even though her hiatus is nearly coming to an end, it doesn’t change the fact that hyelim is still bored. she’s marathon’ed through enough anime series and finished enough manga series to fall into a coma caused by media overdose, wondering just how people manage to waste away hours of their day doing this over doing their actual work. she prefers the solid feeling of her pen in his fingers, the solace from watching ink turn curved lines to characters going through tragic moments in her chapters.
maybe if she hadn’t gone through that whole ordeal with the hanged man, she would have missed fighting monsters in her magical form too, wrapping them in her whip swords until they explode into bright sparks and foreign guts. but really, the only thing she misses about the magical world are her rookies– who are probably even more traumatized and afraid from the event as she is right now, still recovering both physically and mentally.
but still, she finds a way to occupy her time in something else– online games. mmorpgs have long been a thing for her for who knows how long– especially the cutesy anime ones that have extensive character customization and flashy skill sets. she can never find enough time to sit down and go through hours and hours of questing due to her job– but now that she’s taking a hiatus, she has all the time she needs.
and she’d been having fun… if not for the fact that this obnoxious male avatar keeps pk’ing her.
perhaps it is her fault for creating a character in a pvp server, but she hadn’t realized there was a choice to join a pvp-free server until she was fifty levels in, too far into the game to create a new character and start all over. most of the time, other people would leave her alone– more occupied in doing their own quests and grinding, finding no fun in killing other characters.
so she grits her teeth when her character dies for the nth time trying to fight back against her random assailant, already angrily opening up the chat box and sending the idiot a private message.
[Cascader] hey can you stop for once im just trying to play in peace?????
snail’s pace ft. @cchyelim
instead of the tender kiss of the sun seungyeon is huddled in the conveniently well-conditioned corner of the book store. while it wasn’t uncommon for customers to come and stop by to find some relief from the rising temperatures most opted for a cafe or restaurant, which left the store empty as the afternoon continues to drag on lazily. but she doesn’t complain, rather she enjoys sitting behind the counter and being left to herself. fingers working on folding a small piece of paper as she makes another paper crane.
–she rises her head immediately upon the sound of the front bell ringing, signaling someone swinging open the door. she peers over the register to see it’s not her co-worker, who (conveniently) decided not to call-in today, but a customer. probably someone to avoid the heat, she assumes.
normally she would stay rooted in her position and move when she notices someone with a quizzical expression, but today she decides to leave the counter in her quest to seek some form of entertainment. the card had always found interest in people watching, and for the time being the woman that walks through would be under her watch.. which she tries not to make obvious.
she lifts the heels of her feet, balancing on her toes as her fingers curl onto the shelf on the other side of the customer. she tries to catch the name of the book the woman picks out, leaning a tad bit too close and accidentally causing a group of books to fall. her surprise comes in two soft, very nonchalant words:
“oh no.”
it’s hard to look at things in a brighter perspective now. all hyelim can see when she stares back into her bathroom mirror is a broken woman whose childhood dreams were crushed by reality, accessorized with a eyepatch that’s an exact replica of ciel phantomhive’s (a gift from sunggyu) covering her right eye as if it made the situation any better. it’s a pain, not being able to draw or even fight monsters in this condition– instead waiting at home and apologizing to her assistants for leaving them unpaid for the month.
she can only imagine how her rankings will plummet after she gets off her hiatus.
but it’s no good to sit at home and sulk, and the least she can do is go out to buy groceries for the week and other goodies she can spare with the money she has. so she steps into a bookstore in search for any new volumes of manga she hasn’t read yet, an armful of groceries still on her person.
she’s just about to pick up the newest volume of magical girl apocalypse until the crash of books fluttering to the floor catches her attention. she turns to come across a young woman, her single visible eye wide and surprised at the sudden encounter. ah, an employee. so she had tipped them over.
but she’s not angry nor is she annoyed. instead, she greets her with a weak smile and sets down her bags to crouch down and help her pick them up. “here, let me get them for you,” she offers, knowing fully well that being a retail worker is bad enough. “kind of clumsy there, aren’t you? it’s okay. it happens to the best of us.” even when she’s down in spirits, she won’t reject helping another person– even if it’s in just the smallest things.
nightmare: i’ll write my character having a nightmare about yours, or vice versa.
game — i’ll write a drabble of my character playing videogames with yours.
