Chapter 119: Just Because

“Don’t touch this upcoming assignment.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Where is this suddenly coming from?”

“You literally handled the last two projects entirely by yourself, didn’t you?”

That was technically true. Still, the current atmosphere didn’t exactly feel like the right setup for this specific topic to surface. I had thoroughly grown accustomed to Sephiroth blindly spouting whatever was on his mind regardless of the vibe, but executing a face-to-face interaction with Na Eun-hyeok behaving exactly like that remained incredibly difficult to get used to.

“Since when do you actually pay attention to details like that?”

“Ah, whatever. Forget it.”

“Why are you suddenly getting incredibly defensive and snappy?”

“I am not being snappy. Either way, I’m doing it.”

“Sure, knock yourself out.”

Throughout the entire term, I had simply crammed two people’s worth of labor into those assignments because I desperately wanted to avoid interacting with Na Eun-hyeok while simultaneously refusing to become a disgraceful team member who ghosted a project. It wasn’t as if I possessed a profound personal fixation on completing the coursework with my own hands. Regardless of his sharp delivery, if he was volunteering to execute the labor, I had zero reason to object.

“You’re not plotting some catastrophic double-suicide maneuver to tank both our grades, right?”

“A double suicide?”

“No, never mind.”

I had tossed the question out just in case, but I instantly concluded it was an impossibility. Na Eun-hyeok wasn’t the type of person to intentionally butcher an assignment just to drag me down with him. Even inside Zelfia, despite executing every toxic behavior in the book, he was an incredibly diligent and dedicated player when it came to the actual gameplay. He was the type of guy who would systematically murder his own teammates before he ever considered logging off himself. Furthermore, this absolute bottom-of-the-barrel personality seemed to be a premium feature restricted strictly to me; there was zero chance he would throw away an opportunity to look pristine in front of the professors.

I briefly realized that I understood Na Eun-hyeok’s psychological makeup entirely too well, but it couldn’t be helped. My history of harboring a one-sided crush while quietly watching him from afar spanned multiple years, and recently, I had been glued right next to Sephiroth every single day for an entire month without a solitary break. The time metrics required to completely read a person had already been thoroughly invested.

“Unbelievable prick.”

“What?”

Even if I understood him, an insufferable prick was still an insufferable prick, causing my internal monologue to slip right past my teeth.

“I said you’re an unbelievable prick.”

“Well, I admit I am exceptionally close to absolute perfection.”

“Perfection, my ass.”

There was a fleeting window in the past when I genuinely believed he was perfect. Not anymore. With a structural personality flaw of this magnitude, it was safe to categorize it as a severe, much-needed balance patch from the universe.

At my muttered commentary, Na Eun-hyeok’s gaze shifted straight toward me. Caught in the reflection of the rearview mirror, his eyes were boring into mine, his jawline locked in a rigid, tense line. What? Why? Look at me all you want. You’re the one who started acting like a prick first, aren’t you? Right as I was fully chambering a lethal verbal retort to fire back the exact second he opened his mouth—

“……I honestly have zero clue why I’m executing this behavior right now.”

Instead of picking another fight, his voice drifted out sounding slightly drained, causing my eyes to widen. Before I knew it, the car had cleared the crest of the hill, passed straight through the main campus gates, and was advancing down the central avenue.

“Ah.”

The exact millisecond Na Eun-hyeok executed a smooth right turn, a powerful wave of déjà vu violently hit me. The slope we were currently traversing was the precise location where I had tripped and fallen, and where Na Eun-hyeok had helped me back up—the exact coordinates where I had fallen in love with him for the very first time. That solitary fraction of a second had been permanently burned into my memory, yet the brilliant coloration of that moment had completely faded by now. How on earth did our dynamic degenerate into this? Right as that thought surfaced—

“This is that exact spot, right?”

“What is?”

“Where you took that massive spill.”

“You actually remember that?”

“Didn’t you bring it up once before?”

Come to think of it, I felt like we might have shared a brief, passing conversation about it a while back.

“Honestly, why didn’t you just ignore me and keep walking that day?”

Evaluating it through the lens of Na Eun-hyeok’s real personality, he had absolutely zero logical reason to assist me, so I couldn’t comprehend why he had acted like that. If he hadn’t intervened that afternoon, I would have never become this profoundly hung up on him. I would have simply categorized him as a spectacularly handsome, high-profile guy in the department and moved on with my life. Driven by a wave of pure bitterness, my voice came out heavily pouted.

“So you’re actively complaining even after receiving assistance?”

“It’s just completely uncharacteristic of you to help someone. You literally went out of your way to walk to a convenience store just to purchase an adhesive bandage.”

