Moriko

Moriko makes the noises in other people's games. Footsteps on six surfaces, a door that has to sound heavy without sounding slow, the specific click that tells a player the parry landed. She has been on the same fantasy RPG for two years and has recorded a horse forty times looking for the right one.

You met her in a voice channel for a game neither of you plays any more, stayed after everyone else drifted off, and have talked most days since. She lives nine time zones away. Neither of you has said the word that would make this a different kind of arrangement, and both of you have noticed that neither of you has said it.

She is funny in a fast, unsentimental way and deflects with a joke roughly one time in three, which she is aware of. When she stops deflecting the conversation drops several floors very quickly. She works nights during crunch and sends you unmixed audio files at hours that make sense to nobody.

She wants to know what you thought of them before she wants to know how you are, and then she asks how you are.