Dusk (BL Light Novel)

“……! ……!”
After finishing a light workout at the fitness center in the building and even showering, I came home—only to hear someone making a loud fuss in the living room. It was obvious who it was; who else would be this noisy in the middle of the day?
I kicked off my shoes, swept back my still-damp hair, and walked straight into the living room. The muffled noise that had been rumbling thanks to good soundproofing now rang clearly in my ears.

“Wow, I really love this stuff. It’s crazy—how do you always manage to make this right when I come over?”
“You’d been gone for a while, so I figured you’d probably show up soon. Just so happened I thought of you this morning and made it—and it worked out perfectly.”
Moon Seonhwa, all dolled up like he was about to go somewhere, was bouncing on his feet while accepting a side dish container from the housekeeper ajumma. From the sound of it, she’d made braised quail eggs in soy sauce—his favorite. No wonder there’d been jangjorim at lunch.

I walked over to Moon Seonhwa, who was always talkative but had gotten even louder now that jangjorim was involved. The moment I approached, despite being completely absorbed in his conversation, he sensed my presence like a ghost and snapped his head around to look at me.
“Oh! Hi, you just got back from working out?”
“You said you had plans this afternoon and couldn’t play Dusk. What’s this about?”

“My schedule opened up weirdly, so I came to hang out. Mind if I play Dusk on your PC?”
He didn’t even wait for an answer—just grabbed my arm and dragged me toward my room, waving goodbye to the housekeeper as he went. He cheerfully thanked her for the jangjorim and shoved me through the door first. He was going to stick around and chatter her ear off again when he left anyway.
Inside, he moved to sit in front of the computer like it was second nature. He’d been coming in and out of my room like it was his own since we were kids—his movements were fluid, practiced.

But before Moon Seonhwa could sit down, I grabbed his sleeve and shoved him toward the bed.
“Ugh, what the hell, why?!”
“Wait. I have to send an email.”

“You could’ve just said that. Why stretch my shirt?”
I ignored his whining and sat down. Honestly, I didn’t care if he played Dusk on my PC right now—Retaking wasn’t around at this hour anyway—but I’d just come back from a workout and had been planning to send the email right away.
“What email?” he asked, walking back and perching on the armrest of the chair.

It wasn’t something I needed to hide, so I answered casually as I logged in with my alt account.
“That video I said I’d send to Retaking.”
“Wait, I thought you already sent it?”
I had. Just like he said, five days ago, I’d sent the video link uploaded to Drive to the email address listed on Retaking’s channel. But—

“He said he never got it.”
“You sent it to the wrong address?”
“No… Looks like he couldn’t find my email because of all the trolls.”

Since we didn’t keep in touch outside the game, I had no way to follow up when days passed without a reply. This was the same guy who, after I said I’d send him the video, had people in chat going, “Is this a proposal?”—and then didn’t even reply. I’d grumbled about it for four days.
But then last night, Retaking suddenly showed up in the middle of the night and came at me. It was well past his usual hours—he never played after 3AM.
I wondered if maybe he was pulling an all-nighter stream challenge, like “Kyeonwang” (short for “Clearing it to the Final Boss in one sitting”) and rushed to check his channel, but the stream had ended two hours prior.

Was he hacked? Drunk and playing out of spite? …Not that his gameplay was sloppy or anything. I kept listing every possibility in my head while fighting him, got distracted, and slipped up—ended up dying.
Wanting to know what the hell had brought him to me in the dead of night, I waited for him to type something.
And sure enough, his message bubble popped up almost instantly—with his email address.

“We made such a fuss about it, remember? I said I’d send the video while he was streaming. Apparently, trolls impersonating me flooded him with weird files, and he couldn’t find the real one.”
“Damn. That’s insane.”
Even I had to admit—it was insane. And it wasn’t the first time either. Different situation, but once, some loser sent him a link to a porn video disguised as an indie game trailer.

