Chapter 7
“———So that's how you ended up trying out the club activities?”
“Yeah.”
Lee Sol nodded as Jinuri summarized the situation.
It was a somewhat troublesome situation for me.
All I had to do was get her to put her name down. But her sudden appearance threatened to undo all the effort I'd put in so far.
“What do you want to do?”
“Hmm···.”
Lee Sol pondered Jinuri's question briefly, then.
“I'll join this one.”
she replied.
“Really?”
I was honestly surprised.
I hadn't expected her to decide so quickly.
“Yeah. Honestly, this place seems more comfortable than the other clubs.”
That was perhaps a very Lee Sol-like answer.
“Are you okay with this? Weren't you going to do club activities with her?”
What was unexpected was that Jinuri showed hardly any reaction either.
“I don't care. She says she wants to join this one.”
Jinuri shrugged.
“I was only worried she'd be a nuisance to other people. As you can see—”
I turned my head in the direction of her gaze.
Lee Sol was chewing jelly and hugging an armful of snack bags.
When had she gotten like that?
“Mmph, I'm a member, so I can eat whatever I want, right?”
— “···Do you really need to ask? I'm a member too, so I can eat whatever I want.”
She looked just like a greedy hamster, with her cheeks stuffed full of food.
“······Yeah, she's like that.”
Jinuri sighed deeply at the sight.
She was looking at Lee Sol more like an older sister than a friend.
“······Are you really okay with this?”
Jinuri was seriously worried about me, not Lee Sol.
But I didn't have a choice.
If we didn't take even her, the club would be shut down immediately.
“Can't be helped.”
And so, Lee Sol joined the Counseling Club.
***
March. The month when spring begins.
Buds sprouted from the trees, and warm breezes began to blow. It was perfect weather for an outing after a long time.
Where did the most Korean schoolboys go to hang out on a day like this?
Why, none other than a PC bang.
I was no different.
“Uuuugh···! Phew~”
I stretched and loosened my stiff body this way and that.
‘Those bastards left first because they had to go to their academies···.’
I clicked my tongue as I thought of the two who had gone ahead.
They'd invited me to go to a PC bang for the first time in ages, only to leave before I did.
Thanks to them, I had to play by myself from the middle onward.
“It's fun since it's been so long, but···.”
I was starting to get bored.
Playing with several people was more fun than playing alone, after all.
I should head home now.
I shut down the computer and gathered my things. Just as I was about to get up.
— “Does this fucking game always have to be like this?! Ah, fuck!”
“······.”
A very familiar-sounding curse lodged itself in my ears.
I stopped where I was and looked around.
Someone wearing a hood sat not far away.
No matter how I looked at it, that was···
“···Shin A-young?”
“Eek?!?”
At the sound of her name, she leaped up and bounced in place.
“Y-you've got the wrong person···?”
Shin A-young yanked hard on the drawstrings of her hoodie.
The hood cinched shut in an instant, completely hiding her face. I definitely couldn't see her now.
“······What are you doing?”
As I stared at her in disbelief.
— “Huh? That voice···.”
Shin A-young's head slowly turned in my direction.
She peeked her face out through the tightly closed hood. Her eyes, visible through the gap, reflected my face.
“······Oh, it was you. Whew, you startled me for nothing.”
Shin A-young casually tossed her hood back.
She had the look of someone who'd hidden for no reason.
“······.”
Ever since the incident last time, it seemed like she treated me worse than before.
Was it just my imagination?
“What are you doing here?”
“···What, am I not allowed to play games?”
Her voice was a little sullen.
“No, I mean, why are you playing here? Your house is really far from here.”
At that, Shin A-young's eyes narrowed slightly.
“···How do you know where my house is?”
“Because it's famous? Wasn't it on a variety show once?”
I didn't know the exact unit, of course, but I roughly knew which building it was.
It was a pretty expensive apartment. I remembered because I'd once thought I wanted to live in a place like that, too.
“Ah.”
Shin A-young let out a short exclamation and awkwardly turned her gaze away. Apparently, she'd forgotten that fact.
“I guess you like games?”
She'd come all the way here. And judging by how she'd even wrapped her face up tightly to do it, she must have.
“I do like them··· but my parents don't really like me going to PC bangs.”
“Ah···.”
Of course. So there was a reason she came all the way here to play.
If the other kids found out, word could reach her parents too.
“Being the daughter of a celebrity sounds exhausting.”
That thought came out naturally.
“······.”
No answer came from Shin A-young.
Her expression merely loosened slightly, as if she sympathized.
“······.”
That aside.
“···Wow, what was that just now?”
The words slipped from my mouth. I meant them negatively rather than positively.
They'd escaped me at the sight of Shin A-young's play, which was so astonishingly bad it left me speechless.
But flashing into a wall and dying is just not okay.
“······.”
Shin A-young's eyebrows twitched.
The corners of her mouth were raised, but her eyes weren't smiling at all.
“···You must be good, then, if you're saying that?”
