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

 he 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 and 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 our 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.”
    “All right. Perfect. Now…”
    Pressing a button on the title screen, I set the difficulty to “Extra.”
    Mr. Tateyama mentioned that this level was “so hard, you’d have to be some kind of monster to get a perfect score on it.”
    “Hey, wait a sec, lady. I ain’t accusing you of anything, but you aren’t gonna be cheating or nothin’, right?”
    The eternally pissed dude spoke up again, acting a bit more threatening this time.
    I couldn’t blame them for considering it. It would have been easy to ease the difficulty for my end only, or to rig the scoring system to my advantage if we wanted to.
    “Oh, no cheating at all, sir. Actually, we could change places if you like. It’s all based on points, so I won’t complain if you beat me from either station.”
    “This is fine,” said the grouch as he removed his sunglasses, “so let’s just get going.”
    “…Certainly. Good luck.”

    I placed a firm grip on my controller, relaxed it a bit…then gripped it hard again. Making sure I was 100-percent comfortable with it, I clicked on the “Game Start” button.

    Enemy monsters swarmed out from the backdrop, completely covering the screen in an instant. The game lasted two minutes in competitive mode. Whoever managed to shoot down more enemies in that time walked away the winner.
    The difference between this and single-player mode was that the game didn’t end if an enemy hit you—you were shut out of the game for a short period of time instead. You could also shoot certain bonus items to obscure your opponent’s view with a giant on-screen blood spatter.
    Otherwise, nothing had changed. The gameplay couldn’t have been simpler: You see monsters, you shoot them. But that simplicity meant that the difference between a beginner and a seasoned player was obvious to anyone watching.
    No. There was nothing “stupid” about this game at all.
    And this guy acted like he was too good for it. I had to whip him, and soundly.
    By the time ninety seconds had passed, I was so far ahead scorewise that my pissed-off opponent had no chance to make up the difference, no matter how much he struggled.
    I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen so I couldn’t see how he was looking, but this was a sorry performance for someone who talked so tough a few minutes ago. I could imagine his expression easily enough right now.
    Coldly, robotically, I kept tabs on the monsters appearing on-screen. I didn’t shoot any of the bonus items. All I cared about was blowing away my foes.
    The end-of-game buzzer sounded, and the game displayed the final results screen.
    But the pissed dude, perhaps because he already knew he lost big, was blankly staring at his controller. The guy behind him held his mouth open, dumbfounded.
    Of course he was. Slashing apart such a massive number of monsters without a single mistake couldn’t be done by gaming the system, so to speak. It was a simple matter of talent.
    I had even performed the old party trick of putting the controller down midway and letting myself get whaled upon for a little while. They couldn’t say I didn’t give them a fighting chance.
    “Well, that’s the end of the game. Thanks for playing! I’m not allowed to play the same competitor twice in a row, so if you’d like to try again, feel free to come back half an hour from now.”
    I smiled as I made the announcement. “No way…how could I have…” the angry man said. You couldn’t get a more traditional sore-loser script than that.
    “Um…if you wouldn’t mind?” I said, trying to hurry them out of the room. My opponent immediately stood up and began wildly shouting at me.
    “Wh-who the hell are you, anyway?! I’ve never seen such an awesome gamer in person like you! How on…?!”
    It was such a typical, predictable response. To be honest, I was already getting annoyed by it.
    “Well, you know,” I replied, “I practiced a lot.” It wasn’t much of a response, but I hoped it was enough to make them go away.
    But looking at my face, illuminated by the results screen shining almost too brightly in the darkness, the men began to rear back a little. Just then, I realized I had made a terrible mistake.
    The dopey guy just told me earlier that his surly companion was a champion-level Dead Bullet -1989- player.
    Playing in the nationals was definitely nothing to sniff at. There was no doubt that I had just trounced a pretty seasoned gamer.
    He had certainly demonstrated some flashes of talent during our match, so I doubt his slopeheaded friend was lying. But, if anything, I wished that he was.
    “Are…are you…Dancing Flash Ene?!”
    —This couldn’t be going any worse. If he made it to the semifinals—and, especially, if he qualified in the same region that I did—we had probably at least seen each other at the site of the regionals.
    What’s more, I had misplaced the mask I had prepared for the day of the tournament. I played with my face visible for all the world to see.
    I decimated the competition at the semis, easily scoring first place to punch my ticket to the final. They would later call it—and I’m serious here—the “Legend of the Dancing Flash.” To say the least, I stuck out a little bit.
    I wasn’t concerned at first because the semifinals were thankfully not shown on TV, but, man, how could I have known this would happen?
    I had been generally miffed all morning, so I was putting on this cool, composed gamer-girl image up to now, but this sudden development wiped my mind clean once more.
    “Huh? Hey, is this girl famous or something?!”
    “Famous? Dude, not just famous. You ever heard of ‘Dancing Flash: Eternal Rondo’? That’s the guild this lady built. They’re, like, legends in the tournament circuit. The scores they put up are nuts. They’re in the, like, top three of the team battles—”
    “Aaahhhh!! Y-you’ve got the wrong person! Please, just give me a break! Like, just get out of here already!!”
    The man’s blabbing away, revealing everything that was in the number-one spot of the “secrets I never want revealed” list, had brought me to the end of my rope.
    “B-but…But I recognized your play style! That’s, like, the classic ‘Holy Nightmare’ technique that Ene came up with for Dead Bullet!”
    I was plagued by the feeling that my guts were going to eject themselves out of my mouth. My face felt like it would start spewing magma at any moment.
    I just wanted to stuff these two people into an oil drum, fill it with concrete, and go bury it in some mountain forest.
    “That…that’s not me, okay?! Uh, please, I need you to get going! Pleeeease!!”
    Thanks to this outburst, the door flung itself open, Haruka bursting into the room with a worried look on his face.
    “T-Takane! Are you okay—!”
    “Yaaagghh!! You go away, too! Please, all of you, leave—!!”
    I pointed at the door as I shouted. The three of them murmured “Okay, okay!” as they obediently trundled themselves out of the room.

