Back to the scene when Ji Woo called So Hee from her dorm
When So Hee came down, a rush of relief and happiness washed over Ji Woo at the very sight of her. But he schooled his features into uncharacteristic seriousness. "Noona," he began, his voice low and intent. "I have something important to tell you."
Flustered by his grave tone and the memory of their last encounter, So Hee blurted out the speech she'd been rehearsing in her head all the way downstairs. "Ji Woo, wait! Before you say anything... just let me say this. Whatever you decide, I'll accept it. I don't want you to feel pressured." She added in a suppressed tone, I know you have a lot going on, and honestly... I'm not even sure if I want this, either." With her normal tone, she voiced, "My career is more important to me right now."
Ji Woo jolted as if struck, the word "career" reminded him his grand plans. He rose from the concrete bench. "Yes... you're absolutely right," he said, a new energy crackling in his voice. "Our careers are more important. That's exactly why I think you should join my startup."
"Startup?" So Hee repeated, the word landing between them, utterly unexpected.
"Yes. I'm planning to open a game development company. We'll start small. Just you... and me." The intensity in his eyes was purely professional, yet utterly captivating. "I haven't thought of anyone else but you. I came to you first. Well, we might need to gather a team of a few more people later, but—"
"That's what you wanted to tell me?" she interrupted, her voice a mixture of shock, embarrassment, and dawning amusement.
"Yes! I'm so excited. But Noona... will you join my startup? Please don't say no. You said you would accept whatever I said." A flicker of confusion finally crossed his face. "...How did you know I was going to ask you this?"
A faint blush colored So Hee's cheeks. She had almost confessed to a completely different conversation. "I know you," she said, her voice soft with a mixture of fondness and chagrin. "You called me here so late. I assumed you probably had some crazy, brilliant idea you couldn't contain."
The steamy encounter was never acknowledged, never breathed into existence by words. Yet, in the silent theater of their minds, both Ji Woo and So Hee nurtured a parallel reality - a vivid daydream where their lips had met, sparking a romance that filled their solitary worlds with a happiness they only dared to imagine in secret.
Fast forward to the current time when they are in their late 20s
YERIN was officially registered for the Nebula Games Cup 2025. The challenge was to develop a game inspired by a core element of Korean culture. With the submission deadline in one week - a more than manageable timeframe for them - the team began their work. The finalists' games would be test-played live on a global stage by top international gamers. Fortunately, YERIN already had a significant groundwork laid, giving them a crucial head start. Every day is crucial for a start up like YERIN. They hired more people, more tester more programmer for the D-Day ahead.
Despite the bulk of their work being complete, few critical tasks remained unfinished. As the deadline loomed, the team's composure began to fray under the mounting pressure. Though Ji Woo was the boss, it was So Hee who stepped into the fray, channeling her inner college senior to deliver sharp, effective scoldings that instantly refocused everyone. Ji Woo watched in awe at her skill in navigating these tense moments; her reprimands were a delicate art, fierce enough to command fear yet precise enough to motivate. Truth be told, the team feared her, and even Ji Woo felt a flicker of that same healthy respect. Yet, he found himself increasingly drawn to her presence, often catching himself staring without realizing it. Once, Dong Geun noticed his gaze and tried to tease him, but Ji Woo deftly managed to evade by saying he was zoning out.
The air in the office was electric, thick with the kind of focused tension that precedes a storm. On every screen, the dazzling, neon-drenched world of "Zombie Idol Savior" whirred to life. The final build was minutes away from being submitted to the Nebula Games Cup portal. They had done it. The game was a perfect, cruel, and beautiful machine: the glittering hordes of infected idols shambled to an infectious beat, the Cure-Light synthesizer pulsed with energy, and the leaderboard algorithms stood ready to pit the brave against the reckless.
Then, it happened.
From the corner of the room, a junior tester's voice cut through the silence, thin with panic. "Um... Boss? The 'LUMINA' idol... she's... broken."
