"What does that mean?"
"Appearance sync?"
The answer came immediately.
From every player. Bodies flickered, forms destabilising as the system took hold, reshaping, correcting, pulling everything back to something real.
Ellie flinched slightly as the effect passed over her, her body tightening instinctively before relaxing again just as quickly.
She blinked, looked down at herself. Then back up. "…that's it?"
She turned slightly, checking her reflection in a nearby window, brushing her hand over her hair out of habit. Nothing had changed. Well, almost nothing. She shifted her weight, frowning slightly. "…did I get shorter? It was subtle. Maybe an inch. Barely noticeable. She huffed softly, half amused, half confused. "…okay, sure that was stupid, Liam, what did yo-"
She turned back toward Liam and instantly froze. Because Liam wasn't Liam anymore. Not the one she knew in-game, he was the one she knew, idolised, and loved secretly, in real life.
His body flickered once, then expanded. It happened all at once, like fireworks. There was a pop. Armour cracked first. Too-small plates split apart under sudden strain as his frame stretched, widened, grew into something that didn't fit the proportions it had been forced into before. The sound of it breaking was sharp, metal giving way as his shoulders broadened. His posture rose. His presence shifted from something small and strange into something overwhelming.
Ellie didn't move.
Where moments ago there had been a small, quiet figure, now someone else entirely stood before her.
Tall, far too tall. At least 6'5, maybe more, his frame broad and solid, making space around him without trying, muscle and structure built naturally into him as it had always been. His silver hair fell cleanly around his face, catching the fading light, and his eyes—red, sharp and clear. His features were… complete. There was no awkwardness, no imbalance, nothing unfinished about him. Strong jaw, clean lines, a face that drew attention without asking for it, the kind that made people look twice before they even understood why. And then he saw her staring, and he smiled wide, easy, unaware, goofy even.
Ellie's brain caught up all at once. Her entire face went red. Not a light flush, immediate and Explosive. Her mouth opened before she could stop it. "LIAM?" People nearby turned, but she didn't care. "LIAM YOO?" Her voice cracked on his name, disbelief stronger than anything as she stared at him, as if reality had just broken.
Because she had.
"…uh," he said, voice low, deep, rough in a way that didn't match anything she had heard from him before, the sound of it enough to make two people nearby glance over instinctively. He rubbed the back of his neck slightly. Then smiled again.
"Hi Elizabeth."
That made it worse, so much worse. Ellie stepped back. Then another, still staring.
This was the guy from the ceremony. The one she had watched from a distance. The one she had wanted to talk to, the one every girl ever wanted to talk to, even the teachers blushed when they saw him. even the men. She had spent hours, hours, walking around with him, thinking he was. Ellie immediately covered her face with both hands. "…no," she muttered, voice muffled, mortified. "no no no no no."Her brain replayed everything. Calling him a child. Patting his head. Dragging him around. Talking down to him. Her shoulders tensed. Her entire body locked. Then she slowly lowered her hands. Looked at him again. Still red. Still in shock, "…you," she started, then stopped, then tried again, "you let me—"
She couldn't even finish the sentence.
Liam tilted his head slightly. Confused. Not embarrassed. Not bothered. Just… confused. "…you didn't ask," he said simply. That didn't help at all.
Ellie made a sound somewhere between a groan and a choke, turning slightly away as she tried to recover, one hand still half covering her face. Behind them, the crowd was still reacting, people shouting, laughing, some shocked, some excited, most screaming that they would sue, but none of it mattered to her anymore.
Right now, this was way worse. She peeked, just for a second, then looked away.
"...you're tall," she managed to whisper, looking up at him in disbelief.
Liam looked down at himself again. "...yeah," he said, as if just noticing.
And somehow, that made her blush harder.
Liam chuckled deeply and smiled again, then patted her head and said, "Guess you're the little one now, huh?"
She peeked at him again. Just a fraction of a turn, just enough to catch the shape of him in her peripheral vision. The broad line of his shoulders. The way his chest filled out that simple black shirt, fabric pulling slightly where it sat open at the collar. White hair catching light. Those red irises, calm and unbothered, scanning his own hands like he was checking for software bugs.
