. .

| Minji |

"Welcome in..." The second they locked eyes, he scoffed loudly. 

She wasn't exactly sure what his first reaction would be, but it certainly wasn't this. Was this his reaction whenever Soyeon sunbae showed up? 

However, the man behind her had a much more reasonable reaction. He looked genuinely mystified by her, a man who was likely the manager of the store that Dohyun had mentioned. 

"Annyeong sunbae." She put on an act, pretending to act politely to him. 

"What are you doing here?" He questioned. 

"And you are?" The manager inquired, speaking over the annoyed boy. 

"I'm Dohyun sunbae's high school hoobae."

"Oh wow, I've never met a friend of Dohyun's before, are you by chance—"

"Hyung didn't you come back to finish an order? Go and finish it, I'll take care of her." Dohyun immediately ushered the other male back into the kitchen area. 

He slowly rotated to face her, flashing a disinterested smirk. 

"So what are you doing here? Are you trying to watch a drama here?" Dohyun questioned in a disinterested tone. "Or are you looking for him? He's not here today." 

"I know that already. I'm here to try gaming." Minji snapped back annoyed at his disingenuousness. She was a customer after all. 

"Is this how you treat all potential customers? Just treat me like a normal customer." 

Dohyun gazed at her, before flashing a commercial smile. Portraying a retail worker surprisingly well considering he didn't appear to have taken up any acting classes. 

"Hello son-nim (guest), would you like to use a PC?" He spoke in as fake a capitalist tone she had heard before. 

"What else do people come here to do?" She murmured under her breath. 

"You can use computer 102." He pointed down the long corridor of rows and rows of identical looking computer setups. 

It was a wonder that people used all of the different computers. It wasn't her first time here, she had come here before to show Hanni what they were like. But it would definitely be her first time coming to actually play games. 

"Thank you." She expressed as she navigated the rows to find her assigned PC. 

When she found it, she noticed it had a pretty descent view of the front, allowing her to see him if she peeked over the top. 

Surely, he'd come over at some point. After all... she hadn't come for no reason. After an entire week of not talking, Minji was starting to become more and more confused. 

Nothing had been said since their weekend run in at the mall. No texts, not to mention her student council meetings kept her from ever 'running' into him. 

It was just so annoying, she didn't have to reach out to anyone, people came to her.

Yet here she was, visiting his workplace like an idiot, hoping that she'd have the chance to talk to him again. To bother him of course. 

She took a second to explore the set-up: the usual glowing mechanical keyboard, a similarly sleek black mouse, and a wide monitor that certainly looked much cooler than the one she had at home.

Seeing it up close again, she felt significantly more excitement than when she had come before. She felt like a pro-gamer. With a few naver searches she had found there were many female professional gamers, as well as many in the live-broadcasting scene. 

Maybe if she got dropped by SM entertainment... never mind her mother would probably murder her if she ever mentioned gaming around her. 

As she finished her internal monologue, she noticed he had yet to even so much as peer towards her.

Instead, he remained nonchalantly at the counter, his eyes glued to something on the desk. 

This was petty. He was being petty. 

So she mustered up her pride and decided to text, not wanting to waste her visit. 

「

Lee Avatar-nim

[ Are you working on something? } |

[ Can you come help me? } |

」

Minji placed her phone down, and almost five minutes passed, as Dohyun continued ignoring her. What the hell was he looking at? ? 

Minji began to randomly tap vigorously on the keyboard, hoping to catch his attention, yet the only thing she received were a handful of annoyed stares from those playing around her. 

Another 5 minutes passed before he finally seemed to look at his phone. 

「

| { I'm working ] 

| { There's a guide on how to create an account and log-in right there ] 

[ What are you working on? } |

| { What happened to "I'm here to play games?" ]

| { and "just treat me like every other customer" ]

[ Teach me then } |

[ put your LoL skills to good use for once } |

| { I have to stay at the front ]

| { the thing about working is... ]

| { you can't do whatever you want ]

[ there's no one else coming } | 

[ school has been over for like an hour now } | 

[ And no one has come in for like 40 minutes now } |

| { You got here 15 minutes ago ]

o

」

Minji frowned as she clenched her hand around the innocent mouse and started to squeeze it tightly. Was he really going to be like this? 

