Chapter 29: I'm Busy Today!
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 29: I'm Busy Today!
This was an emergency.
A major emergency.
Doah's sudden message had set up a gaming session for tomorrow.
I hadn't played enough games to completely scrub my nickname history, so as soon as I was done talking to her, I frantically started a match.
This time, I just queued for a normal game, but I figured from the next match on, I'd have to spam ARAM just to rack up the games...
[cherriestastegood: DOA#8721 send me a friend request.]
Ha. These guys who play Yuumi are always like this.
They just sit on someone, doing nothing but tapping their keyboard, so why is their ego so damn big?
First normal game. The Yuumi player on my team screwed up, and when I said something, they started arguing back, insisting I was just hating on them.
Honestly, it was infuriating because if we had won that last fight, we could have ended the game at 15 minutes.
With the gold lead we would've had, we could have bought items and just steamrolled them with pure stats. We also could have dealt an irrecoverable blow to their jungler, whose pathing was already messed up.
Don't get in my way!
I'm fucking busy right now!
My goal was to play at least eight games by dawn.
In that context, dragging out a winnable game was the worst.
I figured it'd be more satisfying to argue over voice than type back and forth, so I told them to join Voicecord, but...
[You are already friends with this user!]
The message that popped up when I entered the ID made me tilt my head.
I checked the chat again, wondering if I'd typed it wrong, but the ID was correct.
If that was true, it meant this person was already on my Voicecord friends list...
I read the username carefully one more time.
“Doah... 8721...”
...Doah?
...No way, the Kim Doah?
A chill ran down my spine as I opened my friends list and looked for Doah.
[Playing Legends of League.]
Hovering my cursor over her name, I could see the game time.
[19:32]
The time she started the game was an exact match with mine.
“...Ah. Fuck. Wait a minute.”
With the feeling that I was seriously screwed, I couldn't focus on the game anymore.
This meant the Yuumi was Doah.
[cherriestastegood: Hey. Why haven't you sent the Voicecord invite? You chicken?]
...Chicken!
...Fucking terrified!
The moment I realized that ‘cherriestastegood’ was Doah, my head started to spin.
What was I supposed to do? I had just given her my ID, but had she not noticed yet?
Seeing as she didn't immediately ask if I was Taemin, it seemed possible she didn't know.
Wait, Voicecord.
I needed to check my Voicecord settings first.
Doah had her settings configured to show that she was in-game, but I didn't.
Han Taemin's profile was just set to offline.
I felt a wave of immense relief.
I scrolled back up through the chat log to check the messages I'd sent.
First, I'd pinged a bit... As for swearing...
I'm not the type to hardcore flame people in the first place, so there wasn't anything too extreme.
At worst, the most I said was something along the lines of, ‘All you bastards who play Yuumi are the same’...
[cherriestastegood: Hey. You said let's use Voicecord. Why haven't you sent an invite?]
Of course, I was the one who started it, but Doah came at me like a fighting cock.
[RRRRRRR: Ah. Voicecord is bugged;;]
Pathetic! Han Taemin!
So fucking pathetic!
Even I thought I was being the most pathetic person in the world, but I couldn't help it.
It's not like I could get on a Voicecord call with Doah and start cussing her out.
Not only would we not be able to play together tomorrow, but things would obviously get awkward with Doah from now on.
[cherriestastegood: What do you mean, bugged lol]
I flinched, feeling like she could see right through me, but I just wanted to smooth over the situation somehow.
[RRRRRRR: Whatever, just focus on the game go]
We were about to fight over an objective, so Doah didn't press the issue or type in chat anymore.
The game entered the late game, a tense situation where a single mistake from either side could end it all.
Both teams were positioning, trying to feel each other out.
I thought we'd have a better chance if I poked them down a bit, so I was holding a forward position.
The enemy team, probably thinking they'd lose if they took any more poke, suddenly charged forward.
I had anticipated it to some extent and was trying to reposition back a little to keep dealing consistent damage, but the disaster happened somewhere else.
Whether they failed to manage their distance or just couldn't react, our team's mage champion got focused and instantly blown up. The enemy team rode that momentum and chased us to the end.
Our teammates fell one by one.