“Do you want to know a fun fact? The convenience store right behind us was completely sold out of bandages that day. I explicitly had to hike all the way to the Student Union building to procure it.”

“The Student Union?”

The Student Union building was considerably far from that specific slope. It was a solid ten-minute trek on foot, or roughly five minutes if you executed a full-on sprint. I had always assumed he took a bit long for a quick run to the immediate shop, but he had actually traveled all the way to the central campus building? Arriving at that realization made the entire sequence of events feel exponentially more bizarre.

“You intentionally traveled all the way to the Student Union building? Why the hell would you do that?”

“Are you seriously interrogating the person who helped you?”

“Are you seriously trying to claim you’re the type of human being who does that out of pure charity? Because you’re absolutely not.”

If I had recognized Na Eun-hyeok first and actively called out to him, his behavior wouldn’t have been perplexing. After all, Na Eun-hyeok was someone who deeply managed his public reputation. But back then, I was in far too much physical agony to even register whether he was within my line of sight. This meant if he had simply looked the other way and walked past, I would have remained entirely oblivious for eternity. Therefore, why did he actively possess a separate motivation to speak to me?

“That is also a fair point.”

Na Eun-hyeok accepted my harsh assessment far more easily than expected. He lightly tapped his fingertips against the steering wheel before continuing his explanation.

“Once I’ve already initiated an interaction, failing to execute the resolution flawlessly would look incredibly weird on my part. I was forced to hike to the Student Union entirely out of necessity.”

“Look at Mr. Perfectionist putting on a grand display.”

“Because I strictly have to be perfect.”

“If you love perfection that much, aren’t you exposing entirely too much of your absolute baseline trash personality to me right now?”

“I don’t know.”

A thoroughly blunt, sullen answer flew back.

“Either way, since I had already initiated the sequence to help, I absolutely had to bring back a bandage, right?”

“Yeah, okay. And it’s true I didn’t look like I was about to stand up and walk away on my own either.”

I nodded in agreement, but the core mystery remained entirely unresolved.

“But why did you initiate the sequence to speak to me in the first place?”

The ultimate query—why he had initially approached me and why he had allocated his mental bandwidth to care—remained entirely unanswered.

Na Eun-hyeok didn’t offer an immediate response. I pressed him fiercely once more.

“Was there someone else standing around the area back then?”

“I was entirely alone that day.”

“Then why the hell did you do it?”

“Hmm.”

Na Eun-hyeok’s brow furrowed into a slight contortion. The expression looked picture-perfect handsome. I briefly considered nagging him one more time, but since I thoroughly enjoyed watching this arrogant prick look deeply inconvenienced, I simply silently observed him.

“……Just because.”

A voice as microscopic as an ant barely hovered in the heavy silence that followed.

“What?”

“……I said, just because.”

“There is zero chance it was ‘just because.’ Are you honestly trying to convince me you’re a person capable of executing pure goodwill? Absolutely not.”

“Hey. Chae Un-ha.”

“What? Did I utter a single false statement? Seriously, why did you do it? I’m incredibly curious, so just spit it out.”

Na Eun-hyeok’s car smoothly veered into a white-lined parking grid. As he executed a flawless, liquid-smooth parking maneuver, the veins on the back of his hands bulged sharply against his skin. Vehemently biting down on his lower lip with a completely rigid expression, Na Eun-hyeok suddenly whirled his head around to face me directly.

“You just caught my attention and stayed on my mind that day. Satisfied?”

“What?”

“Get out. I need to finish parking.”

“Uhh, what?”

“I said, get out of the car immediately.”

What the hell was up with this sudden, aggressive eviction?

Completely bewildered, I popped the door open and stepped out onto the asphalt. Peering back through the window glass, Na Eun-hyeok looked as though he was heavily panting for a split second before drawing in a massive breath to forcefully reconstruct his calm composure. No, wait—was he merely acting out a performance of being composed?

Caught his attention? Stayed on his mind?

That was an incredibly frustrating, lingering answer to leave behind.

[Community Forum – Zelfia Board]

God-Pang’s Girlfriend Is 100% Executing A Cheat Program

User_9283 | Views: 1,842 | 2026-07-02

Seriously, when I spotted her yesterday she wasn’t even level 70, so what other logical explanation is there for her suddenly breaking past level 100 overnight?

[Comments]

• Mano_88: Wipe away your tears before you type next time.

• Zel_Pro: Are you perhaps a member of Endless?

  • User_9283: Who else besides Endless would be crying this violently right now? Lmao.