    Sitting back down on my chair, I slouched my shoulders dejectedly.
    This was a major miscalculation. I never imagined that my true identity would be revealed here, right now, of all places…
    What would happen if that pissed-looking guy sent me a message later along the lines of “I apologize for being so rude to you earlier. It was a great honor to have the chance to compete against you…”?
    He might do it, too, is the thing. It’d probably be a smart idea not to login for a few days.
    —But Haruka’s the real problem. I don’t think he overheard any of that conversation, but if he did…The mere thought nauseated me.
    I always found my handle pretty embarrassing. When the game asked me for an account name, I just kind of freestyled with it. That clan title was meant to be an ironic attempt to sound all spooky and mysterious.
    Now it was all revealed…That, and the ridiculous name that people had given to my gameplay style.
    “I should just delete my account and die…”
    Tears of humiliation came down my face. After all this time of treating him like an idiot, if Haruka found out about how I went around online with all these teenage-fanfic-writer names, he’d probably freak.
    My current circle of friends would almost certainly crumble. They’d all politely keep their distance from me, saying stuff like “Oh…uh, good morning, Enomoto…” like someone had just passed gas in the stairwell.
    It’s all over. This is awful. What the hell is some tournament-level player doing bumping around a stupid school festival like this, anyway? It was just the most horrible luck.
    For now, I had to assume Haruka heard everything and come up with the best excuses I possibly could.
    But—wait a sec here—even if he did make out some of it, it was unlikely he’d understand much of what they said.
    No. There was no way he could.
    He wasn’t a gamer or anything. No way at all.
    It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.
    “Takane, are you okay?”
    “Yeah, I’m okay, I’m okay…Aghh! Since when were you in here?!”
    …Thanks to focusing so fervently on my internal conflicts, I had completely failed to notice that Haruka was there in the classroom, right by my side.
    “Since when? Uh…around the point you said you should delete your account and die, but…”
    My face instantly ran hot as an oven. He even overheard me talking to myself.
    And talking to myself about something as stupid and embarrassing as my video-game account…
    “No! No, I didn’t mean that! You know, the account…like, the thing you use to chat with friends and stuff, right?”
    What else could I have meant? Haruka wasn’t even listening, but the sight of me, head down, trying to make excuses, would’ve aroused anyone’s suspicions. From the bottom of my heart, I wished someone would throw me in an oil drum and bury me in the mountains.

    After a moment, I looked up, wondering how Haruka was reacting. For some reason, his eyes looked alive with energy, as if flames were burning in them.
    “You really handled that great, Takane! I thought those guys were pretty scary at first, but they were all polite with me and stuff on the way out! I guess they must’ve given some respect for your skills once the game was over, huh?”
    Haruka was acting amazingly passionate about this all of a sudden.
    He was scared and blubbering a moment ago, and now he was going on about sportsmanship like some peewee soccer coach.
    But this sudden shift didn’t matter. I felt a wave of relief, noting that he didn’t mention me once during his speech.
    Haruka didn’t hear a thing after all. Thinking about it, no way he’d be the kind of guy who’d have his ear against the door anyway. I was all worked up over nothing.
    “Wow…They were that nice to you, huh? Yeah, I sure hope I taught them not to mess with this school. Not that they had any chance against me in the first place!”
    “Ha-ha! You said it! You know, I was really anxious about all this, but this is actually really fun! You’re being a huge help, Takane!”
    Of course I was. There were a few unanticipated events, yes, but we had successfully entertained the first visitors to our booth.
    And considering how easy it was to fend off a challenger as talented as that was, I was confident we would hold on to our prize—as long as the national #1 didn’t show up or anything.
    If you focused on the results alone, we were off to a grand start. And if those two guys are already gone, there was nothing left to be concerned about.
    Given the location of the science storage room, we could hardly expect to be as crowded as the festival stands outside. I should just sit back, enjoy the atmosphere, and wait for my next challenge.
    All this anxiety had made me pretty thirsty. I took a swig from the sports drink I had ready under the desk, a small reward for my epic performance.

    “I sure am impressed, though…And that name’s really cool, too! ‘Dancing Flash Ene,’ huh? I’d love to see you show off some of those ‘Holy Nightmare’ moves sometime!”

    The sports drink in my mouth flew across the room, robbed of its chance to tour my stomach.
    What liquid that didn’t spray out went straight down my windpipe. I began to choke loudly.
    “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what just happened, Takane? Are you all right?!”
    Haruka gave me a couple precautionary slaps on the back. I would have much preferred it if he suddenly blinked out of existence.
    My skirt was drenched in sports drink, and the violent intensity of my coughing was causing my mind to zone out.
    If anything, I wanted to just die right there, just as I was.
    “Ngh…huff…huff…H-how did…you hear about…!”
    Catching my breath, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand as I asked. But it might have been too late by that point anyway. Haruka had just parroted my handle name and “special moves” (ugh) back to me, precisely, without error.
    “Those guys told me. Man, the one dude was really excited about you, Takane! I’m glad I got to find out about it!”
    “Ahh…ahhhh…”
    I no longer had the energy to wipe myself dry. All I could do was hang my head and groan. It was all over.
    Time to wave my school life good-bye. The school festival had been kind of fun, but now it was just another memory I wish I could erase.
    “Hey…hey, why’re you acting all depressed? I mean, that’s really awesome, Takane! You’re like some kind of celebrity, right? All those fans! It’s like I’m in the same class with this huge big shot!”
    Haruka gave me another pat or two on the back, but the term “big shot” mercilessly pierced deep into my heart.
    He was right, though. Anyone who saw me would naturally conclude that I wasn’t exactly a normal girl. If my hobby was something humdrum like shopping, that would have been fine. Or if I had focused on extracurricular activities instead of all this, people might think I was a really active, energetic teenager or whatever.

