Page 81 of Played By Design

And beneath that, written in fresher black ink:

Research yoga games. Needs more flexibility work. Traditional routines won’t hold interest. Find one with progression/unlocks.

I glare at it.

Yoga.

Kain is planning to trick me into fucking yoga.

My eyes narrow.

Asshole.

Another page.

Public / Not Public

The left column is short. Grave Circuit. Pulse Riot. Critical Extraction. Farming sims.

Games I stream, games I talk about, games that exist in the world where other people can see them.

The right column is longer, and every entry is a dating sim.

Beside them are notes.

Attachment risk.

Comparison behavior.

Unrealistic expectation modeling.

A metallic taste fills my mouth, as if I’ve eaten something wrong, something I was never supposed to touch.

At the bottom of the column, underlined three times in blue ink and once more in black, as if Kain came back to it later with a different pen:

Dusk Protocol

My thumb traces the aggressive underlines, following the indent of ink embedded in the paper.

I think about my old device with my original ZeroSignal save file on it. The one never in my jacket pocket when we go out.

The one always misplaced. Always dead. Always somewhere else when I think to search for it.

I have never once questioned that.

My hand shakes, and the pages rustle.

Rewards work better than timers.

My eyes snag on the line again.

Rewards.

The word tugs at my memory.

Then I realize why.

It reminds me of the notes I keep for my farming game.