“Congratulations! You won the campaign!”

The other six people sitting around the table stare at me, dumbfounded. I don’t know why. This wasn’t the craziest session of this campaign. I thought we’d gotten past the surprise and had landed in ‘oh, well, don’t question it, just laugh’ territory a while ago, but here they are, stunned and silent. It’s unnerving.

“Unless you’re not ready for it to be over, in which case I can—”

“No! No,” Yin blurts out, waving her hands in front of her. “This was fine. This is great! I love how it ended. It, um… it was great!”

She’s blushing to the tips of her toes. Well, probably. Her toes are under the table and covered by a pair of white socks and her trademark red sneakers. The shoes were her first purchase when she came to America as a Chinese foreign exchange student, and the shoe store was where she met and fell in love with Byeong-ho, although she insists they’re just friends. She hasn’t looked at him once during this session. It’s okay, though. He’s sitting beside her, and he hasn’t looked at her once either.

“Yeah, it was… great,” he mumbles. The man is six feet of muscle and the shyest person I know, which is unfortunate, since he’s also the hottest guy on campus. Besides a ripped body, he inherited a tanned complexion and swoon-worthy almond-shaped eyes from his Korean-American and Japanese-American parents, and his lips and jawline bear a striking resemblance to a certain Golden Maknaë. If his initials weren’t BTS, people would probably call him Kookie. Yin is the only person who uses his real name, and he loves her for it. Well, he just loves her, period, although he won’t admit it.

Freya shrugs. “It was interesting, that’s for sure. But that’s what we get for letting someone who hasn’t even played the game be the game master.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, feigning injury. I know she’s teasing, and she knows I know. That smirk says it all.

“It means you have to play with us for a while before we’re letting you GM again. Like, at least a year.”

“But we’re graduating in—”

“And I’m GM next time,” she interrupts me, flipping her pink hair over her right shoulder. Her extensions hit my cheek.

“Wait a minute,” Yan interjects. “It’s my turn next!”

“You gave up your turn for Katie to run this one,” Freya corrects Yin’s younger sister.

“I did not!” Yan’s lower lip pushes out in a pout as she looks at me, rounding her eyes. “You remember, don’t you? We decided you could GM this game, and then I’d GM next time!”

“Actually—” Freyr begins, but Yan whips her head around to glare at him, giving me a hairlash on my right cheek this time.

“She wrote it all down! Didn’t you?” She whips her head around again to look at me. “You’ve been writing this whole time!”

“Sorry, but I started writing after the game began, not before.”

“Well, I remember us deciding I would be the GM next time, and that’s that!”

Yin lets out an exaggerated sigh and rolls her eyes. “Knock it off, Yan. You’re being a brat.”

“That’s Omega! Omega! Why is it so hard for you to use my preferred nickname?”

“Um, hello? Haven’t you noticed my life?” Byeong-ho asks. “You don’t get to pick your nickname. People just call you whatever they want.”

Yan wants a nickname, and Byeong-ho wants his real name—any part of his real name, since everybody complains his first name is difficult to pronounce. His last name, Sanada, is easy enough. So is his middle name, Taiki. For that matter, Byeong-ho is easier to pronounce than it is to spell, and most people don't spell names when they say them. But do the girls chasing him around campus care about the correct pronunciation or spelling of his name? No. They see an attractive Asian man, and they go nuts. He probably stars in some tasteless BTS fanfictions that would make him faint if he read them.

“Anyway,” Luna says, lifting her voice above the argument, “I thought the game was a lot of fun. A Mimic would have been a nice addition, and I think we all would have appreciated more ‘are you sure?’ warnings, but all in all, it was a great way to kill a few Sunday afternoons.”

Her compliment gives me all the warm fuzzies and makes me smile so hard that my cheeks hurt. I wanted to include a Mimic, but that goes into the bucket of secrets only I can know. Yin’s petite, bespectacled appearance is a lie. The girl is scary when she’s angry, and I pushed her limits with this game. It was all in the name of a good cause, though.