With Doah attached to me, I did my best to run away.
But it wasn't enough to change the outcome.
In the end, we couldn't defend our tower, got pushed all the way back, and lost our Nexus.
[ZOXYC: Would've won this game if it weren't for the brainless bot lane bitches.]
Hey! The game ended because you got blown up!
I was dumbfounded.
It wasn't a ranked game where points were on the line, but I couldn't help being annoyed.
[cherriestastegood: Yeah~ if you hadn't died, we would've already won~]
“Pfft.”
Doah's message was so satisfying, it felt like a weight had been lifted.
This was the raw, unfiltered Doah—not Luka, and not the version of her who was always so conscious of me.
No pretense, just straightforward. I like it.
Afraid I might get caught, I left the post-game lobby immediately, took a break from queueing, and wiped my forehead.
Anyway, how was I supposed to get out of this situation?
The best-case scenario would be that she didn't realize it was me and just let it go, but if she decided to interrogate me tonight or tomorrow, I had to be prepared.
Worse, my old nickname, [Lukatansmine], was still visible if you just scrolled down my match history a bit, so using this account was out of the question.
After racking my brain, I came to a conclusion.
I queued up for another normal game.
My summoner spells were Cleanse and Ghost.
[I'm throwing~ please report me!!!]
And just like that, following the name change, my main account successfully got suspended.
“Hwaaam~”
I didn't need a mirror to know.
I could feel the deep, dark circles under my eyes.
My goal hadn't been to rack up games but to get banned, so I had run around Summoner's Rift like a complete psychopath, not even playing the game properly.
And I didn't just run around. I spammed insults and did every single nonsensical play I could think of.
It was a time when I truly felt like I was doing something awful.
Trolling isn't for everyone.
It's surprisingly hard for a normal person to pretend to be unhinged for that long.
“Hey! Han Taemin!”
As I was dozing off, slumped in a corner of the lecture hall before class, a familiar voice reached my ears.
“What.”
Yoonje, the club regular, sat down next to me, grinning from ear to ear as if something great had happened.
“Dude. Why do you look so drained?”
“Just tired from staying up late.”
“...A girl?”
I don't think I know anyone more girl-crazy than him.
Yoonje was the literal embodiment of 'a bastard crazy for women'.
“No. Just messing around.”
“That's not important. Hey, look at this.”
Yoonje held his phone out to me as if he had something to show.
“What is it?”
“Isn't she amazing?”
He was making such a fuss that I glanced at the screen. It showed a picture of a woman who looked like an influencer you'd see all over Instagram.
“Who's this?”
“She's an acquaintance of a female friend of mine. Said she'd introduce me to her today.”
My internal alarm started blaring. This bastard is about to ask me for a favor again.
“I see.”
“...Wanna come with?”
“No.”
Absolutely not.
“Ah, Taemin. Pleeeeaaaase.”
As expected. My senses are never wrong.
Yoonje put his hands together in a praying gesture and bowed his head.
“Can't you just come and sit with us for just one hour?”
“No. Why would you drag me to a meeting with you and your friend's acquaintances?”
Just go have fun with them. Why are you doing this to me?
“The condition was that I had to bring a handsome friend.”
“Then find someone else.”
“Ah, I really tried to, okay? But my friend saw a picture of us together and apparently wouldn't stop whining about how she wanted to meet you.”
Haaah... seriously...
Honestly, I should have cut ties with this kind of person, but I couldn't shake Yoonje off so easily because I owed him a big favor from our freshman year.
Besides, he was just crazy about girls; he wasn't a bad guy.
“It's today?”
“Yeah. 8 PM today.”
My game with Doah was scheduled for 9 PM anyway, so I was just about to say I couldn't because I had prior plans, when...
“...Oh. Oppa is busy today!”
The pitch was a little off.
Both Yoonje and I turned our heads at the same time toward the voice coming from behind us.
Doah, wearing an oversized knit sweater that was much too big for her frame, was standing there blankly. I had no idea how long she'd been listening to our conversation.
Doah's eyes darted around before she looked to me for confirmation.
“...Right?”
If a chat window existed in real life, I would have definitely spammed it with [cuteee].