Chapter Text
At 8 years old, Hana’s already made a name for herself in her neighborhood’s arcade. Minhyuk, the arcade worker at Club Joy, sometimes sneaks her more game tokens than what she paid for in order for her to play extra rounds and beat her own high score.
When she walks by the machines, she hears some kids groaning, saying, “who is ttoki?” and “why is ttoki number one on every game here!”.
It makes her proud, especially when she sits by the Tekken 7 machine (where she remains undefeated), waiting for whoever’s before her to throw their hands up in defeat and trudge away. “Ttoki” flashes in the first place spot before it fades back into the title screen. She’d then go with whoever was brave enough to challenge her for top seed, insert the two tokens into the coin slot and press start. Her record was three minutes to completely obliterate her opponent; at this point it’s a race to set the Guinness record on how high of a score she can get in the game.
She remembers it as a Friday when she first sees him , arguably the worst (and simultaneously best) encounter of her lifetime.
Hana is working on perfecting Kazumi’s wall break move when she hears someone gasp from behind her. It brings her HP down by 30, and Yunhyeong, a regular she’s competes against whispers a small “Yes!”, finally gaining the upper hand. She’s not letting whoever’s behind her make her feel uncomfortable, she tells herself, though she can feel the person slowly coming closer and it makes her hands start sweating.
“GG.” Yunhyeong says after the game’s over, shaking her hand.
“Whatever.” Hana mumbles, staring at the “Defeat” words on the screen flash in a bright red. She’s going to kill whoever ruined her 20 game win streak, especially when she heard them yell out, “Whoa!”, startling her and making her accidentally press the wrong button.
When she turns around she sees a boy around her age with big eyes that made him look like he’s amazed by her, holding a plastic baggie filled with loose change. His baseball cap sits crooked on his head, and he has a bandaid on his right knee with a couple of scrapes on his left shin.
“How did you do that?” He asks.
“Do what?”
“You know, that move where Kazumi goes ‘Pwow! Pow, Doosh’ and then does a kick midair a gazillion times.” He excitedly exclaims, imitating her moves and throws a few punches in the air.
“Just press 2 and 3 as fast as possible.” She shrugs while he frowns.
“You can’t say that; it’s not that easy.”
“Then you should play more.” Hana simply responds, getting ready to go since it’s nearing dinner. If she’s late again her mom would definitely ground her.
“I feel like everytime I play the older kids purposely let me win, though. And none of my friends like Tekken 7 so they’re always at the Soulstone machine. Oh yeah, I’m Daehyun. What’s your name?” He introduces himself as he trails after her.
“I’m Hana. Maybe you should find people who like the game, then.”
“Well, don’t you like the game? Can you teach me?”
“I need to be home by 6 or else my mom is going to kill me.”
“Just one game today, please? I can buy a lot of tokens with this.” Daehyun practically begs, shaking the bag for good measure.
Hana bites her bottom lip, pondering whether or not this is enough incentive to stay. When Daehyun drops a few more coins he can find in his pocket into the bag, she caves. She asks Minhyuk to let her borrow the phone, telling her mom she’d be coming home an hour later than usual.
Sunset paints the sky a faint mix of purple and orange, tinting Daehyun’s hair into a light shade of brown as they walk home. He’s counting the coins they had remaining after their hour long game, sucking on a lollipop Minhyuk ended up giving them before they left. Hana begins her usual routine of trying to remember all the new combo breakers she learned today.
“I have enough for 12 games tomorrow. Maybe I should use it for lunch? But the cafeteria is only serving PB&J’s tomorrow…” He ponders. For some reason, Hana is already used to the way his train of thought moves.
“Save it for the arcade. Do you live near here?” She asks.
Daehyun looks up and freezes, turning his head from left to right before groanining, “I’ve been walking the wrong direction the whole time, you should’ve told me!”
“What? I don’t know where you live!”
“Oh. That’s right. Sorry about that.” He frowns, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck after his outburst. Hana finally smiles for the first time this whole day, patting him on the shoulder and adjusts the bill of his cap.
“It’s ok. You should go home, though.” She tries to console him. Daehyun seems to be happy with this and nods.
