"No, Kyouya. Stop it!"
The name hit the air like a live wire.
The physical transformation in the man I was holding was instantaneous.
The "VelvetVice" persona—that flirtatious, gentlemanly mask—didn't just slip; it shattered. I felt his entire frame go rigid, a flash of genuine, unscripted shock vibrating through his arm and into my palms.
He didn't look at FullMetal. He looked at me.
His blue eyes, which had been dilated with a mix of arousal and irritation just seconds ago, were now sharp, cold, and dangerously focused.
There was a look of profound betrayal there—the kind that comes from realizing your partner in a death game just handed your head to the executioner on a silver platter.
I commanded, my voice firming up as I tried to force the genie back into the bottle,
"Punching him won't fix the game, and certainly won't change this hellhole's design."
I was talking to a wall.
Kyouya's gaze remained fixed on mine, heavy with a question I didn't want to answer: How do you know that name, and why did you say it in front of him?
I looked at FullMetal over my shoulder. He hadn't even flinched.
He just stood there, a living embodiment of his own philosophy—letting us suffer on our own terms. But he wasn't just observing a fight anymore.
He was collecting. I saw the way his eyes tracked the word "Kyouya," cataloging it, filing it away for a future move. He was watching us like we were data points in a lab, and I had just gifted him the most valuable data point in the room.
The tension in the room shifted from sexual to lethal. Velvet—Kyouya—slowly pulled his arm out of my grip. It wasn't a violent movement, but it was final.
The heat of the [SYSTEM ALERT] was still there, flickering at 40%, but the air between us was now freezing.
He looked down at me, his eyes searching for the "Midnight" he had nearly kissed, only to find a liability instead.
"Kyouya, huh." he repeated, his voice dropping into that lower, rougher register—the man underneath finally surfacing, and he sounded like he wanted to kill me.
"K-Kyouya, I—"
"Shut the fuck up."
"You really are a pathetic virgin motherfucker, aren't you? You don't even know how to keep your bitchy mouth shut."
The shift in the room's gravity was so abrupt I felt like my internal gyroscope had finally shattered. The lethal edge in Kyouya's eyes didn't soften, but the "Divine Slayer" standing by the door—the man who was supposed to be our most dangerous adversary—just offered a small, terrifyingly calm smile.
"I already knew," FullMetal said, his voice cutting through the suffocating tension like a scalpel. "And I have no intention of using it. I'll keep this a secret."
I froze. My mind, usually a high-speed processor of game mechanics and social manipulation, stalled. Why would he discard such a massive piece of leverage? In a survival game where information is the ultimate weapon, he was essentially handing us a blank check. It felt wrong. It felt like a trap designed by someone who played a game I didn't even have the manual for yet.
But before I could even formulate a "Mid Gamer" counter-theory, he turned his gaze directly toward me. The "average Japanese man" mask remained, but the intensity behind his eyes was anything but ordinary.
"However..." he started, his tone dropping into a register that made the hair on my arms stand up. "Please be careful next time, Mayo-san."
The air left my lungs.
Mayo.
My real name. The name belonging to the girl behind the "Midnight" avatar, the identity I had been guarding with every ounce of my tactical IQ. He didn't just know Kyouya; he knew me. He had peered through the digital interface and the "deep baritone" of my avatar to see the pathetic, trembling virgin underneath.
He didn't wait for a reaction. He didn't wait for me to deny it or for Kyouya to process this second, even more devastating security breach. He simply turned and walked back into the hallway, leaving the door slightly ajar—a literal and metaphorical opening in our defenses.
I stood there, the [SYSTEM ALERT: LIBIDO STATUS] mocking me with its persistent 40% flicker. I had been worried about losing my dignity to a kiss, but I had just lost my entire existence to a man who claimed he was playing "fair."
Fucking liar. He didn't even hesitate revealing mine.
I looked at Kyouya.
The silence between us was no longer "airtight" or "tantalizing." It was heavy with the realization that we weren't the ones playing mind-games. We were the ones being played.
"Mayo..." Kyouya whispered, the name sounding foreign and dangerous in his mouth.
He wasn't looking at me like a teammate or a target anymore.
He was looking at me like a ghost.
The sound of it—my actual, flesh-and-blood name—didn't just break the silence; it de-synced my entire existence from the server.
I had always accounted for the possibility that a monster like the Divine Slayer had backdoors into the system, but I never imagined it would be handled like this.
Not as a climactic reveal, but as a casual, almost polite piece of advice given while walking out a door.
I stood paralyzed, my fingers still tingling where they had touched Kyouya's sleeve, but my focus had shifted entirely away from the Libido status or the technical glitch. The realization hit me with the weight of a physical blow: anonymity, the only shield a top-tier gamer like me had left, was dead. If he could drop our names this casually, it meant the digital interface was a joke—a transparent veil over our real, vulnerable lives. Our addresses, our families, our past failures; everything was now a variable for FullMetal to manipulate at will. This wasn't a survival game anymore. It was a total, terrifying exposure of every nerve we had tried to hide behind our avatars.
I really wanted to cry now. Not a feminine sob, and not the jagged smile but the sound of someone realizing they've been playing a rigged game from the very first frame.
I just wanted to log out of a reality that was becoming far too real.
I stood paralyzed, my fingers still tingling where they had touched Kyouya's sleeve.
My primary concern shouldn't have been the Libido status or the technical glitch anymore. It was the terrifying realization that anonymity, the one thing that leveled the playing field for a top gamer like me, was dead.
If he could drop our names this casually, what was the point of the avatars?
What was even the point of the "Midnight" persona or the "VelvetVice" mask?
It meant the game wasn't just happening in this flickering digital interface; it was a direct pipeline to our real, vulnerable selves.
I looked at Kyouya, and I could see the same dark gears turning in his head. If our names were out, our lives were out.
Our addresses, our families, our past failures—everything was now a variable that FullMetal could manipulate whenever he felt bored with the "technical issues."
The anonymity wasn't just unimportant now; it was a fucking joke.
We were standing in a room with a man who could ruin us with a single keystroke in the real world, and he had just signaled that he was tired of playing by the rules of the simulation.
I felt a cold, hollow sensation in my chest. The system had promised a survival game, but this was becoming something else entirely.
It was a total exposure to every player's vulnerability.