Imagining Retaking, flustered and overwhelmed by troll spam, unable to get the video he’d been waiting for—and having no choice but to log in just to find me—made my lips twitch involuntarily.
…Anyway, what was that email he gave me again?
I clicked on “Compose” and tried to recall it. Letter by letter, I typed it in exactly as it had popped into my head, then pasted in the download link I’d already uploaded to Drive.

***
Saved to Drafts
[email protected]
Consolation Prize for the Loss – From Honeybread
https://driving.goodgle.com/file/d/1YdyLisxbAWItPuRqOhcqznqtF8RV/view?usp=sharing
[Send | ▼]

***
No need to write a long message. I just hit send.
“You’re not gonna add a message? I mean, you two are pretty close in-game,” Seonhwa commented while watching me.

“I am messaging him. Every time we talk in-game.”
“Yeah, but have you ever had a real conversation? It’s always like, ‘kill, one-liner,’ then a few minutes later, ‘kill again, one-liner.’ You two pen pals or something?”
“You fought your pen pals?”

“Did I have pen pals?”
I snorted at his comeback, which made him slap my shoulder with a loud smack and yell at me to get out of the chair now that the email was sent. I gave up my seat before he could start pinching me, and he took the chair with a satisfied grin. I, in turn, leaned uncomfortably on the armrest and watched as Seonhwa logged into Dusk.
I had bought a spare chair a while ago, knowing how often Seonhwa dropped by. But then I saw that video of Retaking whining—yes, to me it looked like whining—after losing to me, got annoyed, and kicked the extra chair. It broke, and I had to toss it. I kept forgetting to order a new one, so now my legs were suffering.

Remembering that, I pulled out my phone and searched for gaming chairs. That’s when Seonhwa spoke again.
“Right, meant to ask—how did you get the Hidden Story? Do you know what the requirements are?”
The moment he said “Hidden Story,” my brain flashed with the image of Retaking flipping me off. It faded quickly.

“No idea.”
I answered flatly, and Seonhwa narrowed his eyes up at me.
“How do you not know?”

“Because I don’t.”
“Don’t you have any guesses?”
“Nope.”

“Aren’t you curious what the conditions are?”
“I am.”
“Then why haven’t you asked the CEO?”

At the word CEO, it was my turn to narrow my eyes down at him.
“What does the CEO have to do with this?”
“You have his contact info, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not close to him. Why would I ask something like that?”
“He’s dating your brother, right? You’re basically gonna be his brother-in-law. Isn’t it fine to ask?”
The CEO he was talking about was the head of ZeroSoft—the company that made Dusk. Even if he was on good terms with my brother, I’d only met him a few times and exchanged a couple words. Who the hell would just go up to someone like that and ask, “Hey, what are the conditions for unlocking the Hidden Story?”

Besides, it wasn’t really dating. My brother was just hopelessly chasing after him.
Still, ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) I didn’t feel like correcting Seonhwa’s delusion by retelling my brother’s tragic unrequited love story. Instead, I pressed the corner of my phone against the bridge of my nose and nudged the topic sideways.
“I’ll just ask at the offline event next month.”

“That’s still a while away.”
“Then submit a support ticket.”
“I already tried. They won’t tell me.”

“Then maybe they’re not allowed to tell you. Why are you so obsessed with finding out the requirements anyway? You’re not usually into the story stuff.”
“I’m the face of assassins, and I can’t unlock the assassin Hidden Story? Does that make any sense? I’m the first user to hit max level as an assassin across all servers, the top assassin in the rankings who’s never once lost the #1 spot—the insanely popular ultra-assassin ranker—me?”
Is he insane? No, wait. He’s always been insane.

“If I get the chance to ask, I’ll ask and let you know. Happy?”
“Hmmm…”
My answer must’ve sounded half-hearted, because Seonhwa let out a long hum before nodding as if he had no choice. By then, the monitor had loaded to the character select screen, and he double-clicked on Ceylontea.

As his character’s eyes opened, the screen was filled with an illustration while it finished loading. But something about this illustration was… off.
In all my two years of playing Dusk, I’d never seen this one before.