The moment the character-select screen dimmed, he lifted his head. The fire in his eyes was so vivid it looked ready to spill out as real smoke. A tremor crawled to my fingertips—will I burn too? The game’s framerate dipped oddly. Eighteen seconds. For eighteen seconds I could not look away.
The Curse of His Burning
“Why Diavolo in the first place?” a friend asked later. Not top-tier damage, not meta. I had no answer. When he blinked, the red glint threading his lashes was too sharp, as if it had roused something long buried inside me.
“I’m sorry… it’s just—your eyes are stunning.”
The man called Diavolo on the screen didn’t smile. He merely tilted his head, peering deeper.
From that night on, I burned artifact fodder nightly just to summon him. I’d walk into Abyss damage on purpose so he’d swoop in and catch me—because no one in the real world ever did.
Anxiety Deeper Than Fear
Weeks later, an open-chat notice read: Coex Genshin booth next week. My nickname wore a badge: Diavolo Simp #1. My finger moved before my mind caught up.
Nickname: Skyblade_Diavolo4Life
Status: …spare a little flame?
Meeting him—his voice actor—would collapse the distance. Fatal. Yet the more fatal, the more my hands shook.
3F, Coex. Not the pixel Diavolo, but the man paid to speak for him. The voice was right, the gaze was not. I approached anyway.
“Could I… have an autograph?”
“Where?”
“The back of my hand—no, my wrist.”
I rolled up my sleeve. When the pen touched the pulse, my eyes fell shut—just like when he catches me in-game.
Why We Surrender to Fictional Eyes
Psychologists call it psychophilia—desire for distance. What I loved was precisely the unreachable. Diavolo in the game will never leave me, and I can never delete him; that certainty was comfort.
“Real relationships end. But the game burns forever.”
I remembered a woman from the chat who loved Serana from Skyrim. Each night she installed mods and walked the woods with her. Real love had only wounded her; an NPC never turns away.
We soothed our real loneliness in arms that cannot abandon us.
His Breath Stepped Out of the Screen
Leaving the booth, a man blocked my path—same Genshin tee.
“You’re Skyblade_Diavolo4Life, right?”
“…Yeah?”
“I main Diavolo too. Wanna run Abyss at eight tonight?”
He smiled—half-ecstatic, half-chill, like the in-game grin. I nodded. Going home meant being alone.
That night we summoned Diavolo together. When he swept in, smoke-wreathed, a message popped up.
[Skyblade_Diavolo4Life] Could we… meet in real life?
[FlameSummoner] No. Then in-game Diavolo would grieve.
I stared at the screen. The crimson gaze still watched, unblinking.
Are you, right now, nursing the urge to drag someone’s fiction into flesh? Or is someone reducing you to a mere 3D model?