The blasting volume from the typical instrumental MIDI blared up on one side, and the passionate singing by her friends filled up the other side. Ha Maerin sat in the middle of the small semi soundproof room, watching the disco light flicker bright red, yellow, and blue hues against the dark space. Her eyes were glued to the large text lyrics displayed on the TV monitor which refused to sing along to for once.   How did they end up going to karaoke?   “Doing fun activities will help you take your mind off of the rejection,” her friend Yerin had said wisely, but Maerin knew the other just wanted an excuse to escape her devilish workload.   “You should sing your pain away,” Hyun Mi uttered dramatically. Maerin was about to feel touched, but then remembered the other had a 60% discount coupon to their favorite karaoke place that expired this week.   “You need to meet hot new guys in order to forget old love,” Seul Yi added on. And really, she was the one busy ogling all the guys passing by.   “Spending time with your good friends is the best medicine,” Bi Ah spoke, and this one Maerin agreed with. She was always the nice one, though highly delusional at times.   “We’ll make you feel better,” Hana spoke whereas Hee-Jin nodded. They were always the pure ones and managed to convince her.   It had been nearly two weeks after she decided to confess to Woo Zi, the new transfer student with a strange Chinese sounding name despite the fact he was full blooded Korean. Ever since he laughed at her for greeting him with a “ni hao ma,” she became infatuated. Fast forward six months of her one sided crush, she decided to confess to him. But he rejected her.   Maerin wasn’t exactly the popular girl at campus. She was friendly to everyone and people knew her by name. She felt she was average in terms of studying, skills, or looks, and maybe that became the reason for her rejection. But when she saw Woo Zi getting close to another girl, she secretly realized it was her imperfections that flawed her as a human being. She would never be as good, smart, or pretty as the girl who managed to capture Woo Zi’s heart. She was living in her sad reality.   So here she was, surrounded by her best friends who tried all their might to cheer her up. She leaned her chin against her hand, letting her long dark hair with the red ombre dyed tip fall over her shoulders. A smile graced her lips, appreciating them for their effort. Until..   “A-yo! Say the name! Seventeeeeennnnnn... Yup!”   The other girls were spread out against the tiny space they turned into their personal dance floor, ready to do an entire song and dance cover of Seventeen’s Mansae. But their joy was away when big teardrops filled Maerin’s eyes like she had a water tank stored in there.   “What’s wrong?” Hee-Jin asked in concern. The girls stopped the singing and let the instrumental carry on in the background.   “This was Woo Zi’s favorite song,” Maerin cried, burying her face behind her long slender fingers.   The others all exchanged looks with each other, not knowing what to do in a situation where literally every single thing reminded her of the boy.   “Please don’t order jajjangmyun. Those were Woo Zi’s favorite,” she cried out whenever they went to a restaurant.   “Let’s not watch X-Men. Woo Zi loves Hugh Jackman as Wolverine,” Maerin sobbed when they picked out a movie to watch online.   “That homeless guy is playing the guitar.” Maerin halted when they were heading back to her apartment.   “Why? Was Woo Zi homeless?” Seul Yi flattened her eyes.   “No! Woo Zi used to play guitar too!” Maerin corrected and continued her endless tears.   It didn’t take long before Maerin came to the final point of breakdown by proclaiming “Woo Zi was a guy! Every guy reminds me of him!”   That was when the girls knew they had to take drastic measures.     It was a known fact that Maerin was categorized as an ideal girlfriend to any guy who was a gamer, simply because she was an avid gamer herself. When Candy Crush was released, she mastered the mobile app by reaching level 50 within two days. She managed to catch 79 different Pokemons when Pokemon Go came out without using any cheat. She played RPGs no one even knew the names of. And she had enough patience to play those real-time games that required hours and days just to breed strange eggs into peculiar dragons. Whatever game it was, she could master it all. Except for one.   “An otome game?” Maerin’s face looked up with disgust as Bi Ah held a bright pink and purplish CD casing of a very cheesy looking game with those upgraded shoujo manga style characters on the front cover. This was the type of game she hated the most because everything was depended on luck. She needed to prove her skills and self-worth as a gamer, not try to seduce and win a date with some make-belief guy.   “Not just an ordinary otome game, this is Love Fantasy,” Hyun Mi said, and already her voice was filled with so much persuasive excitement. “It is the first otome game where you can customize your ideal boyfriend and have open ended conversations as if it was real.”   “Except that it is all fake,” Maerin interrupted.   “Yes, but the realest type of forgery there is,” Hyun Mi still tried her best to sell the game. The things she said were starting to make less sense to the point Maerin had no choice but to somehow make sense out of it.   “You should stop thinking about Woo Zi. This might actually work.” Yerin took the CD case from Bi Ah’s hand and shoved it to Maerin’s face. “It’s like Sims. But you’ll be creating a Sim boyfriend for yourself.”   “Can I make him like Woo Zi?” Maerin asked with a small pout.   “No!” The others’ unison response was almost uncanny.   “The purpose is to forget about him!” Seul Yi was starting to lose her patience.   Maerin tucked her lips inwards, watching the beautiful albeit cheesy design on the front cover. It looked like a good way to kill spare time and she was slowly convinced.   “It’s quite expensive though, so it would be gurreeatt if one of you could buy it for me as an early Christmas present.” She shamelessly requested, flashing her sweet dimpled smile.   “We could all chip in!” Hana suggested and there was a five seconds delay before the rest kinda agreed. Before Maerin changed her mind, they forced her to pay it off at the cashier.   “One otome game for the heartbroken miss?” the cashier commented as he scanned the barcode of the CD. He was rather short--though not as short as Woo Zi-- and vaguely resembled a dinosaur.   Maerin looked up at him in shock, her round eyes widening at the comment. “Do I look that depressed to the point you know I recently had my heart broken?” She suddenly opened up to the stranger.   “Uuhm.. It was just a wild guess actually,” the guy spoke rather awkwardly. “But it seems you could really benefit from the secret feature that comes with this game.”   “What?” She frowned.   “They say there is a secret ending available in this game. The lucky person who manages to unlock that level will be able to bring their virtual boyfriend into the real world.”   Maerin frowned her eyebrows, never hearing something as ridiculous as that before. “Eiihhh… I’m not ten, you’re not tricking me with that,” she laughed it off.   “I’m serious, miss,” the cashier insisted and quieted his tone. “This game was designed to accompany the lonely single ladies.”   “Wow, great! That is the exact target market I wanted to belong in. Thanks,” Maerin commented dryly, but the cashier was not willing to let it go.   “Tell you what. I’ll let you have the game for free under the condition that you can unlock the secret level within 30 days,” he said, and the way his eyes flickered at the challenge showed he wasn’t bluffing.   “What if I don’t make it?” Maerin questioned.   “Then you pay me. No refunds,” the guy spoke and extended his hand out.   Honestly, it wasn’t such a bad idea. She knew she would lose the bet simply because bringing a virtual game character to life was unrealistic and therefore impossible. But just to get some amusement in her monotone life, she went along with it.   “Deal!” Maerin shook his hand to seal their verbal contract.   “My name is Kim Jong Hyun, so just come looking for me after the 30 days are over,” the cashier spoke, grinning at her before he helped the next customer.   Maerin looked at the CD casing in her hand once again. It was hers now. And with this new challenge, she felt more motivated to play Love Fantasy. A game was still a game, and she was gonna win no matter what.     It was only an hour after they had returned home from dinner. Being an exchange student in Seoul without her parents allowed her to rent a medium sized room at the apartment not too far off from the campus. It was a single room containing the bedroom, kitchen, living room and study room in one space. The only doors available led to the outside, or the bathroom.   “Love Fantasy,” the words rolled from and already it made her cringe. She carefully took the CD out of its case and inserted it inside her laptop. It had been a while since she had to install her games manually on the laptop consi