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Throughout my whole career, what taught me how to keep my eyes forward was the DplusKia facility.
Not because there was anything indecent about a team house full of adults, or because there were secrets hidden behind every door, but because there were marks. Everyone had one, and everyone pretended they did not.
Some people wore theirs like medals, other people hid them like injuries. Some players had taken onto tattooing over them, cut them, burn them. Some coaches, old enough and not as in the public eye as the players, let them show, the way they let a bad habit show, and acted like it was just another quirk.
Mine is none of those. Mine is the moon. I can’t pretend I am like them.
It sat on Yonghyeok’s right hip, a crescent that looked like it had been painted under his skin before he had ever learned what skin was. Even as a child, when he used to stare at it in the bathroom mirror trying to decide if he could pry it loose with his fingernail, it never faded, budged or became ordinary. It only became hateful.
And in this stupid world the marks mean something, and the meaning is never quiet.
They said the first generation of pro players got them like blessings after the first big tournament, like the game itself had reached out and touched them. Later the marks started appearing on ordinary people too, fans and casuals and kids in schoolyards. The superstition grew faster than the science could follow. Some people said the marks were a promise, others said the marks were a warning.
And then the stories started to settle.
Sun, Moon, Star, Storm, River, Blade.
Each one linked to an old champion myth, as if Runeterra had grown roots under Seoul, as if the gods of Mount Targon had found a new mountain in a city full of neon signs.
If you had a mark, people expected you to become something. If you had the moon, they expected you to be Diana.
I have always hated Diana.
Yonghyeok didn’t hate her because she was weak or boring. He didn’t even hate her because she did not fit his style. Those were the excuses he offered when coaches asked, the reasons he fed to analysts and strangers and himself.
The real reason was simpler, uglier: Diana was a story he did not want.
Leona, the sun, the radiant dawn, the faithful one. Diana, the moon, the heretic, the outcast. Friends turned enemies, two halves that were supposed to be one. And he had the moon.
And his support, their support, their anchor, the person who said the most encouraging words and always did the most, had the sun.
Hyeongseok never talked about his mark, but it was mainly because he never had to: it flashed when he moved. Sometimes, Yonghyeok caught it in the corner of his vision when he reached for something on a high shelf, when his shirt pulled up along his ribs. A sunburst on his left rib cage, neat as an emblem, bright enough that it seemed to glow even under fluorescent lights.
Like he carried his own dawn.
“Does it hurt?” Siwoo had asked the first time they had seen it.
Hyeongseok had just blinked at him, slow, as if he had asked whether gravity hurt.
“No,” he answered.
“Do you like it?”
“I don’t think it matters,” Hyeongseok’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
He tried to laugh like it did not matter, and Siwoo tried to agree. But it mattered to Yonghyeok, because every time his mark flashed, Yonghyeok’s felt heavier.
They were supposed to fit, but they did not.
In the game, Yonghyeok could make it look like they did; on stage, he could path around him, hover his lane, cover his roams, slip into a bush at the right moment so his engage landed like a meteor. He could make their timings align, their instincts overlap, their comms sound like something practiced instead of improvised.
People called it synergy, chemistry, fate. Yonghyeok would rather call it work.
Because if fate exists, I don’t want it.
Not if fate was a crescent under his skin and a sun on Hyeongseok’s ribs and a story that ended in blood.
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✩☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
But the coaches did not care about fate. They cared about drafts.
“Yonghyeok,” Jeonghyeong said one morning in the meeting room, the wall screen glowing with patch notes and damage charts. “We’re playing this comp tomorrow. We need Diana jungle for the AP threat. We need it in our pocket, it’s good in the meta right now.”
He kept his face still.
“I don’t play Diana, I haven’t played her for years.”
Jeonghyeong stared at him like he had said he didn’t breathe.
“You can,” he corrected.
“I don’t,” he repeated.
Around the table, the team shifted. Someone cleared their throat. Someone’s chair squeaked. Hyeongseok sat with his hands folded, eyes on the screen, as if the conversation was happening in a different room.
Seungchan gaze flicked to him.
“And we need Leona as the engage. Hyeongseok, you’ve played it before.”
“I can,” Hyeongseok said, voice flat.
