Pretending to not understand the mechanics of StarCraft II hurts Hana on a personal level.

"No- no, put your hands here, you dolt!" Tara plants Hana's hand firmly over the keyboard. "You want a high APM, don't you?"

Hana scowls, even though her sides are fit to burst from contained laughter. To further sell her cluelessness, she sputters, "S-sorry, what's an APM?", though the definition of the acronym has been ingrained in her head for years now: Actions per Minute. Also a feature of one of Hana's most popular catchphrases- "Time to raise my APM!"

The look on Tara's face is a mixture of outrage and utter disgust. Hana hastily ducks her head behind her screen so that the older girl can't see her cheeks puff up with a muffled giggle. Why was this so damn funny?

"You said you've played StarCraft before, you little shit!"

Hana calms down enough to counter, "Only once or twice, and it was at a crappy PC cafe." She squints down at her borrowed holoboard, which is actually Amin's, and therefore not very well suited for gaming. Oh, well- she's played in worse conditions before. "I get the gist of the game, though. So don't bother going easy on me."

By no means is Tara bad at StarCraft. Hell, she's probably in the upper echelons of the game's playerbase, which is saying something because she's just a casual. Hana had just watched her stomp some poor scrub to pieces with some seriously clever tactics.

But if Tara is champion, then Hana is a god, complete with a legion of mindless followers numbering in the millions.

Practice has something to do with it. Streaming and MeTube ad revenue was her only source of income for years, and keeping her family afloat, what with Father's tremendous debts and all, is no easy task even if you stream for every day, every year.

And talent- Hana knows she has talent. It's what got Overwatch to message her in the first place. If practice hasn't widened the gap between Hana and the rest of the world's reaction times enough, then it's talent that drives them so far apart that sometimes Hana wonders if they're the same species.

A high reaction time. God, what a practical skill. Instead of dealing with her mother's drunkenness and father's absence by facing them head on, she can just game it all away. It's such a gut-wrenchingly sad fact that it's become sort of hilarious.

The frown on Tara's face is replaced by a small, self-satisfied smirk as she logs in. Obviously she thinks that Hana is just another easy win. Hana would've felt bad for her if she didn't secretly feel so damned upset at Tara's underestimation of her abilities. Mastery breeds contempt for those who are lesser, and Hana is bathing in her mastery of the game.

Though, she's also partly just excited to start playing. It's been what- more than a week? For most of her life, a single day hadn't gone by in which she didn't play. With the absence of the game came a newly revived hunger for it, to taste the delicious salt of some player's tears as she giggled into a mic.

Of course, she also has to be very careful. If she plays too well, Tara will become suspicious. What with the recent disappearance of DVA and all, Hana is certain that Tara will be able to put two and two together. Though… it's still a rather far leap of logic to think that the grubby little street urchin with no home is actually a famed gamer (that Tara apparently watches on stream. Hana's not sure how she feels about that.)

On the other hand, if she plays too poorly, she will lose. Human pride deigns that Hana would rather die than be defeated at the one thing she has complete control over.

"Are you ready?" asks Tara, her coarseness temporarily muted under sheer excitement.

Hana reigns her emotions in with a shaky hand. "Of course." Game on.


She tries to drag out the match. It lasts seven minutes.

The silence in the air weighs heavily on Hana's shoulders. She sweats nervously as she peers at Tara from behind the safety of Amin's holoboard. The girl is a stock-still mass of jumpy nerves and total anger.

Hana's about to shut down Amin's holoboard when Tara's arm shoots out and grabs it, preventing her from closing the top. "No," she snarls, eliciting a jump from Hana. "Again."

The next match is as one-sided as the first, mainly because Hana is fueled by a burning determination to beat her soundly now. Tara thinks she can win? Against Hana? She can hear Tara's fingers pounding into the keys like they had killed her family from three feet away. It doesn't prevent her from losing, though, and Hana, feeling a little bit more confident, has to resist the urge to smirk as Tara demands, flustered, "Once more!"

Hana clicks her tongue as she complies. That wasn't enough for you, huh? A devilish smile breaks out across her face, small but insistent.

Fine.

The will to not unleash the full extent of what she can do drains slowly away. Her fingers fly across the worn plastic of the keyboard as the sound of frantic clicking echoes through the electrically charged air. Then, with a rush of exhilaration, the proverbial dam holding her back strains as she gradually speeds up to match Tara's also increasing APM. She's in her element now; this is where she has complete control. Both girls squint furiously at their holoboards, which flicker under the intensity of their screen-rocking key-punching.

