Chapter Text
“For the new launch, make sure the bugs are out.”
Kenma’s voice was flat, clipped, the kind of calm that brooked no mistakes. He balanced the phone against his shoulder as he leaned forward in the swivel chair, snatching the controller from his lap. His eyes cut to the monitor, sharp and unblinking. “I know bugs are common, but I do not want them in my game.”
The screen flared. Minecraft. The title glowed in blocky letters, familiar yet loaded—like it was daring him to find the flaw he missed.
“Should we send the video game to you, boss? Just so you can check?”
Kenma’s fingers tightened around the controller. To anyone else, bugs were harmless glitches. To him, they were cracks in the foundation, failures he could not afford.
He hesitated, the weight of temptation pulling at him, then exhaled. “No. I’ve got midterms coming up. If I take the build now, I’ll play it all week instead of studying.”
A laugh burst through the line—unrestrained, unprofessional. Kenma twitched, shoulders jerking, and snapped upright in his chair. “Hey! Matsuki!”
“Sorry, boss, sorry,” Matsuki wheezed between chuckles. “I keep forgetting you’re still a university student. Imagine—our genius lead developer, stuck with exams like the rest of us mortals.”
Kenma pinched the bridge of his nose, already tired of the noise. “Just focus on the build. I don’t have time for your commentary.”
He dropped the controller back into his lap, dismissing Matsuki’s laughter with the same ease he dismissed the rest of the world. The call ended, the room went quiet, and for the first time that night, Kenma let himself settle into the game.
Just an hour, he told himself. One hour, then he’d put the controller down and crack open his notes. Midterms weren’t going to wait.
The world loaded in, and the familiar terrain spread out before him. Hardcore mode. No respawns. Every block mattered. He remembered how he and Kuroo had built this place together since their second year of high school, and the weight of that history pressed against him like gravity.
They used to stay up late for this world, and Kuroo even had to sleep over to even keep up with Kenma’s demands.
A smile crept on Kenma’s face upon the memory.
Towers and castles stretched across the horizon, stone walls etched with the kind of obsessive detail only a restless teenager could manage. There were bridges spanning rivers, a cathedral half-finished but still magnificent, underground farms that thrived in secret caverns—all the marks of Kenma’s quiet precision.
And then, there it was. A jarring slab of glass and concrete on the outskirts: a modern house, boxy and defiant, dropped into the middle of his medieval sprawl. Kuroo’s work. It didn’t match, not even close, but somehow it belonged—just like him.
“Just build it far from spawn!” Kenma remembered snapping at him.
“No. It’ll be difficult to look for you,” Kuroo had said, already rummaging through his minecraft chests like a thief.
“Just check my coordinates, dumbass.”
But Kuroo had only looked at him then, the glow of the monitor catching the sharp line of his jaw, his eyes sparking like midnight stars. “It can be as simple as staying by your side.”
Kenma’s lips twitched from the memory, though he couldn’t tell if it was irritation or something else. He let his character stand at the edge of the build for a moment, staring at that misplaced house.
A pop-up blinked on the corner of the screen, a message from Steam had gone in.
tekutsuroo: oi. online both in mc and steam? don’t tell me you’re playing instead of studying.
Kenma froze, thumb hovering over the joystick. Then stared at the message before setting the controller aside and typed a reply back.
kodzuken: you’re online too.
He sat there, waiting, the cursor blinking like it knew something he didn’t. There was something about messaging him—something Kenma couldn’t name—that pressed against his chest and twisted low in his stomach. The kind of feeling that wasn’t welcome, not when he had exams and deadlines breathing down his neck.
If this keeps up, he thought, maybe he’d just block him.
tekutsuroo: i’ll play with you.
His stomach dropped.
Kenma couldn’t remember how he agreed—if he even did. One moment the spawn point was empty, and the next, Kuroo’s avatar materialized right in front of him. Steve. The default skin. Not once had Kuroo bothered to change it because he thinks it was a waste of time.
“Lame,” Kenma muttered, imagining his own sleek robot skin, painted black with streaks of neon red, standing in sharp contrast. For Kenma, it’s a good investment, especially when he just started to livestream as a gamer. It helps people recognize him.
A call rang through Discord. Kenma’s cursor hovered for a moment, but he already knew who it was. The Steve standing in front of him didn’t need a name tag.
With a reluctant sigh, he clicked accept.
“Wow, this sure takes me back,” Kuroo murmured on the other end of the call. His Steve avatar spun in uneven circles, blocky head jerking as if he couldn’t quite control it. Within seconds, his hand was swinging aimlessly, chipping at the carefully placed terrain. “Ah! Look at those towers! You finished them now!”
Kenma groaned under his breath. “Watch where you press, Kuroo. Netherite’s a pain in the ass to loot.”
“Oops. Sorry,” Kuroo chuckled, steering his blocky Steve toward the out-of-place mansion. Kenma stayed at spawn, just watching his avatar sprint across the field.
“You didn’t touch anything here, did you?”
Kenma laughed. “I ate some cakes when I was on the brink of death. Kept forgetting to loot for food.”
