Chapter 131

Even as Mo Yeonhoo stared blankly at the screen, their characters were practically fused together.

For a game that wasn’t rated adults-only... or maybe because it was determined to properly demonstrate what a “Passionate Kiss” was supposed to look like, the interaction was remarkably intense. Their hoods kept him from seeing much detail, but their noses and mouths were moving, and—

(Notification) NotMiyoung used the ‘Light Kiss’ interaction on IOnly!

—now he was planting kisses all over his face!

“Why did you press another one?!”

Once, fine. That could happen. But twice?!

His face suddenly felt unbearably hot. Startled, Yeonhoo called out to Kwon Mieon, only for Kwon to tilt his head and ask innocently,

“Why, Yeonhoo? Is something wrong?”

“You keep making your character kiss mine....”

“I was checking how far you can go before the anonymity wears off. We might end up using the Pulling interaction while helping each other later, right? We should know whether something like that reveals our original nicknames.”

“That’s what you were doing?”

“Of course.”

Kwon nodded.

“We have to account for all kinds of variables, don’t we?”

...Is he serious?

There were plenty of other interactions he could have tested, so Yeonhoo still had to wonder why Kwon had specifically chosen kissing. But Kwon’s face as he looked at him was so guileless, without the slightest trace of mischief, that he didn’t seem to be lying.

“Really...? Okay.”

Yeonhoo was the first to raise the white flag. He gave an awkward nod, deciding Kwon probably had a point.

“Then keep going, I guess....”

His expression remained deeply dubious, though. The suspicion was written all over his face.

Kwon scrunched his nose at the sight, then finally lost the battle and burst out laughing.

“Pfft—hahaha, Yeonhoo!”

Yeonhoo stared at him blankly, only to flush bright red at what came next.

“You actually believed that?”

“...Oh, come on.”

See?

He’d been messing with him again!

He got me again!

Kwon was so good at games that when he deliberately lied like that, Yeonhoo ended up believing him even while thinking something about it felt off.

That didn’t make it any less unfair.

“You’re annoying.”

Yeonhoo scrunched his face up with all his might. Kwon leaned forward slightly now, still laughing.

“You’re seriously adorable.”

“What’s adorable about this? Are you insane?”

Yeonhoo looked appalled, but despite the sharpness in his voice, his face was red enough to burst.

Kwon wasn’t even sparing the screen a glance anymore as he said evenly,

“That was such an obvious move.”

“What move? You were just messing with—”

“An excuse to kiss you.”

Yeonhoo froze.

For a second, he couldn’t process what he’d just heard.

Then Kwon added,

“Me. Wanting to kiss you.”

Yeonhoo turned toward him before he could stop himself.

Kwon had already swiveled his chair around to face him. The moment their eyes met, the corners of his mouth lifted, as though he’d been waiting for exactly that reaction.

“Just kidding.”

At Kwon’s smiling declaration that it was a joke, Yeonhoo flinched.

Why do I feel so hot?

His face only kept getting redder. Yeonhoo turned stiffly back toward the screen, moving like a badly programmed robot.

“Y-you seriously need to stop joking around.”

Of course, if that robot had been modeled after a terrified small animal, it would have been perfect.

His voice gave away every bit of his embarrassment.

Kwon narrowed his eyes at him for a moment, then lowered them as though nothing had happened.

“Sure....”

Scrape.

He gave a light shrug and turned his attention back to the screen.

“Yeonhoo.”

“What?”

“Could you actually look at the screen?”

Thinking Kwon was messing with him again, Yeonhoo started answering more sharply than before.

“If you’re about to pull another—”

“Hit prone.”

“What?”

“Quick.”

This time was different.

There was a note of urgency in Kwon’s voice. Yeonhoo immediately dropped his character prone, and the second he disappeared into the bushes, Kwon pulled out his binoculars.

Is something there?

Yeonhoo equipped his own binoculars almost automatically.

Then he paused.

What? When did everyone leave?

Until just moments ago, alliance members had been moving supplies back and forth through the area.

