“You didn’t hear what happened?”

Mei Qi shakes her head so slightly as to not break out of her concentration. With knitted eyebrows, she finishes off her design with a strike. Mei Qi straightens her back and offers Dawon her finished product with a proud smile: a cup of latte, topped with a neat rosette formed in milk.

Dawon glances at it with an approving nod and takes a sip, only for her face to immediately contort into an uncertain expression. Mei Qi can hear Dayoung snicker from the side.

“What? Does it taste bad?” Mei Qi questions with wide eyes.

Dawon shrugs. “It’s…okay. You poured too much milk. Look, cute fancy latte art is nice, but don’t let it distract you from brewing a good drink. It’s 2017, Mei Qi, coffee drinkers are kinda snooty nowadays. No one will care about the flower on top if it tastes like .”

Mei Qi rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on, it doesn’t taste that bad. And customers like latte art!”

“Okaaay, back to matters more pressing than whether latte art is superficial and a waste of time or not,” Dayoung chirps from where she’s leaning against the counter. She leans discretely towards her two fellow co-workers. “Luda completely blanked out.”

“What do you mean?” Mei Qi asks as she wipes the counter. The door rings with the exit of their last customer of the day.

“When I was hanging out with her here a few days ago, she suddenly just blanked out. Like, she stared into space for a good few seconds and didn’t even flinch when I went like this,” Dayoung pauses to wave her hand obnoxiously in front of Dawon’s face, who scrunches her nose, “and then she suddenly blinked and was normal again. It was so weird…”

“People space out all the time,” Dawon says with dismissive nonchalance.

“Yeah, but it was like her soul left her body...or like, someone clicked pause on her. Super suspicious if you ask me.”

“You think everything is suspicious.”

Mei Qi snorts and exchanges amused looks with Dawon before leaning forward to feign interest. “So? What did Luda say after?”

“She apologized for blanking out and then told me she had to be somewhere, so she left quickly.”

“See? She just blanked out. She could've just remembered something. Don’t be so dramatic,” Dawon says as she nudges her younger co-worker. Dayoung always has a knack for overreaction and exaggeration.  

“Now you two stop blabbering and help me clean up, we gotta close the café for the night. There’s a new episode of Suspicious Partner tonight,” Mei Qi says.

Dayoung shakes her head as she begins putting up the chairs on the table. “No one just spaces out like that though!”

"Maybe she realized she forgot to turn the stove off," Dawon says with a chuckle.

01100101

The two girls glance at the short-haired blonde kneeling in front of them with pleading eyes and hands pressed together as if she was praying.

(And she really might be with the way she’s acting.)

“Pretty please?” Luda implores.

“You have the game. Why can't you play with your own?”

Frowning, Luda confesses, “My mom confiscated it.”

“Your mom?” Juyeon breaks into a loud, boisterous laugh. “What are you, fifteen years old? What happened? I’m not even surprised.”

“She says I spend too much time on it,” Luda says with a sigh. “She even had the nerve to pull the helmet off my head while I was playing! You should never do that, it’s extremely detrimental not only to the gameplay, but also to the nature of realism that must be maintained. Also, it caused me to break a regulation! I got a warning notice in my inbox this morning.” 

Cheng Xiao rolls her eyes at the pouting girl. “Mrs. Lee is right, you spend too much time playing it."

Luda gets up on her feet and clasps her hands desperately. “Please Xiao, you don’t understand, I was interacting with an NPC when I abruptly got disconnected. This could affect my storyline! Please, just lend me an hour or two and let me play with your console just to sort things out.”

“Luda, I can’t let yo–“

“Please!!!” Luda begs, prompting Cheng Xiao to shudder at her childish antics. “You’re my last choice!”

Suddenly, Juyeon interjects and puts a hand on her shorter friend’s shoulder. “It's okay. You can play with mine.”

Luda blinks at her as Cheng Xiao whips her head to face Juyeon with furrowed eyebrows. She knows where this is headed.

“You don’t even have the game,” says Luda.

“Yeah, she doesn’t,” Cheng Xiao answers for her with narrowed eyes.

Juyeon smirks. “Oh, I do,” she says, “Unconventionally, but really, I do. It’s state-of-the-art, trust me.” She gives her a wink.

Luda narrows her eyes in suspicion, but gives in anyways. “Whatever, I don’t care in which shape or form you have the game, I just want to play.”

Cheng Xiao groans. “We are not doing this!”

“Then you can stay here.”

Juyeon grabs Luda’s wrist and leads her down the sleek white corridor brightly illuminated by fluorescent lights. Upon reaching her apartment, Juyeon places her palm against the door. A bright blue square lights up around her hand as it scans from the tip of her fingers down to her wrist.

A kind-sounding voice emerges from a speaker beside the door. “Good afternoon, Juyeon. Password?”

Juyeon sighs. “Quit joking around, just open the door,” she says before suddenly lowering her voice, “Mr. Badboy…”

“As you wish,” the voice says before the door glows up and slides open at once with a whoosh.

Luda lets out an amused scoff as they step inside. “Did I hear that incorrectly or did you just call your residence bot Mr. Badboy?”

