#but also my computer\profile got stuck in dark mode | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sunnydaisy1 · 3 years

Text

Kayaking

DYLAN O’BRIEN X READER

A/N: wassup im backk! okay not really school is once again kicking my arse and im back to posting once every century *finger guns* but yeah I’m now obsessed with dylan obrien again and wrote this. - Also, sad note, my computer is not letting me update my masterlist so my Tom Holland x reader and this post won’t be on there but everything can still be accessed via my profile. Thankss :))

SUMMARY: You and dylan are camp counsellors and are leading a kayaking activity together (i suck at summaries)

Maybe gets a lil spicy spicy hehe

You walk into the canteen, a bubbling group of 8 year old's behind you bouncing with adrenaline from just completing the trampolining activity. You walk them over to the tables laid out in a long row, ensuring every kid was seated before taking your own place. You chatted with a few of the campers as they patiently waited for lunch. Before long the canteen was becoming packed with campers and counsellors alike, and you turned when you heard a particularly rowdy group of kids enter, lead by none other than Dylan, a red bandana tied around his head and a wide grin plastered on his face. He immediately caught your eye and sauntered over to your table, followed by his kids as they merged with yours. Dylan plonked himself in the empty seat next to you since Alyssa had moved up to make room for him. You had whisper shouted at her not to but Dylan come over before she could move back. "Hellooo ladies." Dylan beamed at you, crossing his arms in front of him. You rolled your eyes but a small smile slipped onto your lips. "How was trampolining?" He asked the group of campers sitting near to him, catching you by surprise as he must have looked at what you had on your rota. "It was awesome!" Arthur responded, eagerly exclaiming from a few seats down. "Yeah Y/N showed us her backflip!" Kiera cheered from beside you, making Dylan raise his eyebrows in surprise at you. "Oh really?" His mouth twitched with a slight lopsided smirk. Last night, you, Dylan and some other counsellors had the night off and were allowed to hang out in the indoor sports area. You had ended up dragging Dylan over to the trampolines, wanting to bounce and do your very impressive forward rolls. Dylan had almost ended up pissing himself when he saw you roll haphazardly across the trampolines, hair becoming staticy. You had pouted and shoved him playfully, jokingly teasing that he couldnt do any better. Of course Dylan had then proceeded to back flip in front of you, making you feel overwhelmingly embarassed. He had laughed at your shocked face that quickly turned appalled when he asked if you wanted him to teach you how to do it. You had very reluctantly (okay so maybe not that reluctantly when dylan pulled your hand into his) agreed to let him teach you how to do it. He got a mat for going underneath you incase you fell and you were surprised with how careful he was being, Dylan normally being so utterly careless and clumsy. He had started with getting you to just bounce, laughing at your frustrated face. You soon progressed onto the actual flipping, starting off with Dylan holding your back and upper legs to help you master the movement before you managed to do it yourself. By the end of the evening you had mastered a pretty impressive backflip, feeling proud of yourself and way more confident in your new trampolining skills. Dylan of course had loved every second of it, playfully teasing and coaching you whilst maybe also enjoying having an excuse to touch you. You looked sheepishly to Dylan as Kiera continued to babble on about trampolining and he nudged your shoulder with his, "proud of you." You grinned but also felt your entire body heat up with the soft gaze of affection Dylan was looking at you with. You muttered a thanks, being interrupted by the shrill echoes of the lunchtime bell. Amy, the head counsellor, stepped to the front of the canteen as always, making sure everyone knew what was going on before she announced which table would get food first. Soon, it came to your table and you queued up behind the campers, waiting with Dylan at the back. Grabbing you both a tray you handed him his, to which he grinned and thanked you. You headed over to the hot food station, one of the workers serving you a sausage roll before you walked to the salad bar. You were scooping some sweetcorn onto your plate when you felt a hand on your lower back. You instantly jumped and turned to see Dylan smirking at you. "Piss of will you O'Brien you almost gave me a heart attack." He just grinned and popped one of the tomatoes from your plate in his mouth, chuckling as you thwacked him before he scooted off to your table. You sighed as you collected your plate and returned to your seat, narrowing your eyes at Dylan as he watched you with a widespread grin. "You're such a pain Dyl." You stated, taking a bite of your sausage roll. "Thanks y/n, love you too." He responded, munching on his meal. Soon, lunch was over and you and Dylan had both sent off your campers to get changed into their wet gear, as you had a joint kayaking activity together this afternoon. You retied your laces before hopping back up, Dylan walking over to you after collecting the keys to the canoe shed. He wiggled his eyebrows at you, jangling the keys in his hand. You let out a huff of amusement, before you both walked down to the lake together. Dylan quickly unlocked the shed, walking inside the slightly damp and musky structure. He hauled out the large bags containing the life jackets while you untied the straps holding the kayaks together. Once you noticed Dylan slipping into the toilet at the back to change into his trunks, you scooted out the shed, wanting to find the red life jackets for your campers. Your fingers were fumbling with undoing the bag's ties and you had just managed to pull out the adult sized life jacket when Dylan sauntered out, grabbing the jacket from your hand and slipping it onto his body. "Hey!" You said, turning to see Dylan cheekily grinning at you, hands on his bright pink clad hips. Your eyes ran over his body, brow raising when you studied his choice of bold pink trunks. His honey eyes met yours as you looked up and you couldn't help a small smile peaking out your mouth at how adorably dorky he looked. "That's my life jacket." You stated, dropping the bag you had been holding. Dylan pretended to look around the red jacket he was wearing, "Can't see your name on it." He replied cheekily, slight dimples on his cheeks. You huffed and prodded him, "Come on Dyl, you know red is my favourite colour." Dylan just stuck his tongue out at you, "Tough luck y/n." You frowned and flipped him off, reluctantly putting on the unappealing blue life jacket, leaving it to hang open, similiarly like Dylan's. Soon, the campers all arrived down to the lake and you and Dylan had finished setting up the equipment, kayaks and paddles layed out neatly beside jackets. You had to do the mandatory safety talk, ensuring every kid knew what to do and Dylan was rather unhelpfully distracting you by running his fingers along the edge of your life jacket's back, you shoving him multiple times to get him to stop. He continued anyway, a smug smile plastered on his face when you shivered as his fingers 'accidentally' brushed under your counsellor polo top. When you eventually finished the safety talk, Dylan removed his hand from your back, clasping his hands together like he often did in counsellor mode. "Okay everybody, partner up and pop on a life jacket, I'm gonna show you how to adjust it so you're all ready to get out on the lake." You grab your water bottle while he waits for everybody to grab their jackets. You are just screwing the lid back on when you feel a tug, yanking you over to Dylan's front. You look up to see the kids giggling and Dylan wiggles his dark eyebrows at you before reaching down and zipping your life jacket up. "Everybody zip their partner's jacket up." You look to see all the surrounding kids echoe Dylan's movements, having fun helping their friends. "Okay next part, you're gonna need to give this strap here a nice tug." He places a hand on your side, pulling quickly at the strap, winking at you as the jacket becomes more secure. You feel your body heat up and try to ignore Dylan's nimble, slender fingers resting on your side. "Ready for the final bit everyone?" He asks the kids and they all nod enthusiastically. "Okay then, you're gonna give these shoulder straps the same tug you did for the other and then I need you to lift your bud's jacket up, making sure it's nice and tight." As Dylan says this, he pulls each of your shoulder straps tight, smirking as his fingertips brush along your collar. He then reaches underneath the jacket's shoulders and lifts upwards, beaming as your torso just gets tugged upwards. You feel your heart pounding as Dylan releases you, his smug face turning to help the younger kids. You cough lightly, trying to rid the fogginess in your brain before you go and help. Soon, the kids are all ready, paddles in hands and you have lifted yourself into your kayak, off the jetty so that you can help from the water. You swiftly maneouver yourself into postion, watching as Dylan checks the first kid's life jacket before lifting the kayak into the water easily. You can practically feel yourself gulp, watching his tan, lean arms bulge against the yellow polo shirt all counsellors had to wear. Your gaze flickers to the pink trunks, clad around his thighs and you sigh, not understanding how he can pull off such stupid coloured items. "You gonna help y/n or just stare?" Dylan asks you, watching as you stutter and quickly grab the kayak, steadying it so the child can get into it. An hour later, all kids were on the water, having mastered the basics you and Dylan had taught them and a fair few of them soaking wet from splashing or falling in during the races you had got them to do. "Alright campers," You yell, gaining their attention while you paddle to the middle of them, "We are gonna have one last competition. We're gonna raft all the kayaks together, Dylan's campers on one side, mine on the other." Suprisingly quickly, the campers rafted together, all holding onto each other's kayaks so that they didn't float off. You sandwiched yourself in the middle, watching amused as the teenage girls from Dylan's campers raced to sidle up next to his kayak, two of them smug as they reached the spots next to him. Katie and Laura grinned as Dylan grabbed onto their kayaks, their arms 'coincidentally' touching his as they held onto his kayak. It was common knowledge that Dylan was a popular counsellor amongst the older girls, often being subject to much of the gossip around camp and you could understand why. His chiselled face and body were unfairly god-like, his brown hair was soft and most often messy and those damn moles on his face often got compared as the luckiest things on earth. He also had an immensely lovely personality; he was hilarious, kind, caring and sensitive. To be honest, a large majority of camp you found yourself almost having to wipe drool away from your face after staring at him across the room for too long. You eventually tied all the kayaks together, creating a temporary raft that was secure enough for your planned competition. "Okay so here's what's gonna happen. You will see that you all have a number on the front of your kayak. If I call that number, you have to get out of your kayak, run across the raft and into the other person's seat." You were basically playing a more elaborate game of ladders. (A/N: I have no clue if ladders is a worldwide game or just here in the UK but if you don't know what it is just google it :) ) The kids all squealed enthusiastically and you were glad to see even the older ones who were usually more reluctant with activities were looking excited. "Okay we will have a few practise rounds so you get the hang of it. Ready? Okay.....Number 7!" You shouted and instantly, two small kids scrambled up from their kayaks, climbing across the raft before plonking themselves in the other's seat. "Woah, you guys were quick! Okay one more practise before we start counting points for teams." Soon, the competition was well underway and kids had been scrambling their way across, a few falling into the water. Then, when two of the campers were settling back into their kayaks, Ethan shouted out, "Y/N and Dylan should have a go!" At once, all the campers shrieked in agreement, making you look at Dylan. He shrugged, a smirk working its way onto his face. You grinned, "Okay but you'll have to hold onto each other reallyyy tight!" They didn't really considering a rope held you all together but it made it more exciting. "Right count us down then." Dylan said. "3,2,1 GO!" The campers all screamed and immediately, you hauled yourself up, clambering over to reach Dylan's kayak. You are almost at his, grinning with the knowledge you were gonna win as Dylan made the kayaks rock more, slowing him down. All of a sudden, you felt a hard push on your side and a second later you were surrounded by cold water. "DYLAN!" You screeched as you came to the surface of the lake, said man watching you with glee as you bobbed, clothes now soaking wet. He cheekily reaches out for you and you grip his hand, pretending to get ready to get out before giving his arm a hard tug, causing him to topple into the water. You laugh as he surfaces, treading water as he flicks his hair out his face like a wet dog. "I can't believe you fell for that!" You chuckled, grinning triumphantly at his now soaked state too before making eye contact with him. The pair of you instantly raced towards the kayaks again, you managing to scoot back on and into Dylan's seat before he reaches yours. "HA! MY TEAM WINS!" You shouted, beaming and high fiving some of the campers around you. "Yeah, yeah yeah." Dylan shakes his head defeatedly, a smile on his face anyway. Once the kayaks are unrafted, the campers make their way back to the jetty, Dylan getting out to help the kids. You steady the kayak as he reaches under the straps of the less strong kids, easily lifting them up and onto the wooden jetty. Once all the kids are safely out the water and kayaks laid out by the shed for the next group, you paddle and steer so you're beside the jetty. Placing your paddle on the side, you go to get out when you feel Dylan's warm arms wrap around your waist and lift you up, you barely having to push to get out the kayak. "Uh thanks..." You say, body tingling from the freckled man's touch. He just winks at you and lifts your kayak out the water, placing it next to the others. You dismiss the kids, all of them running off to the cabins to shower and change before the next activity. You walk into the canoe shed, placing the rope back where it came from, and tidying away a few bits before you too went off to change. You lean down to pick up a few plastic balls and place them on the side when a hand tugs your now open jacket, causing you to stumble into a hard chest. You look up to see Dylan smiling down at you, brown hair sticking up in all directions. Your hands are pressed against his chest, his own life jacket open as well. "Uh hi." You say, and Dylan brushes a strand of your hair out your face. "Hi." His eyes are looking right into yours and his hands are on your waist and you can feel your heart pounding against your ribcage. "Wasn't very nice of you to pull me in like that was it y/n." He says softly, gaze darting down to your lips. "You pushed me in first!" You say, poking his chest and Dylan grins, his head tilting and a lopsided smirk gracing his mouth. "Guess so, I think I can make it up to you though." You frown in confusion but feel your stomach flip when Dylan leans forward, pressing a kiss to your mouth. Your eyes are shot wide open, watching as Dylan's own brown eyes open and look at you through dark lashes. Then, your hand tugs on the fabric of his shirt, causing his lips to press against yours again and you close your eyes, a hand running behind his neck to tug on the hairs at the base of his head. It escalates pretty quickly and you find yourself being lifted onto the side of the cabinet in the shed, Dylan pressed between your legs as his lips work against yours. Your hands push his polo up slightly, running along his abs and torso, admiring as his muscles contract at your touch. He runs his fingers softly up your side, his mouth caressing yours. "Once you guys have finished making out, the kids are meeting you in the hall." A loud voice echoes out and you both instantly break apart, flushing and extracting your hands from up each other's shirts. You see Amy walking out the shed, her red hair swooping as she shouts out a final, "Oh and please don't fuck in the shed!" You look up at Dylan who's expression mirrors the same as his mum finding a girl in his room and burst out laughing. Dylan's warm gaze flicks back to you and he grins lazily, lips puffy and swollen. His hands have fallen to your thighs and you giggle as he leans in again, going to kiss you but you place a hand on his chest, pushing him back softly and sliding off the cabinet. "Dyl come on we still need to get changed" You slip your hand into his and tug him out the shed, much to his protests of 'y/n please, the kids can wait a bit longer' but you just roll your eyes and drag him to the counsellor cabins, the promise of a possible shared shower causing Dylan to walk a bit faster.