Clenching her teeth in frustration, she was about to propel herself up and go yell at him when an ingenious idea popped into her head. 

Remembering the infatuated manager, she stealthily left her desktop and found him dropping off a tray of food to a group of college aged students.

"Um excuse me?" She quickly caught his attention. 

He looked stunned by her interruption, and smiled awkwardly.

"Hi, you're the manager-nim right?"

"That's right. I'm the owner of the Happy Gamer. You're Dohyun's hoobae right?" He recognized her from when she had first walked in. 

Utilizing an aegyo tone was something she almost never did, the whiny and childish image something that she despised. But, desperate times called for desperate measures. 

"Actually, after watching Dohyun sunbae play LoL so well, I begged him to help me learn it. And he promised he'd teach me." She lowered her head intentionally, keeping her hands together.

"But whenever I ask him now, he always says he's busy working. So I came today to make him fulfill his promise, but he still won't come help me." Minji ended her performance with an overcompensating pout, enlarging her eyes and pursing her lips.

It didn't take more than a second for him to flash sympathetic eyes as she knew she had succeeded. 

"Of course! That Lee Dohyun, he's way too cold to his juniors. Especially a pretty one like you, I'll make sure to send him to you just sit tight." He promised with determined eyes. 

Minji smirked as she returned to her desktop, mentally patting herself on the back for being so cunning. 

She leaned back proudly as she watched the show play out as predicted. The manager marched to Dohyun and began pointing aggressively towards her, reprimanding him for his lack of attention towards his 'hoobae'. 

Shooing him out of the counter, Dohyun was forced to leave, as his gaze slowly gravitated towards her. 

"Son-nim, I heard I promised you a LoL lesson that I can't seem to recall promising?" He grumbled clearly holding back frustration as he took the seat beside her. 

Without a hint of shame she nodded in return. "I know as an old man your memory might not be so good. But I happen to know you do." 

Giving zero warning at all, he stood up and positioned himself directly to her posterior—what was he doing? 

Reaching forward, his right hand hovered over hers, was he going to... what would gamer hands feel like? Would they be soft— "Move please."

In reality he was motioning for her to let go of the mouse she had unconsciously started to suffocate. Embarrassed, Minji swiped both hands away. 

His head now beside her, his arms extended around her as he began controlling the desktop. 

Did he really need to get this close? Couldn't he have just asked her to move?

She watched as the golden League of Legends logo flashed onto the desktop. 

"Your email?" 

"What?" 

"You need an email to create an account."

"Like a school email?" The second she said it, she realized how stupid she sounded. 

"Do you want your school email to receive confirmation emails that you play LoL?" 

Minji stole the keyboard and bit into her lip as she hurriedly typed her email. Why was she so flustered all of the sudden. 

"Shawol minji at naver dot com." She didn't need to look over, she could tell from his mocking voice, he enjoyed the opportunity to . 

(*name for Shinee stan)

"Hey! Why not support my entertainment coworkers? Besides, I made it over 4 years ago back when I was in middle school." She doubled down. 

"I didn't say anything." 

He helped her type in a password leading them to the final step of the account creation process: choosing a username or 'Summoner name' as was outlined by the heading. 

"Have you thought about it?" 

Minji giggled as she had actually given it a little thought... or maybe a lot of thought. Typing into the keyboard, she spelled out: 'SM Minji', then promptly pressed enter. 

After all, it had quite a ring to it, didn't it? She found it admittedly cool how Dohyun and other pro players showcased their team name then their name in the username. 

Shouldn't she— a frown flashed across her face as red words popped up onto the screen.

"Tough." She heard him murmur before she even had the chance to read. 

「 The summoner name you have entered is already in use. 」

"Ya! What kind of sick..." 

