gameboy | jww
Author: bratzkoo Pairing: gamer! wonwoo x game analyst! y/n Genre: angst, fluff, fake dating Rating: PG-13 Word count: 9.5k~ Warnings/note: eck.
summary: fake dating. it's stupid, really, wonwoo thought it might save you from the embarrassment your asshole ex has been saying in the media. seventeen masterlist
Wonwoo's POV I always thought SEVENTH HEAVEN was loud enough without outside interference.
People see the highlight reels and think we’re this cool, clean, icy “top 1 in the league” machine. What they don’t see is Seungkwan screaming at Mingyu because he missed one peel (“YOU LET ME DIE LIKE A FARMING KRUG, YOU MENACE”), Vernon quietly typing notes about ward timers like some vision-obsessed librarian, Mingyu throwing himself at me every time his ganks work, and Seungcheol conducting all of us like we’re his personal orchestra and he’s both the conductor and the guy who built the concert hall.
We were chaos. Controlled, competitive chaos.
And then Y/N entered our orbit and the volume dial didn’t just go up.
It snapped clean off.
The first time I ever heard her say my name, she didn’t know I was listening.
We were in the team lounge at 1 AM, which is pro player for “we’re tired, stubborn, and pretending we don’t have scrims in the morning.”
I was eating instant noodles, trying not to think about the last VOD we watched. Seungkwan was on the couch, yelling at a random montage.
“That is NOT a good trade,” he shouted at the TV. “WHO EDITED THIS? JAIL. LIFE SENTENCE. THROW THE WHOLE BOT LANE AWAY.”
Vernon rolled over with the remote. “Okay, okay, let’s watch something that doesn’t raise your blood pressure.”
He flicked through channels, then opened YouTube on the console.
That thumbnail was already familiar to me.
Bright colors. A stylized League map behind her. Her logo in the corner.
Hextech Hot Takes w/ Y/N “THIS DRAFT HURT MY SOUL (LITERALLY)”
My chest did a weird little stutter.
“AYO, CLICK THAT,” Seungkwan demanded, jabbing a finger at the screen. “MOTHER.”
Vernon clicked.
She appeared on the screen, headset on, hair pulled into a messy bun, eyeliner sharp enough to be classified as a weapon. In the background was her streaming setup: LED lights, a floating “DON’T FF AT 15” sign, shelves crammed with champ figurines and a giant stuffed poro in the corner.
“Okay,” she said, grinning at the camera, eyes bright. “We need to talk about this draft, because I don’t know what the coach was smoking, but it wasn’t vision control.”
Her chat flew past on the side.
Mingyu perked up from the floor, half-buried in a beanbag. “OH, THIS ONE,” he said. “She roasted the hell out of that team for locking four melee tops.”
“She did what?” Seungkwan asked, instantly invested, already sitting up.
“Four melee tops,” Vernon confirmed. “In pro play.”
“Queue the funeral,” someone muttered. Might’ve been me.
Footsteps padded in and Seungcheol joined us, steaming mug in one hand. “Who are we flaming?” he asked.
“Not us,” Vernon said.
“Sadly,” Seungkwan added, clutching a pillow.
I tried not to look too eager. Tried and failed.
She broke down the game, frame by frame. Pulled up drafts, painted over the screen with her words.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, circling champions with her cursor. “Aggressive drafts are hot. We love to see it. But this is not aggression, this is self-harm with extra steps.”
The team cackled.
I watched her more than the game. The way her mouth curled when she found a particularly bad decision. The way her eyes sharpened when she talked about vision. The way she kept dragging the analysis back to players’ mental and burnout like it mattered more than views.
And then the screen switched.
A screenshot of SEVENTH HEAVEN appeared.
She paused the frame, zoomed in.
On me.
My heart did something stupid.
“This is Jeon Wonwoo,” she said, tone shifting into that dangerous blend of fond and forensic. “Mid laner for SEVENTH HEAVEN. Mechanically cracked. Probably knows every jungle path in this region by heart. Emotionally? I’ve seen turrets with clearer expressions. If he ever smiles on stage, I’ll host a charity stream.”
Seungkwan screamed. Actually screamed.
“NO WAY SHE SAID THAT—PLAY IT AGAIN, PLAY IT AGAIN, I’M CLIPPING THIS IN MY SOUL.”
Mingyu practically folded in half. “BRO, SHE READ YOUR SOUL AND YOUR TAX RECORDS.”
Vernon side-eyed me. “…you are kind of stiff sometimes.”
I slurped noodles and pretended my ears weren’t burning. Judging by how hot they felt, I was failing.
Y/N kept talking.
Her voice was warm, but it never softened the truth.
“SEVENTH HEAVEN has insane potential,” she said. “Especially their mid. When he commits, he looks unstoppable. But if he freezes, even for a second, everything collapses around him. He needs to stop second-guessing his reads in mid-game.”
Seungkwan gasped like she’d just leaked state secrets. “NOT HER READING YOUR ANXIETY ON MAIN.”
“Shut up,” I muttered.
“She’s not wrong,” Seungcheol murmured, taking a sip of tea.
I watched myself on screen, frozen mid-replay, and I had that weird, dizzy feeling of being seen and dissected and… understood, all at once.
It felt invasive. It felt accurate. It felt… good.
Which was annoying.
I remembered that game: the slight hesitation at a dragon fight, the way I didn’t take a flank I knew was right because I was too busy calculating what would happen if I was wrong.
Apparently, she caught that in one VOD.
“She’s kind of terrifying,” Mingyu said, sounding impressed.
“She’s hot,” Seungkwan corrected. “Terrifyingly hot. Like, respectfully-your-honor hot.”
“Please stop talking,” I said.
They didn’t.
Later that night, lying awake with my phone dimmed, I searched her channel, found the video, and watched it again.
And again.
I told myself it was for “review.”
I was lying.
Two months later, I knew too much about her.
Not personal things. Not gossip.
The important things.
Her channel schedule. Her analysis style. How she’d call a coach “bold” and somehow make it sound like both an insult and a compliment. How she defended rookies from chat pileups. How she always ended her videos with:
“Remember: draft wins games, wards save lives. Go drink water.”
Every time SEVENTH HEAVEN played a big match, I checked if she covered it.
Not for the clout.
For the review.
For the way she could take my messiest mid-game and say something like, “He panicked. That’s not bad mechanics, that’s fear.” And somehow, instead of feeling exposed, I felt… relieved. Like someone had given the mess in my head a name.
I didn’t know her.
But I felt like she knew me a little.
Which is why, when I saw her in person for the first time at a tiny gaming café, my brain completely lagged.