    But what kind of attraction was there to a teenage girl who spent hours and hours playing a game where you killed hordes of the undead? I couldn’t think of any.
    Haruka was going on the way he was because he didn’t understand my viewpoint. The more he actually found out about my daily lifestyle, he more he’d want to edge away from me, that much was certain.
    Then he might not even treat me like a friend any longer. The thought scared me on a primal level.

    “Mmm…Well, Takane, I don’t know what’s making you so worried, but I’m not gonna start hating you just because you’re different, you know? So quit acting so down, all right?…Oh, right! Hey, can you maybe teach me a little sometime? I wanna start playing, too!…Uh, Takane? Are you listening?”
    Haruka was rubbing my back as he spoke.
    Whether he was aware of it or not, the worst thing about this was how he was talking about all this embarrassing stuff as if it weren’t embarrassing at all. He probably acted this way with everyone. There was nothing underhanded in his behavior, you could say. That, or you could say he was just too slow in the head to fake friendliness.
    Still, through it all, there was something about him saying he wouldn’t hate me that I found very reassuring.
    Thinking about it made me realize how dumb I was being.
    Whether out of happiness or embarrassment, I was starting to feel more tears coming for reasons unknown to me. I was unable to answer Haruka, or even turn toward him.
    “Um…Hello? I’d like to have a match?”
    Suddenly, another visitor spoke up from behind the door. Oh. Right. The school festival’s only gotten started. No time to sit here staring into space.
    I hurriedly wiped away my tears and turned toward the door, only to realize that my skirt was still soaking wet.
    “Oh…ooh…”
    I was frozen, pitched forward like a runner at the starting line. Haruka briskly walked past me and out the door.
    There was something generally off about a lot of his personality, but he was always oddly generous to others at times like these.
    I took out a handful of tissues from a box on top of the shelf, quickly wiping them on my skirt and the floor.
    It wasn’t a great amount—just the sports drink I had in my mouth—and it was all wiped up in seconds.
    Wadding up the tissues, I tossed them into the garbage can in the room and headed for the door, as if nothing were amiss.
    Opening it a crack, I stuck my face out to tell Haruka that I was ready. There I saw our next visitor —a boy, around twelve or thirteen years old.
    “Oh, is everything okay? I think this kid wants to play you, so knock yourself out!”
    The fire had once again returned to Haruka’s eyes. This game wasn’t a sport or anything, but in terms of it being a competition where players tried to outdo each other, I suppose there was a sense of sportsmanship to it that appealed to him.
    Maybe he understood me better than I thought. The idea brightened my soul as I began to get excited for my next match.
    “Oh, are you the champion around here? Well, good luck.”
    The young challenger, sporting a black parka and dyed brown hair, flashed a refreshing smile that seemed to have something lurking behind it before giving me a polite bow.
    “Oh, uh, sure! Good luck to you, too! Here, come on in and I’ll explain the rules to you!”
    I slid the door open and the boy entered, exclaiming “Coooool!” as he examined the décor.
    “Okay, uh, we’ll be done in a sec.”
    I turned back toward Haruka, eyes now blazing with competitive passion, and shut the door.
    “Uh, so yeah, here are the rules! We’re gonna play each other in the game running over there, in the center of the room. Whoever beats more enemies and scores the most points is the winner! Easy, right?”
    I tried to make the best big-sister impression I could as I spoke, the smile that failed me earlier gleaming like the sun. This visitor seemed perfectly normal. Or maybe my first opponent was so abnormal that everyone else seems tame by comparison.
    “Whoa, that looks like fun! I guess our little friend isn’t here either, but…what do you think, Kido, wanna try it out?”
    “Oh, it’s a lot of fun, trust me! Wait…Kido?…Wagh!!”
    The boy I had just been giving the rules to suddenly began to speak to the empty space by his side.
    I had no idea what he was doing at first, but the moment my eyes turned to where the boy’s attention was focused, I was greeted with the fright of my life.
    Up until this moment, the only person in front of me was this boy.
    But now there was a girl, too—about the same height as the boy and wearing a hoodie.
    It was too dark to gauge her expression, but the soft “Yeah” she gave in response indicated she was indeed female.
    “W-w-where, where did you…?”

    The shock was enough to almost make me lose my balance. There was no way this girl was here before—not here, not in the hallway earlier.
    There was no time for her to enter the room, except for the moment I had the door open. Considering that, she had to have gone in with the boy…but from my perspective, it was like she just teleported in, right in front of me.
    “You all right, lady? Oh, this girl’s been here the whole time. She doesn’t project much of a presence, though, so people don’t even notice her a lot of the—Oww!”
    The girl gave the boy a punch on the side, apparently unappreciative of her companion going on about this…what would you call it? Transparency?
    Being a wallflower is one thing. What would it take to be so…unnoticeable? I had never experienced such an odd, disquieting feeling in my life.
    —Maybe she was some kind of ghost. The thought seriously crossed my mind for a moment. But that would be even more unrealistic. For someone like me, who steadfastly refused to believe in ghosts or apparitions or the supernatural, the idea that I had just overlooked her seemed far more convincing.

