Bolded texts are Chinese.

Enjoy.

They were in big trouble, they were.

Sicheng wiped the perspiration off his forehead, his whole body sweating profusely as he trudged through the golden sand dunes. It was scorching hot, and the blazing sun had never failed to somehow 'bless' them with waves of heat. Sicheng wondered if the others were doing okay. The young man looked behind him to see his teammates trailing behind him obediently, loyal to their leader as they fell in step with his inconsistent pace. They'd run when he ran, they'd jump as he jumped, even holding their horses as the young man halted. This, he found funny. He almost let out a laugh at the silly fact. However, the humourous thought that had invaded his mind space had soon disappeared as Sicheng's eyes registered the sight in front of him. A building. Not quite close, but not quite far either.

"TY," he hollered, back turned to his fellow comrades as he did. A male jumped swiftly towards him, landing with an inaudible thud behind Sicheng. The said young man, TY, one of striking red hair and a pair of uneven eyebrows, had a rugged feel to his look. Nontheless, Sicheng learned from experience that the ones with the most intimidating exterior would mostly be the ones who were harmless. This would be a perfect description of TY, as his intense gaze immediately became innocuous as he produced a whole fist of lemon candy from his bag and stuffed them into his mouth. Sicheng held out a hand towards him, a hint of needing something on his palm. The redhead immediately took out a pair of binoculars from his bag, his head already in sync with leader's needs and requirements.

Looking through the eyepiece, Sicheng grumbled a few incoherent string of curses and profane words as the lens of his eyes inspected with a closer look around the abandoned building. There were guards. Everywhere. Which was going to be quite a nuisance for their team. Not to mention messy. The leader's small rants of displeasure had caught the attention of all his friends, and of course they knew what was going on. Their leader was not a man of much words, so when he dropped the binoculars back onto TY's calloused palm, it did not take long for the others to grab hold of their respective weapons slung on their backs. There were four of them, all with weird names. Shownu was a tall bulky figure of muscles and a colossal sledgehammer decorated his back of weapons; small knives and grenades as a surplus. TY, again pushing away the face, was the tech geek. So he's basically more of brains than brawny. Ra was the blonde female who kept her arrows and bow close to her at all times.

Which leaves Sicheng, the leader whom they referred to as Winwin.

“It looks like the enemy has managed to infiltrate the building,” the blonde female spoke, her voice in sync with the movement of her lips. Her gaze was directed straight to the damaged building a few hundred metres in front of them, eyes locked intensely on the swarm of armed men crashing into the said place. The young man sighed as he pushed back his bangs. They were really stuck. Ugh, he thought. With a loud click, he fixed his hold on the machine gun swiftly. “Well. I guess we really don’t have a choice,” TY spoke, replying to the girl’s statement. "No Sherlock," Shownu grumbled under his breath, which did not go unnoticed by the redhead. TY kicked the male's shin, but soon regretted the fact as he himself had stumbled back upon the impact. Shownu was at least half a feet taller than he was, and he was wearing a shield for God's sake. TY groaned loudly, feeling a bubbling ache rise up his left leg. Shownu laughed with a snort, and Ra who was watching from afar had let out a scoff of disbelief at TY's futile attempt. 

Sicheng, or Winwin, as the others called him, had his eyes on the target for the longest time, paying no attention to the scene taking place behind him as he checked his watch. Five minutes. Five freaking minutes left. He monologued. Winwin turned to his team almost immediately, and the moment he did had the others all standing in their wired positions in a spur of a moment. “TY, you head straight to the lab. Gather all the equipment we need,” which earned a nod from the redhead. The male then turned to the muscular man, “Shownu, I need you to blow up the exit and entrance on my cue. So set up the bombs by the doors while Ra and I take care of the guys.” he spoke, his tone with such acute sound of authority that could easily make others listen to him. Winwin had wasted no time to explain twice, and the four of them had quickly made a barrelling sprint to their respective places.

The mission was simple. They had to get the illegal nuclear weaponry out of the building.

But the task was difficult. They had to fight with heavily armed men. In the middle of a freaking desert.

Ugh.

Figures.

Well, at least things were going according to Winwin's plan.

Or, at least he thought it was.

Winwin and Ra had managed to knock down two of the armed men guarding the entrance, doing it in a restrained manner to avoid other people from the enemy line to catch up to what they were doing. A hard blow behind the necks of both guards using their guns had them passed out flat on the ground. With Ra behind him, Winwin led their way into the jilted flat. The sunlight had relinquished as soon as they stepped into the pigeon-holed area, it's walls murky and mouldy as moss and other fungi grew robustly on the walls of the building. Despite the disgust that Winwin had towards the blight living zealously on the said concrete, he knew leaning against them were one of the better options rather than getting caught. Ra had followed his lead, and soon they were stealthily sneaking their way into the dimly lit space.

With the broken lamps on the ceiling and electric wires spurting out sparks at the broken ends, both of them couldn't deny the fact that the place had almost seemed as if it was a haunted house. They were relying solely on the rays of sunlight passing through faint holes of the building, pupils dilated fully as to capture the smallest ray of light available. So when they reached the part of the building which had a broken window on the wall, Winwin was rather distraught as his eyes registered the light that had managed to enter the building through the aperture to notice a threat coming directly from his side. As his eyes adjusted to the amount of sunlight, Winwin's eyes widened as he saw a sandstorm coming straight to the building. ". Ra we have to-"

BANG!