  • K-Gamer: X_X Always remember when they declared war looking so incredibly badass.

  • Passerby_A: └ Was the exact phrasing “We shall show you our true power”? Kek.

  • Mano_88: └─ XXXXXXXXXX Lmaooo.

  • K-Gamer: └── Turns out it was the true power (of dying)~

• Guild_Master: Still, raising a query makes complete sense in this scenario, doesn’t it? Even if leveling up in Zelfia is considered relatively easy nowadays, how do you mathematically skyrocket by nearly 50 levels in a single day?

  • Zel_Pro: └ Exactly.. I wonder if everyone has gone completely insane like God-Pang.. or if they just universally despise Endless..

  • Guild_Master: └─ Everyone else is just messing around because it’s not their personal problem, so don’t let it get to you.

• True_Logic: This is a factual statement; if anyone knows a single player who has raised 50 levels in a single day within the level 70 bracket, please step forward;; It would literally take three to four days just to go from level 1 to level 50;

  • Endless_Fan: └ I agree.

  • PVP_God: └ Upvoted for agreement.

  • Anti_Endless: └ Looks like the Endless squad has successfully mobilized to the comment section lol.

  • Endless_Fan: └─ Are you actual brain-dead? The second someone raises a valid point you label them Endless.

  • True_Logic: └─ Exactly my thoughts.

  • Anti_Endless: └─ Lmfao do you guys carry your brains around strictly as a physical decoration? No matter how you evaluate this, it’s completely unnatural.

  • PVP_God: └─ Every single issue is automatically blamed on Endless, right? You guys are completely blind to the fact that Sephiroth’s girlfriend is executing a damage hack?

I’m An Active Endless Guild Member, And This Is Literally Impossible?

Endless_Knight | Views: 2,401 | 2026-07-02

Look at this screenshot. This is my exact HP bar after taking a single sequence of hits from BlueberryWhiskey. Just for baseline reference, I am a level 250 maxed player and I can completely verify all my equipment stats. I have put maximum effort into securing a fully optimized, end-game graduation gear set. Even if we choose to overlook the sudden level explosion, this raw damage output defies absolute logic? Lmao.

[Comments]

• Hack_Hunter: It’s 100% verified that she’s running a cheat program lol. It’s a definitive damage hack.

• Gamer_Z: Who was the clown claiming Zelfia has zero active hacks~

• Info_Bro: Oh, you’re an actual Endless member? What’s the current atmosphere inside the guild like?

  • Endless_Knight: └ Haha, f*ck, don’t even ask. If we had known God-Pang was actively participating we would have never gotten involved.

  • Endless_Knight: └ But right now, the guild atmosphere has actually stabilized a bit because everyone is unified under a “Down with the Cheater” banner. Honestly, with BlueberryWhiskey’s hack execution being this incredibly blatant, isn’t the Zelfia management team completely abandoning their core duties by sitting on their hands? Lmao. Right now, our singular objective is to somehow get both accounts permanently banned.

• SnowBloodFragrance: Oso Bro, who are you? We explicitly agreed to never discuss our internal guild war logistics outside the game oso.

  • Info_Bro: └ Oh, SnowBloodFragrance, hello!

  • Gamer_Z: └ It’s Fragrance.

  • Anti_Net-Okama: └ Yuck, the net-okama has materialized once again.

  • Endless_Knight: └ You’re the one claiming we agreed not to talk about guild matters, yet here you are actively commenting yourself. Talk about absolute double standards.

  • Anti_Net-Okama: └─ Lmao why are you coming at SnowBloodFragrance when you guys are actively worshiping Sephiroth’s girlfriend?

  • SnowBloodFragrance: └── Thank you, Oppa, hehe. There are so many bizarre people around that I just choose to ignore it.

  • PVP_God: └ Welcome, SnowBloodFragrance.

  • Simp_99: └ Please accept my friend request, Fragrance-nim!

  • Anti_Net-Okama: └ The sheer audacity to consistently utilize a fixed nickname when we tell you not to.

  • Simp_99: └─ Ah, please stop inventing arbitrary unwritten rules lol.

  • Info_Bro: └─ Stop breathing down Fragrance’s neck.

  • Anti_Net-Okama: └── Why are there so many net-okama simps crawling around this board?

  • SnowBloodFragrance: └─── oso Fragrance isn’t a net-okama though..

  • Info_Bro: └──── Looooooooool.

  • Gamer_Z: └──── Bro, maintaining this concept roleplay to this extent is an actual psychological illness.

  • Simp_99: └──── Just completely ignore these clowns, Fragrance-nim, haha.

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