“Uh, my mom renamed it,” Juyeon grumbles under her breath. “I prefer calling him Mister."

“I do not like the name either,” the voice interjects.

To the oblivious, one would think it's a human speaking and not an AI installed within the suite. The bot’s words resonate throughout the apartment like it came from all directions rather than from one speaker on the ceiling.

“Deal with it!” Juyeon shouts to the air as she stops in front of a door. Turning to Luda with determined eyes, she smiles. “Are you ready to be impressed?”

Before Luda could even answer, Juyeon pushes the door open to a room that immediately lights up.

Screens cover an entire wall with mounted displays. Monitors of different sizes sit atop desks littered with backlit keyboards and empty cans of soda. Computer cases sit in rows on the floor amidst the tangled disarray of blue, red, black, and white wires.

A lone recliner centered on a shaggy rug in the colour of distasteful gray sits facing the wide window, bringing in natural sunlight and offering a full view of Seoul’s cityscape.

In the sky, a drone advertises the latest model of the Hyundai Hover on a hologram (new lightweight design; now available with autopilot!).

On the side of a particular towering building protuding from the skyline, a colossal digital billboard spanning the building's entire height proudly displays statistics of Seoul’s evidently improved standard of living (boasting a crime rate that has dropped by 11% in the past year!).

The billboard smoothly transitions to a commercial for a video game called Project Hyperreal (developed by Seong Industries; transport into a world of endless possibilities!).

“So, this is what it’s in this room…” Luda mutters as she takes in the sight with wide eyes.

She had passed by this room plenty of times before every time she visited Juyeon, but the door was always closed and locked; Mr. Badboy only allowed access to Juyeon (Luda wonders how she programmed her bot to do so, but if Juyeon was to explain, she wouldn't understand anyways). 

“This is where all the magic happens within my lovely, humble abode,” Juyeon says proudly with a fond smile as if she was talking about a precious child dear to her.

“And...what exactly is it that you do in here?” Luda asks, still unable to completely comprehend. She has never seen this many screens in one room except at internet cafes she frequented at.

“Oh you know,” Juyeon starts, her eyes twinkling, “Magic.”

When she presses a square button on the wall, the room brightens as the monitors turn on one by one and the computers buzz to life with a whizzing sound that’s all too familiar to Luda.

Luda’s eyes light up in wonder. “Oh my god…” she mutters. “This is like…a gamer’s paradise!” 

She turns to Juyeon excitedly, who leads her to the recliner by the window. A head-mounted display akin to a VR headset is placed on her head and Luda feels elbow-high gloves being slipped into her hands.

“What are the gloves for?” Luda says as she sinks into the recliner too eagerly, despite being suited up with sketchy accessories she never even had the chance to ask for. 

“I hooked them up with sensors,” Juyeon answers absentmindedly. “I know, it’s no Seong Industries motion-tracker tech, but it’s the best imitations I could produce. Besides, I think longer gloves are more effective than the straps and wires that Seong uses for their controllers anyways. Listen, I've worked on this for the last several months, putting blood, sweat, and tears into perfecting it. Just trust me.”

Juyeon positions Luda so she is sitting comfortably before moving over to the swivel chair in front of the monitors. Cracking her knuckles and stretching her arms, she exclaims, “Alright! Are you ready?”

“Wait!” Luda interjects from her seat, finally realizing the situation she is in and how this could totally not work at all (how on earth could Juyeon possibly pull this off?). “Ready for what? What are you doing to me exactly?”

Juyeon peers at her from her seat. “...Didn’t you want to play?”

“Um, well, obviously, but how can I even play? You don’t have the proper controllers and accessories, Juyeon. Is this even going to work? Or this is just some prank because if it is, I am not falling for it!”

Juyeon lets out a familiar type of laugh b in confidence and vanity. 

“Ms. Lee Luda, we live in a world of innovation. What kind of Seoulite would I be if I didn't exploit opportunities to my full capacity?" she replies with charming, self-assured nonchalance. "You don’t need Seong Industries’ superficial gizmos to play their game."

“Uh, yeah, you kind of do,” Luda counters matter-of-factly. 

“Nah...you just need some powerful computers...a bit of optimism...lots of fighting spirit...but, most importantly,” Juyeon pauses to point a finger at her temple as her lips break into a familiar smirk, “a brain like mine.”

She sits back on her chair, cracks open a soda can, and begins typing on one of many keyboards sprawled across the desk. On the monitors, lines of commands appear one after the other and Juyeon's eyes sweep with conviction, blinking symbols reflecting on her irises with every dart of her pupils. 

“Now, all you need to do is sit back and relax. In no time, you'll be transported into the beautiful world of endless possibilities,” Juyeon instructs dreamily from her computers over the clicking sounds of the keyboard. “...Hey Luda?”

“Hm?”

Juyeon smirks as her finger hovers over the Enter key. “Have fun in Hyperreal!”

a/n: i meant to have this up earlier but i ended up rewriting it several times and i'm still not fully satisfied asldka oh well, had to start somewhere...i always find beginnings and endings the hardest to write

i know it's a bit vague and we haven't gotten to the real interesting stuff yet, but i love reading comments so please let me know what you think so far :)