Chapter Text
What can Seungmin say? He was a complete sucker for all those cheesy Japanese and Asian romance novels, with the stereotypical archetypes that would always be the love choices for the stereotypical quirky and unique protagonist. The ones with the overly blushy and wide and sparkly eyed characters that seemed to hold the entire galaxy within their pupils.
Sure it was overdone, but what can he say? It was charming, and for someone with absolutely no love life and zero relationship experience, he found them fun to experience. True, things like what happened in the romance novels would never happen to him in real life, but it was fun to pretend.
He’s played so many kinds, it usually gets in the way of him doing homework, especially now that he was a senior in high school, it probably wasn’t the best thing to be distracted with. ‘Sorry Miss Teacher, I couldn’t finish the homework last night, I was too busy completing Saito’s love route.’ Yeah, that probably wouldn’t be the best excuse to give.
Luckily for him, it was winter break, which usually meant he was given as much free reign as he wanted to do whatever he wanted. His parents and brother, who were currently out somewhere for a social gathering, were not really caring as long as he didn’t burn anything down. Which meant he probably shouldn’t be attempting to cook anything for a while.
Seungmin was sitting down at his desk in his bedroom, scrolling through the numerous lists of games on his computer. He had already completed most of them, so there would be no point in replaying any of them at this point, if only for the enjoyment and to see the characters again.
He groaned, not knowing what to do, perhaps he should actually go and buy a new one instead of retrying another of the numerous ones he already had. He moved the mouse and went to click on the web browser icon before he paused when he noticed a small notification pop up in the corner of the screen.
“A new email? Why would I get an email?” He whispered, trying to wrack his brain for what it could possibly be, clicking on the notification. He recognized the email had been sent as a sort of promotion from the normal site he got most of his games from, which was weird considering he’s never gotten anything like this before.
“Congratulations,” the email read, “You have been selected to beta test a new and upcoming game due to your continued loyalty to our games! Click now to download and play!”
Seungmin was a bit surprised, he had been getting most of his games from these developers for a while, never having gotten something as special as this. How could he pass this up, a chance to beta test a game from one of his favorite developers? Not to mention, he’s getting to play the game for free? Seungmin didn’t even have to think twice before clicking on the download button, watching the installer pop up.
Along with the installer came a small description of all the characters, there seemed to be quite a few love potentials along with a generic main character. The supporting best friend character in this case seemed to be the main character’s twin brother. He supposed that was a nice change to see.
In the back of his mind, while the game was downloading, he realized he probably should have been a bit more cautious and worried about getting a random email about a random game that he had never seen nor heard about prior to this moment.
Worse comes to worse, it would probably give his computer a virus, which he would then have to fix…which would then cost a lot of money that Seungmin didn’t have.
Maybe he shouldn’t have clicked to download the game.
It was too late now to have regrets or to go back as the installer had finished its thing, the game main menu opening up on his screen. A loud EDM sound coming through his speakers on either side of his laptop. It sounded a bit weird for a cheesy cliche romance novel, but what could Seungmin judge, he wasn’t a game developer.
Across the screen in the most absurd font Seungmin had seen, read the words: ‘You Can STAY’.
“Huh, sort of a weird name for a game, but alright.” He whispers, glancing around, the screen showed a group of seven boys, all with their own unique features, all looking handsome and cute at the same time. These must be the love potentials, they looked quite fitting, definitely suitable.
In front of the boys was a girl with chestnut brown-hair and brown eyes, standard and plain, nothing really notable. Her hands clasped together in front of her with a small smile stretched across her lips. Well, it looks like that will be his character for this game; he wonders if he could comment on her design or if that would be seen as rude?
Seungmin shrugged and hesitated over the new game button, that’s weird. He noticed that there were no options for settings, in fact there was nothing for him to press besides the new game option. Perhaps that was a flaw that the developers managed to overlook? He secured that in the back of his mind as he went ahead and pressed the button, the screen filling with black.
After a few moments of just staring at a blank black screen, Seungmin couldn’t help but feel the disappointment rise within him. He knew it was too good to be true, his computer was probably already being hacked or something. He grumbled, reaching down to press the power off button, in hopes to save anything when he felt a sharp pain strike through his head.
He groaned and pressed his hands against his head, his elbows resting against the desk as he leaned forward. What was this? Why was it hurting so much? Why…why was everything getting so blurry and dark?
The last thing Seungmin saw before he blacked out was the newly shown words on the black screen in that weird font: ‘We hope you enjoy playing, “You Can STAY!”
.
.
.
By the time Seungmin woke up, the sharp throbbing in his head had ceased down to a dull pain, one that was quiet, but there. He sighed as he sat up in his bed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm. His room was completely dark, was it already night time? God, that would be embarrasing. Wonpil probably found him just passed out on his desk and had to carry him to bed, though it wouldn’t be the first time such an occurrence had happened.
He reaches over to his left, where he knew his nightstand would be, along with his glasses, though the further he reached, he could only feel empty air.
“What the heck?” He mumbled, his eyebrows furrowing, continuing to reach around in the dark for what he was sure had been there before he knocked out. ‘What the hell? Did Wonpil move my stuff around?’
Suddenly the lights to his room were thrown on, sending him into a moment of shock from the stark difference of seeing nothing to seeing everything.
The first and probably most important thing was that he realized that he was most definitely not in his room. Sure, it had some things he would like, a pretty nice looking bookcase, a nice computer set-up among other things, not to mention it was super spacious, but otherwise it wasn’t his room.
‘Oh God, I’ve been kidnapped.’ He thought, before looking to the doorway to see what his kidnapper looked like, only to be hit with another surprise. It was the female protagonist? The one he had just seen on the main menu of the game, but how was she here? ‘I must be having some sort of weird fever dream.’ He reasoned with himself.
“Seungmin, come on and get your sorry ass up, we’re going to be late if we don’t get going now.” And now the fever dream was talking to him, things just went from bad to worse. He simply stared blankly at the girl before turning to the right and being greeted with a mirror. That was certainly himself, but now his hair was…brown? It had been black earlier today, what the hell was going on?
“Who are you, what is this?” He asked, looking up at the girl who for some reason looked offended by his questions, which is absurd as he should be the offended one, having been kidnapped!
“Kim Seungmin, what the hell are you talking about? I’m your sister, now let’s go!” The girl hissed, placing her hands on top of her hips.
Oh Dear God.
He was in the video game.