General Preface

What Zeal Did to Me at RDC 2025

Written and compiled by the person to whom this happened. Edited with the help and support of my friends.

CONTENT WARNING

This document contains discussion of sexual assault, coercive sexual contact, emotional abuse, trauma bonding, suicidal ideation, suicide attempt, false accusations, public humiliation, and photographic evidence of physical marks left on my body.

Please read with care.

Base Description of the Following Document

I am NoLongerNull (A.K.A. Ren).

I quit working on his game due to psychological abuse and being overworked back during Summer 2025. I was manipulated into believing I was in the wrong for quitting, and it was framed as me “forcing him to fire me”. I was blocked by the team, exiled from all servers, and told I was too unstable and a liability to be around. Not long after, he decided we should reconnect. He befriended me again for his own benefit, conditioned me to not think too much of physical contact, and took his chances to get me alone with him.

On the night of September 3rd, 2025, in San Jose, California, two days before RDC began, Zeal, developer of Pressure on Roblox, sexually assaulted me in my hotel room. I had been crying, and he had offered to come to my room to comfort me, and hug me. After over an hour of constant crying, I was emotionally exhausted and completely alone with him. I went limp and nonverbal. I did not consent. He pinned my arms above my head. He did not stop.

I did not think much of it, and assumed good faith, unable to process what had happened to me yet.

During the second night, a day after, when I was trying to talk to him about respecting me, he placed his bare penis against my intimate area and said, “don’t worry, I won’t put it in, I just want to feel it.” I became scared immediately. I was afraid he was going to ignore what he had just said and penetrate me anyway. At that moment, I was terrified of becoming pregnant and felt completely unsafe. I remember silently praying that he would not do it. No penile penetration happened in both nights, but he did everything else.

The following morning, (RDC morning) I discovered marks on my neck that I had not fully noticed the night before. Seeing them caused me immediate distress. I told him that I had never wanted this and asked him what he had done. He laughed in my face and said, “don’t worry. Roblox devs get no pussy, they won’t know what that is.”

I have photos of the marks on my neck taken the same day. Some were taken fresh, some after I tried to cover them with concealer, and some later as they began to heal. Even under concealer, the discoloration was still visible, yellowed in places, and later turned bluish with a raised, bruised appearance. They itched. They hurt. They were unmistakable for what they were. I was scared when I saw them. I never wanted them on my body.

He made fun of my attempt to come forward about it. What followed caused me to attempt suicide on the night of the Roblox Awards. He then reconnected with me again, after I survived and went home safely, after telling me he never wanted to see me again, for further sexting, manipulation, and damage control. Therapy helped me cut him off, recognize what had done to me, and process everything over the past six months. This document is the result of all the healing, processing, and my strength to finally come forward. I will not be scared into silence any further.

This Document is a record of everything: Before, during, and after. It contains screenshots and a documented pattern of behavior in the weeks leading up to RDC. It contains a full account of what he did to me. It contains physical proof of the marks he left on my body. And it contains what happened after: the members of his team who knew what he did, chose to protect him anyway, and worked to spin the story against me to keep their cash cow safe.

I am aware of what coming forward with something like this means. There will be people who will try to scare me into silence again, people who will misread or deliberately misrepresent what I have written here in this document or on social media, people who will try to bait me further after this is released, people who will spin the story to protect him.

People who will attempt to discredit me, pick apart my words, find loopholes in my account, or use my own pain against me. People who will say I am doing this for attention, for clout, out of bitterness.

I have thought about all of it, and I am not scared of it anymore. None of it changes what happened to me. None of it changes what this document contains. It is ugly.

Despite all of that, I still believe that bringing this forward is the right thing to do. People deserve to know who they are supporting. It’s scary. It is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. I am 22 years old, and I’ve had my fair share of hurt, and this has been one of the worst things that had ever happened to me in my lifetime.

Staying silent only protects him, and his accomplices, and I have spent long enough doing that. This is what must be done, and I hope that what I have put together here protects any future victims he already has his eyes on for the next RDC.

Preface

This document is part of my healing. It’s not a callout for drama, it’s not entertainment, and my life is not a show. If you are here to spectate, to screenshot for gossip, or to treat this like your new episode of the Roblox Dev drama TV show. Please leave.

I am not a story. This happened to my body. I am still living inside this body, and breathing. Read it with the weight it deserves, or don’t read it at all.

I learned that it’s not selfish to do this for me. I deserve peace of mind, and for the truth to be shown. I deserve to stop feeling scared of those people. He will forever be more horrifying than any of his horror projects, to me, and I wish to stop fearing him.

Before You Tell Me What He Said

Any apology at this point, I will not accept. If it wasn’t said when the harm was happening, it is damage control, not guilt. They made sure to show they feel nothing but deep hatred for me, and only care for their public image.

On DARVO

Deny: If he were to say none of this actually happened here. The record speaks for itself.

Attack: He or people he knows may try to discredit me. None of that changes what happened.

Reverse Victim and Offender: I am not going to let him make this about him. He is no victim. His own words prove he knew what he was doing.

The term ‘victim’ renounces him.

To You, Reading This

If Zeal genuinely cared about the people who play his game, who follow his work, and who have invested something of themselves into what he creates, he would not have done what he did to me.

The same person who created something that millions of people love is the person who left marks on my body without my consent, then walked out of my hotel room and made a joke about it. That is not something I can resolve for you. But it’s something you deserve to know.

What he did in private, when no one was watching and there was nothing to protect, is what this document is about.

I also want to say this: putting all of this together has made everything feel very real. It already was real, but this is different. Having it organized and laid out and documented, in this format, is something I cannot look away from. It’s a little too real life for me sometimes. It scares me. I am still scared as I write this. I just think it needs to exist anyway.

What I Am Not Asking For

I am scared that he will hurt himself. That is not something I expected to feel, and not something I expected to write here, but it’s true, and I will not hide it because it makes the picture complicated.

I do not want Zeal to die. If something happened to him, I know I would cry. I know I would feel it. I do not fully understand that, but I am not going to lie about it to seem more consistent.

I know it might seem strange, or even selfish, for me to say this, given that I have attempted to end my own life, but I was saved. I sought help. I am still here. One outcome I do not want from this document is his death. I want him to face what he did. I want him to take responsibility. And I want him to get help. I hope he does.

Sometimes I miss a version of him that I am no longer sure was ever real. We were friends for years before any of this,  and I find myself going back through those years, wondering whether what I saw then was always a filtered version, whether the hotel room was just the first time the filter slipped, or whether the game changed something in him, or whether it did not change him but revealed him, brought something to the surface that had always been underneath. I genuinely do not know which one is true.

What I do know is true, is that whoever that person was, he is not there anymore. I have had to ground myself in that, but the grief of it’s separate from the harm, and I am allowed to carry both.

You Deserve to Know Who You Are Supporting

Keeping this hidden would not have made it go away. Silence does not heal anything. It does not undo what happened. It does not protect the next person he decides to do this to. It only protects him, and I have spent long enough protecting him.

You have a right to know who you are giving your time, your attention, and your support to. Not the version he performs online.

The real one.

What you do with that information is entirely your choice, but I refuse to be the reason you never had the chance to make that choice.

On His Pre-Emptive Mockery

Before I even began writing this, he had already tried to stop it. Before RDC, within a few days, as he was leaving after sexually assaulting me in my own hotel room, he said:

'can't wait for the Google Docs in 5 years!' In the most obnoxious tone a man can have. If you know him, you know how his voice sounds when he says such obnoxious things.

That comment seemed like a joke at first, but it feels like it turned out that it was a pre-emptive attempt to make the idea of me coming forward feel predictable, pathetic, and unreasonable since he’s always made sure to convince me I was unstable, a liability to be around, and too mentally ill to handle. That I’m crazy, but he’s doing god’s work tolerating me, and that nobody ever will tolerate me as much as he did.

His Google Docs joke was meant to make me feel small before I even thought it through. That I kept denying the need for a document. I denied everything until the stage of denial wore off, and I started vomiting more, knowing and accepting what happened to me was ugly. Fearing the fact that someone I thought was so close to me actually did something so disgusting.

My body that I see in the mirror every time I take a shower looks like an alien now. I feel ugly, broken, and used now. I feel that I am as good as a corpse. My therapist and psychiatrist are doing their best to help me through this, and so are my friends.

Context and Power Imbalance

Who is Zeal

Zeal is the creator of Pressure, one of the most played games on Roblox. I was the music composer, but I want to say something honest about how I saw us: I never saw him as some big, popular figure I was lucky to be close to. I never walked into that friendship looking up at him that way. I still saw him as the same person I had always made things with, just angrier and further away from who he used to be.

That said, it was still a relationship of unequals. Not because I placed him above me, but because the structure around him was real, whether I acknowledged it or not. He had the platform, the community, the team. I had a role within something he owned. I moved carefully around him because of that, even when I did not consciously name it for what it was. One does not need to declare one's power to utilize it.

We never dated. He never wanted that, despite being the one who initiated and continued everything between us. So when I say relationship, I do not mean it in a romantic or official sense. I do not fully know what we were. I am not sure there is a word for it, and I have stopped trying to find one.

A Direct Address to Zeal

Zeal. I beg of you, please, do not harm yourself or others around you because of this document. Don’t self-harm. Don’t kill yourself. It will not make things better for you, or for those who love you, if you even care. And do not yell at, or harm, anyone else around you (from the team, or your friends/family). I know how you have reacted in the past with your anger. I would like you to go into therapy. I would also like you to be honest about your actions and your manipulative ways. I would like you to recognize what was wrong with what you did, and stop denying it. The world does not revolve around you.

Care, Love, And Hurt

I’m certainly not going to deny that at one point in time, I had feelings for him. He has used those feelings for his benefit and as part of keeping me in an endless cycle of pain. I continued to stay with him and endure this pain because I truly believed that he was capable of changing and trying to be the best version of himself. The fact is, he made that choice not to. Saying that I had feelings for him does not make excuses for what he did; it simply shows how much he abused my hope and my patience. Stockholm Syndrome is a bitch. Cognitive dissonance can drive you insane.

Before You Continue

On September 3, 2025, Zeal sexually assaulted me. He did not ask. He did not warn me. He did not check if I wanted it. I was crying, exhausted, and nonverbal when it happened. There was no ambiguity.

In the pages after this, you are going to see me sound like someone who wanted to be there. I sound affectionate, I sound willing. I ask him on a date, I tell him I would spend anything to see him again, and I go along with an arrangement where he gets to keep sleeping with me without ever calling it what it is.

I need you to understand what was already done to me before those messages were sent.

For months, Zeal ran a pattern on me. He would be warm, then vanish. He would pull me in, then go silent. He would make me feel like the most important person in his world, then disappear for days. Every time he came back, I was more grateful. Every time he pulled away, I tried harder. By the time I was in that hotel room, I had already been trained to prioritize his comfort over my own safety.

That training did not stop after the assault. It got worse.

What you are about to read is not consent. It is what happens when someone has been conditioned, over months, to believe that the only way to keep a person from leaving is to give them whatever they want. It is what happens when the person who hurt you is also the only person who made you feel seen. When your brain cannot hold both of those truths at the same time, it picks the one that lets you survive. I picked the one that let me keep him.

Trauma bonding is not a choice. It’s what your brain does when the source of your pain is also the source of your comfort. The warmth and the violence come from the same person, and your body stops being able to tell them apart. You do not stay because you are stupid. You stay because your body has learned that leaving feels like dying.

Every apology I made, every boundary I walked back, every time I said "it's fine" or "sure" or "I don't mind waiting," I was doing exactly what he had spent months teaching me to do.

I am asking you to hold that while you read what comes next.

On My Diagnosed BPD

I am diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, or BPD. BPD affects emotional regulation, attachment, fear of abandonment, and the intensity with which a person can experience relationships and rejection. In my case, that matters a lot. It made me more vulnerable to intermittent reinforcement, self-blame, and staying emotionally attached even when I was being harmed. It is easy to villainize people with BPD, and never think they could be a victim, and easily manipulated due to the need for reassurance, and a state of constant worry.

I am not including this to excuse anything I or he did,  or to suggest that my diagnosis caused what happened. I am including it because people often weaponize mental health diagnoses to discredit victims, especially when those victims stayed attached, minimized harm, or struggled to leave. My diagnosed BPD helps explain why this looks insane and not normal. Why it was easier to keep me hooked through pain. It does not make the events in this document any less of what it was. It does not erase screenshots, timelines, physical evidence, or what he or others said and did to me.

The Pattern Before RDC

The Pattern Before RDC : Documented Evidence

What follows is a timestamped record of messages leading up to RDC. Screenshots are in chronological order. Names of non-complicit third parties have been redacted.

Some of this will look minor on its own. A message about meeting up. A comment about physical contact. A redirect. Taken one at a time, each moment could be explained away. That is how patterns work. They look like nothing until you step back and see the full picture. I put this together carefully and on purpose. It all connects. Please read it in full before deciding what it means.

There are a lot of screenshots in this document. Around 235-ish. I know it looks like a lot. One message on its own means nothing. But when you see them all together, you start to see what I saw too late. Please do not skim through it.

A note on blocked messages: lines that say "blocked message" appear because I have him blocked. I have clicked "show" on every single one. Nothing is hidden.

June 29, 2025 : Attempt to Exit the Dynamic

I sent a goodbye message referencing having been called a burden and experiencing suicidal ideation in prior months. This shows that I had already tried to leave.

With no acknowledgement of the prior distance, and cut off. We reconnect.

The same day we reconnected, he invited and then blocked me from his development server ("This is work only / Wanna keep it professional") while inviting himself into my community server. Immediately after excluding me, he asks if I will be at RDC. The following image is from my departure from Pressure and attempt to cut him off for good.

August 11, 2025 : Re-engagement, Re-connection, and Access Control

“Alr so tomorrow midnight at 12 am” was the timing of when my last album was releasing.

June 29, 2025 : 12 am was the timing of the final album release. My goodbye message to Zeal. August 11th, we connected back.

Aug 11, 4:53-5:01 PM : Re-connection. I sent a photo of painted nails and invited him to my server.

Aug 11, 8:23 PM : Zeal invites me to his dev server, then retracts that. ("This is work only / So u cant join sorry") while inviting himself to my community server.

Aug 11, 8:23 PM : "Talked to fellow staff / This is work only / Wanna keep it professional."

Aug 11, 8:24-8:34 PM : Zeal explains why I am not allowed in the developer server anymore.

Aug 11, 8:34-8:43 PM : I question the exile.

Aug 11, 8:45-8:52 PM : Immediately after excluding me from his server, Zeal asks: "Will u be at rdc." I confirm I have my visa and am booked.

August 12, 2025 : Gating Access to My Own Relationships

I asked whether I can apologize to Zerum. He gates access with one word.

Aug 12, 3:38-3:39 PM : I asked permission to apologize to a friend after taking time away from the team, and was denied.

August 24, 2025 : Coordinating Proximity at RDC

Zeal asks which day I will arrive at RDC. When I answer, he responds enthusiastically that we arrive at the same time, then immediately shares his hotel. This coordination was deliberate.

Aug 24, 2:46-3:36 PM : Zeal asks "When will u get to rdc / Which day." On learning we arrive at the same time: "same time as me!!!" Then shares his hotel: "Mariott."

August 24-25, 2025 : Physical Contact Framing Begins

The language of physical contact at RDC is introduced here. It was not my language first. It was his. Over the following days, it will appear dozens of times, in increasingly explicit forms.

Aug 24, 3:36-3:41 PM : Zeal confirms hotel (Marriott). I was at the Westin. I shared a photo of my friend's camera equipment for RDC, and talked about my other friends, and our meetup plans.

Aug 25, 5:55-5:56 PM : Zeal: "im gonna push you at rdc." Me: "WAAAAAAA."

August 25, 2025 : Selective Engagement

I shared my music and vulnerability about my creative work. Zeal responds with two words. Notice the contrast: extended messages about plans to handle my body at RDC, a two-word response to my creative self-disclosure.

Aug 25, 5:58-6:00 PM : I shared my music: "Not good enough yet / Lacking." Zeal: "Oki / Good lucks." No further engagement.

Aug 25, 6:08-6:11 PM : RDC plans discussed. Zeal (6:11 PM): "im gonna meet you and pick u up and throw ua round." Second statement of planned physical contact in one day.

Aug 25, 6:11-6:13 PM : I: "I like being picked up and thrown around / I am in fact / A creature." Note: this verbal statement in a playful online chat context was later used as an implicit justification. It is not consent to being grabbed without greeting in public.

Two explicit statements of planned physical contact. Ignored normal conversation.

Aug 25, 6:16-6:19 PM : I: "I finally feel normal about u again..." I was happy despite enduring an abusive workplace, which I successfully escaped.

August 26-28, 2025 : The Soft Content Pattern

Zeal begins sending soft content, primarily rabbit/bunny videos cuddling, and memes, with captions like "Can we do this," "Me to ren," "ur so bunny," "im squishing yu," "ur getting squished and carried." This is documented across multiple days. The same soft content pattern is also sent to other women in his circle (see note below).

Aug 26, 10:22 PM : Zeal sends a photo of two kittens curled together. Caption: "Can we do this."

Aug 27, 5:48 PM : I send a photo of a white rabbit eating from a bowl. Zeal replies: "you."

Aug 27, 5:46-5:50 PM : Zeal replies to my message with a photo of a tiny bunny eating with a spoon: "you." I sent a photo of two bunnies sitting together, captioned "literally us" with: "Us at rdc...."

Aug 28, 5:35 PM : Zeal: "ur a dumb reat / im gonna squish u at rdc." Third explicit statement of planned physical contact.

August 30, 2025 (1:58-2:52 AM) , "Im gonna pick u up and kick u around"

Between 1:58 AM and 2:52 AM on August 30, in a single overnight conversation, Zeal makes multiple statements about planned physical handling of my body. Simultaneously, the conversations are playful and warm, which is the point. Physical domination framing was embedded in a register that felt like friendship.

Aug 28, 5:35-5:46 PM : Zeal: "ur getting squished and carried." Fourth explicit statement.

Aug 30, 1:57-2:02 AM : I shared hyperfixation fan art. Zeal: "Ur so dymb." Then: "Im gonna pick u up and kick u around." I: "Okayyyy!!!"

 Note: Enthusiasm in a hypothetical chat context is not consent to being physically handled without asking.

Aug 30, 2:06-2:08 AM : Zeal: "Wanna do stupid shit at rdc." Then, discussing what they might do together.

August 30, 2025 (2:27-2:35 AM) , The "wanna do this" Sequence

Zeal sends a series of animal videos with the caption "Wanna do this" or equivalents. The sequence escalates. Reader note: these are being read in the context of what he had already said about his physical plans at RDC.

Aug 30, 2:09-2:12 AM : RDC plans. I suggest genuine stupid shit to make him cringe. Zeal: "The silly."

Aug 30, 2:27-2:28 AM : Zeal sends video of two bunnies holding hands. Caption: "Wanna do this." Then another video of two bunnies cuddling. Caption: "Wanna do this."

