Summary: "Min Gui Wen, this is our health clinic's physician, Li Tian Lang."

Set during the weeks spent training in chapter seven, before the tournament.

Spoilers for the sidestory/omake at the end of volume four.

Second First Meetings

By Dark Ice Dragon

Recognition

The university was all right, Gui Wen conceded as he was given a tour around it. It could have been worse, but it wasn't as if he had held any expectations of the institution.

It was actually quite accessible from his house, which was nice.

"And that concludes our tour," his tour guide, Wu Cheung, said cheerfully. "Are there any questions you'd like to ask?"

'How many days will I have off?' But he'd find that out soon enough once he had received his timetable. Before he could shake his head, Wu had started waving at someone behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see a tall, brown-haired man walking towards them.

"I showed you where the health clinic was but our physician wasn't there," Wu said apologetically.

The physician was staring at him. It wasn't like how Prince had stared at him, the first time they'd met – and he really shouldn't be thinking about Second Life when he wasn't playing it. Second Life was where he could not think about real life and it should be vice versa. It was less chance of the physician being a homo, and it was more probable that he recognised him, what with his reputation.

"Min Gui Wen, this is our health clinic's physician, Li Tian Lang," Wu introduced them.

"Gui?" Li echoed, eyebrows raised slightly.

He frowned. "Yes?"

Li blinked, and then shook his head. "Never mind."

They talked for a little while longer, about general things, he said his goodbyes and then he was commuting back home.

xOx

"Gui?" Gui Wen raised his head from the book he was reading to see who it was, but there was only one person who called him by that name. He'd noticed over the few times they'd bumped into each other in the university, Li would sometimes slip and call him that; the frequency had begun to decrease though.

He'd barely opened his mouth before Li was speaking again, correcting himself.

"Ah, I mean, 'Guileastos'?"

Whatever it was he'd wanted to say, he didn't know what it was anymore as his mind blanked on him. How...? Gui Wen carefully studied the other man's face, but he couldn't place whether he recognised him or not. Maybe he was someone who'd seen him as he played, but they hadn't actually talked to each other. But then, wouldn't Li be calling him 'Guileastos', not 'Gui'?

"You don't recognise me, do you?" Li asked him, humour colouring his tone. The other man pulled out the chair opposite him and sat down.

The way Li was saying it, it was as if he should know who he was in Second Life. He stared for a little longer, but Li still didn't look familiar. "...No, I don't."

"My screen name's Ugly Wolf."

That... was unexpected. Gui Wen leaned back, looking at Li as a whole rather than just his features, and tried to slot in what he knew about Wolf and how that compared to the little he knew of Li. Wolf was a Beast, so that would explain why he wouldn't recognise him – what he had left to go by was body language and speech mannerisms, and even then, he was proof alone that how a person spoke in real life could be extremely different from how a person spoke in the game. Li was certainly tall enough to be Wolf, but again, that was something that could be changed easily when you were a Beast. The way Li was sitting, it waslike how Wolf did, but that wasn't something that could be used as concrete evidence that they were the same person.

Li chuckled, putting a hand on the table. "We first met when you pulled the Zombie King back to me and Prince, and the day after that, we spent about an hour trying to agree on a name for our team." What he'd said, only the members of Odd Squad could have known - unless someone had been stalking them for a long while. "If you could call it 'agreeing' on Odd Squad since you weren't allowed that much input," he added. Li scratched the side of his chin, eyes raised as he thought. That was something he was used to seeing from Wolf. "Hmm. There are other stories I can tell you." His head tilted down and looked at him. "Have I convinced you yet, or should I tell you them as well?"

He was mostly convinced; he could see small echoes of Wolf in Li, but, what were the chances that he would meet someone he knew in Second Life in real life? He shook his head to Li's question. "It just seems... unlikely that I'd meet anyone from the game."

Li waved a hand in agreement. "I know what you mean – I wasn't sure it was you because you were so different from Gui."

'So diff-' Gui Wen's thoughts halted as the realisation of what a person from Second Life actually knowing him meant. Guileastos was a homo, a blatant homo in Second Life – if people took that as a sign –

"Gui," Li said firmly, bringing his attention back to him.