We’d gone there on an off-day.
The café was cramped, lit by cheap neon airing out its last few lumens. The chairs wobbled. The PCs were weirdly powerful for such a small place. The kind of place you only find if someone tells you about it in a Discord server.
Mingyu insisted they had the “best instant ramyun in the city.”
He might’ve been right.
We were mid-cup—me, Mingyu, Vernon—when the bell over the door rang.
She walked in.
No headset, no overlays, no chat exploding on the side.
Just a hoodie, jeans, laptop bag slung over one shoulder. Hair down this time, curling a bit at the ends. She looked softer and somehow more dangerous without the armor of production.
She stepped up to the counter, ordered an iced americano, thanked the barista with a small smile that hit me harder than it had any right to, and scanned the room.
Her eyes lingered for a second on the row of PCs where we sat. I ducked my head instinctively, like an idiot, even though there was no way she’d pick me out from this distance.
“Is that…?” Mingyu whispered.
“Yes,” I muttered.
“That’s Y/N,” he hissed, eyes wide. “Bro. Say hi.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Because you already watch her videos at 2 AM. Because she already peeled a layer off your brain in a ten-minute analysis. Because if she looks at you in person the way she looks at drafts, she’ll see right through you.
“Because no,” I said.
“That’s not a reason,” he protested.
“It’s my reason.”
Vernon glanced between us and then at her. “She looks smaller in person,” he observed. “Still scary though.”
“Sexy scary,” Seungkwan’s voice popped in from behind us; he’d just returned from the counter with bread. “Like she’s going to ruin your draft and then your life.”
“That’s enough out of you,” I muttered.
She chose a table by the window. Sat down. Opened her laptop. Pulled out a tiny notebook, full of scribbles and little color-coded tabs.
I watched her flip to a page with “META – SUPPORT BUFFS?” written in too-neat handwriting and a tiny doodle of a ward in the corner.
“Bro, you’re staring,” Seungkwan said around a mouthful of bread. “Do you want me to go ask for her autograph? Or her hand in marriage? I can do either.”
“Play your game,” I said.
“I am playing,” he replied. “It’s called ‘are you going to talk to your YouTube crush or not.’”
I queued a game. And another. And another.
Every time I told myself, after this one, I’d get up, walk over, and say something normal, like, “Hi, I like your breakdown on jungle pathing,” and not something insane, like, “You live rent-free in my VOD review mind palace.”
Every time I ended a game, she frowned a little at something on her screen, bit the end of her pen, scribbled another note. Her concentration was so complete it felt like a shield. I didn’t want to break it.
So I stayed put.
She packed up eventually. Slid her laptop back into her bag. Slipped her notebook into the side pocket. Wrapped her fingers around her iced americano, now mostly melted.
The café door chimed behind her.
I stared at the door for a full minute.
“Wow,” Seungkwan said finally. “We just witnessed a love story almost start and then not. Tragic. Ten out of ten, would cry again.”
“Do you ever shut up?” I asked.
“No,” he said cheerfully. “Especially not when my mid laner is in emotional denial.”
Later that night, Mingyu posted some blurry story of our café outing on Instagram. In one frame, way in the back, barely visible, there she was at the window.
Some fan commented:
“wait, is that Y/N in the bg??? HELLO????”
I saw it.
I turned my phone face down.
Fast forward to the pre-finals press conference.
The air in the room is heavy with lights and bad perfume. There’s a stage at the front, branded backdrop behind the table, rows of chairs for reporters and analysts and camera operators. Microphones everywhere. Noise everywhere.
We’re seated in a line.
Seungcheol in the middle: perfect posture, steady gaze, captain aura turned to 11. To his right, Seungkwan and Vernon: bot lane chaos incarnate. To his left, Mingyu and me: jungle and mid, the so-called “brain” of SEVENTH HEAVEN, which is terrifying when you think about how often our brains decide to do stupid things.
The host runs through the usual questions.
“How do you feel about finals?” “What does SEVENTH HEAVEN mean to you?” “Are you preparing anything special against Silver Aegis?”
We answer on autopilot. I’ve done enough of these that my mouth moves while my mind drifts.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I spot her.
Y/N.
Press badge hanging from her neck. Tablet in one hand, stylus in the other. Glasses today. Simple ponytail, a few strands falling loose around her face. No LED lights, no animated overlays, but she still looks like she’s in 1080p when the rest of the room is stuck in 480.
She looks… serious. More serious than she does on stream. The easy banter is gone; in its place is a sharp, focused stillness.
She taps something on her tablet, glances up, assesses us like we’re another draft she’s about to tear apart or defend to the death, depending on how stupid we are.
My heart does that weird, too-fast thing again.
Next to me, Seungkwan follows my line of sight. I can feel his grin without even looking.
“Ohhh,” he hums under his breath. “Mother has arrived.”
“Don’t call her that,” I mutter.
He ignores me. “You’re staring,” he whispers. “Should I wave? I’ll wave.”
“Don’t—”
He waves. Big, stupid, enthusiastic.
To my horror, she sees it. She raises a brow, then gives a small, polite nod. Her gaze flickers past him. Lingers on me for half a second longer than it needs to.
My pulse spikes.
She looks back down at her tablet.
“And we’re blushing,” Seungkwan sings quietly. “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”
“Focus,” Seungcheol says mildly, eyes still on the reporters.
I drag my attention back to the front.
Then there’s him.
Her ex.
Manager of Silver Aegis, king of inflated self-image. Hair too slick, smile too wide, voice too loud. He’s laughing with someone near the back, gesturing theatrically with his hands like he’s narrating a movie where he’s the main character and the plot.
He’s positioned himself just close enough to her that he can pretend any interaction is “coincidental.”
My jaw tightens.
The host asks something about “biased coverage in the scene.”
“Some fans feel that certain analysts are harsher on specific orgs,” a reporter says. “Any thoughts on that?”
Someone’s gaze flickers briefly to Y/N.
Of course it does.
Seungcheol keeps his tone neutral. “Analysts are free to do their jobs. We focus on ours.”
Textbook answer. Good captain. Nothing to clip out of context.
We get through the rest.
We stand, bow, exit the stage. The lights feel too bright; the air feels too thick.
That’s when I hear it.
“She’s still obsessed with me,” he says to a nearby journalist, intentionally too loud. “You can hear it in the way she talks about my team. It’s sad, honestly.”
My jaw tightens so hard it hurts.
Across the room, Y/N’s back goes a fraction straighter. Her shoulders rise and fall once, controlled.
She doesn’t turn toward him.