Aug 30, 2:28-2:29 AM : Video of bunnies sleeping together.

Aug 30, 2:31-2:32 AM : Zeal sends video of one bunny mounting another. Caption: "Wanna do this." I: "Yaa." This is where it shifts. Cute to sexual, reframed, from cuddling to mounting, framed as something they both want.

Aug 30, 2:34-2:35 AM : Zeal sends Slay The Princess fanart of the Princess being pet. Caption: "Me to ren."

I want to be clear: laughing in a DM is not consent to what he did to my body. physical contact at a real-world event. Enthusiasm expressed hypothetically does not authorize action on a body in person, without asking, without warning. Friendly enthusiasm in a direct message is not consent.

Aug 30, 2:44-2:48 AM : Zeal: "Hi / Throws u up." I joked: "I thought u said throws up I was gonna be like WHAT WHY."

August 30, 2025 (Afternoon) , Gift, Access, "sit on top of me"

I was in a mall shopping for gifts to bring to my friends before my flight. I offer to buy Zeal a gift as well. He deflects, but redirects care by naming someone else (Kat) who likes the same thing I offered, completely ignoring the fact that the connection between the two (I and Kat) was severed a long time ago. Later that same afternoon: the bunny proxy pattern culminates in "yeah u can sit on top of me," followed by him explicitly asking my height.

Aug 30, 4:38-4:39 PM : I asked if he likes plushies. Zeal: "Mostly from media I enjoy." Then: "I know kat loves plushies tho." Redirects care away from himself toward someone else. I: "We aren't friends they have me blocked / I tried to add back I was blocked so." Zeal: "Ah okay." I: "Idk / Everyone from pressure blocked me / Can't reconnect unfortunately."

Aug 30, 4:39-4:42 PM : I attempted to talk about the unfair exile again: "Was going through a rough time but whatever ig." Zeal ignores and continues: "U dont need to buy me gifts."

Aug 30, 6:13-6:16 PM : I mirrored the bunny proxy language back: "Me to u" Zeal: "Im bitibg you." The language he introduced has now been absorbed into my vocabulary, this is how normalization works.

Aug 30, 6:16-6:30 PM : I asked again to apologize to Zerum from the team (still thinking I did something bad to them). Zeal: "shes constantly hurting / she doesnt even talk to me / cuz of her condition." He gates.

Aug 30, 6:31-6:35 PM : I sent a YouTube video screenshot meme "Bunny hat" (bunny being carried on the head of another bunny). Caption: "Can we do this." Zeal: "yeah u can sit on top of me / stupid hat." Fifth explicit statement of planned physical contact.

August 30, 2025 : Height, Weight, and the Explicit RDC Plan

Zeal collects my height and weight directly. I answer. He confirms he can carry me.  Then states, explicitly and in writing: "thats gonna be me at rdc, pick u up toss u around and kick u a little." He had already decided. He had sourced my physical measurements. He announced his plan. He did not ask.

Aug 30, 6:35-6:37 PM : Zeal: "i can carry u on my back, arms, wherever." Asks "how tall are u." I: "I'm barely  160 cm / Is 60 kilos a lot"

Aug 30, 6:37-6:41 PM : Zeal: "no / im 97kg." I: "I'm not strong I'm fat... cries." Zeal: "yeah i can carry that." I: "YAAAAY / I LIKE BEING CARRIED AROUND."

This is the moment his weeks of work paid off. Weeks of repeated physical framing had echoed back what he wanted to hear in our text messages, which he then used as cover to act on my body at RDC without asking. "I LIKE BEING CARRIED AROUND" in a Discord chat at 6:41 PM is not consent given to someone you have never met in person. Enthusiasm in a hypothetical is not consent in person.

Aug 30, 6:41-6:50 PM : I further state that being carried is a friends/brotherly thing to me. Zeal (6:50 PM): "thats gonna be me at rdc / pick u up toss u around and kick u a little." He announced his plan. He did not ask if I wanted this to happen or in what way.

Aug 30, 10:32-10:38 PM : Zeal: "Im gonna use u as a stressball." I responded with a GIF of a squishy hamster: "mmmh yes squishy rat."

What Happened at RDC

On the Soft Flirty Content : A Warning to Other Women

The animal videos, bunny memes, and "wanna do this" framing used with me are not unique to me.  He sends the same content, the same videos, the same framing, to multiple women he works with.

Aug 30, 10:43 PM : Zeal sends "soft soft rub rub / wawa / omg" drawing of two cute characters massaging in bed. Caption: "Me to reb." This same soft content pattern is also sent around to other female friends Zeal talks to.

If you are a woman in his circle and you recognize this pattern: it’s not a special connection. It is a method. The warmth is manufactured. Please be careful, and start noticing the patterns.

September 1-2, 2025 : Arrival and the Final Messages Before They Meet

Sept 3, 12:28-3:19 AM : I sent chibi figure video outside. I was out on my first day exploring California with a friend. Zeal (3:10 AM): "I hotta showrr rq / Wanna meet after?" I: "Ya where u at?" I head to Best Buy then toward the Marriott.

Sept 3, 3:00 AM-4:26 AM : Multiple calls between us. I was at a drum set for the first time ("First time ever seeing a drum set irl btw"). Zeal confirms location: "San jose mariott." I: "Will drop off snacks and head to Marriott lobby." Zeal (4:26 AM): "Soon?"

Sept 3, 4:33-4:52 AM : More calls back and forth. Zeal (4:52 AM): "Im in front of the mariott / I got 10 mins before i cant park anymore." This is the last message before they meet in person.

V. What Happened at RDC : September 2025

The first thing he did when he met me: not even a hello, he approached me and lifted me into the air from my waist and twirled me on the sidewalk in front of his hotel building. There was no greeting. There was no question. He acted on my body before he acknowledged me as a person.

September 2, 2025 : The Suite Incident

After spending the day out with mutual friends, the group returns to a suite booked by a friend to hang out. I am sitting on the couch. Zeal places a pillow in his own lap, positions my head on that pillow, and begins playing with my hair.

As the group prepared to leave for the night, I said goodbye to my friends and asked for hugs. When I asked Zeal, instead of a normal hug, he grabbed me and crashed backwards onto the couch, pulling me on top of him. He buried his face in my neck and breathed me in. This lasted for what felt like several minutes. My friend and Cyborg were the two people with us in that room. My friend felt very awkward.

Cyborg, comments: “haha gayyyyyy”, treating the scene as comedy rather than recognizing or intervening in what is happening. My friend in the room is visibly uncomfortable and awkwardly witnessed the prolonged physical contact.

Zeal then whispers in my ear: “Tell me when you wanna let go.” I responded: “okay let go let go.” He drops me off the couch, directly in front of his crotch area. I immediately crawl backwards to create distance.

Zeal then stands up abruptly, says “well goodnight everyone I gotta go,” and leaves the suite with noticeable urgency. I did not notice that at the time, but later, during my healing and recollection of the events, the sudden exit after that prolonged physical contact is consistent with him having become physically aroused and needing to leave before it became apparent to others.

I then hug Cyborg goodbye. Cyborg says: “not like Zeal, not like Zeal”, acknowledging even in the moment that what had just happened with Zeal was different from a normal hug. I went and gave my friend a hug too, then returned to my hotel room.

After I returned to my room, Zeal began messaging me. At 10:07 PM PDT he sends “hiii.” At 10:36 PM: “Gn reen / U are very cute and fun.” He says “Mwah” three separate times across the next twelve minutes. I, still processing the evening through the lens of trust, responds warmly: “U give the best hugs eveeeeer ur so cute ilyyyyy gooodniiiight.” I send the selfie from the suite showing my head on his lap.

Sept 2, 10:07-10:37 PM PDT : Zeal: "hiii." Then at 10:36 PM: "Gn reen / U are very cute and fun." I: "Gooobbbnighhttttt zeeeallll / U give the best hugs eveeeeer ur so cute ilyyyyy gooodniiiight." Sends bunny GIF. Zeal: "Mwah."

Sept 2, 10:47-10:48 PM PDT : In response to Zeal's message, I wrote: "Yea / We already did tho / LOL." Zeal: "It was nice tho."

Sept 2, 10:48 PM PDT : Zeal: "It was nice tho." I: "If wassss / U deserve it all the time / Ur so cozy and comfy." Sends "BIG HUG" cartoon. Zeal (10:49 PM): "Wanna do it tmrw / Maybe with less ppl cuz it was awkward."

He wants to repeat physical contact again, it’s clear this isn’t because it was awkward, but to remove witnesses. His solution is to do it again with fewer people around. He was planning to isolate me with him, while I assumed he was seeking comfort in me.

September 3, 2025 : The Next Day

Sept 3, 7:22 AM PDT : I woke up early and hyper: "LMFAOOO bruh it’s like 7 am I woke up on the other side of the bed upside down..." I message about wanting to do things, but everyone is still asleep. Zeal does not respond.

Sept 3, 11:17 AM PDT : Hours later, Zeal messages: "Hai / Wya." He starts a call that lasts 5 minutes. I (11:18 AM) sends a screenshot of my Google Maps location.

Sept 3, 12:11-12:25 PM PDT : I am out at Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo with [redacted], shopping for gifts for my family and getting boba.

Zeal messages repeatedly: "How long till u guys come bacl" (12:11 PM)

"Wheb are u back" (12:17 PM). I sent photos of the boba shop and my drink. Zeal (12:25 PM): "Beeh i gotta knowwe / I wanna hang out with u guys / But idk when ur back."

Sept 3, 12:25-12:26 PM PDT : I: “Come oooverrrrr / Commmeeee.” Zeal: “Where.” I: “Driiiveee big man / I’ll send u location.” Zeal: “Ok.” I asked if he has iMessage”

He says no. I sent my location: Hillsdale Shopping Center, San Mateo, California. “Here / We are / Inside / With bobbaahhhh.”

Zeal does not come. Despite repeatedly asking when I would be back and calling me, he does not drive out to meet us. Me and [redacted] ended up feeling bad for him and cut our shopping trip short to go back and pick him up so he could tag along.

September 3, 2025 (Afternoon) , The Lobby, the Store, and the Hand

[Friend A] and I head back toward the hotels, but [Friend A] needs to pick up his friend [Friend B] from another hotel. The three of them, me, [Friend A], and Zeal, walk to [Friend B]’s hotel. Once there, [Friend B] takes [Friend A] back to his room to show him something, saying they’ll be back in a bit. Zeal and I are left alone in the hotel lobby.

There are not many other people around. Zeal sits in silence for a while. Then he says: “Sssoooo have you found a new job after you quittt? How’s that new Piggy game goin for ya?”

Piggy is a well-known Roblox franchise. I had been asked to work on something under that franchise years prior, under team I2R.

Zeal had previously joked that I was “cheating on him with another game.” Now he is asking me about my employment status after I quit working for him. He knows this is a painful conversation for me.

I start crying. I tell him I never wanted any of this. That he terrified me. That I thought he was scary but maybe it was all in my head. That I genuinely did not want to work under him because the working relationship had made my friendship feel toxic. I tell him I had started to feel he was abusive. I cannot get all of it out in words, so I cry a lot.

Zeal puts my head in his lap and tells me it’s okay. He begins brushing my hair slowly.

This is the second time in less than 24 hours that Zeal has positioned my head in his lap and played with my hair. The first was in the suite, set up as a casual hangout moment. This time it follows an emotional breakdown he triggered by asking about the job he knows traumatized me, destabilized me, then provided physical comfort. Each time it deepened the sense of intimacy and dependency I had for him.

[Friend A] and [Friend B] return. [Friend A] sees that I have been crying and immediately pulls napkins from his backpack and gives me water. He had packed water for me specifically to make sure I stayed hydrated. This is the kind of care that does not require positioning someone’s head in your lap, that I couldn’t recognize.

[Friend A] wants to build [Friend B] a computer, so all four of us go to Micro Center. Once inside, [Friend A] and [Friend B] grab a cart and disappear deep into the store. Zeal and I are left together again.

We walk around. There is not much conversation. I started looking at gaming laptops for my little sister, which I had planned to buy as a gift. Zeal tries briefly to seem knowledgeable about computers, then admits he doesn’t really know much, after failing to explain stuff to me about them. I tell him I don’t need his help because I already know about computers.

We end up at the display screens. One of them is playing a Kingdom Hearts animation, the fight between the Wayfinder trio, Xehanort and Vanitas. I start jumping with excitement and tell Zeal how I watched that animation so many times, but it still makes me so excited every time I see it. Zeal stands there and watches the entire thing with me.

I began to soften. I started thinking that Zeal genuinely cared about the things I care about… which he never did. I felt a deep comfort around him.

Eventually, Zeal says he is bored and wants to leave. We walk outside and stand in the parking lot. He shows me a plushie of one of his game’s creatures, the new Abomination toy they are releasing. I tell him it’s cute and ask him to send me one when it comes out. He says I don’t know.. I’ll think about it. Then Zeal says outside is boring, and we should go back inside. I follow him.

We walk back into the store. Zeal intertwines his fingers with mine, locks his hand with mine, and starts skipping. I start skipping with him. Two people holding hands, swinging their arms, skipping through an electronics store like idiots.

This comes after I watched one of my favorite game cinematics. After I cried to him, he comforted me. After a nice day out with friends. After he watched something with me that I loved. Everything felt warm. Everything felt safe. Everything felt like he was a sweet and kind person who cared about me.. Maybe even trying to show me he loves me.

The emotional vulnerability was triggered by a question he knew would hurt me and make me cry. The comfort that followed built physical intimacy with me. The shared moments built trust with me. The hand-holding sealed it. By the end of this afternoon, my guard was completely down. I was not thinking about the couch grab from the night before. I was not thinking about “maybe with less ppl cuz it was awkward.” I was thinking about how safe I felt with Zeal.

September 3, 2025 (Evening) , I Reach Out; Zeal Deflects

After the shopping trip, the group splits up. Zeal says he wants to go back to his hotel room to work. He has been working on a Roblox event (the Takeover) on his laptop since arriving in America. Everyone goes their separate ways. There are plans to meet up again later that night for dinner: I, [Friend A], Zeal, and Cyborg (the same team member who was present during the suite incident the night before and commented “haha gayyyyyy”).

Back at my hotel, I think about the breakdown I had in the lobby earlier that day. I want to continue the conversation. To actually talk through the pain I felt, the things I could not fully say while crying on his lap. I reach out to Zeal.

Sept 3, 6:22 PM PDT : I: "Can we like / Continue talking about like stuff / Cuz I started crying and stuff in the lobby kinda just inappropriate." Zeal: "what stuff." I: "Work and friends and what happened and stuff / But like irl cuz it’s just better and more normal." Zeal: "like what." I: "Nvm it’s nothing rly." Zeal: "its okay / what did u want to talk about." I: "Idk."

Sept 3, 6:27-6:33 PM PDT : Zeal: "okay / let me know if there is anything." I: "r u working." Zeal: "ya / but it isnt importnat." I: "can u irl sharescreen..." . I am asking to be with him in person, to sit with him, to have this conversation face to face. Zeal: "no, but i can call." I: "Nah."

I can tell he is not in the mood. I do not want to distract him from his work. I withdraw.

Sept 3, 6:33-6:46 PM PDT : Zeal: "why, whats up." I: "Nothing it’s oki." Twelve minutes of silence. Then I send a photo of a sleeping bunny on a blue blanket.

Zeal: "hi." I: "hii." I then send a photo of two bunnies cuddling together.

I had opened the door to a real conversation about everything I had been carrying. Zeal responded with “what stuff” and “like what.” I was asking to sit with him in person and talk. He offered a call instead of being there. I withdrew. The bunny photos came back. That was the only language this relationship was allowed to feel safe in.

September 3, 2025 (Night) , The Assault

The dinner never happened. My emotional state collapsed. My psychiatrist had been adjusting my medication to regulate my mood, and combined with everything I had been carrying, the unresolved pain from earlier that day, the feelings I could not get out, the years of hurt, I broke down completely.

Sept 3, 7:00 PM PDT : I: "My bpd switch is happening and I went from extremely happy to extremely sad and I’m crying a lot and I don’t think I can come with u guys / My crying is out of control rn." Zeal: "should i come over." I: "I’d like that I’m just crying a lot / Idk do u know where i am / I don’t remember if I said." Zeal: "The suite / ?" I: "No I have my own room 405 on 4th floor."

I am alone. Crying uncontrollably. In an emotional crisis. On new medication. I have just given him my room number. He asked to come to me. I said yes because I trusted him. I wanted comfort. I wanted the conversation we could not finish earlier.

Sept 3, 7:07 PM PDT : Zeal: "K."

Sept 3, 9:16 PM PDT : Zeal: "Well that just happened."

Two hours and nine minutes of silence between those two messages. That is when the sexual assault happened.

What Happened in Room 405

EXPLICIT CONTENT WARNING

The following involves a detailed account of the sexual assault that occurred to me in my hotel room. Please read it with caution as it may be triggering or disturbing to some.

Trigger Warning: This section contains detailed accounts of: Sexual Assault and Non-consensual Sexual Contact. Sexual Coercion and Emotional Manipulation. Physical Pain and Bodily Harm. Medical/Physical Distress (Gagging/Choking). Trauma Response (Freezing, Fawning, and Dissociation)

**************************************

Zeal arrived at my room. His hair was wet. He had showered before coming. I did not think anything of it at the time. I assumed he had been working out like he usually does and needed to clean up.

He entered the room saying “hey hey, it’s okay.. it’s okay.” He grabbed me immediately and lifted me into the air. I was crying loudly. He placed me gently onto the bed.

He held me, He put his face in my neck, I cried, I screamed, I vented everything. All the fears, all the pain, everything I had been unable to say in the lobby, everything I had tried to bring up over text and been deflected from. He held me through all of it.

During this, he kept shifting our positions; he moved our bodies in ways that I did not fully register at the time because I was too consumed by the emotional release to process what was physically happening. It was only over a month later that I recognized what those position changes were.

At one point, he wrapped us both inside a blanket like a burrito. I found this comforting. Being cozied up as I cried helped me feel safe. This was my favorite moment.

I screamed in Zeal’s ear: “You’re so safe, you’re so safe.” Until my voice gave out.

After a while, calming down, I asked about the others. Cyborg must be waiting for us. We were supposed to have dinner. Zeal told me not to worry about it. He texted Cyborg: “we’re ditching.” He chose to stay alone with me in my hotel room.

After approximately an hour and a half of constant screaming, venting, and crying, I was spent. Exhausted, I felt limp.

That is when it changed.

Zeal lifted my arms and pinned them above my head, slowly, gently. He put his lips on my chin and began breathing heavily.

He became feral. Without warning, he forced his tongue deep into my mouth. I did not understand what was happening, my body felt strange, I was confused. Before I could process, he put his hand inside my shirt and began touching my breast. He kept kissing me. He started undressing me. He flipped me over, he took my bra off. He touched my breasts with both hands, he took his own shirt off.