A subtle scoff emitted from the boy hovering beside her. 

"You really think someone wouldn't think to take a name like that? I wouldn't be surprised if it was someone from our school."  

It took a little manipulation and about 5 minutes of repeated entries for them to settle on: SM E M1nji.

Minji smiled as the loading screen finally popped up and the client revealed a glowing dashboard full of different types of game modes and articles about Esports. 

Despite becoming familiar with the game mechanics after watching a couple of matches (a few on YouTube that she'd never reveal to anyone), she had no clue what the actual game looked like. 

Dohyun helped her click through the main pop-ups and then she noticed the game start to load. Unlike the normal map, the map that loaded to be a giant icy bridge that looked completely unlike the standard layout that was in the competitive games.

She glanced to her side to ask him, but noticed his total absence. 

Dohyun had already returned to the desk beside her and was scribbling down notes on his homework. 

"Nerd." 

He didn't even engage in his usual banter. Was he really this studious?

Frowning, Minji refocused on the game following the tutorial step by step, controlling a female archer called Ashe through multiple simple clicking instructions.  

As she finished the first tutorial, she beamed in pride, turning to gloat... he remained annoyingly oblivious still completely immersed in his homework. 

"YA! You call this teaching?"

"Ah, my treasured Hoobae. If you're so interest in League of Legends, I can recommend no better teacher than the one you have before you. The in-game tutorial." He mocked, not even caring to check on her.

"Ani-ya. Can't you at least advise me from the side or something." She pouted as she was loaded into the next tutorial. This time she had been given a different female character called 'Lux'.

"What if I want to try that cute champion?"

"Which one?" Dohyun questioned his voice slighter more enthusiastic than before. 

"The one that you played in the event. The blue one that you kept jumping around with." She recalled his impressive performance during the show match with Seoul Tech. 

"Ahh... Tristana?" He spoke a strange name that didn't even sound feasible in English.

Still the name did ring a bell, from the thrilling showdown. 

"You can't." Dohyun sunbae quickly squashed her excitement. 

"Why, cause I'm not good enough?" She snapped back defensively. Who was he to tell her who she could and couldn't play? 

This time Dohyun finally showed his face to her, giving a condescending eye roll. 

"No pabo. You need to play more to earn in-game currency, then you can purchase the champion."

Feeling slightly stupid, Minji quietly finished the final levels of the tutorial, before leaning back in her chair.

"Can't you play with me once? Don't you have to play with the best to become the best?" She quoted some random philosopher. 

Dohyun tilted his head slightly, before letting out a deep sigh. "Fine, one game. What role do you want to go?" 

"Just go in the bottom lane with me. That way you can teach me while we play." She reasoned. 

Entering in the lobby she noticed that the account he was playing on was the infamous one she had seen in the event. KT Avatar. 

It took another 5 minutes to set up the voice chat, but they connected, as she found it quite fascinating. 

"Jeez I haven't played normals since I first started." He mumbled something  that Minji didn't understand.

"Alright, be ready, once the game starts you're going to have to type in 'Bot' really quickly." 

Thankfully, the game began without much trouble, with Minji taking the same girl she had first played with called 'Ashe'. 

While waiting, Dohyun hurriedly explained all of her abilities and she seemed to get the basics of the kit. 

Like most champions in League of Legends, each character had 4 unique abilities along with 2 shared abilities called Summoner Spells. 

The unique abilities were assigned to the same keyboard buttons, the four characters following the tab: 'Q', 'W', 'E', and 'R'. The latter was known as the ultimate ability, which was extremely powerful but couldn't be unlocked until your character reached level 6. 

This specific champions abilities were explained to her as such: her 'Q' which could make her basic attacks do more damage, her 'W' which shot a hail of arrows in a triangular shaped cone, her 'E' which shot a tiny arrow around the map to show what was going on in the fog, and lastly her 'R' which shot a large arrow that stunned the enemy champion it hit.

As they spawned into the game she heard th