She keeps typing.
“She’s really living in his head rent-free, huh,” Vernon mutters beside me.
“Yeah, but he’s trying to convince everyone it’s the other way around,” Seungkwan says. “Delulu is the solulu, I guess.”
“Please never say that again,” I say.
When the press conference clears out, we’re filing toward the side exit in a loose line when I see him angle his body and step right into her path in the hallway.
She stops short, forced to look up at him.
“Doing another ‘Aegis is trash’ segment?” he asks smoothly. “You know, people are starting to notice how bitter you sound.”
She looks at him like he’s a bug she can’t believe she still has to deal with.
“I literally praised your early game yesterday,” she says calmly. “I flamed your Baron call because it was a grief. That’s not bitterness. That’s accuracy.”
He laughs. Too loud. Fake.
“Oh, come on. You’re so sensi—”
His hand lifts like he might touch her arm.
I move.
So does the rest of SEVENTH HEAVEN.
Seungcheol gets there first—rock-solid, expression cool, not even bothering with words yet. He doesn’t have to. He stands just close enough that the manager would have to physically acknowledge him—physically step around our captain—to keep going. A wall without saying “I’m a wall.”
Mingyu drifts to Y/N’s other side, hands in pockets, smile gone. Vernon hangs back a bit, but his eyes are ice.
Seungkwan stands just behind them, arms crossed, jaw clenched, expression somewhere between “I will tweet about this” and “I will commit arson.”
Y/N doesn’t step back.
She steps closer.
“Touch me,” she says quietly, but every syllable lands like a hammer. “Go ahead. I dare you. Then my next upload won’t be analysis—it’ll be evidence.”
His hand freezes mid-air.
Her expression doesn’t change.
She tilts her head, gives him a smile so bright it’s almost cruel. “Tell your friends I love the drama if you want,” she says. “But stop using my name for views. It’s embarrassing.”
She turns.
Walks away.
Doesn’t look back.
The hallway temperature drops.
Seungkwan exhales like he’s seen God. “Queen,” he whispers. “Absolute queen behavior. That’s my mid laner-in-law right there.”
“Stop,” I say automatically.
“I will not stop,” he says. “If you don’t marry her, I’m unsubscribing from our own team channel.”
“I run the YouTube backend, I can actually see that,” Vernon adds, deadpan.
“I’ll unsubscribe twice,” Seungkwan insists.
“I’m in love,” Mingyu mutters, staring after her.
I look at him sharply.
“WITH HER BRAVERY,” he adds quickly. “Respectfully. Very respectfully.”
We start walking again.
I glance down the hall where she disappeared. My body is still buzzing from the way she said, “It’s embarrassing,” like it was the final nail in a coffin he’d built for himself.
“Everything okay?” Seungcheol asks quietly, catching my look.
“Yes,” I say.
No, I think.
Two days later, she’s buried in work and slander.
Not “busy.” Not “booked and blessed.”
Buried.
Livestream clips. Tweets. Reddit threads twisting her analysis into “emotional bias.” Random dudes with anime icons calling her obsessed. Thinkpieces by people who have clearly never watched an entire Hextech Hot Takes episode, much less the ones where she’s bent over backwards to be fair to teams that don’t deserve it.
Her ex is clearly feeding it. Little “sources say” mentions, vague subtweets, liking posts that paint her as “unhinged” and “still hung up.”
I see it all. I’d like to uninstall the internet.
I find her at a folding table in a quiet backstage corner, tucked behind a stack of promo boxes and a dying plant. There’s a cluster of half-empty coffee cups around her like a ritual circle. Notes spread everywhere. Her laptop is open with emails, her tablet shows a half-finished script, and her phone face-down keeps buzzing every thirty seconds.
“What’s the crisis?” I ask, gripping a spare chair and dragging it over.
She doesn’t look up. “Org wants a ‘balanced’ segment,” she says, air-quoting with one hand without pausing her typing. “Silver Aegis doesn’t want me covering them at all. My subscribers are fighting each other in the comments. And a fourteen-year-old in my DMs told me I’m ‘ruining esports.’ You know. Thursday.”
Her tone is flippant. Her shoulders are tight.
I grip the back of the empty chair opposite hers a little harder. “You know it’s all bullshit, right?”
“I know,” she sighs, eyes still on the screen. “Knowing doesn’t make it less loud.”
Her voice dips on that last word.
Loud.
I don’t think she’s just talking about notifications.
I stare at her for a moment. At the tightness in her jaw. The faint shadows under her eyes. The way her leg’s bouncing under the table, restless, like she’s holding herself together by motion alone.
Whatever filter usually exists in my brain fails.
“I could help,” I say.
She finally looks up, eyes wary and curious. “Help how?” she says. “Are you going to become my emotional support jungler?”
“No.”
“Hack the algorithm?”
“No.”
“1v1 my ex?”
“Yes,” I start, already picturing it, then abort. “No. I mean. Don’t tempt me.”
Her mouth quirks, some of the tension in her face easing for the first time today.
“Careful,” she says. “He’d probably leak your DMs and call it ‘evidence.’”
“I don’t DM clowns,” I mutter. “I’m talking about helping the narrative.”
She raises both brows. “Go on, mid king.”
I take a breath. My heart does an unnecessary little crit in my chest.
“If we were… publicly together,” I say, choosing each word like it’s a skillshot, “people would stop buying the narrative that you’re still thinking about him.”
Silence.
She blinks once. Twice.
Then she laughs.
Actually laughs. A short, sharp burst that startles both of us, her shoulders shaking slightly as she drops her head for a second.
“Wonwoo,” she says, wiping the corner of her eye with her thumb. “You want to pretend-date me to fix PR?”
When she says it out loud, it sounds incredibly stupid.
I shift my weight from one foot to the other. “When you say it out loud, it sounds stupid.”
“That’s because it is stupid,” she says.
“I know.”
There’s a beat where I can feel the idea hovering between us like a dangerous buff.
Her gaze turns thoughtful. She leans back, studying my face like she’s trying to see if I’ll flinch.
“You’d do that?” she asks. “Knowing how your fans are? Knowing SEVENTH HEAVEN’s brand? Knowing my channel is literally built on me talking shit about drafts for money?”
“Yes,” I say. Too fast. Too sure.
Her eyes search my face. I hold still.
“You’d deal with our comments section?”
“I already do,” I say. “I see everything people tag us in.”
She snorts softly. “Condolences.”
“You’d let me flame you if you grief lane?” she pushes.
“You already do that too,” I say. “You called my Azir pick ‘an act of spiritual warfare’ last split.”
