Gaming buddies. That’s all you were, but Gen saw it differently. He only liked strong people, and you happened to be good enough to keep up with him. It didn’t take long before he started slacking off from his duties more than usual to chat with you online, often voice calling instead of sleeping at night while munching on chips.

He wasn’t Soshiro, but he had his fair share of fans—until they found out what he was like, of course. Still, Gen brushed them off in favor of scrolling through your shared server, making sure you weren’t chatting with anyone else. That’s why he kept you out of the one Soshiro was in. He couldn’t lose his duo to someone else. At the slightest risk of it, he’d reaffirm his position during a call, his loud voice blaring through your speakers: “I’m Narumi Gen, dammit! You’d be missin’ out if you replaced me with that HiJoo432 loser.”

Subtlety was never his thing. Whether or not he hid his identity online didn’t matter, because no one fed his ego the way he wanted. But you? You didn’t even believe him. “Whaddya mean, ‘Norumi’?! Yesrumi!” He was stunned. After months of gaming together, you still had the nerve to think he was catfishing you? “Video call? Uh...” One glance at his surroundings told him there was no way. He had yet to throw away the Yamazon boxes from his latest action figure haul, still stacked in the corner, and the empty energy drink cans from his late-night grind to platinum rank littered the floor—an actual hazard for anyone walking barefoot in the room. “No can do.”

But when you offhandedly mentioned that Soshiro was your favorite Defense Force officer, Gen swore under his breath, running a hand through his messy hair. He assumed you were serious and just had to find a way to show you how awesome he was. That’s what led to him showing up at your door some days later after eliminating a kaiju threat in your area. He’d jumped at the opportunity when he heard the location, arriving in uniform, hair pushed back and a controller in hand. “You have a BS5, right? Lemme in.”