“Oh, okay. Could you give that to Ayano directly for me? See you.”
The boy turned and started walking again, thinking nothing more of it. I chased him down in a panic.
“Whaaa—?! No, wait a second! It doesn’t mean anything unless you’re the one giving it to her…Like, if you’re the one she’s accepting it from…!”
“Uh, you’re really not making any sense. Stop following me, all right?”
The kid refused to slow down as he spat the words at me, weaving his way through the festival crowd. With the baggage I was carrying, I had trouble keeping up.
Finally, we reached the school’s front door. The boy removed his guest slippers and was just about done putting on his own shoes when I reached him.
“Ahh, wait a minute! I’ll think of something, so…um…!”
Crap. If he leaves the school grounds, I won’t be able to chase him around forever. What do I do now…?!
Then, at that moment, someone bumped into my shoulder. “Sorry!” she said. I turned around to find a female student selling drinks and looking at me with sorrowful eyes. The cooler slung from her shoulder had SODA 100 YEN written on it.
“Well, I’m outta here. Please don’t follow—”
“Do…do you want a soda?!”
The boy stared slack-jawed at me.
“Uh, I don’t really like sugary drinks like that, so…”
“Please! Just one can! You gotta be thirsty, right?! That was such a killer match, I bet some soda would taste great right now! C’mon. let’s have a drink! C’mon!”
The boy responded with what almost seemed like fear at my fervent request. Other people nearby us stopped, wondering what my deal was.
The drink seller took a look at us. “Um, would you like two, then?” she asked optimistically.
“Yes, two, please!” I immediately replied. “Okay?!”
The boy opened his mouth a couple times, attempting to say something, but then sighed heavily, giving up all hope.
“…All riiiight. If you want me to drink it, I’ll drink it.”
The response made me want to wave my fist in the air. Yes! I did it! I did it, Takane! I stopped him! Now our booth is a total success!
“Thank you very much!” the girl said, smiling. A few people around us began to clap. “I don’t know what’s going on,” one of them said, “but hey, good job.”
It was a good job. Seriously…
…Why was I going through all this again?
There were communal spaces dotted around the school for festival purposes. We chose a simple bench on the north side of the first floor, not far from the front entrance, to sit down and take a load off.
“…Ooh, this is good.”
The hoodie kid, who introduced himself as Shintaro Kisaragi, looked lovingly at his can. It was like he had never tried soda before. I gave him a questioning look.
“There’s nothing that rare about it, is there?”
There wasn’t. In fact, he was drinking the most well-known soda brand in the world. How the heck did he not know about it?
“Well, I know about it and all,” Shintaro replied, sounding a little hurt. “I just never picked it out for myself because I don’t like that sugary stuff too much.”
“Oh, I see!” I smiled. “Guess you just made a new discovery.”
“Guess so,” Shintaro said, already uninterested in the topic.
“…So you want me to give this to Ayano?”
Shintaro looked down at the fish specimen by our feet.
I did finally manage to have him accept it, although I was honestly starting to regret bringing up Ayano’s name.
“I think she’d be happy to have it, but…I’m sorry. If she says she doesn’t want it, we can take it back.”
“Ahhh, it’s fine. Even if she doesn’t, I got a sister who likes weird stuff like this, so I’ll give it to her instead.”
Shintaro stood up and tossed his empty can into a garbage bin next to the bench. Hmm. He’s a pretty nice kid after all, isn’t he? I don’t know what he did to set off Takane so bad. He’s a pretty damn good gamer, too. Where’d he come from, anyway? I decided to send out a couple of feelers.
“Y’know, though, you were really good at that game. Do you play in any competitions or anything?”
“Huh? Oh, that was just messing around. All you had to do was shoot the enemies when they came up on-screen. It’s pretty easy.”
Wow. Yeah, he and Takane were never gonna be too compatible. Kind of like oil and water, in fact.
“Y-yeah…? Well, it was still really impressive. I mean, pulling off what you did…I’m really kind of jealous. I sure can’t do anything like that…”
…Oops. Now what? I was starting to get frustrated with myself again. Damn, I’m an idiot. Why am I being jealous? I could never play like them.
But…oooh, that was so cool. If I could play like Shintaro can, then maybe Takane and I could—
“Uh?” Shintaro looked perplexed. “Well, if you wanna do that, why don’t you?”
“…Huh?”
“I’m just saying, if you want to play games online or whatever, just do whatever you want. It’s not like anyone’s stopping you, are they?”
“Well, no, but…”
Shintaro sighed and scratched his head. “So just do it,” he repeated. “Do what you like. If you want, I could introduce you to some pretty good…games…”
The feelings running through my mind were probably written all over my face. Shintaro’s “Uh-oh, what have I done now” look of shock made that obvious enough.
It was four in the afternoon. Just as someone over the PA system announced that the festival was over, I stood up and spoke as clearly as I could.
“Yes! Please! I’d love that!”
LOST DAYS · 6
“Huh. So that’s how you got friendly with each other? A classroom, late at night…That’s pretty romantic.”
“You don’t have to make it sound all gross like that! It’s not like anything happened.”