There was no protest. No excuse. No visible flinch. Maybe he had learned better than Yonghyeok had. Maybe he did not hate his mark. Or maybe he hated it so deeply he had buried the hate where no one could see.
Jeonghyeon turned back to Yonghyeok.
“This is not negotiable,” he said. “You don’t have to love the champion. You just have to play it.”
He wanted to say something sharp, make a joke, point at his hip and say: You are asking me to wear a story I’ve been trying to peel off since I was five.
Instead, he only nodded.
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✩☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
In the practice room that afternoon, he locked in Diana. The loading screen felt like a dare.
On his second clear, he missed a reset. On his first gank, he hesitated on the angle. The champion felt like a language he could speak, technically, but not comfortably.
Hyeongseok locked in Leona in the next game. His engage was clean, of course it was. He did not hesitate. He did not float between choices. When he went in, he went in as if there had never been another option.
Yonghyeok watched him on his second monitor, the way his champion glowed gold as it slammed into the enemy bot lane, the way his skillshots looked like sunlight. And he hated his own hip for aching beneath his sweatpants.
After scrims, the facility went quiet in the way it always did: the sudden drop-off after hours of constant noise, like someone had turned down the world.
They showered on different schedules, or tried to. There were too many of them, too few stalls, too much routine.
Yonghyeok waited until after dinner, until the others drifted into solo queue or naps, and then slipped into the bathroom with his towel and his thoughts.
The hot water did not help, it only made the mark feel brighter, like the moon was trying to rise through his skin.
Yonghyeok scrubbed at it too hard, then stopped. There were older scars along the edge, thin white lines where he had tried other methods when he was younger. Those had healed, but the crescent never had.
When he turned off the water, steam rolled through the room. He stood there for a moment, fingers on the tile, breathing slowly.
It was stupid, the way he could win games in front of thousands of people but could not look at his own body without resentment.
Slowly, Yonghyeok wrapped the towel around his waist and stepped out.
That was when HeoSu was there.
Their mid-laner leaned against the wall like he owned the hallway, hair still damp, phone in hand. He was the kind of person who noticed everything and then decided which parts were worth mentioning.
His eyes flicked down. Not to the towel, not to anything indecent. They flicked towards Yonghyeok’s hip. As he noticed, his hand tightened reflexively, pulling the towel higher.
“Relax,” HeoSu said. His voice was amused, not teasing, which made it worse. “It’s not like I haven’t seen a moon before.”
Yonghyeok felt heat crawl up his neck.
“Don’t,” he said.
HeoSu pushed off the wall.
“I’m serious,” he said. “It’s… clearer than I expected.”
“I said don’t.”
HeoSu held up his hands like a surrender.
“Okay, okay,” he said. Then, as if he could not help himself, he added, “Does Hyeongseok know?”
The question hit like a surprise auto attack.
“Know what,” Yonghyeok said, perhaps too quickly.
HeoSu’s brows lifted.
“Your mark,” he said. “And…” His gaze drifted, not to his body now, but through the wall, toward the living room, toward where their support would be, quiet and consistent. “And yours, together.”
Yonghyeok’s stomach dropped.
“There is no ‘together,’” he said.
HeoSu’s smile softened. He wasn’t mocking him, and maybe that was the worst part.
“You two are ridiculous,” he said. “I thought it was obvious.”
“What’s obvious.”
HeoSu tapped his phone like he was pulling up a stat sheet.
“Moon and sun marks,” he said. “Same team. Same timing. The way you path to cover his roams even when it’s suboptimal. The way he trusts your pings even when they sound like you’re half-asleep. The way you both refuse to play the champions you’re marked with unless someone forces you.”
Yonghyeok’s throat went dry.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” he managed to say, although his voice came out as barely a whisper.
HeoSu tilted his head.
“It does,” he said. “It means you’re soulbonded.”
The word landed between them like an ultimatum. Soulbond. Everyone knew the stories. Everyone pretended they didn’t. Two people, marked by matching symbols, tied together in ways the world couldn’t explain. Some bonds were romantic, some were platonic. Some were violent, some were protective. The bond didn’t care what one wanted. It just… happened.
