He sat back, the blue light of the laptop bathing his face. The stadium lights in Raleigh would eventually dim, and the fans would clog the highways home, but in the quiet of his room, Elias just hit refresh. He wanted to see the post-game handshake, delivered one frame at a time.
The stadium erupted in the background of the audio feed, a roar that sounded like static and glory combined. Elias jumped, nearly knocking his lukewarm coffee onto the keyboard. He looked at the chat. It was moving too fast to read now—just a blurred waterfall of "TOUCHDOWN" and "LFG." He sat back, the blue light of the laptop bathing his face
The neon glow of the Raleigh night pressed against the windows of the Carter-Finley Stadium press box, but for Elias, the real action was happening on a twelve-inch laptop screen. The tab was pulled up, the header stark against the dark mode interface: The stadium erupted in the background of the
The chat sidebar on VIPBox was a digital war zone. User99 was spamming "HOKIES PRIDE," while WolfpackWill countered with a string of wolf emojis so long it crashed the scroll. Elias leaned in. The stream suddenly cleared into high-definition clarity just as the ball was snapped. It was moving too fast to read now—just
Then, it happened. The fourth quarter, three minutes on the clock. NC State down by four.