Chapter Text
A tear rolled down my cheek as I shut my phone off and placed it on the table. No matter how many times I played the redheaded hacker’s route, it still made me cry. Sometimes I thought it was almost pathetic how emotionally attached I was to an anime boy in an otome game, to the point of still being unable to play for Jumin’s good or normal ends, because I just couldn’t ignore Seven. Hearing about Seven’s phone call to the player on day 10 from my Jumin stan friend only made it all the more difficult to even feign interest in the Deep Route’s other choice long enough to complete all the endings in the game.
However, this time was different. This time I would finally play Jumin’s route, and if I felt any guilt I’d simply play for Seven’s good end once I was done. It was time to stop being a baby. As attached to him as I was, Seven was not a real person. He would not actually be hurt by my playing a different route, the phone call was as much an element of dramatization, meant to pull at your heartstrings, as much as the rest of the tragic events in the game were.
I wiped my eyes with the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I should probably take a break from Mystic Messenger if it was affecting me this much. I would take a few days to catch up on my sleep, disconnect my emotions from a bunch of red, black, and yellow pixels on my screen, and then I would finally 100% the Deep Story.
I got up off my couch with a sigh. Might as well go buy something tasty for lunch as a reward for getting through days 7-10 on Seven’s route. I stepped out of my apartment, and into the hallway. Putting in one earbud, I hummed along to the song and absentmindedly walked towards the stairs. Suddenly, I rammed into someone’s shoulder, lost my balance, and my phone flew out of my hand as I landed face first on the floor. I rolled over and met a pair of green eyes. A gorgeous guy in a dark turtleneck and red flannel jacket extended his hand towards me.
“Are you okay? I’m so sorry, I should have been watching where I was going.” He said, his brow wrinkled with concern.
I took his hand, stood up, and dusted myself off. “I’m alright! And no worries, I was distracted too.”
He picked up my phone, and looked at the screen before handing it to me. “Your phone is fine too, thank God.” Red spread across my face when I realized my phone was still unlocked, my 707 background visible for all to see.
I snatched the phone from his hands maybe a little too harshly, and shoved it into my pocket. When I looked back up, his expression was strange, almost a smirk, but it quickly changed back to a friendly smile before I could register what was going on. Was it my imagination? “Did you just move in?” I asked, “I haven’t seen you in the building before.”
He laughed, “Oh, I’m just visiting a friend. If you’re okay, I’m actually late meeting them, so I should go.”
“Oh! Sorry to hold you up! Have a nice day!” I gave him a smile, and turned to leave. He mumbled something as I turned to leave, but I didn’t stay to hear it. I hurried down the stairs and into the lobby, but as I opened the door leading out to the street, something felt off. Was the theatre across the street always showing the Lion King? I never really paid attention to it, but I could’ve sworn they were showing something else.
Whatever, not important. What was important was the ever-increasing emptiness in my stomach. I hurried to the grocery store and bought a party pack of sushi rolls, which I promptly devoured the second I got home. Throughout the rest of the day, I occasionally glanced through my door’s peephole to see if I could catch the guy I bumped into this afternoon and grab his number or something. Either I missed him or he was spending the night with whoever he was visiting, because I didn’t see him at all for the rest of the day. Yawning, I decided to give up on him. If it was fate, I would see him again. Besides, it was getting late, and my eyes were getting harder and harder to keep open.
I took a quick shower before dragging myself into bed, and almost instantly, I feel asleep. It wasn’t long, however, before I woke up to my phone buzzing, and rolled over, thinking it was my alarm going off. However, my room was still pitch black, and my screen told me it was about 12:45 AM. The buzzing was not my alarm, but a string of Mystic Messenger notifications.
“Weird…” I mumbled, I hadn’t restarted the game yet so there was no reason for the app to be sending me notifications. I opened the app and my screen showed the string of messages you get from “Unknown” at the beginning of the game. Am I so obsessed with this game that I started a new route in my sleep?
UNKNOWN: ...Hello…?
I pressed the flashing yellow ‘Answer’ button, but instead of giving me the ‘?’ choice, it opened my keyboard. “Did they update the app?” I mumbled to the darkness in my apartment as I squinted at my phone screen.
Typing out choices seemed a lot more confusing than just picking them, but at least it meant I wouldn’t have to say I wanted to lick Zen’s abs anymore. I figured since I was still getting used to the new feature, it would be best to follow the original script as closely as possible.