“Aw, what’s the big deal?”
Not spending any of the money I was gifted for the past several New Year’s Days resulted in a pretty decent amount of savings. It let me buy a much better PC than I was expecting.
Having a computer made me realize all over again how useful the Internet was. You could play games while using voice chat to talk to people without a phone, and it was all free, too. Amazing.
I was using the software Shintaro had told me to download to talk to him right now. But was this really a good thing? We weren’t going to put the phone company out of business, were we? I was a little worried about that.
Several months had passed since the school festival.
Ever since that day, it had become a nightly ritual for me and Shintaro to play online games together. It was the first time I’d done anything like that, but I found them both incredibly deep and astoundingly fun the more I got into them.
I always pictured video games as these things you played by yourself, but online games were kind of like virtual worlds, places where you could interact with people and compete with them in real time from anywhere in the world. Some of them were newbies like me, and some were virtual mountain hermits who spent years honing their craft. Working on my own skills and taking on these faceless opponents felt less like a game and more like interacting with a different culture. I quickly found it incredibly addictive.
These days, I was spending nearly every evening online, playing Dead Bullet -1989- (Takane’s home turf) and a variety of others. I mixed up my choices because Shintaro told me to. “You’ll be less one-dimensional that way,” he said. “It’ll make you a better player.”
Perhaps because of that, I was building a pretty decent record for myself in Dead Bullet. My handle, “Konoha,” was starting to get a little name recognition whenever I showed up in the lobby. Shintaro, on the other hand, never played it. The game helped me overcome my fear of zombies for good, but apparently his case of u
ndead-phobia was a lot more serious than mine.
“You’ve gotten really good, though, haven’t you? At this point, I bet you’d get up there in the rankings for pretty much any game you tried.”
“Huh? Y-you think so? Well, that’s just because you’ve been such a good teacher to me, Shintaro.”
“Teacher? I don’t think I really taught you anything. Oh, hey, more squids incoming.”
The moment Shintaro mentioned that, the windows of the mansion that loomed on-screen shattered, a swarm of multitentacled aliens slithering out of each one. The “squids” he mentioned, in other words. I wrapped my fingers around my controller and calmly began sniping them down.
Today we were playing Pumpkin Shooter, a free-to-play game with a Halloween motif. You chose your own character from a witch, a werewolf, some kind of Frankenstein-like thing, and so on, then you fought to defend Earth against a giant alien invasion. A little light on plot, maybe, but seeing it in action was a thrill. I loved it.
Playing it, you got the idea that the developers took a pretty direct approach. If monsters are scary, and aliens are scary, then mixing them together ought to be super-double scary. Shintaro still liked it, though. “Deep,” he called it.
By the way, Ghoulish Gourd, the game’s de-facto mascot, was a pretty useless power-up by default, but if you didn’t mind shelling out for microtransactions, he’d fly over to the nearest alien horde and blow himself up. This selfless fighting spirit meant that players universally just called it “the pumpkin bomb.”
That didn’t matter to me as much as Shintaro just mentioning I’d “gotten really good.” Receiving praise from Shintaro was an achievement in itself. It elated me as I fired a few more salvos into the next wave of squids.
“Y’know, if you keep that up, maybe you could even beat her next time. What was her name? Enomoto?”
“Huh? Oh, no way. Takane’s still way too tough for me, heh-heh-heh…”
“You think so? I dunno. You really got your moves down pat these days. I think you got at least a fighting chance. Why don’t you challenge her to a duel?”
That’s easy for you to say. But Takane (well, Ene, really)? She was on a whole different level. I’d seen videos of her in competitive tournaments, and what I saw made me doubt I had any chance.
Not that I couldn’t take her on, of course. I mean, I’d lose, but I could always try playing her anyway. But I didn’t want to yet. Why not? Well…
“Lemme guess. You’re afraid that if you lose real bad to her, she’ll never play you again, right?”
Bingo. It felt like one of the squids on-screen had wrapped a tentacle tightly around my heart.
“Well, that…that’s…part of it, but…Oh, it’s all riiight, though, okay? I’ll ask her when I feel like it! Give me a break!”
“Yeah, yeah. Not like it’s any of my business anyway…More squids.”
The warning was followed by the sound of a door creaking open. Not from the game, but from Shintaro’s room, through my headphones. Then, a girl’s voice. I began to get a little nervous.
“Hey, bro, can I talk to you for a sec?”
“Huh? Dude, are you stupid or something? I told you to knock before coming in! I’m kind of busy right now—”
“Ooh! You’re playing that game with the squids in it! Cool! I wanna play the squid game, too!”
Oh! This must have been Shintaro’s little sister I’d heard about. He said she liked “weird” things, didn’t she…?
“These squids are sooooo cute!”
Yep. It had to be her. But what did she want? Something related to Shintaro? “You can end the call if you want,” I said. No reply. He must’ve already removed his headset.
“Look, I’m playing with somebody right now. Can you just go away? You’re annoying me.”
“What’s with that? How come you’re willing to play with some random stranger, but not me? What’s so bad about me, huh?”
