That Girl From Random Chatting

Seo‑joon woke up to a message ping at 4:12 AM. The Random Chat app glowed with a notification:

Anonymous: "They're impersonating again. My messages got doctored."

A worn dread settled in his chest. He clicked:

Thanatos: "Where are you? I'm coming."

He threw on a hoodie, grabbed his phone, and slipped out into the night.

The campus grounds were silent. Streetlamps hummed over empty corridors. Seo‑joon followed the anonymous user's location: behind the auditorium loading dock. There, under a flickering lamp, cowered Park Ji-hoon, a quiet sophomore known for digital art he displayed on the school forum. He trembled against the wall.

Three upperclassmen loomed, sneering:

"Argent? No, you ruined things last week. The startup you voted against, we exposed your data."

One brandished a spray-paint can as a taunting prop. Seo‑joon stepped forward.

"Leave him."

They turned, with mock surprise. The tallest taunted, "Fresh phantom seeking glory?"

Seo‑joon held his ground. "I'm nobody's myth. Don't pretend I won't intervene."

Their laughter died when fists raised. Time slowed. A punch struck Seo‑joon's forearm, sharp pain juddered through him. He blocked another blow to Ji-hoon's head. Still, numbers overwhelmed him. A kick to his ribs dropped him to one knee. Blood rushed in his ears.

He saw Ji‑hoon squat beside him, motionless, cover tensed. Guilt sealed Seo‑joon's voice: He reached out. He couldn't pause again. He lashed out, once, hard, sending the ringleader reeling, gave Ji‑hoon his hand

"Get up. Move."

Together, they ran. Ji‑hoon limp and pale, Seo‑joon heart pounding. The echoes of mocking laughter faded behind them.

At home, Ji‑hoon settled on the sofa, hand wrapped in a towel. Seo‑joon propped ice on his own bruised ribs. They sat in silence.

Seo‑joon finally whispered: "I'm not a savior." Ji‑hoon looked at him, voice small: "You helped me, when no one else even monitored the forum." He pressed his palm between them. "That's enough."

The next day, back at school, gossip raged. Rumors: Thanatos was just a paid operation, or worse, a clique of seniors. Some supporters shifted to cry: Argent is a facade. Anonymous scammers.

Seo‑joon's terrible embarrassment gnawed at him. He sat through history class as classmates whispered: "Is being 'Thanatos' even real?" 

After lunch, Hamin waited at his locker.

"Have you seen the forums? Someone posted as Argent last night, asking for money."

Seo‑joon nodded. Cold trickles of fear crept through him. "They're spreading edited logs with my name."

Hamin closed the locker softly. "We stop it now."

That afternoon they worked: flagging threads, contacting forum admins, tracing IPs. Together they dismantled dozens of impersonators. Still, fake Argent accounts reappeared, some quoting Seo‑joon's previous messages, adding "donation requests" or "classified insults."

By evening, Seo‑joon's phone vibrated with notifications: school's official Discord, art groups, alumni channels all echoing the same question: Is Thanatos dead?

At sunset, Seo‑joon found Hamin under the courtyard willow. Flyers drifted around her, handfuls printed with text: "Real Argent = free. Fake Argent = scam." She handed him a flyer:

"What do I do with it?"

"Hold onto truth. Don't let the legend become a rumor mill."

He watched her toss another flyer into the air. Petals of memory scattered across the courtyard.

"I'm afraid I lost it."

"No. They're just hijacking it. You can reclaim it."

That night, Seo‑joon typed into the school's private forum as Thanatos:

"If you see copies of Argent or Thanatos that ask for payment or include edited chats, they're fake. My counsel remains free and anonymous. I will continue helping, and I will root out impersonators."

He paused, thumb steady over Post. Then clicked.

Comment threads filled with support from his classmates, denouncing phishing threads. Real Argent volunteers joined him, verified by cross-checking comments and IP addresses.

He looked at the cracked sketchbook on his desk, portraits of people he'd never admit publicly: his grandmother's piano keys, the oak tree where he first drew Yuri's shoes.

He realized something he hadn't before: Thanatos wasn't just a mask, it was his intention. His empathy, his promise to stand for honesty, anonymity, and kindness.

The fake Prophets couldn't take that.

He shut his laptop with calm quiet.

Tomorrow would bring more rumors, more phantoms. But he was ready. He didn't need invisibility. He just needed integrity.

...

Seo-joon didn't expect to find Hamin standing by the vending machine near the alleyway behind the school. She held a bottle of milk coffee in each hand, her expression unreadable as usual, but there was a glint of something in her eyes today. Something that made him uneasy.

She tossed one bottle toward him. "You're spiraling."

