A Headphone Actor

by Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)

  YUUKEI YESTERDAY II

  “Daaang…That girl’s beat thirty-seven in a row…”

  “Yeah, I heard from some guy that she actually placed second nationwide in a Dead Bullet -1989- tournament.”

  “Dude! Really?! You mean ‘Dancing Flash Ene’?! Man, no wonder she’s so dialed in like that. Whoa, check it out, she beat her high score again! …But why’s she crying, though?”

  The science storage room was undoubtedly witnessing the most exciting scene it had ever hosted since the school’s opening.

  I kept a firm grip on my controller, unable to wipe the tears away from my eyes.

  No matter how hard things got, once I picked up the controller, there was nothing that could take my hands off of it.

  That was the credo I lived by as a gamer, something that lay at the root of my personality, and I wasn’t sure I could do anything to break the habit any longer.

  The big-screen monitor displayed a hand holding a gun at the bottom, twisting left or right based on my controller input as it shot down the barrage of targets.

  The target monsters that roared dramatically with every hit were drawn like cutesy fairy-tale bears and rabbits and so on, but the explosion of blood and body parts that gushed forth with every shot was not exactly kid stuff.

  “Nice, Takane! Another win for us! …Though that was really more of an Ene move just now, wasn’t it?!”

  Haruka, all but serving as my ringside manager as he sat next to my competition seat, beamed brightly as his eyes shone in sheer wonder.

  “Uh. Ngh. Shut…up…dumb…ass…”

  I was already sobbing to the point where stringing together a sentence was proving difficult, but the audience surrounding us paid it no heed, showering me with applause as my win count continued to skyrocket upward.

  My competitor, a guy dressed in military gear and a crew cut, gave me an impassioned salute. “I appreciate this,” he said. “Such an honor! Getting to play against Dancing Flash Ene in person like this…!”

  It was to the point where the brawny men milling around the entrance were scuffling against each other for the chance to challenge me next. “Let me go first,” said one. “No! No, I’m more worthy of her!” said another.

  The students who had gathered around to take in the scene, along with the hard-core gamers who heard the rumors and ran over for this once-in-a-lifetime chance, had turned the room into a living hell.

  “Why is this happeningggggg…?”

  My vision blurred as the tears plopped down onto the controller.

  The day of the school festival. The trigger for this whole ordeal began a few hours before.

  The usual desks were carted out from the center of the science storage room, the shooting-gallery booth looming large in their place.

  Though, really, the “booth” was little more than a pair of monitors on top of a long table, a cloth decorated with fluorescent paint draped over it. But turning off the lights and taping cardboard over the classroom windows left the room in total darkness except for the monitors and the faint glow of the paint.

  It didn’t seem like any kind of last-moment setup at all, in no small part thanks to Haruka’s artistic talent.

  “W-well, this is it, huh…? It’s kind of like a dream, isn’t it? Like, we actually did this…!”

  “Yep. Turned out pretty well, didn’t it? Great job, Haruka! Here, let me practice a little more before we open this up.”

  Mr. Tateyama, deep rings around his eyes after pulling a series of death-march all-nighters to finish coding the game, and myself, with no rings around the eyes at all after getting ample sleep (fifteen hours) the night before, were busy making the final adjustments before the big reveal.

  Haruka turned on the PC lurking beneath the table, and in a few moments, the title screen for the game, the pride and joy of Haruka and Mr. Tateyama, appeared.

  The game, which featured a rogues’ gallery of plush animal monsters getting mown down by the player, was named Headphone Actor by Haruka.

  I didn’t know what the title was supposed to mean at first glance, until I found that the final boss, the evil mastermind controlling all these monsters, looked exactly like me. In other words, the object was to defeat the headphoned villain and the troupe of evil monsters (“actors”) she had under her control. Then I knew what it meant, and it irritated me more than a tad.

  It goes without saying that I floored Haruka with a single punch immediately afterward.

