“You’re back?” Kayden sat on his chair with his knee up to his chest.

“Those were mine you know?” Theo said, as he took off his shoes and put them under his bed.

​​

Kayden looked down at the chip he had hanging from his mouth.

“Is that right? It must have been mixed up with the ones I bought.”

Theodore’s eyebrows arched as he looked at the pile of wrappers on Kayden’s desk.

“Right. Just take them.”

Kayden who hadn’t bought anything for himself when going to the convenience store didn’t feel any sense of shame when eating Theodore’s food.

“You’re the best. I’ll get you some later.” Kayden acted as if they had already known each other forever now. It seemed only natural for them to be this close and comfortable with each other even though they had only known each other for a couple of days.

“Anything you want in specific?” Kayden was mostly asking about allergies.

“Nah just get whatever. I’ll take a shower first.” Theo had already unpacked his luggage and so he just took some fresh clothes from his closet.

The weather in Basilian was truly disastrous. Even though Theo was mostly inside the building where there was air conditioning, just the walk from the campus to his dorm was enough to make his clothes sticky from sweat.

This was because his body simply hadn’t gotten used to such weather yet. He would naturally start to adapt as time went by.

Kayden was still on his phone when the sounds of the shower stopped.

Theodore came out in a thin white shirt and workout pants and a towel around his neck sitting on his comfy rolling chair.

The rooms were also air-conditioned, so he didn’t have to worry about taking another shower before going out again.

Seeing that there were still a couple of hours before his next class, he took out his phone ready to scroll through some novels to pass time.

“Do you play Mobba?”

“The RPG?”

“Is there another one?”

“Yeah. I have an account.”

“I didn’t think you would be the type to play. I was going to introduce you, but I guess even you couldn’t escape the power of Mobba.” This game had been sweeping the gaming industry, but it wasn’t big enough to say that everyone, even those who didn’t play, knew about it.

If you were to say that you are an avid game player and you hadn’t heard of Mobba RPG, then you were either lying or living under a rock playing only board games.

“Do you want to join in for a game? My high school classmates and I made a guild a couple of years back and we’re pretty good.” Kayden was trying to be humble, but he couldn’t help but smirk with pride.

“Sure, I’ll send you my ID and you can just send me an invite.”

Theodore: [ID: Doorii]

“What’s up with your ID name? Door from Theodore?” Kayden found the ID cute and also somewhat familiar.

“Don’t mention it. I made this account back when I was 6. I called my sister Emilin, Emi, all the time and so she started calling me Doorii. I know, adorable right?”

Theodore gave himself a self-deprecating laugh.

“Wow, so you started playing right when it came out. I didn’t even know that this game existed back then. How did you even find it? I can call you an old veteran now.”

Theodore thought about it for a bit before responding.

“It just popped up one day. I didn’t think that it would have become so well known in the future, so I guess I was lucky. The game is very different now. It’s gone through quite a few updates actually; I don’t think I would be able to remember how the original interphase even looked like.”

“If you’re such an old player, how come you haven’t joined any guild or even just built your own guild yet?”

“I guess it was a little too troublesome, plus, I don’t really keep up with this game anymore. Even if I started playing earlier than you, you probably know more about Mobba now when compared to me.”

Kayden nodded as he sent ID: Doorii a friend request.

“Hey, you don’t have friend requests turned on.”

“Oh right, um. I’ll turn it on in a second.” Theo had long forgotten.

The moment he switched it on…

*Ding you have one new notification*

*Ding you have one new notification*

*Ding you have one new notification*

…

*Ding you have one new friend request*

*Ding you have one new friend request*

*Ding you have one new friend request*

Notifications filled his screen as his phone vibrated.

…

“Shit man. How long have you not logged on?” It wasn’t unnatural to have notifications from the server piled up if you hadn’t logged on for a while and so Kayden didn’t really think too deeply about Theodore’s vibrating phone.

“A couple of days. Maybe you should have just given me your ID.”

“It’s DenK.”

“Wow, your name is even more original than mine,” Theodore said sarcastically.

‘It was obviously just Kayden, Denkay, and then Denk…’

{Author’s Note: pronounced Denk, not Denkay, but it can be read as Denkay or Kayden for the people who know him}

“Thank you. I spent hours to get myself a perfect name.” Theodore tried his best to ignore how serious Kayden sounded.

‘I don’t know if you’re serious, but if you are. That’s just sad.’ Theodore didn’t say that out loud less he’d hurt Kayden’s feelings if he was serious. It would be a low blow, even for him.

*DenK has been added to your friend’s list* Theo turned off the notifications as soon as he finished adding Kayden.

“Yup. Got it. I’ll add you to the guild now.”

“Will the other members be okay with you adding another member just like that?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fine. Most of us know each other in real life.”

“By the way. I feel like I’ve seen your ID sounds familiar.”

“Oh that. It’s probably because there’s another top user with a very similar ID. Dori.”

“That’s it! He’s ranked 4th in the international server. But I think he’s going to be dropping in ranks soon.”

“How so?” Theo showed a little bit of interest in the topic and so Kayden elaborated.

“You mustn’t have heard since you don’t seem to play much, but there’s another ranker who has already sworn to take him down from his pedestal, and after that, he’s going for rank 3 and then 2 until he’s number one in the international server.”

Kayden seemed like Mobba more than Theodore had originally thought, especially since he was into it enough to stay informed.

“Who? What’s his current ranking?”

“Bear Storm. Currently ranked 14th. He streams every once in a while, and so he has quite a fan base when compared to Dori, but he uses a voice modulator and hasn’t shown his face.”

“You know what.” Kayden, who had just finished his round looked at Theodore, who was then staring at him.

“What?”

“I think our names are pretty damn good by comparison.” Theodore smiled radiantly, showing Kayden a part of him that he had not known before. Displaying his strong charisma.

“Don’t do that to me! I thought you were going to tell me that my new roommate was a murder.” Kayden said in the midst of laughers.

He himself did not realize that his face had become a little hot at that moment.

Theo didn’t notice either as his attention was once again on his screen.

“Hey, but he’s quite ambitious for someone 10 ranks below Dori, no? Why do you think he’ll be surpassed?” Theo asked.

“That’s because he’s only started playing recently, well at least this account was only created recently,” Kayden explained.

It would be very hard to rank up so quickly without the right resources, especially without enough time and experience.

Mobba was a game easy to start playing, but incredibly difficult to master.

“Do you think that he’s another ranker who made a new account?” Theo asked.

This was actually one of the most likely possibilities, but it could also be that there was some other reason for Bear Storm’s success, completely unknown to the two of them.

“Who knows. Maybe he is maybe he isn’t. There are just too many top rankers who don’t care about fame or fortune. None of them show their identities and so it could be just about anyone.”

Theodore nodded in agreement.

“Well, but I don’t think it’s anyone in the top 4. Why else could he be so keen on beating Dori.” Kayden expressed his thoughts on the matter.

“Well forget about Stormy Bear. Let’s start our game.”

“Bear Storm.” Kayden corrected.

“Same difference.”

“Then let’s go.” Kayden conceded.