He caught it mid-air, barely. "Thanks for the concern, Sherlock."

"No sarcasm. I'm serious."

They stood in silence. A cat meowed somewhere behind the trash bins, digging for scraps. A few kids wandered by from the main road, but the moment held still between them.

Then Hamin said, "Stop being Thanatos. One week."

He blinked. "…What?"

"No log-ins. No messages. No hints, no rescue missions, no ghost posts." She sipped her drink. "Just live. Just Seo-joon. No mask."

He scoffed, leaning against the wall. "That's a stupid dare."

"It's not a dare. It's a test. But you like dares better, don't you?"

His jaw tightened. "Why? What's the point?"

"You're addicted. Not just to helping people, but to being the one who helps them. The only one who can. Admit it."

Seo-joon didn't answer.

Hamin looked straight at him. "I want to see what happens if you disappear from the equation. If the world burns... or if it just keeps going."

That hit deeper than it should have.

"You're insane," he muttered.

"Probably. But you're worse."

He thought about it that night. The back of his phone burned with muscle memory. The Random Chat app, the encrypted scripts, the folders titled ARGENT and FALLBACK. Every piece of digital infrastructure he'd built over the years, whispering his value back to him.

He clicked the app.

Then, just before the screen loaded, he locked the phone and threw it across the room.

Day One.

The first few days were the hardest. Every hallway felt louder, every text more hollow. Without the mask, Seo-joon was just another face in the crowd, quiet, unremarkable, borderline forgettable.

He wasn't Thanatos. Not here.

Not now.

He watched a group of freshmen crowd around a boy with thick glasses. It was the kind of moment he'd usually intervene in with a perfectly timed text or anonymous call to a teacher. But instead, he walked past.

Later that day, he found the same boy eating lunch with someone from the literature club. A girl who didn't talk much in class. No Thanatos involved.

Maybe the universe had other gears.

Day Four.

He saw another message thread on a public forum. Bullying, accusations, subtle threats. The kind that begged for a counterattack.

He wanted to break the rule. Just this once.

Instead, he closed the browser.

By Day Six, his hands had stopped twitching for the phone. He found himself people-watching more. Not analyzing. Just… seeing. Students who used to be background noise were now stories in motion.

Then Day Seven hit, and he found a note taped inside his shoe locker.

"It stopped."

That was all.

He rushed home and logged into the Random Chat backup feed, breaking the week-long rule.

The bullying case he had followed in secret, one he'd thought only Thanatos could dismantle, had resolved. A senior had stood up for the victim. Other students followed. A teacher stepped in, late, but better than never.

No Thanatos. No masked savior. Just people. Doing the right thing.

Seo-joon leaned back in his chair. It was… terrifying.

Because it meant he wasn't necessary.

And yet, somehow, it also meant he was finally free.

...

There's something about silence that feels heavier after a week of withdrawal.

Seo-joon sat at the back of the library, a stack of untouched books in front of him, the Random Chat app reopened on his phone. Notifications blinked softly, muted like heartbeats he'd tried to ignore.

Most were noise. Misfires. Lonely messages looking for someone to talk to, someone to care.

But one message stood out.

OceanSky: "What do you do when they won't stop waiting for you to break? Not hit. Not yell. Just wait. Like it's more fun when you do it yourself."

Seo-joon reread it five times. Then clicked the message thread open.

The full chat history was only a few entries long, OceanSky had reached out once, months ago, and never again until now. They never asked for advice. Never even used Thanatos' name. Or help. This was a whisper into the void.

And Seo-joon knew what it meant.

He checked the metadata. Same school district. A new high schooler, first year. No history of disciplinary action. No reports from teachers. No obvious red flags.

And yet, the words screamed in silence.

He sent a reply:

Thanatos: "Tell me what's happening. You're not alone."

There was no reply.

It took him two days to trace OceanSky's login patterns. During lunch hours. After third period. Never past 9 p.m. Geo-tags pointed to a corner of the school grounds he'd walked past hundreds of times.

He stood there now, in the late afternoon haze, watching from a bench near the track field, where a row of art classrooms formed a quieter wing of the campus.

A group of students passed by. Four boys in uniform. Loud laughter, casual shoves, and smiles a little too perfect.

One of them turned back and gave a little nod to someone still crouched behind a wall.

Not part of the group. Not welcome, either.

Seo-joon recognized him immediately. Thin shoulders. Hands clutching a half-shredded sketchbook. The kind of kid you walk past unless you're looking.

Seo-joon waited until the boys disappeared, then circled.

"Your sketches are good," he said quietly.

The boy jumped. "W-What?"

"I saw your corner. By the fire stairs." Seo-joon pointed behind them. "OceanSky?"

