“What is your story?” Jake muttered, drumming his fingers on the table beside the mouse.

The still image of a CG character stared back at him, eyes bright and a slight smile on her face. He had spent hours tweaking the model on the school computers. Now the girl looked as good as he figured she was going to get.

No more stalling.

Part of the reason he had spent so much time modeling was because he had no idea what to do when he was done. He had made the character, but she had no purpose. There was no story for her to enact.

He glared at the image until her smile started to make him sick.

“Fuck you!” He closed the image. For half a second, he considered deleting the file. He stopped himself just in time, knowing that the only way to get another image would be to return to school and get the modeling software to spit one out. It would be just as effective to pretend he had deleted it for now.

Sighing, Jake opened a web browser. The animation club was only part of his school life, and the other part was demanding his attention. He had a paper due by the end of next week, and it was only half written.

Of course, the internet was made to be a distraction. As soon as Google loaded, he got a notification that Luna had sent him an email. He knew what it was immediately, so he opened it.

‘Listen to your heart’s content.’

A sound file was attached. He was so eager to listen to the song again that he hit play in the browser. The few seconds it would take to download and save the file to his computer were too much, and he could do that while listening to it play anyway.

He sat perfectly still, listening. He wanted to know more about the person behind this sound, and the only way he could do that right now was pick apart their voice.

It had to be a woman, right? The character had been voiced by a female actress, after all. Luna had told him why women voiced little boy characters once. A male whose voice sounded right would be too young to know the discipline required to get the right performance. Something like that.

And Jake could detect a slightly more mature quality in the voice. It worked with the subject matter, so didn’t draw away from the performance. But still, clearly not a child.

The track ended and he hurried to open the file from his computer. Now he could hit repeat.

She must have been one of Luna’s friends. If Luna had hired someone, they would have insisted on getting credit.

Jake pulled his attention away from the song long enough to mentally compare it to all the friends he had been introduced to. He quickly gave up, not sure if he was remembering their voices correctly.

He could go visit her right before class started. Her friends would be there, and he could hear them speak again.

No. Luna would know exactly what he was doing. While she might think it was funny that he was trying so hard, he knew how loyal she was. As soon as she knew, she would get a message to whomever had done the song to avoid him.

The track came to its end again and started over. Jake noticed how the beginning differed from the end. The end of the song had confidence in it, but the beginning was hesitant. He smiled at this. It was cute.

“Who are you?”