One minute passes. Then, two minutes. Three minutes, four minutes-

At five minutes, VICTORY! flashes across Hana's screen in bold white lettering, partly mirroring the DEFEAT that flashes across Tara's. Maybe I've overdone it, she thinks as she checks on her opponent. The stunned look on her face is worth the suspicion Hana had probably garnered with this little stunt.

A bit of childish glee seeps through her blank face, causing the corner of her lip to twitch upwards. That's right. I won.

Tara is speechless even when Hana shuts Amin's laptop with a soft click. She yawns and stretches out her arms, feigning boredom. "Video games are easier than I thought."

Usually she'd expect someone like Tara to shoot back a snappy comeback. However, the paleness of the girl's skin indicates that she has basically become a block of ice.

"Tara?" she ventures. The girl in question blinks twice in rapid succession, closes her holoboard with an especially forceful click, and stands up, looming over Hana.

Hana scrambles backwards to the corner of the couch, all of a sudden feeling all too small. "What-"

"How did you do that?"

"How did I do what?"

Tara gestures towards her closed holoboard, sharp features still pulled back in a scowl. Her tank-top and shorts are rumpled, lending to her a slightly deranged look. "That's not- that's not possible."

"I just did it, so I'd say it is," says Hana shortly, trying to keep herself as blasé as possible. "What, you're that upset that I won?"

She can almost see the gears in Tara's head turning.

"Who are you?" Tara finally snaps, nostrils flaring like some sort of mad ox. "There is no way you're new to StarCraft. Meaning you're definitely not homeless, and you're rich enough to either own a computer or regularly go to a PC café."

Her next words hang unspoken in the air: Meaning you're taking advantage of Amin's kindness.

Damn, Hana screwed up big time. And all just to have a little fun, too. Should she have matched Tara's skill level more closely?

"Wh-what? I am homeless," defends Hana hastily, unsure of how to assuage Tara's sudden anger. Just as she was getting comfortable with this gruff, loud girl, she finds herself getting threatened by her. Absolutely wonderful. And over a game, no less.

"Who are you?" Tara repeats with an air of disbelief, knuckles cracking intentionally loud. "And don't you dare lie to me."

Hana is fairly certain that Tara is ready to pummel her into the ground without a second thought, fun times gaming together be damned. Her speech comes out sharp and frantic. "I already told you. I'm Hana Song, fourteen or fifteen years old, and I really don't have anywhere to go. Okay?"

Tara's voice is as icy as her countenance. "Your name is Hana Song?"

Hana tries to gather herself into a less compromising position than the one she's currently in- jammed into the space between an armrest and a velvet cushion. "Yes. Hana Song; are you deaf?" Wait, no. "I mean, no, my name is Tokki." Ahhh, fuck, she's an idiot, a naïve idiot-

Tara advances even further towards Hana. What is she going to do? This situation had spiraled completely out of Hana's control into something outrageous. She tries to think of something to say, but the only thought in her head is that Tara knows my full name, and she knows that I'm a liar.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-

"Whoops," Hana says, far more calmly than she feels. I need to get out of here. "That was just a slip-up-"

She rolls off the couch, grabbing at her duffel bag, which lies partly unzipped by the coffee table. As soon as her hand wraps around the coarse fabric of its handle, she makes a run for it. Towards the door. It's time to leave-

Hana doesn't make it very far. Tara swears, and actually reaches forward and grabs the scruff of Hana's borrowed blouse, pulling Hana far closer to Tara than she's comfortable with.

Fuck, fuck-

Hana grabs Tara's arm and tries to twist it away, but the girl must've been serious when she said she was a fifth-degree black belt in taekwondo, because Hana might as well be trying to bend a steel bar.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" demands Tara, short hair flying in her face as she tries to keep the wriggling Hana in her place, posture and demeanor reminiscent of a drill sergeant. "You lie and then you run?"

Maybe a physical response is uncalled for, but it's the type of response Hana knows best. So she lashes out with a foot at the junction of Tara's knee, whereupon, in theory, the girl should stumble and fall.

It connects with a sold thack, and instead it's Hana that falls back with a yelp because her foot throbs like she'd kicked a brick. What the hell is this girl made of?

Her pitiful attempt at a kick only further angers Tara. "What, you want me to let go?" she asks, scowling as she readjusts her grip. "So you can run away to somewhere else? Away from your daddy issues?"