All heads turned. On the tester's screen, the game's most challenging character; a zombified mega-star with a complex, five-part dance routine; was frozen. Not crashed but stuck in a horrifying loop. She would begin her final, devastating attack; a blindingly fast sequence of spins called the "Supernova Sway" and then, for a single, jarring frame, her model would contort into a stiff, robotic T-pose. It was a grotesque flicker, a digital corpse twitch in the middle of her graceful decay, before the animation snapped back and continued. It happened once every five attempts, a ghost in the machine that was utterly unpredictable.
Panic, cold and immediate, flooded the room. The deadline was a guillotine blade hovering inches above them. "It's a memory leak!" one programmer insisted. "The animation file is too high-poly!" argued another. The team's cohesion, so strong moments before, began to fracture under the pressure. Voices rose, fingers pointed at lines of code, and the glorious submission seemed to be vaporizing before their eyes.
It was So Hee who acted first. She slammed her hand on a desk, not in anger, but to create a shockwave of silence. "Enough! Everyone, quiet! Ji Woo is on it. The rest of you, run diagnostics on your own modules. Now!" Her voice was a whip crack, instantly quelling the mutiny. She had handled the human glitch.
Now, Ji Woo handled the digital one.
He dismissed the theories with a calm that seemed to radiate from him. "It's not the memory. It's not the model. It's a race condition," he stated, his voice low and steady. His fingers were already a blur on his keyboard, pulling up the intricate web of the animation state machine. "Her 'Supernova Sway' has a custom event that triggers the flash VFX and the hitbox. The 'Cure' animation from the player tries to interrupt it. They're fighting for control of the same bone structure at the same nanosecond."
He explained it like a surgeon describing a delicate operation. Under the immense processing load of the character's elaborate effects, the game's logic threads could sometimes fall out of sync. The system would receive the command to start the cure animation a microsecond before it had fully finished processing the idol's own attack. For a single frame, the system got confused, didn't know what animation to play, and defaulted to the model's base T-pose.
"We need to force a hierarchy. We need a traffic cop," he muttered, more to himself than to the team now watching him, mesmerized.
He didn't rewrite thousands of lines of code. He didn't reduce the graphic quality. He implemented an elegant, brutal fix. He created a tiny, universal script—a "state buffer." He called it the AnimationLock.cs.
"This," he said, as he typed the final lines, "will make any new animation request wait a single frame if the current animation is in the middle of a 'non-interruptible' event—like her Supernova. It creates a queue. No more fighting."
He saved the file, compiled the build, and held his breath. The junior tester, hands shaking, loaded the same game level again. They ran the sequence once. Twice. Five times.
The T-pose ghost was gone. The Supernova Sway flowed seamlessly into the Cure-Light's beam without a single hiccup, the idol's terrifying grace perfectly preserved. The only thing that broke was the tension in the room, replaced by a collective, awe-struck exhale.
Ji Woo finally looked up from his screen, a faint smile touching his lips. He glanced at So Hee, who gave him a single, sharp nod of approval, the highest praise he could have received.
"Alright," he said, his voice returning to its usual commanding tone. "Now let's submit our game."
A collective roar of relief and triumph erupted as the submission confirmation flashed on the screen. The team exploded into a chaotic, joyful dance, high-fiving and shouting, the weight of the deadline finally lifted.
In the center of the celebration, Ji Woo stood still for a moment, a weary but profound smile touching his lips. He shook his head slightly, not in disbelief, but in a quiet wave of gratitude. His gaze found So Hee across the room, and he offered her a small, almost awkward press of his lips; a silent, heartfelt thank you for her timely intervention that had held the team together.
So Hee, still surrounded by the bouncing energy of their teammates, didn't need to shout or move. She simply met his look and gave a single, nearly imperceptible nod. Her eyes softened, acknowledging everything: the panic, the trust, and their unspoken pact that of course the problem would be solved because Ji Woo was on it.
So now it's time to wait for the result. Let's see who wins although Ji Woo had complete faith in his idea and his team's capabilities.