The old myths insisted that the bond was a gift, but most people Yonghyeok had met treated it like a trap.
“That’s not real,” he said.
HeoSu’s eyes narrowed.
“You believe in macro but not in marks,” he said. “Okay.”
“I believe in effort,” Yonghyeok snapped.
HeoSu’s gaze held Yonghyeok’s.
“You can believe in effort and still have a bond,” he said quietly. “Those aren’t enemies.”
Enemies. The word pulled the Leona and Diana story into Yonghyeok’s mind like a hook.
Friends. Faith. Doubt. The mountain. The power. The fight. I hate it.
He hated it because it felt like someone had written his life in champion lore and then expected him to act it out.
Unravelled, Yonghyeok shoved past HeoSu, towel tight around his waist, and headed for his room.
“Yonghyeok,” HeoSu said, managing to make him stop. His voice was careful now. “I’m not saying you have to do anything, I’m saying… if you’re going to hate the mark, at least hate it for the right reasons. Not because you think it makes you someone else.”
Yonghyeok didn’t answer, he couldn’t.
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✩☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
That night, he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the distant click of keyboards from other rooms, the muffled voice of a streamer in the living room.
He thought about the moon, about the sun, about Hyeongseok’s hands on his mouse, steady as if nothing could shake them, about how he had liked him before he had ever noticed his mark.
Back then, he was just a support.
A loud kid with a funny face who stayed after scrims to review lane matchups, who brought extra snacks for whoever forgot to eat, who never complained when the team lost and never bragged when they won.
Yonghyeok liked him in the way you like someone who makes the world feel more stable. But then the mark entered the equation, and the stability became a threat.
Because what if he didn’t like him? What if the bond liked Hyeongseok for him? What if every time his attention drifted toward him, it wasn’t his choice, but the moon tugging toward the sun?
He hated that idea more than he hated Diana.
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✩☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
The next day, Jeonghyeong ran them through drafts again.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’re scrimming against a team that plays heavy dive. We need reliable engage and follow-up. Hyeongseok, Leona. Yonghyeok, Diana.”
Hyeongseok’s gaze flicked toward Yonghyeok for half a second. It wasn’t expressive, it wasn’t dramatic, but it was there.
Later, in the practice room, Yonghyeok hovered Diana on the champion select screen. His finger hesitated above the lock-in. Across the room, Hyeongseok hovered Leona.
For a moment, neither of them clicked, they just stared.
Yonghyeok wondered if Hyeongseokfelt the same tightness in his chest, the same resentment, the same fear that the mark was a leash.
Hyeongseok’s hand moved first, locking in Leona. The sun appeared on the screen. Something in Yonghyeok’s body responded before his mind could stop it. A strange warmth, like a pressure behind his ribs.
I hate that too.
He locked in Diana, and the moon appeared.
HeoSu whistled low from his station.
“Well,” he said. “Lore-accurate comp.”
“Shut up,” Yonghyeok muttered.
The scrim began.
At level two, bot lane traded too aggressively. The enemy jungler hovered for a dive. Our bot lane pinged for help.
Yonghyeok was pathing top, but he rerouted. It was the correct play. It was also the play he always made. Hyeongseok’s voice came through comms.
“Care,” he said. “They’re here.”
“I know,” Yonghyeok said.
He arrived as the dive started; Leona went in anyway.
Yonghyeok watched Hyeongseok’s champion flash forward, shield raised, sword blazing. He stunned two targets under their tower like he was trying to hold the entire lane together with his body. Diana dashed in after, crescent strike landing, the arc of moonlight slicing through the chaos.
The fight was messy, but when it ended, they had turned the dive. Two kills for zero, the enemy retreating, their bot lane alive.
In the brief silence after, the comms filled with exhalations.
“Nice,” HeoSu said.
“Good,” Geumjae added.
Hyeongseok didn’t speak. He rarely did after a good play, he didn’t need to.
But Yonghyeok’s skin felt hot, and it was not from adrenaline. It was from the way Leona’s sun had flared on the screen, and his moon had followed. From the way it had felt less like coordination and more like gravity.
After the scrim block, Yonghyeok found Hyeongseok in the kitchen. He was making tea, because he always made tea. His movements were precise, unhurried. The sun mark was hidden under his shirt, but Yonghyeok could picture it anyway.
