Work Text:
The cursor blinked like a timer, silently counting every second it sat on a blank document.
Brigitte sat, shoulders hunched, over the keyboard. Her fingers rested lightly atop the keys, desperate not to accidentally break any buttons like she had on her last one. Why were the keys so light and flimsy, anyway? Not every writer had slender, delicate fingers.
She’d been staring at the blinding white screen for the better part of an hour. A few sentences had manifested in that time, but they’d all since been deleted. The thought of someone else seeing them was too much to bear.
She tapped out a few letters.
Hana,
A good start, she decided. It showed that she knew Hana’s name, and that the letter was intended for her. Very practical.
But should it have been a letter? Maybe a poem would have been better. Or even a short story full of allegories, like a tale about a knight falling in love with a cute but vicious she-dragon, or a statue that comes to life after a pretty girl buys it.
Or maybe she could construct an entire sci-fi fantasy world where characters suspiciously resembling herself and Hana both serve the same galactic overlord, and they fall in love while fighting to expand their wicked galactic empire.
Instead of any of that, her fingers clunked out a You’re very pretty
No, no! She quickly deleted it. I’m supposed to show, not tell. That’s what that online writing course told me.
How could she show Hana being very pretty without saying it?
You are
Her fingers hovered over the keys for a moment. Then they delved back in.
Like a flower.
A good start. But what kind of flower, specifically? Some were prettier than others. Also, maybe she should pick one that was native to Korea. Or would that be weird?
Half an hour of internet research later, she rewrote the line.
Like an erythronium. Specifically, the pink ones. Because you love pink.
An icon at the top of the word processor lit up and did a little shake. Straightening her hunched back a bit, Brigitte gave it a curious click.
A cartoony purple paperclip appeared on the side of her document. Beside it, a yellow dialogue box filled with text in real time.
“It seems you’re having some trouble writing a love letter. Would you like my assistance?” The text box glitched a few times, the letters flickering purple before settling back to a normal black.
“Oh, is this one of those AIs that writes stuff for you?” Brigitte brightened for just a moment before slouching back down in her seat. “No. I want it to be from the heart.”
The paperclip cast a pointed look over the few lines she’d written.
“Are you sure?” the text box read.
She read back over the handful of lines she’d already written. This wouldn’t impress Brigitte’s own mom, let alone a world-famous celebrity.
A pained little noise escaped her throat. “I want it to be from the heart,” she repeated. “But I also don’t want her to tell me I’m ‘cringe’ or whatever.” She barely knew what that meant in the context Hana frequently used it in, but it definitely wasn’t positive.
The paperclip idled on the side of the screen, waiting for her to click either “Yes” or “Not now” under its original question.
She only had one chance with this. If it turned out bad, Hana would never take her seriously again, and would probably even call her cringe. She didn’t want to be cringe. Her tender heart just couldn’t handle that.
“Maybe you can just...help me out a little,” she said, as she hesitantly clicked the “Yes” button.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a small black box flickered briefly on top of the document, with lines upon lines of white text scrolling upward at light speed. Then the box disappeared–and the document began to fill with text.
“Ooh.” Brigitte skimmed the lines of the letter as they appeared. “Yes, she does remind me of sunshine! And oh my gosh, I’d absolutely love to bake a delicious pie with her. How does it know all this stuff??”
When it was finished, the letter was two pages long. Every line made Brigitte melt inside. Okay, I know I didn’t write it, but I agree with it all. So that counts, right? Sorta?
No way Hana would laugh at such an elegant, heartfelt confession. Regardless of how much of it was written by a suspiciously helpful computer program.
She all but yanked the letter out of the printer as soon as it emerged. With shaking hands, she folded it sloppily into thirds, then wrote Hana’s name in her neatest handwriting on the outside.
Since Hana was still getting formally onboarded into Overwatch, she was near-constantly in meetings, which meant her bedroom was unoccupied. Folding the letter up tight, Brigitte hurried out into the hall to slide it under Hana’s door before she returned.
Later that night, as Brigitte was putting away the pieces of her latest project, she saw someone appear in her shop doorway. Even in her side vision, she could see the shock of bright pink sneakers and a matching jacket drifting toward her.
A layer of sweat beaded up all over her arms and face. Play it cool, Brigitte. Don’t make her think you’re cringe.
“Hey, Hana.” The greeting came out hoarse. Brig cleared her throat, then chuckled awkwardly. She didn’t dare make eye contact.
Hana seemed to study her a moment. “...Hi,” she eventually said.
Brigitte tried to focus on putting her tools away, but her hands were shaking too hard to do anything but fumble them around in her belt. “Um, so...how’s your night going?”
Hana circled around to stand in front of her. Brigitte felt simultaneously like a ridiculous giant and like a tiny little mouse.
Out came the letter. Hana pulled it from her pocket, where it had gotten crunched-up and slightly torn.
“Did you put this in my room?” she asked.
It was impossible to deny. The letter had ended with her name at the bottom.
Brigitte grabbed a fistful of wrenches and screwdrivers from her belt to busy herself stuffing them into her toolbox. Of course, with her shaking, sweaty hands, two wrenches slipped right out of her grip and clanged off the floor. Hana watched them fall with an unreadable little frown.