Silence. Then, through the call, the steady sound of footsteps against quartz slabs as Kuroo’s avatar disappeared into his house. And then—
“What do you mean some?! Nearly half my cakes are gone!”
Kenma’s grin widened. He nudged his avatar toward his castle-like base, remembering the ridiculous sight of Kuroo’s massive table once covered entirely in cakes. “You didn’t visit this world for two years. The cakes would’ve expired if I hadn’t eaten them.”
“There is no food expiration in Minecraft!” Kuroo shouted, indignant.
Kenma laughed harder. “Then you should be thanking me. I saved your dining hall from being a fire hazard.”
“Saved?!” Kuroo’s voice pitched higher. “You pillaged my legacy. Do you know how long it took me to place all those cakes?”
“Two minutes,” Kenma deadpanned.
“Exactly!” Kuroo said, as if Kenma had just confirmed his point. “Two whole minutes of my life, gone. Poof. Eaten by your ungrateful little pixel-man.”
Kenma leaned back in his chair, the controller loose in his hands, laughter bubbling despite himself. “You’re the only person I know who hoards cake in hardcore.”
“Correction—hoarded,” Kuroo snapped. “Past tense. Thanks to certain someone.”
Kenma let him rant, lips twitching as he guided his avatar along the edge of his fortress walls. Kuroo never changed. Loud, dramatic, impossible to ignore. And somehow, after two years of Kuroo not visiting the world, it felt like no time had passed at all.
Once Kuroo’s righteous fury over the cakes simmered down, he suggested they get back to work on the cathedral—the one that had been sitting half-finished since their second year of high school.
It didn’t take long for them to fall into old patterns. Kenma placed block after block with practiced efficiency, filling out archways and windows, while Kuroo fussed over symmetry and balance like the entire structure had to meet divine approval.
“Don’t just stack it—line it with stone brick first,” Kuroo muttered, his avatar crouching, demolishing and replacing blocks until they sat just so.
Kenma rolled his eyes, but he followed the correction anyway. “You’re more obsessive than me.”
“Perfection is a virtue,” Kuroo said, and though Kenma couldn’t see him, he knew Kuroo was grinning.
Hours slipped by this way—Kuroo directing, Kenma executing, both of them wordlessly syncing into the old cadence of building. And somewhere in the back of his mind, Kenma realized this was exactly why he let Kuroo get away with being impossible. When he cared about something, even something as trivial as Minecraft blocks, Kuroo gave it his whole attention. He was serious, sincere, in a way that almost made Kenma want to match him. Almost.
By the time the spires were sketched against the digital sky and their storage chests nearly emptied, Kuroo finally let out a long exhale. “Not bad.”
Kenma leaned back in his chair, controller loose in his hands. “It’s not finished.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Kuroo said, followed by a sigh. “You’re finished.”
Kenma frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ve got exams,” Kuroo reminded, his voice softening. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re putting this off.”
Kenma stared at the screen, at their cathedral silhouetted in torchlight. He hated that Kuroo was right. Hated it more that he felt a small warmth in his chest at being reminded.
But Kenma exhaled through his nose, pushing the controller onto his desk. He was about to say something sharp—you don’t have to parent me—but the words caught on his tongue. Kuroo’s voice wasn’t scolding, not really. Just… steady. Like always.
And that was the problem.
College wasn’t high school. There were no easy practice schedules to anchor them, no daily walks home, no reason to drift into each other’s lives without trying. Now, everything felt carved out in pieces—an hour here, a call there—until even Minecraft had become something they had to schedule.
Kenma let his eyes linger on the spires piercing the blocky night. An unfinished cathedral, floating between what they’d started and what they’d never get around to completing.
One day soon, Kuroo wouldn’t just log off for the night. He’d log off for good, moving on to the next stage, while Kenma was still here, grinding levels, stalling, clinging to the only world that hadn’t changed since they built it together.
“Don’t fall asleep on your notes,” Kuroo added, breaking the quiet. His voice had a smile tucked inside it.
Kenma hummed, noncommittal, though his throat felt tight, their cathedral silhouetted in torchlight. He hated that Kuroo was right about falling asleep on his notes. Hated it more that he felt a small warmth in his chest at being reminded. His fingers flexed around the controller, restless, like he couldn’t quite decide whether to keep playing or set it down for good. Even when he let the controller slip onto the desk, his thumbs twitched like muscle memory, as if refusing to let go.
On the other side of the call, Kuroo yawned, careless, like he had all the time in the world. “You’ll thank me when you pass,” he said.
Kenma leaned back in his chair, head tipping against the rest, and stared at the glow of the screen until his eyes blurred. The cathedral loomed unfinished, its jagged spires stabbing upward, stubborn and incomplete. He exhaled through his nose, sharp and quiet.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.
When the call finally clicked off, his room felt suddenly too still, the hum of his PC too loud. Kenma’s hands hovered over the keyboard like he should open his notes, but his body didn’t move. Instead, his chest ached in that same irritating way—as though exams, deadlines, even game launches weren’t half as heavy as the silence Kuroo left behind.
And somehow, the cathedral sat there waiting, just another unfinished thing.
Unfinished, like the so-called “genius lead developer” Matsuki kept praising—stuck between exams and games, spires and deadlines, never complete.