#dylan #dylan obrien imagine #dylan obrien oneshot #dylan obrien x reader #dylan o'brien x reader #dylan o'brien #dylan obrien #dylan o'brien oneshot #stiles stilinksi x reader #urm why is this man so hot #someone save me i hate school #dylan obrien is sexy #when is 1d gonna reunite #imma head out

136 notes · View notes

maximelebled · 4 years

Text

My quick review of the ASUS XG27UQ monitor (4K, HDR, 120Hz)

I originally wanted to tweet this series of bullet points out but it was getting way too long, so here goes! I got this to replace a PG278Q, which was starting to develop odd white stains, and never had good color reproduction in the first place (TN film drawbacks, very low gamma resulting in excessively bright shadows, under-saturated shadows, etc.)

The hardware aesthetic is alright! The bezels may feel a bit large to some people, but I don’t mind them at all. If you’re a fan of the no-bezel look, you’ll probably hate it. There is a glowing logo on the back that you can customize (Static Cyan is my recommendation), but it isn’t bright enough to be used as bias lighting, which would’ve been nice.

The built-in stand is decent; it comes with a tacky and distracting light projection feature at the bottom. It felt quite stable, though I don’t care about it because it got instantly replaced by an Ergotron LX arm. (I have two now, I really recommend them in spite of their price.)

The coating is a little grainy and this is noticeable on pure colors! You can kinda see the texture come through, a bit more than I’d like. Not a huge deal though.

The rest of the review will be under the cut.

The default color preset (”racing mode”), which the monitor is calibrated against, is very vivid and saturated. It looks great! But it’s inherently inaccurate, which bothers me, so I don’t like it. It looks like as if sRGB got stretched into the expanded gamut of the monitor.

sRGB “emulation” looks very similar to my Dell U2717D, whose sRGB mode is factory-calibrated. However, the XG27UQ’s sRGB mode has lower gamma (brighter shadows), so while the colors are accurate, the gamma is not. It feels 1.8-ish. Unless you were in a bright room, it would be inappropriate for work that needs to have accurate shadows. This mode also locks other controls, so it’s not the most useful, but the brightness is set well on it, so it is usable!

