Forced Into a Break, Apparently (2)
The moment she was handed a forced day off, Jin Gyeo-wool headed straight for a PC bang. She figured she might as well play some games she never normally got around to.
She claimed a seat, ordered a hot dog for a snack and a cola to go with it, and was about to boot up a game when the part-timer who brought her food asked a question before she could even hand over her card to pay.
"Excuse me—are you by any chance Jin Gyeo-wool? From Team Recon Seoul?"
She should have said no. But this was the first time anyone had ever recognized her like this, and before she knew it she was beaming and answering honestly.
"Oh. Yeah, that's me."
His face lit up even brighter. He looked like a regular PC bang employee, but he must have seen her photos all over the Recon gallery boards. Declaring himself a fan, he held out a metallic marker and his phone.
"Could you sign this for me?"
"Uh… a signature. I haven't actually made one yet…"
"Then just write your name. And could we maybe take a picture together?"
"Yeah, sure. Hang on a sec."
A signature, huh. What kind of signature was she supposed to give? Gyeo-wool tipped her chair back and let out a long, thoughtful groan. Arms crossed, lips pushed out in a pout—she had no idea how adorable the pose looked, or how thoroughly it was winning the part-timer over.
She started mentally cataloging the things in her room.
On the desk: a curved monitor optimized for gaming. To the right, a small bookshelf stuffed with various titles she didn't seem to actually read.
On top of the shelf sat an SD Aliston the Cow figure, an SD Chimo figure, an SD Lar figure, a nine-tailed fox Ara statue, and a Katrina statue. Someone must have gifted them, or she must have cared about them a great deal—they were all sealed inside an acrylic display case.
Nothing particularly special.
…No. Wait. Thinking about it carefully, there was one thing.
A dust-covered photo frame she'd deliberately laid face-down in front of the unread books on the floor. The background was the GGN studio where CCK matches were held, and inside it Gyeo-wool was smiling alongside Lee Do-jin and Lee Bom.
Gyeo-wool decided then and there to invent a signature that even Hon Gyeo-wool would accept.
Her own name as the base—but with Bom's name placed first, so she'd never forget her.
Bom. Gyeo. Wool.
"Here."
"Whoa, that signature is seriously cute."
"Is it?"
"Could you write my name on it too?"
"Sure. What's your name?"
"Oh Do-jae."
"Got it…"
Squeak. Squeak. The marker glided across the smooth back of the phone.
Gyeo-wool handed the finished phone back to the part-timer and took the food he'd brought in exchange.
The problem started after that.
"Could I get a signature too…?"
"Are you going pro?"
"Which team are you thinking of joining?"
"Holy crap. You're way prettier in person."
"Hello!"
Somehow word had gotten out. One after another, people who'd been playing Recon in the PC bang came over asking Gyeo-wool for autographs.
In the end, she never even got to touch the hot dog she'd ordered until it had gone completely cold. The poor thing lost its chance to be eaten while it was still warm.
Realizing this wasn't going to work, Gyeo-wool hit the pause button on her session. Then she grabbed the hot dog and drink and fled the PC bang. She didn't forget to return the bow of the part-timer who saw her out—all thanks to Lee Do-jin's training.
Wandering around after leaving the PC bang, her feet eventually carried her to a nearby playground. Here, at least, nobody would recognize her. That was the idea, anyway.
"Came to play some games and I can't even play…"
Relieved, Gyeo-wool took a bite of the hot dog topped with cold ketchup and mayo—only for someone to call her name again.
"Gyeo-wool noona?"
She flinched, but turned her head with deliberate calm. Showing someone your chewing face was bad manners, according to Lee Do-jin, so she thoroughly chewed and swallowed every last bit of hot dog in her mouth before she managed to look.
"Wait, it really is noona?"
"…Jesus, you scared me, Choi Do-yun."
Thankfully, the person who'd recognized her was Choi Do-yun.
She wasn't particularly curious how he'd tracked her down this far from the practice room. Her empty stomach took priority—Gyeo-wool's hand shoved the rest of the hot dog into her mouth in a frantic rush.
"Who's chasing you? Why are you eating like that?"
Gyeo-wool demolished the entire hot dog sitting on its square cardboard tray, swiped the sauce from the corner of her mouth with her thumb, and licked it clean.
Then she cracked open the soda she'd brought and downed the whole thing in one long series of gulps.
"Kahhh."
"…You're seriously gonna choke eating like that."
"I'm not gonna choke."
Choi Do-yun looked genuinely anxious, as if his future wife might somehow damage her health. Gyeo-wool didn't notice any of it and kept talking with total indifference.
"So why are you even her…e?"
"Me? I've got the day off too. I was just wandering around wondering what to do and happened to spot you."
"You live around here?"
"Yeah."
Gyeo-wool was about to find that surprising when she suddenly remembered the message Coach Chae Hojin had sent her before she left the house that morning.
Sharp as she was, Gyeo-wool immediately grasped the coach's intent. Aha. So that was why he'd told them to rest over the weekend. For reasons she couldn't quite pin down, he'd deliberately arranged an environment where the players and Gyeo-wool could hang out together.
She knew the cause and she knew the result. Naturally, Gyeo-wool started trying to figure out why Coach Chae would think of something like that.
"But why do you have the day off? Originally I was the only one resting today."
"Coach told me to take the day too."
"He didn't say anything else?"
"Nope. Guess today is just my and noona's day off or whatever."
A disappointing answer. Gyeo-wool furrowed her left eyebrow and muttered bluntly,
"Figures. What would you know, trailing after me all day going 'noona, noona.'"
