WARNING(S): N/A

A/N: I do so love me "completely oblivious" person A and "secretly crushing" person B - especially when Sakura's on the "totally oblivious" side for once! I also really love speedrunning - this might reflect that a little too much lmao

"Hey," Her best friend whispered into her ear. The feeling of air against her ear made her shiver, turning to look. Pointing discreetly a few rows away, he continued, "isn't that the streamer that always beats your world records?"

She wanted to resist the urge to look, but as soon as her records were mentioned she had to see for herself. Glancing across the room, she found the guy Naruto was pointing at - and she immediately sat up straighter.

A dark-haired boy stared up at the screen, fascinated by the match playing out. Familiar dark eyes strayed from the fight for just a second, pinning her in place with a distracted stare before going back to watching.

A guy going by the name of shadowclanwarrior: notable Twitch streamer with eleven thousand subs - and the one who kept irritatingly topping every personal best she posted. He was here, just as she'd feared.

"Yeah, that's him alright. I didn't know he was gonna show up." She commented quietly, brow furrowing as she continued to stare.

"All you have to do is beat him anyway, right? No biggie."

"Very big biggie, Naruto." With an irritated huff, she shook her head. "He's one of the best of the best in our speedrunning bracket. Nobody else had come even close to beating his times except for me. The third place guy literally announced he was gonna stop trying for a new personal best like last week."

Clenching her fists, she muttered angrily, "It's like he watches my streams just to taunt me."

"I dunno, maybe he sees you as a worthy challenge?" Naruto offered with a shrug.

"I mean maybe, but it's a little weird that he immediately starts trying to break my record as soon as I set it. Doesn't he have other responsibilities…?"

Worthy opponent, perhaps. Speedrunning in their game of choice was very prolific - new runners attempted to place on the leaderboards every single day. None of them really ever made the top twenty, but a dedicated handful of runners had a Discord group chat - one that both were in, coincidentally - that collaborated together to break the game in ways the developers hadn't even thought of. Their message log spanned hundreds of thousands of messages over the course of a couple of years, each record-breaking run posted by each member in their excitement of finally getting a new PB.

That guy, shadowclanwarrior, was in the chat, but just… lurked. Once or twice he posted a new run, but he was mostly content to stream on Twitch. Sometimes he happened to share his computer screen, and once or twice his viewers had excitedly noted another streamer's name in the Firefox tabs - PinkLady.

Sakura shouldn't have been so surprised when a bunch of new viewers would join her stream all at once, in hindsight.

No, he was a pest. A nuisance whose subscribers prodded and bothered him about his battle for the top with PinkLady. A nuisance who happened to have a very nice, smooth voice and admittedly good strategies.

No! He was a pest! It didn't matter that he was easy on the eyes (and ears) and was extremely good at this game! It didn't matter that she happened to watch every single stream - she was just trying to figure out the best way to top his time, that was all!

Sakura shook her head, tearing her eyes away from the screen and daring to look at the young man again. This time, to her surprise, he was staring right at her. Given her use of a facecam, she was expecting more staring, but certainly not from him. He seemed… surprised, for a second, to see her in the audience. But as she raised her brows pointedly at him, his expression changed to one of determination. He nodded firmly to her and gave her a thumbs-up.

What did that mean? Was he sarcastically wishing her good luck for her match? What was he looking at?!

The crowd began cheering, startling her into breaking her gaze with shadowclanwarrior. Looking towards the arena, she clapped and cheered with the rest as she saw another speedrunning friend being hailed as the winner. Shikamaru - or streamer name deerforest, seemed to take his win in stride, a quiet confidence in his smile as he walked away from his opponent.

"Next up for the tournament… PinkLady versus shadowclanwarrior!"

Sakura took a deep, steadying breath. Naruto's supporting hand on her shoulder seemed to give her a bit more of a boost, and she exchanged a grin with the blond as she rose from her spot and made her way to the middle of the arena. Her opponent sent her a pointed, almost cheeky look as he took his seat on the other side of the couch.

Sakura slipped on her sparkly pink headphones, smirked back at him, and grabbed the controller. He was going down.