I remember clearly being scared and confused at that specific moment, seeing his bare chest, but there was no time to think, everything was happening too fast.

He pulled my pants and underwear off, he began fingering me aggressively. It hurt. I told him: “IT HURTS. IT HURTS.”

He stopped for a second. Then he immediately put his finger down my throat. I coughed and felt like I was going to vomit.

He then began fingering me again with the same finger he had just forced down my throat. It still hurts. I tried to endure it. I could not. I told him again: “It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.”

He stopped. He lied down and said: “welp... I’m tired. Guess we are just not into each other.”

When I expressed pain, he did not check on me.  He did not ask if I was okay. He made me feel bad about his rejection. He framed my physical distress as a lack of desire for him, which forced me to choose between enduring what was happening or losing him. That is coercion.

I panicked. I began comforting him. I told him I liked him so much. That I had always liked him. That it was just me, that I was a little broken sometimes, that my body does not always work. I told him I was trying. I was trying.

He got up. He stood in front of the bed. He took his pants and boxers off, exposing himself.

I put my hand up and yelled: “NO NO NO DONT NO.”

He put them back on immediately.

I, terrified of making him feel rejected, immediately reversed: “NO NO NO I’M SORRY. YOU ALREADY TOOK IT OFF. I SAW IT. IT’S OKAY IT’S OKAY I DIDN’T MEAN IT.”

He took them off again. He lay in front of me and said something to the effect of: “Welp... this is my penis!”

I was naked in bed. I stared. I did not register what I was supposed to do. I asked: “You want me to touch it? What if it hurts you?” He reassured me it was fine, and I did.

He did not like it. He told me to try it with my mouth.

I listened, I obeyed, I was trying as hard as I could to appeal to him so he would not abandon me, so he would not tell me we did not work, so he would not say we were not in love.

I said "IT HURTS." He stopped for one second and then put his finger in my throat. I screamed "NOOO" when he exposed himself. He turned my pain into rejection. He used my fear of abandonment to make me comply. Every time I resisted, he made me feel like the problem.

The rest is a blur. I remember that he ejaculated on my stomach. I felt nothing, no release or satisfaction, only a constant fear that he did not like me back, and that I had to perform for him, and keep reassuring him, because he was a misunderstood autistic man. Something he referenced multiple times during the encounter as an explanation for his behavior.

After he ejaculated on me, he paused, and he realized what he had done.

He began shivering and shaking. He grabbed napkins and tried to wipe it off, but it was drying on my skin. He ran to the bathroom, wet a towel, and started wiping it off me. He did not like how it was going, so he grabbed me and put me under the shower. He began washing me with soap in his hand, scrubbing until he was satisfied that nothing was left. His hand was shaking the entire time.

I was terrified. Not of what had just happened to me, but of how scared he was, I stood under the water and told him: “Zeal it’s ok, it’s ok, you're okay. Zeal please, please listen to me. It’s okay. I love you. I love you Zeal. Please listen to me. It’s okay, really.”

He did not listen. Eventually, while putting his clothes back on, he appeared to calm down. But every time he looked at me from the bathroom door, still standing awkwardly under the running water, completely confused about what I was supposed to do next, he covered his eyes and refused to look at me.

He left me under the running shower. He went into the room and finished getting dressed.

While he was almost done, he said:

“Well, can’t wait for the Google Docs in five years!”

I screamed after him to listen to me, begging him to come back.

He did not come back. I noticed as he left that he was visibly aroused again, inside his shorts.

He ran out of my hotel room.

That was it.

He came to my room because I was crying and in an emotional crisis. He held me for an hour and a half while I screamed and vented. He waited until I was completely exhausted and limp. Then he assaulted me. When I expressed pain, he made me feel guilty. When I said no, he made me take it back. When it was over, he shook with fear. Not for me. For himself. He washed the evidence off my body. He made a joke about me coming forward. And he left.

**************************************

The Immediate Aftermath

The following screenshot contains a statement I made that was not true. I am disclosing this myself, voluntarily, because the truth matters more than looking perfect for a document, and so he doesn’t use this against me, twisting the narrative and saying that I wanted this.

Sept 3, 9:16-9:27 PM PDT : Zeal: "Well that just happened." I (9:23 PM): "LOL." I send a 17-second voice message. Then: "Dw I won’t tell anyone / u are so fucking lovely / I mean it / U wanna know?? I fantasized about u multiple times before I guess it’s just not the right moment / Like it worked multiple times when I did it alone and thought about you." Zeal (9:27 PM): "The gooner." I: "PMFAO / KFSLJCPENFOWJDNF / ur so fucking funny man."

I had never fantasized about Zeal. Not once. That was a lie.

What Fawning Looks Like

In the following pages, you are going to see me being kind to the person who just assaulted me. You will see me comforting him and apologizing. Making him laugh.

Fawning is a trauma response. Like fight or flight or freeze, except instead of running or shutting down, you start people-pleasing to survive. You become whatever the threat wants you to be so it does not get worse, and more painful.

I had been doing it for months without knowing it. Every time he went cold and I scrambled to bring him back, I was being conditioned into it. By September 3, it was automatic.

If you read the next section and think, "but she seems fine," that is exactly what fawning looks like from the outside. Fine. Normal. Willing. It is the most invisible response because it looks like consent.

But it is not.

I made it up in the immediate aftermath of the assault to reassure him. Because for the past hour and a half, every time my body did not respond the way he wanted, he punished me for it. “Welp... I’m tired. Guess we are just not into each other.” That sentence rewired my survival instincts in real time. By the time he left my room, I was so deep into the fawning response that I was still performing for him over text, alone, after he left and I finished showering.

I made a lot of stuff up to explain why my body did not cooperate during the assault like he wanted it to, trying not to make him feel bad about himself, or feel like a failure, or worry too much that he’s hurt me. I was telling him: it’s not that I don’t want you. It’s just timing. My body works for you when I’m alone. I promise. Please believe me. Please don’t leave.

If what happened in that room was something I wanted, I would not have needed to fabricate proof of my own desire after the fact. People do not invent fantasies to retroactively justify sex they enjoyed. They do it when they are terrified the other person will retaliate, withdraw, or punish them for not being the way they want them to be… The way he wanted me to be.

“Dw I won’t tell anyone.” Read that line again. If this was consensual, why would I need to promise secrecy? Why would my first instinct be to assure him that nobody will find out? I am protecting him. Seconds after he assaulted me, left me under running water, and made a joke about me coming forward, I am protecting him.

“LOL.” Then the voice message with my voice shaking. “ur so fucking funny man.” I was trying so hard to show him everything was okay, so I wasn’t dead to him. I am laughing the way you laugh when you are in shock and the only thing your brain knows how to do is pretend everything is fine because the alternative is falling apart, and I already fell apart once tonight, and it got me sexually assaulted.

The very first thing he said the moment he walked out that door, leaving me standing under the running water alone.. “Well, that just happened.” Four words. That was how he filed it away. He cracked a joke. He reduced everything that had just occurred in that room to a punchline. He minimized everything before I had even had time to process what had happened to me.

I am choosing to include this screenshot and show you that I lied to him in it because hiding it would be dishonest, and this document is built on the full truth and evidence.

Note: Fabricating compliance or desire after an assault is a recognized self-protective response. It is not evidence of consent. It is evidence of fear.

The messages that follow across the rest of that night and into the next morning will be used against me. I am naming them here myself, the same way I named the lie, because the full record is the only honest record.

Sept 3, 9:35-9:38 PM PDT: I: “U did well im just exaggerating for the bit / Genuinly / Uhm / Ur mouth kinda tasted / Rly good.” Zeal: “Dont say that.” I: “IM SORDY / IM JUST / SITTING AND ITS STILL THERE OKAY / I’m sorry.” Zeal: “Tdk tsk tsl.” I: “Idiot / Fucking idiot I swear.” Zeal: “Night.”

“Exaggerating for the bit.” I am retroactively reframing my own pain as a joke to make him laugh, as something I was doing for comedic effect rather than something that was painful. I said it hurt, It did hurt. Now I am telling him I was joking. I am not joking. I am alone in my room and the physical evidence of what happened is still showing on my body and I am apologizing for noticing it. “IM SORDY / IM JUST / SITTING AND ITS STILL THERE OKAY / I’m sorry.” I apologize three times in four lines for the fact that my body is still registering what was done to it.

-

Sept 3, 9:38 PM PDT: Zeal says goodnight. I: “U sleeping??” Zeal: “Im tired.” I: “Okkkiiii / Night night.” Then, thirteen minutes later: “I hope ur okay / I really did enjoy this okay u didn’t do anything wrong / We are just both dumb and not experienced / Don’t feel bad I know it’s hard not to but trust me it’s okay I’m just gonna sleep now blehhhh:P.” Zeal: “Gnn.” I: “Night silllaaaay.”

I said goodnight. Then, alone, thirteen minutes later, I sent four more lines to reassure him. Every sentence is oriented toward his emotional state. “I hope ur okay.” “Don’t feel bad.” “Trust me it’s okay.” I am still, after he has gone to sleep, making sure he does not feel like the person who hurt me.

Sept 4, 11:08 AM PDT: I, having slept and woken, messages again: “Zeal / Are u still awake.” No response for seventeen minutes. Then (11:25 AM): “I’m sorry I couldn’t make u feel good / I feel like I should’ve done more so u don’t feel as much shame as u did before leaving cuz it’s totally okay I mean it / Don’t worry about anything / If u stayed I would’ve loved to just sleep next to u but so much was happening so fast and u left and / Idk / Ur a good guy / Most first times go like this also so don’t feel ashamed ur good.”  Zeal does not respond for hours. That afternoon: “Is okay.” I later: “I really like your cuddles your arms and chest is so comforting / Kinda wish u were here rn.” Zeal: “sorry.” I: “I’m sorry / Idk what I was thinking.”

I am apologizing for not doing anything and lying limp in bed during my own assault. I am coaching him through his shame. I am sending reassurance into a silence he chooses not to break for hours. When he finally responds it’s two words: “Is okay.” He is not checking on me. He is closing the loop on his own discomfort and nothing else. When I then tell him I wish he were there, I immediately take it back: “I’m sorry / Idk what I was thinking.” I have been trained through this entire encounter to retract anything that might make him uncomfortable, even if I needed it.

Sept 4, 7:09 AM PDT: Zeal: “i was happy / justlike / tired asf / i went to bed.” I: “Okay good / I just hope I didn’t make you feel bad.” Zeal: “u didnt.” I: “I just / Kinda wish I could go back to sleep but in your arms one last time.” Zeal: “sorryy.” I: “It’s okay / I’ll just hold my pillow n go back to sleep.” Zeal: “gnn.”

I hold my pillow. He says sorry. He does not come. He goes back to sleep. No acknowledgment of what I experienced, or felt. Two words of absolution for himself and a goodnight.

This is the line that dismantles any claim that the night before was what he wanted. You do not propose to “try again” after something that went well. You try again when the first attempt did not go as planned, when you know something went wrong and you want another opportunity to get what you came for.

He is also making me responsible for procuring the protection. He is not offering to handle it. He is putting the logistics on me, making me the one who has to actively go out and acquire the means for this to happen. This is not the behavior of someone uncertain about whether I want this. This is someone who has already decided it will happen and is assigning me a task.

Sept 4, 7:44 AM PDT: I shared that a new song came to me. Then Zeal: “I got some errands to run like makeship dinner and a dave and busters / Maybe if u buy condoms we can try again tonight.” I: “Okay !!!! / But idk how to buy those and six is around too / U might have to do that.” Zeal: “Hmm / Okay.” I: “U got the car.”

I said “Okay !!!!” and then immediately listed two reasons I can’t do it. I do not express desire or anticipation. I say okay and then create friction. I became someone who has learned that saying no directly is not safe. Someone who introduces obstacles and hopes the plan falls apart on its own. A fawn response that has been rehearsed across hundreds of messages does not become desire simply because it’s expressed with !!!!!

Sept 4, 7:45-7:47 AM PDT: I: "U got the car / But just a heads up I need u to like do some research on like / Sex / Lol / Cuz I know I can get aroused I think it's just / How to do it / It's gotta be slow n stuff like / We can just talk when it happens / Before doing anything." Zeal: "Ok."

I am telling him what he did wrong. I am not naming it as wrong, I cannot. He will abandon me. Instead I describe, in exact terms, what was missing the night before. It was not slow. He did not talk to me before doing anything.

I did not refuse a second encounter; I have been conditioned past the point where refusal feels available to me, and am trying to make the next one survivable by giving him instructions, coaching my own abuser on how to hurt, and scare me less. Begging him indirectly for mercy.

Sept 4, 7:47-7:50 AM PDT: I: "Idk keep it in mind that / We will try if it doesn't work I still wanna sleep next to u the night if ur okay with that I just / Crave closure with u / I need to be blunt and honest with my words ig."

Sep 4, 7:49 - 7:50 AM PDT:  Zeal: "We cab try but ud need to leace early cuz my mom."

His mother was with him at RDC. He has mentioned her as the reason I would need to leave early. He did not want her to ever meet me. He wanted me to go to his hotel room to use me there, then leave early before his mom came back. He did not want his mother to find out what he was doing, but also wanted the comfort of his own place, for something he wanted to do.

I: "Ur not coming over to my place??? / My place is better ur building is filled with devs." Zeal: "Acyually thatd be better maybe / True." I: "Ya I can just give u my other card to come whenever u wanna."

He did not offer for me to meet her. He has been planning a late-night encounter with me while keeping me entirely separate from anyone in his life who might witness or question what he is doing.

I offer him a key card to my room. Unrestricted access, making myself as available and easy to reach as possible because the alternative, being someone he has to work for, feels like the thing that will make him abandon me.

Sept 4, 7:50-7:52 AM PDT: I: "Ya I can just give u my other card to come whenever u wanna / I have two / U can come over make urself comfortable around put anything u need here / I have the king size bed after all!!!!!!!!! / U can walk over rn and I'll give u the card and if u wanna drop anything here too." Zeal: "Nah i gotta hang with ppl." I: "Me too / Oh wait rn??" Zeal: "My mom / Breakfast."

He declines to come to my room and goes to have breakfast with his mother instead. I am not allowed to meet her. I do not ask why. I have already learned not to push past a boundary he sets, because his boundaries are enforced and mine are not.

Sept 4, 7:55-7:57 AM PDT: I: "But yeah one more thing the more romantic and cute u be and stuff u say the better it makes stuff it's how like I work / It's probs why it didn't work last night / I need to be like filled up with those emotions n shi / Females be like."  Sep 4, 7:55-7:57 : Zeal: "im not that big of a romantic sorry." I: "Females are super emotional beings / No that's the thing / Most guys aren't / U learn / Makes things so much better / Trust me / trying to teach u / Porn just jumps straight to things but in the real world it's gotta build up slowly / That's why I said when ur free later on u can google and search / Could give u an idea / That's all / Bleh :P." Zeal: "gotta be around 23 or midnight / cuz i got a dave n busters thing with the mates."

I am giving him the reason. I am explaining my own assault back to him in terms that protect him from feeling bad, not "you hurt me," but "here is what you need to do differently, so it doesn’t hurt again." I am sorry for his inexperience, offering to teach him to treat me how I deserve to be treated. With gentleness and care.

He does not acknowledge what I have just said. He ignores me, then tells me he can come around 11 PM or midnight, after Dave & Busters with the “mates”.

He has set a time for the second attempt. He did not ask if I wanted to try again. He announced when he would arrive, and I complied.

Sept 4, 3:54 PM PDT: In reply to a deleted message from Zeal about condoms, I: "Oh shit / I was gonna tell u uhm / U need lube as well / It helps."

He deleted the condoms message. The evidence of him arranging the logistics of a repeat encounter is gone from the record on his end. What remains is my reply, responding to it, adding information I had looked up on his behalf.

I have been doing research. After what happened to me in that room, I spent part of my day finding out what would make it hurt less next time. Not because I wanted it, but because I had been trained, across the entire preceding night and morning, that my body's failure to cooperate was my problem to fix, and I was afraid of that same pain happening again.

The lube message was me trying to protect myself from a pain I already knew was coming.

Sept 4, 3:54 PM PDT: In reply to my message about needing lube, Zeal: “Well too late.”

Sept 4, 3:54-3:56 PM PDT: I: “Sorry I didn’t know when u were going / Idk.” Zeal lists his schedule: hangout, Makeship dinner, then Dave and Busters. I asked if the stores would be open before he comes over. Zeal: “No.”

Sept 4, 3:54-3:56 PM PDT: I: “No the stuff is open 24/7 is it not? / The stores for that stuff.” I am trying to find a way to make this work. He is not.

Sept 4, 3:56-3:57 PM PDT: Zeal: “Man u can get it then / Lazy asss :p.” I: “No its / Not easy for me.”

“Not easy for me,” is the closest I come to saying no.

I am twenty two years old, alone in a country I had never been to before, on my first trip outside my home country. I had no car, no license, no familiarity with the area. He had his mother with him. I was dependent on friends to take me anywhere. I had never purchased condoms or lubricant in my life, nor am I sure where they sell them in this country. I did not know where to go or how to get there, but Zeal did not care and called me lazy instead.

He was twenty two, also, but had a rental car and a driver’s license. His mother was with him, and he knew how to navigate the area well enough to move around between hotels, restaurants, and Dave & Busters on his own schedule, and had every logistical advantage I did not. Naturally, as the owner of a million dollar IP should.

He did not offer to pick them up on his way to my room later, did not offer to stop at a store between his dinner and Dave & Busters. He had a car and a packed schedule full of stops, any one of which could have included a two-minute detour. He chose not to. He put the burden on the person who had the least ability to carry it, mocked me for struggling with it, and moved on to his evening plans, as I felt bad about myself, dissatisfying him.

The same person who made my body’s pain about his rejection the night before is now making the logistics of protection my responsibility. If it does not happen, it will be because I failed to provide it, not because he failed to care.

September 4, 2025 (Afternoon), Departure and Disclaimers

The following messages were sent on the afternoon of September 4, 2025: the day after the assault. By this point, Zeal and I had already exchanged messages throughout the morning. These screenshots document the moment Zeal wraps up the logistics conversation and prepares to leave for his evening plans, including a Makeship dinner and a Dave and Busters with others. As he leaves, he issues two final statements: a repeat plan for that night, and a disclaimer that this is not a relationship, therefore I shouldn’t expect any love.

September 4, 2025: 3:56 PM to 3:59 PM

Zeal tells me I can get the condoms myself, calling me “Lazy asss” when I explain I have no car and am traveling with a friend. He follows it with a joking “:p”. I reply: “No its / Not easy for me.” Zeal ends with: “We can try tmrw if it dowsnt work.”

Sept 4, 2025, 3:56-3:59 PM: Zeal dismisses my mobility constraints, calls me “Lazy asss,” and proposes trying again that night.

He assaulted me less than twenty hours earlier. He is now mocking me for not being able to independently acquire protection for a repeat encounter he is planning without my full agreement. There is no check-in, no acknowledgement of the night before.