ME: ?
UNKNOWN: Can you see this?
Luckily for me, I’ve played this game, and specifically the prologue so many times that I basically had the entire thing memorized. I quickly typed “Yes, I can.” and waited as Saeran, er, UNKNOWN went on his monologue about getting a text from a stranger, before typing out the choice I usually went with.
ME: First… who are you?
UNKNOWN: Me? Oh sorry. I didn’t even introduce myself.
UNKNOWN: I’m just… a student studying abroad. I’m Korean.
UNKNOWN: I could tell you my name, but it doesn’t really matter.
UNKNOWN: You won’t find me on search engines. ^^;
UNKNOWN: But, anyways…
UNKNOWN: Can you help me find the owner of this phone?
I continued replying to Unknown’s messages absentmindedly. To be honest, being able to type out responses was starting to grow on me. It would up the difficulty of the game a ton, but it added more realism to the game, and made me feel like I was actually talking to cute anime boys. I would probably have to start using guides again. Actually, now that I think about it, how would they decide which answers were ‘correct’ if you type out the answers… I guess I’m not a video game programmer, so I won’t be able to understand anyways. My attention snapped back to my phone, but the messages were different than usual.
UNKNOWN: You trust me…
UNKNOWN: Thank you!
UNKNOWN: Just a sec. I’ll send you the address.
UNKNOWN: Found it.
However, instead of the usual option to click the link to enter Story Mode, Unknown had sent me an actual address. Not only that, it was an address in my city. I couldn’t click on the message, and there was no way to exit out of the chat room. I closed the app in shock, not sure how to respond. Am I dumb enough to go to a random building in the middle of the night, just because a cute anime boy told me to? Actually yes, I am. I reopened the app and typed out a reply.
ME: Just a sec. I’m heading over now.
I figured it would be best to pack a small bag on the off chance that I actually got stuck in that apartment for 11 days. I pulled a small suitcase out of my closet and filled it with clothes, a toothbrush, a phone charger, and other necessities before dragging it to my front door. I went back into my room and grabbed pepper spray, just in case. I copied the address I was sent into my GPS app, and it was surprisingly close to my own.
“Let’s hope this is a fanfiction and I don’t end up kidnapped and murdered because of my own stupidity.” I laughed, dropping my suitcase in the passenger seat, before getting in on the driver’s side and starting the car. I drove in complete silence the whole way there, the bizarrity of the situation put me out of the mood for music. I pulled up to a relatively normal looking apartment building. The building didn’t look at all rundown, and was in a decent part of town, not the type of building you would expect a kidnapper to send you to. Still, I put my hand into my hoodie pocket and lightly touched the pepper spray, to make sure I still had it. I got out of the car, and grabbed my suitcase. I walked up the stairs and found the door number that matched the address I was given. The second I stepped in front of the door, a new message from Unknown popped up on my screen.
UNKNOWN: Are you there? ^^ See. Nothing strange.
UNKNOWN: Is there a password lock on the door?
I looked at the door handle. It looked exactly like it did in the game, an option to scan a card at the top with the three by three set of numbers below. The metal handle even had ‘R. F. A.’ emblazoned across it. This whole situation was reaching prank levels of strange at this point. I responded with a simple “Yeah”, too confused at this point to think about responding with the original game choices. Unknown responded with a string of numbers, that I could only assume were the code for the door. Without thinking, I punched them in and heard the click of the door unlocking.
ME: The door’s open.
UNKNOWN: Good. Why don’t you go inside?
ME: I guess I will.
I opened the door and stepped inside the apartment. I supposed at this point it shouldn’t surprise me, but even Rika’s apartment looked identical to how it did in the game. The heavy door slammed shut behind me, the loud noise affirming that I was truly stuck here. I received a final string of messages from Unknown thanking me, before the app glitched out, landing me in the main group chat for the RFA. I braced myself for the Yoosung crying emoji sound that they hit you with right off the bat. After hoping none of the neighbors woke up to what, in all honesty, sounds like moaning, I watched message after message pop up. If this apartment was real, how much of the rest of the game was? I had never heard of C&R or Zen in real life, and they were supposed to be famous ingame, but there was no shame in checking.
