Pocad are killing me

Ryugi sat at his desk doing what he rarely allowed himself to do anymore — actually writing. No doomscrolling, no refreshing tabs, just the cursor moving and the quiet hum of the hangar around him. The space was too big for one person, truthfully. High ceilings, exposed beams, the kind of echoing silence that made you aware of every small sound. He'd filled it how he filled most empty things: poorly and with enthusiasm. Shelving units lined one wall of his office, and on them, organized with a precision that had no business existing alongside the rest of his life, sat his newest edh pet project. Narset Enlightened Exile

The doorbell rang.

He didn't get up. He pulled up the camera feed on his second monitor, already knowing it was probably her — Chowon had a specific way of standing at doors, weight on one foot, head slightly tilted, as the door had personally offended her by being closed.

He was right. He pressed the button to unlock the hangar.

The sound of the door rolling open carried all the way to his office, followed by the soft echo of footsteps on concrete.

"Ryugi?" Her voice bounced off the walls, softer than the space deserved.

He didn't look up from his screen. "In my office, Cho."

A beat.

"Ryugi." Louder this time, with feeling.

"Cho."

The footsteps picked up.

She came in the way she always did — fast, curious, already looking at everything at once. Her eyes swept his desk, the monitors, the stacked notebooks he kept meaning to organize, and then landed on the blown-out grid of Pocas on his monitor. She stepped closer, scanning the rows. Her expression shifted through something he couldn't quite name before it settled back into neutral.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"They don't have yours yet."

She nodded slowly, processing. "Okay. First run, they gotta get the popular ones out first. Am I in the second run?"

Ryugi winced. It was involuntary. "Sadly. No."

Chowon looked at him — really looked — and said, "Will I be on any run?"

Another wince. "Probably not."

She stared at him for a long moment. The hangar hummed. Ryugi's monitor blinked.

"Elaborate," she said.

He sighed the sigh of a man who had explained this before to no one and was now explaining it to someone. "The way the site works, a lot of Nugu groups aren't going to build enough momentum to get poca sets. No matter how many fics exist for them."

"Really."

"Yeah. It's tied to the unique author count. Not fic count. Not quality. How many different people are writing about you?"

Chowon folded her arms. "So even if you wrote thirty-five fics about Lightstum yourself — good ones, ones people actually liked—"

"Still nothing."

"That's bleak."