September 4, 2025: 4:04 PM

Zeal announces he has to go. He sends a “Ur awesome” heart reaction, says “Gotta dip / Hangiut time / Cya,” and sends a Roblox GIF. I asked: “Can I get a mwah.”

Sept 4, 2025, 4:04 PM: Zeal leaves for his evening plans. I responded with fawn.

He is leaving to spend the evening with others, and has planned to come back to me later that night. He says goodbye warmly and casually, as though nothing bad has happened. I then asked for a mwah, as I am still operating in fawn response.

September 4, 2025: 4:05 PM

One minute after saying goodbye, Zeal sends: “Btw this isnt dating / So no ODing when we get back okay / Wanna make that clear (edited).” He edits the message.

Sept 4, 2025, 4:05 PM: Zeal issues an unprompted disclaimer: “this isnt dating,” then edits the message.

“ODing” is Roblox slang for online dating.

He edits the message after sending it, suggesting he considered his wording carefully.

He never once checked in on me, my physical or mental health, nor cared. He never asked if I was okay after the night before. His only concern is his reputation, how people perceive him, and my silence about what happened, and to never take accountability for anything, making sure I know my place in the dynamic.

September 4, 2025 (Night), I Shared Everything; Zeal Waits

Hours later, once Zeal has finished his evening plans, the messages resume. I am out with friends, specifically a friend referred to here as [Friend], trying to get into Round 1. They are unable to enter: I do not have my passport on me,  and [Friend] is 19 years old, below California’s minimum age for entry into venues that serve alcohol. The friend we  were waiting on to arrive, one of whom was 25 and could have facilitated entry, had not arrived yet. I and [Friend] wait in the parking lot for him.

While we waited,  I was on my phone with Zeal, who is pressing me to come back. [Friend] notices that I am becoming increasingly anxious. I am afraid. I am terrified there will be penile penetration tonight, not just fingers anymore, and I do not want it, but I believe that keeping Zeal happy is something I cannot afford to fail at, or he will abandon me forever. Losing Zeal was something I believed was the scariest thing ever.

My friend noticed my discomfort, and she kept tapping my arm with her fingers, and scratching my head with her nails to help me stay calm, and not fall apart.

September 4, 2025: 10:21 PM to 11:30 PM

Zeal announces he is done for the day (edited). I tell him I am at the arcade playing games with [Friend] and will let him know when we are done. Zeal asks “Which 1”, I answer. At 11:08 PM he asks: “Soon?” I said I am trying to go home, I explained I am stuck in the middle of nowhere, I sent a photo of the dark, empty parking lot, [X] is already getting an Uber to pick me up, and take me home at this point, and I was going to abandon the Round 1 plans, so I do not disappoint Zeal further.

Sept 4, 2025, 10:21-11:08 PM: Zeal announces he is done and begins asking when I am coming back.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:13-11:24 PM: I explain I am stuck and send a photo of the parking lot where I and [Friend] are waiting.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:24-11:30 PM: Zeal asks how far I am from the hotel and whether [Friend] is with me.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:30 PM: I explain the situation: the friends they were meeting did not arrive, I have no ID, and [Friend] is underage.

Zeal offers to pick me up. I thanked him but said [X] is already on the way. I did not call Zeal for help, but was already arranging my own way home. I did not want Zeal to come pick me up. If anything was to happen to me, at least keep it in the comfort of my own room, near my things, and shower. His offer to pick me up was clear impatience and not a concern for my safety being in the middle of nowhere. He wanted me back. ASAP.

September 4, 2025: 11:32 PM to 11:44 PM

While waiting for my ride, I tell Zeal about my day. I made many friends, I complimented strangers and received hugs. People told me they had expected someone intimidating and were surprised by how warm and small I was. I had hot pot with a group of friends.  I tell him about [Someone I met], “He’s such a sweet soul he’s awesome.” I sent a group photo, I told him I felt, for the first time in a long time, like myself.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:32 PM: I shared my day: new friends, hot pot, feeling proud and like myself.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:36 PM: I sent a group photo from the evening.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:41-11:44 PM: I continued sharing. Zeal responds briefly before asking again: “Are u back soonV.”

I told Zeal my entire day. I showed him photos of almost everyone I met, shared my feelings, my excitement, my self-discovery. Zeal told me nothing about his day. His responses were brief and distracted. When I finished sharing my entire day, his response was: “Its almost midnight / Are u back soonV.”

He was not present in the conversation. He was waiting for my body to arrive for him.

September 4, 2025: 11:44 PM to 11:47 PM

I said I am in the car and apologized for “yapping a lot.” I tell him the GPS says 15 minutes. Zeal responds: “Its ok im just excited.” I read his dry texting style and voiced my concern: “I thought u just wanna get shit over with / Like ur just exhausted and just / Idk don’t want to / And that I’m just being a burden.”

Sept 4, 2025, 11:45-11:47 PM: Zeal: “ Its ok ill stay hard for you smirks.” I immediately asked him to take it slow.

My immediate response to “ill stay hard for you” was “Can we just take it slow / Please / Don’t / Rush / Please.” This is a direct, explicit request, because I am scared. I am asking him to slow down before I even arrive.

I told him I was worried I was being a burden to him, and his response was to tell me he was maintaining an erection for me. This is the clearest possible statement of what I was to him in that moment: a body he was waiting on, not a person he was concerned about at all.

September 4, 2025: 11:47 PM to 11:49 PM

Sept 4, 2025, 11:47-11:48 PM: I asked to talk first and take it slow, I tell him: “I just wanna talk to u before we do anything.” Zeal responds: “I wanna kiss.”

Sept 4, 2025, 11:48 PM: I explain how intimacy should work for me. I continued: “I wanna take it slow / Okay / But no tongue right away either okay.” I explain how intimacy should work for me, slowly, with words, with care, with foreplay.

“U don’t touch and do stuff without my permission / U gotta ask me ‘can I? May I? May I do this? May I do rhat?’ And say it / Last night was messy u just ripped everything off and did stuff without asking but I just idk was rly overwhelmed and went nonverbal / And it’s okay.”

Sept 4, 2025, 11:48-11:49 PM: I name the previous night directly: “u just ripped everything off and did stuff without asking.”

When I said I wanted to talk first and take it slow, Zeal’s response was “I wanna kiss.” He did not engage with what I said. He did not acknowledge my request, but simply stated what he wanted to do.

In the same message where I describe being overwhelmed and going nonverbal the night before, I add: “And it’s okay.” I am naming an assault and immediately absolving him of it in the same breath. I was not forgiving him, but I’ve been conditioned to manage his comfort at the expense of my own safety, even if I was terrified.

September 4, 2025: 11:51 PM to 11:54 PM

Zeal says: “Sorry.” I responded immediately: “Ur fine / U were excited.” Then: “U were a fucking feral animal it’s funny / I didn’t hate it / I just didn’t feel ready fast enough.” I explain what I needed: time, love, care, foreplay, words. I tell him sex is intimate, not like pornography. I coach him: “U need to just show me how genuinely u want me.”

Sept 4, 2025, 11:51 PM: Zeal apologizes. I immediately reassured him and reframed the assault as him being “feral” and excited.

Sept 4, 2025, 11:54 PM: I coach Zeal on what intimacy requires, then exchange “mwah” messages.

Zeal apologized in one word. I spent the next several messages explaining that it was fine, that he was just excited, and then teaching him how to do it better next time. I am not refusing a second encounter. I have been conditioned past the point where refusal feels like a real option. I am trying to make the next one survivable.

I am coaching my own abuser on how to assault me more gently, hoping this time does not hurt like the first time.

September 4, 2025: 11:56 PM to 11:59 PM

Sept 4, 2025, 11:56-11:59 PM: Zeal confirms he is coming over and notes he will leave immediately in the morning.

Zeal says: “Ill get ready and come over / Btw when i wake tmrw, ill leave immediately / Its a long day / Have to be ready.” I arrive home. I say I just need the bathroom. I say I really just want to sleep with him. Zeal: “Ill come over.” I: “Okayh.”

Before he has even arrived, he has already announced his exit. He will leave immediately when he wakes up, and tells me this, so I have no expectation of any sort of care. He is managing my expectations the same way he managed them at 4:05 PM: making sure I know my place.

I have just spent the past hour asking him to go slow, setting boundaries, explaining what I need, and coaching him on consent. His response to all of it was to confirm he is coming over and announce when he will leave.

Midnight: September 4-5, 2025

At 11:59 PM on September 4, 2025, Zeal had confirmed he was coming over. I had just arrived back at my hotel room after being stuck outside Round One with my friend. I went to use the bathroom to get ready, I took longer than usual. I stood in front of the mirror for a long time, looking at myself, wondering… why me?

I was terrified. I was afraid he would lose control, that there would be unprotected penetration, that I could get pregnant, and that if I did I would have to kill myself. What people would call me. How miserable my life was going to be, and how lonely it all was going to get. I was bracing myself and did not want what I believed was about to happen, but I believed the cost of refusing was higher than the cost of complying.

I got ready, because I had been conditioned to believe that keeping Zeal happy was something I could not afford to fail at.

Sept 4, 2025: 11:58 PM to 12:10 AM PDT

Sept 4, 2025, 11:58 PM - Sept 5, 12:10 AM PDT. I am in the bathroom; Zeal tells me to message when I'm done. While I am in the bathroom, Zeal texts me: “Msg when done.” He calls me “The pisser.” I explain I take my time because I like to wash properly. Zeal responds: “Okii.”

Sept 5, 2025: 12:10 AM to 12:11 AM PDT

The exchange continues. Zeal and I joke back and forth. At 12:11 AM, I tell him: “U can come now.”

Sept 5, 2025, 12:10-12:11 AM PDT. I invite Zeal in.

This is not evidence that I was unafraid or fully willing. I was afraid of what would happen, and I said come anyway.

Sept 5, 2025: 12:18 AM PDT Zeal responds: “Okay / I was waiting in the hall / 405?”

He did not wait for the invitation before coming. He was already positioned in the hallway outside my door before I said I was ready, stood there and waited. He confirmed my room number, then came in.

Sept 5, 2025, 12:18 AM PDT. Zeal reveals he had already been waiting in the hallway outside my room before I invited him.

**************************************

This time, when I was trying to talk to him about respecting me, he placed his bare penis against my intimate area and said, “don’t worry, I won’t put it in, I just want to feel it.”

I became scared immediately. I was afraid he was going to ignore what he had just said and penetrate me anyway. At that moment, I was terrified of becoming pregnant and felt completely unsafe. I remember silently praying that he would not do it.

Sept 5, 2025: 5:34 AM PDT

By 5:34 AM, Zeal is asleep in my hotel room. I cannot sleep. I send him a message:

“Weeeeehwhehwhewewehh / Eepy head / Sleeping next to me rnnnnn / I woke up can’t sleep so I’m texting my eepy headdddd that’s sleeping… Next to me!!!!! / Blah blah blah / U need the rest silly / Bruuuuh u sleep so soundly like a baby it’s soooooooo cute and peaceful / Hhmnhhmhnmmmmmm I wanna……., kiss uuuu!!!!!!!!!! / Kissessss kissesssss kisssesssss”

I send him a photo of two bunnies huddled together, one labeled “me” and one labeled “you.”

I am awake at 5:34 AM while the person who assaulted me sleeps next to me. I am not screaming. I am not leaving. I am sending him a bunny meme and wishing I could kiss him. This is not mutual love, this is what trauma bonding looks like. The warmth I felt is real. So is what caused it.

Sept 5, 2025, 5:34 AM PDT. I am awake; Zeal sleeps next to me. I send him an affectionate message and a bunny meme.

Around this same time, I shared a tweet: “Me in ur arms / need someone 2 hold me like this”, over an image of a small animal held in a person’s hands. I was lying next to the person who had assaulted me, wishing I felt as safe as I was pretending to feel.

The following morning, I discovered marks on my neck that I had not noticed the night before. Seeing them caused immediate distress. I told him that I had never wanted this and asked him what he had done. His response was not remorse. He laughed and said, “don’t worry. Roblox devs get no pussy, they won’t know what that is.”

**************************************

TRIGGER WARNING

The following page contains photographs of physical marks left on my body without my consent.

**************************************

September 5, 2025: The Conference

That morning, I went to RDC.

I had been excluded from Zeal’s server. I had been told I could not speak to Zerum because she was unwell. I had been kept at a distance from people on his team for months, managed and redirected every time I tried to reach out. Here, in person, at the conference, there was no buffer. I saw them. I decided to try.

I approached Kat and Zerum. I was not confrontational. I was not there to start anything. I wanted to clear the air, to apologize if I had ever hurt either of them in any way, to show them that I was just a person, a normal person, not whatever version of me they had been given second-hand through Zeal. I wanted them to see me.

What Actually Happened

This was not a quick approach and go. We talked for a while, me and Kat and Wil. Hobo was there too.

Hobo was the nicest person in that group. He was a genuine gentleman, and I mean that. He was warm and he treated me like a person. I want to be honest about that, because I do not think everyone there was acting in bad faith, and he deserves to not be lumped in with what the others did.

Zerum was a different story. She kept turning her back on me. Every time I was in her space she physically oriented away, cold and pointed, as if my presence was something to be endured and removed as quickly as possible. The look on her face said it clearly: I was disgusting to her. I had done something unforgivable in her eyes. If she had heard things I said when I was hurt and frustrated, I will own that. But it was Zeal who managed the narrative. He kept us apart and chose what version of me she was given.

At some point, when Zerum’s coldness had gotten to me, I told Hobo I did not want his stickers. I was upset and it came out toward him even though he had not done anything to deserve it. I felt bad about that almost immediately. He had only been kind to me. So I went back to him, I apologized, and I accepted some stickers from him.

Those stickers are still in my drawer.

Kat was friendlier. But not in the way that meant they wanted to be friends. They were friendly in the way someone is when they are trying to get you to leave without a scene. They gave me Pressure stickers. They smiled. And then they steered me away.

I was shooed. That is the only word for it. Handed a sticker and moved along, like something you manage rather than someone you know.

Everything Kat and Zerum gave me, I ripped up and threw in the trash the same day.

It upset me deeply. I had come in good faith. I had wanted to make peace with people I had been separated from through no clear fault of my own, by a person who had benefited from keeping us apart. And I was treated like something gross they needed to get away from. I have no patience for being disrespected in public. I have been through too much. Zerum got to be cold and dismissive from behind the protection of her proximity to Zeal, and she used that position like it gave her the right to treat me that way. It did not.

On the Framing That Followed

This encounter was later framed by them as me harassing them.

I want to be precise about what that framing does. I approached them once, in a public space, to try to apologize and clear the air. That is not harassment. Calling it harassment flips who was in distress and who was being unkind. It gave them a victim position they did not earn from that interaction, and it gave people a reason to dismiss anything I might later say about how I was treated.

And with Zerum specifically, it fits a pattern. I say this from observation, NOT hatred. Once during a Stage stream, I was in FL Studio. Kat briefly joined Stage and caught a bit of the OST. They did not reach out to me. They went to Zerum. Who then reported it to Zeal. He entered the Stage with 11 people and yelled at me. Shortly afterwards, Zerum and Kat unfriended me. Zerum had already blocked me, removed me from her server, and decided I was unstable, all before I ever had a problem with her. She hated me first, the coldness at RDC was not a surprise.

May 28, 2025, log of Kat joining and leaving Stage within a minute.

May 28, 2025, log of Zeal immediately joining the Stage to berate me.

September 5, 2025: Afternoon and Evening

The following messages span the afternoon and evening of September 5, 2025, the final full day of RDC. I am ill with a fever I caught from Zeal. Zeal is attending industry events and dinners. These screenshots document how each of them spent that day, and the emotional dynamic in their final exchanges before the conference ended.

Sept 5, 2025: 4:21 PM to 4:30 PM PDT

In the afternoon of September 5, I message Zeal: “Caught ur dumbass germs loser I’m now burning up fever dizzy n shi.” Zeal responds: “Oops” and then “Sorrryyy.” I call him names and swear at him affectionately.

The tone is joking. I am sick because of the physical closeness they shared, and I am laughing about it. I am channeling my illness into affectionate teasing. This is the shape of a trauma bond: the source of harm becomes the source of comfort.

Sept 5, 2025, 4:21-4:23 PM PDT. I am sick with a fever caught from Zeal. His response: “Oops.”

Sept 5, 2025, 4:29-4:30 PM PDT. I continued joking while sick.

Sept 5, 2025: 4:44 PM to 6:25 PM PDT

I am still sick, awake through the afternoon. I watch my Uber on my phone and make a joke about the driver’s music. I message Zeal. Zeal tells me he has a two-hour dinner. I respond: “2 hours? / That’s long why / I had a bagel / Have fun nuuy” and “Take care of urself.”

I am ill, alone in my room, and my concern is for his dinner. This holds true across all of the entire record: my attention is oriented toward Zeal’s comfort even when I am the one who needs care.

Sept 5, 2025, 4:44-6:25 PM PDT. I am sick and alone; Zeal is at a two-hour dinner.

Sept 5, 2025: 6:50 PM PDT

Despite being feverish and unwell, I sent Zeal a collage of cute animal photos, kittens, bunnies, rabbits on skateboards. I am still reaching toward him. Still trying to be someone he likes.

Sept 5, 2025, 6:50 PM PDT. I, sick and awake through the afternoon, sends Zeal a collage of cute animals.

Sept 5, 2025: 10:01 PM to 10:04 PM PDT

Zeal messages: “Oksy done / Gn ren.” I have just woken from a nap. I tell him I was shaking and cold earlier but feels warmer now, and that I’m sad I missed the conference party.

Zeal then tells me he met bslixk, someone who helped produce Yakuza, and someone who produces One Piece. My reaction is an immediate cascade of “WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT” messages. Even while sick, even in the context of everything I have been through, I am still the same person who marvels at things.

Sept 5, 2025, 10:01-10:04 PM PDT. Zeal reports meeting major industry figures. I, sick in my room, reacts with excitement.

Sept 5, 2025, 10:04 PM PDT. my reaction to learning Zeal met the producer of One Piece.

Zeal is networking at the highest level of the industry while I am in my hotel room, sick, and recovering from an assault.

The business cards below corroborate that Zeal’s accounts of his meetings were accurate, he was with industry executives while I was alone and ill.

Business card: (Sega / Sega Sammy Group), consistent with Zeal’s account of industry meetings at RDC 2025.

Business card: additional industry contact from the same period.

Sept 5, 2025: 10:30 PM to 10:31 PM PDT

I asked if we can see each other before everything ends. Zeal responds: “Im not coming over sorry / I need proper rest tonight’s.” I said “Aw” and asks: “Can we tomorrow after everything is over..” Zeal: “Probably nott.” I: “Oh.”

One syllable. I absorb the rejection and move on.

Sept 5, 2025, 10:30-10:31 PM PDT. Zeal declines to come over. “Probably nott.”

Sept 5, 2025: 10:31 PM to 10:44 PM PDT

I message: “hi nuuy.” Zeal responds: “Gn ren / Try to rest” and sends a photo of a white rabbit. I reply: “I’ll try / Thanks for everything.”

