Chapter 117: Contrast

“Even after acting like this, you still want to eat lunch together?”

“Yeah. Let’s eat.”

“You do realize I might literally hurl a boiling earthenware pot straight at your face, right?”

“That’s fine. Let’s grab lunch.”

Fine, my ass. If I actually did that, I could already see the sensationalized front-page headlines trending the very next day. Top University Student’s Jealous Rage? Former Child Actor Na Eun-hyeok Suffers Facial Burns…… The media titles practically generated themselves inside my head.

“Just make sure you perform properly during the guild war.”

“We strictly need to finish clearing the rest of the temples too.”

“Yeah. That too.”

The absolute millisecond the four elemental temples and this guild war wrap up, I am never looking at this prick’s face again. Locking in that fierce internal vow, I took large, sweeping strides ahead of him.

“Oh, hey. Look who finally decided to show up for class. Did you officially decide to terminate your school boycott?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Good. Honestly, the word ‘rebellion’ matches Chae Un-ha about as poorly as humanly possible.”

Han Gyu-tae—a guy who practically embodied the definition of the word rebellion—let out a loud chuckle. It had been an incredibly long time since his noisy laughter actually felt welcoming. Sitting beside him, Park Seong-jin greeted me with massive, dark circles hollowing out his eyes. He had mentioned earlier that he was staying up all night managing logistics for the guild war.

“Still, thanks for logging on yesterday, Un-ha.”

“It was nothing.”

“The fact that you actively got Sephiroth to move completely stabilized our positioning. It looks like the Endless guild noted how erratic Sephiroth’s status has been lately and assumed he wouldn’t lift a finger to help us, which is exactly why they launched their offensive. I don’t know about their core leadership, but the morale among their general guild members has visibly plummeted.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Hearing him phrase it as me getting Sephiroth to move pricked at my conscience a bit, but since it was technically true, I kept my mouth shut. If I attempted to clarify or argue against that phrasing, the conversation would inevitably spiral into explicitly revealing that Na Eun-hyeok was Sephiroth, and I had zero desire to cross that bridge.

“More importantly, why the hell are you suddenly so hyper-fixated on the game lately? You were practically a ghost for a while.”

“Fucked if I know.”

“Seriously, whenever Han Gyu-tae drops off, Chae Un-ha grinds like crazy, and the second Chae Un-ha takes a break, Han Gyu-tae is suddenly locked in.”

“We’re literally in the middle of a guild war anyway, so isn’t it inherently a good thing if I’m grinding hard?”

“True.”

Sensing the dismissive edge in my dry response, Park Seong-jin quickly scanned my expression and deftly shifted the topic. Han Gyu-tae was instantly reeled into the new conversational thread. After seemingly fooling around outdoors for a while, Han Gyu-tae appeared to have fallen right back into being utterly consumed by Zelfia lately. Normally, I would have questioned him about what had been going on, but right now, my own internal dilemma was causing an immense headache. I simply let their dialogue drift aimlessly past my ears.

Staring blankly at the empty instructor’s podium, a sudden movement at the opened front door caught my eye. Turning my gaze without a single shred of thought, I watched Na Eun-hyeok walk into the lecture hall. Clad in a crisp white spring long coat, an ivory turtleneck sweater, and deep brown slacks, his entire aesthetic looked exceptionally bright and immaculate. It almost felt as though a literal halo was radiating around his silhouette.

No, stop it, Un-ha. Pull yourself together.

Old habits truly die hard; the second I caught sight of him, my brain was already outputting useless, lingering fantasies. Wake up. Wrapped inside that pristine exterior was the soul of Sephiroth—the man possessing the absolute worst personality on the entire planet. He was nothing but an apricot that looked stunning on the outside but was completely rotten within. No, not just standard decay; he was a thoroughly poisoned apricot. Right as I was fiercely scolding myself internally, Na Eun-hyeok’s eyes swept across the room and locked dead onto me.

The corners of his eyes crinkled softly, and his lips curved upward into a gentle, elegant smile.

That faint expression was undeniably directed strictly at me. It felt as though the heavy musk fragrance that had saturated the interior of his car was suddenly wafting across the lecture hall. Walking past his usual designated seating area, he advanced two rows deeper into the room and settled into a desk situated almost directly in front of mine. From my exact vantage point, the back of his neck sat perfectly within my field of vision.