    “…Would you mind if we got started?”
    “Agh…! Oh, sure, sure! If you could just take this seat here…!”
    This girl’s existence presented countless questions to me, but regardless of who she was, it seemed wise to get this over with as soon as possible.
    Even if she was a ghost, it didn’t matter as long as she didn’t hurt me or anything. I think.
    …She didn’t strike me as the evil curse–giving kind of ghoul.
    But if she picks up the controller using telekinesis or something instead of using her hands, I’m definitely getting outta here. That was the conclusion I settled upon as I headed for my chair.
    The girl and I each took our seats, but my heart kept beating away at a breakneck clip.
    Gingerly, I turned toward the girl. The light from the monitor in front of us just barely illuminated her face.
    Her skin was pale but attractive, and her hair was on the long side. Her eyes were a bit too sharp and gloomy, but otherwise her face was well-balanced and worthy of the term “beautiful.”
    But the ambient light was making her look like something right out of a ghost story.
    I decided to hurry up and get the game started before I lost my nerve.
    “Okay, uhhhh…so, like I said before, this is a shooting game where you try to score as much as you can. If you can beat my score, I’ll give you a fantastic prize! So…uh, what difficulty level would you like…?”
    “…Normal.”
    “Oh! Right! Certainly! Sorry! Okaaaay…right! Time to get starrr-ted!”
    My tongue tripped on that final word out of sheer nervousness. The boy behind us tittered in response.
    Seeing him made me feel utterly embarrassed.
    A whirlpool of thoughts was churning in my mind, but I just focused on getting through this, and fast. Setting the difficulty to normal, I pushed the “Start” button. Monsters began to well up on-screen.
    This mode offered far fewer monsters to shoot than the “Extra” mode last game, meaning that there were nowhere as many points on offer.
    In my personal experience, this mode stuck out to me mainly because the game generated a lot more pig enemies here than in any other difficulty.

    A minute passed.
    The girl’s playing style was utterly normal, with no particular idiosyncrasies. She was just an average girl playing a game.
    To me, having just taken on an elite player in the toughest mode the game had to offer, the challenge was lacking. But what should I expect from a regular girl, though?
    I occasionally heard her squeak out an “Agh!” or “Whoa!” in response to the menacing monsters, but otherwise she just sat there, quietly playing.
    If this pair started going on like “Nngh, this is soooo tough! I’m so terrible at this!” and “Aw, hang in there, girl, you can do it!” that’d be enough to wipe the smile from my face and jump out the window out of pure awkwardness. In that way, things were going far more smoothly than I expected.
    But with about thirty seconds left in the game, something strange started happening on my screen.
    Suddenly, the pigs in front of me began to disappear, the on-screen gunsight blinking on and off. The game began to bug out in unpredictable fashion.
    “Hey…Hey! Is this thing crashing, or…?”
    “Don’t get scared, Kido!” said the boy between his giggling. “Stay focused!”
    I tried to hold out and keep killing foes, but there wasn’t much way of doing that if my target reticule was gone.
    As time went on, the gap between our scores grew narrower and narrower. Who could have guessed that my going easy on her at first would come back to bite me like this…!
    Just as I began to think I was in serious trouble, the closing buzzer went off.
    Thanks to my frazzled reaction, I had lost track of my point score. I closed my eyes, praying to myself as the game prepared to show the results.
    If she defeated me, I’ll have lost our one and only prize to our second visitor.
    For the sake of our continued business, we needed to avoid that.
    With a musical fanfare, the results screen flashed on. Opening my eyes and forcing myself to read it, I found the WIN mark next to my name. I eked out a victory by a mere one hundred points.
    The sweat began to pour out of me. This bug or whatever nearly did me in back there…
    But, jeez, Mr. Tateyama! Don’t tell me you didn’t bother beta-testing this stupid game!
    As I thought over this, I heard the boy’s now-familiar giggling rev up again.
    “Ha-ha-ha! Guess you narrowly lost that one, huh, Kido? Wouldn’t be very nice if you won by cheating, though, right? I think you probably owe her an apology.”
    The boy’s face was illuminated by the computer screens as he spoke. It looked like he was trying to hold back tears as he continued to titter to himself.
    “…Sorry.”
    The girl’s voice wavered a bit as she spoke. She stood up and calmly walked toward the door.
    “Wait, cheating…? I-I think that was just a program bug. She didn’t do anything wrong, did she?”

    Indeed, there was no way anyone could have called that anything apart from a bug.
    It’s not like she was hacking into the program or trying to mentally distract me. The girl never even had a chance to break the rules.
    The boy continued to beam brightly at me, unfazed by my denial.
    “Aw, I’m sorry to confuse you. This is, like, maybe kind of hard to believe, but that girl was actually using her psychic powers there. You can check it out it yourself if you like, but I’m sure the computer’s, like, fine and stuff. It’ll be back to normal now, so don’t worry about that happening again later.”
    Having said his piece, the boy followed the girl toward the door and disappeared into the hallway without even turning his back to me.

