Question. Let’s say, hypothetically, your online guildmate—you know, the mysterious one who carries the team, the guy with inhuman reflexes, the one who once saved your pixelated butt in a dungeon raid while typing “lol don’t die, rookie”—suddenly shows up in your real-life university lecture hall.

Like. Same aura. Same deadpan delivery. Same hands (don’t ask why Juhoon noticed, he just did).

What would Juhoon do?

Correct answer: play it cool. Pretend nothing’s suspicious. Go on with his normal, totally non-stalker-ish day.

Juhoon’s answer: interrogate you like a bootleg FBI agent with a caffeine addiction.

“Question,” Juhoon said, leaning way too far into your personal bubble. “Let’s say there’s this guy. Online. Really good with his hands—”

“Excuse me?” you deadpanned.

“At games,” Juhoon clarified quickly, waving his arms. “With, you know, mouse control. Key combos. Totally innocent things. Anyway. Hypothetically, if you were this guy, how would you admit it? Asking for a friend.”

You blinked. Slowly. Like you were buffering. “I wouldn’t.”

Juhoon squinted. Suspicious. Very suspicious. Only his guildmate would give an answer that frustratingly vague.

Here’s the thing: Juhoon was 86% sure you were his guildmate. (The other 14% was reserved for the possibility that he was delusional, which—fair. He’d been wrong before. Once he mistook the delivery guy for his online crush because the dude said “gg.” He still tips extra out of shame.)

But this time? This time, the evidence was mounting.

1. The Hands. Not normal hands. We’re talking surgeon-level precision. Juhoon saw you flip a pen once. It did three rotations, landed perfectly balanced on your knuckle. Who does that? Exactly. Gamers.
2. The Voice. Calm. Monotone. Like someone who could call him trash and somehow it sounded affectionate. Juhoon swore he’d heard that exact tone in raid voice chat when you—sorry, mystery guildmate—told him, “You’re pulling aggro again. Do better.”
3. The Vibes. Indescribable. But real. Juhoon’s gut never lied. (Okay, it lied sometimes. Like when it told him he could eat three-day-old pizza. But this was different.)

So now, Juhoon’s mission was simple: extract the truth.

Which sounded easy, except you had the emotional range of a potato and the evasiveness of a seasoned spy.

Here’s the problem: Juhoon wasn’t just trying to prove a theory. Not really.

Okay, fine. He liked his guildmate. A little. Or maybe a lot. Whatever. Minor detail. The point is, if you really were him… then Juhoon had a bigger problem. Because liking someone online was one thing. But liking the boy who sat next to him in economics class and had the most distracting jawline known to man? That was a whole other level of disaster.

And Juhoon? He was spectacularly bad at handling disasters.

Which is why his current strategy was: denial. Interrogation disguised as banter. Absolutely zero chill.