Daddy issues? Something about that stings. Hana screws up her face to yell back a petty insult, but DVA seizes control with what little grace remains of her, forcibly lowering her volume and evening out her tone.

"You don't know anything about me," she says in the end, voice wavering back-and-forth between calm and cold. You don't know what I've gone through to get here!

Tara snaps.

"Oh, yeah? You think so ? You aren't the first stray we've taken in, Hana," she seethes. "And I think I know plenty enough. Your parents don't care, or maybe they're dead, whatever the fuck- so you get into trouble and you try to run from it all. And then kind people like Amin take you and in the end they're the ones that get blasted for all the hell you've raised, y'know that? Just shut up, sit down, and take the help you can get."

That's not true, Hana wants to shout, but the words are stuck in her throat, because- because it's true that she's running. She blinks furiously and opens her mouth to speak, but now she's afraid to say anything, because it has taken less than twenty minutes for Tara to figure out that Hana is a liar from what little she had already said-

Why did I think this was a good idea?

She swings a fist at Tara's unprotected face. Tara grunts at the blow, drops Hana, who stumbles backwards with stinging knuckles.

Blood dribbles from Tara's nose as her gaze meets Hana's.

Hana's prepared for a barrage of insults. Hana's prepared to grab the duffel bag and run. She's prepared to head straight towards the subway station, to tell Tracer-nim that there's been a change of plan…

"Go on," Tara spits. She wipes at her nose, leaving a long, red streak across her face.

"Run away."

And just like that, Hana is effectively locked in place. Weighed down by an anchor of pride and a burning desire to prove this girl wrong. Even if she longs to just bolt from the apartment, to let them face Talon's wrath on their own…

I can't. She needs to calm down. She needs to have a place to stay. She's no coward; Genji had told her she was brave, and Genji has yet to be wrong. Besides, if she runs now- leaves them to deal with the Talon raid that is sure to come in the near future- Hana will forever be haunted by the thought that maybe I killed them.

Hana takes a deep breath, tucks her hair behind her ear. This childish bout of fury had almost destroyed the tenuous relationship she had begun to build between herself and the household's residents.

"I... I'm sorry," she says stiffly, as if she's painfully coughing up words of broken glass. "Please let me stay here for just a bit longer."

Tara just stares. She replays the ridiculousness she had just caused in the theater of her own head.

I lied to the host. When they became angry, I kicked them. When they got even angrier, I punched them in the face. They ordered me to leave, and I- I need to stay. I need to convince-

Tara takes a step forward, expression unreadable. Even so, she has what has often been referred to as a resting bitch face, and it's just as terrifying to witness as her angry face. Hana keeps her head mostly down, trying not to flinch away. She's sure that she's going to get scolded… maybe even hit?

She nearly jumps a foot when Tara's hand comes down on her shoulder, heavy and damning. The older girl's words are low, but just an infinitesimal bit gentler as she steers Hana back to the couch.

"C'mon, we're having a rematch."

She sits Hana down on the couch, who's more stunned than confused. Tara drops down next to her, propping open her own holoboard with a casualness that simply should not be there, considering the blood that is now streaked across her face.

Hana figures she should just go along with this sudden change of mood without question. Instead she sputters in a disbelieving sort of way, "You're not upset with me?"

Tara snorts and wipes at her nose again, creating a discolored splotch of light red on her otherwise unmarked face. "Well, I already knew that you were lying about basically everything. And now that you've admitted it- and apologized- I don't have anything to be angry with." She meets Hana's eyes again with a measured gaze, lips twitching slightly. "And, uh… what I said about running away… from daddy issues." She fumbles with her words. "That was uncalled for."

What the hell was going on? The mood had switched in the complete opposite direction. "I shouldn't have kicked you in the first place," says Hana quickly, a strenuous sort of relief pooling in the air, thick as blood. Their first and hopefully last argument was cooling down as quickly as it had flared up, for which Hana is thankful. She doesn't know how to deal with… with people. Especially angry people.

Especially angry people that… are sort of growing on her.

She studies Tara, who is sheepishly rubbing her short, wild hair. It's only now that she notices the web of band-aids crisscrossing the older girl's knuckles, pale against her tanned skin.

And Hana admits, finally, "It's true that I… I lied."

That's right. Tara knows more about Hana than is safe for either of them. A full name, a location, age, current health condition. The risk of Talon getting ahold of the Lee family, in Hana's mind, is at an all-time high.