"Wh—what are you talking about. Don't treat me like an idiot."
"You are an idiot. Before I fixed you, you'd wander up to the top lane whenever you got bored."
"That was… that was me wanting to take care of you. That was genuine."
From the first few months of teaming up until now, they'd almost never had a chance to talk one-on-one—and that was how the misunderstanding had grown so large.
Gyeo-wool was finally one step away from grasping the full truth of it.
"Why would you take care of me?"
"Uh…"
Choi Do-yun was baffled. Of course he took care of her—Gyeo-wool liked him and looked after him, so he couldn't just keep receiving without giving back. Having a "why?" attached to something so obvious left him flustered.
Why was she questioning the motive behind that behavior? Convinced of the depth of Gyeo-wool's affection, Do-yun started fumbling through the information he knew.
Female interest signal number four: she asks a lot of questions.
Also, female interest signal number fourteen: she directly asks if you don't like her.
The current question was a little different, but wasn't it in a similar vein? Maybe she was expressing a desire to reconfirm their love!
Having reached that conclusion, Choi Do-yun delivered what he considered the perfect answer.
"Well… you take care of someone as much as you love them."
"……."
At the word love, Gyeo-wool—who'd been fine until then—furrowed her right eyebrow too. Sensing her newly uncomfortable gaze, Do-yun panicked.
What? Did I answer wrong? He hurriedly kept talking.
"No, I mean… not like, I love you a normal amount. I mean I love you so much that I just keep wanting to look after you! That's why I kept ending up on the top lane without even realizing it…"
"Hold on. Back up. You love me?"
"…Huh? Of course I do? Why?"
Gyeo-wool tilted her head at an angle, mouth hanging open like an idiot. She looked like she was thinking something over very carefully.
She muttered various things under her breath as she wrestled with it—so quietly Do-yun couldn't hear a word.
Why would he love me?
Did I do something that could be misunderstood?
What the hell kind of misunderstanding even is this?
But thinking wasn't going to produce an answer. Things had been tangled from their very first meeting and had stayed that way ever since—how was she supposed to figure it out?
She tried tracing her memories all the way back to the day they met, but there were far too many points that snagged. Gyeo-wool couldn't pin down any single specific action that had caused things to end up like this.
"Uh…. So. What are you planning to do now?"
"What about you, noona?"
"Me?"
Whenever she asked what he was going to do, he always asked for her opinion first. That was when it finally clicked. The reason Choi Do-yun was always so considerate, always trying to yield things to her—it was because he loved her.
And Gyeo-wool had no such feelings whatsoever.
The second she said she wanted to do something, Do-yun would clearly trail after her like a lost puppy. So Gyeo-wool decided to get out of there first.
She wanted some time alone. Only then could she analyze how things had gotten this way and come to some kind of judgment.
"Ah, uh…. I think I'm gonna head home soon."
"Already?"
"Yeah. I just remembered something I need to do."
A kinder girl might have invented a plausible excuse out of consideration for the other person, even when forcing a goodbye. But Gyeo-wool hadn't originally been a girl to begin with, and Hon Gyeo-wool—who influenced her personality—wasn't any good at that kind of thing either.
In the end, Gyeo-wool's words came out rather harsh.
"So go play by yourself today. Later."
"Ah—noona? Noona?"
Drawing fully on her Peak Athletic Ability, Gyeo-wool took off running toward the main road. Do-yun chased after her, but even though she barely exercised, the sheer difference in talent meant the gap opened up almost immediately.
In the taxi she flagged down on the boulevard, heading home, Gyeo-wool sank into thought.
What the hell have I been doing for this kid to get this deep into a delusion?
Worse still was the chill that ran down her entire spine the moment she registered that Choi Do-yun loved her. The one inside Gyeo-wool's body was Bae Do-hyun—there was no way a one-sided love coming from another guy was going to sit well with him.
Either way, she had to fix this problem fast. Otherwise Do-yun's misunderstanding would only grow, and the odds of him doing something stupid later would climb even higher.
Gyeo-wool groaned and buried her face in her hands. Inside her heart, the favorability graph for Coach Chae Hojin plummeted toward the floor at a catastrophic angle.
That bastard. If there was a problem like this, he should have dealt with it himself. This was why he'd told her not to come in over the weekend.
Trembling with a sense of betrayal, Gyeo-wool started racking her brain for a way to clear up the misunderstanding without leaving a scar on Choi Do-yun's heart.
If she just brushed it off with something like "I don't like you, don't get the wrong idea," a sensitive guy like Do-yun would have it affect his play. There were still about two months until the international tournament, and there was no guarantee he'd recover in time.
But even after more than twenty minutes of thinking on the way home, no answer came. Even after barricading herself in her room, collapsing onto the bed, and thinking for several more hours, still no answer came.
Having sprinted after the fleeing Gyeo-wool, Choi Do-yun finally crouched gasping in the middle of some random alley, completely out of breath.
"Hahh… seriously. How does she run that fast…"
It had been a while since he'd last sprinted, and his heart felt like it was about to explode. But what hurt his heart even more was the sudden cold-signal Gyeo-wool had just sent him.
Female disinterest signal number six.
During a meetup, she claims something suddenly came up, or that she has to go home early.
People who liked each other generally didn't keep secrets—and she hadn't even given a real reason before heading home. It had been a completely one-sided farewell announcement.
Do-yun was suddenly terrified. He was convinced he'd done something wrong and that was why she'd run away.
"Augh… what is it? What did I do wrong?"
The boy had no idea he'd stepped into a maze with no exit—and he began wandering through it without end.