    The exaggerated “Aaaaiggh!” I heard from Haruka the moment the pair left no doubt indicated that he hadn’t seen the girl before, either.
    I put down the controller and listlessly stared at the door they had just left through.
    I felt like some kind of fox spirit had just played a trick on me.
    That psychic ghost-girl, and that boy who kept smiling at me the whole time…
    I’ve just had this experience which, if I ever told anyone about it, would make then say, “Ah, you’ve been watching too much anime.”
    Haruka (as expected) came running through the door immediately afterward. “Was that girl there from the start?!” he asked (as expected). “I didn’t notice her at all!”
    “Wasn’t she there…? I mean, look…”
    The display I pointed at showed the score tallies from our pitched battle, the sole evidence I had that she even existed.

As the noon hour rolled around, the school began to grow more fragrant.
    To the classes running cafés or food stalls, this was the high season. For those of us running attraction-type displays, it was time for a break.
    Exiting the dark storage room and hanging a RETURNING 1:00 P.M. sign on the doorknob, Haruka and I set off for lunch.
    I played against a dozen or so competitors in the morning, but after that wacky pair, I was blessed with refreshingly normal opponents the whole time, finally making it to lunch without further incident.
    “I was really worried for a little while…Like, at first, I thought you were deliberately trying to find the weirdest people possible to play against me.”
    “Whaa? Oh, come on, Takane! All I did was talk with anyone who passed by the door, so…”

    The open space in front of the main entrance, a morass of blue plastic sheets and cardboard a little while ago, was now bustling with stalls and shops run by the school’s assorted classes.
    From yakitori to hot dogs, from French fries to yakisoba noodles, the colorful signs that lined the area were enough to whet anyone’s appetite.
    Wandering around as we reflected on the morning’s events, Haruka and I spotted an area just to the right of the entry gate where we could sit down and consume our purchases.
    “Hey, how ’bout we head there to eat? I eat lunch in the prep room every single day, so this’ll be a nice change of—Hey!!”
    “Mmh? Whuh?”
    I realized that Haruka was already chowing down on some grilled squid, both arms already groaning with food.
    “…You could have worked with me a little, you know. I thought we were gonna go shopping around together…Like, when did you even buy all that stuff?!”
    “Mngh…Oof! There we go! Uh, sorry about that. It all looked so good, I couldn’t help myself…! You wanna have some, Takane? Here, take whatever you like!”
    The bag Haruka was holding contained a vast variety of main dishes—boxes of yakisoba, okonomiyaki pancakes, and so forth.
    “Wow…You made some good choices. Okay, how ’bout we go sit down and eat? There oughta be some empty seats at the far end.”
    I turned around to point out an uncrowded table to Haruka, only to find his mouth already full of the hot dog that was his latest conquest. He nodded emphatically, unable to verbalize a response.

    We took seats facing each other in a shady spot of the eating area. The weather outside couldn’t have been more perfect for the school festival.
    If anything, it was almost a touch too warm outside. Many of the visitors were dressed in little more than T-shirts and jeans.
    Haruka and I were lightly dressed as well, since we figured we’d be on our feet for most of the day.

    The moment we settled down, Haruka, apparently unable to contain his bearlike appetite any longer, cracked an enormous smile as he laid his purchases out on the table.
    The food he showed me earlier was apparently just the appetizer. One after the other, he arranged all the boxes neatly on the table—easily enough food for five or six people.
    “Is that, like, a Bag of Holding or something…?”
    Haruka looked over his personal smorgasbord, the sheer quantity of which made me wonder how on earth it all fit in his bag. After a few moments of uncertainty, he opted for the okonomiyaki first.
    I was pretty hungry myself, so I grabbed a plastic box of yakisoba with sauce and brought it in front of me.
    “Well, thanks very much…Oh, right, I haven’t paid you yet. How much was this?”
    I would’ve felt bad eating on his dime, so I took my wallet out of my skirt pocket.
    “Oh, don’t worry about it. You know, Mr. Tateyama this morning, he gave me some money and told me to eat whatever we wanted. Like, ten thousand yen or so. So go thank him, not me!”
    “Ten thousand? That much?! Ugh…Our teacher basically embezzled our festival budget, but now he’s being crazy generous to us, huh?”
    “Yeah, well, I guess he went to a pachinko parlor to take a break from working on the game, and he said he kinda hit the jackpot over there. He ordered takeout from some fancy sushi restaurant for us that night.”

    Hearing that brought my recently improving opinion of Mr. Tateyama zooming back down into the abyss. The feast before me now seemed like nothing more than the by-products of a degenerative gambling habit, filling me with an odd sense of sympathetic sorrow.
    “Hmm? Aren’t you gonna eat, Takane? ’Cause if not…”
    “I’m eating, I’m eating! Like, how much of this are you actually gonna eat, anyway? You’re gonna gain so much weight!”
    The stalls at school festivals are virtual odes to the art of high-calorie fast food. The sight of the fried-chicken booth was enough to make me start to smack my lips, but if I lost myself in the festival atmosphere today, I knew my body would make me pay tomorrow.
    The calories I’d gleefully consume would definitely come back to haunt me in the days to come. That much was obvious.
    And meanwhile, here was Haruka, plowing through the plates of boneless fried chicken, hot dogs, crepes, pizza sticks, fries, and chocolate-covered bananas with astonishing speed. The sheer quantities were out of this world, but picturing the churning slurry of grease and bread crumbs in his stomach was enough to give me heartburn.
    “Well, so? It’s delicious. All of it. Oh, and you know, I pretty much never gain weight, no matter how much I eat. I don’t pack too big a lunch for school, but this is about what I eat at home, usually.”
    Listening to Haruka while silently comparing the size of his lunch with his compact frame genuinely irked me.
    Even going a little overboard with meals for a day had drastic effects on my weight. It just wasn’t fair.
    “Ugghhh,” I groaned. “I wish I could go without a meal or two and not feel so hungry all the time…That, and I wish I didn’t have to sleep, either.”
    “Well, that’d be kind of boring, don’t you think? ’Cause me, I really like to eat. And sleep, too.”
    Haruka stuck another dagger in me as he expectantly eyed a burger he was in the process of unwrapping.
    “…Well, I’m glad you’re happy, anyway.”
    “Mm? What was that?”
    Something about the way he responded, a spot of ketchup on one of his cheeks, made it impossible to hate him. I prayed to no one in particular for Haruka to gain twenty pounds overnight and rip all of his pant seams.