Tara brings Hana's attention back to the present with an arched eyebrow and incredulous tone. "Of course you did. D'you seriously think Amin and I believed that your name was Tokki? What sort of weird name is that?"

Sure, it was a stupid name, but Genji's limited command of Korean heavily narrowed the pool of options. She grips her bracelet a little tighter. "I'm not the one who came up with it."

The girl shoots Hana a questioning look. The sun's glare shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows illuminates a halo of dust around her head, flickering softly in the artificial lighting. "Then who did?"

Hana opens Amin's holoboard and clicks on the StarCraft icon without much heart. "A friend," she mumbles. A brother. She can almost imagine Genji balled up on the floor, laughing like he's dying over this entire ridiculous confrontation.

She switches the topic to something more benign- "Your nose is… well, I, uh, punched you. Are you okay?"

Tara's harsh laugh grates on Hana's ears. "You call that a punch? Kiddo, you ain't gonna get anywhere with a wimpy little slap like that. Doubt you've ever been in a real fight before."

"You think so?" asks Hana dryly. She wishes Tara was right. The memory of blood coating her fingers when she pounded that anonymous Talon agent's skull into the pavement hasn't been blurred by time or the trauma from the incident at all, like she'd expected it to. It remains so painfully vivid- the way brain matter and fluid dripped from the jagged orifice in the man's skull, crusted w-

"Hana?" Tara ventures cautiously. She's staring.

Hana swallows, hard. Her throat feels like sandpaper.

"Hey." Tara gives Hana's shoulder a little shake. She slaps Tara's hand away without a second thought.

"Don't touch me," she says without bite. "Ever." A flush of embarrassment spreads across her face, but she decides, firmly, that this is a necessary action. She needs to set boundaries now, before Tara mistakenly believes that randomly poking her is okay. Because it is most definitely not.

Hana focuses on the screen in front of her. "Are you logged in yet?"

Instead of responding, Tara closes down her holoboard with a frown. Hana blinks. "W-What are you doing?"

"Dude," the older girl says slowly. "I'm real sorry if I spooked you. By, er, grabbing you like that." She makes a vague arm-swinging movement that's probably supposed to represent her seizing the front of Hana's blouse. "I have some anger issues… mood swings, and the like. But- I would never actually... hurt you. So…"

So that explains Tara's rather extreme and sudden change in temperament. There's raw guilt in her words, as saturated in her voice as Tracer's had been over the transceiver. It produces a similar effect, too- Hana immediately feels like a terrible person.

"Oh. No, no," she says quickly, shutting down Amin's holoboard as well. "I'm not scared of you."

Tara raises an eyebrow again, and Hana, realizing how impetuous she must sound, amends, "I mean- It has nothing to do with you." The tips of her ears are burning red, and she's glad that her hair hides them so well.

She finishes, "I just don't like being touched in general. By anyone." Except Genji. "It's a problem with me, not a problem with you."

The girl runs a hand through her hair. "Regardless of who's problem it is, it's still a problem," she says, sounding just a tad bit relieved.

Hana blinks. She'd never thought of it that way.

Maybe because it's not true?

"No, it's something I have to deal with," Hana says firmly. She taps her holoboard. "Now are we going to play, or what?"


Hana reigns herself, playing just well enough to beat Tara and nothing more, until Amin comes back at around six o'clock, appearing especially serene in her long grey coat. To Hana's relief (and Tara's relief as well, if her quiet exhalation of breath is any indication), Amin doesn't seem to notice Tara's slightly bruised nose. She hums and tries to cook them chicken for dinner, despite not actually being able to consume food. Tara grumbles about how it tastes like a burnt tire. Hana assures the flustered Omnic that it tastes delicious.

Sneaking out onto the balcony after Amin starts charging her battery turns out to be a terrible idea. Tara notices Hana's absence almost immediately, and nearly catches her in the act of calling Tracer. Only some quick fumbling and an especially big coat pocket saves her from a copious explanation as to why she has a military-grade transceiver on her person, and what she was about to do with it.

Tara is a mystery to her, but then again, Hana almost never has clear-cut impressions of people. Mr. Seon had scared her, certainly, but she had never quite understood why he did the horrible things he did, so he remained a comic-book villain in her life: comically evil for the sake of being comically evil, with no redeemable qualities to speak of, and no Batman to hunt him down. The stranger that was her mother had motives as unclear as her speech when she was drunk- never directly abusing her, but allowing others to kick her to the dust if they so wanted. Tracer was everything she had hoped and everything she had desperately wished not to be true all at once, and thinking about Genji caused physical pain in her head from all the why's and what's and how's.