Ah, Chae Un-ha.

Did I truly detest Na Eun-hyeok? That was an absolute lie. I was obviously thoroughly infuriated with him. The raw reality that my words consistently came out incredibly sharp and bitter both in Zelfia and in reality was definitive proof. When all was said and done, he had explicitly played with my emotions, regardless of whatever his actual intentions might have been.

Yet, the very fact that I remained entirely ignorant of his true intentions functioned as a massive, lingering hurdle. My attachment behaved exactly as its name implied—acting incredibly pathetic and foolish. Thoughts that perhaps I had simply assigned arbitrary meaning to words he spoke without a single shred of thought, or that our timing had merely been catastrophic, kept violently surging to the surface at the most unexpected, defenseless intervals.

The solitary silver lining was the reality that this lingering attachment was steadily growing exhausted. I wasn’t entirely sure if it was healthy to categorize exhaustion as a form of comfort, but that was the objective truth. Previously, merely looking at Na Eun-hyeok’s face functioned as a massive source of nourishment that allowed my feelings to bloom frantically; now, it felt entirely different. Like a plant starved of water day after day, my heart was slowly drying up and withering away. At this rate, it wouldn’t be surprising if the stem snapped entirely and the flower dropped dead to the floor before long.

“……Sigh.”

“What’s with the heavy sigh? You look exactly like someone who just got dumped.”

Han Gyu-tae blindly stumbled right into the absolute bullseye once again. I slammed my fist into his shoulder with a dull thud.

The exact millisecond the lecture concluded, I attempted to execute a rapid escape, but Na Eun-hyeok’s reaction speed was a fraction of a second faster. Right as I was about to rise from my desk, the white turtleneck materialized directly in front of my line of sight. Casting my eyes upward, I found him welcoming me with his signature elegant smile.

“Un-ha-ya. Let’s grab lunch.”

I could immediately detect Park Seong-jin covertly scanning my facial expression. Even without looking, it was a mathematical certainty that Han Gyu-tae was throwing him an intense glance that explicitly read, What the hell is this current atmosphere? To prevent myself from causing an awkward scene right in front of my friends, I delivered a rapid response.

“I’ll head out first.”

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

Park Seong-jin’s voice trailed off, sounding distinctly suspicious. Han Gyu-tae, still entirely failing to grasp the structural reality of the situation, simply rolled his eyes back and forth, staring at Na Eun-hyeok and me in alternating confusion. Shooting my friends a firm look that silently commanded them not to utter a single word, I exited the lecture hall. Na Eun-hyeok quietly trailed a single pace behind me.

“You were totally planning to make a run for it, weren’t you?”

The words dropped the exact second we broke away from the heavily crowded corridors and veered into the relatively deserted path behind the campus building. The cherry blossoms that had bloomed so beautifully along this walkway had practically all fallen by now, leaving nothing but a blanket of petals across the pavement. In their place, the lilacs remained in full bloom, gently broadcasting a soft, floral fragrance through the air. That sweet scent seamlessly mingled with the deep, crisp aroma of Na Eun-hyeok’s cologne.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You totally were.”

“I said I wasn’t.”

“I can see right through you.”

Na Eun-hyeok was acting like a literal child. It made me heavily question whether this was truly the exact same individual who had stood so flawlessly and elegantly in front of Park Seong-jin and Han Gyu-tae only moments prior. The guy was a total Jekyll and Hyde; his online and offline personas were so diametrically opposed that I was genuinely struggling to figure out which rhythm I was even supposed to align with when interacting with him.

“Let’s head over to the Humanities Department cafeteria today.”

“I want to go to the student union building though.”

“Then we’ll go to the student union.”

The way he seamlessly conformed to my preference without a single shred of resistance made it entirely impossible to decipher what was going on inside his brain. As I stared at him with a thoroughly sullen expression, his eyes suddenly locked onto mine.

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just wondering what the hell you’re thinking.”

“Honestly, I’m not entirely sure myself, so I’m currently trying to figure it out.”

“What is that even supposed to mean?”

“I’ll let you know the exact second I find the answer.”