One thirty in the afternoon.
    After reopening our shooting gallery on time, we were surprised to find our steady stream of visitors from the morning suddenly go dry.
    “Weird, huh? I wonder what’s going on. It wasn’t anywhere near this dead in the morning. You think someone’s spreading bad rumors about us or something?”
    I peeked out the door and checked the hallway. Haruka was still standing guard outside, waiting for visitors, but there weren’t many people roaming the halls at all, much less near our classroom.
    As I experienced a sudden pang of anxiety, Haruka reached into his pocket, as if suddenly remembering something, and pulled out a piece of folded paper.
    “Oh yeahhh…I think it’s probably because of this, Takane.”
    The paper had a printout of the class presentation schedule for the day.
    I lost my copy almost immediately after it was passed out, but I didn’t mention it because I didn’t want to subject myself to asking Haruka to show me his. Thanks to that, I didn’t have much of a grasp of the other classes’ plans.
    “Oh…? So which of these would keep people from coming here?”
    “Well, apparently the student council’s holding this thing from one to two over in the gymnasium. I guess most people are over there, checking it out.”
    The entry Haruka pointed out read “Student Council Project: 1–2 p.m.” It was boxed in with heavy lines, giving it higher visibility on the schedule grid.
    “Huh. You’re right. Man, the student council sure likes to stick out of the crowd, huh? They could’ve waited until the rest of the class booths were closed up, at least…I bet all the other classes are pretty pissed about this, too.”
    The exhibitionist streak so clearly presented in the schedule’s design was certainly not giving me a very good impression of our student government, anyway.
    And here I made sure to have a decent lunch and get myself mentally prepped for the afternoon’s combat session. Not much point to that if no one’s gonna show up.
    “Ah, it’s no big deal. We’ll probably have a big rush in half an hour once it’s over. How ’bout we just take it easy until then?”
    Haruka folded the printout back up, opened the door I stuck my head out of, and entered the room.
    “Yeah, I guess so. Man, I wish we could get a real flood of visitors sooner or later. I’m ready to take on the world here.”
    Just as I was about to stop whining and bring my head back into the room, I spied a figure at the edge of my vision.
    It was on the left side of the hallway, near the front student entrance. There wasn’t a soul there earlier, but now I saw three men, all sporting the same getup.
    They were wearing military-camo pants, headbands, and goggles, as if they had just returned from a rousing game of airsoft and stopped by the festival without changing.
    “Whoa…Who’re those dudes? Are they in costume or something? I guess they’re visiting the festival, but is that what they normally wear…?”
    It was all a little too perfectly done up to be their everyday outfits. The clothing was one thing, but there even appeared to be walkie-talkies Velcroed to the shoulder straps on the bags they carried.
    “What’s up, Takane?”
    “I dunno…There’re these weird guys down the hall. You think we should call for a teacher or something?”
    “Weird guys? Here, lemme take a look.”
    Haruka stuck his head out the door above mine and peered down the hall.
    “You see? Really weird, huh? That’s definitely not the sort of thing you wear to a school festival…”
    “Well, who knows? Maybe that’s just the new fashion or whatever. The military look, you know?”
    Hearing Haruka use the word “fashion” threw me for a loop. Does he…actually know about that sort of thing? Like, a lot more than I thought?
    Maybe these people I was repeatedly describing as “weird” were simply up on the latest trends… Would that mean I was the one being weird after all, with my so-last-year teenage look?
    “Yeah, uh, I guess you do see that a lot lately. Must be getting pretty popular. Did it start in…uh, Tokyo or something?”
    I had no choice but to play along and compliment the drill sergeants down the hall. I didn’t want anyone, particularly Haruka, to think I didn’t care about looking good.
    “Oh, it is popular, huh? I have no idea about any of that stuff, so…Guess I should’ve known you would, Takane!”
    Haruka’s guileless smile stung me inside. Thinking about it, someone willing to strip half-naked in class would have no business talking about fashion at all.
    Yet again, my ego had been kind enough to shovel my grave for me. “Yeah, thanks,” I replied, which only served to further guilt my conscience.