With her gaze on the floor, Brigitte said, “Um, yeah.”
“You really wrote this?”
Her cheeks began to warm. “Yes.”
Squinting at her, Hana said, “So you want me to invest in crypto and send you feet pics?”
“What?!” Brigitte shot to her feet. “That’s not what it said!”
Hana pulled the letter from her pocket and unfolded it. The glitter-coated nail of her pointer finger settled on a line somewhere in the middle of the letter.
Brigitte scanned the letter. “What the hell?? That’s not what the program wrote at first!” Snatching it from Hana’s hands, she read over the rest of it. The entire letter was a mixture of seemingly-plagiarized poetry lines, requests for money and, yes, a request for pictures of Hana’s feet. At the bottom, Brigitte’s name was signed in huge, bold letters.
The papers slipped out of Brigitte’s hands. She continued to stare at the space they had once occupied between her fingers.
“Soo...” Hana tilted her head back and forth. “Gonna assume you didn’t actually write all this.”
Brigitte could only nod.
“What were you really trying to tell me?”
Despite her small size, Hana’s sharp gaze and casual assuredness made Brigitte feel like a giant wimp in comparison. Hana stood with her arms folded and her chin up, watching Brigitte. Waiting for an explanation.
Brigitte felt her throat tighten up. “Um...well...”
Why had she thought this was a good idea? Hana was beautiful, with those big brown eyes and silky hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail, exposing the entirety of her sweet, perfect face. She was a genius, an icon, a superhero in her own way, inspiring hope with every undertaking. And she did it all with that million-dollar smile of hers.
Her world shared near-zero commonalities with Brigitte’s. What would she gain by having Brigitte in her life in that way?
“I...” Brigitte sighed, letting go of the last of her ridiculous expectations. “I just wanted to let you know I really like you. That’s all.”
Hana’s expression changed a bit, but it was still impossible to read.
“I wanted to write you a love letter,” Brigitte blurted, “but I didn’t trust my own writing, so I had a suspicious-looking paperclip write it for me. And now I probably have a virus on my computer. Or I guess another virus, since my computer’s still really slow ever since I downloaded that zip file of free cat screensavers.”
Hana stared at her.
“I just wanted you to be impressed,” Brigitte groaned.
Hana had a smile familiar to the whole world. But the one she showed Brigitte then didn’t look like that. This smile was small and quiet, but it made her eyes sparkle and her tense posture thaw into something much warmer.
“I’m not very impressed you generated a love letter full of stolen lines and scam links.” She leaned in a little closer to Brigitte, her smile growing as Brigitte backed shyly away. “I’d be impressed if you wrote me a real one.”
If Brigitte’s face were any hotter, it may have melted right off. “Really?”
“And maybe I’ll write you one back.” Hana’s smile morphed into a grin. “I mean, I’m not much of a writer, but...”
“Honestly? Neither am I.” Brigitte laughed, and then Hana was laughing, too.
Maybe this wasn’t going as bad as she feared it would, Brigitte thought, even as she could feel the sweat dripping down between her shoulder blades. She was being given a second chance. That was something, right?
“In that case,” Brigitte said, “I have to go do something very important.”
This time, the letter was handwritten, complete with Brigitte’s messy penmanship and a few motor oil stains from where her hand had rested on the paper for too long.
It probably wasn’t good. But it was undeniably, for better or worse, from the heart.
Hana made tiny, thoughtful sounds as she read the letter over. What was probably two minutes felt like half a lifetime as Brigitte felt herself sweating through her shirt.
“Hmm...” Hana flipped to the back to finish reading. “Huh.”
Brigitte tried in vain to wipe the sweat from the back of her neck.
Finally, Hana reached the end. She lifted her eyes from the letter, locked them with Brigitte’s, then said, “Brigitte...this is cringe.”
It felt as though a lightning bolt had shot from the pages and struck Brigitte in the chest. She took a half-step backward, hand over her heart. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
Hana’s eyes rounded. “Oh, no, I meant it ironically! It’s like saying it’s pog, or based.”
“I don’t understand anything you’re saying,” Brigitte whimpered.
“It’s good!” Hana said. “It’s...”
Her words trailed off. She reached up and coiled a loose strand of hair around one finger, focusing on that instead.
“Sorry. I’m not used to talking about feelings in, like, an unironic way.”
Suddenly a piece of paper was thrust into Brigitte’s hands. It was a neatly folded bit of stationery with a pastel, cartoonish rabbit on the outside corner. When unfolded, it revealed words written carefully in neon pink gel pen.
Brigitte
Gay moment
-Hana
Brigitte looked up from the paper. Hana wore a small, earnest smile.
“So is this a good thing?” Brig asked.
“It’s a gay moment.” Hana shrugged, as though that explained everything. “Wanna get a drink sometime?”
“For sure!” Brigitte folded the note and gently tucked it into her pocket. “And you can explain all these words to me. And I can explain to you...I dunno. Wanna learn some Swedish swears?”
Hana’s eyes glinted. “Of course.” Sidling up beside Brigitte, she added, “And maybe some cute words, too. Just in case I need them.”
Brigitte looked her over a moment. Then she said, “Hana...that’s cringe.”
Hana gasped in mock indignation. Brigitte cracked up laughing.