Chapter Text
And the day that Gaia officially recognised Seon-il and Jihan as lovers became the day they got together, no matter how strangely it occurred.
After that original talk, Jihan did stay a while longer for the two to talk through the weighted issues that were grudgingly dragged up by both parties. It was safe to say that this relationship had Gaia’s blessing. Literally. Gaia is probably messing with the both of them and could be a Fujoshi. If we consider the fact that Jihan was given the ability to game in real-life the thought wasn’t all too far-fetched.
Seon-il and Jihan approached the blossoming relationship with delicacy, both worried that one wrong move could destroy everything. One wrong move and they’d lose both the blinding bliss love embraced them with and the strongly built friendship that stacked strong over the years.
Not to say there wasn’t a spark, but fire wasn’t lit from nothing so it was inevitable that affection shone stronger than lust. At least for the two of them, that is. Skipping past the heated sex because we’re dealing with a very fluffy couple here and this is not what the fic is about.
As the days passed, touches and stares began to linger, and so did the sweet taste of the other on their lips. Everything was quite private except for one thing-
The marks.
Probably inevitable. Since they’d been getting more intimate, the purple-red bruises that danced across Jihan’s skin became more evident. And harder to hide. Jihan didn’t understand why, he had a gamer’s body, and a gamer’s body didn’t receive bruises or scratches, not even a lost arm or leg. He was supposed to have an unchanging physical body.
But maybe it had something to do with the title Seon-il got.
Jihan saw his group of friends, what Seon-il now comfortably called his ‘harem’, every other day because they were all in the same class and pretty close. The only difference was that Seon-il was around more. With how long Seon-il had been keeping the crush for, it was simple to see why no one had figured it out yet.
It had been about a month now, his mother was back and even she had yet to see through the true nature of their relationship. It was a mutual decision that it was probably better to keep quiet otherwise Seon-il’s grandpa would have a heart attack and things might get weird in the friend group. Which was the least desirable outcome because they still went to school together dammit!
Jihan’s mother would probably support it with vigor and that was the concerning part.
“ Seon-il!” Jihan whined. He was in front of his bathroom mirror at home and was getting dressed and ready for school. The hickeys were just peeking out over his shirt collar and it was not nearly cold enough yet to be wearing a scarf. “ I told you to stop leaving marks!”
Eyes fixed on the reflection of his bruised skin in the mirror, Jihan didn’t spare a glance at the figure he was berating, screen up to the side with his useful video call abilities. Memories of the night before brought up the phantom sensation of Seon-il’s touch. But Jihan threw the memory out the closest window before he could get distracted.
“ Shit.” Jihan mumbled to himself, hand pulling his collar down and craning his neck to try and get a good look at the marks. “ Now I have to do another quad spell again.”
“ Just do it.” Seon-il spoke through the call, voice coming through clearly. “ It’s not like you don’t have enough mana.” The man wasn’t really affected by the issue, knowing the broken extent of Jihan’s powers.
“ Why a quad spell though? Can’t you just make it go away or something?”
“ I have to layer them otherwise a part of my neck would just go invisible.” Jihan surveyed the damage this time. Keeping to himself that he didn’t just manually heal it away because a part of him didn’t want to. If he ever admitted it Seon-il would only be encouraged.
‘Invisibility, camouflage, normalisation, cover.’ He thought mentally as the spell started up. Silent spells were actually getting easier. Huh.
“ But your mana recovers scary-fast.” Seon-il tried pointing out once more.
“ I’m not making it disappear. I layer an illusionary patch over it to hide it then recreate the regular visible texture of my skin. And since I don’t want to draw attention to it and our whole group of friends are all abyss people, I have to normalise the mana flow in the area to draw attention away from it to make sure it doesn’t get discovered.” It was a pretty long rant he just went on, complaining about technical Sorcery stuff, but not once did Seon-il shift his attention away.
“ If someone finds out they’re going to start calling you the player instead of the gamer.” Seon-il joked.
“ I don’t even want to think about it.” Though he was still technically the ‘player’ of the ‘game’. Jihan buttoned the collar of his uniform back up with practiced ease, a single lazy hand fiddling with the buttons. His gaze went back to Seon-il. “ Anyways, see you at school.”
Seon-il blew a kiss as the call ended and Jihan laughed away the light flutter in his chest while the screen glitched back out of existence. Jihan bit his bottom lip in a failed attempt to contain the grin that stretched across his features, talking to Seon-il somehow made him feel like he held his heart out for the other and got a hug in return.
He closed his eyes with a pleasant exhale, hands going up to press against his warm, aching, cheeks. Dusted a pastel hue, his face hurt from smiling, he needed to school his face into a normal level of bliss before walking down or his mother would basically see the words ‘love’ written across his face.
The floaty feeling that lifted, all fluttery in his chest tickled strong, but he managed to school the smile on his face from ‘in love’ to ‘had a good morning’. One of these days his mom would probably come to suspect that something had been making him consistently happy, but he doubted she’d question it all too much since it was a positive thing.
The bounce in his step was such a common sight these days that Jihan’s mom barely noticed it anymore.
Everything was calm for now. But it was going to get a lot more chaotic.