“Ok! See you soon then, Hana!” Daehyun grins and waved at her before turning away, breaking out into a sprint down the road. She watches him until he disappears around the corner, and she swears she can hear him belting out the tune of Donkey Kong as he runs.
“Can I have 500 won?” Hana asks her mom during dinner. Her mom stops packing rice into her bowl and looks up.
“For what? I gave you some yesterday.”
“I want to play some more games at the arcade tomorrow. I need to beat my high score.”
Her mom laughs, “How about you finish your dinner in 30 minutes, and then I’ll give you more money, sound like a deal?”
She doesn’t get the change, and Hana lays in bed that night, unable to sleep. Yunhyeong, that stupid snob, is probably going to beat her high score tomorrow. She kicks off her blanket to try to cool herself off and falls asleep with the sound of Donkey Kong playing in her head.
“Daehyun’s went to the restroom, so he’ll be out soon.” Minhyuk says when Hana walks in to the arcade.
“Thank you.” She says and makes her way down all the rows of game to stop at Tekken 7.
It becomes a routine: Daehyun usually arrives before her, hogging the machine by standing in front of it and spreading his legs far enough to block both spots. He’s normally aimlessly pressing the buttons, switching between all the character profiles. When Hana taps him on the shoulder, Daehyun turns around and perks up. He fumbles for the four tokens; Hana hands him the change to pay him back, and they both press play at the same time.
Daehyun is too hyper, talks too much, and gets easily antsy (like when the older kids come and tell them to get off the game so they can play). But he plays a mean Kazuya, someone that Hana has yet to perfect. So she sticks by him. And days go off to weeks, and weeks go into months.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Daehyun suddenly says out loud when they’re sitting by the curb of the street just across from the arcade.
Hana doesn’t look up from her game on the Switch, “I want to be the best player in the world.”
“Can I be your manager, then?”
“What’s that?”
“I think I’m supposed to take care of you? That’s what my dad said he was when I asked.”
She collects all the rupees in the rocks she threw against the wall and shrugs. “Maybe.”
Daehyun doesn’t show up on Wednesday. When she asks Minhyuk, all he can offer is a shrug. Hana must have made it obvious she was upset, since Minhyuk offered to play with her for a while.
“No thanks, you don’t play Kazuya well.” Hana declines.
“Wow. Well the offer still stands if you come back later.”
She sits by Tekken 7, keeping her eye at the entrance, hoping for him to pop up, but Daehyun never does. Some of the other kids come by and challenge her, which she wins by a landslide. It’s the first time Hana had ever felt sheer boredom as she competed with the other people, hoping for the game to end as soon as possible.
After what seemed like an eternity of rebattling one of the kids who refused to acknowledge he lost, she leaves the arcade in the hour she’s there. Not that there was anything better to do, she reasons. The walk home seems longer than usual, and she can barely keep her mind on only the combos and game cheats she discovered today. What happens if Daehyun is sick? Or moved away?
“You’re home early.” Hana’s mom says with eyebrows raised when she walks in.
“It wasn’t fun today. Not a lot of games were open.”
“Is that so? Well, where’s your friend?”
Hana drops her small coin purse onto the table and looks up, “What do you mean?”
“You know, your friend that always walks home with you. Daehyun, right?”
Hana blinks. “I don’t know.”
“Well that’s a shame. You should invite him over some time, there’s always room for one more at dinner.” Her mom nods, and Hana smiles back.
“I’ll ask him next time.”
She doesn’t want to admit she was excited when she pushes open the door to Club Joy and sees Daehyun sitting right next to Tekken 7 with the bag of tokens in his hand the next day. For some reason, she felt scared that Daehyun really had disappeared (“Was I too mean to him?” Hana had asked herself the night before). But when Daehyun looked up as she walked over, a big grin spreading across his face, a wave of relief crashed inside her.
“Where were you yesterday?” Hana asks, already fishing out the coins. She helps insert it into both slots for them as Daehyun sheepishly scratches his cheek and awkwardly laughs.
“I don’t want to say it; it’s embarrassing.” Daehyun finally responds. She frowns, refusing to press start when Daehyun gestures her to choose a character.