The Lees were very much the same way. In the beginning, Tara seemed to be about as friendly as Talon to her, while Amin was conversely too friendly to be real.

Which is why Hana is so at loss for words when Tara doesn't leave Hana on the balcony alone even after Hana hides the transceiver, clearly doing nothing worthy of suspicion. The older girl approaches the railing, next to Hana.

"Wotcha doing out here?" she asks gruffly. Awkwardly. It's a little charming and Hana holds back a chuckle.

"Looking out of the city. Isn't it pretty?" She turns towards the horizon, set ablaze by a setting sun. The sky is already a deep indigo, illuminated by a backdrop of neon city lights spiraling high into the air, scattered, blinking, in the distance. Her heart swells. The coast had been gorgeous, but Hana finds herself quite liking this urban sort of dwelling as well.

It's odd to think that this is her first time experiencing this feeling when she's lived in Busan her entire life, and this remarkable view was just outside her window. What a waste of a life I've led.

"Guess so," says Tara dubiously. "Isn't it cold outside, though? Amin was getting worried you'd catch a cold."

That's not true at all; Hana had checked to make sure that Amin was turned off at the charging system. Tara was suspicious and came out to investigate out of her own volition.

Instead of calling her out, Hana leans over the railing, suspended over the stories of nothingness. No point in antagonizing her any further. "Amin thinks humans are a lot more fragile than they actually are," she says breezily.

Tara rubs at one bare arm with a shiver. "Fragile? Hardly. Dumb? Probably, because it is too cold outside. Get your ass back in here."

"Tara, try not to swear at our guest," came the soothingly female voice of Amin from behind the two. Hana turns to see the Omnic backlit by the living room, standing poised at the center of the doorframe. She doesn't need to look at Tara to know that the girl is scowling.

"Mom-"

"-I am not finished," Amin continued, voice floating like a melody. She clasps her hands together, blue lights dimming slightly. "I don't want my girls getting into fights, either. Especially not with each other."

All significance of Amin somehow noticing that Tara and Hana had gotten into a fight, however brief, is lost on Hana when she wonders at the words Amin used.

My girls. Not you girls, and not you and my girl.

Tara rubs at her head again, that sheepish look crossing her face, at odds with her tough delinquent look. "Knew you would notice," she mumbles under her breath. "You were always good at that sorta thing, huh?"

Amin takes the compliment with a lighthearted chuckle. "Yes, so be careful. Keep safe." Her head swivels on a silvery neck of wires to look directly at Hana and nods ever so slightly. Hana swallows and nods back.

A silent assurance.


That night, an hour after Tara is snoring into a Hello Kitty pillow, Hana drowns her guilt with thoughts of what will happen if she doesn't leave the Lee family in due time. She thinks apologetically, as she grabs her duffel bag, I'm sorry for breaking my promise. Amin.

The threshold creaks under the weight of Hana's booted feet. She steps out of the apartment with a hood pulled low over her head. It's one of Tara's old raincoats that she swears she will return, after she gets back from her night walk, before the Lee household is even awake tomorrow morning.

Once Hana is standing outside the apartment complex, staring out into the glittering expanse of Busan, her transceiver emits a beep. She inspects the screen, its characteristic blackness having been replaced by a digital recreation of a map to Juseong Station.

Hana takes a deep breath. DVA grins confidently. The two press the red button.

"Tracer? I'm in location…"


Hana interacts with a girl around her age for the first time. This girl is violent and has extreme mood swings. It goes about as well as you might expect…

Was super busy this week, so this chapter was a bit delayed- sorry! Also I rewrote it about six times because the original version contained far too more foreshadowing than was necessary. The final document, as you see here, turned out twice as long as the original.

My dad is visiting me and my mom for the next couple weeks, so uploads will be a little erratic. But I promise you next chapter will have some sweet action, and... another Overwatch member introduction into the story? Hmm, we'll see!

Cultural Notes:
PC cafés, also known as PC rooms or 'PC bangs' in Korean, are basically Internet cafés specifically situated towards gaming. The room(s) are filled with computers with pre-installed games and high Wi-Fi speeds, making it an ideal place for students to meet up with their friends after school and play together.

Fun fact: StarCraft, League of Legends, and Overwatch are all very popular games in these cafés, with League being the most played game for many years. Very recently, Overwatch has overtaken that number one spot and has become the most played game in PC cafés in Korea!