She huffs a laugh. “It was.”
We look at each other.
Both of us know this is insane.
Both of us also know it might work.
“Ground rules,” she says finally, sitting up straighter, business mode snapping into place. “No real feelings. Public-facing only. We control the narrative; they react to us. The second it stops being useful or comfortable, we stop.”
There’s a weird pinch in my chest at “no real feelings.”
I ignore it. Like an idiot.
“Obviously,” I say.
We shake on it.
Her hand is warm. Steady. Like she’s shaking on a contract she intends to honor, not a joke.
I walk away telling myself it’s just a strategy patch. A meta adjustment. A tool.
Deep down, something knows I’m lying.
The fake dating meta drops Week 1.
We take one backstage picture. One.
It’s after a scrim. Everyone’s half-dead, hair damp, jerseys wrinkled. I’m mid-sip from a water bottle, tilting it back. Y/N’s next to me, half-laughing at something Mingyu said off-frame, body angled slightly toward me like we’re in our own little pocket of the hallway.
She snaps it, barely looks at it, and posts it to her story.
Caption:
“Carried by my mid laner. Again.”
Tagged: @7th_wonwoo
My phone buzzes once. Twice. Then becomes a grenade.
I don’t even have to look at the team to know what’s happening.
“YAAAAAAAAH!” Seungkwan screams from across the room, waving his phone over his head like it’s on fire. “YOU’RE DONE. IT’S OVER FOR YOU. RIP MID KING. WE HAD A GOOD RUN.”
Mingyu barrels into me full force, nearly knocking the bottle from my hand. He grabs my shoulders and shakes me like a malfunctioning monitor. “CAN I BE YOUR FLOWER BOY AT THE WEDDING? I HAVE THE TALENT. I HAVE THE RANGE.”
Vernon glances up from his screen, calm as ever. “You’re going to get clipped in every compilation for the next decade,” he says. “Try not to look constipated.”
From the corner, Seungcheol: “TF is this.”
Our manager appears at the door, eyes wide. “Why is our engagement rate spiking—”
I want to sink into the floor.
Instead, I unlock my phone, open her story, double-tap it, and repost with one simple caption:
“Analyst diff.”
If I’m going down, I’m going down clean.
The comments go feral within minutes.
“PARENTS?????” “THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE SHIP I DON’T CARE IF IT’S REAL OR NOT.” “NO ONE TALK TO ME I’M BUSY SOBBING OVER THIS.” “HE SMILED. Y/N WE EATING GOOD TONIGHT.”
They’re not wrong. I am smiling a little. Which is rude of my face.
In the corner of the room, I hear furious tapping.
“Group chat time,” Seungkwan mutters. “This is emergency content.”
He makes a new GC right in front of me. I can see the name over his shoulder.
[GC: WONWOO & HIS WIFE (NO INPUT FROM HIM)]
Members: – Seungkwan – Mingyu – Vernon – Seungcheol (added against his will)
He starts spamming screenshots of the story and my repost.
Seungkwan: MID KING IS A LOVER BOY CONFIRMED Mingyu: I CALLED IT. ENERGY NEVER LIES Vernon: ship name ideas? Seungkwan: WONY/N. Y/NWOO. I’M WORKSHOPPING IT Seungcheol: Please focus Seungkwan: FOCUS ON THE FACT THAT OUR MID HAS A GIRLFRIEND
I mute the chat. They add me back in. I mute it again.
We do a short interview for a regional channel later.
The host smiles too wide. “So, fans are wondering—” he says, turning the mic toward us, “are you two… actually dating?”
Y/N crosses one leg over the other and smiles sweetly, like she’s about to ruin someone on air.
“Define dating,” she says.
I choke on my own breath.
She continues smoothly. “We spend time together,” she says. “We talk about drafts. He listens when I say his mid-game is scuffed. That’s commitment.”
The host laughs awkwardly. “So… you’re… official?”
She leans just a bit closer to my shoulder. I feel the warmth of her, the faint brush of her sleeve against my arm. “We’re in the same patch,” she says. “That’s all you’re getting from me.”
Back at the base, the segment gets clipped, edited, put to dramatic music and heart emojis. SEVENTH HEAVEN’s social media manager is one meltdown away from a nervous breakdown. Our metrics skyrocket.
I catch her watching the clip later, smirking at the comments.
“You’re trending,” I say.
“We’re trending,” she corrects. “Congratulations, boyfriend.”
My brain error codes for a full three seconds at the word.
Later, she releases a thirty-minute video titled:
“TEACHING MY ‘BOYFRIEND’ HOW TO EXPRESS HUMAN EMOTION (NO, SERIOUSLY)”
The thumbnail is me looking confused while she points at a whiteboard that says:
“FEELINGS ≠ FF @15”
She plays old interviews of me.
“There,” she says, pausing one, zooming in on my deadpan expression. “That’s a man who just answered a perfectly normal question like someone asked him to confess tax fraud.”
Her chat spams laughing emotes, crying emotes, hearts.
She adds, “In his defense, he’s very good at League and very bad at eye contact. We’re working on it.”
I watch the video.
I should be embarrassed.
Instead, my stupid heart feels… lighter.
Like the weight of being “MVP,” “stone-faced mid king,” “emotionless robot” has been turned into a bit we’re both in on, instead of a cage I’m stuck in.
Week 2, she starts coming to scrims.
“For content,” she tells Seungcheol.
“For intel,” she tells me with a smirk.
“For drama,” Seungkwan whispers loudly.
She sits behind us with her tablet and a notebook, jotting down timestamps and notes. Sometimes she mutters to herself. Sometimes she mutters about us to herself.
“The way you said ‘mutters’ is hurtful,” she comments once without looking up.
I’m not sure if she read my face or my soul.
The first time she speaks up during review, we’re watching one of our messier games. One of those scrims where we win, but ugly.
“Pause,” she says from behind me.
Our analyst hits spacebar immediately. He’s as curious as we are now; no one ignores a Y/N “pause.”
She walks up, stands beside me, close enough that I can feel the brush of her hoodie against my arm, and points at the minimap. Her perfume is faint—vanilla, something warm.
“You had priority mid and bot,” she says, “but you drifted toward river, hesitated, then backed off. Why?”
I follow her finger on the screen.
“If I hard-commit, their jungler can flash in from fog,” I say. “I didn’t have vision on top river, and TP advantage was theirs. We could’ve gotten collapsed on and lost the whole fight.”
“So you backed for vision?”
“I backed because the risk wasn’t worth the reward yet,” I say. “Renekton had item spike. If we throw there, we lose tempo and they get dragon for free.”