“Uh oh. What’s that smile about?” Freyr nudges Luna with his right shoulder. “You were talking to Katie before the session started, right? She isn’t planning anything else, is she?”

“Of course not!” I say in as suspicious a voice as possible. “I would never—”

“It’s nothing for us to worry about,” Luna tells Freyr. “We’re not in denial about our relationship status like some people.” She directs her smirk toward her best friend.

“For the last time, we’re just friends!” Yin protests.

Yan snorts with laughter. "Yeah, sure. That's why you two spend all your time together and text each other constantly whenever you're apart.”

Byeong-ho squirms in his chair. “She’s a good study partner.”

“Oh, so you do a lot of studying in the gym, then?” Freya grins and glances across the table at her twin. “Freyr, I thought you said Yin just sits in a corner and reads while you and BTS work out.”

“Yeah, that’s about it. It was kinda creepy at first, but I’m used to it now. Except for the occasional longing looks they cast each other when the other isn’t looking. Gag.”

His smiling, freckled face and bright red hair make me think of a leprechaun. Of course, he’s much taller than a leprechaun, and he’s bulked up quite a bit since he became Byeong-ho’s workout partner. I still can’t take him seriously. Or his sister, for that matter. Among her many eccentricities, the girl changes her hair color at least once a week and says the wildest things.

“Your mother calls me once a month to see if you’re engaged yet, Yin.”

Prime example.

“She does not!” Yin exclaims. “And you don’t even speak Mandarin Chinese!”

Freya has such a smug smile. “Some things transcend language.”

“Not phone conversations!”

“Well, even if she’s lying, BTS’ mom calls me every month for the same reason,” I say.

Everyone stares at me.

Byeong-ho hides his face in his hands. “Please tell me you’re making that up…”

Yin jumps to her feet so fast that her chair topples over. “Um, I, um… I need to call Mom.”

“Yeah, me too.” Byeong-ho rushes out of the room after Yin, both chased by riotous laughter.

Luna raises three fingers and ticks them off. “Kissing in three, two—”

“Nope,” Yan interrupts her. “They haven’t kissed yet.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I switched Yin’s coffee for Irish coffee last week and she started babbling about how hot he is and how nice he is and how if he doesn’t kiss her soon, she might just launch herself at him one day and lay one on him.”

“No wonder she doesn’t like you,” Freya remarks.

“Why didn’t she notice the taste?” Freyr wonders.

“It was one of her rare BTS-free study sessions,” Yan explains. “You know how involved she gets when she’s studying. I told her it was a new creamer, and she bought it.”

Luna frowns. “You’re nineteen and Yin doesn’t drink. Where did you get Irish coffee? You didn’t buy alcohol illegally, did you?”

“Nope.”

“Then who gave it to you?”

Yan shrugs and looks down at her fingernails. She’s sporting a scarlet macaw-inspired look with a red base and blue and yellow stripes. “Sorry, but I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”

“Yan! This is serious!”

“Okay, fine. I’ll tell you if I get to GM the next game.”

Freya groans and rolls her eyes. “Not this again.”

I should take notes. The dynamics and dialogue of this friend group are classic. It’s too bad we’re all seniors and will go our separate ways soon—well, we’re all seniors, except for Yan. She’s still a freshman. She has three more years to find a new friend group and new people to terrorize. I almost feel sorry for whoever she latches onto next.

“Hey, everybody, come here,” Freyr calls. He left the table during Yan’s interrogation and is now standing at the window, waving us over. We all leap to our feet. He’s always in the right place at the right time to see the weirdest things. There was the pencil fight, when a couple of students got mad and lobbed pencils at each other for a full hour; the guy skating on one pink roller skate and one purple roller blade, both with neon green wheels; the girl doing her homework in a bikini on the roof of her dorm building, and so many more. When he tells us to look at something, we expect it to be funny.

This isn’t funny, but it has Luna squealing and bouncing in place.

“It’s about time!” Yan exclaims.

Freya and I look at each and smile.