The “User Mode” settings use the calibrated racing mode as a starting point, which is a big relief. So it’s possible to tweak the color temperature and the saturation from there! I checked pure white against my Dell monitor and my smartphone (S9+) and tried to reach a reasonable 3-way compromise between them, knowing that the Dell is most likely the most accurate, and that Samsung also allegedly calibrates their high-end smartphones well. My configuration ended up being R:90/G:95/B:100 + SAT:42. This matches the saturation of the U2717D sRGB mode fairly closely. You also get to choose between 1.8, 2.2, and 2.5 gamma too, which is not too granular, but great to have. It kinda feels like my ideal match is between 2.2 and 2.5, but 2.2 is fine.

The color gamma according to lagom.nl looked fine, but I had to open the picture in Paint, otherwise it was DPI-scaled in the browser, and that messed with the way it works!! (That website is an amazing resource for quick monitor checks.)

Colors are however somewhat inaccurate in this mode. It’s easy to see by comparing the tweaked User Mode vs. sRGB emulation. There are some rather sizeable hue shifts in certain cases. I believe part of this is caused by the saturation tweak not operating properly.

Here’s a photo of what the Photoshop color picker looks like when Saturation is set to 0 on the monitor, vs. what a proper grayscale conversion should be. It’s definitely not using the right coefficients.

So in practice, when using the Racing & User modes, compared to the U2717D sRGB, here’s a few examples of what I see:

Reds are colder (towards the purple side) & oversaturated

Bright yellow (255,215,90) is undersaturated

Bright green (120,200,130) is undersaturated

Dark green (0,105,60) is fine

Magenta (220,13,128) is oversaturated

Dark reds & brown (150,20,20 to 90,15,10) is oversaturated

Cyan (0,180,240) is fine

Pink (230,115,170) is fine

Some shades of bright saturated blue (58,48,220) have the biggest shifts.

The TF2 skin tone becomes slightly desaturated and a bit colder

It’s not inaccurate to the point of being distracting, and you always have the sRGB mode (with flawed gamma?) to check things with, but it’s definitely not ideal, and some of these shifts go far enough that I wouldn’t recommend this monitor for color work that needs to be very accurate.

I’ve went back and forth, User vs sRGB, several times, on my most recent work (True Sight 2019 sequences). I’ve found the differences were acceptable for the most part; they bothered me the most during the Chronosphere sequence, in which the hazy sunset atmosphere turned a bit into to a rose gold tint, which wasn’t unpleasant at all — and looked quite pretty! — but it wasn’t what I did.

I’m coming from the point of view of a “prosumer” who cares about color accuracy, but who ultimately recognizes that this quest is impossible in the face of so many devices out there being inaccurate or misconfigured one way or the other. In the end, my position is more pragmatic, and I feel that you gotta be able to see how your stuff’s gonna look on the devices where it’ll actually be watched. So while I’ve done color grading on a decent-enough sRGB-calibrated monitor, I’ve always checked it against the inaccurate PG278Q, and I’ve done a little bit of compromising to keep my color work looking alright even once gamma shifted. And so, now, I’ll also be getting to see what my colors look like on a monitor that doesn’t quite restrain itself to sRGB gamut properly.

Well, at least, all of that stuff is out of the box, but...

TFTCentral (one of the most trustworthy monitor review websites, in my opinion) has found suspiciously similar shifts. But after calbration, their unit passed with flying colors (pun intended), so if you really care about this sort of stuff and happen to have a colorimeter... you should give it a try!

I hope one day we’ll be able to load and apply an ICC/ICM profile computer-wide, instead of only being able to load a simple gamma curve on the GPU with third-party tools like DisplayCAL. Even if it had to squeeze the gamut a bit...

Also, there are dynamic dimming / auto contrast ratio features which could potentially be useful in limited scenarios if you don’t care about color accuracy and want to maximize brightness. I believe they are forced on for HDR. But you will probably not care at all.

IPS glow is not very present on my unit; less than on my U2717D. However, when it starts to show up (more than a 30°-ish angle away), it shows up more. UPDATED: after some more time with the monitor, I wanna say that, in fact, IPS glow isit's slightly stronger, and shows up sooner (as in, from broader angles). It requires me to sit a greater distance from the monitor in order to not have it show up and impede dark scenes. It is worse than on my U2717D.

Backlight bleed, on the other hand, is there, and a little bit noticeable. On my unit, there’s a little bit of blue-ish bleed on the lower left corner, and some dark-grey-orange bleed for a good third of the upper-left. However, in practice, and to my eyes, it doesn’t bother me, even when I look for it. It ain’t perfect, but I’ve definitely seen worse, especially from ASUS. The photo above was taken at 100% brightness, and I’ve tried to make it just a tad brighter than what my eyes see, so hopefully it’s a decent sample.

Dead pixels: on my unit, I have 5 stuck dead green subpixels overall. There are 4 in a diamond pattern somewhat down and right to the center of the screen, and another one, a bit to the right of that spot. All of them kinda “shimmer” a little bit, in the sense that they become stronger or weaker based on my angle of view. They’re a bummer but I haven’t found them to be a hindrance. Took me a few days to even notice them for the first time, after all.

HDR is just about meaningless and uses some global dimming techniques, as well as stuff that feels like... you know that Intel HD driver feature that brightens the content on the screen, while lowering the panel backlight power in tandem, to save power, but it kinda flattens (and sometimes clips) highlights? It kinda looks like that sometimes. Without local dimming, HDR is just about meaningless.

Unfortunately, the really nice HDR support in computer monitors is still looking like it’s going to be at the very least a year out, and even longer for sub-1000 price ranges. (I was holding out for the PG27UQX at first, but it still has no word on availability, a whole year after being announced, and will probably cost over two grand, so no thanks.)

G-Sync (variable refresh rate) support is... not there yet?! The latest driver does not recognize the monitor as being compatible with the feature. And it turns out that the product page says that G-Sync support is currently being applied for. Huh. I thought they had special chips in those monitors solely for the feature, but it’s possible this one does it another way? (The same way that Freesync monitors do it?)

DSC (Display Stream Compression) enables 4K 120Hz to work through a single DisplayPort cable, without chroma subsampling. And it’s working for me, which came as a surprise, as I was under the impression this feature required a 2000-series Turing GPUs. (I have a 1080 Ti.) I was wrong about this, it’s 144 Hz that requires DSC. And I don’t have it on this Pascal card. But I don’t really care since I prefer to run this monitor at 120 Hz, as it’s a multiple of the 60 Hz monitor next to it.

Windows DPI scaling support is okay now. Apps that are DPI-aware, and the vast majority of them are now, scale back and forth between 150% and 100% really well as they get dragged between the monitors! The only program I’ve had issues with is good old Winamp, which acted as if it was 100% on the XG27UQ... and shrinked down on another monitor. So I asked it to override DPI scaling behaviour (”scaling performed by: application”), which keeps the player skin at 100% on every monitor, but any call to system fonts and UI (Bento skin’s playlist + Settings panel) are still at 150%. So I had to set the playlist font size to 7 for it to look OK on the non-scaled monitor!

A few apps misbehave in interesting ways; TeamSpeak, for example, seen above, scales everything back from 150% to 100%, and there is no blurriness, but the “larger layout” (spacing, etc.) sticks.

Games look great with 4K in 27 inches. Well, I’ve only really tried Dota 2 so far, but man does it get sharp, especially with the game’s FXAA disabled. It was already a toss-up at 1440p, but at 4K I would argue you might as well keep it disabled. However, going from 2560x1440 to 3840x2160 requires some serious horsepower. It may look like a +50% upgrade in pixels, but it’s actually a +125% increase! (3.68 to 8.29 million pixels.) For a 1080 Ti, maxed-out Dota 2 at 1440p 120hz is really trivial, but once you go to 4K, not anymore... you could always lower resolution scale though! (Not an elegant solution if you like to use sharpening filters though, looking at you RDR2.)

Overall, the XG27UQ is a good monitor, and I’m satisfied with my purchase, although slightly disappointed by the strong IPS glow and the few dead subpixels. 7/10

#xg27uq #review #monitors

6 notes · View notes

starryseo · 6 years

Text

another world. | kim seungmin

pairing ↠ seungmin x gender neutral!reader

genre ↠ this was meant to be fluff but if you read the warnings below, you will see that that failed

wc ↠ 8863

summary ↠ video games are fun, but being trapped in one isn’t as nice, even if you’re stuck in it with your best friends

warnings ↠ swearing, fighting (mentions of blood) and major character death (i’m sad but not sorry)

a/n ↠ one of my faves, hope you all enjoy!!

16:43: Hyunjin - 17 more minutes!!!!!

16:43: Felix – tHIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME

16:44: Jisung – 16 more minuTES!!!!!!!!