“no, no, no– you’re supposed to use this button–”
hyelim makes an agonized noise the moment the card fumbles long enough to holster his gun for the zombie to catch up to him, watching as his character gets helplessly torn apart from the undead creature biting into his neck and ripping at the skin. she tries to catch up solo, but unfortunately enough, a horde of zombies were waiting for her to turn around the corner and pounce on her enticing flesh.
the words “game over” flash across the monitor in bloody red letters– indicating that they’ll have to start all over from the most recent savepoint, which had been far from where they had been before they died.
she sets down her controller in defeat, turning over to daniel with a look of disbelief, eyebrows furrowed and his lips pursed downwards. “oi, is it because you’re a card that you don’t know how to handle technology, or because your human form is so old that you physically can’t?”
“well, that’s just rude. my form’s just in my late thirties–”
“old.” considerably old, in the eyes of a woman in her early twenties. she picks up the game controller again, brushing her hair away from her shoulder and blinking over to him. “so– are you going to be better at this game this time?”
“i– can try, but–”
“if you die before i do, that means i get to capture you for myself~!”
“hey, wait just a second–”
the want to go home after all she has experienced after being pulled in by the portal is still strong. kei was one to always want to go lots of places. but considering the fact that she was at an expo, a gigantic chess game, a cavern, and now, a place that looks like an abandoned amusement park, she feels as if she was about ready to pass out due to exhaustion. she hasn’t had this much excitement in ever. it was too much excitement for her to deal alone. well, technically she wasn’t on her own. she had a bunch of other strangers experiencing the same things along with her.
though it didn’t look exactly beautiful, this wasteland was still a place of relaxation for some after what everyone had gone through. the little amusement that was created didn’t exactly have to look presentable. as long as it had working rides and no one gets severely injured on them, anyone could enjoy their time here. there still will be people who’d have to fight the strange looking beast that came along with the gift of a land with rusty rides. but for people that needed a break, they wouldn’t really have to worry about much… right?
due to the fact that kei had no amazing abilities that would classify her as an amazing hero and she had no weapon other than her purse and umbrella in it, she was basically defenseless. so she decides to spend some time with a good friend of hers on the ferris wheel. she tells herself to relax and not pay attention to anyone’s battle with the beast. but instead of that, she worries about her injury.
with the fact that something happened to her right eye, kei wonders how she could admire both of her pretty eyes now. then again, at least there was one left. and it wasn’t like kei liked hyelim because of her eye. she obviously liked her for more than that. but even so, something that serious looked extremely painful. “are you sure you’re alright?” she asks for the second time, concern written all over her face as she looks at the other. “that looks really bad. you really should go to someone about it if we ever go back.”
the need to go back home and settle in a warm blanket with some hot chocolate and a rerun of love live is even stronger within hyelim. this has all been too much, too overwhelming for a magical girl like hyelim. she has always grown up to know that being a magical girl is as lighthearted and heroic as it had looked in most magical girl anime, their only struggle being the safety of their friends and their loved ones. being a magical girl isn’t supposed to be anything like puella magi madoka magica, an anomaly within the magical girl genre.
then again, it’s her fault for thinking that anime’s more realistic than reality itself. that’s what caused her to lose an eye in the first place; her own childishness and foolishness, along with her naivety. but for now, she’s done with fighting– the loss of an eye and killing her biggest fear enough to drive her into her lowest levels of energy known to date– preferring the company of her biggest crush over dealing with a monster that might take another one of her limbs.
she’s seen too many magical heroes suffer back on that chessboard, watching blood and limbs fly everywhere, listening to the bloodcurdling screams of her dear rookies. but she has to stay stronger for kei. and she does.
“i’m fine.” the remnants of sunggyu’s sleeve that he had wrapped around her head had bled through already, and she has to fight every urge to touch it, not wanting to risk infection. “a lot of us have to go to the hospital after this is all done.” her smile gets weaker, just like her resolve to keep fighting in general. “a lot of the pain had gone away by now. don’t worry about it too much, okay?”
the presence of kei is comforting to her, almost enveloping her like the warm blanket she’s been craving for. she’s relieved to find that the other girl isn’t as bad in terms of physical conditions as the others she’s seen. after all, kei’s the last person she wants to see getting extremely hurt– she can’t even bear with the idea. “how about you?” she asks instead, leaning in towards her. “isn’t… isn’t this all really scary to you?”