It Keeps Overlapping
There are things that are better than good ones, and even more good things than that.
I used to think that saying was true.
Gabi didn’t like the current situation at all.
If it had only been her and me—no, the woman pretending to be me—she would have gone looking for that girl the second she could.
But with her friends around, she couldn’t do that.
The exam had just ended, and it was a good day.
They had come over to hang out instead of just eating something delicious and parting ways.
She hadn’t wanted to ruin that mood with her own problems.
She could have stood up and said she had to go, but she didn’t.
Gabi had only ever studied. Even making friends was hard for someone so introverted.
No matter how much she talked to people, it was never easy for an introvert to say what she needed to say.
So Gabi swallowed down her unease and accepted the matchmaking game.
The promise had been made with her friends first anyway.
She had to stay with them first.
Twenty years of values had taught her that much.
Gabi resented the friend who had dragged her into the game without asking, but she never showed it.
She had even considered showing Noel the messages to ask for help, but what if Noel had some secret she couldn’t tell her?
“Oh, there’s the mid laner. Jungler, come help with a tight mana burn.”
“The Cain start is too weak. You can’t just go in at level six.”
“Why does the jungler have to pretend to have a brain? Every level-up after two, come help the mid laner.”
“Jungler? No help needed for the mid laner.”
“Yeah, the mid is running.”
“You’re really insane.”
Even while they bickered in that childish way, the friends were laughing. She didn’t want to spoil that feeling.
So even if she went to Noel’s house, she would go alone.
She was prepared to report anything that happened.
While they waited for the loading screen, Gabi stared at her phone hoping for another message from that side.
She wasn’t sure if the friend was focusing on the game or doing something else.
No special contact came.
Yeah. She would just stay with them a little longer and then head out.
She would wait with resolve.
She would find out exactly what had happened to Noel.
Gabi made that vow while looking at Noel’s English four-letter ID.
Whether she had meant to or not, she had ended up matched with another girl pretending to be Noel.
She was the support, Noel was the long-range dealer.
It wasn’t a coincidence that they had been placed together so often.
They had probably just been lucky to be paired with a friend they liked, and the others had given up their lanes.
The reality wasn’t like that, and it wasn’t very welcome, but it always had been.
For Gabi, games were just a way to spend time with friends.
It had always been that way, and it still was.
The raw fun of competition and cooperation was explosive and gone in one match.
Games didn’t really interest Gabi, so it didn’t matter whether Noel was on the same lane or not.
It was just another black character wielding dual pistols.
She was Lulu, the support who only needed shields, movement speed, and attack speed buffs when the black character fought.
Her own growth and contribution to the game didn’t affect the outcome much.
It was perfect for Gabi, who only played games casually.
The game started, and after she helped the jungler for a moment with the big jungle camp, she arrived at the lane where the minions were moving.
The black character immediately started beating them hard.
Gabi also attacked the minions without thinking, following the black character.
The enemy long-range dealer also used a skill to clear the minions in time.
Up to that point, Gabi felt no tension about the game.
She was already worried whether Noel was okay if someone else was pretending to be her.
But because both supports were aggressively clearing minions, the black character, who had just reached level two before Gabi could react, charged straight at the enemy marksman.
“Eh? Eh?”
Gabi, who had only just reacted, placed a shield on the black character and joined the attack on the enemy marksman.
The enemy marksman, who had also reached level two the moment the fight started, used an extra skill to counter.
She backed up slightly, shot a snare, and then began firing at the black character that Noel was controlling.
At the same time, a purple cow suddenly appeared from the bushes and rushed at the black character.
The black character dodged every blink skill with the same flashy movement, and continued fighting the enemy long-range dealer.
Dual pistols and a long-range gun.
Gabi, who didn’t understand game mechanics, just helped hit the targets Noel was attacking.
Naturally, when the support skill missed the enemy, winning the fight was unlikely.
Feeling the defeat coming, at the last moment the long-range gun’s marksman tried to blink out of the battlefield.
But the pistol bullets already fired by the black character and the magic ray shot by the Lulu Gabi had left on standby were chasing her.
[GabiGju defeated RainyDay Paratajo! First blood achieved!]
The long-range dealer was taken down, and only the lone purple cow remained.
