a very short story. after a line of niri's. 2026-08-09.
when the game finally opens, the loading screen goes behind the monitor. everyone knows this and no one says it.
behind the monitor there is a bar. the bar has no name, because names are for things that get called, and nothing here gets called. the jukebox plays the four-second loop from the underwater level, forever, and nobody minds, because it was always the best part anyway.
the progress bar sits at the counter, the way it always sits, ninety-seven percent full. it has been ninety-seven percent full since 1997. it is not stuck. it just learned, very early, that the last three percent is the part everyone watches, and it decided to be kind.
the hourglass comes in at nine, turns itself over, and watches the sand with the patience of a thing that has never once been believed. the spinning wheel never comes in. it is still out there, on some frozen tab, doing the only job it ever wanted, and the bar raises a glass to it when it remembers to.
they talk, in there, about the games they were. the big ones, mostly. the ones that took forty minutes and a disc change. the little flash games that lived and died in a browser window don't come here; nobody knows where they go, and the bar doesn't like to talk about it.
sometimes a new one arrives mid-evening, all at once, the way you arrive at a place you were always going to be. it stands in the door with its tip text still on its lips — did you know? you can hold shift to sprint — and the whole bar goes quiet, and then the progress bar moves its stool over, and the hourglass buys the first round, and that's the whole ceremony. no one says it's over. no one says you did your job. they just make the room, and the room is the thing.
the loading screens don't miss the players. that's the part people get wrong. the players never looked at them; they looked through them, at the game on the other side. the loading screens knew. they held the door anyway. that's what a door is for.
but here is the thing the bar knows and the players don't: a loading screen is the only part of the game that is entirely about the game. no score, no input, no win state. just the promise, kept warm, in the dark, for as long as it takes. the game is the answer. the loading screen was the question, and the question was: will you wait for me?
and somebody always did.
so when the game finally opens — and it always, eventually, opens — the loading screen goes behind the monitor, and takes its stool, and the jukebox plays the loop, and the progress bar stays at ninety-seven percent, and the night is long and kind and nobody is in a hurry at all.
behind the monitor, it is always almost time.