As he struggled to gather his scrambled thoughts, the system suddenly launched into an unexpected countdown with a phrase he hadn’t anticipated. He clearly heard something about an automatic shutdown, but understanding what exactly was being shut down wasn’t easy. Then again, it wouldn’t have made sense no matter what it was referring to—nothing about this situation was normal.
But standing in front of a system that barely made it to the count of five, there was no time to organize his thoughts. All he could do was stay completely ready to protect Seon-woo in front of him if anything went wrong.
And the moment the countdown ended…
<Unauthorized access detected!>
<Forcing logout. Progress at 32%, 57%, 96%…>
Unauthorized access? Who was accessing what, exactly? But again, there was no time to figure that out.
Pik.
Without so much as a farewell, just a short puff like air escaping from a balloon, the voice that had tormented Seung-hyeon all day vanished without a trace.
“Why… what’s wrong? Are you feeling worse?”
Seon-woo’s voice, which had been sluggish and distant like it was coming from far away, slowly grew clearer. The haze clouding his vision, caused by fever and delirium, was gradually lifting. The heat that had been burning through his body was starting to cool. A mild fever still lingered, muddling his mind, but compared to earlier, it was hardly a symptom at all—barely a tickle.
Of course, Seung-hyeon had hoped the system would give up on its own. But hopes and reality never did line up. No warning, no signs—just gone. Like a computer crashing from overload, the system had disappeared without a word.
Even as Seung-hyeon stared blankly at his own hands, no voice returned.
At last, fully aware of the situation, a soft, incredulous chuckle slipped from Seung-hyeon’s lips.
“Ha, haha… hahaha.”
“Gwak Seung-hyeon?”
If someone asked him what was so funny, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. But the urge to laugh wouldn’t go away.
Seon-woo, seemingly convinced that Seung-hyeon had finally lost his mind, leaned in with a worried expression. Seung-hyeon, still laughing breathlessly in disbelief, met his gaze. Then he patted his own knee and said,
“Come here.”
“…What?”
“Sit here.”
Seon-woo’s face twisted in displeasure.
The mood had already been shattered beyond repair. After seeing that side of him, there was no way—absolutely no way—that Seon-woo, of all people, could go on with this nonsense. Asking him to sit on his knee like that…
There was no point in trying to decipher what kind of expression Seung-hyeon was making, or how much Seon-woo liked the look on his face.
Watching Seung-hyeon sit there with open arms, waiting, Seon-woo let out a sigh before finally speaking.
“Next time, Seung-hyeon. Next time.”
“Don’t say that. Just feel my forehead for a second.”
He brushed off Seon-woo’s coaxing tone with a light remark, and Seon-woo looked at him with suspicion—like there was no way the forehead that had been boiling hot just moments ago could’ve cooled down so suddenly. Still, he reached out his hand as requested.
And the moment Seon-woo’s hand touched Seung-hyeon’s forehead, his expression twisted in disbelief. Seung-hyeon gave a little shrug, as if to say I told you so.
“See…? I’m fine now, right?”
“…What kind of illness is this? Is it some kind of seizure?”
So he still thought it was an illness. Seung-hyeon didn’t know what had happened either, so he had no answers to offer.
Instead, once again, he simply patted his knee wordlessly.
Seon-woo stared at him, baffled, then muttered like a man giving in.
What, is this some illness you get from not sitting on someone’s lap?
But in the end, the sharpness was only in his words. Seon-woo carefully got up and started climbing over to the passenger seat where Seung-hyeon was sitting. He pulled the lever at the side of the seat to slide it back and reclined it just enough to make some space.
Seon-woo settled into Seung-hyeon’s lap, looking somewhere between embarrassed and awkward. Seung-hyeon smiled and leaned his head on Seon-woo’s shoulder. The slight stiffness in Seon-woo’s posture melted away with just that small gesture. As he felt Seon-woo’s fingers slowly begin to run through his hair, Seung-hyeon lifted his head.
Kiss me.
Today, Seung-hyeon seemed especially prone to asking for things like that. Seon-woo looked conflicted, but at this point, there was no real hesitation left. Not after coming this far. Besides, Seung-hyeon’s body hadn’t completely cooled off yet—it was probably still warm from earlier.
Seon-woo leaned in and kissed him. When their tongues entwined again, the temperature felt just right—not too hot, not too cold. Before he ran out of breath, Seon-woo pulled away, and Seung-hyeon let out a contented sigh, wrapping his arms tightly around Seon-woo’s waist.
…So should he consider everything until now just one long foreplay session?
Whether Seon-woo sensed that thought or not, Seung-hyeon murmured aloud,
“I still have no idea what just happened…”
“I don’t know either, not really… But maybe this is why people say doing things you’re not used to makes you sick.”
