But tonight, the altar felt desecrated. The ramen stink had gone sour, heat from the overworked circuits clinging like mildew on their skin. The hum of machinery buzzed thin as a mosquito trapped in a stasis pod. Every pixel of light seemed to stutter, as though the room itself wanted to look away.
They sat among the relics, not friends—hands idle, eyes downcast. Plastic dice rested like bones in the dust. Once, this room had roared with their laughter, their curses, their mock battles against faceless mobs. Now the silence gnawed the edges of everything.
No one said his name. The seat screamed it for them.
A holo-field flickered above the controller, pixel static drifting like dust motes. The interface resolved, retro-font glowing in sickly neon:
PLAYER 2: METEOR STRIKE
Status: Waiting to log in…
Beside the text hung Jihoon’s old profile image, frozen long before his face turned impossibly flawless. A crooked smile in braces, his lucky hat askew. The boy they remembered. The boy who wasn’t supposed to vanish.
The hologram pulsed faintly, as if waiting for a heartbeat to sync. Every few seconds, the status text glitched—twitching into pale static that almost spelled another word: Offline.
The empty chair glowed in its ghost-light, equal parts shrine and accusation.
“...So we’re just not gonna talk about it?” Echo finally muttered, shoving a stack of chip bags aside. “He was our guy. Friday raids. Pizza runs. Jihoon. And now—”
Her words bled into the voice that seeped from the battered speakers of the HEXA Herald, glitch-glossy and smug. Lisa Liemawr.
“—banned lithium augments. Combustion risk higher than your grandma’s vape pen, people. Campus golden boy? More like campus fraud. He went boom because he cheated. And let’s be honest—nobody turns that pretty without paying for it.”
The feed didn’t stop there. A jingle stinger, cheerful as a toy commercial, burst through. “But hey—don’t just take my word for it! Witness reports are in. Kyra—yes, the girlfriend—says Jihoon was desperate to be someone, at any cost. Fame, fortune, flames, baby!” Lisa’s laughter bubbled, synthetic and cruel. “Play stupid games, win spontaneous combustion. Smash that like button if you saw it live!”
Plague’s fist slammed the table, rattling a graveyard of half-broken controllers. “She’s killing him twice,” he snarled. “Jihoon hated augments. Always said putting metal in your body was just one bad update away from the morgue.” His fist balled tighter, trembling. “I thought he DNA-hacked himself… thought he chose it. God, I thought he wanted to leave us behind.”
The others flinched. They had thought the same. They’d mocked him, shut him out, just like the popular ones always did to them. Jihoon had laughed it off, pretending everything was fine. Pretending—like them—that he wasn’t burning inside.
Echo turned away, her hair a curtain. But then came a shuddering breath, the sound of denial breaking. Her voice spilled into the stale air, soft as a scalpel, merciless as truth.
“I keep seeing him on fire,” she whispered. “In my dreams, he’s burning and screaming, and I try to drag him out… but my hands just pass right through.” Her tears traced clean tracks down her cheeks. “I always fail. And we failed him. We didn’t even ask if he was okay. We just… looked away.”
The confession landed heavier than silence.
Ghost said nothing. He picked up the twenty-sided die—the sacred artifact of their friendship, their last excuse for avoidance. He didn’t roll it. He hurled it into the darkest corner. The clatter echoed, final as a coffin lid.
In the ringing quiet, he keyed his holo-pad. A map of the city sharpened into view, its glow bleaching their faces. Jae Won University Hospital. The map drilled down through glass and steel until it locked on Intensive Care, Room C — YOON JIHOON.
Ghost’s hologram gloves flickered, projecting his urgent sign language into the dusty air:
“Done pretending.”
The words hung like a verdict. Ghost turned, his shadow dragging long across the relics as he walked for the door.
For a stunned beat, no one moved. Then Plague’s fist uncurled. Echo scrubbed her eyes raw, standing straighter than she had in weeks. Echo pushed her chair back with a final scrape.
One by one, they followed. Haunted, ashamed, and no longer hiding, they left the mausoleum of play behind.
Jihoon was waiting—in the hospital, in their nightmares, in the fire they could never unsee. Whatever had consumed him, it hadn’t been augments, or hacks, or doping. It was something far worse. And they had let him face it alone.
...
Such a powerful and pivotal chapter. This was written months ago, and it was just pure luck that Cyber Fair just so happens to have a major cool game in it! I was just blow away by how neat it was and the quality of the work. I went to the GeckoGames main store to get more help on setting up the game. So here I will pass it along for you, so you can play your own games!
2) Download the Sporks UpdateTool from the Marketplace.
3) Rez the GamerTable. Then Rez on the ground close to it, the Sporks UpdateTool. Touch your table, then let it update. Do NOT sit on the table before doing the update.
4) Now that its update, Rez the Gecko invasion game next to the table, and touch. Let it do its update, and then you are ready to play!
5) Sit at one of the chairs. If you have no one to play with you, trigger one of the cute Geckos by touching the little Gecko head on the game board.
After that you should be good to go! If you have any questions, go to the GeckoGames Linktree for their discord. There are more board games you can buy and add to your table. The board games fit onto the surface of the table. The game table itself, you can customize with HUD for different textures and animated LED lights.
BONUS INFO: You can scale up or down the chairs for larger and smaller avatars, by right click edit only on the chair, then scale it up or down how you need. Used Adjust Avatar height after that to make sure you sit properly on the seat. I don't recommend scaling the table itself, because the Game Board size must not change.
Now on to other cool things in the image.... For my young Nerdy Jihoon, the bright cool green eyes by Lovelysweet, For the cute hat by 404, the DoomDa1 Hat. The fatpack has fun texture options, like the Cross one I used for Jihoon' player profile. The warm fuzzy arm warmers are by Yuebin with fits for male and female avatars (Legacy F, Legacy Athletic, Ebody, Bella Jake, Anatomy), and includes all the many color texture options.
On him, Young Yoon Jihoon:
Hat: 404 DOOMSDA1 HAT, Fatpack (Androgyny Event)(399L)
Eyes: lovelysweet Asher Eyes 9, cool green (Androgyny Event)(225L)
Shirt: Starlit Endeavor Sandbridge Shirt (Legacy M)
Shorts: Starlit Endeavor Sandbridge Shorts (Legacy M)
Hair: RavenBell Nova Hair Short w Bangs ~Shimmer~
Skin: BRABOS x MoiMoi 'SKIN' Veylan Skin - NF Pale
Socks: DCNY Sporty Socks_Black/White 7 [BOM]
Boots: Cult Cyborgonia, LegecyM [mesh](Cyber Fair)(369L)
Setting:
Board game: GeckoGames [GG] Gecko invasion v250825[mesh](Cyber Fair)(1500L)
Board game table: GeckoGames [GG] GameTable v2.17[mesh](free)
Monitors: positronic.net PN NODE 001 CMU Futurslee [mesh](Cyber Fair)(270L)
Halogram: isil Planetarium Hologram (Milky Way) RARE [mesh]
Food: BackBone Lazy Gamer's Hideout [mesh]
Chairs: HILTED Xero Collection - Cyber Single Chair [mesh]
Sofa, table: Nievla Anxo set, White [mesh]
Posters: Pitaya Tropix - Cyber Club - Posters [mesh]
Neons: #hashbang! Neon Shapes - Medium Zig Zag, Short Line [mesh]
Pod: ANTINATURAL[+] Synthetic Crush / Bot Capsule / WHITE [mesh]
BONUS IMAGES: inworld raw shots, hi-res, midday sky
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