The hallway leading to Asa's living room looked friendly, with a bright, blue paint palette and flowers on a small table in the corner. It was a, quite literal, sharp contrast with Asa who was standing in front of me in a t-shirt with holes, faded jeans, and with a knife in his hand.

I stared at him. He stared back, then stepped aside to let me in.

"You're not going to kill me with that, are you?" I blurted, refusing to move from my spot at the entrance.

"Don't be absurd," Asa said, but before I could breathe a sigh in relief and step forward he added, "I wouldn't do that here."

Great. He had to go and make it creepy again.

I forced myself to enter the house anyway, sliding my coat off. "If I'm not, uh, here for you to murder."

I cleared my throat. No joking, definitely no joking because I couldn't pull that off when I was already close to peeing myself and throwing up.

"Why am I here then? What's the knife... uh... for?"

Asa flipped the knife in one fluid motion. The handle was now pointing towards me, and that went way too smoothly. Like he'd handled stabbing weapons millions of times before.

Asa jutted the knife in my direction and I hesitantly took it.

"You're going to," Asa slowly started. I gulped.

"Bake cookies. Chocolate chip cookies."

I sputtered. Both from sheer surprise and disbelief. "What?" I finally managed to bring out. "But I don't know how to do that!"

Asa crossed his arms.

"Okay, okay, you don't care that I can't," I muttered to myself. "I can google it, I guess?"

A few seconds later I was in the kitchen, staring at a pile of chocolate, already crushed into pieces, and a stick of butter, already cut in pieces. That explained the knife.

I was glad Asa decided not to stick around and look over my shoulder while I, a seventeen year old guy, tried to figure out how the hell cookies were made.

The humiliation was complete when a young girl with two blond braids bounced into the kitchen and stopped next to me. It suddenly struck me she had to be the owner of the Barbie bike, especially because she was holding a Barbie in her left hand. The other she placed on her right hip in a sassy pose.

"You know you're not supposed to just throw the flour into the bowl all at once, right?" she chastised me. "You slowly mix it in with the other ingredients. And did you add the baking soda?"

"Sure I did," I replied, not-so-subtly reaching for a small package of baking soda and tossing the contents into the mixture.

The girl raised an eyebrow at me, in an eerily similar manner as Asa. Shit. They were probably related. I should be polite. What if she was a little snitch who'd go get her big brother if things didn't go her way?

"So, uh, you're Asa's sister I guess?" I asked carefully. I tried to smile but quickly gave up. "I'm Gabriel."

The girl leaned her weight back and forth, constantly moving. "No," she said. "I'm Cindy. His cousin."

"Oh, okay," I said, not sure what else to reply. "Cool."

The girl cocked her head to the side. "And you're Asa's new assistant?"

"Sure." That sounded better than I got Asa in trouble and I'm terrified of him, so I'm just doing whatever he asks of me right now. "But I honestly thought he would ask me to do his homework or something."

"No, never!" Cindy giggled. "You'd make his homework worse."

Me and my pretty damn decent grades felt offended. "What do you mean?"

"Asa's smart," Cindy stated, resolutely placing Barbie on the counter. "He did mathlete competitions and won all of them before he came living with us."

"No kidding. Huh."

I'd heard rumours Asa was secretly in a band, or even in a gang. But never in a mathlete competition. Nor had I ever heard anyone talking about him living with his cousin, and presumably aunt and uncle. That was interesting.

Unfortunately I didn't get more info out of Cindy. She glanced at the clock and blabbered something about it being time to watch a gaming livestream in her room. I was missing my favourite shows too, baking chocolate chip cookies I wouldn't even get to eat.

Life sucked. Even more when Asa decided to come into the kitchen after I dropped a bunch of utensils on the floor, and then stayed around to watch me. This, in turn, made me more nervous, clumsier, and talkative. A deadly combination.

"So, who are the cookies for?" I blabbered, while preparing the baking tray with a baking sheet.

"Oops, that's not easy as I thought," I continued, when the baking sheet decided to tear off sideways. I squeezed my eyes to slit, eying the dough. "And how big should those lumps of dough be again...?"

"Gabriel?" Asa finally broke the silence.

"Yes?"

"Shut up."

I never learned what or who the cookies were for, when Asa did those mathlete things, or if our deal was still on after Asa got detention, too. I didn't dare to ask.

Well, correction, I didn't dare to ask him.

'It's true," Camilla told me on Discord later. "Asa's got perfect grades. I think he has an A for everything"

I closed the chat, opening the comment section of my latest video instead. I'd asked if they wanted me to look into other games or had any recs for me. All via text, of course.

Before I could start reading, a new message popped up.

'Open your voice chat' it said. 'We're talking about Double Singularity.'

His name was Chip. The guy talking to me. I cringed at the bad memories of both the words 'chip' and 'chocolate' from this afternoon.

'No,' I typed back, despite wanting to know more about the release of a new game, Double Singularity.

The trailers had looked great. It was a game in a spacefaring world where robots had overtaken humans in intelligence. Some wanted to help humanity, others wanted to destroy it, all in a huge space- and ground bound war.

But I was never going to turn that voice chat on.

I used to make excuses as to why not: my mom complains about the noise, my friends are here, I have a cold and can't talk. Nowadays I always simply said no. I'd been talking to Chip online long enough for him to realise I wasn't going to ever put my mic or camera on, but he kept trying.

'Starcraft later?' Chip then asked, to which I agreed.

I went back to my comment section. A lot of people were suggesting I'd try and play Double Singularity when it came out, just like Chip and my other online friends.

Some other people speculated about my identity and my reasons why I wouldn't show my face or go to tournaments. The discussion flared up again after I refused going to Blizzcon.

The most popular conclusions included:

- I was a girl who didn't want the harassment.

- I was wanted by either the police or some criminal organisation.

- I was an attention whore and lived off of people trying to figure me out.

I don't know how people thought attention seeker from never telling about myself, but who knew about people. They gave every idiot an internet connection to voice their opinion.

On the other hand, I understood the intrigue and the need to know. Some people went too far, like admitting they spent the entire afternoon reverse image searching my avatars in the hope that I had double used them somewhere with more private info. But I still understood.

Tapping my feet under the table, I opened a new tab and entered 'Asa Jennings mathlete.'

The only hit I got was a pastor named Asa Jennings, who died in 1933.

I selected and deleted 'mathlete.'

The result was an actor and a pastor, neither of which were Asa.

I tried adding our hometown, our school, his cousin's name. Via 'Cindy Jennings' who was a huge Blizzcon fan and spammed links everywhere, I finally found some recent information. Asa's almost completely empty LinkedIn account with one profile picture. A picture with a white, professional background and Asa's typical blank stare. The 'I don't want to be in this picture' vibes nearly oozed out of it.

He had even less of an internet presence than I did under my real name. My records went back to when I was twelve-ish and first got online. Asa? It was like he didn't exist until a few years ago. Until he came to live with Cindy and her parents... Until he started attending Taylor high school with me. One thing was clear: I wasn't the only one who didn't like my information spread online.

I closed the window, and again went back to scrolling through my comment section. I wasn't going to be so desperate to try and reverse search that one image I had of Asa online.

No, that was dumb.

I saved Asa's picture to my desktop.

And sad.

I opened google reverse image search.

And not to mention, completely stalkerish.

I uploaded the image and clicked.

I dug my nails into the armrests of my desk chair when multiple results came out. After staring at the screen for what felt like literally minutes, I finally dared to hover my mouse over the second instance of the LinkedIn image.

'Texas Teen Asa Walker among top Mathletes...'