It was pure wordplay. It felt as though we were both outputting nothing but abstract nonsense to one another. I desperately wanted to uncover the concrete reason behind why he was executing this behavior, yet he claimed he didn’t even know himself. If you’re that confused, you should strictly stay quietly at home. Instead of voicing my complaints, I simply pouted my lips in dissatisfaction.

“You’re kind of cute when you do that.”

“What?”

Startled violently by the low voice drifting from right beside me, I whirled my head to stare dead at him. Did my ears actually just register that correctly? Yet, Na Eun-hyeok maintained a perfectly serene posture, walking forward with his eyes locked dead ahead as if he hadn’t uttered a single syllable. Judging strictly by his stoic demeanor, one would assume I had suffered a literal auditory hallucination—but no matter how much I rationalized it, there was zero chance it was an illusion.

“What did you literally just say?”

“About what?”

Since he was blatantly denying it, I lacked the absolute courage to voice the phrase “You said I was kind of cute” back to his face. Instead of pressing the issue, I grumbled under my breath.

“You are seriously bizarre.”

“I’ve been thinking the exact same thing about myself lately.”

If the man himself openly agreed with the assessment, what else was I even supposed to say? I firmly locked my mouth shut. Amidst the suffocating silence, the gears inside my brain spun at a frantic velocity.

Throughout the entirety of the meal, I was forced to continuously endure Na Eun-hyeok’s deeply intense, meaningful stares. He kept directing this incredibly powerful, piercing gaze straight at my position; every single time those pitch-black eyes locked onto me, I instinctively averted my line of sight. Is there literally something smeared on my face? Unable to withstand the pressure any longer, I finally snapped the question out, but Na Eun-hyeok merely offered a slow, deliberate shake of his head. Then why the hell are you acting like this? When I pressed him further, what had his exact response been again?

‘I’m thinking.’

Another entirely incomprehensible, cryptic answer.

Thanks to that lovely dynamic, I shoveled down my food in an atmosphere where I couldn’t even tell if the rice was entering through my nose or my mouth. The sheer discomfort was practically lethal. It made me realize that the full-dive environment of the game was infinitely more comfortable; inside Zelfia, we were completely consumed by executing dungeon mechanics, leaving zero mental bandwidth to overanalyze anything else.

“What time are you logging on?”

As if our thoughts had locked into perfect alignment once more, Na Eun-hyeok voiced a query regarding my schedule the moment we wrapped up eating.

“Around my usual time.”

“Try to coax your guild friends into joining us.”

“Why?”

“I checked the requirements yesterday; the Water Temple explicitly mandates a party size of four or more players to enter.”

I had a strong feeling that would be the case. It was standard gaming convention for party size requirements to scale proportionally alongside the structural complexity of a dungeon. Part of the reason the Fire Temple had felt so exceptionally punishing was strictly because Na Eun-hyeok and I had systematically brute-forced a massive zone entirely by ourselves. Having even a single additional damage-dealer present makes a night-and-day difference in overall clear efficiency.

“And tell them to purchase a massive stack of resurrection scrolls ahead of time so they can instantly revive and keep pace the second they trip a trap mechanic.”

Of course, when evaluated strictly through the lens of pure mechanical execution, a duo run consisting of just Na Eun-hyeok and myself remained the absolute pinnacle of efficiency.

“Just use your own stash of resurrection scrolls to cover them. If you establish toxic entry conditions like that, players who were actually considering joining will immediately back out. Especially considering the fact that they have to run a dungeon alongside you to begin with.”

“Why should I? They should be profoundly grateful for the mere privilege of running content right beside me.”

As he spat out that intensely arrogant remark, a brilliant grin broke across his face. The smooth, sweeping elevation of his crimson lips felt exactly like a meticulously edited slow-motion sequence cut straight out of a high-end drama. I found myself staring at his face in absolute enchantment for a split second before violently snapping myself back to reality. When I used to listen to him spout that exact brand of nonsense while staring at Sephiroth’s black armor, it didn’t register a single thought; yet, hearing those exact same words while looking directly at Na Eun-hyeok’s real-life face made the statement feel profoundly persuasive.

“I’ve asked you this exact question once before,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes. “Where on earth does that absolute, baseless confidence of yours even originate from?”

“Does it truly look baseless to you, Un-ha-ya?”

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