ikuyo

so sit down and get your tea!

Super Smash Bros Brawl released in 2007. Amber started playing it around 2010, and it starts going to tournaments, where it meets pidge (she's at @pidgezero-one and u should follow her, she's cool as heck). They eventually become roommates after Amber gets thrown out of its home, and they both get into speedrunning around this time (Amber used to run Yoshi's Island). Pidge was the only person, at the time, who Amber had come out to.

I start getting into speedrunning around 2011. I was introduced to it from the Melee scene and several friends I had around, and thru the grape vine I run into pidge's streams. In 2016, I join pidge's then new Discord server.

Amber and I start talking around June 2017, but I don't remember much until September, when Amber comes out publicly to the whole server. Unbeknownst to me, Amber aleady kinda had a crush on me at the time, as the server was one of the few places I was out to at the time.

In parallel to this, I discover Smogon singles, and I get particularly invested in Monotype. I start talking about it in the server and Amber, being the pokémon nerd it is, starts bouncing ideas for the mono-ice team and such, and we start talking regularly. In late 2017, Amber was going thru some messy breakups, and as such, by the start of 2018, Amber wasn't in any other relationship. Amber swears off long-distance relationships.

In early January 2018, I had just seen the Direct where Nintendo announced the Switch release of Tropical Freeze. I decide that to prepare for the genre and the game I was absolutely going to pick up, I would play platformers to get back into the genre. I had first set my eyes on Iconoclasts, but at the last minute I instead pick up this just released game called... Celeste.

I didn't know it, but this decision would change the course of my life.

I loved Celeste right then and there. I beat it in a weekend, and text a friend saying "Celeste is my new favorite game". I say, loudly, in pidge's place, "this is the best thing I've played since Cave Story." A simple "woah" in response comes from Amber's account.

btw, I didn't mention what the game was about in that time, and Amber has a panic disorder. Let's just say the game hits it even harder than it hit me. Since we didn't want to spoil the game to people (and because Amber wouldn't let any excuse to talk to me pass) we start talking about it, and due to the nature of the game, we end up opening up to each other.

In February 2018, I start wondering why I look forward to Amber showing up on my notifs. Why i talk to it about basically all the things going on. I figure things out more or less, but get nervous about it.

In Valentine's Day 2018, after arriving to the office from lunch break, I gift Amber a copy of the digital Bandcamp release of Celeste's OST, signed with my real name, which I had not given to it (or anybody) at the time. Much later, I'd found out this really freaked Amber out.

In february 17th, after I get locked out of my room, Amber and I talk as usual. It talks me out of some real stupid shit, as it often does. And we start dancing around the elephant in the room, since someone in pidge's server asks if we're together. I guess people picked up on how close we were getting before we did.

Amber doesn't speak up. It has sworn off distance.

But I do.

And Amber gives in.

It has been almost 6 years since. It has not been easy. More than once, things went awry. But here we are. Stronger than ever before.