Her stomach dropped straight through the floor.
She forced herself to look away, studying a random rock on the ground.
The rock did not help; she could smell him now, cedar, smoke, and something clean.
His hand was still on her head. He hadn't moved it. He wasn't even looking at her; he'd turned slightly, squinting at his own reflection in a shop window across the street, tilting his jaw like he was trying to figure out how his face worked now. Meanwhile, his thumb rested casually against the curve of her ear, and the pad of it was rough and ridiculously gentle at the same time, and she was going to combust.
She grabbed his wrist. Meant to shove it off. Didn't shove it off.
Her fingers barely wrapped halfway around.
"Stop…" Her grip tightened. "Stop patting me."
He glanced down at her. Way down. The height difference was absurd. She used to stand nearly at the same level as his old avatar. Now the top of her head barely cleared his collarbone, and she had to tilt her chin up to meet his gaze.
"You patted me first," he said matter-of-factly. "Back when I was small. Multiple times."
"That was!" She sputtered. "That was different."
"How."
"Because you were…" She gestured vaguely at him with her free hand, still gripping his wrist with the other, still not pulling it away from her head. "You were little. And round. And!"
"And now?"
The question hung there. Simple. No weight behind it. He genuinely wanted to know what adjective she'd pick. Her face burned so hot she was surprised the UI didn't flag a debuff. "Big," she said flatly. "You're big. Congratulations. Mystery solved."
He considered this. Nodded once, like she'd given him useful crafting intel. "Thanks," Liam replied.
He stretched—arms overhead, joints popping, the motion pulling his shirt taut across his chest and exposing a strip of pale stomach above his waistband—and then dropped his arms with a satisfied exhale, completely unaware that he'd just committed a war crime.
"Hungry," he announced, rubbing his stomach for emphasis.
Ellie stared at the strip of skin that had just disappeared back under black fabric. Her brain attempted to reboot.
"…what?"
"I said I'm hungry." He looked down at her again with that same placid expression, red gaze, patient and unhurried. One ear flicked. "You okay? Your face is really red."
"It's a SKIN CONDITION," she snapped, loud enough that three nearby players turned to look.
He turned toward the market stalls, already scanning for ingredients, already moved on, already thinking about whatever recipe his brain had queued up next.
Ellie stood rooted to the spot. Her hand drifted up to the top of her head where his palm had been. The hair there was slightly mussed. Her ear still tingled.
She dropped her hand fast and shoved it into her pocket.
"A skin condition," she muttered to herself. "I told a six-foot-six albino wolf man that my blush is a skin condition," she lamented.
LLiam turned around quickly, surprising Ellie, who nearly walked into him. He said, "Actually, I need to do something irl. Let me be right back."
And when he went to log out, he couldn't; he couldn't find it. It was gone. There was no log out; you couldn't log out.
"Uhhhh, I don't know, but I can't log out. Can you?"
Ellie scoffed and pulled up her menu like this was something simple, something she could fix in a second if Liam had just missed it. "You're probably just not seeing it," she said, scrolling through her interface quickly. Her expression stayed casual for about two seconds before it shifted. Not panic, not yet, just confusion as her eyes slowed, then stopped. She scrolled again, more carefully this time, checking every section, every tab, every option that should have been there.
"…wait."
Liam didn't move, just watched her.
Ellie kept scrolling, slower now, more deliberately, as if she expected it to appear if she just went carefully enough. It didn't. The space where it should have been stayed empty, clean, as it had never existed in the first place.
"…it's not here."
Liam frowned slightly and opened his own panel again, checking even though he already knew the answer.
Still nothing.
Around them, the event kept going like nothing was wrong. Fireworks burst overhead, players laughed, people cheered about rewards and items, and gold like this was still just a game they could leave whenever they wanted.
Ellie lowered her panel slowly and looked up at him, her expression no longer confused, not really. It had settled into something quieter, something heavier that hadn't fully formed yet but was already there. "...I can't log out," she said, voice small.
Liam didn't respond right away because he couldn't either.