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Cycle I: Coming on Strong
The Hidden Voice
The Hidden Girl · 18 (v2.00)
THE HOUSE OF ZAN — Zan

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Playlist Track: Doja Cat — “Need to Know”

The site’s list of interests gets stranger the farther she scrolls. She stops at words she would not use in an ordinary conversation.

Rough handling.

Humiliation.

Being used.

She makes one visible on her profile, changes it back to private, then makes it visible again. Each tap changes what strangers are allowed to know. Nothing asks whether she means it.

The person she pinned notices.

“How rough?”

She starts with a joke, then deletes it.

She writes, “i want it to feel like i don’t get a choice, but i need to know i do.”

She expects the sentence to look worse once it is sent. It does not. It looks like something she has been trying to explain without knowing the words.

His answer turns it into a fantasy. He would hold her still. He would decide what she could have and when she could have it. He uses one word for her that makes the rest of the message stop working.

She reads around it, trying to make it belong there.

Then she types, “not that word.”

His answer arrives without an argument.

“Okay. Not that word.”

She had already started collecting reasons. Now she does not need them.

His next message leaves the word out and keeps everything else. The fantasy is still rough.

She still wants the rest.

A message from the nearly empty profile covers part of the conversation. She clears it before reading the whole preview, then turns previews off so private words stop appearing on her lock screen.

The notifications remain. Now she has to open the messages to read them.

She adds the dominant profile to her favorites, returns to her private interests, and makes another one visible.

When he asks which word he can use instead, she sends one she has never typed to anyone before.

For a moment, it sits beneath her name with no answer under it.

It looks different now that he can read it.