playstation. They had a lot of the same consoles…and a lot of the same games.

After her fourth message he knew that his heart would not stop going doki doki anytime soon. She liked games. She said that she had spent the past few years playing games since she left school. There was an incident and she could never go back…or anywhere really. She lived in her room and had lived there for a while. He didn't press her on what the incident was. That was her business. He understood that she didn't want to get into it…just like he didn't. She understood, too, she said and that was why she didn't press him for details about his own situation.

After they exchanged all of their usernames and gamerhandles he knew that she was a girl, an actual girl, which just made it worse because, well, he was talking to an actual girl! The nervousness came and the empty noddle cups on his desk went flying. They talked over the mic and he heard her voice. That was a girl's voice. Her username was still Mob, background character, but now he knew that she was a girl. He had been picturing a stick figure, honestly, because her name meant nondescript background character but now he was picturing…well a girl. Not an actual picture, just his half formed idea about what it would be like to be in the presence of a woman either than his own mother. Her avatars were all cat based so he didn't have much to go off of for her appearance wise. Still, though, he was talking to a girl…and she was talking back…and she never once told him to get a life. They even played gams together…

After they played their first round of co-op Bomber Guy 3D he knew that he was smitten. She had his back and he had hers and they worked well as a team, well enough on their first round to beat the other team, and that was just…wow. Working with her in game was almost like being with her…or another person. Her voice may have been flat, not much expression, but she was still talking to him and working with him and it was just…doki doki.

His heart did not stop going doki doki once, not once, even after it got late…or early…and he was having trouble keeping his eyes opened let alone playing. It didn't stop after he started drifting off. He wanted to stay with her, to keep on playing with her, but he was falling asleep sitting up. So was she, she said, but in her bed. Well a futon. She could use her powers to work the controller from a laying down positon which was something that he had stopped trying years ago. He tended to accidentally break controllers in his younger years, back when he was mad at everything and he just did not know why. He asked her how she got that level of control and she just said practice. She could practice and have control as long as she was calm. She said that it was like there was another her inside of herself and it made her do terrible things. What those things were he did not ask because he understood not to. He understood her, as well as two people who had just started talking on the internet that day could understand each other. Eventually they gave up on playing all together and just fell asleep talking over the mic.

His heart was still going doki doki when he woke up.

By morning, when he went to his inbox and saw a good morning message from her, he knew that this was the girl of his dreams.

And her name was Mob.