“You’re blocking the cabinet,” Hyeongseok said, not raising his gaze.
Yonghyeok shifted automatically.
“I…” He started, but his voice caught. What could he even say? HeoSu thinks we’re soulbonded. Do you know my mark? Do you hate yours? Do you feel it when we lock in those champions? Do you feel it when I look at you?
Instead, he said the only safe thing.
“Coach wants us to keep practicing the comp.”
Hyeongseok poured hot water into two cups.
“I know,” he said.
He slid one cup toward Yonghyeok without looking, and he took it. Their fingers brushed. It was brief, accidental. But the touch went straight through Yonghyeok; not the normal jolt of contact, something deeper, like the moment you step onto a stage and the lights hit you and you remember you exist.
Yonghyeok jerked his hand back too quickly, and Hyeongseok finally looked up. His expression was calm, but his eyes were sharp.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Yonghyeok lied.
Hyeongseok’s gaze dropped, just for a second, toward his hip. The towel incident with HeoSu flashed in Yonghyeok’s mind.
There was no way Hyeongseok could have heard about it. Unless HeoSu had told him, or unless the bond was real and it had whispered. The thought made his stomach twist.
Hyeongseok set his cup down.
“Yonghyeok,” he said.
Yonghyeok flinched at the way Hyeongseok said his name; carefully, like he was placing it somewhere it wouldn’t break.
“What,”
He hesitated. Hyeongseok was not a hesitant person in game but out of game, he moved like someone who had learned that words could hurt more than fists.
“Did HeoSu talk to you?” he asked.
Yonghyeok’s throat tightened.
“About what,” he said, even though we both knew.
“About… marks,” he said.
“So he did tell you.”
Hyeongseok’s eyes flicked away.
“He didn’t have to,” he said. “I saw.”
Yonghyeok’s heart hammered.
“When?” he demanded.
Hyeongseok’s voice stayed even.
“Sometimes your shirt lifts,” he said. “In scrims, when you stretch, when you change.”
“I didn’t want you to see.”
“I know,” Hyeongseok replied, his voice small.
The softness in it made Yonghyeok more angry than any teasing would have.
“Then why are you talking about it,” he snapped.
Hyeongseok didn’t flinch.
“Because you look like you’re hurting,” he said.
The words landed like a stun.
He stared at him, and for the first time, he noticed a faint scar along the edge of his collar, a thin line that disappeared under fabric.
Yonghyeok thought of his own scars.
“What did you do,” he whispered.
Hyeongseok’s hand went to his shoulder instinctively. He paused and then, slowly, he pulled the collar of his shirt down. The sun mark was also there. This one was brighter up close, etched into his skin like gold leaf. And along one edge, there were scars, pale and jagged. He had tried to scrape it away.
Just like me.
Something in Yonghyeok’s chest cracked.
“You hate it too,” he said.
Hyeongseok’s gaze stayed on him.
“I hate what people think it means,” he said.
The answer was so precise it hurt.
“What do they think it means?”
Hyeongseok’s mouth tightened.
“They think I’m supposed to be… righteous,” he said. “They think I’m supposed to lead. They think I’m supposed to burn.”
Burn. Leona. The faithful one. The one who turned her sword on her friend.
“And you,” he added, voice quieter. “They think you’re supposed to be the opposite.”
Heretic. Outcast. The one who ran. The one who returned with a blade of moonlight.
The story sat between them, heavy as a mountain. HeoSu’s voice echoed in Yonghyeok’s memory. You can believe in effort and still have a bond. Enemies.
“I don’t want that story,” Yonghyeok managed to say.
“Me neither,” Hyeongseok nodded.
Silence. The tea cooled.
“I… liked you,” Yonghyeok blurted. “Before,” he added quickly, as if that made it safer. “Before I noticed the mark. Before I knew what it might mean. I liked you because you’re… you.”
He hated how childish it sounded, but also how honest. Hyeongseok’s gaze softened in a way Yonghyeok had never seen on stage.
“You don’t have to say that,” he said.
“I do,” Yonghyeok said, voice rough. “Because if we’re soulbonded, if this is real, then I need you to know it’s not the mark making me say it.”
