It's Fun When We're Together
After lending sunbae my laptop, I headed straight back upstairs to my apartment and sprawled out to rest.
I didn't have a shift today anyway, and if I was going to call in sick with a torn muscle, I might as well skip the afternoon lectures too. And so I just kept rolling around on the mattress, over and over, until someone drifted into my thoughts.
Sunbae, crying so wretchedly out on the street. Sunbae, shedding tears all over again at my comfort. Sunbae, apologizing even as she refused to turn down my help, bowing her head again and again to thank me…
That was it. Right now, my head was completely full of her.
Someone once claimed that a woman is at her most captivating the moment she cries. I'd thought that was complete bullshit at the time, but I was going to have to take that back. I felt terrible even thinking it, but… the way she looked while she was crying had been incredibly beautiful. Fragile and pitiable, stirring every protective instinct I had — and beautiful, all at once.
Not that that was why I helped her. I helped her because I could. Because when she said she'd been holding it together on her own, but today had just been too much — it had sounded so desperately fragile.
That didn't mean there was no ulterior motive in there. I knew myself perfectly well. No matter how I tried to spin it, I'd just be hypnotizing myself.
Yeah. I wanted to get closer to her. Close enough to become someone special to her. We'd only known each other a week, and aside from Mondays when we saw each other at school, we only messaged every other day or so — but I still wanted to be someone special to her.
I could even say I'd fallen for her. But at the same time, my rational mind was working just fine.
She had a boyfriend.
She'd never told me that herself, but I was sure of it. There was no way someone that kind and that charming didn't have a boyfriend. Which meant this feeling of mine was one I absolutely shouldn't have.
My mood was all over the place. This ticklish, aching feeling in my chest. And when that happened, well…
"Time to hop on Elysion~"
Gotta play Elysion. Whenever random thoughts started crowding in, or I was feeling a little off, Elysion was the answer.
I got up from the mattress and walked over to the capsule. I powered it on, climbed into the open pod, lay down on the plush bed inside, and logged into the virtual world.
From that point on, I played Elysion for about ten hours straight, right up until dinner. I did climb out of the capsule now and then for the bathroom or a quick bite, but I spent the vast majority of that time in-game. And I poured every bit of it into my main character.
Lately I'd been playing my alt way more than my main. My main's playtime was forty minutes on a good day — just long enough to knock out the dailies. But my main was still this swordsman character, no question. I couldn't neglect my main too much just for the sake of an alt — and besides, now that I'd taken down Gigantomachia Mode Typhon, I could craft a new weapon. I still needed to farm the crafting materials and enhancement materials for it, so the truth was I actually had more to do on my main.
Anyway, that's how I ended up putting in a long session on my main for the first time in a while…
"Hmm… maybe I should go level the Dual Swordsman?"
I decided to go level my Dual Swordsman. And, while I was at it, see our newbie too.
"That's unexpected…"
That "unexpected" didn't come out of nowhere. Cerial played at least two hours a day, no matter how busy. On weekends, they went all out. But today, they hadn't logged in at all. Their last login date was yesterday, and even after I'd finished about two hours of hunting and midnight rolled around, Cerial still hadn't connected.
Figuring I'd wait for them, I headed over to Yushin's forge and struck up a conversation while he swung his hammer.
"Hyungnim, that newbie of yours not coming?"
"Yeah, doesn't look like they're coming today."
I was staring blankly toward the entrance, muttering to myself, when Yushin said something unlucky.
"They quit, maybe?"
"The hell'd you just say?"
The unlucky comment came with an argument just as thin as it was annoying.
"Just think about it, hyungnim. The best swordsman on the server is raising them, the best guild's blacksmith is crafting their gear, and they don't even log in? Someone who used to come on every single day? Don't that just mean they got bored?"
"They probably just have something going on. You can't log in sometimes when stuff comes up either."
"Well, that's true, but…"
"So shut your mouth. Don't even say unlucky crap like that."
"Yessir… but hyungnim."
"What now."
What other unlucky garbage was he about to dump on me now.
"That newbie and you… there really isn't anything going on?"
"There's really not. We just met in-game. He's a guy, anyway."