He'd dropped his book on the table, it having slipped from his limp fingers. He could feel his heart thudding in his chest, but his face was cold, he could feel it. "I'm not – I'm not-!"

Li interrupted his panicked stuttering. "It's a game, Gui. People play it to get away from real life-"

"Or to do things they can't normally do or show," he stressed. Li probably thought that he was hiding the fact that he was homosexual, and that Gui was the real Gui Wen.

"Gui," Li sighed, rubbing his forehead. "You're saying this to a person who plays as a bipedal wolf, and is married to someone in a game." He looked him in the eyes, almost smiling. "You haven't seen me when I'm near any women, have you?"

"But that isn't-"

"Isn't it? In Second Life, you're playing a role; maybe how you really want to act or to have fun." Li ignored the protests Gui Wen tried to make, talking over him and not stopping. "How you spend your free time is your business, and it's not as if you're hurting anyone – just the opposite, since you're the one who keeps getting beaten up afterwards," he said.

He wasn't threatening to expose his 'secret', or do any sort of action against him and he was trying to calm him down instead. That… was the Wolf he knew. Gui Wen shrugged, muttering, "It doesn't hurt that much and, it's... funny seeing how Prince reacts." He had an IQ of two-hundred and that was still the best explanation he could come up with?

Li tilted his head, his small smile growing fond. "He seems to find it cathartic, doesn't it?"

A puff of air escaped from him before he could stop it. "I've noticed." His fingers started playing with the edge of the book as he remembered some of those memories. He sighed, bringing his attention back to the present. "I still don't understand – the way I act on Second Life, it isn't acceptable; shouldn't you be..."

Li was shaking his head to what he was saying. "If I was – if any of us in Odd Squad were disgusted by the way you act in Second Life, why do we keep playing with you?"

The question made him pause. "There's less repercussions if you associate with me there," he argued. But that didn't sound right to him. There were less repercussions in Second Life, yes, but there was also less keeping them from playing with him – if they really didn't want to, they could just leave the team.

"You know, I'm developing an urge to hit you the next time we meet on Second Life," Li said dryly. "You're being stubborn. Look, Second Life is just that: a second life. Your lives aren't connected to each other if you don't want them to be. Min Gui Wen is not Guileastos," he stated. "How about I use Prince as another example - I would hope that he doesn't act exactly like as he does in Second Life, or else there could be a psychopath on the loose."

"But," Gui Wen said, frowning, as he thought it over, "with the number of swordspeople, thieves, and all the other kinds of jobs that use physical force, probably half of the population who play online games should be arrested for... enjoying it." Ah. He could still see Li's smile, even though he'd tried to hide it by turning his head away. He weighed the idea from the new perspective, considering it.

"Min Gui Wen is not Guileastos," Li repeated. "They're two mostly separate people, connected by a number of things, but they can be two completely different people if the player wants them to be." Li's eyes wandered around the library, before he glanced at his watch. "Ah. I've got to go." He stood up from his chair and pushed it back in place after he'd stepped away from it. "I won't be telling anyone about Gui, all right?" he reassured him. "See you later," he said before he walked away.

Gui Wen watched him until he left the library, mulling over the entire conversation.

Wait... If what a person was like in real life could be different to how they were in Second Life, then Li shouldn't have been calling him Gui. It could have been habit, but if Wolf was trying to – Li. Li was trying to... Huh. Now that he knew Li was Wolf, and he wasn't panicking as much, he was internally relabeling 'Li' as 'Wolf'. If he was having this problem with... Li, when Li didn't look anything like his character, no wonder he'd been calling him 'Gui'. Which would explain Li's slips then.

But he'd need more time to think about everything – it was a lot to take in.

xOx

The café Gui Wen was in was quiet; not many people were occupying it at that moment and the music playing in the background was barely over speaking level.

"You seem a little exhausted," someone said behind him.

He looked up tiredly from the cup of coffee he had in his hand. "Last night's training was brutal, and I'm never forgiving you for the sheer amount of torture you put us through," he declared. It probably would have sounded more threatening if he had sounded like he actually knew how to inflect his voice, and he hadn't yawned halfway through.

