Slum Online

by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

  Tetsuo stood alone in the street.

  I stared at my twenty-five-inch TV. It was only when I heard the AFK chime warning me I’d been inactive that I realized I’d won.

  CHAPTER 12

  A HOT WIND pushed dry air through Shinjuku. Two straight days of rain had washed away the smog, leaving a turquoise blue sky outside the window. I picked a butter roll cloud out of the pack drifting slowly over the city. The hint of a smile spread across my face.

  It was 8:55 AM. I was in my logic class, seventh row from the front. It was the last lecture of the semester, but apparently that wasn’t enough to keep Uemura the Elder from attacking the chalkboard with a vengeance. Muttering complaints about the heat under his breath, he flew across the board even faster than usual. I was already on my third sheet of loose-leaf paper. My right hand had gone completely numb.

  “This seat taken?”

  I lifted my head at the sound of Fumiko’s anime-saccharine voice. Without a word, I moved the bag I’d used to save her spot out of the seat next to me.

  Fumiko sat down and started unpacking her bag, which was easily three times as thick as mine. She took her 0.7 mm mechanical pencil and silver-rimmed glasses from their respective cases. Her name was written on the front of her collegeruled notebook in letter-perfect characters.

  I pushed my notes and a blue attendance card to her with a flourish. It was the last spare blue card I had, but it didn’t matter.

  “Your handwriting’s terrible.” Fumiko peered suspiciously at my notes through the thick lenses of her glasses.

  “Sorry.”

  “I can’t even read half of it.”

  “I can.”

  “If you’re the only person who can read it, it’s not writing. It’s code.”

  Fumiko insisted that notes you couldn’t read weren’t any good. You couldn’t count on remembering what you’d written, so you needed to write well enough that anyone could read them. I told her that with the amount of notes we had to take every week for Uemura the Elder, it didn’t matter what condition they were in. She just smiled that hamburger-shop smile.

  Fumiko fought back a yawn as she copied notes down off the board.

  “Not getting much sleep?” I asked.

  “Some.”

  “What have we here?”

  “I was studying.”

  It took Fumiko five minutes to copy the notes I had spent half an hour transcribing, but her handwriting was still two hundred fifty-six times neater.

  Uemura the Elder was humming along in front of the chalkboard. The morning light spilling into the room erupted into a halo as it struck the gel that had hardened in his hair. He definitely had his younger brother beat hands down in the hair department.

  Looking back and forth from Fumiko’s short bob to Uemura the Elder’s neatly parted Carl Sagan coiffure, it occurred to me that given the choice between his associate professorship or a fine head of hair, Uemura the Younger would probably have chosen the hair.

  That afternoon, Fumiko and I went into Shinjuku. She said she had some shopping to do. When I told her I’d seen The Hustler, she admitted to spending all day Sunday in an arcade. Apparently she dragged her brother out of bed to help her practice her combo moves in the neighborhood arcade. Last night she pulled an all-nighter reading a strategy guide.

  I mussed Fumiko’s hair. Maybe there was hope for her yet.

  “Don’t do this on my account.”

  Fumiko tugged hard at my shirttail. “Who said I was?”

  “Why else would you?”

  “I have my honor to defend.”

  “You gotta be good if you wanna defend anything.”

  “I’ll get good, then.”

  “Won’t be easy.”

  “We’ll see.”

  Fumiko claimed to have lost the game I watched her play because she had chosen the wrong character. Apparently the karateka wasn’t for her.

  With an eagle claw, she swore she had the punch-cancel-palm thrust-cancel-palm thrust-punch-punch-cancel-chain low spin kick counter finishing move down cold. An E-rank combo that was a specialty of Tanaka’s.

  I looked up at the narrow strip of sky from the bottom of a canyon of skyscrapers. Before long she’d be better than Pak.

  “Oh, one other thing I meant to ask, Eddie.” Fumiko’s smile gleamed with mischief. “You finally beat Minnesota Fats?”

