It’s summer break and Lu Han’s desperately trying to find someone to play team multiplayer matches on Starcraft II with because he’d really rather not trap himself in a virtual room with the kind of animals who play one on one for fun.

"Channie! Do you wanna 2v2? The wifi at your grandma’s house should be strong enough to play sc on right? I’m too scared to do 1v1s”

Lu Han has been sitting at his desk with his laptop staring at the multiplayer screen for at least two minutes now. He was actually an accomplished player back in the day even now he’s on his university’s team but that’s not necessarily by choice..

A few minutes later he receives a reply.

"no can do bro we're going hiking now. glhf ;)."

Lu Han sighs and clicks on the 1v1 options on the multiplayer screen. Might as well at least try a placement match. Maybe it won't be so bad, he's played 1v1 before in the past and didn't do too badly. He steels his resolve and clicks on the 'Find Match' button. The countdown begins and Lu Han can feel his heart beat faster.

An opponent has been found and the loading screen appears. Lu Han can’t help but grin at the information, a Master League Zerg player, just his luck really, he’s going to get sodomised but he’ll have lots of fun before that happens. The thing is Lu Han has a great strategy for fighting zerg: type whimsy messages and build lots of vikings to shoot down their overlords and piss them off. Who cares about winning, it’s about being the dumbest fruit alive.

“I’m gonna supply block the out of you !” Lu Han cackles in glee.

"glhf xx <3<3<3" Lu Han types. Usually a simple glhf suffices but he's feeling max fruitiness today. He waits for a reply and frowns a bit when he doesn't get one. Such bad manners!

The game progresses without incident. Lu Han sends a worker to scout out InfestorKing's base and the only exciting thing is that the Zerg is already expanding his base. Before Lu Han can do anymore spying his eye catches a red dot on the minimap in his base. He immediately snaps back over to his base to see an overlord slowly floating in.

"get your dumb floating out of my base!" Lu Han furiously types out before sending a marine to shoot down the intruder. He sends another heart over chat when the overlord pops and settles back into making hellions and vikings. Maybe it's not a sound strategy but who cares about winning? Lu Han's here to play.

A ping chimes and Lu Han sees a broken heart in the chatbox. The response is heartening and he taps out a "keep your dumb overlords out of my base!"

Several minutes later Lu Han has a sizeable cluster of vikings in his base and he decides to send them out to get some supply blocking done. He has them fly around the map and cries out in glee when he finds a bunch of overlords floating in an abandoned corner of the map.

Lu Han leaves his viking jets to shoot their prey and works on expanding his base a third time when he sees creep flowing out of where he wanted to land his third base. Tentatively, Lu Han sends a marine in to scope out how arduous the cleanup will be. He gets a brief glance of a giant heart made of spinecrawlers before they tear his marine apart.

It probably wasn't the correct reaction to have but Lu Han couldn't help but be incredibly touched by the gesture. "ohhh thank you I really like it <3" he sends on chat before sending his hellions over to burn everything and land his base. Deciding to return the gesture, Lu Han sends some workers over close to the Zerg base and begins to build missile turrets in a heart formation.

Out of nowhere all of these roaches and mutalisks are barreling into Lu Han's first two bases and he's panicking. Sure he has a big army but it's no match for the menace razing his bases. Lu Han already has a "gg <3" typed out but then a bunch of zerglings scramble into the base but they're not attacking. His curiosity has definitely been piqued and he refrains from giving in just yet. Lu Han watches in awe as the zerglings begin to form a heart and suddenly he finds his hands backspacing the "gg <3" and instead typing "do you want to be friends? I like you and I had fun <3"

Seconds later "sure <3" appears in the chat box so Lu Han sends a quick "gg <3" and surrenders.

Lu Han feels like he’s floating, he barely notices the fact he’s dropped into platinum or even that he supply blocked the other for ten minutes straight and immediately sends InfestorKing a friend request. He then sends a quick sms to Chanyeol informing him of his league placement and his new friend in the meantime. He’s completely tickled to find that his request is immediately accepted so he sends a message to the zerg player.

“Do you want to do 2v2s? I’m scared of 1v1. Not everyone’s nice like you.”

“I’m hardly nice, but sure I’ll 2v2.”

“Would you be averse to voice chat? It’s easier for me than the party chat.”

“Sure.”

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As Sehun adjusts his headset he can hear a meek “hello?” coming out from the other end.

“Yo,” he responds nonchalantly, finally getting his headset in place, “so do you want to do placements now or what?”

“O-oh sure, you start.”

Sehun frowns at the timid voice coming out from the other end and idly begins organising the jungle of wires coming out of his gaming rig, it must be a bit intimidating being a girl playing SC2, the voice is a bit deep but after that match he’s thoroughly convinced that he just played a chick. Sehun tries to reassure his impromptu team-mate, “hey don’t be nervous okay? This is just for fun, relax.”

“Ah, thank you.”

He can hear a giggle come from the other end and smiles a bit himself, “get ready I’m starting now okay?”

The match mostly consists of Sehun ordering Goddess around, she doesn’t seem to mind though and keeps insisting that Sehun is the superior player who knows what he’s doing. Occasionally Sehun tries to be funny and flies an overlord into her base just to hear her screech.

“Hey can you give me control? I’m planning on attacking and I need to lower your supply depots and use your troops.”

“No problem! Aaaaaaaand there! You should have control now.”

“Thanks,” he breathes out and mobilises all of the attack units, they win the match moments later and Sehun can hear a loud “Yaaaay!” coming from the other end.

“Oh I’m really sorry but I have to go, but we should do this again sometime okay? I had a lot of fun!”

“Yeah we should, I had fun too.”

Somehow Sehun can’t help but spend the rest of the night googling articles on the Terran player named Goddess and looking at the pictures that come up. He’s surprised to find that she’s actually ranked and quite pretty.

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For the rest of the evening Lu Han can’t help but feel a little bit in love, no matter how much the voice at the back of his head berates him. He stands up and twirls in his tiny student cell before falling onto his bunk.