Page 36 of Level Up
Owning and operating a laundromat is easy for someone of your talent. Keep the machines running, keep the customers happy, and expand your sudsy empire.
But with a mischievous matchmaking cat as your business partner, will laundered linens and clean clothes be enough to satisfy the singles who flock to your establishment?
You and your business partner might just need to cause a little chaos and confusion to bring these singles together: hide socks, open machine doors, swap baskets, and do whatever it takes to make those meet-cutes happen.
Manage the day-to-day of operating a successful business. Learn more about your customers and find suitable matches for them across your growing network of local laundromats. And whatever you do, make sure your neighbour, Nosy Nina, doesn’t report your establishment as a brothel!
With adorable hand-drawn animations and refreshingly irreverent humour,Laundromateis a riot of laughs, puzzles, and cat-induced chaos that any player can enjoy.
— Promo forLaundromateon Play’N, released February 14, 2023
eleven
do you want to build a snowman?
The followingweek passes me in a blur.
I spend all my time playingThe Stones of Ayor 4whenever I’m not streaming a different game, or working in the shop, or getting coffee with Victory and Pal, or having dinner with my family, or feeding Bitte and Danke their treats. Which is actually a lot of the time, as it turns out.
I don’t see Damien again until the following Tuesday morning, although we talk every single day. I haven’t had this much fun talking to someone since—well, maybe ever. Sharing most of the same classes with Victory in our first year of university, we saw each other a lot, sure, but I didn’t feel the need to spend every waking moment in her company. I love her to bits, and I know she loves me too, but sometimes I think I can be too much for her. (I guess I justlove-but’ed myself.)
Every so often, I worry that I’m being too much for Damien as well, but even when I convince myself that he’s sick of me and about to hang up, about to end our call and never speak to me again, he doesn’t.
And when I ask if he wants to hang out and getcoffee Tuesday—because I’m tired of spending all day in my apartment or my mother’s shop, which are, of course, in the same house—he doesn’t hesitate. Even though he could just stay home and keep playing moreSOA4. Even though he’s been talking to me nonstop for nearly two whole weeks and should be tired of me.
Even though I should be tired of him.
Maybe I like the idea of seeing him more than I should. Maybe all those weird, mushy thoughts I’d had about him before we met—even when I thought he was a dick, honestly—didn’t just disappear but have instead become weirder and mushier. And, for that reason, maybe seeing him in person is a mistake, a big neon sign flashing in my face telling me to run for the hills.
Well, that sign won’t stop me because I can’t read.
I have the day off from my mother’s shop on Tuesday, so I meet with him at Green Bean Coffee just after ten. He picked the place, although I don’t hate that it is literally down the block from where I live—and I meanliterallyin the literal sense. I’m guessing he chose it for my convenience, but it’s a nice place with good cold brew, so I’m not complaining. Once again: gift horses, buttholes.
When I told Victory and Pal about my plans—because I can’t tell one without the other, apparently—Victory offered to sit at a nearby table in case I needed to be rescued and Pal just hooted over the fact that I have a date. Which I don’t. I tried to make that clear to them, but I don’t think it’s sinking in. All that blue hair dye muddling up their brain.
I told them that he’s not interested in me that way—and I’m not sure I could be interested inanyonethat way, despite the weird mush—but they still seemed unconvinced. Though I managed to talk the two of them out of stalking me this morning, so I’d call that a win.
I arrive at the café a bit early, since I was sick of pacinganxiously in my apartment, so I order my usual beverage and snag the table by the window with the too-soft armchairs. True, there’s no way to look cool while sitting in one of these, but they are pretty darn comfortable.
I find myself looking up every time the front door opens, and deflating a little every time the person who walks in isn’t him. Until it is him, and I have to take a deep breath to calm the flurry of excitement and anxiety in my chest. Maybe I was worried that he wouldn’t show up. That he’d forgotten. That he’d decided I wasn’t worth the hassle of schlepping over here on the streetcar. That he?—
“Hey,” he says as he walks up to the table. He sounds a little out of breath and his typically shaggy hair is wilder and more windswept than usual. “Sorry I’m late.”
Oh. I think he ran here from the streetcar.
“No problem,” I say, and he shrugs off his plaid jacket to sling it over the other armchair before going up to order himself a coffee as well. If I’d been thinking ahead, I could have messaged him earlier to ask what he wanted and ordered it to be ready when he got here, like Victory and I do for each other, but it hadn’t even occurred to me.
I’m kind of shit at this wholefriendsthing.
When he finally takes a seat at our table, he sinks back into the armchair with a groan and rubs his eyes behind his glasses. “I’m so tired,” he says, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Too muchStones 4?” I ask, and he drops his hands to the armrests, shaking his head.
“I decided to sleep on the couch last night because Evan wasvisitingMalcolm,” he says. “She didn’t stay the night or anything, but I don’t really want to go in there right after they—you know. Anyway, the couch is not comfortable. At all.”
“Wow.” I take a long sip of cold brew through my straw, which is already starting to lose structural integrity. “Didn’t he just start dating her like a week ago?”
“They’ve been sort of dancing around each other for almost a year now,” he says, waving a hand through the air lazily. “They’re both part of this, like, cosplay tabletop RPG thing—Malcolm does all the costumes for their group, too—and he hasn’t been able to shut up about her the whole time.”
