A/N: Dedicated to all who have found love in this game called MapleStory. Just trying a slightly different style of writing.

If anyone were to ask you what I remember about you, my dearest Nadia, I'll say that I have no idea. Maybe I'll tell them about the way you laugh, your eyes twinkling as you throw your head back. Or the way you're feisty and headstrong, of how you make me putty in your hands. Or perhaps I'll tell them about the way you make me feel when you wrap your arms around me and pull me close, the way you'll ruffle my hair.

Yet I can tell them none of those things, for I've never met you, the love of my life. The closest I've come to meeting you is through the screen of my monitor, and the closest I've ever come to hearing you say you love me is through my headphones.

Ours was an online romance in the Internet era, two Gen-Ys that took a leap of faith. Call it rubbish, call it a fantasy, but our feelings were as real as any others'.

But in those halcyon days and nights, what I remember the most is your smile. The first time you F2-ed at me in the game, and that awkward and adorable grin you gave the camera when we exchanged selfies for the first time. Or the first time I saw your lips turn up in that tiny square that's your blurry webcam on your old Hewlett-Packard.

You are my salvation and my muse, my companion on those lonely nights as we ploughed through himes like there was no tomorrow. You'll teleport to both ends of the map, the himes on your trail, and I'll decimate them as they passed me by. I'll protect you, my dear Bishop, and in return you'll protect me, healing me when I Dragon Roared. We were a dream team, you and I, and the world was our oyster.

We were unstoppable, unbeatable, and I felt like we were forever.

It was our conversation and your words that kept me going on those 3am mornings; I was powered not by caffeine or Red Bull but by you. I am a machine but yet I am but flesh and blood, and if a heart can beat, then a heart can stop.

My heart stopped when I realised I was falling inexplicably in love with the person behind the level 125 Bishop in her Blue Bazura before me. And it stopped again when I confessed.

And when you said you felt the exact same way, I swear, I may well have just died.

MSNs and phone numbers were exchanged - whatever tool at our disposal we could use to encourage our budding romance, we who lived in different cities in entirely different countries.

Nadia; I learnt your name early on. Nadia and Timothy; I liked the sound of that. The sound of us.

I remember those long nights we spent together, exhausted after himes but yet awake enough to carry on conversations through Skype. Chatting about everything under the sun, we built the foundations of our love on our shared interests. You shared with me your insecurities, and I shared with you my worst fears. You were my listening ear and I was your crying shoulder.

You are beautiful, my dear Nadia, regardless of what you may think of yourself.

And then we broke up. Barely four months after we got together, you said you had enough. A long distance relationship wasn't fulfilling for you and although I've given it my all, it just wasn't enough.

My dearest Bishop, how I begged you to stay.

I couldn't understand. We had so much potential but you didn't want to believe in us. Did the late-night Skype calls mean nothing to you? Was my love not enough to make you stay?

There were many things I couldn't provide, but I was more than able to make it up to you should we meet. The word 'meeting' was always on the tips of our tongues, always talked about but never acted upon.

The closest we've gotten was when I mentioned my fleeting thought to fly to your country and city. We can meet, I pressed. I'll fly over to you.

And you talked me out of it, calling it unnecessary.

You said you'll prefer if things remained as they were, confined to Maplestory whispers, MSN messages, and Skype calls.

Dearest Nadia, lying in bed at 1 makes me think of you, again. Of those days where I thought we were forever, and that what we had between us was enough to see us through.

Sometimes I catch myself wondering whether it was better to have never met you. Those days and nights - will I gladly trade them all for a time without you, even if it were to spare me all the heartbreak?

I cannot.

And I find myself unable to even stand the thought of never chancing upon you in Henesys Channel 7, when I was asking for directions to himes as a lowly and foolish level 58 spearman.

In a world of 6 billion the odds are startlingly minuscule that I've met someone like you. A minute more and you'll have passed me by; a minute less and it's as though you've never existed.

Perhaps we were meant to be.

Perhaps we were not.

I curl up in a foetal position, and I start to cry. You are my salvation, my dear Nadia, but also my destruction, my angel and devil rolled into one. I find myself unable to live without you. Meeting you has changed everything I thought I knew, and now there's a void only you can fill.

And yet, I'll do it all over again.

But tell me, once and for all, my dear Bishop, what was I to you?