Sept 5, 2025, 10:31-10:44 PM PDT. I thank Zeal for everything. I notice a couple in the hallway and tell him about it.

A few minutes later, I told him about a small, strange thing: I heard knocking at the door in front of my room and looked through the peephole to see a couple making out.

Sept 5, 2025: 10:44 PM to 10:47 PM PDT

This is me, the day after being sexually assaulted, clarifying to the person who assaulted me that I do not want sex, just affection. I am still negotiating the terms of my own safety with him, still explaining what I need, still hoping he will care.

“No I don’t want sex I just / Idk / Just wanted kisses and cuddles just cute stuff / Ig”

Sept 5, 2025, 10:44-10:47 PM PDT. I said I just wanted kisses and cuddles. I am still telling him what I need.

Sept 5, 2025: 10:47 PM to 10:50 PM PDT

I apologize for wanting affection, and call myself selfish for wanting to be held. He responds with his sleep schedule, then reassures me I am not selfish, only after I have already absorbed the rejection and punished myself for it. The dynamic here is identical to every other exchange in this record: I ask for something, he redirects to his own needs, I apologize.

Zeal responds: “Idk man / I just want some alone time / I dont get enough sleep when we do things.” I immediately apologizes: “Sorry.” Zeal: “6 hours yesterday, 5 today.” I: “Just wanted things before it’s over forever / Just being selfish.” Zeal: “I wanna be rested for tomorrow and the day after.” Then: “Ur noot.”

Sept 5, 2025, 10:47-10:50 PM PDT. Zeal was upset about his sleep schedule. I apologized for asking for affection and called myself selfish.

Sept 5, 2025: 10:50 PM to 10:57 PM PDT

Zeal sends a long message for the first time in never:

He is telling me plainly that what I have found in him is not something I can keep. He frames it as care, he says “this is kinda why i was afraid.” What he was afraid of was my attachment, not for my sake, but for his convenience. Only after he got what he wanted, more than once.

I am thanking him. I am telling the person who assaulted me that he gave me hope that men can be good, and wish there were more men like him. I’ve normalized what was done to me so completely that I can sit in its aftermath and feel grateful.

Sept 5, 2025, 10:50-10:57 PM PDT. Zeal tells me the good thing I have “relies on” him, someone who won’t be there. I thank him for giving me hope.

Zeal: “Thats just how it is / Like u wanna do things that feel good / Thats just being human / I want to go home and work on my good pc for example / Doesnt make me selfish / U want kisses and cuddled and maybe more / Doesnt make u selfish / Idk what to recommend that isnt me tho / Cuz yeahhh i know guys in ur country suck ass / Idk what to do about that / This is kinda why i was afraid / Cuz u got a good thing, but that relies on me / Someone who isnt gonna be there.”

Me: “It’s fine / It’s how it’s always been for me so I’m used to it / u win some u lose some / U gave me an experience i craved / U just gave me hope men can be good cuz I believed they couldn’t be / So maybe it’s not over / I wish more men were like you / Would make life better”

Sept 5, 2025: 11:00 PM to 11:04 PM PDT

Zeal: “I do so too / Good men exist but fuck were a rare breed”

This exchange is the clearest distillation of the entire dynamic. He gives me just enough warmth to feel seen, then he withdraws. Then he tells me to go find it somewhere else. Then he says sorry. He has done this across every section of this record, not once owning up to what he’s done, and recognizing that he’s hurt me, and continues to hurt me.

Sept 5, 2025: 11:27 PM to 11:44 PM PDT

My response to Zeal’s “Sorry” is not what a person with a clear view of what has happened to them would write. It's clear and it shows that it is what someone in the grip of a trauma bond writes, someone who has been so thoroughly conditioned to orient toward their abuser that the abuse itself has become the source of their sense of safety, and without it, I’d collapse.

I write, in part:

“Don’t be / I lost the hope but u gave it back / Now I know men like you actually exist even if it’s rare / So thank u for this / All of this”

And then, minutes later:

“I feel safe with u now I don’t think I’ll ever feel scared of u again / Ur a genuinely gentle kind hearted soul / And u deserve the world / I love u zeal okay / I wish u the best genuinely I wish u all the happiness and laughs and success and everything u wish and strive for and will support u / I won’t distance from u ever again… / We wouldn’t have connected the way we did this fucking close if we didn’t love each other and care this deeply and I appreciate it so much / I know I have someone in my life that’s rly awesome now hehe”

I tell him I feel safe with him. I tell him I love him. I tell him I will not distance myself from him ever again. I thank him for giving me hope. I call him a “genuinely gentle kind hearted soul.”

This is being written to the person who sexually assaulted me less than twenty-four hours earlier.

They call it trauma bonding.

I was experiencing many things like something called Stockholm Syndrome, in which a person who has been harmed by someone they depended on for safety, affection, and validation experiences an intensified attachment to that person in the aftermath of the harm. The abuser becomes, paradoxically, the only source of relief from the fear they created.

Every element of Zeal’s behavior throughout this record, the warmth and the withdrawal, the praise and the dismissal, the physical access followed by normalization, is consistent with a grooming pattern that produces exactly this response. The fact that I express safety after being hurt is the key to showing something genuinely horrible was happening, but I didn’t know, and was unaware at the time.

I also referenced something Zeal had promised me “a while back after the last update”, a reference to a previous interaction within the Roblox community context, and says “the shit I did happened and stuff.” I am already re-narrating the assault as “stuff” that “happened.” Something that got in the way of plans, rather than something done to me, the same way Zeal had framed it.

Sept 5, 2025, 11:27-11:44 PM PDT. I responded to Zeal’s “Sorry.” I tell him I feel safe, that I love him, that I will never distance myself from him.

“I feel safe with u now I don’t think I’ll ever feel scared of u again”

Telling Him Everything: September 2025, RDC Week

This screenshot is addressed to Zeal. Like almost everything else in this record, I reported it to him. My friends had just spent the evening taking care of me, and I told my abuser about it in real time, the way I told him everything.

[X]  noticed I was sad and ran to get me ice cream. [Friend] heated spaghetti for me. They all gathered around me, scratching my head, hugging me.  My friends could see that something was wrong, but they did not know how to name it. They did not say it out loud. So they just held me, and fed me, and stayed close.

And I, sitting in the middle of all that love, opened Discord and told Zeal about it.

“I love my friends I love love I feel so loved and it’s making me emotional again imma happy sob AAAAAAAA / Life is beautiful I love living this week has been the best week in my entire life / I’m happy I never killed myself”

I am telling the person who assaulted me that this is the best week of my life. I am telling him I am happy I am alive. I am describing the care my friends are showing me,  care that exists, in large part, because of what he has done, and I am sharing it with him as though he is someone who should know. As though he is on my side.

I was reporting my life to him, every feeling, every moment, every sandwich and ice cream cup, the way I had been doing since we first started talking.

My friends were scratching my head because something was wrong. I was messaging Zeal to tell him about it. Those two things were happening at the same time, in the same room, and I did not see the contradiction.

“I’m happy I never killed myself”

I had a history with my own mental health. This week, this week of grooming and assault and ice cream and bunny memes, felt like a reason to be alive. I meant it.

The story I was in was that beautiful through my rose colored glasses.

RDC week, September 2025. I tell Zeal that my friends brought me ice cream, heated spaghetti for me, and held me while I cried. I call this the best week of my life. I say I am happy I never killed myself.

Note: The name of my friend has been redacted and replaced with “[Friend]” throughout this document to protect my privacy. They are not a subject of this record. They are a witness to it.

September 6-7, 2025 : Shift in Engagement During RDC

During RDC, my behavior toward him remained consistent. I continued reaching out, sharing updates, and attempting to spend time together. I sent him messages, photos of myself and my friends getting ready for the night, and kept him updated on where I was and what I was doing.

His responses during this period became noticeably minimal and detached. He repeatedly indicated that he was occupied with his team, other people, or event-related activities. I understood that RDC was busy and that he had responsibilities, so I did not react negatively to this.

What these screenshots show is that, even as I continued to make contact in a normal and friendly way, he was becoming harder to reach and less personally present. I interpreted that distance at the time as him being busy, and I accommodated it.

Sept 6, 2025, 8:23-8:24 PM PDT

He says he is in the Q&A, then says he is with his team and other people. I respond normally and say I would like to meet them, then ask him to let me know when they are done.

Screenshot showing him stating that he is in the Q&A, then with others, while I continue trying to coordinate seeing him in person.

Sept 7, 2025, 1:58 AM PDT

I continue sending him light, friendly messages and images while he remains minimally engaged.

Screenshot showing me continuing to message him casually and warmly during the event.

Sept 7, 2025, 1:59-2:29 AM PDT

When he responds, the exchange stays brief. I continue updating him about what I am doing, including getting ready for the awards night and going home to rest, while his replies remain short and limited.

Screenshot showing the continued imbalance in engagement: I keep sharing updates and trying to stay connected, while his replies remain minimal.

September 6, 2025: The Night of the RIAs

The Roblox Innovation Awards are happening tonight in San Jose. Zeal is there as a developer. I am not with him. Three days have passed since the assault. I am still reaching toward him.

Sept 6, 2025, 5:02 PM PDT

I sent him a photo of my neck. The marks he left are visible. I write: “U forgot u left those?”

Zeal says: “Oops.” Then: “No.”

“Oops” and then “No.” Flippancy, then denial. He left marks on my neck and his entire response is two words across two messages. There is no concern for whether I am okay. No acknowledgment of what those marks mean or how they got there. Just “Oops” and “No.”

I am not confronting him. I am not angry. The tone of “U forgot u left those?” is not accusatory. It’s almost playful, I am pointing at evidence of what he did to my body the way you would point at something charming he accidentally left behind. This is what the conditioning produced, I am showing him the marks on my neck and making it easy for him.

Sept 6, 2025, 5:02 PM PDT. I send Zeal a photo of the marks on my neck. He says “Oops” and then “No.”

Sept 6, 2025, 5:02–5:05 PM PDT

I continue. I describe the marks:

“Bro marked me like an animal ong / They were so red yesterday LOL / They’re fading away / They hurt a little and I think it’s neat cuz it’s the feelings u left for me / One of the good pains / U a freak doe”

I have found a way to make the pain meaningful, not just tolerable. “The feelings u left for me.” The marks on my neck are not just something he did to my body without my full consent, they are proof that he was there, that something passed between us, that it mattered. “One of the good pains” is not minimization. It is transformation. I have taken what he left on my body and turned it into evidence of closeness.

This is the same movement I made every time something hurt. Find the meaning in it. Keep the story intact. Because if the story is intact, then I am not a person something was done to. I am a person who is loved.

Zeal responds with one word: “Brah.” Then I say “Hi.” Zeal says “Ho / Hi.” I say “Hiii…” The exchange about the marks on my neck dissolves into small talk within seconds. That is how fast this gets filed away. That is how practiced we both are at not looking directly at it.

Sept 6, 2025, 5:02–5:05 PM PDT. I describe the marks Zeal left on my neck as “one of the good pains” and “the feelings u left for me.” Zeal responds with “Brah.” The conversation moves on.

September 6, 2025: Still Reporting In

Throughout this evening I am with friends. I am taking photos. I am sending them to Zeal the way I have sent him everything, the way I have been reporting my life to him since the beginning. The assault has not changed that. The conditioning runs deeper than the harm.

There are photos from this night that I am not including here, what matters is the pattern: I am happy, I am surrounded by people who love me, and I am telling him about it. Every photo. Every moment. He is the person I want to share my life with, even now. Especially now.

September 6, 2025. I send Zeal a group photo. The caption: “Feels like a family photo I’m happy.”

I am happy. That is real. The happiness and the harm existed at the same time, in the same week, in the same body. That is not a contradiction I can see clearly yet. I am sending him proof of how good my life looks from the outside, and asking him, without saying it, to be part of it.

Sept 6, 2025, 6:18–6:57 PM PDT

The RIA notification comes through in our conversation: “Ready for the RIAs?! Doors are open! Make your way over and enjoy some pre-show bites and drinks. Reminder, there is no re-entry once you exit the venue.”

I text: “Careful.”

One word. I am watching out for him even now. Even as he walks into a room full of people who do not know what happened in my hotel room three nights ago. I am still the person who cares whether he makes it inside before the doors close.

Then: “May I see ur fit :3”

Zeal responds: “Not now / Its starting.”

He dismisses the request in four words. The show is starting. I can wait. Or I cannot wait, and it does not matter, because he is walking into the RIAs and I am on the other side of a screen.

I say: “Here’s mine.” And I send him a photo of myself.

September 6, 2025: The Night I Decided to Die

The RIA night was not over when I wrote that. It was just beginning.

What happened next is the hardest part of this document to write. Not because I am not sure of it. I am sure of every second of it. It’s hard to write because I’m still here, and for a long stretch of that night, I was trying very hard not to be.

What He Did, and What He Knew

Zeal knows I have BPD. He has known this for as long as we have been close. He knows what it means: the fear of abandonment that can become consuming, the way emotional pain can escalate past what I can regulate on my own, the way I can spiral when I feel cornered or discarded. He knows all of this. That night, he used it.

He engineered a situation that he knew would trigger me. He knew exactly which lever to pull and he pulled it. When I lost control. This is what BPD looks like when someone who knows your diagnosis deliberately pushes on it. I said things I did not mean. I made threats. I am physically small. He knows I am physically small. He has always known that. The threats were empty, and he knew they were empty. He had just left marks on my neck three nights before. I have never hurt anyone in my life.

But the threats existed now. And that is what mattered to him.

Hiphop

I was outside, sitting on the steps of a staircase, trying to hold myself together. A Roblox staff member found me there. She had nicknamed me “Hiphop” at some point during the conference because I hop when I am excited. She walked up to me and said: “What’s the matter, Hiphop?”

I started crying. I told her I really wanted to punch someone because he had ruined something I loved. She was calm. She said: “No, no. Don’t do that. That’s really bad and it will get you in trouble. How about you take a walk? The weather is so nice. Take a walk, get some fresh air, clear your head. You’re clearly in a lot of distress and you’re shaking.”

She was kind. I thanked her. I started walking back toward my hotel.

When the Grip Left

Somewhere on that walk, something in me let go.

It was not a dramatic moment. It was quiet. One second I was walking and the next I was somewhere else inside myself, dissociated, untethered, not fully in my own body. Everything I had been holding landed on me at once. The marks on my neck. My religious family at home who could not know. Every friend I believed hated me. Zeal. The feeling that I had nowhere to go and no one who wanted me there.

At that moment, I made a decision. I was going to end my life.

I did not think of it as giving up. I thought of it as the only logical conclusion to a night that had already taken everything.

Three Buildings

I disappeared into the city. I do not know exactly where I went. I was not tracking myself. I climbed at least three buildings, looking for a way to the top.

America is not like home. Back home, rooftops are accessible. I had gotten up onto them before, in darker times before this one. Here, every emergency exit was locked. Every stairwell ended at a closed door with no gap, no ledge, nothing. There were suicide prevention measures everywhere, the kind that exist precisely because people like me have looked for exactly what I was looking for.

I started kicking the emergency exit doors. Screaming at them. People heard me and I had to run. I was barefoot at some point. I was wearing my formal attire from the RIAs. I was terrified and furious and so completely exhausted by existing that I could not think of a single reason to keep doing it.

What Was Happening Behind My Back

I learned all of this afterward.

While I was climbing buildings looking for a way to die, the police were called on me. While I do not have definitive proof, nor accounts from anyone that may have witnessed the report, I believe it would not be far-fetched for me to conclude that it was Zeal, Zerum, Kat, and Cyborg that had called the police on me. They may have reported me as a threat. They may have used the fact that I had made verbal threats in a BPD episode to have me arrested. It wouldn’t be surprising that they called me a psychopath.

I was not a threat, I was a 22-year-old girl in formal attire with no shoes, somewhere in a city I did not know, trying to find a tall enough building to jump from. But they did not know that, or they did not care, or both.

Cyborg called my phone multiple times. He said he wanted to give me a hug. He said I should come back. He did not say there were police waiting. I was tempted, I wanted someone to want me, but I decided I did not deserve hugs. That I was too horrible to deserve comfort. So I did not go back.

My friend, [X] was not there that night because Zeal had told me he would not come. That was a lie. [X] did not show up to the RIAs because he had a business meeting, not because I had made him uncomfortable. Zeal invented that. He told me [X] did not want to be around me so that I would feel more alone. It worked.

What I know now is that [X], when he found out where I was and what was happening, left everything. He was in the middle of a deal with someone who represents a major creator. He left it. He pushed people to help find me. He ran.

Binary

I had made it to the street. I was standing there thinking about cars. About what it would take. About whether that was the way.

And then a man walked by with a dog.

The dog jumped up on me. I do not have a better way to describe it. She launched herself at me and started licking my face before I had time to process what was happening. Her name was Binary. She was a Husky. She was completely, entirely, joyfully convinced that I was the most important person on that street.

I stopped. I could not stop crying and I could not stop laughing at the same time. Both at once. My breathing steadied. I was back in my body. I was no longer in that headspace. Binary had knocked me out of it.

Binary. Sept 6, 2025, San Jose. She found me on the street and knocked me back into the world.

The Man on the Sidewalk

The man noticed I had no shoes. He noticed I was wearing formal attire and walking aimlessly through the city at night with no shoes on. He asked if I was okay.

I looked at him and I said: “I’m not. No. I’m not.”

He sat down on the sidewalk. He told me to sit next to him. I did. He told me his name. I still pray for him. I will not write his name here for privacy reasons, but I will carry him with me for the rest of my life.

I told him how bad of a person I was. That I had betrayed someone I loved. That I hated myself. That I wished death on myself. He cried when he found out I had been trying to find a place to end my life. He told me the person I loved would not want me dead over something like this. He said: “You’re hurting, but you’d hurt him the worst if you were gone. Do you really want to hurt him more?” And I started crying and saying no, no, never, I love him, I never want to make this any worse for him. He also told me what I did sounded like a misunderstanding that had gotten out of proportion, and that I should talk to my friend.

Then he said: “If your friend can’t trust you, then I will trust you. May I trust you?”

I said no. I said he absolutely could not trust me. That nobody should ever trust me. That I could not be trusted.

He handed me Binary’s leash.

My Friend, [X]

I answered, I yelled, I cursed at him. I asked him why he had not shown up to the innovation awards, and why he left me waiting. I did not yet know that Zeal had lied to me about [X] not wanting to be around me. I was still carrying that lie as fact.

[X] took all of it. He did not get defensive. He told me he had gotten caught up with a business meeting and was late. Then he asked where I was. I sent him my location.

He ran. On foot. The entire distance, In his expensive suit and shoes. When I saw him across the street he was already running toward me. He grabbed me and held on.

He said he was so glad nothing had happened to me, he checked if I was hurt, then he went to the man and thanked him. He crouched down and let Binary lick him and thanked her too.