  “…This is really in bad taste, you know that? Why do I have to fight against myself?”

  “Well, I mean, the people who play this have to beat you in the game to win, right? So I figured, like, it’d be neat if the last boss looked kind of like you, Takane…though I guess I kinda forgot you’d be playing the whole time, too…”

  “…I should’ve guessed it’d never occur to you. Though it doesn’t look much like me anymore, now that you changed the colors.”

  The last boss, named “Takane V2” by Mr. Tateyama, used to be a dead ringer for me with her black hair. After I forced Haruka to change it, she was now in her “alternate Player 2 palette” with blue hair.

  “But even ignoring that, why’d you make this game into such a gorefest? Did we really need that?”

  Pressing the “Start” button on the title screen brought up an opening monologue. The game was apparently set in a small city, one that (once again due to Haruka’s meandering artistic spirit, no doubt) bore an eerie resemblance to the town we lived in.

  Proceeding through this townscape, gun in hand, the player is confronted with a gauntlet of cutesy stuffed animals, all eager to attack you. Your job is to shoot them down, but with every hit, the game rewarded you with blood spurts and grisly, moist sound effects, no doubt striking most players with intense pangs of guilt.

  “That was…You know, I borrowed it from that game you were talking about before, Takane! I figured that’s the kind of thing you’d like, so…”

  My fingers quivered in response. That error in judgment was all it took for a stuffed monkey to sink its teeth into my neck, bringing the game to a quick end.

  Streams of blood poured down from the top of the screen, followed by GAME OVER in block lettering.

  “D-did you hear about that from Mr. Tateyama?!”

  After several nights without sleep, Mr. Tateyama had apparently collapsed into bed after finishing up the game, leaving behind the words “Tell…the administrator…about this…”

  Haruka had apparently been staying over at our teacher’s house over the past week to get the game done. There was more than a passing chance Haruka had learned a lot more than he should have.

  “No, no, he didn’t tell me anything. I just remembered what you told me in class earlier, and I did some research from there.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s fine then, but…I mean, don’t you think all this blood is kind of a mismatch for the theme of the game? It kind of, I dunno, puts a damper on things.”

  I started the game from the beginning again, but the sight of these cutesy plush animals getting gibbed with every shot just felt weird to me. If these were zombies, the whole package would’ve been a lot more attractive, I thought.

  “Heh-heh! Sorry about that. But, hey, it’s the school festival, so I wanted to make it something you’d like…”

  My hands slipped once again at this most uninvited of responses. This time, a plush pig trampled me to death for a quick GAME OVER.

  “But…it’s not like I, like, enjoy all this gore or anything…”

  I deliberately kept my gaze away from Haruka as I started another game.

  “What? Ooh…uh, I’m sorry. I thought you liked this kind of rough stuff, so…But I guess you wouldn’t after all, huh, Takane? Guess I should’ve realized that sooner.”

  “Oof…Man, you really got the wrong idea with me, Haruka. Listen, do you know what makes for a good game? Excitement. You play a game because it’s fun and refreshing to be the hero, going around this amazing world a
nd wishing you were more a part of it.”

  That was the attraction I looked for in games, at least.

  The real world could be a lot more unfair, but in the game world, if you have the talent, anyone can be a hero.

  That, more than anything else, was why I became a gamer.

  “Hohh…I see. I don’t really play games much, so I guess I wasn’t aware. So, uh, does that mean this game…isn’t very fun or whatever?”

  Haruka sounded cautious as he asked. I kept my eyes firmly on the screen, saying, “Oh, no, I kind of like it” after planting a shot between the eyes of a plush cat that flew into sight.

  I could hear a sigh of relief from my side.

  Given how much I already played the game yesterday, it only took ten minutes or so for me to get back into the groove.

  Unless Haruka threw me with his unwelcome commentary and ended my game early, I never made a mistake. There was no way I could lose in a competitive match against another player.

