Chapter 10: Dissonant Keys

The song came together slowly. Over two weekends, Ren and Miyu met again—at the café, at his apartment, once even at a park bench near her office under golden gingko trees. The music grew from scattered notes into a thread they both clung to.

But as the melody sharpened, so did the tension.

One late afternoon, while strumming together on Ren’s balcony, Miyu hesitated. “Do you think this is just a phase?”

Ren looked up, brow furrowed. “You mean... us?”

“I mean all of it. This—game-born connection. What if we’re just pretending we’re not broken?”

Ren said nothing for a moment. The city hummed below. Then he quietly replied, “I think we are broken. That’s why it works.”

Miyu stared out at the horizon. “It scares me how easy it is to be with you... like I’m waiting for the moment it breaks.”

“You waited nine years for someone who never gave you answers,” Ren said softly. “Maybe it’s okay if this feels like peace instead of tension.”

She turned her gaze to him. “You don’t talk like someone who hides everything.”

“I don’t hide from you.”

Back in-game, the guild prepared for a ranked event. Competitive, high-stakes, noisy.

RikaTheRogue: Ren, you on voice?

OblivionHeart: Here.

RikaTheRogue: Perfect. Let’s do what we used to. You take mid-call shots, I’ll flank. Like the old days.

Miyu watched their exchange on screen. Her chest tightened.

Shin’s voice cut in. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Fine,” he muttered, clearly annoyed. “But if she keeps pushing her nostalgia crap on Ren, I swear—”

“Don’t.”

Shin paused, his voice quieter. “I don’t want you hurt again.”

They won the match. Barely. But victory didn’t feel like a celebration. The tension hung in the Discord call long after the scores were posted.

When the group disbanded, Miyu didn’t log off. She sat on a hill outside the digital city, alone, watching the pixelated sky turn to dusk.

She opened her in-game notebook. Scrolled past old lyrics. Then typed something new:

“Even in pixels, you can feel when someone is reaching for the past instead of the present.”

A moment later, a soft chord rang through her headphones.

Ren had logged in.

He walked up to her slowly, his avatar stopping beside hers. He didn’t sit. He just stood there.

OblivionHeart: You good?

HanaLune: Yeah. Just tired.

OblivionHeart: She’s not what I want.

Her heart skipped.

HanaLune: But she knows you. The old you.

OblivionHeart: And you know the real me.

She stared at that last message for a long time before replying:

HanaLune: Then let’s stop looking backward.

He replied with a single note emoji 🎵.

Then sat beside her.

Their avatars watched the sunset in silence. And this time, it didn’t feel like waiting.

It felt like choosing.

---Interlude is coming... a flashback of 9 years...