The boy froze.

Then, "You're him, aren't you?"

"I'm no one," Seo-joon said. "But I listen."

The boy's hands shook slightly. He didn't cry. Just stood there, too stiff, too tired. Like his body hadn't relaxed in weeks.

"It's not even that they do stuff," the boy finally whispered. "They just… wait. For me to screw up. Then laugh when I try to explain. They ruin my art when I'm not looking. Swap my pencils. Hide my bag. If I complain, I'm the one making trouble."

Seo-joon nodded slowly.

"And no one believes you?"

"They said I should toughen up. That maybe I'm reading into things too much."

Seo-joon's phone buzzed in his pocket. A new message. From Hamin.

Hamin: "You win. I get it now."

That night, Thanatos returned.

Seo-joon uploaded two new messages, encrypted ones, cross-posted to three school forums:

"The difference between teasing and torture is silence. Watch who isn't laughing."

He also sent a private tip to the homeroom teacher under a burner identity, attaching security footage from the stairwell he'd scouted days earlier.

The next morning, Seo-joon sat quietly on the third-floor landing. He watched as the four boys from the track field were pulled aside, first by a guidance counselor, then a teacher. The boy with the sketchbook walked by, staring at his feet.

And Seo-joon stood. Walked up beside him.

"They won't wait anymore," he said.

The boy looked at him. Eyes wide. Mouth slightly open.

Then, for the first time in days, he smiled.

That night, Seo-joon messaged Hamin again.

Seo-joon: "Sometimes they do grow without me. But sometimes… they don't."

Her reply came a minute later.

Hamin: "Then don't disappear. Just… learn when to step in. And when to let go."

He stared at the screen for a long time.

The Thanatos mask wasn't gone. Not yet. But maybe it didn't have to smother him either.

Maybe, sometimes, the ghost just needed to stay.

Not because the world would collapse without him…

…but because someone was still waiting for a hand in the dark.

...

The sun was dipping just below the horizon, casting the rooftop in burnt gold. The wind was light but restless, just enough to lift the edges of Hamin's oversized sleeves as she leaned against the fence, a half-empty carton of strawberry milk in her hand.

Seo-joon stepped out onto the roof and quietly closed the door behind him. For a moment, neither spoke.

Then Hamin said, without turning around, "So. Back to playing ghost?"

Seo-joon walked over to the opposite side of the fence and leaned forward. "I didn't want to. Not really."

"Didn't look like that from where I was sitting."

There was no accusation in her voice. Just an observation. Like she was gathering pieces of a story, checking where it cracked.

Seo-joon stared out at the basketball court below, where students were packing up after practice. "He wouldn't have made it another week. I think he was trying to disappear. Quietly. Like if he made himself small enough, he'd stop hurting."

Hamin's carton made a soft crinkle as she pressed it. "That's why you couldn't ignore it."

"I tried. But…" His hands gripped the fence. "There are people who grow. Who get through it, like you said. But others just fall, and no one's watching."

Hamin turned toward him finally, her expression unreadable, but her eyes softer than usual.

"You were right," he said. "I am addicted to helping. But maybe it's not about control. Maybe it's just, I don't want them to feel like I did."

He didn't realize he'd said that last part out loud until the wind caught it and carried it away.

Hamin didn't respond right away. She took a step closer.

"I know," she said quietly.

Seo-joon blinked. "What?"

"I know you don't help because you think you're better. You help because you still remember what it felt like when no one did."

He looked at her. For once, he didn't try to hide the tiredness behind his eyes.

"You said the world might not need Thanatos. That it might move on without him."

"I did," she replied. "And I was half-right."

He tilted his head. "Which half?"

"The part where you learn to let go. But I was wrong about the rest." Hamin met his gaze. "Some ghosts are necessary. Not because people can't survive without them, but because sometimes, people need to know someone is out there. Watching. Caring. Quietly."

Seo-joon exhaled slowly.

"Do you hate that I stepped in again?"

Hamin shook her head. "No. I'm glad you broke the rule."

He gave a faint smile, a rare thing. "You sure? You seem like the type who keeps score."

"Only when it matters."

She walked past him, paused at the door, and looked back.

"One more thing," she said.

Seo-joon raised an eyebrow.

"You're not Thanatos."

He blinked. "What?"

"You're Seo-joon," she said firmly. "Thanatos is just the part of you that believes people matter. Don't confuse the two."

And with that, she left him on the rooftop, bathed in golden light, wind in his hair, heart beating a little louder than before.

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Thanks for reading. You can also give me ideas for the future or pinpoint plot holes that I may have forgotten, if you want. 

Powerstones. Me. Give. Now.