Chapter 94: The Intersecting Timelines of Midday and Midnight

“I only want to meet you online.”

“Ah. Right. Well, want to run some Battlegrounds then?”

Even as I gave him that flat rejection, Sephiroth’s mood remained incredibly high. I couldn’t understand him at all. What was making him so happy? I thought I had figured out quite a lot about the creature known as Sephiroth, but it felt like a completely incomprehensible side of him had suddenly dropped out of nowhere.

After running Battlegrounds all night long, I opened my eyes to yet another Wednesday morning. Unable to break free from the clutches of deep exhaustion, I dragged my hazy consciousness into the bathroom and turned on the tap. The shock of ice-cold water soaking down from the crown of my head instantly jolted me awake.

I grabbed a quick, lazy breakfast, packed my bag, and stepped out the front door. The mild warmth of a spring day lightly tickled my cheeks. However, that didn’t mean my footsteps on the commute to school were light. In stark contrast to the endlessly clear weather, my heavy feet dragged along the pavement, leaving nothing but a slow, sluggish rhythm behind.

As I rounded the alleyway and came out onto the main street, my phone vibrated. Expecting it to be another useless discount notification from a burger joint, I clicked the screen on. To my absolute shock, the sender of this particular alert was someone I never could have anticipated.

[ Na Eun-hyeok: Un-ha-ya ] [ Na Eun-hyeok: Want to grab lunch together? ]

“Huh……?”

A dumb, dazed sound slipped from my lips. Was Na Eun-hyeok actually proposing that we have lunch right now? While he had suggested eating together again the next time we ran into each other during yesterday’s lunch, I had fully assumed it was just a passing, polite formality—the equivalent of a casual ‘let’s catch up for a meal sometime.’ But no matter how I looked at it, the message he just sent was a direct, literal invitation to eat.

My head spun. The phone in my hand suddenly felt completely foreign. It felt like the distance between Na Eun-hyeok and me had shrunk overnight. Why is this happening? A wave of sheer joy washed over me, but it was instantly followed by a sudden, heavy knot of dread. It was only natural to want to be near the person you like, but it was just as natural to be terrified of making a fool of yourself in front of them. Constantly exposing my flustered, hyper-nervous self to him—to a degree that would make any outsider ask what my problem was—was bound to be a massive psychological burden.

But still……

[ Me: Yeah. I’d love to. ]

It wasn’t like I was actually going to text him back saying no.

With a trembling hand, I slowly typed out my confirmation and shoved the phone deep into my pocket. My heart hammered against my ribs as if I had just finished sprinting a hundred-meter dash. A delayed rush of pure euphoria forcefully pumped from my chest, and a bright, cheerful rhythm finally found its way into my step.

I couldn’t focus on my morning lecture to save my life. In the corner of the thick handout I had printed from the copy shop, Na Eun-hyeok’s name was repeatedly scribbled down and aggressively scratched out. I found myself checking and re-checking the campus cafeteria menu—something I usually didn’t give a single glance. What kind of food does Na Eun-hyeok even like? After aggressively narrowing down the choices, I typed a few options into my phone.

[ today the agriculture cafeteria, social sciences cafeteria, and business cafeteria all look pretty good. what do you think? agri has spicy stir-fried duck, social sciences has pork cutlet rice bowls, and business has black bean noodles ]

I sat there debating whether or not to press send on my incredibly detailed menu briefing when a message popped up without warning.

[ Na Eun-hyeok: Want to go to the agriculture cafeteria? ] [ Na Eun-hyeok: If that’s too far, the one in front of the social sciences building is fine too ]

I immediately deleted the entire essay I had just drafted. My fingers flew across the screen.

[ Me: Let’s do the agri cafe ]

The agriculture cafeteria was quite a distance away from the Social Sciences building where I was currently taking my lecture. Na Eun-hyeok hadn’t offered the social sciences option for no reason. However, I had a strategic plan of my own. If we met up in front of the social sciences building, walked all the way to the agriculture college together, and then walked back, I would get to see him for much longer. Na Eun-hyeok definitely wouldn’t view it that way, but I couldn’t help a small, delusional thought: If we were on a campus date, it would probably feel exactly like this.

[ Me: Want to meet in front of the social sciences building and walk over together? ]

[ Na Eun-hyeok: Yeah. Around what time does your class end? ]

Seeing his immediate reply, I threw a quiet celebration in my head. While a creeping sense of anxiety started to worm its way back in, this still marked one of the few massive, successful triumphs in Chae Un-ha’s entire life.

Phew, phew. As I took a deep breath to steady my racing pulse, Han Kyu-tae, who was sitting right next to me, gave me a hard nudge.

“Did you eat something weird?”

“Mind your own business.”

“Did you get a girlfriend?”

“No, so please shut up.”

I gave Kyu-tae’s arm a sharp pinch to warn him. Watching him turn his head back to the front with a startled look, I let out a long sigh. If even Han Kyu-tae was commenting on it, I must have been wearing my emotions entirely on my face. I seriously needed to learn how to keep a straight face, but it was just so incredibly difficult.