  One reason for this confidence was that I had easily tripled Mr. Tateyama’s high score of 45,000 with my first play—a score he had to work hard to achieve.

  “Wow, this is going to turn out great! No way could any of the challengers here beat you!”

  “Well, duh. I’ve got the skills, and I know it, too…Whoa, look at what time it is! The festival’s gonna start in five minutes! Are we okay with the rest of the prep, Haruka?!”

  “Oh, uh, yeah, all systems go! I set everything up yesterday so we’d be ready to go whenever. Ooh, but now I’m starting to get nervous…”

  Haruka had been his usual “yeah, whatever” self up to now. Now, with the school festival looming large, the pressure must have been getting to him. He got out of his seat, pacing around the classroom anxiously.

  “Hey! Quit freaking out on me! I’m not gonna lose to anyone, so it’s gonna be just fine!”

  “Y…yeah, I know, but you think anyone’s gonna show up…? What if they don’t like the game at all…?”

  I, too, had begun to get butterflies in my stomach. It was the same kind of nervousness, I recalled, that I felt before the game tournament I went to the other day.

  This time, though, the main challenge wasn’t to see how well I could perform—it was how much I could entertain the guests that showed up.

  We’d be entertaining everyone from kids to elderly women…Of course, we’d have to put in some age restrictions with all this gore, but either way, we’d be obliged to appeal to a broad audience.

  The game Mr. Tateyama and Haruka came up with was naturally pretty lacking in terms of gameplay depth and balance, but to be honest, I thought it was pretty fun. There was something really compelling to it that made you want to keep playing.

  My job was to bring this appeal across to the audience, helping them enjoy it as much as possible…and try to keep a smile on my face the whole time.

  “Aw, don’t worry about it. You put your heart and soul into this, right? They’re gonna love it!”

  I tried my best to placate the fretful Haruka. Just as I did, the speaker next to the clock squawked to life: “Ladies and gentlemen, the school festival is about to begin. All classes, follow your planning committee’s instructions and make this into the most exciting event you can!”

  The moment the voice fell quiet, my heartbeat accelerated.

  Haruka, for his part, was crouched down, intoning “It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay” to himself like a mantra.

  “Hey! Get up! We’re starting! People are gonna start coming in soon, so…uh, go stand in front of the door and guide them in! If anyone looks interested, go up to them and tell them what’s going on in here! Okay?!”

  “Uh, uh, yeahhh…Yeah! I…okay. It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay…”

  With that less-than-inspiring reply, Haruka stood up and staggered his way toward the door…and right into it, with a bang. “Ow, ow, ow…” he said as he finally exited the classroom.

  “…You think he’s gonna be okay?”

  The speaker that had just played the announcement was now broadcasting background music for the festival, letting everyone know that things were about to get under way.

  For the purposes of our setup, I turned down the volume on the science storage room’s speaker, shut off the lights, and decided to wait for Haruka to presumably bring in my first challenger.

  With the lights out, the room was bathed in the faint light from the monitors and the fluorescent paint.

  I sat down on the rightmost of the two chairs facing the monitors on the long table, staring blankly at my title screen.

  The Headphone Actor splash screen featured a dull, gray cityscape behind the title logo. The game must have been set around dusk, because a deep, purplish sky was visible through the tops of the buildings.

  “Man, this game is really in bad taste…I mean, Haruka and Mr. Tateyama really got into making it and all, but this is gonna freak you out if you’re a girl or something, isn’t it?”

  But I knew Haruka. I doubted he cared. If he found an interested-looking girl, I was sure he’d take her right into the room, like I told him to.

  —You know, this could actually turn out real bad. What if that lady is too much of a wimp for this kind of thing?

  The first thing she’ll see when she opens the door is this gorefest of a shooting game, playing inside a dark, seedy storage room.

  And she’d be playing against a dark, seedy, glarey-eyed me for her opponent…No. I should stop thinking about myself. That’ll just make me all depressed, and it’s not like I have any idea how to improve my life. I’d just start crying, is all.