She studies the screen. Then me.
“The casters said you played scared there,” she says. “They were wrong. You played patient. You’re not a coin-flip mid.”
I blink.
Behind us, Seungkwan makes a soft offended sound. “AND WHAT ABOUT ME—”
“You’re a casino, you don’t get to talk,” she says, without looking at him.
He gasps theatrically. “I’M SENDING THAT TO MY THERAPIST.”
Everyone laughs.
The review moves on. I try to pay attention, but part of my mind replays one line on a loop:
“You’re not a coin-flip mid.”
It shouldn’t hit as hard as it does.
It does anyway.
Later, in the hallway, I hear her ex talking to another manager.
“I mean, of course she’d hype him,” he scoffs. “She’s clinging to the ‘genius mid’ narrative to stay relevant. She always attaches herself to someone.”
I feel my hands curl into fists.
I don’t confront him.
Yet.
But the jealousy is a hot, unpleasant knot in my chest. Not because I think she likes him.
Because he still dares to talk about her like that. And because I hate that part of her career is constantly cleaning up after his ego.
The almost-kiss happens at the end of Week 2.
Everyone else has gone home. The building is quiet in that echoing, late-night way where you can hear your own thoughts too clearly.
We stay back to review one more VOD because I asked, and she said yes too quickly.
She’s beside me, both of us standing in front of the projected screen, the room lit only by the bluish light from the replay. It’s one of our better games this time, but she pauses at a mid-game fight anyway.
“Here,” she says. “This moment. You know you’re stronger. You know you win if you go in. You hesitate anyway.”
I squint at my tiny champion on the screen. Hesitating. Stutter-stepping around the edge of a fight I could have blown open.
“I was tracking flank TP,” I say. “If I go too early and they collapse, we lose.”
“You were also tracking Seungkwan’s position,” she says. “You hesitated because you were waiting to see if he survived. You always hesitate when you’re protecting someone.”
I go silent.
She glances up at me, eyes reflecting map colors. Closer than I realized. Little pixels of blue and purple flicker over her skin.
“It’s not a bad thing,” she says, softer now. “It just means you care.”
My throat feels tight.
The projector hums.
My pulse feels louder than the fan.
Then the timer on the projector hits whatever mark it was set to and shuts off with an audible click.
The room is plunged into dim dark.
We’re still standing close.
I can just barely see her silhouette, the faint outline of her face, the glimmer of her glasses catching the exit sign’s glow. Her perfume is subtle but suddenly it’s the only thing I can smell.
“Guess that’s our cue,” she says quietly.
She doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
My brain runs calculations I don’t have names for.
Risk vs reward. Game vs everything else.
Do I step back? Turn on the projector? Say goodnight?
Or do I lean in?
“Do you want the lights back on?” I ask, voice lower than I expect.
“Do you?” she echoes.
I don’t.
I turn slightly, facing her fully. She tilts her head up in the dark, like she’s meeting me halfway already.
The air between us feels thin.
I lean in.
She leans in too.
Her breath brushes my lips.
Her hand moves, reaching, fingers just barely brushing my wrist in a touch so light it makes my skin spark—
The door slams open.
“Yo, I brought ra—”
Vernon stops dead.
He stands there in the doorway with two convenience-store ramen cups and the haunted look of a man who opened the wrong door in a horror game.
We freeze.
He freezes.
The silence is so heavy I can hear the boiling broth in those cups.
Vernon makes the slowest, most respectful retreat I’ve ever seen, backing out and closing the door as gently as he can like if he moves too fast, reality will notice.
Silence crashes back down.
My face is on fire.
Hers is a shadow, but I can hear the way her breath catches, then steadies.
“We should… review pathing tomorrow,” she says, voice very carefully neutral, like the last thirty seconds didn’t just detonate both our nervous systems.
“Yeah.”
We leave together.
We don’t talk about it.
But when I get home and check the team GC, there’s one new message from Vernon:
Vernon: I almost died tonight
No context.
I throw my phone on the bed and stare at the ceiling.
I think about it constantly.
Week 3 is when everything fractures.
Her ex escalates. Of course he does.
He files a formal complaint to the league, saying she’s “too emotionally involved” to cover our matches and his fairly. Claims she’s “compromised.” Uses big words and bigger lies. Drops words like “conflict of interest” and “unprofessional attachment,” conveniently leaving out the part where he’s the one who can’t move on.
I hear about it from our manager first. From the legal team second. From chat third.
From her last.
By the time I find her, she’s half-sitting on a crate backstage, one leg bouncing, scrolling through emails with a blank face that I now recognize as “one millimeter away from snapping and still holding it together.”
“Is it true?” I ask.
“That my ex is weaponizing professionalism to try to silence me?” she says dryly, eyes still on the screen. “Yeah.”
“You’re not—” I search for the word, “—furious?”
She exhales slowly.
“I’m tired,” she says. “Fury is expensive.”
Something in my chest twists.
I stand there in front of her, helpless, hands hanging uselessly by my sides.
“We can say something,” I blurt. “SEVENTH HEAVEN. We can back you publicly. Or I can. I can talk in interviews. I can—”
“Wonwoo,” she cuts in gently. “Finals are in three days.”
“And you’re being attacked now,” I snap.
She finally looks up.
Her gaze is sharp at first—defensive, tired. Then it softens. Just barely.
“I appreciate it,” she says. “I do. But if you throw your focus away on my battles, then he wins twice. He gets to mess with me and ruin your season. I’m not giving him that.”
She stands, stretching her legs, rolling her shoulders like she’s easing armor into place.
“For once in my life, I want my presence near a team to be the reason they succeed,” she says quietly. “Not the excuse for why they fell apart.”
That hits me harder than anything she’s said on stream.
Because I get it. Too well.
How many times have analysts blamed “outside noise” when a team chokes? How many times have they implied it was a girlfriend, a fight, a distraction? How many times would people love to blame her for any mistake we make because it’s easier than admitting we messed up alone?
“I’m not—” I start.
“Please,” she says.
Just that.
Please.
I shut my mouth.
She walks off. Back straight. Shoulders squared.
I feel like I failed some hidden objective.
In the GC, a few hours later:
Seungkwan: I WILL BITE THAT MAN Mingyu: which man Seungkwan: PICK ONE Vernon: don’t get banned Seungcheol: Practice in 10. Be on time. Seungkwan: YES DAD
My gameplay dips.
Not spectacularly. Not enough for the average viewer to notice.
But Seungcheol notices.
He always does.
He pulls me into the review room after one particularly messy scrim.