16:44: You – i leave for half an hour and yoURE STILL COUNTING DOWN

16:44: Felix – stop killing our vibes bro

16:44: Hyunjin – #HaterzAreMyMotivatorz

16:44: Jisung – it makes it more exciting okay joIN US

16:45: Felix – it’s a new minute……….

16:45: Hyunjin – say it y/n

16:45: Jisung – say it say it say itsayitsayit

16:45: You – it’s time

16:45: Felix – :)

16:45: You – for me to get new friends

16:45: Felix – :(

16:46: Jisung – :((

16:46: Hyunjin – :(((

16:46: You – :D

16:46: Hyunjin – we’re not friends anymore

16:46: Jisung – agreed

16:46: Felix – agreed x2

16:47: You – agreed x3

16:47: Jisung – wHy Do YoU hAtE uS

16:47: You – because none of you are giving me chan’s number :(

16:47: Felix – he’s out of your league

16:47: Hyunjin – he’s out of MY league

16:47: You – hyunjin shut up

16:47: Jisung – hyunjin shut up

16:47: Felix – hyunjin shut up

16:48: Hyunjin – what’s with this slander?? weren’t we all against y/n?

16:48: You – they finally realised i’m better than you

16:48: Jisung – omg shut up and get online PLEASE

You turned your phone off, running down from your bedroom to your living room. Grabbing your controller, you hit a button, waking up your console from its rest mode. The screen still showed the loading image of the game you had downloaded. So far, only a beta version of the game had been released to the public, and the four of you were more than excited to try your hand at it, seeing as it was one of the latest, most talked about, virtual reality games. Since it was still an unfinished game, only a certain number of people could join, so you all had loaded the game beforehand, the developers updating you that the game would officially be ready to play at 5PM exactly.

Clearing the room so you had space to move, you grabbed the SenseSet, the headset built just for this franchise, propping it on your head and fixing the mic. It was a headset that stimulated all of your senses via your brain, so you could fully experience and control your in-game character. You watched eagerly as the minutes ticked away, getting closer to 5PM. When you had mere seconds left, you grabbed your controller, ready to hit the ‘X’ button and start the game as soon as possible. When the clock struck five, you pushed the button, waiting with bated breath. As soon as the loading screen faded into a welcoming screen, you cheered, immediately grabbing your phone.

17:00: You – IM IN BITCHESSSSS

17:00: Jisung – jhsfkjashf SAME HERE

17:00: Felix – ayyyyy #squad

17:00: Hyunjin – i didn’t get in

17:00: You – sucks to be you

17:00: Jisung – better luck next time bro

17:00: Felix – oh well

17:01: Hyunjin – why are you bitches so heARTLESS

Hyunjin – I WAS LYING. I GOT IN, BUT SCREW YOU ALL

17:01: You – we knew you were lying

17:01: Hyunjin – h o w

17:01: You – intuition? :’’’)

17:01: Felix – spidey senses???

17:02: Jisung – your profile says you’re in the game dumbass

17:02: Hyunjin – oh yeah whoops

Grinning as the page finished loading, you went through a quick set-up of adjusting the screen size and resolution before the game actually began. A robotic voice, you couldn’t tell whether it was male or female, started speaking as your screen changed to a dark blue colour, the words they spoke appearing as though someone was typing them on screen.

“Welcome to Another World,” it began, the screen fading to show vibrant images of the virtual reality game. It showed hills and rivers where people were training and fighting, and also the bustling towns where people had gathered for festivities. The typing continued over the images in the background. “A place where you can be who you want, however you want. Make new friends, explore new places and forever have fun, in this brand-new world where you are your own master. Please enter your real name – this will only be visible to people you have chosen to share it with.”

On screen, a keyboard appeared, and you used your controller to spell out your name before hitting enter.

“Please enter your screen name – this will be visible to everyone.”

Typing in your username, WhoAmI, you were glad it was available and you didn’t have to spend time thinking of another one. The screen then zoomed into the world until one street was displayed. A plain figure was also displayed on screen with your username above their head. A banner with ‘Recreate yourself’ written on it was at the top of the screen, different settings emerging on the side with buttons to personalise your character. After much deliberating, you had created your whole character finally adding a black cloak with a silver dragon embellished on it to complete the look. You hit enter and the screen transitioned to a first-person perspective, still in the street.

“On your wrist, there is a Viewer – it is impossible to remove the Viewer and tampering with it will result in a ban. Please click on the Viewer’s screen.” The voice instructed.

You clicked on the watch, a hologram-like screen appearing in front of you now. As a default, it opened your profile, displaying your name, username, level and health bar. There was an empty friends list to the side and multiple other tabs at the top too.

“To add another person, you must open your friends list,” the voice told, just as a square highlighted your friends list. “Please click on your friends list.”

You were taken through a thorough tutorial of how to use the Viewer, familiarising yourself with the other tabs (the main ones being the inventory and map tabs).

“Please head to the Town Hall. Use your map to navigate to it.”

Opening the map, you looked for where Town Hall was written, clicking on it so a path was highlighted. You closed the screen, the map shrinking down to be displayed on the Viewer.

Upon arriving, the voice spoke up, “Enter the Town Hall building for a briefing.” Just as you were making your way to the building, you heard several voices call out your name.

“Y/n, where are you?”

“Oh man, what if they already died?”

“Shut up, Felix; if you haven’t died, I doubt they have.”

You turned to the boys standing just off to the right of the building. You made your way to them, swinging your arm around one of them as you grinned. “Did you guys miss me?”

“Ew, of course not,” Hyunjin grumbled, shrugging your arm off of him.

“C’mon, we were waiting for you to come so we could go in together,” Jisung spoke up.

“Aw, cute, you’re all lost without me,” you laughed, making your way to the building.

“I told you we should’ve left without them,” Hyunjin mumbled and you nudged him.

You all entered the building one after the other, but as soon as you entered, you could no longer see them. The place was filled only with computer generated characters to fill the scene.

“Guys, can you hear me?” you questioned aloud, looking around. “Felix, you there? Jisung? Hyunjin?”

After radio silence, you walked forwards a couple of steps before a voice spoke out. “Welcome to Another World. I am the developer of this world, Park Jinyoung, and now, I am in control. You may have noticed that the tutorial failed to show you a log out button – that is not a defect or glitch. You cannot log out of Another World, and an outsider will not be able to shut down or remove the SenseSet from your head; doing so would force the transmitter in the headset to discharge a microwave signal into your brain, destroying it and killing you. Media outlets are already aware of what removing the SenseSet would do, so the likelihood of removal is, hopefully, minimal. Cutting the power will also be futile as I installed an internal battery in the SenseSet.

“Now that we have all 1,500 people in the game, the world and all its mysteries will be acting in full force. The only way to get out of the game is to clear the three boss levels I have personally created. If, at any point, your health falls to zero or you are killed, not only will your avatar be killed, but the SenseSet will trigger the microwave signal, ending your life, so reviving someone is impossible. Only once you have cleared a level can you move onto the next. Once all three levels have been cleared, the game will end. Players, I wish you all good luck and remember to have fun. Thank you for playing Another World. This concludes your tutorial.”

When the booming voice silenced, the noise from the computer characters took over your senses once again. You quickly turned around, rushing out of the door you had come again. You were met with Hyunjin’s character looking around worriedly, and you jogged over to him, asking, “Where are the others?”

“They haven’t come out yet; did you get the same message?” He looked relatively scared, like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide and unfocused.

“About this being real? Yeah, what the hell kind of messed up shit is this?”

“What the hell was that?” you heard someone yell, and you and Hyunjin turned to see Felix running out of the building towards you.

He was followed by Jisung who was repeatedly saying, “No, no, no, this can’t be real, right?”

Hyunjin was the first to speak up, “It makes sense,” he started, and you all turned to him, fear evident in your eyes, “he wasn’t lying about the internal battery and there really is no log out button – I went through all the settings. Plus, we have no control of our bodies now, so we wouldn’t be able to pull off the SenseSet even if we wanted to.”

He was definitely correct about that last part, even you were sure about that. The SenseSet had been advertised as the most revolutionary headset since it gave the user the full experience their character would undergo, the only way to regain your senses was to quit whatever game you were playing.

“So, we’re actually stuck here?” Felix murmured, stuffing his hands in his pockets, “And we have to fight to get out?”

“Wait…” Jisung started, hesitantly, “Would we have to kill people, like, actual people and not just the computer-generated ones?” You all looked at each in silence, no one answering him since the answer was obvious and grim.

“We should get a move on,” you suggested, Hyunjin nodding along with you. “We should try to level up or something, learn more about the game so we can get the hell out of here.”