Li didn't look at all scared by his words. "Which is why you said 'I look forward to seeing all of you tomorrow and hope we level up as much as we did today!' just before you logged off?"

He blinked at him, trying to remember if that was what he had said. "I didn't say that."

"Yes, you did." The side of Wolf's mouth was lifting up in a half-smile.

"But," –'Gui? I?'- "I don't talk like that." He was fairly sure he hadn't been that tired last night to start talking out of character.

"It was something along those lines," Wolf dismissed, waving a hand.

And he still couldn't honestly recall saying anything remotely like that. After a few seconds of trying, Gui Wen gave up and shrugged. "I don't remember saying anything like that, which is just more proof that I needed rest after all that we'd done."

Wolf just chuckled and raised an eyebrow. "Maybe. But I'm still not changing the training schedule."

"Damn."

xOx

"How do we keep bumping into each other like this?" This time, he'd just finished shopping and was on his way home. His stock of coffee had run out days ago and this was the first time he'd bothered to replace it; the coffee shops were nice, but he liked the taste of his homebrewed coffee better. "The school year hasn't even started yet."

"Perhaps it is our fate for our paths to cross continually," he said, winking. "Our destiny writ in the stars that we are to..." He trailed off, realising what he was saying, who he was saying it to, and where they were.

Wolf was staring at him, eyes wide. "Okay, okay, I'll ease up on the training then."

... Well, that was rather embarrassing.

xOx

"You know," Gui Wen said conversationally. Wolf looked up from the book he was reading, startled. For once, he was the one happening across Wolf, rather than the other way around. "Maybe I was right – this is the fourth time we've met in under two weeks." He'd been rest deprived at the time, but maybe it wasn't so farfetched. There had to be some reason why they kept coincidently bumping into each other without trying to. This was the second time they'd met in the library; it was even the same table.

"I think Prince would be disappointed," Wolf commented, placing his book down gently.

Would he? Gui wasn't getting any more of the mixed signals he'd gotten from Prince like when they'd first met and Prince was making it clear he didn't want any advances from anyone.

He flopped onto the nearest chair, posing with a hand in the air. "Oh, but if it is our destiny to do so," he said, channelling Gui. At least this time, he was doing it intentionally.

"Yulian would probably want a word with you," Wolf cut through the speech before he could get going properly.

Ah. "...She'd probably keep on killing me until I was back to level one, wouldn't she?"

Wolf nodded. "Most probably, yes."

Right. Definitely make sure he kept his antics directed at Prince then.

xOx

Gui Wen stared up at the ceiling through the sleeping headset, waiting to fall asleep. It had been an interesting number of days, in both Second Life and real life.

Odd Squad was progressing well, though the tournament was looming closer and closer with each passing day. It had also been interesting seeing Wolf in real life during that time and actually seeing him as a person, rather than just a character that he played with. After Wolf had revealed both of them and the conversation that had followed after that, he'd thought that he really could separate 'Gui Wen' from 'Guileastos' with no problems.

Because he couldn't, not completely. He didn't know if it was because they were 'bleeding' into each other, or if he wasn't caring as much about what was acceptable or not anymore. The biggest priority he had in his life now was to have fun, since he'd never had the chance to before.

Min Gui Wen was different from Guileastos, but at their centre, they were the same person. There were different expectations on how they were supposed to act, but it was ultimately his decision if he adhered to them or not.

He had been a loner before, separated from everyone else because of his IQ and being more interested in reading books than interacting with other people, and while he was still mostly a loner in real life, he wasn't as cut off as he'd used to be.

The room darkened as his eyelids began to droop. He was no longer willing to submit so much to other people's expectations, not unless he actually wanted to. He would act how society wanted him to act in real life, but in Second Life, he would do what he wanted, without having to think if it was 'right' or what other people would think about him.

He would act how he wanted to in Second Life and, while he wasn't a homo, he was being truer to himself doing that.

He drifted off to sleep, anticipating what would happen in today's adventures, a smile on his face.