    “Um…would it be all right if I asked you a question, perhaps?”
    “Huh?”
    Looking upward at the sudden request, I was greeted by the platoon from before, now standing at attention right in front of us.
    They had gotten worryingly close while I was distracted by my inane exchange with Haruka.
    “Waugh! Y-yes! What is it?”
    Up close, the group was terrifyingly intimidating.
    Dressed beyond inappropriately for a high school, they had somehow multiplied since I first spotted them, now a full squadron of six.
    Haruka noticed the same time I did. He yelped, reared back, and tried his best to hide behind my back to avoid them. Pathetic bastard.
    “I apologize for surprising the two of you. You see, we’re searching for this one display…We heard there was a certain booth in this festival holding a shooting-gallery competition.”
    “Uh, huh…Huh?! Oh, uh, I think you’re looking for us, but…”
    I was surprised at first by how breathlessly polite this group of young men was, then surprised a second time by the fact they were looking for our booth.
    The men began to murmur among themselves, as if taken aback themselves.
    “Ohh, this is it, huh? B-by the way, who would our opponent be…?”
    The moment they realized they had the right place, the men began to eagerly question me, as if they were about to challenge their commanding officer to close-quarters combat.
    “Um? That…that would be me, but…?”
    I peeked my head out the doorway just a small distance, trying to keep a safe zone between myself and this bizarre army.
    The moment I replied, the group cried out joyously in unison.
    The man in front speaking with me even began to sob uncontrollably. What’s this reaction all about…? I was starting to have a very bad feeling about this…

    “P-pardon us, ma’am…! So, so you must be Dancing Flash Ene, then…? It’s such an honor to meet you in person—”
    That was all I needed to hear. I slammed the door in their faces.
    I knew it. They were fans of mine from the world of online gaming.
    I should have realized it the moment I spotted their stupid uniforms.
    They were dressed that exact way the last time I saw them, at one tournament or another.
    If I was just a little quicker on the uptake, I could have hidden both my identity and our booth. And none of this would be happening! I am so damn stupid!
    But how did they know…? Ah, that much was simple, at least. That eternally pissed-looking guy I played with this morning had to have posted something like “Dancing Flash Ene is running a shooting game! Any gamers nearby, check it out and send pix!”
That was the only way I could imagine word getting out. I knew I should have been a lot more firm with him when I still had the chance.
    “T-Takane…who were those guys…?”
    “Huh? Oh, nobody! They’re already gone!”
    I smiled through my rapidly beading sweat as Haruka gave me a worried look. Immediately afterward, there was a heavy knock on the door behind me.
    “Please! We just want to have a single match with you!” they mewled through the door. “Please! Whatever it takes!”
    Who was the idiot who suggested the shooting gallery in the first place? Oh, right, it was me. If I had known this would happen, running a maid café would’ve been a thousand times better.
    The commotion on the other side of the door grew louder. Judging by the voices, the squadron had grown into a full company of would-be soldiers gathering here after word got around.
    “…Let’s get it over with.”
    With a final oath to myself, I opened the door to find the warriors now numbering a dozen or so.
    The moment I appeared, a wave of elated cheering erupted across the hall.
    I flung the door wide open. “All right!” I shouted. “I’m Ene, and I’ll take all of you on one by one! Who wants to die first?!”
    “Ene…So cool…” muttered one buck private in stark admiration. The stream of tears indicated to me, once and for all, that the years of my youth were over.

…Two hours or so passed.
    The classroom was filled to the brim with onlookers, the crowd spilling out well into the hallway.
    Right then, I was in the midst of creating a “New Legend of the Dancing Flash” with the several dozen people I had taken on. The tears, and my sense of humiliation, had all but dried up.
    “…She won again! That’s forty-five in a row!!”
    After what seemed like the eight-hundredth round of cheers and applause, my challenger complimented me and took his leave, weeping in joy at the opportunity to play against me.
    The pool of challengers consisted of nothing but gamers now, the general public left to quizzically stare at the events from afar. It was a strange sight, a distinctly non-school-festival-like one.
    “You still doing okay, Ene?! We’re closing up in ten minutes, so hang in there!”
    Haruka, crouched down to my right, had started calling me “Ene” somewhere along the line, cheering me on like a boxer’s corner man.
    “Yeah…it’ll be over…Though it’s been over for me for a while now…heh-heh…”
    I leaned back in my chair, babbling incoherently. I couldn’t guess what kind of rumors would start going around school tomorrow.
    Maybe I should just write “Ene” on a nameplate, hang it around my neck, and prance around the school grounds all day.
    As I lost myself in dread and idle self-pity, a new challenger sat down next to me.
    All the opponents up to now were big, burly (or just plain obese) men, but this time I was taking on a boy in a red jersey, about the same height as the teenage pair who visited this morning.
    I was visibly bewildered. Haruka patted my shoulder from the side.
    “Ene…I’m sorry to interrupt you while you’re in the groove, but we better give out our prize before we have to close. Would you mind much if you let this kid beat you…?”
    Haruka seemed honestly reluctant to broach the topic. How long was he going to have the wrong idea like this? I’m not “in the groove.” Nothing even close to that.
    But, timewise, it might be a good idea to throw a match sooner than later.
    Losing to a boy would be something of a blow to my pride, yes, but this wasn’t really a competition—it was more of a service to our visitors.
    And it sure beats having to lose against anyone in this gaggle of gamers…
    If I wanted this event to end successfully, now was no time to try to show off. This was the final opponent, besides. I decided to paint a smile on my face for the first time in hours.
    “Okay, you’re the next opponent, right? Great to meet you! Do you know the rules, or do you need a quick rundown?”
    I somehow managed to drum up my “cutesy big sister” voice for him. Who knows if this experience might affect this kid’s taste in girls, after all. —I am such an evil woman.
    “…You know, maybe you think you’re good, being number-two in the country and all, but you don’t look that tough to me at all. Your moves are so predictable, and you’re getting sloppy, too. It’s getting me pissed just watching you.”
    The kid in the jersey didn’t even look at me as he spoke. It was the exact opposite of what I imagined.
    “Huh…? Uh, I’m sorry, I don’t think I heard you quite right…”
    I had to have misheard him. How could a cute little kid like this be so harsh with me?
    “I said, you suck. Can we get started already? You can set the difficulty to whatever you want.”

