“You there, four-eyes? I said I need to use the computer.”

She can hear the girl screeching beside her. The sound is reaching her ears, and she can recognise the words, but her brain is too busy to put meaning to those words by fitting them into a sentence. She’s thinking about how to win this game. Her opponent went for very early aggression, and she was stupid enough to not defend properly –

“Look at me when I’m talking to you, idiot.”

 A hand is being waved in front of her. How annoying. At least she has her bases in the correct control groups. Might as well take care of her army production while she can’t see the action on the screen -

“Hey, idiot, I said I’m talking to you.” The girl gives her shoulder a hard shove –

That’s annoying. She has to delay her Hellion drop because of this idiot trying to shove her out of her seat. No matter, it looks like her opponent’s mineral line is still undefended. All she needs to do is guide her units through his detection. Drop a scan – see where he is on the map – move her army to guide him away, bait him forward – it’s nothing she hasn’t done before.

It takes ten keystrokes to win the game. First her Hellions deploy from the medivac transports, the “drop” that this kind of attack is named for. Then they rush towards his worker units, and for an instant, there’s an opportunity for her opponent to avoid this – drag his probes away from the incoming devastation. But he doesn’t do that, because he’s not as good as her. Her units’ flamethrowers light up on the monitor, and it only takes another nine seconds until she sees the victory screen appear in front of her -

“Fine. Have it your way.”  The girl takes the drink bottle beside her keyboard, and knowing she can’t dump it on anything electronic without getting in trouble, instead pours it onto the notebook she has next to her mouse. Her notebook. “Now move – “

“Don’t you have some boys to chase after, Hwayoung? Leave her alone. It’s not like she was bothering you or anything.”

The new arrival’s voice is loud and clear, loud enough that Taeyeon looks over shoulder to see if the computer lab supervisor is going to wake up – no, he doesn’t. She turns in her seat to regard the newcomer, and she notes it’s the transfer student. The one that has her entire year wrapped around her finger already. Whatever charms the girl has are not on display as she glares at Taeyeon’s bully.

Tae isn’t sure how this is supposed to work. For a moment she’s afraid that her bully is going to do something similarly extreme from the way she approaches the transfer student. But this isn’t a drama, and her tormentor instead chooses to play it off with a shrug and an eyeroll, strutting out of the computer lab like she always intended to leave.

“Thanks,” Taeyeon replies, drumming her fingers together. She wants to turn back to her computer, but she recalls that it’s rude to not face someone when they’re talking to you.

“Don’t mention it – oh no.” The new girl brushes past her to pick up the soaking notebook. Drops of inky water splatter on the desk as she holds it up for inspection.

“It’s, it’s fine. I mean, um, it’s just a notebook. I can remember most of it anyway.”

“Hey, do you want one of mine? There was a sale at the stationery store.” The girl just asked a question, but she’s already rifling through her backpack. “Here, take it.”

Taeyeon takes the book, turns it over a few times. It’s very pink, but it’ll do. She sits down, takes a pen from her bag, and starts re-writing her notes while she stares back at the girl.

“Thank you….” She flips to the front cover, bare except for the label. “-Miyoung.”

///

It’s Thursday today. Which actually means no games, just practice maps. It also means she will be there to talk to later.

Eating her lunch takes sixteen minutes. It’s two minutes to walk to the computer lab. The computer takes a minute and a half to start up. She sets her bag down and takes what she needs – pen, notebook, and ruler. Eight centimetres from the edge of the desk to the keyboard. Fifteen centimetres from the keyboard to the mouse, ten centimetres from the keyboard to the edge of the monitor. Measuring all this out takes up one minute out of the game’s loading times.

And then she practices until Miyoung appears. She gave up trying to figure on spotting a pattern after an entire term – Miyoung seemed to come and go as she pleases. Sometimes Miyoung sits down for lunch, tagging along as she wordlessly walks to the computer lab. Sometimes Miyoung’s waiting for her, having already the computer for her. Or maybe she’ll appear halfway through this practice map to ask questions.

“You’re playing your game again.”

“Yeah.”

Miyoung moves around to lean over her shoulder, looking at what’s happening on the screen. “Do you get bored of playing the same level all the time?”

“No. It’s a very complicated, um, level. There’s lots to learn.” Like how to split her forces against charging banelings, how to execute the perfect medivac drop play. Not that Miyoung would understand any of what that meant, not that anyone would. Good thing she doesn’t expect them to. It wasn’t that she thought they weren’t capable, the concepts were quite simple, really. It was just that every time she’d tried to tell someone about it when she was growing up, they’d always tell her to stop. It didn’t make sense to her, at the time, but now she knew this was just how people worked, with their annoying questions and pretending to be interested. Well, with one exception.

Practice ends on a sour note – maybe that keyboard she was using was starting to stick, maybe she was off her game today. And yet despite the scowl on her face and her heavy steps, Miyoung insisted on following along.

Maybe she resented it today, maybe not. But for someone reason, she felt like asking.  “Why do you want to hang out with me?”

“I’m sorry?” Miyoung looks taken aback, clutching her hand at the neck of her blouse.

“I don’t have many friends. I’m not very attractive. And while I have helped with your homework, that’s hardly a reason to waste your break time –“

Miyoung stares at her, and Tae braces for the biting dismissal that everyone who crosses Miyoung gets. That girl had a way with words. “Because you’re interesting, Tae.” Miyoung flaps a hand at her, the same way she dismisses some poor boy that’s trying to up to her. “And if I’m totally honest, I’m a little jealous.”

“Jealous of what?”

“You’re a very driven person, you’re here all the time, playing your game. I don’t understand what you’re doing or why you’re doing it, but it’s not just some game to you is it?”

“No….it isn’t.” She wasn’t expecting that question, and she turns to Miyoung. No-one’s ever told her it’s more than a game. Her parents didn’t care, so long as her report card came back looking good. Heck, even some of her online friends didn’t see this as much more than a game.

“My teachers say I’m ambitious and hard-working, but you put me to shame. It’s a little inspiring, really. Makes me want to work harder for my dreams.”

“Oh.” Once again, she’s lost for words. She gets this feeling a lot when she talks to people, but she just lets it pass. But with Miyoung, she always feels like she should be saying something. Anything to stop the blush coming to her cheeks. “What do you dream of?”

“I want to be famous. It’s silly – selfish too – but I don’t care. I want to sing to a stadium. I want to see my face on the billboards in Gangnam. What’s yours?”

Now that’s an easy question. “I want to get better at my game.” That would be enough of an answer, but Miyoung’s smile – the attention – encourages her on. “It’s fun. There‘s an order to things there. It makes sense.”

“Honestly…I don’t understand your game at all.” Miyoung laughs, her eyes two shining smiles. “But I do know that no-one else in school wants to challenge you any more…so you must be pretty good, right?”

Taeyeon lets herself smirk for a moment. “Ah…it’s pretty easy to understand. Here, I’ll show you. See, there’s three different races, the humans, and two different kinds of aliens. Then on the game’s map you send out these units to collect –“

She’s never talked to someone so much in her life.