Later he told me: “Ren, you could never make me uncomfortable. It was Zeal, what he did to you. I didn’t know how to help you or tell you what was going on, and it’s all new to me.”

Sept 6, 2025, San Jose. [X] sitting with me on the sidewalk, on his phone letting his friend know he found me and I am safe.

Reporting Back to Zeal. Again.

[X] and I sat together on the sidewalk for a while. And during that time, I started texting Zeal.

Not to tell him what had happened to me. Not to confront him. To apologize. Again. The same reporting back to Zeal cycle continued even then.

I had just spent hours trying to find a way to die. A stranger had sat with me on a curb. My friend had run through the streets to reach me. And the first thing I did when I held my phone back in my hands was tell Zeal I was sorry.

Sept 6, 2025. The first messages I send Zeal from the sidewalk. Photos of the street and of Binary. Text: “I’m so sorry zeal / I betrayed you / I hurt you so many times / And I continue to hurt you.”

Sept 6, 2025, approx. 11:28 PM PDT. Sitting on the sidewalk with [X], I text Zeal: “I betrayed you.” I tell him I never broke a promise before. That I am human. A really stupid one.

(Screenshot corrected to have proper censored names.)

Sept 6, 2025, approx. 11:35–11:47 PM PDT. I tell Zeal that the man on the sidewalk cried when he found out I had been looking for a place to kill myself. I told Zeal the man said Zeal loves me. I say I realized how many people I am hurting by thinking I deserved to die. Minutes later, another acquaintance calls me selfish for worrying people. I agree with her.

Read those messages carefully. I had been walking barefoot through a city trying to find a building tall enough to jump from. A stranger had held my shoes while I held his dog. My friend had run to me through the night, and yet in those messages, I am not the person who almost died. I am the person who hurt Zeal and should be guilty. I am apologizing to him. I am calling myself stupid. I am saying I betrayed him. I am agreeing that I am selfish for having needed saving.

This is what the conditioning produced, all the way to the end of the worst night of my life. He was still the one I oriented towards. He was still the one whose feelings I was managing, even after everything that had happened to me, and they all later on had taken advantage of that.

After

After a while I told [X] I wanted ice cream, like we had gotten last time. He said okay, let’s go.

The city was loud. There was a red pickup truck on the street with music blasting and people dancing around it, a whole crowd of them, just out there in the middle of the night living loudly. I stopped and watched them. I had just spent the past few hours trying to die, and the city was just lively. Beautiful, and still going.

I notice things like that. Even after something this terrible. I cannot help it. I saw the lights, I heard the laughter, I watched people dance in the street, and something in me went quiet in a different way than it had gone quiet earlier. It felt nice to see people alive.

Sept 6, 2025, late evening, San Jose. Music blasting, people dancing around a red pickup truck in the street.

We got ice cream. Then [X] took me back to my room. He tucked me in. He covered me in blankets and sat with me until I was calm, and petted my head gently, then he left.

That night was one of the worst nights of my life.

I am alive today because of a dog named Binary, a random man on the sidewalk walking her, and a real friend that I will forever appreciate.

No one else came for me that night, and then later on they framed me as attention seeking, and preformative. I will not accept their personal reflection, as they are attention seeking, over what I went through. Their victim complex does not define my near death experience.

If I had died that night, you would not be reading this, they would have controlled the story. They would have told you what happened to me, and how, and whose fault it was, and you would have believed them, because I would not have been here to say what actually happened to me.

After RDC

September 11, 2025: The Reconnection

Eight days after my suicide attempt. Five days after RDC ended. Zeal was the one who reached out first.

I want to be clear about that. I did not go back to him. He came to me. He said he missed me. And that was all it took to pull me back in completely.

September 11, 2025: 9:47 AM

He opens with: "I really wish you hadn't done all that, because I do miss you. You were very soft."

"You were very soft." Eight days after the assault. He is describing my body, and he misses it. He is not saying he misses me, he is saying he misses how I was with him. He is opening the reconnection with a reference to physical intimacy, with no regards to my wellbeing or a care to ask how I was doing, and I fall apart.

Sept 11, 2025, 9:47 AM. Zeal reaches out first: "I really wish you hadnt done all that, because I do miss you. You were very soft." I respond by begging him to stay.

I respond: "I fucking miss u. I fucking miss u so much u don't even begin to understand the guilt I feel. I was up for the past few hours pretending I'm telling u things cuz I didn't wanna text u and make u block me so I was just saying and saying things and spamming myself. I'm so sorry for everything I did. I was so happy and excited I didn't think twice and I fucked up and I betrayed you. I'll give u all the space u ever need just please don't go away."

He says: "Im not leaving. Im just sad and disappointed."

He is sad and disappointed, not me, he assaulted me, he lied to my friends about me. He was at the innovation awards while I was on a sidewalk trying to die, and at this moment he is sad and disappointed, and I am begging him not to go.

September 11, 2025: 9:58 AM

I tell him he has every right to be sad. That I have been reflecting. That I will keep working on myself. That I never want to be like this to him again. I tell him to get some sleep before his update launch, that he went through too much too fast.

Sept 11, 2025, 9:58 AM. I validate his disappointment and make sure he rests before his game launch.

I want to note what is happening in these two screenshots. He opened by saying he misses me and I was soft. I responded by apologizing for everything, listing my failures, begging him not to block me. He responded by being sad and disappointed. I responded by making sure he was okay before his game release. I am the one who almost died. And I am managing his feelings about his Roblox update.

September 11, 2025: 5:15 PM

I tell Zeal that my best friend, someone he knows personally, has been making fun of my suicide attempt online. I show him a screenshot of her comments mocking me. She was my best friend up until this point. I tell him I cannot believe it. That I know it’s hypocritical of me to say, given everything. I tell him my attempt was real. That I was not faking it.

Sept 11, 2025, 5:15 PM. I show Zeal a screenshot of my best friend mocking my suicide attempt in comments. I tell him I cannot process it.

September 11, 2025: 5:22 PM

I continue: my best friend called me a psychopath and told other people I was a psychopath. Zeal knows her. I trusted her completely. Of everyone in my life, she was the last person I expected to do this. I tell him I am just struggling mentally. I am not a psychopath. I ask him: do I deserve this?

Sept 11, 2025, 5:22 PM. I tell Zeal I was called a psychopath. I ask if I deserve this cruelty.

September 11, 2025: 5:33 PM

Zeal sends me a photo of a bunny with another animal. His response to everything I just told him: "You dont deserve this cruelty." I reply: "Zeal u genuinely were the only person who understood me. I can't believe what I did to u and how I betrayed you."

Sept 11, 2025, 5:33 PM. Zeal responds to news of my suicide attempt being mocked with a bunny photo and: "You dont deserve this cruelty." I respond by apologizing to him.

I had just told him someone was mocking my suicide attempt. His response is a bunny photo and a reassurance. And my response to that is to apologize to him. Again. For betraying him. I am the one who almost died. I am the one being publicly mocked. And I am apologizing to the man who assaulted me.

September 11, 2025: 6:37–6:38 PM

Zeal begins framing the person who hurt me as someone who is "coping in a very awful way about losing a close friend" and says "like no one wants to cut you off, they do it because they cant trust you." He is, in effect, redirecting my pain about being publicly mocked back onto my own untrustworthiness. Then: "Im taking a huge gamble and betting that you have changed from this. And will keep your word next time."

He is positioning himself as the one taking a risk on me. The generous one. The forgiving one. I almost died eight days ago. He had assaulted me eleven days ago. And he is the one taking a gamble.

Sept 11, 2025, 6:37–6:38 PM. Zeal reframes my pain, positions himself as forgiving, and announces he is "taking a huge gamble" on me.

September 11, 2025: 6:38–6:39 PM

I say: "I will never fucking betray you or anyone ever again." He responds: "I know what u taste like. (Its good btw)"

This is eleven days after the assault. He has just told me he is "taking a huge gamble" on my trustworthiness. And then immediately, he references tasting me. Casually. Like it’s flirtatious small talk. As if what happened in that hotel room was a mutual experience we are both fond of. This is what the cycle looked like: reestablish moral authority, then immediately use the intimacy the assault created as a resource.

Sept 11, 2025, 6:38–6:39 PM. After I swear never to betray him, he says: "I know what u taste like. (Its good btw)"

September 11, 2025: 6:39 PM

I say "zeal fuck u man." He says "Give it a month. Give ppl timr to process." I tell him I was not expecting to see what I saw when I went to delete her account to give her space. I say I am not a bad person, right? He says: "No. Just mentally ill. But that doesn't make you bad. Im mentally ill."

Sept 11, 2025, 6:39 PM. He tells me to give people time to process. Reassures me I am not bad, just mentally ill.

On the "Forced to Fire" Narrative

September 11, 2025: 6:41–6:43 PM

I tell Zeal he is amazing. I tell him we never stopped caring about each other. And then I say: "It's one of the reason I forced u to fire me. I wanted to see u not as my boss anymore. I didn't wanna be scared of u anymore."

Sept 11, 2025, 6:41–6:43 PM. I tell him why I left the job. "I forced u to fire me" meant: I made myself leave. I quit.

I need to explain where the phrase "forced u to fire me" even comes from, because it is not language I invented. Kat had framed my departure to Zeal as me forcing him to fire me. That was their version of events. And Zeal repeated it to me, enough times that I had heard it so many times it seeped into how I described it myself, even though I always knew I quit. That is what this line is: me absorbing their framing back at him in the middle of an emotional conversation, trying to take ownership of something so he would not be angry with me.

I quit. I said it then. The document you are reading establishes this. The September 3 section shows Zeal asking how my job hunt is going "after you quit." I left because the working relationship had made me feel abused, overworked, and afraid. I left because I did not want to be scared of someone who was supposed to be my friend.

Kat told him I forced him to fire me. He repeated that to me until I started using those words myself. And then, in this conversation, those words were used as evidence against me. That is the loop. That is how it worked. You reshape someone's understanding of their own story until they start telling it in your words.

September 11, 2025: 6:49–6:53 PM

The conversation shifts. We talk about his health. He is sick from air conditioning. I ask if my kisses got him sick. He tells me it was the aircon, not me. I tell him to drink water, put on a jacket, and keep warm. I ask about his event release.

Sept 11, 2025, 6:49–6:53 PM. I check on his health, remind him to stay warm, and wish him a good event launch.

Eight days after I tried to die. I am asking if he is warm enough and whether the bugs in his game are going to be annoying. This is the pattern. This is what it looks like.

September 12, 2025: 2:41–3:19 AM

In the early hours of the following morning I am still checking on him. He has no jacket. He forgot it in America. He is cold. I tell him to find a blanket and wear socks.

Sept 12, 2025, 2:41–3:19 AM. I make sure he is warm. I send bunny photos until he falls asleep. He says: "oki."

This is what the reconnection looked like. Not a reckoning. Not a confrontation. Not a moment where I said: what you did to me in that hotel room is why I almost died. It looked at bunny photos at 3 in the morning, asked if he had socks on, and told him his event launch was going to be fine.

I had not yet fully named what happened to me. I had not yet fully understood it. I was still in the cycle, still caretaking the person who had put me on that sidewalk. It took time. It took therapy. It took months before I could see it for what it was.

September 13–14, 2025

This is what the note at the end of this section describes. September 13, starting at 1 AM: I am sharing old songs I found on an archive site. Sending selfies. Spamming memes and silly drawings. Sending him stickers that say "super proud of you" and "you matter." Writing "I want to live in your hugs" and "I'd go anywhere to see u again" and "I wanna be a silly cat with you." He responds with a one-word answer, or a bunny photo, or "hi." This goes on until nearly 6 in the morning.

Sept 13, 2025. Bunny photos exchanged across the day.

Then, that evening, he sends a meme. The punchline is "I can help with that." And then: "I know how u taste already." Ten days after the assault. He uses it like a compliment. Like it’s something shared and warm between us. I ask if the drama he mentioned is about Roblox. He says yes. I ask what happened. We move on.

Sept 13, 2025, 10:51 PM. Zeal sends a flirty meme, then: "I know how u taste already." Ten days after the assault.

September 14, 2025: 1:16 AM

After midnight, he asks me to send him my "gooning material." I tell him I do not have any. I am a saint. He says he is just bored and pushes: "try it."

I explain, embarrassed, that I am a reading nerd. That what I read for that kind of thing is erotica. Written fiction. That I forgot which ones. That I think this is why I am good with words. I warn him he is going to laugh at me.

He calls me "the gooner." My heart is racing. I am embarrassed. I say I will send mine if he sends his. He tells me his is "just regular twitter slop."

Sept 14, 2025, 1:16–1:23 AM. He asks for my gooning material. I explain I read erotica. He calls me "the gooner." His is "regular twitter slop."

I want to be clear about what I was actually describing, because it matters. I read. That is it. I am a word person, always have been, and the way I engage with anything, including anything intimate or sexual, is through language. Written fiction. I had not thought of it as "gooning material" until he used that word, and I borrowed it back at him because it was easier than explaining the difference at 1 AM while embarrassed.

He collapsed it into the same category as what he does, which by his own description is visual, scrolled, passive. "Regular twitter slop." Those are not the same thing. One is literary. One is not. He called me "the gooner" because it was funny and because it gave him something to use. But he had misunderstood what I actually said, or chose not to distinguish, because the distinction did not serve the moment he was trying to create.

What He Volunteered

I want to be extremely precise here, because what happens next matters.

I did not ask him to show me what he watches. I did not bring it up. I did not hint at it. He volunteered for it. Unprompted, he shared a direct link to pornographic content and described it as "stuff like this ig, very vanilla." He wanted me to see what he masturbates to. I had never asked.

Sept 14, 2025, 1:32–1:40 AM. He shares porn he watches, calling it "very vanilla." I respond with surprise, referencing how seeing him physically changed my perspective on bodies.

Then, immediately after sharing pornography he watches, he says: "fyi im not gonan send nudes, i dont feel comfy with those being online anywhere."

I want you to sit with that for a moment. He was not comfortable having his own images exist digitally, because he understood what could happen with them. He understood the risk of exposure. He understood the danger of something intimate being out of your control. He articulated it clearly. He protected himself. He made a boundary and stated it out loud.

That same awareness, that same instinct for self-protection, did not extend to me. Not in the hotel room. Not once during any of this. His comfort mattered. Mine did not even come up.

Sept 14, 2025, 1:40–1:42 AM. He sets a boundary about his own nudes, citing discomfort with anything being "online anywhere." I agree.

I told him I agreed. That it should only be in person. I said I would prefer seeing him in real life. I said I did not know what to do with something I could not physically touch. I was being honest. I was being careful. I was respecting his boundaries and stating my own.

What I Showed Him vs. What He Sent Back

A few minutes later, I showed him what I actually save on Twitter. It was a post from an account called @yourcorruptbf. A list of pet names. "My love. My darling. My good girl. My princess." Romantic, soft, sentimental. That is what I save. That is what I look at. I told him "I'm so cringe man."

Sept 14, 2025, 1:52–2:00 AM. I share the kind of content I save on Twitter: a romantic post listing pet names. I call myself "cringe." He responds with "smh."

I showed him something soft. Something embarrassing, even. Something that told him exactly who I am and what I actually care about.

His response was "smh." And then he sent another link. Another piece of pornographic content. I showed him romance. He sent back porn. Again. This was the second time, and again, I had not asked for it.

The Private Accounts

We ended up on each other's private Twitter accounts.

I told him, in all caps: "IM BEING VERY VULNERABLE WITH YOU RIGHT NOW BTW." It was my secret account. I was trusting him with something private, and I said so out loud.

Sept 14, 2025, 2:01–2:02 AM. We exchange private Twitter accounts. I tell him I am being very vulnerable. He sends a follow request.

He sent a follow request. We became mutuals on our private accounts. And that is where most of the sexting happened from that point forward. On a platform I gave him access to because I trusted him.

I am not going to document the content of what was exchanged on Twitter. It was sexting. It was mutual at the time. It was also private, and I do not have much of it saved because what happened next made that impossible.

Sept 14, 2025 : 2:02 AM. I sent him the link to my private account in DMs. That is my account. @littlesad39506. I shared it with him myself

Sept 14, 2025: 2:07 AM

Minutes after exchanging private accounts, I asked what show he was watching. He said Peacemaker. I asked if he was watching alone. I asked if I could watch with him.

He said no.

I said okay. I accepted it. I did not push.

Four minutes later, he sent me a link to a porn account and said: "shes pretty too." (Further elaborated below)

What He Did With That Access

When the fallout started, when things between us became something other than what he wanted them to be, he got my account suspended.

My private Twitter account, suspended.

While Zeal had not admitted it himself, my account was clean and I’ve had it for so long. There was no reason it could be suspended. The account I had told him was my secret. The one I said I was being very vulnerable sharing. The one I gave him access to because I trusted him. He used it against me. He reported it, or had it reported, and it was suspended. My voice, my archive, my access to my own history with him on that platform, gone.

I want to be very clear about the sequence here, because it tells you everything you need to know about how he operates.

He initiated the gooning conversation. He shared pornography, twice, without being asked. He escalated to sexting on that platform. And then, when it no longer served him to have me accessible, he had that account removed.

Every single step of this was his escalation. I showed him a romantic Twitter post about pet names. He sent me porn. We shared private accounts. He used that access until he did not want me to have a voice anymore, and then he took it away.

Sept 14, 2025, 2:07–2:13 AM. I ask to watch a show with him. He says no. Four minutes later he shares a porn account and says "shes pretty too."

"Too." Compared to what. Compared to who.

He had just told me I could not watch a show with him. Then immediately pointed at another woman and told me she was pretty. I do not know if he meant it as a comparison. I do not know if he thought about how it would land. What I know is how it landed.

I felt bad. I started sending him pictures of myself.

That is what rejection followed by redirection does when you are already in the pattern we were in. You do not get angry. You do not ask what that was about. You try to remind him you exist. You try to be enough.

Sept 14, 2025, 2:45 AM. His response after I send him photos of myself: "woah / hi"

He was pleased. That is the whole transaction. He said no, showed me someone else, and I came back trying to be what he wanted. He got both.

Sept 14, 2025, 2:46 AM. I tell him I'm hot, I just don't show it. He says: "i know first hand."

"I know first hand."

That is not a compliment. That is him reminding me that he has been there. That he has seen me. That he knows my body because of what happened at RDC. Fourteen days later, and he is casually deploying that as confirmation. Not tenderly. Not with any weight. Just: yes, I have the receipts, I know.

And I kept going. Because he said it like it was nothing, so I treated it like it was nothing. Because that is what we were doing at 2 AM.

Sept 14, 2025, 3:06 AM. I tell him I'm better looking than the girls he showed me. He responds: "?"

He showed me two porn accounts in one night. And I spent the next hour trying to prove I was better than them. I said "I'm better looking than those stupid girls." I sent a meme. I was competing with accounts he had shown me, for attention from the person who showed them to me.

He said "?"

He did not even give me the win. He set up the comparison, watched me run toward it, and then acted confused when I arrived.