“…What?”
Seon-woo’s confusion deepened. What was that supposed to mean? That the sudden feverish collapse and then recovery came from doing something he normally wouldn’t do?
“I should apologize to Assistant Manager Seo tomorrow too…”
With that final thought, Seung-hyeon drifted off to sleep.
A startled “Ha!” slipped from Seon-woo’s lips, who had been frozen in stunned silence. His boyfriend had casually dropped another man’s name before falling asleep—seriously? Even though he didn’t suspect for a second that there was some secret relationship between Seo Eun-jae and Gwak Seung-hyeon, the fact that Seung-hyeon had passed out like that still made him feel a little… indignant.
Seon-woo reached out and gently pinched Seung-hyeon’s nose so it wouldn’t hurt.
“Just wait… we’ll talk when you wake up.”
Moving carefully so as not to wake him, Seon-woo opened the car door. He somehow managed to lift Gwak Seung-hyeon onto his back and trudged slowly toward the elevator.
***
“AAAAAHHH!! AAHHHH!! What the hell is wrong with this thing?! Where did I go wrong?!”
A piercing scream echoed through the office. But no one even flinched or turned to look. That was to be expected—everyone there had, at some point, run into inexplicable errors during a project and screamed in frustration. And the one yelling now, Su-yeong, happened to be especially loud and prone to yelling more often than most.
“Hey! Kim Su-yeong! You’ve got a visitor.”
Just then, the manager called her name. Su-yeong was about to snap back—Who the hell is it now?—but remembered just in time that it was her boss, and also that she seriously needed to cool off. She let out a deep sigh and got up from her seat.
But when she dragged herself out to the lobby, the face waiting for her was the last one she wanted to see. Within a second, Su-yeong was overwhelmed by the desire to turn around and head straight back into the office.
“Su-yeong-ah…!”
The one waving at her enthusiastically was none other than Black Violet author, Park Eun-ji. Su-yeong sighed deeply, shoved her hands into her pockets, and walked over.
“Hey. This is my workplace, remember? I told you to stop dropping by all the time.”
“But… everyone seems happy to see me…? Even your director last time… He said I should come by more often.”
Apparently, the director had figured out that this ditsy woman was a buzzworthy writer behind several hit titles.
What kind of bootleg-ass company is this anyway…? What, you befriend a writer and suddenly your game gets made?
None of this made sense. Still, with the director himself giving Eun-ji the green light, Su-yeong had no choice but to take her to the café in front of the office once again.
“Su-yeong… you look awful. What’s with your face?”
“Oh, this? The dark circles? I pulled an all-nighter. Game’s been giving me hell.”
“You’re working on a new game lately…?”
“Uh-huh… well, not really.”
Su-yeong muttered and averted her eyes.
“You remember that one… the old project you were writing for.”
“Swamp of Obsession? That one…”
“I know, you said you’d never release it.”
Even now, Su-yeong wasn’t reviewing that game with any plans to release it. It was more like revisiting an old toy, something nostalgic. Something that, for whatever reason, still felt like it contained echoes of a senior she respected…
It felt like traces of Gwak Seon-woo were still embedded in the game, and that made her obsessively try to patch up every little flaw.
“But I’m seriously thinking of scrapping it. I tried debugging a bit yesterday—tweaked some of the code to fix a bug—but then suddenly, outta nowhere, a whole swarm of new errors started popping up… Ugh, I don’t even wanna talk about it. Tried fixing it, ended up screwing everything else. When I booted it up again, the player’s face had turned into an NPC’s. Tried again, and this time the protagonist was walking around on his hands. Like, seriously—what the hell is that even?!”
As Su-yeong went on, Eun-ji just blinked at her with a blank, uncomprehending face. Su-yeong waved her hands dismissively.
“Anyway, whatever—I’m done with it! So what’d you even come here to say?”
At that, Eun-ji’s eyes sparkled as she declared it was something really important. For a moment, a flicker of hope crossed Su-yeong’s face too.
“It’s about my next project… You’re the first one I’m showing it to…”
“Okay but WHY ME?! I’m not your editor!!”
Frustrated, Su-yeong pounded her chest in protest. But once Eun-ji had latched on, escape was impossible.
Resigned, Su-yeong sipped her coffee loudly and thought to herself:
Still… will the game be okay…?
She’d brushed it off like it was nothing, but the bugs were serious. She was starting to wonder if she’d made some huge mistake while half-asleep—something she didn’t even remember doing.
…Well, it should be fine. I shut the game down, after all!
With that, Su-yeong shoved the thoughts aside and began listening to what Eun-ji had to say.
What really happened during the time she poured her heart into debugging, all the way up to the point of forcefully terminating the game…
…was something no one might ever truly know.