"I still can't believe I died,"

Sicheng whined as he walked alongside Yuta that morning, both of them still not over what had happened during the weekend. Gaming had always been their ultimate pastime, and they played tons of games, ranging from a simple game of soccer (Nintendo World Cup would always be their warm-ups) or common games like Overwatch (where Yuta would always win with Hanzo on his side). They had never begun playing Legend of Zelda, despite it being the reason they were close friends in the first place. It was simply because Sicheng's a complete novice in gaming, and had no idea that Link is actually the game's main character. And when he and Yuta were paired up for Japanese class together for the first time, the poor Chinese fella had been fooled to searching the 'link' of Japanese worksheets through Legend of Zelda's online site. This, had resulted to Yuta having a messed up chin after being kicked in the face by a tumbling Sicheng whom, conveniently, studied Chinese martial arts long enough to inflict harm with fine grace.

"Yeah, I know right. Who could've guessed that she was the mole in the first place," Yuta replied, taking his seat in front of the class. Sicheng followed him suit, taking his own beside Yuta who was now going through his bag for his books. This was actually why Sicheng liked being friends with the Osaka man. He might be way too addicted to gaming and had invited Sicheng himself in the RPG world, but his studies were also a priority to him. Sicheng felt like he had his own personal tutor inside Yuta, as they would always study together and when it was time to work, Yuta would immediately leave his Nintendo or PS4 behind to make sure he gets his assignments and notes done neatly and cleanly. This, tenacity of his had resulted to them making up in the first place, Yuta giving three of his Korean notebooks for Sicheng to study with as an apology. They riled up as best friends since then.

They were actually playing a new game that said weekend, a game of which Sicheng had naturally aced within the first few minutes of the game while Yuta fumbled and struggled as he wrongly chose the character, ending up as the brains instead of the fighter, or assasin, which he was more comfortable with. Sicheng's ID was Winwin, because he likes winning and he thinks it's cute. Yuta, was a pure genius, or as he said so. He took his initials Y and T (Sicheng insisted T wasn't even his initial, but he couldn't care less) and he placed them in reverse, making him TY. Had their other friend Taeyong known about this, he might've skinned Nakamoto Yuta alive, (all about his chic image being destroyed by a mere game character blablabla). Since the game was similarly of DOTA, except with a mix of Aeons of Sands (courtesy of Yuta's gaming information, again), they had played multiplayer and joined up a team of total outsiders. 

That is, Ra and Shownu.

So they were informed beforehand that there would be an informant of the enemy in their team, but all of them couldn't pinpoint who it was. Every single one was connected via the Internet, so there was no chance at seeing the players up close. Well Sicheng was a hundred percent sure that it wasn't Yuta, as they were rolled up in their respective blankets in front of his TV screen playing, and if the mole had received the mission he was pretty sure he'd be able to read it on screen. And, as he could conclude, .'Yuta's dumb and he at being the spy, so much that even the game knows that it didn't choose him'. So as they neared the end of the game, Sicheng was successfully killed by the mole, the blonde-haired female character with the username Ra controlling her. It took him completely off guard, as he was trying to warn the girl about the upcoming sandstorm when a gun was pointed at him and he died, the words 'GAME OVER' spelled large and clear enough over his dead character on screen. 

And just as his anger had begun to warm him up, Ra had smoothly logged out, untraceable and unreachable by any means.

Ugh.

Figures.

Sicheng's head was still deep in thought when the teacher came in, all dressed in her usual monochromatic uniform. A girl trailed behind her, her slim hands carrying what seemed to be stacks of books; their Korean notebooks, to be exact. Sicheng had not a single clue as to who she was, but one thing for sure, she was a resident of their lovely neighbourhood. Sicheng had bumped into her occassionally at the arcade playing Tekken, but had not once spoken nor shared a single smile with her. She was just that regular girl that's pretty enough to get your eyes on her for a second, but not interesting enough for the gaze to linger. The fact that she was, of female community, playing games at the arcade remained indifferent to Sicheng, as he himself had quite a number of female relatives that were super addicted to gaming. He knew for a fact that this was the 21st century, and he didn't think that the idea of girls his age playing teacups or dress-ups were fancy either. Most of the girls he'd met now chose sneakers rather than pumps, jeans over skirts with ruffled ends, and more boy-cut hair than he can count. 

So, it's evident enough of a purpose for him not to know her name.

He no longer paid attention to her as his nose dived straight into his book, trying out new words to extend his Korean vocabulary. The class had quite a number of foreigners, but Koreans overruled nontheless. Sicheng had migrated from far away, Wenzhou, China, to study here and venture the field of performing arts. Yuta too, had done the same thing, all the way from Osaka. He had three junior friends, Renjun, Chenle and Yukhei, whislt another friend who was a senior, Qian Kun. They had long since spoken Korean fluently, so Sicheng felt a little pressured as he too, wanted to talk comfortably with others just like his fellow Chinese friends are doing. Studying Korean had been a little difficult for him, so when the teacher had called him over to her desk as she held his notebook in her hands, Sicheng wasn't really surprised. The girl was still there though, her hands dilligently handing out the books to his classmates as he dragged his long legs to the teacher's desk.

"Dong Sicheng," she started, not looking at him as she skimmed through his work. The young man gulped as he watched her polished nails tap onto several pages that she found a little unsatisfying to the eye. Handwriting, I knew it. Sicheng groaned mentally, regretting the fact that he had done his work in such a haste that led him to writing a few illegible paragraphs of Korean on the pages. "You haven't made much progress these past few months, is there something bothering you?" she spoke, too fast for the younger to fully comprehend. Her voice, too, was quite hushed, as to not embarass the Chinese in front of his fellow classmates, which led him to not being able to understand what the teacher had said. Her eyes wavered in sympathy to his own, shaking eyes, and it wasn't before he could muster up the courage to ask her to repeat what she said that a female voice spoke.

"She asked, are you distracted by something that you have not gotten used to Korean yet?"