I switched over to my phone’s browser and typed in “C&R”. I stared at the results that popped up on my screen. I blinked twice. There’s no way it was a real company, so why was the website for C&R International the first result? There was no way the entire Mystic Messenger fandom missed an entire company with the same name as the one ingame. Actually, scratch that, there is no way Cheritz got away with giving the fictional Jumin Han’s company the same name as a real company. Clicking on the link to the website told me that not only was C&R real, Chairman Han was as well. If Chairman 
Han wasn’t in front of my eyes in black and white print, I don’t think I could have believed it.
I switched back over to Mystic Messenger to find they had noticed my presence in the chat while I was gawking over the existence of C&R. I typed in a simple “Hello…” which caused an explosion of messages on my screen, as well as the revelation that I was in Rika’s apartment. Knowing that they were potentially real people made it far more annoying that they were referring to me as “it”. I held my tongue, or rather, I held my fingers from saying anything. If the apartment was real, and C&R and Chairman Han were real, there was a good chance the bomb was real too. It was probably safest to follow as closely to the original game as I could. I wasn’t in the mood to be blown up, and following the game meant I knew what would happen next. Jumin’s angry emoji popped up and that meant it was my time to shine.
ME: I’m
. Who are you all and what is this place?
Thankfully, everything continued to flow at a predictable pace. Seven made fun of me for being awkward. Zen introduced himself and sent a selfie -- except, instead of the CG that he usually sent, it was a real person. He still had crimson eyes and long silver hair, and he was still strikingly attractive, but he was real. I moved to pause the chatroom but clicking on the message bar at the bottom of the screen only brought up my keyboard. There was no way to pause the messages. There wasn’t even a way to adjust the speed. My eyes moved to the top of the screen. The ‘Skip’ and ‘Max Speed’ buttons were missing too. In their place was an option to leave the chatroom -- a feature usually not available until all the other members had left.
I scrolled down and every single picture was replaced by a real life version, including the CCTV footage of Seven playing with Elizabeth III. I gawked at it. This was my first time seeing Seven as a real person, and even though I could barely make out any details on the grainy image, he was still definitely not an anime boy. Knowing this only served to make me blush when Seven called me cute. It was nice to know my long-time anime crush found me attractive.
Shortly after, Jaehee’s photo popped up in the chatroom, and, consistent with the rest of the RFA, she was gorgeous. It almost made me a little self conscious. The other members continued talking before V joined and, as expected, gave the speech about Rika ‘wanting this’.
JUMIN: Rika called in a complete stranger from up in the sky?
I cringed reading that. It’s one thing when fictional characters believe another fictional character is dead, but a real person thinking their real childhood friend is dead? That hurts. I held myself back from saying anything of course, no reason to make them any more suspicious of me for no reason. Even though I had played the game a million times, and knew all of the information they were telling me, I played along, asking them to explain who Rika was… is… and the purpose of the RFA. I was warned not to touch Rika’s things, and then V left the chatroom shortly after. Messages continued to rapidly pop up on my screen until they finally asked me if I would like to join. Knowing I didn’t really have a choice, I accepted.
YOOSUNG: …I’m glad we have a girl now! It was a hopeless sausage fest until now lol.
I had to physically hold myself back from asking “What about Jaehee?” Since this was a real situation and a bad end meant more than just a waste of a few days, I was still scared to deviate from the game. Everyone said their goodbyes and left the chatroom, leaving me once again in complete silence. I was lucky I basically had the prologue memorized, since I had gone through it so many times, but sticking to the game was only going to get more difficult from here on out. Pursuing Seven would be my preferred option, not only is he my favourite character, but, having played his route so many times, I would have an easier time sticking to the game and getting the good end than I would on other routes… but that is only an option if I’m on the deep story.
I could at least rule out being on Another Story, but I would have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether I was on the Casual or Deep Story. Wait, if this is real life, is there even a Casual or Deep Story? I could technically romance whoever I wanted, regardless of what chats popped up. But that would be courting danger, considering romancing the wrong characters leads to a bad end after the fourth day. Now, it would be easiest to avoid a more dangerous Bad End by just going for the Day 5 Bad Ending, and leaving the RFA, but who, when presented with a chance to romance their favourite anime boy, would give that up for silly reasons like personal safety? As long as I didn’t mess things up and let on that I know pretty much everything about everyone in the RFA, or bring up Rika being alive too soon, or say the wrong thing and get a Bad End, or-- well, I think I’ve made my point. I am such a sad, lonely weeb, that I would risk my life to date the notorious hacker, God Seven Zero Seven.