September 14, 2025: 7:43 AM

It’s now morning. I have been up all night. And I am reading.

He had told me at some point that he is autistic, that this is why he is the way he is. And I had taken that and run with it. I was in therapy by this point, starting to sit with what had happened at RDC, starting to feel the edges of it. And instead of following that feeling, I went looking for a way to explain it away. I read books. I read about autism. I read trying to find the sentence that would make what he did land somewhere I could tolerate. Somewhere that made it not what it was.

I brought what I was reading to my therapist. I brought it to him. I needed someone to confirm that it was okay. That it was understandable. That there was a framework that contained it. I was in denial, and the books were how I was doing it.

Sept 14, 2025, 7:43 AM. I tell him I'm reading a book that mentions autism. He says "idk how to describe autism."

Sept 14, 2025, 7:46–7:50 AM. I ask if the descriptions sound relatable. He says "meh? idk." I apologize for asking. I call myself an old ass loser for reading books. He says "i just rawdog this shit."

I asked if what I was reading sounded relatable to him. He said "meh? idk." I apologized. I told him I just wanted to understand him better, to care about him better. I called myself an old ass loser for reading books instead of just asking ChatGPT.

He said: "man idk how i work / i just rawdog this shit."

He was not interested in being understood. He was not curious about himself. He was not offering me anything to work with. I was doing all of the labor of making sense of him, and he met it with "meh."

And I apologized for trying.

That is the part that I have had to sit with. Not that he did not engage. But that I made myself feel embarrassed for caring enough to read. I called myself a loser for it. Because in the dynamic we were in, caring that much, trying that hard, reading whole books to understand someone who had hurt me, felt like too much. Like something to be ashamed of. So I got there first and said it myself.

It was not too much. It was just misplaced. He was not someone I needed to understand. He was someone I needed to stop explaining.

September 16, 2025: 4:39 AM

Two days later. He sends me a photo of a baby bunny held in someone's palm. A random internet image. The caption he wrote on it: "me holding ren."

Sept 16, 2025, 4:39 AM. He sends an internet bunny photo captioned: "me holding ren."

I said "Snuggles." He said "snuggles my bunny." And then I started sending him bunny photos and asking: "Would u hold me like this." "Would u." "Wawa?" And he said "yea" and "yeah" and "ren in my hand."

Sept 16, 2025, 4:39–4:49 AM. The bunny exchange. I ask to be held. He says yes.

This is the language we had made. Soft things standing in for what I actually needed. I could not say: hold me. I could not say: I am still not okay. I could not say: what happened between us is still living in my body and I do not know what to do with it. So I sent bunny photos and asked if he would hold one, and he said yeah, and I took that and turned it into something I could survive on.

September 16, 2025: 5:38 AM

I told him we should go on a date someday. Maybe travel. He asked how. I said maybe travel. He said that was expensive.

The Conditioning Continues

What follows is a single conversation that lasts nine hours. It is the longest exchange between us after the assault. In it, you will see me name what he did. You will see me confront him. And then you will see me walk every word of it back.

I want to explain why.

By this point, Zeal was the only person left. The Pressure team had blocked me. My best friend was mocking my suicide attempt. The person who hurt me was also the only person still talking to me. When the only person who responds to your pain is the same person who caused it, your brain will do anything to keep that connection alive. Including apologizing for your own assault.

That is what you are about to watch happen in real time. I say the truth. He goes silent. I panic. I take it back. He comes back. The cycle repeats. Every time I named what happened, I lost him for a few hours. Every time I apologized, he returned. My brain learned the lesson fast.

This is not me being weak. This is conditioning working exactly as it was designed to. He built this. And in this conversation, you can watch it operate.

I told him I did not mind. That I would spend anything to see him again. He said "Hmm / Maybr."

Sept 16, 2025, 5:38–5:42 AM. I say I would spend anything to see him. He says "Hmm / Maybr." Then: "Ren on top of me again / Smiles." I laugh. He says "Sorryy."

And then he said: "Ren on top of me again / Smiles."

He was referring to RDC. He was referring to what happened in that hotel room twenty-three days earlier. And he said it with a smile. He said it like a memory he was fond of. He said it like something we had done together, something mutual, something warm to look back on.

I said: ":3 zeal putting his dumb fucking tongue down my throat when I don't expect it again / LOL"

I laughed. I used an emoji. I said LOL.

I want to explain what that was, because it was not joy. When someone references something that hurt you as though it was just a thing that happened, as though it’s fair game for a 5 AM smile, you have about half a second to decide how to respond. And if you are in the middle of telling yourself that it was not what it was, if you are still reading books and asking your therapist to help you find a framework that makes it okay, then you do not have the language yet to say: that is not something to smile about.

So you laugh. You get there first. You make it a bit. You say LOL because that is the only move available that does not require you to collapse right there at 5 AM in your bed.

He said "Sorryy." Two r's, one y. Not a real apology. A gesture in the shape of one.

Sept 16, 2025, 5:58 AM. I joke that he has probably forgotten my real name. He says he has. He apologizes.

Sept 16, 2025, 6:02\\0016:03 AM. He tells me he just came to my name. The name I had given him minutes before. Then he asks how old I am.

He Did Not Know My Name

He did not know my age either.

He has used the phrase "friends for five years" more than once. That is a fact.

On September 16, 2025, at 5:58 AM, I joked that he had probably forgotten my real name. He had. He said sorry. Six minutes later, he told me he had just come to my name. The name I gave him minutes before. Then he asked how old I was.

I want to be precise about what that sequence documents.

He sexually assaulted me on September 3, 2025. Before that, he spent months emotionally manipulating me: cycling warmth and withdrawal, collecting my physical measurements, planning what he would do to my body at RDC. He made me feel seen in ways that made me trust him. He used that trust in a hotel room I cannot unsee.

Thirteen days after the assault, he did not know my name. He did not know how old I was.

That is what five years of friendship looked like to him.

It has been seven months since September 3, 2025. He is still making his game. His platform has not removed him. He has not apologized to me. He has not reached out. He told people I harassed him at a convention and positioned himself as the one who needed protection.

He did not know my name. He never needed to. I was useful to him without it.

Sept 16, 2025, 6:14-6:21 AM. Thirteen days after the assault, Zeal volunteers, unprompted, that meeting up can "only be a 1 time thing" because he does not want a long-term relationship. I tell him not to overthink it.

Sept 16, 2025, 6:21-6:23 AM. Zeal says he is worried about me falling in love with someone who cannot be there for me. I reassure him, explain what dating means to me, and remind him we are both 22.

Sept 16, 2025, 6:31-6:39 AM. I spend eight minutes reassuring him: I will not depend on him for my stability, he does not need to shut the door early, I deserve love and so does he. "You're worth the risk to me." I tell him to go to sleep.

Sept 16, 2025, 6:41-6:43 AM. Zeal says "gn." I follow with one more message: we have both survived hard things, and fearing this is stupid in comparison. "I need u to be more brave than this and I will be too."

I Comforted Him

Thirteen days after he sexually assaulted me, Zeal opened the conversation with an announcement: if we ever met up again, it could only be a one-time thing. I had not asked. He volunteered for it.

Over the next thirty minutes, I reassured him.

I told him we were young. That I did not expect the future to be figured out. That I would not depend on him for my stability. That he deserved love. That he was worth the risk to me, I told him not to shut the door early, I told him to be brave.

Then I said goodnight.

He said gn.

He had just told me I could only have him once. I spent thirty minutes making sure he was okay about it. I managed his feelings about what he had done to me.

He said “gn” and went to sleep.

Sept 16, 2025, 2:14 PM. Eight hours after reassuring him, I send a long message naming what I have realized: I had a nightmare that made me see the pattern. "All I am to you is just a body to fuck." I say I cannot meet him again if it is one-sided. I ask what the holding was - love or expectation.

What I Was Trying to Say

At 2:14 PM, I sent what I had been carrying since I woke up.

I named it directly: “all I am to you is just a body to fuck.” I said it plainly, without hedging. I connected what had happened at RDC to a pattern I recognized in myself ’ being used, allowing it, telling myself it was something else. I said I had woken up from a nightmare about it.

I also asked the question that mattered most, when he held me that night, was it because he loved me, or because he was expecting something from me? I said I could not meet him again if it was one-sided. I said I wanted love, not to be used.

It is the clearest I would be in this entire conversation.

Twelve minutes later, I walked it back.

Sept 16, 2025, 2:26 PM - 8:04 PM. Twelve minutes after my confrontation, I write: "It's fine though like. I'm not mad. I deserve this for the shit I did." He does not respond for over five hours. At 7:59 PM Zeal surfaces: he is not ready for Love. He wants to stay fwb. I say I don't mind waiting.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:04-8:07 PM. I apologize for scaring him. He says he wants to stay fwb - "been friends for years, it's weird going from friends to lovers.", I call myself stupid for not having my feelings figured out.

The Apology and the Label

At 2:26 PM, twelve minutes after naming what he had done, I wrote: “It’s fine though like. I’m not mad at u nor am I upset atp tbh. If anything I feel numb rn and kinda don’t rly gaf. I deserve this for the shit I did.”

He did not respond for over five hours.

When he resurfaced at 7:59 PM, he told me he was not ready for Love. He said we had been friends for years and it was weird going from friends to lovers. He framed what I had named as assault as a relationship transition he was not prepared for. He made himself the one who needed to be handled carefully.

I said I did not mind waiting.

Then I apologized, I called myself stupid. I said I genuinely did not have my feelings figured out about anything in life.

He had sexually assaulted me thirteen days earlier, I was now managing his discomfort about being loved too much.

At 8:11 PM, I told him I had never cried like that before. Not anywhere, not with anyone. That was true. I meant it.

But I also told him my brain was going in two directions. Either he held me because he loved me. Or he came to my room that night for other reasons. I did not know which one. I was going back and forth trying to make sense of what happened.

I was starting to understand something, though I did not have the name for it yet. I kept going back over what happened in that room. Trying to figure out his reasons. I was not calling it assault yet. But I was getting closer. This was part of the process of figuring it out. I was putting the pieces together in real time, in a conversation with the person who had done it to me.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:11-8:19 PM. I explain my fear of abandonment - that I started pushing for love so he would not disappear. I say the first time I did not feel scared was when he held me. "It felt like it was the first time someone genuinely gave a shit about me." I say I never cried the way I did in his arms.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:21-8:24 PM. Zeal says he held me because we were friends and friends help friends. I respond: "Friends do not do this. Zeal. Friends don't." I tell him: "Friends don't carry someone to bed and hold them and breathe down their neck and wrap each other in blankets." He says: Man idk then.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:24-8:25 PM. I tell him that when he held me on the couch, both [X] and Cyborg were confused - because that is not something friends do, and they knew something was up. He says: "Man dude idkkk." Then: "I did it as a friend and it became more than that."

Friends Do Not Do This

I told him clearly, more than once: friends do not carry someone to bed and hold them and breathe down their neck and wrap each other in blankets.

I told him that [X] and Cyborg were confused in that room. That they knew something was up. That I had many friends at that event and none of them had done what he did.

He said: Man idk.

He said: Man dude idkkk.

He said: I did it as a friend and it became more than that.

That last sentence is the closest he came to acknowledging what the holding was. He said it. He did it as a friend, and it became more than that. Then he moved on.

I kept explaining. He kept not knowing. I was carrying the weight of something he was unwilling to name. I gave him every opportunity to say it clearly. He responded with variations of idk until I stopped asking.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:25-8:31 PM. I explain that no girl lets someone touch and carry her that way unless she wants them. I tell him I had feelings for him for two years. Zeal responds: "I dont really have personal boundaries with friends so i dint see it that way. They can all slap my ass if they want idc."

Sept 16, 2025, 8:33-8:34 PM. Zeal: "Ren I love u but like / I dont Love you yet." Then: "To me, i was conforting a friend who was down in the dumps." Then: "It got a little zesty." I respond: "BRUH im gonna slap u."

Sept 16, 2025, 8:34-8:35 PM. Zeal clarifies: "It got zesty and we got naked. But like. I still see u as my friend." I say I'm stupid for thinking about the future. I apologize for freaking him out. He confirms he left the convention early because of it.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:36-8:38 PM. I ask if he would go around having sex with other female friends. He says: "I mean if they wanted. Dude idk man. Im just a guy." He tells me I am thinking way too far ahead for him.

He Got “ Zesty “

He sexually assaulted me on September 3, 2025. On September 16, 2025, at 8:34 PM, he described it to me as: “It got zesty and we got naked.”

The word zesty is not an accident. It is a specific kind of erasure. The kind that sounds light-hearted, even funny, so that anyone reading it would feel they had misunderstood the gravity of what was being described. It reframes assault as mutual flirtation. It reframes a hotel room and a violation as something that simply happened to both of us equally, a thing that “got” a certain way on its own, without agency, without harm.

He had told me earlier that he was "comforting a friend who was down in the dumps.” He told me he does not have personal boundaries with friends, that anyone can slap his ass if they want. I asked if he would go around sleeping with other female friends, and his answer was: if they wanted.

I responded to “it got zesty” by saying I was going to slap him. I laughed at it. I did not know what else to do when the person who assaulted me turned it into a joke.

I then apologized for freaking him out.

“We got naked” is the second part of that sentence, and it does the same work. We did not get naked. He took my clothes off. His tongue was in my mouth and I could not think. I was nonverbal. I was out of it.

There was no moment where I made a choice about my clothing. No decision. No reach. Just him, and his hands, and me not present in any way that counted as participation.

The word “we” turns it into something mutual. A thing two people did together. That is not what happened. “We got naked” requires someone on my side of that sentence who was choosing. That person was not in that room.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:39-8:42 PM. Zeal lays out explicit terms: "We can keep being friends, we can keep being freaky, u can keep masturbating to me if u want, we can fuck if we meet, etc." I tell him I bought a book on autism and relationships because I care about him. I say other girls would not bother.

The Terms

At 8:39 PM, Zeal laid out what he was offering:

“We can keep being friends, we can keep being freaky, u can keep masturbating to me if u want, we can fuck if we meet, etc.”

He had just described the assault as getting zesty. He had just told me he did not Love me yet. Sex when convenient, no commitment. He was not ready for Love, but he was ready for this.

I responded by telling him I cared about him. I had bought a book on autism and relationships because I wanted to understand him. That other girls would not give two shits. I was still, at this moment, trying to be what he needed.

I accommodated the terms.

This conversation began thirteen days after he assaulted me. It ended with me accepting an arrangement that gave him everything he wanted and named none of what he had done.

Before he offered those terms, he told me I was thinking way too far ahead for him. I was not talking about settling. I was not talking about marriage. I was not planning a future he had never agreed to.

I was asking if we could give this a chance. Not forever. A chance. Like two adults who had been through something together and might want to figure out what it was. Responsibly. Carefully. Like grown people.

He turned that into too far ahead. Too much. As if wanting to date like an adult was the same as demanding everything immediately. As if asking to be considered was the same as asking to be chosen forever.

He was the one who held me all night. He was the one who said he would have liked to hold me forever. But me asking if we could just try, like grown people, properly, that was too far ahead.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:42-8:46 PM. I offer to help him understand people and relationships. He says he is good. I say I hope he does not get in trouble. He says he won't. At 8:46 PM I share sweet.mp3 - a song I was in the middle of writing when he started talking to me.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:50-8:52 PM. Zeal says gifts scare him. I correct him: "No lmfao. I was writing this whennnn u started talking was finishing it up." It was not a gift. It was mine. He says he is getting a lot of mixed signals. I say it's fine.

Sept 16, 2025, 8:52-8:54 PM. He asks what the song is for and whether he can have it. I say: "Just personal feelings and expression. Yeah sure." He pins it. Then: "Itd be for pressure." I say: "That's fine."

Sept 16, 2025, 8:54 PM. Zeal asks if I am okay with him using my song for Pressure. I say "Idc." He says: "Hugs my ren."

The Song

At 8:46 PM, I shared a file: sweet.mp3.

I told him I had been making it when he started talking to me. It was mine, something I was writing, personal feelings and expression, not finished or mixed well. I was not giving it to him. I was showing him what I had been working on.

He misread it as a gift and told me gifts scared him. I corrected him: “No lmfao. I was writing this whennnn u started talking was finishing it up.” He said he was getting a lot of mixed signals. I said it was fine.

Then he asked if he could have it for something. He just liked it. I said: “Just personal feelings and expression. Yeah sure.”

He pinned it. Then told me it would be for Pressure.

I said: “That’s fine.”

I had spent this entire day trying to make him understand what had happened between us. I had named the assault, walked it back, apologized, explained, watched him minimize it as getting zesty, accepted his terms. At the end of all of that, he took my creative work for his game.

I said that’s fine.

Then he asked if I was okay with it. I said: —Idc.“ He said: —Hugs my ren.“

This is the version of him that showed up after he had gotten what he wanted. Not before. Not while I was trying to explain what happened in that hotel room. Not when I was walking it back, or apologizing, or accepting his terms. After. When the conversation had ended in his favor and he had my music and I had run out of things to say.

He gets cold. He gets mad. He disappears. But he took my clothes off while his tongue was in my mouth and I could not speak. He took my song at the end of a nine-hour conversation where I had given everything. And then he said: —Hugs my ren.“

The warmth is always after. It is always for him.

Sept 16, 2025, 9:03 PM. Zeal asks: "Am i still allowed to think of u when doinh it btw. Just woke up and got morning wood." I say: "Sure." Then: "Idm cuz like im single so idc." He asks if he should inform me. I say yes.

At 9:03 PM - nine hours after the conversation began - Zeal asked: “Am i still allowed to think of u when doinh it btw. Just woke up and got morning wood.”

I said: “Sure.”

Then: “Idm cuz like im single so idc.”

I was not enthusiastic. I was exhausted. I had spent nine hours in a conversation where I named what he did to me, apologized for naming it, comforted him, explained what holding someone in a hotel room means, watched him call it getting zesty, accepted the terms he offered, and gave away my music.

“Sure” is not consent. It is what is left when someone has run out of energy to hold a line. It is the sound of a person who has already given everything and has nothing left to protect.

He said Oki.

This is the last exchange documented here. It is not the last thing he took from me.

Sept 17, 2025, 11:58 AM. He sent this.

An art of a girl crying, being held upside down, showing her underwear. That is supposed to represent me and him. Captioned 'Kissing rens panties.' Then 'Wawa.'

This is the power dynamic he saw between us.

September 19

Sixteen days after RDC I was still talking to him. Someone had invited me to use the music I made for Pressure at a Roblox event called The Block. I went to Zeal to ask if I had permission to use my music. They made sure to tell me that if I used my music for anything, I was trying to use Pressure for personal clout, and I had no right to do that because I forced Zeal to fire me.

What I did not know at 3 AM was that I was about to find out exactly who had shaped how the team saw me.

Their name is Kat. Zeal confirmed it. They had me blocked like the rest of them. At RDC they handed me stickers and steered me away. They did not make up what the team thought. But they "found the best way to say it." His words. Kat gave everyone the language to agree on who I was.