"Huh? A guy?"
"Yeah. When I asked what they wanted to call me, a bunch of titles came up, and 'hyungnim' was mixed in there."
That airtight rebuttal shut Yushin right up.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The hammer rang out four times, then suddenly stopped again.
"Um… hyungnim."
"What now."
"…Rainbow noona calls SettledPoet hyungnim 'hyungnim,' though?"
"…Huh?"
"They just included 'hyungnim' as one of the options. Doesn't mean we know if they're a guy or a girl, right?"
…Shit. He had a point.
Our guild was a small, elite group, and that meant we were all extremely close. During the summer and winter stretches when we did a lot of meetups, there were times we got together every single week. The nicknames had gotten pretty casual along the way. Even Shield hyungnim, who kept things formal in public, dropped the honorifics when it was just us — and that damn bunny Yeon Seoyeon, who I swear I ought to throw in a stew, called everyone oppa or unnie except me. She even dropped honorifics with some of them.
Which meant I had a comeback.
"That's just because we're all super close. Besides, Rainbow noona's got that tough-girl thing going."
"True, that newbie felt more demure and cute than tomboy."
"They did have that demure, cute vibe… wait, no, I told you he's a guy."
"You do know that in VR games, guys and girls mostly keep their real gender, yeah?"
That was actually true. Men could make female characters and women could make male ones, but for the most part, guys made male characters and girls made female ones. It was a virtual reality game, after all — you had to move the body yourself. That said, there was a system in place to minimize how much you felt the difference, so a handful of players who wanted to try out a handsome or beautiful body of the opposite sex would switch genders when they made their characters. And apparently, if you used a third-party program, you could wipe out that difference in sensation entirely.
"Well… at the end of the day we don't know Cerial's gender, so I'll think whatever I want. I'm just gonna think of them as a guy."
"If it comes down to it, you could always just ask them…"
"No. I'm not gonna ask something like that."
"Why's that?"
I answered that dense question with a simple truth.
"I'm not playing with Cerial because of their gender."
"Weren't you just doing it 'cause you wanted to newdlebak them?"
"That's true, but… lately, playing together with this person has been a lot of fun."
"Fun, you say?"
"Yeah. They soak up everything I teach them, and they've got real passion for the game."
"Whoa… it's that good, coming from you, hyungnim?"
"Yeah. Watching a talented newbie work this hard makes playing together a lot of fun. Plus they're incredibly polite, and kind."
I meant every word of that. All of it. Honestly, the personality mattered more than anything else. No matter how good someone was at the game, I'd rather play with a decent person who was a little worse than with a nasty one who was great. Fortunately, our king-god newbie Cerial had both the talent and the personality — an SSS-rank newbie through and through.
Yushin had started hammering again at some point, and he asked in a careless voice,
"Hyungnim, you thinking of recruiting that newbie into the guild?"
"Huh? Into Dawn?"
"Yessir. If it's that much fun, wouldn't it be nice to play together?"
"Dawn is… I don't know…"
Dawn was a social guild of people who just happened to be close — but it was also a guild of the highest-ranked players on the server. Putting Cerial in that seat felt like too much. Cerial was still way too much of a baby for that. Not that Dawn had a level requirement or anything, but…
"…I'll have to ask Cerial about that later. If there's someone they want to make a guild with, I should let them go."
"Won't you be sad when that time comes?"
"I'd be sad, yeah. But if a newbie's standing on their own two feet and leaving the nest, you have to clap for them. The bittersweet part comes second."
"You sound exactly like a parent, sir."
"Do I…"
One way or another, one thing was certain.
"Whatever Cerial ends up choosing, I just hope we can keep playing together for a long time."
Because it was fun when we did it together. A very simple reason — but a very important one.
I swallowed those words and stood up from my seat.
"Doesn't look like they're coming. I'm gonna head out."
"Ah, got it. See you lat—"
Yushin never finished the sentence. Instead…
Creeeak…
The sound of a door opening. And the person who made that sound was the one I'd been waiting for all this time.
"Um… hello…?"
"Ah, Cerial. You're here?"
With almost unfairly perfect timing, Cerial walked in at the exact moment I was about to log off.