  But even ignoring me for the moment, the content of this game might be a little too much for women or children.

  Perhaps I should have drilled this point into Haruka a little more carefully.

  The moment I stood back up, no longer able to remain seated and alone with myself, the door opened.

  Even though only a few minutes had passed, I still had to shield my eyes against the influx of sunlight. Our first customer was silhouetted in the brightness, making it impossible to see him, which flustered me a bit. In terms of height, I could tell he was an adult male, at least.

  It’d be rude not to say anything, so I recited the little spiel I had come up with.

  “Uh, welcome! So, um, in this class, we’ve got a target shooting game! If you can beat me, we’ve got a wonderful prize for—”

  “Heh. You’re a girl? I was wondering who I’d see in here. I’d feel a lot better about whipping the guy by the door than a girl.”

  The man abruptly cut me off as I tried to be as cute and bright in my intro as I could, smile plastered upon my face.

  It was so unexpected that I froze at first, unable to process what had happened. Gradually, though, I realized that this man, for all his lack of politeness, sure seemed to be interested in some competition.

  “Uh…umm…”

  Thanks to this disastrous first contact—even in the best of times, I wasn’t used to interacting with people much—my heart began to race, my hands shaking a little from the nervousness.

  The sales spiel I had prepared had been completely blanked away in my mind. My mouth continued to attempt speech nonetheless, emitting a series of bizarre sounds.

  “Can’t say I’m too jealous of you right now, lady. My friend told me about his school’s festival, so we figured we’d stop on by, and then we heard about this cool game being shown. This guy’s, like, really good at shooters, so you can kiss your prize lineup good-bye in a few minutes, huh?”

  My eyes, gradually getting used to the light, spotted another dopey-looking man behind the first one. Apparently they were a pair.

  “Oh, uh, well, I’m gonna do my best at this game, so…”

  I tried to retain some semblance of calmness as I smiled in response, feeling the sweat run down my back.

  Judging by their introduction, there was no doubt that these visitors were pretty damn seedy themselves. But they were still o
ur first guests.

  They probably stopped by the festival just to poke fun at the stalls and have a little laugh with themselves. The so-called shooting-game whiz who showed up first had sunglasses on so I couldn’t gauge his expression, but man behind him was practically exuding malicious intent.

  “Sure, yeah. I’m sure this is just some stupid homebrew game anyway. Kid stuff, you know? I feel bad for taking all your prizes early on like this, but hey, maybe it’ll teach you a lesson about life and stuff, yeah?”

  With that, the man sidled up to me and, with a heavy flourish, sat down on the challenger’s seat.

  “Ooh, you heard him. That guy shows no mercy when it comes to games, you know. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this or not, but he went all the way to the national semifinals in the Dead Bullet -1989- championships once. And that’s not the only tournament he’s entered either, so I doubt a girl like you could stand a—”

  At this point in the sentence, the pissed-off guy stopped chatting away and emitted a gasp, or maybe a small, muffled eep!-type scream.

  That might have been because I dropped the salesgirl smile and put on my meanest-looking glare again. Or maybe he cut his tongue by accident after all that incessant yapping.

  “T-Takane…”

  I heard a whiny, yet familiar voice. Haruka, looking in from the doorway with tears in his eyes, looked scared out of his wits. These men must have picked on him mercilessly before coming in.

  I motioned for him to close the door. Haruka hesitated for a moment, but managed to squeak out a “Good luck…” before slowly sliding it shut.

  Checking to make sure it was closed, I walked back to our booth in the darkened room.

  Settling into my seat next to the apparently eternally angry guy, I turned back toward the monitor showing the title screen and continued with my explanation.

  “So, one final thing I need to mention. This is a shooting game with a point-based system. Whoever shoots down more enemies is the winner. I can set a difficulty level for you; do you have any preferences?”

  “What do you think? As hard as you got it.”