Sept 19, 2025, 3:44-3:46 AM. I say I have successfully made everyone hate me. He says he will bring it up again.

3:51-3:54 AM. He says the way I left 'turned a lot of the dev team off.' I say: 'That's Kat.' He says: 'yes.'

I named them. He confirmed it.

I was spiraling at 3 AM, and what I was about to learn is who built the tools the team used to do the same thing.

3:55-3:57 AM. I ask why Kat now has control over everything. He says: 'ive broguht up ur idea to multiple members of the team all saying the same thing, kat just worded it best.'

3:57-4:00 AM. I ask if he thinks I am trying to manipulate him. He says no. The team's last memory of me is forcing him to fire someone.

Kat did not make up what the team thought. They just "said it best." They gave everyone the language to agree on who I was.

He tells me he does not think I am manipulating him, then keeps explaining how damaged my reputation is. Both of those things were happening in the same conversation.

4:01-4:06 AM. I ask why I keep trying. He says: 'ren man idk.' I tell him he is the only person who has looked at me without hatred.

4:07-4:12 AM. He says I burnt bridges. The team does not want to hang out or work with me anymore.

He is the only person who looks at me without hatred. I told him that at 4 AM, after he assaulted me.

Then in the next screenshot he tells me I burnt bridges and the team wants nothing to do with me, he is the one I just said sees me without hatred. Those two things were happening in the same conversation.

4:16-4:20 AM. At RDC I walked up to the team. Most had me blocked and gave me the look that I was harassing them. Kat walked a little with me and gave me things. I felt like they were just being nice to me.

Kat had me blocked like everyone else. But at RDC they gave me stickers, walked with me, and steered me away. I was shooed. That is the word I used at the time.

They were also the person who had given the whole team its clearest language for why I was the villain. That is what Zeal confirmed at 3 AM. They "found the best way to say it." Stickers at the convention. The worst version of the case against me to the team. Both at the same time.

4:20-4:21 AM. He says the team remembers me as 'the teammate who guiltripped [X] into firing him' and leaking the soundtrack early. I say: 'But I didn't leak it early did I.'

Two things are being held against me: That I guiltripped him into firing me, and that I leaked the soundtrack early. He never fired me. I quit on my own when I started losing it and feeling fed up. I never wanted to come back or work for Pressure again. This was a one time event that Roblox invited me to and I did not want to turn them down.

I denied the soundtrack accusation right there. He did not argue with the denial. He just kept going.

That is how this works. The accusation does not need to be true. It just needs to be in the story the team tells about you. Once it is in that story your denial does not erase it. It already did its job.

Kat put it in the story. The team remembered it. It is still being used against me since summer when I quit.

4:21-4:22 AM. I say I did not burn bridges. He says I said I would, but I 'didnt.' He shows me something I sent him. He says: 'but thats not what they remember.'

4:22 AM. 'They see you as a bad person because you painted yourself as one. You burnt the bridges, ren.' I beg him to tell them. He asks: 'tell them what.'

I said things in crisis I did not follow through on. He saved them. They are now evidence of who I am.

He tells me I did not actually do it. But that does not matter because what the team remembers is that I said I would. The gap between words I said in pain and what I actually did has been closed.

My worst moments of self-criticism are now my biography. Kat made sure those moments reached everyone in their most convincing form.

He is telling me the team sees me as a villain because I described myself that way in my worst moments. That my own words, said while I was falling apart, are now my permanent record.

I begged him to say something to them. He asked what I wanted him to say. He had nothing. He spent an hour walking me through all of the damage and had nothing to offer to fix any of it.

He built this with Kat. Kat gave it its shape. He delivered it. And when I asked him to help me undo it the answer was: tell them what.

4:23 AM. I start accepting the framing. I say I 'talk like a victim like I did nothing wrong.' I say I am 'pushing against boundaries.' I call myself insane.

At 4:23 AM I stopped fighting the framing. I called myself insane. I said I talked like a victim. He had walked me into it over four hours.

4:33-4:45 AM. He says the rest of the Roblox community still thinks I am great. 'it has really drained my social battery.' I ask if he still wants me around. He says yes but he needs a break.

After hours of cataloguing exactly how burned my reputation is. After explaining every reason the team does not want me. After doing all of this at 4 AM.

It drained his social battery.

He said he still wanted to be around me but needed a break. I said of course, take all the time he needed. I said I hoped he could get a good night's sleep sometime.

I thanked him. I said I would do my best not to disappoint him again.

I said this to the person who had just spent four hours making me call myself a villain.

4:45 AM - 9:32 AM. I write to my therapist. I write to myself. I say I am a good person and I want to keep believing it. I go to sleep.

The timestamps say 4 AM, then 5, then 6. I did not sleep that night. The guilt they put on me would not let me. This villain narrative did not start on September 3. It started in summer. Zeal mentally abused me, yelled at me, the whole team drained me. I was on medication that made me hallucinate, cry nonstop. The worst I did was lose it in chat. They made that the whole story.

By 9 AM I was writing optimistic messages to myself. Telling myself I would be amazing and loved and strong, rebuilding alone from inside a spiral he had just deepened, I want the record to show I was still choosing to believe I was a good person. My friends told me that is not what a villain looks like.

What This Was and What It Did to Me

That conversation was not him supporting me. It was four hours of him walking me through every reason the team hated me, confirming Kat had built it, offering no way to fix any of it, and then telling me it drained his social battery. I thanked him.

This is what it felt like from the inside. You already believe you are the problem. Someone with power over how others see you sits with you for hours confirming it. Every concern you raise gets framed as manipulation. Every question becomes evidence you cannot understand limits. By 4 AM you are calling yourself insane.

I did not sleep because I spent four hours absorbing a case against myself with no way to respond to it. The guilt was not something I chose, It was built into me over months, then reinforced at 3 AM by the person who had assaulted me before this conversation happened.

The conviction that I was a bad person did not come from what I did. It came from what they chose to do with what I said during a really low period in my life. I was on medication that made me hallucinate. Not eating, not sleeping. They watched me crash and kept a record of it. That record is what they showed everyone.

The result was that I spent this night awake, writing apologies to my assaulter, messages to my therapist, and notes to myself saying I was a good person and I wanted to keep believing it. That is what they built. That is what it looks like when you have been convinced you deserved everything that happened to you.

Kat built the narrative. Zeal delivered it. The team absorbed it. And at 4 AM on September 19, I was alone with it, trying to put myself back together.

Around this time my therapist started to notice what was happening. She could see I was being manipulated. She started helping me look for the truth instead of just accepting the version of events I had been handed. She said I was a good person. She helped me understand that what I was living inside was not reality. It was a story built around my worst moments to keep me from seeing things clearly.

September 25

Twenty-two days after RDC. I had posted personal questions on my private Twitter a while back. Things like whether he thinks about me often, what his size was. They were just sitting there.

On this day, Zeal got on Discord and told me he was not comfortable with online flirting and dating anymore. He set his boundaries. Then he went to his private Twitter and started answering those exact questions. I told him to stop, and to not answer. You just set boundaries, why are you telling me this. He answered them anyway.

Sept 25, 2025, 4:59-5:05 PM. I bring up the questions. He tells me he is not comfortable with online flirting or dating anymore. He sets his boundaries.

After weeks of sexual messages, explicit content, and deliberate emotional bonding, he suddenly announces he is not comfortable, he frames it as a health decision for himself. He is the one who started all of it. He is the one who escalated it. And now he is the one drawing the line. Then, after saying all of this, he went to Twitter and answered my personal questions anyway. He set the boundary and then crossed it himself in the same breath.

5:05-5:07 PM. He says he does not want to date someone who is not a 20 minute walk away. 'U can continue to goon to me if u wish, if it helps, all that jazz.'

He does not want to date me because of distance. Not because of what he did. Not because he manipulated someone he met at a convention. Because I am not close enough geographically.

And then: 'U can continue to goon to me if u wish.' He had just told me he did not want a relationship. In the same message, he tells me I can keep being sexually attached to him. He is not ending the exploitation. He is ending the parts that require emotional effort from him while keeping the parts that serve him.

He wants to stay friends. He wants me to still be available to him physically. He is making sure I stay attached enough that the next time he sees me, I will still be there for him to use.

I was pulling away. I told him I was removing his private Twitter. That was my first real attempt to cut a line he had used to keep me attached. He said “okay”

5:12-6:23 PM. I tell him I am removing his private account. He says okay. I tell him I cannot hang out. I called my cousin over for a sleepover.

I called my cousin that night, she came over and I cried, I told her everything. How horrible he made me feel. How lonely I felt. How I felt like I was nothing. She took my phone. She scrolled through the messages between me and him. She told me he needed to be punched in the face, she told me to block him, I could not.

6:23-6:24 PM. I tell him I called my cousin for a sleepover. He says he hopes I have fun. I say I need to rest.

We talked and I cried a lot that night. Then we slept. We ate together the next morning and she left after I started to feel more stable again.

Zeal had been actively destroying my mental health the entire time and I could not leave him, that is when I felt stuck.

He had made me so emotionally dependent on him that even after everything, even after my cousin begged me to block him, even after my siblings and my friends and my therapist all told me the same thing, I could not do it. He did not love me. He wanted something. He got it. And now he was trying to detach from the mistake he made, which was me catching feelings after being manipulated.

But he still wanted me attached, that is what 'you can goon to me still' meant. That is what staying friends meant, he was keeping the door open, for himself. So that the next time he wanted something, I would still be there.

Stuck. That is not a pleasant thing to feel.

September 29

Four days after he set his boundaries and crossed them himself. Despite my cousin telling me to stop talking to him, I kept going. I felt horrible all the time but I could not stop. I was trying to ignore all the history that happened between us and trying to convince myself we were just normal online friends, but it was not working. I was not crossing his boundaries. I was just talking to him about my favorite games, my hyperfixations, songs I liked, sending him silly gifs and stickers. Normal things. This was the last time I reached out like nothing was wrong.

Sept 29, 2025, 6:46-8:56 PM. I invited him to VC. He says he is working. I sent a hamster gif two hours later.

After that, everything landed. What my therapist had been saying. What my cousin had been texting me. What my siblings said. What my friends online and in person had been telling me. It all hit at once.

I went silent. I did not text him for a week. If he joined a voice channel in my server, I would leave. He didn’t text me either, not once.

A week after I went silent, he reached out. He sent a shitpost gif to see if I would reply instantly. I had him muted.

Oct 7, 2025, 1:17 PM. Zeal sends a shitpost gif. I had him muted.

I Stood Up For Myself.

October 11, 2025 : The Last Conversation

Four days after the shitpost gif. I had been sitting with everything. Every deflection, every time I tried to talk about what he did and he turned it into something I was doing wrong.

This is the last conversation I ever had with him. I finally said what I had been trying to say. I confronted him about the assault, the double standards, the way he dismissed my pain as mood swings and treated my honesty as betrayal.

He did not hear me. He compared it to old arguments to make it smaller. He told me to go to sleep. He framed the server they exiled me from like I was upset about not being invited to play with the cool kids, when what I was desperately trying to tell him was that he sexually assaulted me and I needed there to be a real human in there somewhere. There was not.

I blocked him that night. I never unblocked.

Oct 11, 12:36-1:31 AM I tell him I'm tired and exhausted and to go fuck himself. He says "wut." I say read it again. He says he's confused.

Oct 11, 2:03-2:04 AM I call him out for using my mood swings to dismiss everything I say. He says he feels "betrayed" because I told people. He makes himself the victim.

Oct 11, 2:05-2:06 AM I tell him he said it in bed. His answer: "because we arent dating?"

Oct 11, 2:08-2:12 AM I tell him he never admits his mistakes. I ask if I'm allowed to feel anything. He does not answer that.

Oct 11, 2:13-2:21 AM I give up. I tell him to keep distracting himself. I tell him I do not give a fuck anymore.

That was the last time I ever spoke to him.

He thought I was having another mood swing. He thought I would come back in the morning like I always did. He told me to go to bed.

I did not go to bed. I blocked him. And I have not spoken to him since.

Oct 11, 2:23-2:54 AM I ask why he doesn't care. He says he won't tire himself out. I tell him to go fuck himself. His last words to me, thirty minutes later: "go to bed ren." Then I blocked him.

What I Understand Now About The Past

Looking back, I can see that RDC didn’t come out of nowhere. By then, I had already spent a long time minimizing things he did to me. I kept excusing cruelty and humiliation and instability because I wanted to believe he was still the person I’d known for years. I kept telling myself he was stressed, or impulsive, or emotionally confused, or just bad at communicating, I let too much go.

I also understand now that I wasn’t only his composer. Over time, I became someone he wanted continued access to, someone he could pull close when it benefited him and push away when it didn’t. Someone he could keep emotionally attached without ever giving me safety or clarity or respect in return. The fact that we’d known each other for years didn’t protect me. In a lot of ways, it made it easier for him to keep me near while using my loyalty against me.

I didn’t have the language for it then. I do now.

Earlier Signs I Failed To Name At The Time

These screenshots are older, but I’m including them here because they matter in hindsight. I didn’t fully understand what pattern I was inside at the time. I made excuses for public humiliation, cruelty, and the way he talked about me to other people. Looking back now, I see these moments differently. They were not random. They were warning signs.

He explicitly said he didn’t want to “close the door fully” on me and wanted to keep “a foot in the door.” That’s what I was to him. Not a person he cared about. Access he wanted to keep open for later.

This is the environment around him. Everyone is replaceable. Anyone can be discarded. That wasn’t abstract to me. That was how he treated me too.

He called me schizo in front of other people. He said I have multiple personality disorder. In public. As a joke. At the time I tried to let it go. I shouldn’t have.

Rumors, Reversal, and Smear

I’m including the following screenshots because they document rumors that were brought to me after the fact. I was told that people had been repeating a false claim that I was the one who sexually assaulted him. I am documenting what was said to me, who brought it to me, and what I was later told about where that accusation may have come from. Where I can’t independently verify a claim, I’m saying so plainly.

In these screenshots, the person highlighted in blue is the one who brought this to my attention. The person highlighted in red is who they say told them. Kat is the person I was later told may have started or spread that false version of events. I don’t know for certain that every step of that chain is accurate, and I’m not going to pretend I do, I’m showing what was told to me.

The blue-redacted person reaches out to tell me what they’d been hearing. They say they were told I was the one who sexually assaulted Zeal. They tell me they didn’t want to believe it.

The conversation continues. The red-redacted person is named as the one who passed the claim along. I was told Kat was the person who started or spread that false version of what happened. I can’t confirm every link in this chain myself, but I’m documenting what was said to me.

Image Control and Public Relations

I also was told that public relations were brought into this. I’m including it here because it lines up with what I’d already come to understand: once he realized I might come forward, the priority wasn’t accountability. It was managing how it looked.

A public relations agent has been hired, potentially for damage control.

Postface

I Say This With a Broken Heart

I want to be honest with you: bringing this forward breaks my heart. Not only because of what happened to me, but because I know what it means for you. I know that Pressure matters to people. I know that for some of you, what he built is something you have a real emotional connection to. I am not here to rip that from you or tell you it meant nothing.

I am not trying to ruin your fun, I am not trying to destroy something beloved, I understand that this lands hard, and I am sorry that it has to land at all. But I will not stay silent to protect your comfort at the expense of my truth. That is not a trade I am willing to make anymore.

To the Team

To The Team. Especially you. You know who you are. The way you manipulated everything, damaged my credibility behind closed doors, and then collectively agreed with each other that Zeal was right in what he did to me - that I am the villain of this whole story from before the sexual assault even happened, while we were working together on this game, says a lot about you as individuals, not me. My friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, community and fans know me. I am not alone, like you attempted to make me believe I was. I am kind hearted. I am loved. Unfortunately, you did not know me, never wanted to, and now you never will.

On His Inner Circle

His social circle is made up of opportunistic people rather than true friends. The people in his social circle are attached to him because of the status, access to power, and the success of the project. In addition to be willing to blindly defend him, run away and deactivate their accounts until things calm, they can also be ready to immediately turn against him and take over the game as soon as he’s exposed, and pretend they didn’t know any of this. If this group had even a shred of real morality, after learning about his actions towards me, they would have broken all ties with him immediately. However, instead they turned a blind eye to his actions, simply to benefit from the opportunity presented by him.

You’ll do a great deal for someone who paid you $2,000 – $5,000 – $10,000 for a plushie sale, if that means you get to maintain your friendship. Once everyone finds out the truth, you’ll begin to realize how predictable everything has become.

To MY Old Best Friend

This letter is not addressed to Zeal. It is for someone else.

I am not going to say your name here. I owe it to the good memories we had, and they were real to me. I do not know anymore if they were real to you. But I need to say this, because you abandoned me and betrayed me, and we have blocked each other everywhere, and this is the only place left.

I notice things. I always have.

I remember the hotpot dinner. It was my first time. We were all together, a whole table of friends, and the soup touched my finger and I dropped my plate and it splattered on everyone's aprons. Every single person at that table turned to me and asked if I was okay. That it was fine. That it didn't matter. They were kind about it. They reassured me while I sat there anxious and embarrassed.

You were the only one at that table who gave me a death stare.

You thought I didn't notice. I noticed. I notice those things. I always did. I just loved you anyway.

I remember sitting with you in your hotel room when you told me you were jealous. That I had made it and you had not. I hugged you. I told you that you would make it too, that I would support you however I could, that you would meet people at this event who would change things for you. I meant every word. That is who I was to you.

You saw me as a burden anyway.

You took what I said to you in private. The things I said when I was furious at the way the dev team had treated me. Things I told my best friend in confidence. And you sent it to them. You added them behind my back. You let me keep talking to you while you were feeding it back to them. You used my own words, my own language, out of context, to make me look unstable, I do not know if it was jealousy, I do not know if it was bitterness or wanting to take my place with them. I genuinely do not know what you were thinking.

What I do know is what you did after my suicide attempt.

You made fun of it on your private Instagram. You went around telling people it was for show, that I did it for attention. You, of all people, who sat in front of me and admitted you were jealous of me, who I held and told it was going to be okay, used the worst night of my life as something to mock. As someone who seeks attention the way you do, your reflection cannot be placed onto me.

On Accountability

He thought my loyalty could be bought. That the money, the platform, the success of the game would be enough to keep me under his boot forever. For as long as I can remember, I lacked self respect. It was not until recently, through therapy, that I began to realize how much I am worth. It’s never too late to wake up.

Zeal plays dumb so he does not have to take the blame for his actions, and therefore, he gets other people to help him manage his life and his feelings.

Zeal, you need everyone to feel sorry for you, and you need them to protect and defend you. You are an unaccountable person, full stop.

It’s not my job to protect him from the consequences of his own choices anymore, the consequences of those choices belong to him now.

I have finally realized that he will never accept that what he did to me was traumatic and painful, and will forever affect my life. He will always look at himself in the mirror and see a misunderstood guy, he will never reflect.

As much as it hurt me at first, it fortunately doesn’t anymore.

I’ve given up on him.