“I’ve been playing this game since beta. I never knew I could leave the map. Thank you for the sky.”

From up here, none of it matters. The scoreboard is a myth. The insults are silence. The skybox doesn’t judge his K/D ratio. It doesn’t care that he’s shy, or that his father left last week, or that his only real friends are the ones he hears through a tinny headset. The skybox simply is .

sv_cheats 1 noclip

Leo smiles. He closes the message. Then he launches de_dust2, walks to Long A, tilts his view up, and breathes in the static, sun-bleached horizon.