No one else. Just us, the glowing screen, and too many paused replays.
He queues up a series of clips, mid-game moments where I should’ve taken an angle and didn’t. Fights where I played too safe. Calls I didn’t make.
“What’s this?” he asks.
“Caution,” I say.
“Fear,” he corrects.
I fold my arms. “It’s finals. I’m allowed to be careful.”
“This isn’t careful,” he says. “This is you trying to play two games at once. One on stage, one in your head.”
He looks at me steadily. “Is this still fake?”
The question hangs there.
The correct answer is “yes.”
I don’t give it.
I say nothing.
He sighs, but it’s not annoyed. It’s more like he’s adjusting a strap that’s digging in.
“You care about her,” he says. “Fine. Good. That’s not a weakness. But you don’t trust her right now.”
“That’s not true,” I say sharply.
“If you did, you wouldn’t be playing like she’ll break the second you stop looking,” he says. “She’s not glass. She’s probably stronger than half the orgs in this region.”
He’s right.
Of course he’s right.
“She doesn’t need you to fall apart to prove you care,” he says more softly. “She needs you to win. If you love how she’s always honest, then be honest with yourself too.”
The word love hangs in the air like a bugged tooltip I’m not ready to click on.
I look away.
He claps me on the shoulder. “Fix it,” he says simply.
I try.
It goes… medium.
The fake break-up happens the day before finals.
Our PR teams coordinate. Statements approved, wording checked, timings synced.
We both post the same thing—clean, polite, distant.
“With finals and projects coming up, we decided it’s best to focus on our careers right now. We still respect and support each other. Please don’t send hate.”
Fans wail.
“MY PARENTS BROKE UP 😭” “I KNEW IT WAS PR BUT IT STILL HURTS” “HOLD ON I NEED TO LOG OFF AND TOUCH GRASS”
In the GC, it’s worse.
Seungkwan: I’M AT THE DIVORCE OF THE CENTURY Mingyu: I feel like I should get visiting rights Vernon: joint custody of the streams Seungcheol: All of you. Enough.
In person, it’s not clean at all.
We meet in a quiet corridor, just out of view of the main staircase, away from cameras and mics and anyone who might turn this into content.
She’s in a simple black hoodie, hair in a low ponytail. No glasses. No makeup beyond a hint of eyeliner. She looks tired. And beautiful. And tired again.
“This is probably for the best,” she says, arms folded loosely in front of her. Her voice is steady. Her eyes are not.
“Yeah,” I say. “For focus.”
Her mouth twists faintly. “Right. Focus.”
There’s an ache under my ribs I don’t have a name for.
I want to say, I don’t actually want to break up with you, even pretend-wise.
I don’t say it.
“Good luck,” she offers instead, forcing a small smile. “I’ll still roast your draft if it’s bad.”
“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” I say.
She smiles at that. Small. Real. A flicker of what we had when this was just a joke and not a line we’re both suddenly scared to cross.
Then she nods once and walks past me.
She smells faintly of coffee and vanilla.
I stand there in the empty corridor, phone buzzing in my pocket with notifications about a breakup that isn’t even real, and try to breathe around the stupid, heavy feeling in my chest.
For something fake, it feels a lot like getting dumped.
Finals.
The arena is a riot of noise and light.
SEVENTH HEAVEN vs Silver Aegis.
Storylines stacked on storylines: revenge matches, redemption arcs, narratives about discipline vs ego, about “boys vs men,” about “this might be their last run with this roster.”
I sit at my PC. Adjust my mouse. Flex my fingers. The keyboard is familiar and foreign at once.
I should only be thinking about one thing: the game.
But she’s in my head.
Not him. Her.
The way her voice sounded last night in that video.
“The Truth About This ‘Narrative’ | My Story.”
She didn’t use his name in the title. She didn’t need to.
I watched it alone at my desk, lights off, hood up like I could hide from how hard it hit.
She laid it all out. Calm. Precise. No theatrics.
Screenshots. Emails. A timeline of behavior that went from “barely acceptable” to “you need a lawyer” so gradually that you could almost miss how bad it got unless you saw it stitched together like that.
She added context. Admitted where she stayed longer than she should have. Never painted herself as perfect. Never weaponized tears.
She didn’t rant. Didn’t drag. Didn’t perform.
“This isn’t about a breakup,” she’d said, looking straight into the camera. “I’ve made mistakes. I’ve stayed where I shouldn’t. But this is about professionalism. About boundaries. About weaponizing narratives to silence criticism. If you want to say you don’t like my analysis, say that. Don’t rewrite history to make me your villain.”
At the end, she’d looked almost tired. But steady.
“I’m not thinking about you,” she’d said. “You’re the one telling that story. I’m done being part of it.”
She’d posted it. Turned off monetization. Pinned it. Then gone to sleep.
By morning, it was #1 on trending.
The league announced an investigation. Silver Aegis rushed out a statement about “taking allegations seriously.” His socials went suspiciously quiet.
She still went to work. Still showed up as an analyst for the finals.
Of course she did.
So now I’m here, on stage, hands hovering over my keyboard, with her words lodged somewhere under my ribs like a new, sharp truth.
We draft.
We load in.
For the first fifteen minutes, the game feels like synchronicity.
Mingyu’s pathing is clean, sneaking vision deep where they don’t expect it. Vernon’s roams are surgical. Seungcheol absorbs pressure top like he was born under a turret. Seungkwan positions aggressively but controlled, that thin line between “carry” and “throw” walked with terrifying elegance.
I track everything.
Timers. Lane states. Summoners. Flashes. Ult CDs. Enemy mental.
And then, during a short lull in action, the broadcast cuts to the analyst and press section.
I see her.
Headset on. Professional outfit. Tablet in hand. Eyes glued to the screens in front of her. She looks composed, clean-lined, like the Y/N that first burned herself into my brain through a monitor.
Then I see him.
He shouldn’t even be near her. The league told him to keep his distance until the investigation wraps. But there he is, hovering just behind the analyst row, leaning on fake casualness like it’s a crutch.
He moves behind her chair. Too close.
He leans down, says something near her ear. I can’t hear it, but I can see his mouth curl on one side.
Her shoulders stiffen. She leans slightly away.
Just a little.
Like she’s refusing to give him more of a reaction than that.
My hand forgets to move.
My champion takes an unnecessary hit.
“Wonwoo,” Seungcheol’s voice snaps in my ears. “Focus.”
I blink, jarred, and re-center myself. We recover the play. Barely.
The crowd doesn’t know what happened. The casters chalk it up to “a rare misstep from the mid laner.”
