When Last Night Didn't End: Before Story

5

Rin wrung his hands, closing and opening them again to shake the tension and sweat on them. He leaned back on his seat, making the plastic creak. "What did you have for lunch?" he asked, his tone incredulous. "I can barely keep up."

Hye-jin leaned over and grinned at him. Her hair was pulled away from her face by a pink headband. The large pink bow at the top could have developed eyes and stared inside Rin's soul. "It's not the food, slowpoke," she said. "Years of practice, more like."

"No fair," Rin stuck a lip out. "I've been playing F&S since it was released."

She shrugged. "Maybe it's down to natural skill, then," she said. "So, how was that game?"

He pulled out the battle logs and scanned it. "It's good, but you were relying too much on your magic build, hoping it wouldn't ran out mid-game," he said. "I don't think it's a good strategy to use against ranking matches."

"Eh," Hye-jin swung back in front of her laptop—the one she swore she'd never use for games, but look at them now. "You'll be there to back me up, right? I can always go beserk as the main flank and have you do your sneaky thingy that'd lead us to victory."

Rin raised an eyebrow. She must have thought it's that easy. "What if I got taken out early?" he asked. "There are people in the matches who knows my gameplay. I won't be able to hold my own against similar bombard tactics as you and try to take over the enemy turf. And with two hundred bucks on the line, they'd be sure to target me first."

"You're so cautious it's cute," Hye-jin said before slapping her hand over her mouth.

He wasn't about to let it go. "What was that?"

A look of annoyance painted Hye-jin's face. "Clean your ears, gamer boy," she said. "I ain't repeating what I said."

He bobbed his head. "So you did say something," he said. "I thought it's just the wind singing your thoughts."

Something whizzed underneath the table and pain erupted in his shin, sending him jumping from his chair and doubling over to clutch his throbbing limb. "Hye-jin! What the fuck?" he demanded, hissing at the pain thumping against his bone. "I'm kidding!"

His eyes widened when she rounded the table and loomed over him. Then, with her claw-like fingers, she lunged for him and started poking his side, the back of his neck, and the small spot on his back. He crumpled like a discarded can. Both fear and laughter bubbled up and blocked his throat, resulting in half-baked sentences flitting out of his mouth. "Wait—Hye-jin—No, stop! Okay, fine! Got it, so stop—"

Hye-jin withdrew her torture, an equally-wide grin painting her lips. She retreated back to her seat and retook her ergonomic mouse. The shape still hasn't finished weirding Rin out. It's so....twisted. "You're saying we should mesh our tactics?" she asked, her voice already back to normal, as if she hasn't just tickled him to death a few seconds ago. "This is a pair match, after all."

"Yeah, that," Rin gulped and took a deep breath, forcing his heart to slow down. Adrenaline still pumped into his blood, both from the recently-concluded match with Hye-jin and her taking advantage of her knowledge of Rin's ticklish spots. He shouldn't have told her what those were. "Have any idea how? I'm not much of a team player, even in this...new game I'm trying."

Hye-jin hummed. He didn't feel the need to tell her he's restarting Legends of Solarlume just for the limited edition custom build for his character. She probably never even heard of it if she started out recently. That game came out ages ago and the graphics weren't the best despite it being dubbed as the one to herald the golden age of video games.

"I'm also trying a new game," Hye-jin replied. "But that's not what we're here for. Maybe we can list out the strengths and weaknesses of our individual plays and try to compensate for or complement those as we go along," she chewed on her lip and tapped a random beat on the table. "Sound good?"