“···I'm not exactly terrible.”
The game she was playing was RUL (RUL), the most popular game in Korea.
I wasn't particularly good, nor was I bad.
But if I had to compare us, I was probably better than Shin A-young.
“Then sit down.”
Shin A-young pointed at the seat beside her in a sharp voice.
“···I don't have any PC-bang time left.”
“I'll pay for it, so sit down.”
I was unable to resist her forceful attitude and sat down.
If I ran away now, she seemed like the type who'd chase me around until tomorrow.
“What's your username?”
Shin A-young opened the friend-request window and looked at me.
“Jungler Who Never Ganks.”
“Wow··· You really picked that name at random.”
“······I don't think you're one to talk.”
Myeonghwa High's Double-Edged Axe.
It wasn't a name I could easily imagine Shin A-young coming up with. Or had she chosen it deliberately?
I found myself leaning toward the idea that she really might have.
“Bet on the kill count for the winning game?”
Shin A-young made the offer first.
I saw no reason to refuse.
“Okay. Loser buys ice cream.”
No skin off my back. I had absolutely no confidence that I'd lose.
My mouth was already watering.
“I'm getting Baskin-Robbins, so get your wallet out in advance.”
“I'm getting Häagen-Dazs, though?”
······
This was already our third game.
If there was one thing we'd overlooked.
“No, huh? Whaaat······How did it end up like this?”
It was that the bet only counted if we won the game.
I couldn't hide my devastation as I looked at the defeat message on the monitor.
It wasn't just me.
“Team-diff trash game······.”
— “Team-diff trash game······.”
Shin A-young's head drooped. At least to me, it was the first time her outer and inner selves had perfectly matched.
In a way, games really were incredible.
“······Next game?”
The question carried the implication, Do we really have to keep going?
“······What are you waiting for? Queue it up already.”
Shin A-young urged me on.
Apparently, she planned to keep queuing until she won.
“······.”
I placed the mouse cursor over the Start button and sank into a fundamental question.
Could I win if we kept doing this?
No, I couldn't.
This wouldn't do. Something had to change here.
“This isn't working. Let's switch positions. You know how to play ADC, right? Then I'll support.”
“···It's not that I can't. Do you know how to support?”
“It's not like I can't, either.”
I hadn't planned to go this far originally. But we had to win first, didn't we?
The bottom lane was especially dependent on the synergy between two people.
I planned to make the fullest use of my ability here.
“······.”
A new game began.
Tap. Tap-tap, rat-a-tat.
Shin A-young shook her mouse as if being sucked into the monitor, forgetting even to speak.
— “Oh, is this an opening?”
I heard Shin A-young's thoughts.
I got the jump on her before she could move.
“It's dangerous if we go in now, so let's pull the lane back a little and call our jungler.”
“Okay, okay.”
Since our opinions matched, the chance of making a mistake due to poor coordination dropped dramatically.
The lane phase that began this way tilted overwhelmingly in our favor.
Of course it did.
Assuming we were evenly matched individually, our teamwork had to be superior to our opponents'.
To them, it must have looked as though we were moving as one.
“···Let's play this well from here.”
And so, after the snowball slowly gathered momentum, we found ourselves in a standoff in front of Baron.
I slowly watched for an opening in the enemy's defenses, then.
Wham—!
A battle erupted with my lightning-fast engage.
“Going for the ADC? ADC! ADC!”
“Got them!”
Shin A-young didn't miss the opening and successfully took down the enemy ADC.
After that, we advanced with unstoppable momentum.
Once their ADC was down, the enemy formation had already collapsed. They were too busy running away and trying to save themselves.
Before long, respawn timers appeared above every enemy's face. It meant we'd taken them all down.
“Can we get the Nexus now?”
“Even if we can't take it, push Nexus no matter what!”
Shin A-young raised her voice and charged toward the enemy tower. She seemed a little excited.
I quickly followed behind her.
“Hit the tower, hit the tower!”
“Finish it! Nexus, Nexuuus!”
Fwoooom———!
[Victory!]
The Nexus soon exploded, filling the screen with blue light.
The two of us sprang up from our seats the moment we saw it.
“Caarry—!”
“Woooooah!”
Our palms smacked together.
We reveled in the joy of victory with our whole bodies···
Then I suddenly came to my senses.
We were kind of close. Physically.
“······.”
“···Ahem.”
She awkwardly moved a little farther away.
I also awkwardly leaned back into my chair.
“Want to go?”
We'd won one game, so there was no reason to stay any longer.
“Yeah, let's go.”
Shin A-young agreed.
Let's go, home.
“To Baskin-Robbins.”
“······?”
Where did you say?”
I looked at her questioningly.
Shin A-young pulled up the kill score on the monitor and curled up the corners of her mouth.
The ADC's KDA (Kill, Death, Assist) was 10/1/3.
Meanwhile, my KDA as support was 2/0/18.
“······.”
This girl. She wasn't letting this go.