“Okay, well, one, you’re a total sore loser! You start crying and punching me and stuff. That’s not exactly fun for me, you know, putting up with you!”
Eesh, Shintaro. Kind of going too far, aren’t you? As I expected, his sister’s voice began to grow shaky. She wasn’t raising it yet, but I could tell she was angry.
“Is that what you want? Well, fine. I won’t play any games with you at all. Ever! For my whole life!”
“Yeah, do what you want. I don’t care. But if you come back later and ask to play, don’t expect me to say yes.”
Oh, Shintaro! That’s just being mean! You’ll make your sister cry! I craned my ears to find out what’d happen next. After a couple of sniffles, she shot back, her voice almost at a whisper:
“I—I actually stopped by a video arcade on the way home from school today. I wanted to practice a little. The owner came out and asked me if I wanted to be in some event they’re holding next week. He said he liked my voice, and maybe I could be a big star and things…I was kind of nervous about it, so I felt like I should ask you first…”
“Huuuh?! What the hell’s up with that?! He wants you to go up onstage or something? There’s no way you could—”
“But I’ve already decided to do it! I don’t need to listen to you anymore, bro!!”
Then, the slamming of a door echoed across my ears.
“Hey! Momo!” Shintaro cried out at the end, but there was no reply. The audio fell silent for a bit. Was he chasing her down? It seemed possible, but from the background noise I could pick up, it sounded like he was just sitting there, unsure what to do next. After a while I heard him say “Oh” softly and pick his headset back up.
“…Uh, sorry. I forgot we were still on a call.”
“Oh, no problem. Man, your sister, though…”
He didn’t respond at first. Maybe he was thinking about something. I decided to press on.
“Um, maybe you should try discussing things with your parents or something…?”
It seemed like a smart move to make, judging by their conversation.
“No,” Shintaro began. “If I told my parents that she went to an arcade, they’d probably ground her forever. Besides, I can’t put up with every single one of her tantrums. If I did, like…all this wouldn’t be…”
Shintaro sounded dead serious about it. Myself, though, I felt relieved. I admired him in a way. He was playing the big-brother role after all, wasn’t he?
“Yeaaah…Well, guess we’ll just have to do something about it ourselves.”
“…Huh?”
I closed the game window and brought up my calendar to check what dates the next weekend fell on. Then I opened a browser window. In the search box, I typed the date, the name of the local neighborhood, “arcade,” and “event.”
There was only one relevant result. Man, was having a computer ever helpful.
“All right, Shintaro. Wanna hit the arcade next weekend?”
“…Oh! There she is, Haruka! Right there!”
“Huh? Where, where?”
“Right over there! Um…I can’t…ngh…”
Shintaro tried his hardest to lift his head above the crowd and point in a certain direction. He couldn’t pull it off before the waves of people claimed him. I had no idea where he had been trying to point.
It was hard enough to keep myself from falling down and getting trampled. For Shintaro, a fair bit shorter than me, it must have been a harrowing ordeal.
When I heard the term “video arcade,” I was expecting someplace a bit cozier; lines of machines, little kids running around with a pile of 100-yen coins in their balled fists, that kind of thing. That didn’t describe this place. It was people, people, people, people, a few game machines, people, people, people…I mean, what the hell? Was this really a video arcade? It felt more like a people arcade.
“…Dahh, I lost her! What’s with all these people…Oww!! Hang on, I caught on a corner …No, no, sorry to bump into you…”
Shintaro apologized as he let the crowds swallow him for good. If
we got separated here, we’d probably not see each other for the rest of the day.
“Shintaro?!” I shouted, frustrated. “Where are you?! Shintaro?!”
I saw him just barely erupt above the surface, gasping for air.
“Aghh! This is insane! And quit running around, Haruka! You’re so huge, I promise I’ll never lose you!”
True. My height usually earned me nothing but panicked stares from toddlers and an occasional bump on the head against the ceiling, but at times like these, it was pretty useful. I stretched out as high as I could and looked around. Shintaro was pointing…toward the main stage, it looked like. If Momo was in this building, I assumed that’s where we’d find her.
“Haruka, this is totally nuts. If Momo gets put onstage in front of this huge crowd, she’s gonna…”
Shintaro placed a hand against his forehead in anguish.
“Y-yeah, I know what you mean. Um, how much time do we have until the event begins? …Twenty minutes?”
“There’s still twenty minutes?! Agh…nh…M-Momo! Momoooo!”
“Whoa! Chill out, Shintaro! …Oh! Sorry, I’m okay! No, I’m not a creepy weirdo or anything…”
It turned out that Momo was chosen to join a major event at an oversized video arcade and entertainment center, one of the largest in the area. I guess they were debuting an arcade version of Pumpkin Shooter, the game we were playing not too long ago, and the whole place was already in party mode…Well, not just party mode. It was a party. The whole place.
This was in part because, borrowing from the game’s Halloween theme, the event was also a costume contest. You had to be wearing one to get in, which only made things more difficult. We were nowhere near Halloween on the calendar, so I figured there wouldn’t be that many participants. Boy, was I wrong. It made me realize, all over again, how little I actually knew about the world.
Over the Dimension Page 8