His throat moved.
“Do you think it is?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Yonghyeok admitted.
That was the truth, it was the worst truth. Because it meant the mark had succeeded in its oldest trick: making him doubt himself.
Hyeongseok reached for his cup, then stopped.
“You know what I hate most,” he said. “That when I look at you, I wonder if I’m only looking because of the sun.”
Yonghyeok’s breath caught.
“And then I get angry,” he said. “Because I don’t want anything to be able to force me to care.”
The words hit Yonghyeok like a mirror. He had thought he was alone in that fear, but he wasn’t. The bond, if it existed, had not chosen two people who would accept it easily. It had chosen two people who would fight it until their hands bled.
“Then what do we do,” Yonghyeok asked.
Hyeongseok looked at him.
“We play,” he said. “That’s it, we play our game. We make our choices. If the mark wants a story, it can watch us write a different one.”
The conviction in his voice made something in Yonghyeok loosen.
‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✩☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙
The stage lights were bright enough to drown out doubt. The crowd noise vibrated through the floor, and their headsets pressed against their ears like restraints.
In draft, the enemy team banned all of Yonghyeok’s comfort picks.
Daeho leaned behind him.
“Diana,” he said, not a slight doubt behind his words.
Yonghyeok stared at the screen. Hiscursor hovered and, in the corner of his eye, he saw Hyeongseok’s hand, steady on his mouse.
Yonghyeok thought of his scars, of Hyeonseok’s scars, of the kitchen.
He locked in Diana. The mark pulsed under his skin. He hated the pulse. But now he also understood it: not as fate, as acknowledgment.
When the nexus exploded, the stage lights blurred for a moment. Yonghyeok’s eyes had stopped focusing on the screen and started focusing on the person on the other end of the desk. They stood for the fist-bumping.
Hyeongseok stood up, composed and as he raised his arms to pull the jacket over his shoulders, the back of his jersey shifted. The sun mark flashed at the edge of his ribs like a sunrise.
In that instant, something Yonghyeok had been holding for years slipped. Not the hate, or at least not entirely. But the certainty that the hate was necessary.
The mark was not a judge nor a sentence. It was a symbol; people had filled symbols with stories for centuries. Maybe the bond was real, or maybe it wasn’t. But either way, the story was still theirs.
After the match, in the hallway behind the stage, the staff and cameras moved around them like a tide.
Yonghyeok found Hyeongseok by instinct. He was alone for a moment, reading through his script, shoulders loose in the afterglow of a win. Yonghyeok stepped close just as Hyeongseok looked up.
“You played well,” he said.
“So did you,” Yonghyeok replied.
Silence. Then, without thinking too much, because thinking too much was how I had made a prison out of a crescent, he added:
“Do you still hate it?”
Hyeongseok didn’t ask what he meant.
“I hate what I thought it would make me,” he said.
“And now?”
“Now,” he said, “I’m trying to hate it less.”
Yonghyeok’s throat tightened and he nodded.
It wasn’t a confession. It wasn’t a promise. It was a truce. For years, they had treated the marks like an enemy they couldn’t beat. But now, standing under bright hallway lights with the sun-marked person he had liked long before I knew why, he realized something simple and terrifying.
Maybe the moon wasn’t his enemy, maybe the moon was only a reminder that he could run up any mountain he wanted. That he could doubt and still choose. That he could be afraid and still reach out.
Hyeongseok’s hand brushed Yonghyeok’s wrist, brief, careful. A question. Yonghyeok didn’t pull away.
The bond, if it was there, didn’t yank, it waited.
And in that small act of staying, of not flinching from the symbol on their skin, Yonghyeok felt the first crack of acceptance widen.
Not because the mark demanded it, but because he did. Because he had feelings toward Hyeongseok regardless of the mark. And if the mark insisted on being part of their story, then it would have to learn what they had learned the hard way.
The sun and moon were not enemies. They were just light, different kinds.
And maybe, if they stopped trying to scrape the moon away, they could finally see what it had been trying to show them since they had memory:
That some things were not curses, some things were connections. And connection was terrifying, but it was also, quietly, the reason they kept playing.