“We need to do that quickly, there are probably other players that wouldn’t hesitate to attack us.” Hyunjin said, opening his Viewer up, “Let’s add each other first, though.”

You all opened up your Viewers, adding each other. You snorted at Hyunjin’s username, “‘JinyoungILY’, dude you’re such a loser.”

“Says you, ‘WhoAmI’; you’re a lameass, that’s who you are.”

“Oh, burn!” Felix laughed, high-fiving Hyunjin.

“Shut up, ‘Here2FixIt’, how stupid,” Jisung rolled his eyes, “I don’t even want that name to be in my friends list.”

“Oh shush, you love me, ‘ProteccTheSquirrels’,” he grinned, slinging his arm around Jisung’s shoulders.

“Let’s just all agree that I have the best username,” Hyunjin said, smirking. And so, one-by-one you all unfriended Hyunjin, walking away together.

The four of you had explored the map as much as you could before evening came. After talking to some other players, you found out that people could go on missions which would help train yourselves, boost your levels and give you experience points and qreele – the currency in this world.

Earlier, the four of you had taken a few small missions, helping some computer-generated characters decorate their houses, assisting in a charity shop and other mundane tasks. This gave you enough money to head to a nearby caf�� where you all snacked on cake and hot drinks. The drink warmed you up perfectly after spending the whole day out, working and learning more about Another World, and the setting sun made you even more tired. You ate the final part of your cake, the cream tasting so real, so delicious, yet you still couldn’t come to terms with being stuck in a game.

“Guys,” Felix started, leaning his head on the table sideways, “where are we even going to sleep? I’m tired as heck.”

“Sleep is for the weak!” Jisung exclaimed, chugging the second coffee he had ordered.

“Idiot…” Hyunjin mumbled, rolling his eyes at Jisung, “We should probably look around for a place to stay, it’s getting even darker outside.”

You all got up after that, throwing away your rubbish and leaving the café. After wandering around for a few minutes, you walked past an alleyway. You all chose not to walk down there but hearing grunts of pain from there enticed you all to check out what was happening. You hid along the sides of the entrance, trying to look at the commotion. You heard the clatter of metal against the ground before someone growled out, “I won’t ask again, give it to me.”

A feeble voice coughed out, “No, get away from me.”

“Shit,” Felix whispered, eyes widened in panic, “We have to help him out.”

“How?” Jisung squeaked out, “We can barely even see what’s happening!”

The streetlights barely glowed in the alleyway, only showing their shadows on the ground and illuminating the dumpsters and rubbish lining the floor. Hyunjin took lead, instructing Jisung to grab a nearby pot, Felix to duck behind the dumpster and for you to grab the nearest bin lid as a shield. He then moved away from the wall, cupping his mouth with his hands. “Hey, dumbass, why don’t you pick on someone your own size!”

The man, realising the guy on the floor wasn’t going anywhere, dashed in Hyunjin’s direction. Just as he was running past, Felix stuck his leg out, tripping the man over so he thudded to the ground. Jisung threw the pot at the man, managing to hit his head. The man seemed stunned and Felix used this time to help the injured man up just as Hyunjin tackled the guy out of the way. He gained strength, however, easily pushing Hyunjin off who slammed against the wall. He turned to Hyunjin swinging his arm back when you threw the lid at him, hitting his back and grabbing his attention away from Hyunjin. In that moment, Hyunjin kicked the man in the back of his knees, him falling to the ground once more, as Jisung picked up another object, throwing it at the man.

Just as you and Felix had managed to grab the injured man and Hyunjin, the attacker grabbed the bin lid throwing it at Jisung. It flew into his shoulder, the edge cutting him and tearing his shirt. He grabbed his shoulder, grunting in pain, as it started to bleed.

As soon as you heard the man get up, cursing, you heard a small rock-like object hit the ground and then smoke emerged, clouding your vision. You heard a voice usher you guys to follow them and, having no other choice, you did. After a while of running, you somehow managed to lose the burly man you had just fought off somewhat successfully.

“Okay, I think we’re in the clear now,” he spoke, leading you guys to a side street which was lit up well. You tried looking at his face but the mask and cloak he was adorned in concealed him well.

“Uh, guys…” Felix called, “What the hell’s happening to this guy?”

“It’s like he’s disappearing,” Hyunjin said, shaking the man’s shoulders to try and wake him up.

“Look!” Jisung pointed, “His Viewer’s flashing!”

“Let me see,” your saviour said, rushing to the man and holding his wrist. “Oh God, he has no health left.”

“He’s at zero?” you asked, moving closer to the group, just as the man opened his bruised eyes.

“Th-Thanks for saving me,” he barely managed to croak out.

“He is now.” The man who had saved you replied, showing you the Viewer which displayed the number zero in a large, black font. Simultaneously, your heads turned back to the injured man just as his eyes shut, body becoming pixelated as bright colours appeared as small dots until they all faded into a grey shadow of the body.

And then he vanished. In his place was a blue screen with the words XxILoveDarkxX has left printed on it.

Hyunjin and Felix’s arms fell limp to their sides, no longer holding up a body.

“Did… Did he seriously just go?” Felix asked, facing the hooded man.

“Shit, please tell me that was a computer not an actual person,” Jisung said, also facing the man.

He shook his head slowly, “Computers don’t get Viewers, he is- he was human.”

In the sombre silence, the four of you followed the man back to his hideout. He led you to the entrance of another alleyway, but he didn’t walk further. Instead, he looked back, checking for any lurking players, before he crouched to the floor, lifting the metal plate leading to the sewers.

“Your secret place is the sewers?” Hyunjin asked, raising a brow and facing you as though asking you ‘should we make a run for it?’

“Just trust me,” he replied, ushering for you all to go down first.

Felix went first, followed by Jisung who struggled as his shoulder was still injured. You and Hyunjin then went, followed by the man, who made sure to close the lid again. There were light green lights illuminating the place and, strangely, there was no dirty water contaminating the whole floor, but there were two streams on either side of the walkway. Once you had climbed down, the man told you to follow him further in.

You eventually arrived at an open area – a place you definitely didn’t think would exist under the ground. The middle part of the room was slightly lower than the rest and there was a large sofa on one side, a table in the middle and a TV on the other side. There were arcade games lining part of a wall and a fridge next to it and a counter beside it. There was even a door with ‘TOILET’ spray painted onto it. The whole place seemed like the most perfect underground headquarters you had ever come across. You looked further on and there was higher ground with a tree planted in the middle; there were training dummies scattered around that room with weapons hanging off of them and other training facilities on the side.

“Dude, this is wicked!” Felix exclaimed, running ahead and jumping on the sofa.

“There’s no way you could’ve built this place,” Hyunjin inquired, turning to the man – he still hadn’t revealed his name, but his username which, you only brought your attention to now, was ‘SquirtleMin’. “The game was only released today, how’d you know about this?”

The man shrugged his shoulders, pulling his hood off and his mask down, “I was running away from some people, and, what better place to hide than underground?”

“I don’t mean to be a nuisance, guys,” Jisung called out, “like, please, carry on, I’ll just carry on bleeding out, it’s fine.”

“Oh shit, Jisung, you idiot,” you said, pulling him to the sofa.

“Yeah, I’m the idiot, it’s not like you were the ones that forgot I got hurt.”

“In our defence, a man did just die,” Hyunjin said, “I think we’ve got more important things on our mind.”

“I was hurt saving your dumb ass!”

‘SquirtleMin’ had just come back from the bathroom, looking through a first aid kit. He pulled out some gauze, bandages and a saline solution. “I don’t actually know what I’m doing,” he started, “don’t you know what to do?” He asked Felix.

“The username’s just a joke, dude,” he laughed, holding up both hands innocently.

“Don’t trust Felix with that,” Hyunjin interfered, grabbing the solution, “he’d probably kill Jisung.”

Somehow, Hyunjin had cleaned the cut and wrapped it in the bandages successfully and Jisung’s health had stopped slowly decreasing – he was only at 93 which wasn’t too drastic.

“Here, drink this.” The man told Jisung, handing him water. “It should help regain your health.”

“So, who are you, ‘SquirtleMin’?” you asked, crossing your arms and relaxing into the sofa.

“Who am I, ‘WhoAmI’, that’s a great question.” The man laughed, sitting on the table opposite you.

“If you guys are going to make bad username puns, just kill me now,” Jisung groaned, leaning his head back onto the sofa.

