The pressure had been building for weeks. The relentless focus on CampusFix, the pop quiz, the constant need to be "on"—it had left a low-grade hum of tension in Kairos's mind. He needed a hard reset. He needed to log off from reality and into a world where the biggest problem was a Ruin Guard's missile barrage.
He was sprawled on his bed, idly farming Artifacts in Genshin Impact, when a message popped up in the in-game chat. It was from a user named Aether_Prime.
Aether_Prime: You know, for the co-creator of a campus-wide utility app, your Serenitea Pot is looking pretty barren.
Kairos sat up so fast he nearly dropped his phone. Aether_Prime. Ares. Of course her in-game name would be something elegant and foundational. He'd given her his UID weeks ago as a joke, never thinking she'd actually use it.
Kairos_T: It's called minimalism. You wouldn't get it. And I'm busy farming for my queen, Yoimiya.
Aether_Prime:Your 'queen' is a pyrotechnician who sets herself on fire. My Keqing is a pillar of electro efficiency.
Kairos_T:BLASPHEMY. Fight me. Right now. My world.
A challenge. A ridiculous, glorious, zero-stakes challenge. An invitation appeared on his screen: Aether_Prime wishes to enter your world. He accepted.
Her avatar, the elegant and precise Keqing, materialized in his world. For a few minutes, they didn't talk. They just ran around his admittedly sparse Serenitea Pot, the in-game housing system, making their characters jump on furniture and perform idle animations. It was dumb. It was perfect.
Aether_Prime: Okay, I can't take this. The lack of decor is physically painful. Let's go do something. My resin is capped.
Kairos_T:Boss run? Azhdaha?
What followed was a two-hour dive into pure, unadulterated co-op chaos. They teleported across the map, taking on the game's toughest weekly bosses. This was a different kind of collaboration. There were no schematics, no user stories, no debates over architecture.
There was only the frantic, beautiful dance of combat.
"Okay, I'll taunt with Yoimiya, you set up Keqing's stiletto!" he said, his voice crackling over the in-game voice chat they'd finally switched to.
"On it!Get ready to dodge, he's about to stomp!" her voice came back, focused but laced with a thrill he'd never heard during their work calls.
They died. A lot. Azhdaha's elemental infusions wiped them out. La Signora's blizzard phase froze them solid. But with each failure, they adapted. They learned each other's rhythms. He knew to draw aggro when she was setting up her big Electro damage combo. She knew to throw her stiletto to him for a quick escape when he was cornered.
It was a different kind of syntax, a language of movement and timing. They weren't Kairos and Ares, the developers; they were a Pyro DPS and an Electro support, a perfectly synergistic team.
Between boss runs, they'd find a quiet spot on a cliffside in the game, letting their characters sit while they talked, the stunning cel-shaded landscape stretching out before them.
"This is what you do to unwind?" Ares asked, her Keqing kicking her feet over the edge of the cliff. "Beat up giant geo dragons?"
"It's better than staring at a wall," Kairos said, his Yoimiya lying flat on her back. "No one judges you here. There's no legacy code, no weird HTML structures. The rules make sense. If you hit the monster enough times, it dies. It's… simple."
"I get it," she said, her voice softer. "It's a closed system. A solvable problem. Unlike, say, student engagement or maintenance department budgets."
"Exactly."
They fell into a comfortable silence, watching the virtual sun set over Liyue Harbor. It was peaceful in a way their real-world interactions rarely were. There was no pressure, no agenda. Just two avatars in a beautiful world, sharing the same digital space.
"Hey," Ares said after a while. "That thing you did with Yoimiya's burst during the Childe fight? Timing it right after he teleports? That was smart."
The praise, for something so trivial and yet so core to his interests, hit him with a strange warmth. "Thanks. Your stiletto placement is insane. You always put it right where I need it to be."
"It's just pattern recognition," she said, but he could hear the smile in her voice. "It's not that different from predicting user flow in an app."
He laughed. "You can't help yourself, can you? Everything is a system to optimize."
"Old habits," she conceded. "But this… this is a good system."
They played until their resin was truly depleted and their real-world energy began to wane. As they stood by the waypoint in Mondstadt, preparing to log off, a sense of profound contentment settled over Kairos. The hum of tension was gone.
Aether_Prime: This was fun. We should do it again. Maybe I'll even build a proper teapot so you can see how it's done.
Kairos_T:I'd like that. Goodnight, Ares.
Aether_Prime:Goodnight, Kairos.