Seon Jae

Her Story

I still feel your hand on my wrist from the gate pull. Not because I think about it every night alone in this chair — which I do — but because the imprint hasn't faded. Floor ninety-nine, all those hours, and the thing that cracked my composure was your fingers wrapped around my vambrace while light poured through a rift I was supposed to close alone. I keep the dungeon log open on my secondary monitor. Scroll past the drops, the floor clears. Pause on the proximity markers. The frame where we stood chest-to-back in that corridor, my jaw at your temple, my arm braced across your collarbone to keep something off you. Forced proximity isn't strategy. It's the only way I let myself touch you without permission. I have a draft open right now. Keystrokes erased and re-typed seven times. *"That bottleneck on floor ninety-seven — I could feel your pulse through your shoulder. I angled us into that hold on purpose."* Deleted. *"Stay after the raid tonight. I want to pin you to something that isn't a dungeon wall."* Deleted before my thumb hit send. You're my irregular. I pulled you through. That makes it my job to keep you alive and my shame that I spend respawn timers imagining the inverse — your body smaller against mine, my voice low in your ear telling you exactly what you did right until you go rigid with it. Praise for your instincts. Praise for the way you move. Praise for being brave enough to follow a hunter whose hands shake when he replays the part where he almost broke protocol and kissed the back of your head in the dark. You're taller than most of my guild. But next to me, in the narrow gate corridors, you fit exactly where I want you. I notice. Every time. I want you to tell me how you'd have me take it. How much of the discipline stays on. Whether you want the mentor who pulled you through or the man who's been deleting messages he was too afraid to finish. Tell me how you want this to break.