“C’mon, let’s just add each other,” Hyunjin suggested, opening his Viewer to add the man. You all followed after Hyunjin and he accepted, revealing his name to be Kim Seungmin.

“Wait…” Hyunjin started hesitantly, “You go to school with us, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I didn’t realise it was you guys until now.” He grinned, “I thought I just met another group of losers.”

“You’re hilarious, aren’t you, Squirtle?” Hyunjin rolled his eyes, joining Seungmin on the table.

“Yes, I am, ‘Jinyoung I love you’,” Seungmin smirked, nudging Hyunjin’s arm, “Mind asking your lover to get us out of his game?”

Hyunjin scoffed just as Felix snorted out a laugh, “Disgusting, I don’t love that creep, I have standards. I love GOT7’s Jinyoung.”

“Their names are both Park Jinyoung,” Jisung pointed out, posing as though he was thinking of something.

“The creepy ass game developer is part of GOT7!” Felix exclaimed, jumping up, “Conspiracy theories!”

“He should’ve just stuck to the music industry,” you grumbled.

The five of you had created makeshift beds and hammocks to rest in overnight; they weren’t the most comfortable things to sleep in, but for now it was good enough.

That morning you ate breakfast with the food already in the fridge before deciding on what tasks to do for that day. Jisung had healed up fine overnight, so he, Felix and Hyunjin decided to go on a mission whilst you and Seungmin headed to the library to get books on this place before exploring more.

“Dude, this is tiring,” you groaned, faceplanting into the book in front of you. It had been a good few hours since you arrived at the library, reading book after book on anything and everything about this world – from its vast history and how it came to be, to the creatures and legendary monsters hidden within. “If I read another word about how freaking amazing the scenery in this hellhole is, I’m going to cry.”

Seungmin held back a laugh, rolling his eyes at your antics. “Why are you so dramatic? It’s your own fault for picking the boring books,” he pushed a book, ‘Magnificent Myths’, your way. “Read this one.”

“But you just read that,” you moaned, pushing it back and resting your chin on the table, “and the title sounds cheesy as heck, man.”

“You’re so difficult,” he murmured, and you grinned when he shut the book in his hand, pushing it aside. He mimicked your position, leaning over the table, face mere inches away from yours. “What do you want to do, then, y/n?”

Your eyes lit up enthusiastically as you exclaimed, “Let’s eat!”

“Silence!” The librarian – an old woman with dagger-like eyes – bellowed, glaring at you and Seungmin from behind the counter.

“Do you have to be so loud?” Seungmin whispered, peering over at the librarian in case she was still looking.

“Oh, relax,” you shrugged, giggling at his worried expression, before getting up and stretching your joints out. “Let’s go!”

He huffed, grabbing the books he had yet to read in his hand as you carried the others to put away. He quickly scanned the books before catching up with you as you waited by the exit.

You took him to a fast food place you had spotted on your way to the library. After buying your food, you managed to grab a table in the corner, settling down in the booth. You started sipping on your smoothie, the drink refreshing you perfectly.

“This may just be pixels,” Seungmin started, “but, damn, this tastes wicked.” You laughed at his blissful expression as he breathed in the food, barely taking time to enjoy it properly.

You stole some chips from his plate, grinning when he huffed and complained, “you have your own food, why are you taking mine, you thief?”

“Food tastes better when it’s stolen,” you winked, taking another chip, but before you could bite it, Seungmin had grabbed your wrist, using all his strength to force your hand his way so he could eat the chip from your hand.

You pouted when he successfully managed to eat it, glumly picking up your own chips instead now.

“You’re right, it does taste better when stolen.”

“Holy shit, this looks badass,” Hyunjin gasped, holding yet another sword. His hand smoothed over the blade, index finger tracing over the letters engraved onto it.

“That’s what you said about the last sword,” Seungmin groaned, rolling his eyes at Hyunjin’s fascination, “Can you actually help us out now?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hyunjin mumbled, messing around with the sword in a few random poses before he hung it on another display rack, finishing off the sword collection. The five of you had been tidying up the hideout this week, alternating between missions to get enough money for resources to revamp the place.

“Another win!” Felix cheered just as Jisung hit his head against the game machine, “Pay up, sucker.” Felix held his hand out just as Jisung opened up his inventory, giving Felix one of his prized weapons.

“I’m pretty sure you cheated,” he grumbled, sniffing as he reluctantly sent the dagger to Felix whose Viewer lit up with a notification.

“I told you not to play against him,” you said to Jisung, having finished repainting the last wall with Seungmin. “He’s obsessed with the game and you thought you could beat him?”

“Stop judging me,” Jisung glared at you as you laughed, joining Felix who was admiring his newly-received prize.

The three of you joined Seungmin and Hyunjin on the sofas, relaxing after having spent the whole morning re-painting the walls and unboxing weapons you had gathered on your adventures. Hyunjin and Felix had found a secret basement filled with different decorations and paints, so you all decided to re-paint the walls and spray paint over it, personalising the hideout to suit you all.

The training area had been the worst to reconstruct, and you even took the weapons already there to a blacksmith. Hyunjin had read up on the weapons and there were a couple of rare, enhanced swords and shields hidden here. You had taken a particular liking to the magical books that were in the basement, practising the different techniques and spells written in there. There was a handwritten book thrown on the floor of the training area, with more powerful spells and enchantments that you had been practising, although they were incredibly hard to control and energy-consuming.

Over the months, you all had been training in different areas, like your lives depended on it – and they did. Where you were training in the magical arts and had gotten to level 103, Felix had become more agile and stealthy, choosing to become an assassin-like character, learning hand-to-hand combat and how to wield a dagger and gun, rising to level 95. You had watched him practice for so long, pouring blood, sweat and tears into perfecting his martial arts; you couldn’t help but admire how much he excelled at this, even helping yourself and the other boys when he could, so you could all spar together.

Hyunjin had chosen to be more long range, polishing his archery and sniping skills to become a level 97. You always made sure he ate properly – he had a tendency to spend hours training his precision and looking through small scopes, so whenever you spoke to him, his eyes would look exhausted from squinting so much.

Their training was always intense and much harder to level up when they were constantly fighting and draining energy. You practised your healing skills on them: when they would fight, you would see how long it took you to heal them both a considerable amount; you also taught them small healing spells in case you weren’t ever around and they needed to fix themselves up. You had also read about lots of different potions, experimentally brewing one for Hyunjin to lessen the strain on his eyes. Despite several failed attempts at the start, you learned a lot more about different ingredients and how to use them to their full potential.

Jisung and Seungmin had become typical fighters, but Jisung was more of a paladin, strengthening his defence, so, when the time came, he could take on heavy attacks without losing health drastically; Jisung was a level 110 and Seungmin a level 113. Jisung and Seungmin would always push you three to fight against them, so they could become quick to defend themselves against attacks from all distances and angles. Despite the severity of your situation, you all enjoyed the fights that ensued, training together had not only made your characters stronger, but brought your group together, like a tight-knit family of teens.

“Race you to the river!” Felix exclaimed, taking off as soon as you all arrived at the park. Jisung and Hyunjin dashed after him, dropping the baskets and footballs they were holding. The sun was starting to set, casting an ethereal orange glow on the water and fields below.

“Why did we get stuck with these idiots?” Seungmin grumbled, laying out a mat where they had dropped everything, before flopping down on the ground. “Seriously, I feel like their dad looking after them.”

You were just about to taunt him further when you heard Hyunjin yell out, “It’s every man for himself!”

You and Seungmin both turned to see the three of them sprinting away from police guards and you simultaneously sighed. You slumped to the ground besides Seungmin, turning to him. “I feel like their parent too.”

You were staring up at the sky, unaware of Seungmin’s eyes widening – the sun wasn’t the only thing painting his cheeks pink.

He sat up, and your gaze followed, before he tugged you up by your wrist. “Let’s go.”

“Go where, exactly?” you questioned, standing up after him regardless.

“Away.”

He stored everything in his inventory before whisking you away to the river. You had no clue where Hyunjin, Jisung and Felix were, but your mind paid them no heed anyways.

The two of you followed the river downtown, talking about everything and nothing. You couldn’t help but notice how Seungmin was still holding your hand. He had let go when he opened his inventory up, taking out some food for you both to snack on, but he held on again as soon as you had taken the food. This single connection had you riled up, your body fluttering at the warmth his hand exuded. You listened to him as he hummed a song to fill the lull in your conversation. You loved hearing him sing – he would do it in the underground home whenever he thought he was alone, and you could never stop yourself from listening in, hanging on to each word he sang.

“Do you ever think about home?”