  “I dropped out of the tournament.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “After you turned down my dinner invitation?”

  “I ran into someone I’d been trying to find for a long time.”

  “Who? A girl?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know?” I must have laughed then. “I saw that. Come on, let’s hear it.”

  “I really don’t know. You just have to take my word.”

  “Lies!”

  “It’s true. And quit pulling my shirt!”

  I told Fumiko all about Versus Town then.

  Tetsuo and his school uniform and wooden clogs. Hashimoto the ninja. Ben the bartender. Ricky the asshole. The maternal Masumi. The JTS Saloon tucked away in the warrens of Sanchōme. I told Fumiko the whole tale of the make-believe city and the make-believe character named Jack.

  I told her why I wanted to become the best. Why I practiced combo moves on wooden dummies. Why I chose to fight Jack instead of Pak. And she listened to every word.

  When Masumi and Hashimoto came to the saloon after the fight, I told them I had beaten Jack. Masumi emoted a toast to my success with a glass of whiskey and water. Hashimoto only stood there in his tuxedo and shrugged.

  And that was the end of it. Tonight, somewhere far to the north, Hashimoto would be planning his next investigation even as the usual suspects filed into JTS. Life in Versus Town would go on as it always had.

  The only thing that had changed was Ganker Jack. I didn’t expect Tetsuo to ever see him again in the virtual world any more than I expected to see Lui again in the real one.

  The place Jack and Tetsuo fought only existed online in a make-believe city, and it only existed while we were there, locked in a battle only we knew. That place was mine as much as it was Jack’s. I earned it when I beat him, and he earned it when he lost. That was why we could never meet again. And even if we did, that one shining moment that existed between us was gone. It existed somewhere beyond our reach.

  Now Fumiko and I were free to search for our own place, our own shining moment. Not my search for Jack, or Fumiko’s search for the blue cat. I was ready and willing, if she was.

  I turned to her as we walked. “Wanna catch a movie?”

  “Nope. Today we’re shopping.”

  “Again?”

  “Is that a complaint?”

  “A complaint? From me? No, I didn’t hear any complaint.”

  “I’m pretty sure that was a complaint.”

  I took Fumiko’s tiny hand in my own. The smells of a new summer surrounded us as we walked side by side through Shinjuku.

  With Jack out of the way, I had decided to give Tetsuo some much-needed rest. So it was purely chance that we passed the arcade on Kokusai-dōri, and mere coincidence that I happened to spot Pak inside.

  The head-to-head game cabinet had been moved near the entrance. It would seem the arcade was holding an event to allow any brave soul to try their hand against the winner of the second season tournament.

  A girl in a sailor uniform sat beside Pak. If I had to guess, I’d say she was Keith. When Tetsuo failed to show up for his semifinal match, Keith received the spot as runner-up in the match he’d lost against Tetsuo. Keith had gone on to beat Tanaka and advance to the finals.

  Pak dispatched the nameless snake boxer to advance to the finals where he beat Keith to win the tournament. He had honed his sharp look, and his skills, to the point it could probably slice through a butcher block.

  Fumiko watched the monitor as he played. “He’s pretty good.”

  “You
could say that.”

  “You’re better though, right?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But you beat Jack. I thought Jack was the best there was.”

  “Not everybody would agree.”

  “I don’t think I understand.” Fumiko touched her finger to my chin. There was mischief in her eyes. The faint, sweet smell of olive trees tickled my nose. “You want to play him?”

  “Not especially.” I had learned to filter my thoughts.

  Fumiko translated. “So you don’t especially want to play him, but deep down inside, you might be tempted.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can play him once, if you buy me dinner,” Fumiko purred.

  “Expensive game.”

  “You owe me after I had to cancel your birthday dinner.”

  I folded my arms. “This Saturday. Ebisu.”

  “A deal’s a deal. Have at it.”

  “You’re a real slave driver.”

  I sat down opposite Pak and pressed the A Button.

  With a click I was no longer Etsuro Sakagami. I had become a karateka.