I know exactly why it happened.
I want to get up and drag him away from her by the collar.
Instead, I kite a wave and call for a reset.
Time-out is called a few minutes later for a tech issue. A reset request from their side.
We head backstage.
The second our headsets are off, I feel a hand clamp onto my arm and drag me to the side.
“What was that?” Seungcheol says, eyes sharp. Not angry. Focused.
I rub the back of my neck. “He was in her space.”
“And?” he says.
“And I—” I stop. Try again. “I hate it.”
“Yeah,” he says. “So does she.”
He looks me dead in the eye.
“She can handle him,” he says. “She has been handling him this whole time. You not trusting that? That’s the real insult.”
I go quiet.
He lets that land, then pushes once more.
“You don’t get to turn her into something fragile just because you care,” he adds. “She’s not your early-game lane to babysit. She’s her own late-game monster.”
A sharp, unwilling laugh punches out of me. “That’s one way to put it.”
“It’s the true way,” he says. “You want to help her? Win. Make sure the story tonight is ‘SEVENTH HEAVEN stomped’ and not ‘Y/N ruined them.’ She already set fire to his narrative with that video. Don’t burn your own for free.”
He’s right.
Of course he’s right. Again.
I inhale slowly. Exhale.
“Okay,” I say.
In the corner, Mingyu is pacing.
“He’s so dead, bro,” he mutters. “Did you watch the video? That was a clean 3–0 callout. He’s gonna come back with a Notes app apology.”
Seungkwan is leaning against a water cooler, phone in hand, reading comments. “Chat calling him ‘gaslight gank main’ is sending me,” he says. “Also, someone edited your face over her shoulder in the thumbnail. Not sure how to feel about that.”
Vernon looks up from his own phone. “Video hit ten million views,” he says. “Mostly support. Some trolls. But the narrative flipped.”
“Good,” I say.
“Also,” he adds, “your name is in the top ten related searches now.”
I grimace.
“Celebrity boyfriend era,” Seungkwan sings. “You better not fumble.”
“Can we focus?” I say.
Seungcheol claps his hands once. “All right,” he cuts through. “Reset. We fix the early mistakes, punish their overconfidence, and we finish this. Got it?”
“Got it,” we chorus.
We go back on stage.
This time, when the broadcast cuts to her, I don’t flinch.
I see her, headset on, posture straight, eyes sharp. A quick graphic flashes on screen:
“Special Analyst: Y/N – Hextech Hot Takes”
It’s surreal seeing her brand under the league logo.
She looks calm. Untouchable.
In my chest, the jealousy cools down, turned into something else: pride.
Game three starts.
This time, my hands don’t shake.
I stop thinking about what’s happening off-stage.
I think about the game.
Our comp.
My reads.
My team.
We play clean.
We play mean.
We play like SEVENTH HEAVEN.
Mingyu secures every crucial objective like a man possessed. He steals one Baron with a Q-Smite combo so disgusting even the opposing crowd groans.
Vernon hits impossible engages that crack their comp open. Twice he finds their ADC through fog, and I follow up without thinking.
Seungkwan turns into a pentakill waiting to happen. He doesn’t get it, but every fight feels like it’s three autos and one crit away.
Seungcheol leads calls like a general. Calm, firm, exact. “We don’t need to chase. Take tower. Reset. Breathe.”
I see the windows, and I don’t hesitate.
I go.
I trust myself.
I trust them.
I trust her too, weirdly, even though she’s not in the game. I trust that while I’m doing my job here, she’s doing hers out there, and I don’t have to fix her world for her. We’re playing different maps, but we’re on the same side.
We win.
The nexus explodes in a bloom of color.
Our logo flashes across the screen.
The crowd detonates into shouting, confetti, songs, chants.
We’re champions.
People are hugging me.
Someone’s yelling in my ear.
Mingyu’s got me in a headlock, yelling something incoherent about “WORLD BUFFS” and “FIRST ROUND MY TREAT.”
Seungkwan is sobbing into a SEVENTH HEAVEN flag, tears mixing with glitter. “WE DID IT, YOU EMOTIONALLY REPRESSED KING!” he bawls. “YOU DESERVE LOVE AND A GOOD SLEEP SCHEDULE!”
Vernon is laughing, breathless, eyes crinkled. “We actually did it,” he keeps repeating like he doesn’t believe it.
Seungcheol has that rare, almost private smile on his face, the one he only lets slip when something truly lands. “Good work,” he says, pulling us into a group hug whether we want it or not.
Through all of it, a thought cuts through the noise like a clean objective ping.
Find her.
I scan every visible corner of the stadium. The analyst desk. The press section. The green room door.
I don’t see her.
“Go,” Mingyu says suddenly, releasing me and giving me a shove towards the tunnel.
I stumble. “What?”
“Go find her,” he says. “We’ll stall.”
“I have media—”
“We’ll tell them you’re overheating,” Vernon says.
“You are overheating,” Seungkwan adds, fanning me with a towel. “Your ears are the color of infernal drake. Also, if you don’t go, I will.”
“I’ll bench you,” Seungcheol says mildly.
It’s unclear who he’s talking to.
Probably all of us.
I don’t wait to find out.
I run.
The city outside is cooler, quieter, but my head is loud.
I don’t check my phone. I don’t check socials.
My feet know where to go.
The café.
Of course it’s the café.
The little one with the wobbly chairs and too-strong ramyun. Where I first saw her in person and did nothing.
I spot her through the window first.
Same corner table by the glass. Laptop open. Hoodie on. Hair down, half-tucked behind one ear. A half-finished drink next to her, condensation dripping slowly down the plastic.
Her expression is relaxed for the first time in weeks. There’s still a faint tightness around her eyes, but she looks more like herself.
I push the door open.
The bell chimes.
She looks up.
For a moment, we just stare at each other.
“You’re supposed to be on a stage somewhere covered in confetti,” she says.
“I did that already,” I say, stepping closer. “Confetti’s overrated.”
She huffs a little laugh. “How does it feel? Champion?”
“Strange,” I say honestly. “Good. Loud. Also…”
I trail off.
She waits.
“Incomplete,” I finish.
Her brows lift. “Incomplete?”
I sit down across from her. The chair wobbles a little. I steady it with my foot.
“There’s something I didn’t say,” I tell her. “And if I don’t say it now, I’m going to be thinking about it during every interview, every stream, every solo queue game until I lose my mind.”
She closes her laptop halfway, her full attention switching to me.
“All right,” she says softly. “Say it.”
I take a breath.
“The fake dating,” I start, “stopped being fake for me a long time ago.”