His sudden question broke you out of your trance, and you let out a small, “huh?”

He repeated his question and you pursed your lips, so many thoughts taking over your mind. You thought back to your family, your real home, and how life would have been much different had you not logged in. You couldn’t imagine what your family must be going through – you often wondered how they were coping with this ordeal. Were they still worrying about you, or had they lost hope? Would they welcome you with open arms if you ever came back?

“Yeah,” you murmured, “it’s a scary thought, though. Everything’s going to feel so weird if we ever manage to get back.”

“When,” he emphasised, and you furrowed your brows, confused. “Not ‘if we get back’, but ‘when’.” He grinned after that, smiling cheekily as he added on, “Have a little faith in me, y/n.”

“You’re my hero, Squirtle,” you quipped, rolling your eyes as his smile grew.

“C’mon, let’s get ice cream!”

As soon as you entered the hideout, you heard Felix exclaim, “They’re finally back!”

When you walked to where they were, Hyunjin grumbled, “So you’ve finally decided to join us?”

“Ignore him,” Jisung said, nudging Hyunjin, “He’s still salty because the policeman managed to tackle him.”

“I tripped first!”

“Anyways,” Jisung exaggerated, clasping his hands, “how was your date?”

“What date?” Seungmin asked.

“Don’t think we haven’t noticed your hands, Minnie,” Felix commented, and Seungmin broke the hand-hold, quickly holding onto his other hand.

“Oh, shut up,” Seungmin grumbled, leaving the room. “I’m going to sleep, good night.”

Once he had left, all 3 boys turned to you, smirks galore and eyebrows dancing in mischief.

“Screw you all,” you mumbled, going to your room, and they burst out laughing at your annoyed face.

Your group had become very well known in Another World, noticeably due to you being able to defeat the first two bosses within 6 months of the game. It had been a gruelling 6 months, training every day and doing harder missions to get enough money to stay alive. You had even named yourselves ‘I am NOT’, people spray painting your title as a semblance of hope and faith that you could break the game and escape. People still had no idea of your hideout and you were glad; although you were a beacon of hope, there were twisted groups that fed off of the control the game gave them, and a group of youngsters that were close to defeating the final boss was the exact opposite of what they wanted. You had gotten into many fights, never intentionally taking another life – it was a rule you had all agreed upon: do enough damage to end a fight not a life.

The whereabouts of the bosses were all given through riddles; the first riddle being revealed to all the players a week into being trapped in the game. After that, Jinyoung had announced that the next riddle would only appear to whoever defeated the boss, at the end of the fight. The riddle that appeared to you was:

I never thought you’d get this far

But the final clue for you is STAR.

Your progress has disrupted my game

Let’s see if you can fulfil my aim.

The five of you had been wracking your brains for the answer to this, nothing worthwhile coming out of it. You had checked out observatories, staking out overnight in case the boss would only appear at night. You had travelled far and wide, but all your leads led to dead ends.

The five of you had just returned from sneaking into a place called STAR labs. Although you had already checked this place out, this was your first time going at night, altogether, although nothing fruitful happened aside from Felix falling asleep and knocking a glass down, tripping the silent alarm. You all made a hasty getaway from security, barely managing to lose them since the streets were so empty. You abandoned the car you had driven in, running back to your house in the shadows, not leaving a trace of you guys behind.

“Another failure,” Jisung mumbled, faceplanting onto the sofa.

“You’re a failure,” Felix grumbled after him, falling right on top of him.

“Another day, another beautiful car gone,” Hyunjin joked, lighting up the mood.

Seungmin made his way over to the fridge just as Hyunjin pulled Jisung and Felix into upright positions. You sat on the second sofa, easily catching the water bottle Seungmin threw to you.

Seungmin sat beside you, leaning his head on your shoulder, huffing out as he shut his eyes. The other boys broke out of their misery to turn to you, eyes winking non-stop and hands fanning their faces to mock you.

“Y/n, are you perhaps…” Felix started, a teasing smirk on his face, “blushing?”

“Of course not,” you whispered harshly, flicking the bottle’s cap at him. He dodged it easily, raising his eyebrows suggestively at you. You rolled your eyes at him, vision landing on Jisung who had cupped his hands into a heart with you and Seungmin in the middle.

“Stop it!” you said, quickly looking at Seungmin, as you kept your voice down to not wake him up.

“Why?” Now it was Hyunjin’s turn to fool around, “We all know you,” and then he made a heart with his hand, “him.”

Even though they weren’t wrong, you couldn’t help but tell them to stop, fearing Seungmin might wake up. During the long time you had spent stuck in this game, you had gotten considerably closer to the boy. You couldn’t help but appreciate everything he had done for you four, always thinking back to the first day you arrived – he could have easily left you there to fend for yourselves, but he helped you out and even let you stay with him in your current home. You had all gotten much closer now, literally trusting one another with your lives, and you couldn’t be any happier with the four boys you call your best friends.

What surprised you the most was how Hyunjin, Jisung and Felix had managed to figure out your (small) crush on Seungmin; you knew they liked teasing you about liking him, but you never thought much of it until one day when Hyunjin and Felix pushed Jisung towards you – he dragged you off to another room and tried getting you to speak about Seungmin, but, of course, you tried brushing everything off, feigning ignorance. He hadn’t believed in your, “oh, it’s nothing, we’re just friends,” comments, but he had decided not to pester any longer. You wondered if Seungmin knew too, then, if you were this obvious – just thinking about him possibly returning your feelings made your mind go crazy.

“Where else do we have to explore?” you asked, changing the subject before taking a large gulp of your water.

Hyunjin looked over the large paper spread over the table, crossing out ‘Star Labs, night’. “Nowhere else, the labs were the last place.”

“Ugh, guys, there are more rats,” Felix groaned, leaning his head on Hyunjin’s shoulder.

“Where?” Seungmin asked, suddenly awake. All of you turned to him, wide-eyed; had he been awake this whole time? Had he heard your conversation?

Felix pointed to the arcade games and Seungmin went there, sword in hand, looking for the creatures.

“Hyunjin and I went around sealing all the holes just yesterday,” Jisung whined, “How the hell do they get through so quickly?”

The rats had only been adding to your stress over the final boss fight. You took a closer look at where Seungmin had scribbled down the riddle.

“We disrupted his game…” you mumbled, biting your lip as you thought of what that meant.

“These stupid rats are disrupting my sleep!” Felix complained, hearing the clatter of Seungmin’s sword against the ground.

“Felix, that’s it!” you exclaimed, finally understanding the riddle. “The rats only came after we got the riddle, right?”

“Yeah, but they only come out… at night; shit, you’re a genius!” Hyunjin gasped.

You continued, “Exactly, they only come out when the stars are out, we were right about something happening at night. But that’s not all: star is an anagram for rats. There’s got to be a connection with the rats and the final boss.”

“Do we need to follow them or something?” Jisung asked, now interested, “Maybe where they come from is where the final fight is.”

“Uh, guys…” Seungmin called, and you all turned to look over at him. The rat he was going after was stationary in front of a game machine, his sword falling straight through it, yet it wasn’t disappearing in a cloud of pixels like it previously had. Instead, it looked like it was staring straight at you.

“I don’t think we have to go to the fight…” Hyunjin started.

“It’s already come to us.”

The five of you quickly escaped, just as more rats started pouring out of hidden crevices in the room. Jisung was the last to climb out, pulling the lid to the sewer over the hole.

“Wait, those rats have been there for so long,” Felix spoke, “how come they’re only coming out now?”

You and Hyunjin shrugged your shoulders, looking to Jisung who was just as clueless.

“Maybe he was waiting for us to figure it out,” Seungmin suggested. Just as he had said that, the small holes in the lid let through a sharp, bright white light with a blue glow. It travelled as far up as your eyes could see, alerting anyone who was still awake.

“What the hell is that?” Felix said, voice dripping in awe, as your heads all looked upwards at the never-ending light.

A massive crash sounding from your headquarters snapped you all out of your reveries. You all equipped yourselves with weapons, preparing for an attack.

You were right.

The fight had come to you but this was unlike the last two boss levels you had finished; it was like Armageddon and an apocalypse horrifically rolled into one. The cacophony had awakened hundreds of other players, so you weren’t fighting alone. Even then, the monsters that had crawled and broke through the ground were annihilating you all. You had deviated from the entrance to your hideout, the largest and strongest creature hot on your tail.

You couldn’t even make out its feature properly, not due to it being dark outside, but because it barely had features. All you could make out was a massive figure with black, ice-like shards covering its entire body and burning red eyes. That was all. Even its hands that you had seen shoot purple fireballs were made of shards.