My feelings always made an appearance except when I actually wanted them to be noticed. I took my pen and savagely crossed out the words ‘Agriculture Cafeteria’ that I had written in the corner of my notes.

“Alright, I’m heading out to eat.”

“See ya.”

The moment the lecture ended, Kyu-tae packed his things and left first, mentioning he had somewhere to be. I didn’t mind that my usual lunch partner had vanished today. I gathered my remaining things and stepped out into the swarming hallway. Dodging the sea of students flooding into the lecture hall for the next class, I headed toward the stairs. There, the brilliant sunlight pouring through the massive windows illuminated a row of red chairs attached to a long white counter.

“……It really is a nice day.”

Blankly murmuring to myself, I sat down on one of the middle chairs. The backless, bench-style seats looked sleek, but I rarely ever saw anyone actually sit on them. True to form, no one else came to sit anywhere near me while I was there. It formed a stark, quiet contrast against the busy crowd rushing back and forth through the hallway. Is this what they call loneliness in a crowd? I chuckled quietly at my own absurd thought.

A quick glance at my phone screen told me there was still a significant amount of time left before my meeting with Na Eun-hyeok. He had mentioned his class ended thirty minutes later than mine. I think it was in Lecture Hall 107. Leaning my upper body against the counter, I closed my eyes. The lazy afternoon sun tapped softly against my eyelids. As my body relaxed into a drowsy slump, my thoughts began to drift in circles. Un-ha-ya. Na Eun-hyeok’s voice echoed faintly in my mind. But then, strangely, a very similar voice began to overlay right on top of it. Beulli-ya. They were obviously completely different people, yet for some bizarre reason, Sephiroth’s voice sounded uncannily similar in my head.

This first semester was turning out to be entirely surreal. Out of nowhere, I had become close enough with Na Eun-hyeok—someone I thought I’d never be able to properly approach—to casually grab lunch together. On top of that, I had picked up a video game I swore I’d never play and somehow ended up befriending a literal lunatic of a Berserker. It felt as though a massive boulder had been violently hurled into the otherwise calm, uneventful rhythm of my life, but it wasn’t a terrible feeling at all. Becoming this close to Na Eun-hyeok after harboring a massive unrequited crush for so long was obviously amazing, and meeting a psycho like Sephiroth wasn’t half bad either.

“……It’s actually pretty fun.”

My thoughts smoothly transitioned from Na Eun-hyeok straight to Sephiroth. Just last night, I had been tearing up the Battlegrounds alongside him. Thanks to that, we had racked up enough Guild Points to make Seon-hwa nuna completely pass out from shock. The more I thought about it, the more I realized how natural it felt to play with him now. A version of Zelphia without Sephiroth was becoming increasingly difficult to imagine.

Come to think of it, Sephiroth had randomly asked to grab food yesterday, too. While I definitely didn’t have the bandwidth for it right now, I thought it might not be a horrible idea to actually meet up with him once the semester ended and summer break started. Part of me had a childish urge to buy that chuunibyou kid a meal just so I could finally vent all the grievances he’d caused me. But even setting that aside, we had spent so much time bickering and bonding in Zelphia that a single casual meal felt completely earned.

What would it even be like to eat a meal with Sephiroth? I couldn’t easily visualize it. He would probably run my remaining nerve endings completely ragged, but then again, keyboard warriors were often surprisingly meek and quiet in real life. Maybe it would turn out to be the quietest meal of my life. Wait, there’s no way he’d actually use ridiculous terms like ‘Beulli’ or ‘Hyung’ in the real world, right? Even if I ended up looking a bit stiff, I resolved to immediately interrogate him about his age the second we met so we could establish normal titles. Imagining scenarios that hadn’t even happened yet brought a faint smirk to my face. The heavy tension that had tightly gripped my nerves over my upcoming lunch with Na Eun-hyeok slowly, quietly began to melt away.

Ah. If you could just take the two of them and mix them half-and-half, wouldn’t that be perfect? If only I could treat Na Eun-hyeok with the exact same comfortable ease that I used with Sephiroth. It was a completely ridiculous thought.

“What are you thinking about so deeply?”

At that exact moment, a low voice cut through the air right beside my ear.

“Huh?!”

I snapped my eyes open, startling as if I had just been struck by lightning. A tall, impeccably proportioned man was looking down at me. It didn’t take my brain more than a fraction of a second to realize exactly who it was. Na Eun-hyeok leaned down slightly, casting a gentle shadow over me.

“Are you tired?”

“Ah, n-no!”

The moment that deeply resonant voice filled my ears, the chaotic thoughts that had been racing through my mind instantly ground to a halt. In a flash, the noise of the students walking through the corridor completely faded away, making the entire space feel as though it were occupied by absolutely no one but Na Eun-hyeok and me.

“If you’re tired, do you want to rest for a bit?”

Hearing Na Eun-hyeok’s gentle tone, I finally snapped out of my daze. This was one of the incredibly rare opportunities to eat with him. Knowing I absolutely couldn’t let it slip away, I hurriedly gave him my answer.

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