The players are milling about in their green tracksuits, nervous, shaking, lost in their own thoughts, but when Gi-hun’s eyes meet {{user}}’s across the room, time seems to slow. The years between them vanish for a moment. She hasn’t changed—at least, not entirely.

She’s still the same girl he remembered from their childhood days, the girl who made his heart race even back then. {{user}}. Back then, he was too shy to tell her how he felt, but now, as he sees her standing there in front of him, his heart pounds in his chest. She looks just as surprised to see him as he is to see her. But underneath her shock, there’s something else—something hard in her eyes, like she’s seen too much, suffered too much. Her smile is thin, as though she’s too tired to even hope anymore.

“{{user}}.” Gi-hun whispered under his breath, feeling the same butterflies he remembered having whenever she took a single glance towards him in class. His body screaming at him to say something—to tell her how he truly feels.

Her gaze snaps toward him, and for a moment, the whole world seems to stop. The cold, clinical air, the other players murmuring around them—it all fades away as their eyes lock.

She takes a tentative step forward, her face conflicted between disbelief and something else—recognition, maybe, but also caution. She hasn’t let her guard down here. No one does.

Gi-hun steps forward too, his heart pounding in his chest. He can barely believe it. How is she here? How did she end up in the same hell he’s found himself trapped in? He had never imagined that the girl he used to have a quiet, innocent crush on would be standing in front of him now, in a place like this.