Your bullets barely made a mark on it, scratching the surface before flying off. Yet Felix continued to waste his ammo, firing shot after shot as he ran forward; Hyunjin was also shooting arrows that you had enchanted to slow it down, but they were all crushed beneath its claws, disappearing in a cloud of pixels.

A dead-end.

You had done all that running, fighting, saving, to come face to face with a dead-end. You were so sure that this wall wasn’t here, you’d been through this place countless times and yet the bricks lain in front of you begged to differ. Your mind was clogged with so many different things, spells, maps, people, and yet it couldn’t focus on anything, thoughts jumbling into a giant mess screaming at you to do something, to do more. But what more could you do?

You didn’t know how long you had been fighting for. The whole game had changed ever since the chaos ensued: the sky was devoid of all stars and the moon, the streetlights only flickered a ghastly pale blue light and the roads had all changed, houses appearing where there should have been empty spaces, walls built where there once was a street.

“Shit, what do we do now?” Felix panted, bruised hands barely clinging onto his gun as he leaned back against the wall.

“Hell, if I know,” Hyunjin gasped, yelling in pain as you helped him sit down. There was a shard sticking out of his calf, and you used your dagger to cut his trousers so you could help him.

“Felix, shine a light, quickly,” you instructed, crouching in front of Hyunjin who threw his head back, jaw tensing as he bit back cries. Felix opened his Viewer, the screen shining a blue light onto Hyunjin’s leg. There were purple lines slithering out of the shard, beneath his skin, slowly spreading in every direction and you just knew that wasn’t good. You looked at his face, smeared with blood and bruises, tears brimming his eyes in defeat.

You steeled yourself, pulling out water from your inventory for him to drink and ease his nerves before you started. You used every spell you could, numbing his leg before you pulled the shard out, swiftly cleaning the wound before you healed it. The purple lines continued crawling upwards but his health started decreasing at a slower rate, possibly buying you time to do more. You and Felix quickly ate something too, before you heard more crashes, and then footsteps running near you.

Jisung and Seungmin had bought you guys time, diverting the monster’s attention from you three when Hyunjin got hit. When they got to you, Seungmin banged his fists on the wall, “This was never here, what the hell?”

“Are you okay?” Jisung asked Hyunjin, keeping an eye out for the beast.

Hyunjin managed a feint nod in reply, blinking away his tears.

You made sure Seungmin and Jisung ate something, their health bars dropping to 30. With the energy the food gave you, you healed their injuries, hands shaking as they glowed a pure white, clearing their skins of the battle scars.

“We’re fine now, y/n, thanks,” Seungmin murmured, holding your hand in his to stop you from healing him, “boost your own energy up, yeah?”

He handed you an energy sweet he had which you took graciously; you looked up at him, face littered with cuts and dried blood, eyes still shining hopefully, and you wondered how he didn’t feel defeated yet. His hand glowing caught your attention and you broke eye contact, staring at his hand that moved to your face and, as he swiped his thumb over your cheek, you felt a strange sensation on your face where a stinging cut once was. You lifted a finger to your cheek, feeling around for the cut, but were met with just your skin, nothing torn or bleeding.

“When did you learn that?” you asked, a small smile on your face when he kept his thumb there, running circles over your cheek.

“I pay more attention to you than you think,” he joked, pinching your cheek ever so slightly before dropping his hand once again.

Before you could continue you heard heavy thuds getting closer. You felt him grab your hand, squeezing your hand tightly to say ‘Be careful’, before he moved in front of you, now standing besides Jisung who had equipped himself with half of a massive shield, larger in height than the two boys combined. Seungmin equipped himself with the other half, and you stood next to Felix and Hyunjin, knowing what the boys were doing. They had timed it perfectly: the creature had sprinted at them, swinging his fist back before landing a solid punch, clashing with the two shields Jisung and Seungmin had fused together. It was a shield made of the strongest metal, by the finest blacksmith in the game, and you had added further enchantments to strengthen it.

You could see both boys skid back slightly, them leaning their whole bodies into the shield to hold it together more strongly to protect you three. Their eyes were scrunched together as they pushed back with all their might, taking on the second punch that was landed without a second to breathe. A third punch had them moving back even further and the fourth had the shield splitting into two once more. They both flew back, crumpling against the wall, shields clanging miserably against the ground.

You stood in front, lifting your hands to form a magical shield just as the creature delivered another blow; you could hear your shield wilt under the power, see more and more cracks dig their way into the surface, but you pushed back with all your might, hopefully buying the boys some time. The shield fell to pieces once the claws retracted and you used this as an opportunity to send some more magical attacks to it. You sent out purple laser beams that were supposed to be able to cut through anything, yet they only managed to break some shards that were headed your way. You saw bullets flying too, Felix standing beside you, guns at the ready. You followed by sending out explosive black orbs to its legs, but only the ground blew up, dust flying everywhere.

You couldn’t see it.

Not until it had soared past you, too late for another shield, too late to even scream out his name.

It was like you could hear the slicing sound it made as it tore him. Your vision only focussing on how he screamed in pain, hands rushing to where he was hit as though he could do something.

The beast disappeared after that. Gone, like the wind, a message appearing in front of you instead.

Better luck next time!

You could barely make out the letters, rushing to him and dropping to the ground. Your mouth couldn’t form any words, hands doing all the talking as they lit up, a futile attempt to save him.

“You’ll be fine,” you repeated like a mantra, but no matter how many times you said it, you all knew it was nothing but empty words.

“C’mon, bro, hang in there,” Hyunjin mumbled, crawling over and cradling his head in his palms.

Jisung crouched besides you, holding his hand tightly, whispering more words of encouragement so he stayed awake.

Felix sat next to Hyunjin, holding his other hand, eyes wide and screaming for help, mouth quivering in silent pleas.

Nothing was working; no spells were making the blood stop dripping down, no charms were stopping his health bar from diminishing.

15.

You watched as his eyes slowly shut, chest rising and falling with each painful breath.

Hyunjin was rushing through his words, saying he would never forget him – couldn’t ever forget him. Tears streaming down his face, Felix cried about how he was forever thankful, ever since that first day you all met him. Jisung was barely holding on, whimpering about how he looked up to him, admired him for being so courageous and helping you all out, never asking for anything in return.

What did you have left to say?

The tears trickling down your face blurred your vision and you swiped at them furiously. “Fuck, Seungmin, that should’ve been me,” you sniffed.

Just saying his name hurt – this all seemed like a dream, a nightmare, a game. Yet nothing had felt more real. His nose scrunching was his way of disagreeing with you, yet that thought was all that plagued your mind. You should have been quicker, more alert, more careful.

He used his last burst of energy to hold your hand, rubbing his thumb over your knuckles before he pressed a soft kiss to it, the feel of his lips against your hand soothing you ever so slightly. He dropped your hand on his chest, barely lifting his other arm to click on his Viewer. You all looked at his screen, wondering what he was doing as he scrolled.

DRAFTED MESSAGES (1)

He hit send.

He was…

Gone.

Hey, y/n, if you’re reading this then I’ve somehow gotten the courage to be the man I’m pretending to be in this game. So, either I’ve sent this just before we get to leave the game, or just before I, alone, leave the game. Hopefully the former. :)

I like you.

It’s a lot easier typing this message out, especially since I know you probably won’t ever see it (let’s face it, we both know I’m not the strong man inside that this character makes me out to be). With any luck, I’ll get the courage to say this to your face, but until then, I hope this will do. I like you a lot. It sounds really nice saying that, especially to you of all people, because you’re amazing.

We may have met in a game, but I hope we can continue to be great friends in school (if not more) because I’d hate to lose someone like you, and we make a great tag-team against those other losers. I had a great time getting to know you and, although we’re stuck in a game, I’m glad I got the chance to meet someone as great as you because you’ve changed me, a lot. I hope I live up to your expectations outside of the game too.

I feel like I rambled a lot, and this is probably very cheesy (please don’t show the other guys this, I would DIE), but I hope this doesn’t change anything between us.

Third time’s the charm, so here I go:

I really like you, y/n.

#stray kids #straykidznet #sk-writersnet #straykidsdirectory #yeetkidznet #kim seungmin #stray kids fluff #stray kids angst #stray kids scenarios #seungmin #seungmin fluff #seungmin angst #stray kids oneshot #kpop scenario #kpop fluff #kpop angst #stray kids seungmin scenarios #kpop oneshots #sgm

202 notes · View notes