“Say it, or else I’m not helping you beat your high score in Vivi’s Adventure.”
“You’re terrible! Fine…” Daehyun looks around before whispering, “I got grounded for a day because I did bad on my math test. My mom made me rememorize the times table.”
“That’s it? You had me worried!” She exclaims, pushing him. Daehyun nearly topples over but regains his balance with a smile.
“You were worried for me? That’s kinda gross, Hana.”
“Shut up! You’re playing by yourself.” She huffs and begins to walk away. Hana feels Daehyun grab her arm to stop her, a pleading look in his eyes.
“Ok I’m sorry! Please play with me, I had to promise my parents I will get a 100 on the next test so I can come back here.”
She nods, finally returning to the game and pressing play. Daehyun instinctively chooses Kazuya, warming himself up as the buzzer on the screen counts down.
“Actually, can I have your phone number? That way I can call you if I get in trouble again.” Daehyun says mid-game. Hana nods in response, too busy throwing him into the ground. A huge “K.O.” displays across the screen, and Daehyun groans in defeat.
“Not again! I swear I pressed all the right buttons on time!”
“You should do it when I’m not blocking, dummy.”
“You move too fast. Rematch!”
“Fine, not like you’re going to win.”
Daehyun quickly pays for the tokens, ready to instantly lock Kazuya once again. Hana can’t help but have a smile on her face, patting him on the back to get him to relax. He only pouts in response. Mid-punch, Hana finally remembers what her mom had said.
“Oh yeah, Daehyun?”
“You’re distracting me!” He hisses, watching his health bar decrease. She simply ignores him and keeps going.
“Do you want to eat dinner with me and my family tonight?”
“Huh? Sure, but not now. In like an hour because I have 10 tokens left.”
Hana has a recurring nightmare. The sky seems to be falling, the moon bleeding into a crimson red as buildings come crashing onto the street. Her family is nowhere to be seen, and it seems to be only her left in the world. There’s faint sounds of screaming, but she can never find the source, only seeing debris lying in her wake. She runs as hard as she can, panting and fearing her lungs are about to be coughed out. There’s never a good ending to this, always the same routine of cowering in fear as her whole city falls apart.
She wakes up in a cold sweat, immediately sitting up in her bed as she tries to catch her breath. It always seems too real, and the tears prickle the back of her eyes. That’s when she hears something shift next to her.
Daehyun moves in his sleep, firmly grabbing the other blanket her mom had provided him when he stayed the night.
“Five more minutes…” he mumbles in his sleep, and Hana feels like kicking him off the bed.
But she goes back to sleep with comfort, forgetting her dream, remembering that this is reality.
7 more years pass just like that. Club Joy shuts down as the neighborhood kids start switching to purchasing consoles and computers in order to get their daily fixes on games. Not that she wasn’t one of them. Sitting on her bedroom floor, she screws in the final panel of her CPU while Daehyun scrolls through the instructions on his phone.
“Let me turn on the monitor… wow I’m a genius.” Daehyun compliments himself, and Hana rolls her eyes. The screen lights up with “Turning On” displayed. They both high five each other, scrambling to fight for the chair. Daehyun huffs as he ends up sitting on the edge of her bed.
“This is so sick!” Hana grins, clicking around the screen, already setting everything to her preference. She’s switching between all the different wallpapers to choose from when Daehyun swats her hand away from the mouse.
“Don’t forget why I helped you build this computer from scratch for.” He frowns as he opens up the internet, typing “Starcraft” into the search bar.
“Oh come on, did you not want to see the different home screens? One of them changes color every hour.” She teases.
“We can do that later. Right now, it’s time to say goodbye to shitty frames and high ping.”
Hana thanks the heavens that her dad actually agreed to help buy her the game, holding his credit card in her hand as she types the payment info. The screen reloads to “Thank you for purchasing. Your download will begin shortly”, and she can’t help but do a dance in her seat.
“Are you ready to become the best Starcraft player in the world?” Daehyun asks. Hana lets out a small snort, pressing play once the game fully loaded.
“What are you talking about? I already am.”