  That day, I didn’t bother keeping track of how many games I won.

  BONUS ROUND

  CHAPTER 1

  I PRESSED THE BUTTON and was no longer Jun Yamanouchi.

  I had become Hashimoto.

  My thumb worked the directional pad. Familiar music played through my headphones. The lights in my room were off. The storm shutters on the window were closed—I had taped cardboard over them to cover the gaps between the slats. My alarm clock was moping in the corner, collecting dust. It had made audible ticks as it counted away the seconds, but that was before I had torn out the batteries. The only source of light in the room was my flat-screen monitor; it cast a pale glow on the game console and my hands gripping the controller.

  The nights are quiet in Otaru. The noise from my parents’ television downstairs vibrated up through the floor. I could feel it in my ribs. My body lay half on my futon, my torso propped up on my elbows. But my mind was already wandering the streets of Versus Town.

  Sanchōme was filled with the same old digital sounds under the same old turquoise blue sky. It was just past eleven o’clock at night. I spotted some familiar characters moving across the twenty-four-inch screen.

  It’d been three months since Pak’s win in the second season tournament.

  No one had seen Jack. The Ganker of Sanchōme was gone. But the JTS Saloon was the same as ever. Right where it always had been. Most of the faces there were the same too: Hashimoto, Masumi, Ben, and Ricky. Seemed like RL had gotten its claws into Tetsuo’s player though. Sometimes he’d be there when I logged in, and sometimes he wouldn’t. When I did run into him, he’d oft en just be pacing back and forth along the streets of Sanchōme, like a lion in a cage.

  Ninja Hashimoto was currently on the trail of another mystery—the biggest since Ganker Jack in fact.

  The caper was a theft in RL: the mysterious disappearance of Pak’s tournament trophy last week. The trophy itself wasn’t particularly valuable. From the pictures I’d seen on the net, it looked pretty cheap. Not the kind of thing you could get much money for.

  Pak’s player had been at an arcade event when it happened.

  He’d only taken his eyes off of it for a second. Just long enough for the trophy to be stolen.

  This intrigued me. Here we had something of extremely little value being stolen in plain sight in a crowded, public place. A trophy like that is valuable only because of the achievement it represents. It doesn’t work the other way around. No pawnshop would ever take it, and you couldn’t put it on your shelf and expect anyone to praise you for it. It wasn’t impressive to have the trophy—it was impressive to be the player who won it.

  Versus Town Networks, Inc., the game’s owner, had put up an announcement on its homepage asking for the trophy’s return, no questions asked. The public forums were up in arms and even the polygons of Sanchōme looked a little jumpy, as though they were afraid something might come along and steal them

  I pride myself on being in the know, and investigating this kind of thing was Hashimoto’s raison d’être, so how could I resist looking into it? Here in Versus Town, the only real “meaning” came from a push of the directional pad. To get any more involved, the player had to put a part of themselves into the game. But that was like throwing dry ice in a bucket to make fog. Stop adding ice, and it all fades away. That was why Tetsuo’s player wasn’t logging in much these days. Jack had been his dry ice, but now that the saga of Tetsuo and Jack was over, he had no reason left to come to Versus Town. That was the nature of the game—and if you have something worth doing in RL, more power to you, I say.

  As for me, I have nothing but the game. I got accepted to university in Tokyo only to run screaming three months later. Now I’m a professional shut-in. Who better to poke around the Internet trying to discover why someone would risk so much to steal something worth so little?

  When I first retreated into my apartment down in Tokyo, I had this crazy idea that if I just went home the smell of the air would cure me. I’d be a regular person again. But when they finally dragged me back, I found that somehow the hands on my internal clock were moving at a different speed than those of my high school friends. We were off by about five seconds every hour or something. I couldn’t input the correct commands to communicate with them anymore; the timing was all off. So I resumed the life I had taken up so briefly in Tokyo and shut myself away in my room to play games. What if, I wondered, I’m at the cutting edge of human evolution? Maybe my brain is more highly evolved. It’s the kind of thing that, a century ago, only the nobility or the particularly well off would have even dreamed of contemplating. What would a lounging Roman aristocrat think if they saw how I was living? They’d probably think I had it all. “What a life,” they’d say. Or not. Whatever.