Her fingers still on the edge of the laptop.
“At first, it was strategy,” I say. “Smart. Clean. Efficient. It helped kill the narrative and boosted both our platforms. It was about controlling the story.”
I swallow, throat dry.
“Then you started coming to scrims,” I continue. “Sitting behind me in review. Roasting my interviews with love, not content. Watching my VODs and seeing things in my play that even I hadn’t fully articulated.”
Her eyes stay locked on mine.
“Last night, I watched you post a video that could’ve blown up your career,” I say. “You told the truth anyway. You chose clarity over comfort. That’s… who you are. You don’t weaponize the narrative. You straighten it.”
The words come easier now.
“I like you,” I say. “Not the idea of you. You. The way your brain works. The way you refuse to punch down. The way you tell the truth even when it hurts. The way you looked at me on that VOD and said, ‘You’re not a coin flip.’ I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that since.”
A breath, shaky.
“I thought I could keep it fake,” I admit. “I was wrong.”
Silence.
For a second, I think I’ve misplayed my entire life.
Then she exhales, very softly.
“Good,” she says.
I blink. “…good?”
“You’re finally caught up,” she says.
My confusion must be obvious, because she smiles—small and a bit disbelieving, like she’s surprised she’s saying this out loud.
“I wasn’t thinking about him,” she says. “Not once. Not really.”
My chest tightens.
“Everyone kept asking if I was bitter, obsessed, out for revenge,” she goes on. “But I was thinking about you. About SEVENTH HEAVEN. About how this mess would bleed into your games, your focus, your mental. About how it would feel for you to have my entire drama pinned to your name, when all you ever did was exist near me.”
I stare at her.
“You cared more about my mental than his storyline,” I say quietly.
“Obviously,” she scoffs. “He doesn’t have any mental to protect.”
It makes me laugh, sharp and helpless, some tight knot finally loosening.
She leans forward, elbows on the table.
“I like you too, you idiot,” she says. “Have you not noticed me risking my subscriber base to publicly thirst over your gameplay?”
I blink. “You—what?”
“I literally called your flanks ‘art’ in my last analysis,” she says. “Do you know how feral my chat gets when I praise you? I had to delete four edits. Four.”
Something in my chest expands, painful and light all at once.
I stand.
She does too.
We meet halfway around the table, space between us suddenly small, charged in a new way that’s not pretend, not scripted, not for anyone else.
Up close, I can see the faint smudges under her eyes, the way her lips tilt when she’s trying not to grin too wide.
My hand hovers for a second.
“Can I?” I ask.
“You better,” she says.
That’s all the permission I need.
I cup her jaw gently.
She slides her hands up my hoodie, fingers curling at the back of my neck.
We kiss.
It’s not cinematic. Our noses bump. Someone in the back snorts. My heart is beating so loud I’m pretty sure she can feel it through my chest.
But it’s real.
Warm and steady and grounding in a way no win, no trophy, no title has ever been.
When we pull back, we’re both slightly breathless.
“Tell Seungkwan he’s not allowed to monetize this,” she murmurs.
“He already has,” I say. “In his mind. There are probably emotes.”
She laughs, the sound soft and bright and alive.
“Let him,” she says. “As long as we get to write the patch notes.”
“Deal,” I say.
She brushes a thumb over the corner of my mouth, gaze dropping to my lips again.
“Come here, champion,” she says.
I do.
And for once, I’m not thinking about the game.
Just… us.
Finally.
A few weeks later, she sets a camera down on the table between us and says, “Okay. No backing out. We’re doing this.”
We’re at a tiny ramen shop this time, not the café. Late night, post-scrim, both of us in hoodies and caps. Real date, actual food, no PR manager pacing outside.
The camera’s red light turns on.
“Hey guys,” she says, voice slipping into that familiar intro cadence, but softer somehow. “Welcome back to Hextech Hot Takes, but today’s episode is… different.”
She glances at me, grin tugging at her mouth.
“Today,” she announces, “I’m finally filming my FIRST REAL DATE VLOG.”
She flips the viewfinder so we’re both in frame. I raise a hand in a small, awkward wave.
“Hi,” I say. Smooth as always.
“This is Jeon Wonwoo,” she tells the camera. “Mid laner for SEVENTH HEAVEN. Previously known as my ‘fake boyfriend’ slash shield against nonsense narratives.”
“And currently?” I ask.
She bumps her shoulder into mine. “Currently known as my real boyfriend,” she says. “Who is going to let me interview him on this date and not run away.”
“I agreed to this under duress,” I inform the lens.
“You agreed to this because you love me,” she corrects.
My ears heat up. “Don’t say that on camera.”
“Too late,” she chirps. “Clip it, chat.”
There is no chat, but I know there will be later.
We film.
She asks me stupid questions like, “When did you realize you liked me?” (I lie and say “somewhere around Week 2,” not “the first time you roasted my Azir on YouTube.”)
I ask her questions like, “When did you realize you liked me?” (She says, “When you didn’t argue with me calling your draft grief, you just said ‘I’ll do better.’ That was hot.” I have no response to that.)
We eat. We tease. She makes me rate the ramen like it’s a champion skin. I call it “Legendary-tier.” She dabs broth off my chin with a napkin while the camera’s still rolling.
Later, she edits the footage with her usual chaotic precision. Cuts away right as I’m about to say something too soft. Adds dumb captions over my face like:
“MID KING, SOFT BOY EDITION”
The video goes up on her channel a few days after that.
“FIRST REAL DATE VLOG (ft. SEVENTH HEAVEN’S MID LANER)”
The views climb fast.
I scroll through the comments, half-dreading, half-curious.
Fan edits. Capslocked screaming. People saying things like “THERAPY IS CURED.”
And pinned at the very top, with a little blue check next to the username:
SEVENTH HEAVEN – SEUNGKWAN: “he better treat u right queen 😤 if he doesn’t i’ll steal him and treat BOTH of us right”
Vernon replied under it:
“this is a threat and a promise”
Mingyu added:
“i was the flower boy in this relationship from the start”
And from the official team account, clearly hijacked by our captain for thirty seconds:
SEVENTH HEAVEN – OFFICIAL: “As long as both of you are happy and we still win, this is captain-approved.” – S.Coups
She screenshots the comments and sends them to me with:
“your team is insane.”
I reply:
“yeah. but they were right about one thing.”
“what?”
“i really do have to treat you right.”
“good answer, mid king.”
The next time she hits record, there’s no fake label to hide behind. No “pretend.” No “for the narrative.”
Just us.
In the same patch.
For real this time.
