June 28, 2025

My brother and I were sharing a room and he took the bed while I was going to sleep on the floor. I unpacked a portable monitor and slid it underneath the raised bed frame. “What the hell is that?” He asked. “Oh it’s just a monitor.” “You brought that with you?” “It can fold up and doesn’t take much space” I explained.

I idly clicked around on my laptop after plugging in the screen. “And you didn’t even have a plan for what to do with it” he said. “I’m still thinking.”

“Well I just want to watch some anime” he said before taking control and putting on some Thunderbolt Fantasy. We interrupted each other’s questions:

“Have you watched this befor-“

“Which season is thi-“

“It’s Zen”

“Oh I only watched the first season”

“Don’t worry you didn’t miss too much then”

I noticed that the dialect spoken in the show was much closer to standard Mandarin than before.

Ads started to play after the episode was over, some of them rather explicit in nature. My brother asked me if I had a controller.

“For my laptop?… No?” I asked, quite confused. He turned down the volume by pressing on a key with his toe. I was rocking back and forth while hugging my legs when he said, “I hate it when you zoom.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked. He denied having said anything but I felt self conscious about my movements anyways.