Now it was completely empty.

Yeonhoo swept his binoculars rapidly across the territory until something finally entered his field of view.

“They really never change.”

Kwon let out a low laugh.

“Nice to see them again.”

There they were.

Three figures wearing the exact same black anonymous hoods as the people they had encountered that day.

Whoa... holy shit. They really were VITA.

Yeonhoo had already been almost certain from the circumstances that VITA and <System Error> were connected, but actually seeing them like this was still shocking.

“I’m recording.”

“Yeah, good. Me too.”

Yeonhoo’s eyes gleamed as he watched the three characters cross the deserted alliance territory.

After walking for some time, they stopped exactly where he had expected.

In front of <1st>’s core.

It had already been damaged during the attack.

They really do all look completely different.

<47>’s core had looked like a flower bud.

Animal Love’s had looked like a glass sphere.

And <1st>’s core resembled butterfly wings.

The person standing in the middle of the three reached toward the broken core.

Apparently it had only the barest sliver of durability left, because the moment they did—

Crack.

The core split cleanly in two.

“...Something really does come out of the core.”

A fragment-like object appeared and was immediately sucked into the hand of the person in the middle.

“They’re leaving.”

The three quickly disappeared.

Silence settled over the alliance territory again. Not so much as a rat moved through it, but Yeonhoo’s eyes were shining.

“Did you get all that?”

“Yeah. I recorded everything.”

“This is insane! I want to see yours too. I want to know how it came out from your angle.”

Yeonhoo shot to his feet.

They hadn’t had any evidence before, so a small part of him had wondered whether what he’d seen back then had somehow been a mistake.

Not anymore.

Now they knew for certain that destroying a core produced a hidden item.

And that there was a group deliberately going around collecting them.

They still had no idea why those people were gathering the items, of course. That was the next thing they needed to uncover.

“We were right.”

Seeing all their suspicions suddenly sharpen into something concrete felt like watching a dense fog finally clear.

The rush of catharsis was incredible.

They had gone through the long, tedious process of infiltrating the alliance, gathering information, and confirming what was really happening, and it still felt like there was a long road ahead.

But Yeonhoo was having far too much fun in that moment to care.

He leaned toward Kwon’s screen, where the recorded footage was already replaying, and started chattering excitedly.

“Wow, you got it perfectly! There’s still nothing online about items coming out when you destroy a core. If we tell people, everyone’s going to start guarding their cores more carefully, right? And they’ll try to figure out who these people are too.”

“.......”

“I mean, their operation is sloppier than I expected, so maybe a few people already know. But nobody’s said anything so far, so what if we’re the first ones to find out? Damn, what are the odds they’d come take it today, while we were right here watching? But why are they even collecting those things? What are they planning to do with them once they—”

“.......”

The rapid-fire stream pouring out of Yeonhoo’s mouth was absolutely not something IOnly, a supposed player who had started the game only a few days ago, could have said.

Those were words only 0momo0 could have spoken.

But that wasn’t why Yeonhoo stopped.

Kwon had been unusually quiet.

Only after Yeonhoo glanced sideways did he realize why.

“......!”

When did I get this close?

Kwon’s eyes were right in front of him.

Yeonhoo had bent down to get a better look at the screen, and Kwon was simply staring at him from inches away.

“Ah, I was just trying to see the screen....”

He had only wanted to see how Kwon’s recording had turned out.

Somehow, he’d leaned far too close.

Feeling awkward, Yeonhoo slowly began pulling back as he mumbled,

“I was curious because your angle was different from mine.... But you recorded it really well. You can see exactly what came out of the core, and who picked it up, really clearly—ah!”

Yeonhoo never made it back to his own seat.

What the hell? Why am I—

He sat there blankly for a moment, eyes widening as though his brain couldn’t make sense of what had just happened.

...Am I sitting on Kwon Mieon’s lap?

He was.

A hand had closed around his waist, and in the span of an instant, Yeonhoo had found himself sitting squarely on Kwon’s lap.

Notes

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