  Of course my parents were worried about me. Then again, sometimes I caught them actually being happy about their own son quitting school and coming back home, which only served to reinforce my notions about the stupidity of parents. In any case, stupidity is what let me spend my days playing games, so I couldn’t complain.

  I mashed the directional pad, sending Hashimoto running toward Sanchōme. I didn’t take any shortcuts, choosing instead the streets where I knew I’d run into a lot of other characters. Even aft er the text bubbles had faded over the heads of people talking in the street, I could read what they had been saying in my log. I could analyze it later to check for any chatter about the case. If you put together the right team, you could track just about every conversation taking place in Versus Town.

  Hashimoto made his way to JTS. Just inside an alleyway, I saw someone on the screen—a man, wearing a school uniform one size too small. Or maybe he was just one size too big. He wore big wooden sandals on his feet. His hair was all spiked, like the protagonist in a manga, and he wore a white headband. It was the karateka Tetsuo, toughest fighter in Sanchōme, a virtual city block brimming with fighters.

  I pulled out my keyboard and started typing in a greeting. A text bubble appeared over Hashimoto’s head.

  > Tetsuo. It has been too long.

  > About a week, right? I’ve been busy.

  > Be warned: the way of the housewife with too much time on her hands is a dangerous path.

  > Me? A housewife? Hardly.

  > It was merely a jest.

  I entered a command and Hashimoto nodded knowingly.

  I could see Tetsuo was his usual new self: a stressed-out carnivore. Though his texture-mapped face hadn’t changed one pixel, he was moving listlessly. Or maybe it was just that Tetsuo’s player’s clock and the clock of this virtual city weren’t quite in sync.

  Tetsuo spoke.

  > Okay, to tell the truth, I got this problem IRL. Thought I’d head down to JTS and talk to the guys there about it.

  > No good ever comes of bringing RL problems here, friend.

  > Oh, I know that.
It’s just not the kind of thing I can talk to anyone in RL about.

  > It is the way of things to discuss RL problems with RL people, is it not? Have you no friends in whom you might confide?

  Tetsuo seemed to think for moment.

  > There were some guys in middle school and high school I used to think were friends. But we’ve grown apart since entering university. I guess I have one friend I could tell, but I haven’t talked to her in months. She might not even be around anymore.

  > A sadder tale I have not heard for some time.

  > It’s different with you?

  > There are those whom my player considers to be friends. However, whether or not they consider my player to be a friend is unknown.

  > No surprise there.

  Tetsuo flung up his arms on-screen. In a place like the net, where a new hero was born every day, it was sad to think that this foundering, lost fellow was the man who rubbed Ganker Jack’s face in the dirt and got away with it. I knew I should have let it rest, but my fingers moved of their own accord.

  > Tell me, Tetsuo. What troubles you?

  Tetsuo didn’t move. Aft er a few moments, words began to fill the bubble hanging over his head.

  > You hear about Pak’s tournament trophy getting stolen?

  > How could anyone who has been in Versus Town over the last week not have heard?

  > Great. Figures.

  > This is what concerns you? I fail to see how Pak losing his trophy would affect you in any way.

  > It wouldn’t if it were only missing.

  > I am afraid you’ve lost me. What possible connection could there be between Pak’s loss and your distress?

  > Look, first I need you to promise me you won’t tell anyone.

  > A ninja says nothing.

  > I mean it.

  > … > Very funny.

  > I promise you I will speak of this to no one.

  The moment the words appeared on-screen over Hashimoto’s head, Tetsuo quickly forward-dashed from one end of the narrow alleyway in which we stood down to the other and back—checking to see if any other characters were close enough to eavesdrop on our conversation.