There's an unspoken agreement among the members of MEKA programme that certain aspects of their occupation should never be mentioned to the wider public, nor should they be discussed among themselves.

Some of these are easy, ordinary things. They generally, for example, try to avoid slipping out of their personas, even when it's just them. It's easier that way, to be the fearless MEKA pilots in the face of odds that one day will become insurmountable. Each of the Gwishin attacks is harder to repel than the last. Each brush with death now seems more a solid shoulder-check. The public need not know, and PR would fry their asses if they ever showed anything but confidence. Privately, they all already know, and none particularly enjoys talking about how they'll likely not see their thirtieth year.

It's just more fun to be the fearless Casino, , King and Overlord than just the very mortal Jae-eun, Yuna, Kyung-soo, and Seung-hwa.

It feels good to forget they're not invincible.

Easier.

And then, there are… other, less mundane things.

"Hey, Hana." Yuna pokes her head into the the other girl's room, from where she hasn't emerged once for two days running. If the Chat is to be believed, and she has no reason to disbelieve them, the streamer hasn't even gotten up in that time. "We're ordering take-out, you want some too?"

"Y :3 :3 :3"

It's largely thanks to prolonged exposure that the older girl manages to ignore the impossibility of the words she's just heard. Exposure and repression. Don't think about it is a good motto to live by as a soldier, and doubly so with someone like Hana on their team. Ultimately, she doesn't need to know how her teammate still appears to have recently emerged from the shower, two days later. She doesn't need to know how she hasn't taken a break from streaming in uninterrupted 52 hours.

Doesn't want to know, either.

"Cool. You're gonna eat with us? We're doing a tournament, later."

"?"

"Tekken," she answers. "The winner picks the next LAN party game."

"!"
The girl perks up in her chair, a fierce smile twisting her features, the sort she usually wears before going into battle.
"im picking Total War"

"Cool your horses, Hana, you haven't won yet." Not that it's an unlikely conclusion of their little competition. Hana is known to pull victories straight out of the crack of her ass no matter how mathematically impossible, and making it look easy to boot; as if she were simply playing with them the whole time just to yank the rug from under their feet.

" ;P
i gotta wrap the stream up first
b there in a few"

Yuna doesn't linger. It's not that she dislikes interacting with Hana, it's just that dealing with the girl for prolonged periods of time can be… difficult, on one's lonesome. Always has been. Yuna may have more practice than the others when it comes to dealing with her but- it's just easier with others. The world makes more sense when there are more people to share Hana with

It's- comforting, she supposes, the understanding they share, in the way that sharing a hardship with others brings a kind of comfort to a troubled heart. It makes it almost normal that she finds Hana already there when she enters the common area, laughing along at some joke with the others, like she's supposed to be there, and hasn't just somehow skipped passing Yuna by on the only route from her room to here.

She made the mistake of asking, years ago, like everyone who sticks around does at some point, and unfortunately for her, the younger girl was only too cooperative with her answers.

She wishes she could take it back. Most often late into night, with earphones in to drown out the unbidden thoughts.


(If you're interested in this story I recommend to read it on AO3. I can use actual emojis there as opposed to this hack of a site)