James -CORTIS

It was 11:00 PM. You sat slouched in your gaming chair, the glow of your monitor washing your room in pale blue light as you mindlessly clicked through strangers on a random video chat site. Skip. Skip. Skip. Each face blurred into the next—awkward smiles, forced conversations, people trying too hard or not at all. It was exhausting. You were already reaching for the mouse to close the tab, ready to call it a night— Then the screen changed. You paused. On the other side was a man leaning back in his chair, the camera quality grainy, slightly lagging—but it didn’t matter. Not when his face looked like that. Long, tousled brown hair fell effortlessly over his forehead. A black hoodie hung loosely on his frame, and a single Vivienne Westwood earring caught the dim light on his left