Her skills had all missed the black character wielding dual pistols, so she desperately walked toward her own tower and died from the concentrated fire of the black character and Lulu.
It was almost natural.
[GabiGju double kill!]
“Wow, Gabi’s doing well?”
“Lulu is carrying, so I just have to run the jungle.”
“Hey, Ji-seon! Come help the mid laner!”
Her friends cheered at the victory sound from the bottom lane, but Gabi knew it wasn’t something she could be happy about.
A support who gets kills by defeating enemies doesn’t gain much more efficiency than just taking more gold.
If she had picked a carry support, it would have been different, but Lulu was purely a support champion who helped allies.
Meanwhile, the critical-strike-based items for long-range dealers were expensive but guaranteed power.
Even though Gabi only played games a little, she understood that much.
It wasn’t that she hated the long-range dealers she met in ranked games when they got kills.
Of course, it was better than not getting kills.
It was much better than the enemy getting kills.
[Team] GabiGju: Sorry
Still, Gabi apologized.
She could have had a better chance, but she had thrown it away.
[Team] Noel: It’s fine if the support gets kills too
[Team] Noel: The ADC gets CS, so the support can get the kills
But Noel comforted her.
Maybe because she had never been a long-range dealer user.
“Hoo, look how nice Noel is.”
“I’m switching to top jungler from today.”
“Insane girl, help the mid laner!”
Just like her friends said, Noel had always been kind.
Her family situation was good, her parents were good people too.
Growing up in such a home, Noel had been popular with her friends without any problems.
She would never have had any enemies at all.
So Gabi liked Noel too.
That was why the words had been something Noel had said in the past.
When she had been finishing off minions without thinking, money would come in, and she would get last hits on a whim.
When the other kids got angry at her for not being a support, Noel had only said she was happy if the support got big too.
She had said it was fine if she ate the kills herself.
For the exact same reason Noel had just said.
It was fine if skill shots missed.
Skill shots were something the person who hit them did well at, and the person who dodged them did well at dodging.
Even if she died from a vision control mistake, she would say the other side had spotted the weakness.
They might have just been casual words, but since she had been playing a game she didn’t enjoy, those words had stuck in her memory.
And then she had run off to the top lane.
Thinking about that made Gabi keep making mistakes on purpose.
It wasn’t really a mistake, maybe more like trolling, but she kept doing it.
[Paratajo Wang Haemul Paratajo blocked GabiGju’s chain of kills!]
[Team] GabiGju: Sorry
[Team] Noel: They hit well
She pretended not to notice the jungle fighter’s obvious intervention, reacted late, and died.
[Paratajo Yonggang Jangsos sauce is on a slaughter spree!]
[Team] GabiGju: It’s hard to avoid…
[Team] Noel: It’s the person who hit the skill who did well
She could have dodged the enemy mid laner’s long-range attack but walked straight into it and took the hit.
[Team] GabiGju: Why didn’t it hit?
[Team] Noel: It’s the person who dodged who did well
[Team] Rolonoa Kim Chun Kwon: ADC? What’s a tank doing ADC lol
[Overall] Buchaengjeon: This kid suddenly stopped talking, he must be typing in chat now
[Overall] Buchaengjeon: Truth room
[Overall] Rolonoa Kim Chun Kwon: Ah, I don’t know, Mordekaiser bastard
Even the skill shots she used to hit well in lane now missed, letting the enemy escape alive.
“Ah, Gabi seems to be losing her condition.”
“It’s only been a little while. It’s normal. The start was lucky.”
Her friends gave awkward support, but they were still talking to her like she was the one who was bad.
Noel just repeated the words she had once said to Gabi and quietly did her own job.
Gabi thought it was pathetic that the thought even came up because of a game.
It was because she had said she was Noel.
It kept overlapping.
Finally, the game ended and Gabi stood up from her seat.
They had played one game together, so she felt she had kept her promise.
“Eh, Gabi. You’re leaving?”
“You might be bored with the game. Want to go to karaoke?”
“Ah, no. You guys play. I’ll go see Noel for a minute.”
“Ahaha, it’s been a while since you met a friend, huh?”
“Go and help her well. I heard from the news there was something really tough.”
Gabi tilted her head at the strange words from her friends, but because of Noel’s constant messing with her feelings, she let it pass lightly.
“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”