Nine Losses

Loss one. Fine. Bad matchup. Loss two. Teammate disconnected. Not my fault. Loss three. Was my fault. Went for a pick I shouldn't have. Said "my bad" in chat. Nobody replied. Loss four. Close one. Down to the wire. Lost the last fight because I hesitated. I keep replaying it. One second earlier and it's ours. Loss five. Somebody on my team typed "gg go next" before the game had started. He was right. I should stop here. I know I should stop here. Every guide, every video, every person who's ever been good at anything competitive says the same thing: when you're tilted, stop. Get up. Drink water. Come back tomorrow. Loss six. Didn't get up. I'm a project manager. I'm thirty-three. I manage budgets. I have a mortgage and a spice rack organised alphabetically and I have just told a stranger on the internet that his mother should have raised him better because he didn't rotate when I pinged. I've never said anything like that to a person in my life. I don't know where it came from. I do know where it came from. Loss seven. Muted everyone. Played in silence. Still lost. Silence didn't help, it just meant I could hear myself breathing. My rank is now two divisions below where it was at seven o'clock. I've lost, in three hours, what took me six weeks to build. Loss eight. Actually played well in this one. Best game of the night. Lost anyway. Sometimes you play well and lose. That's what a rank is, it's not you, it's you averaged across a hundred nights, and tonight is just one of them. Doesn't feel like that. Loss nine. Okay. I've closed it. Not the game, the whole computer, held the button until the fan stopped. Kitchen. Water. It's twenty past eleven. There's a bit of pasta in the fridge from Tuesday and I'm eating it cold over the sink like a raccoon. My flatmate comes in for a glass of milk. Looks at me. "Rough night?" "Nine losses." "In a row?" "In a row." He considers this. "Did you say anything you regret?" "To a stranger. Yeah." "Was he a prat?" "Yeah. But so was I." He nods. He takes his milk. At the door he stops. "Ten's a round number," he says. "You could've gone for ten." I throw the fork at him. I miss. Tomorrow I'll play one game, win or lose, and log off. That's the rule now. One game. I'm going to break that rule. But it's a good rule.