Byeong-ho and Yin are kissing under an old oak tree. I wonder if they've carved their initials into the bark, as so many couples have done over the years: YY x BTS. Future students will probably see it and think it's a joke, but those are their initials. Yin's last name is Yang. When they get married, her initials will be YS. It's too bad she doesn't have a middle name that starts with an E.

I know my ethnically Asian friends don’t enjoy their names as much as I do, but come on. Yin and Yan Yang? Byeong-ho Taiki Sanada? I love word games.

I also love how Yin has to stand on her tiptoes to kiss Byeong-ho. She’s so tiny next to him. They make an adorable couple, and now, after four years of being ‘just friends,’ I can call them a couple without risking her wrath. And they can go on double dates with Luna and Freyr. And I can call Byeong-ho’s mother and give her the good news.

“Okay, that’s about as much of that as I can stand,” Freyr says, leaving the window to the giddy, gawking girls. “What’s our celebration dinner gonna be?”

“A celebration dinner? Oh, how romantic!” Luna coos, throwing her arms around him.

“I meant for finishing the campaign, not for those two finally making it official. They’ll probably walk back in here and deny the whole thing anyway.”

Luna and Freyr are another adorable couple. She's basically the same person as the character she played in the game, except she can't shapeshift into a cat, and she isn't a werewolf—at least, not to my knowledge. She's done part-time modeling since high school to fund her education, and she's been accepted into a prestigious university's master's program for archaeology.

Freyr is also quite similar to his character, Freycheck. Big, strong, bumbling, shy. He’s an English major who detests formulaic writing and, even worse, AI, and he’s working on a sword and sorcery fantasy in his spare time. His prose tends toward purple, but he has the most unique storyline I’ve ever seen in the genre. With a little refinement, he’ll be a bestselling author someday.

I can see them now: Luna playing in the dirt at an archaeological dig in a foreign locale, while Freyr works on his next book in a nearby tent. And elsewhere in the world, Byeong-ho and Yin will be… well, I don’t know what professions they’ll choose or where they’ll live, but I know they’ll still be joined at the hip and deliriously happy about it.

I don’t want to think about Yan’s future. The girl is bananas.

“Pizza!” She dashes toward the table and grabs Yin’s phone. “Large, stuffed crust, garlic sauce instead of marinara sauce, every type of cheese, maybe with some bacon on top… Ooh, and spinach, and onions, and…”

“Where are you ordering from? Do they even allow that many toppings?” Luna asks her. “And why are you using Yin’s phone?”

“Wait, I want a meat lover’s pizza!” Freyr chimes in.

Freya glances at me and then at the door. I nod and follow her into the hall while the others continue their pizza discussion.

“Thanks for your help,” she tells me.

“It was no problem. When are you going back?”

She shrugs. “I’m not sure. I need to be there for my grandpa’s next birthday, but I don’t know if I’ll stay. Reality has its perks.”

“So does fiction.”

She smiles. “Yeah, I guess so. I kind of wish I’d gotten a bigger part, but maybe this was for the best. It couldn’t have been easy writing me out of that life and into this one without them noticing.”

I toy with the iridescent scale hanging from my necklace. “Well, I had some help.”

The song Be Our Guest blasts from her phone. I’d recommended the ringtone to her, given her circumstances, and she loves it. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and flashes me a smile before flicking her thumb across the screen.

“Hi, Mrs. Hunk. That was fast. I was just about to call you, but it looks like the CMN beat me to it.”

She’s adjusted well to reality. She’s studying game design now, and she has an idea for an isekai game I think will be a hit. A tiny dragon appears in someone’s dream, and when the dreamer wakes up, the dragon is on their pillow, with neither party knowing how it got there or how to get it home. The player can choose to be the dreamer, the dragon, or any of several side characters, and there are multiple endings depending on player choices. It sounds like it’ll be a chaotic, hilarious mess. Especially since she asked me to write the storyline.

I smile and pull out my phone. Just a few more kinks to iron out, and then we can get started.