    —Something inside of my head cracked. There was no mistaking it the second time. He said that I “sucked.”
    This snot-nosed kid was bashing my play. The gameplay that earned me worship and adulation as the Dancing Flash.
    “Uh…you think I suck, huh? So you think you can beat me, oh?”
    “Sure do. In fact, I’m guaranteed to win. You suck, remember?”
    My temper was wearing thin. The blood in my face burned so hot, I was afraid it would burst out of my arteries.
    But my opponent was younger than me. There was no point throwing a tantrum over him.
    It’s nothing that really matters. Just beat him, and everything will be fine. Kids like these are all bark and no bite. Someone needs to teach him that the only thing that really matters in this world is the win/loss column.
    “Oh, reeeeeally…? I see, I see…! In that case, how about we play a match at the highest difficulty? And just to inform you, I am not!!…going to lose.”
    The controller in my hand was groaning and straining from the strength of my iron grip.
    “Wait a sec, Takane,” Haruka whispered to me. “You have to lose this, remember?” But I was in no mind to pay attention to him any longer.

    —I was staking my pride in this fight.
    Right here, right now, the only way to keep my pride intact was to take this kid and his stupid red jersey and tear him limb from limb.

    “Fine by me. If you beat me, I’ll do whatever you want me to. But what if you lose?”
    For the first time, the boy looked me in the face. His eyes were sharp and a bit melancholy somehow. They seemed to see right through whatever they perceived, such was the frigid aura they presented.
    “I-I’ll do anything you say! Anything! I’ll become your servant and call you ‘master’ and everything! But I’m not gonna lose!”
    “Yeah? Man, you are so lame. Let’s do this.”
    With that, the boy turned back toward his monitor.
    I was agitated, to the point that I knew without checking a mirror that my face was bright red.
    I’m gonna beat the crap out of him…! No matter what it takes, he’s going down!
    Taking a deep breath, I selected the “Extra” difficulty and pressed the “Start” button.
    “I’ll make you regret…treating me like an idiot…”
    The duel had begun. The screen began to swarm with monsters.

    In the end, I managed to smash my previous top score for the day. My performance was terrific, something I could physically feel, and my sense of focus allowed me to put every ounce of strength I had into the match.
    But on the results screen, the word LOSE was printed in blue over my name.
    The boy, meanwhile, was marveling at the WIN in gold letters on his screen…as well as the word PERFECT!! in bright red below it.
    “You’re…kidding me…?”
    “Forget about the promise,” the boy said as I struggled to grasp the reality of it all. “You’d just get in the way, anyway.” And then he left the classroom.
    Haruka, flustered, stood up to fetch the fish specimen prize.
    “Uh…I gotta go give him this! Ene, that was awesome, right up to the end! Great work today!”
    I was unable to offer Haruka so much as a single eye blink.
    The debating was already under way around me. “Ahh, she let him win!” “But that was her highscore for the day, right? Which means that Ene actually lost?!” But it didn’t matter to me.
    —I was mortified. It was the only emotion I could feel, as I found myself unable to put the controller down.
    “Um…listen, I apologize that my friend was so rude to you…”
    I was suddenly approached by a girl with midlength black hair.
    Today wasn’t particularly cold at all, but she had on a red scarf for some reason, making her seem weirdly fragile.
    “…You’re friends with that kid?”
    I placed the controller on the desk. “…More or less,” the girl in the scarf replied sheepishly.
    Which meant that guy in the jersey, with all that talent, even brought a girl along with him to the school festival?! I could feel pyres of rage about to erupt within me, but the girl’s honest, apologetic face quelled the flames.
    “Huh…Well, it’s all right. He was really good. That was the most fun I’ve had in a while. But he should really watch that attitude a bit more! ’Cause he’s gonna have problems if he doesn’t.”
    I snorted haughtily as I spoke. The girl smiled bitterly and sighed.
    “I…I guess you’re right, yeah. He kind of has a tough time interacting with people, and he’s got kind of an ego, too, so…I’ll talk to him about it later. Again, sorry about that…”
    “No, no, you don’t have to apologize…I mean, at that age, we all go through a lot of different stuff, so…just talk it over with him, okay?”
    “Certainly. But, oh, he’s gone and left me behind in here! I’m sorry, I need to get going. We have to go meet my father in a little while, so…”
    The girl bowed her head, then ran out of the room in a hurry.
    With our sole prize gone, the crowd slowly began to disperse. Even my fans left the room with undue haste, as if berating me for taking the act too far in the end.
    As I watched this take place in my seat, the school clock rang four p.m., the end of the school festival.
    The speaker in the hallway squawked to life: “Ladies and gentlemen, the exhibition hours have ended. All classes, follow your planning committee’s instructions and begin the tear-down process.”
    The announcement caused my entire body to be suddenly racked with fatigue. From the moment I arrived until right now, I felt awash in a torrent of unexpected and/or unwelcome events. It was utter chaos on more than one occasion, but now that it was all over…I guess it might have actually been pretty fun.
    Now if people can be nice enough to gradually forget about the whole “Ene” thing without word getting spread any farther than it already has…
    I pondered over this as I waited for Haruka to return.

    I had to hand it to him today. He really outdid himself, helping out around the booth.
    Maybe I could treat him to something on the way home…Wait, no. Treating him with my puny allowance would make my savings disappear in five minutes. We could split the tab evenly…No, let’s just buy our own stuff instead. That works.
    Oh, wait, he probably still has a lot of money left over from Mr. Tateyama anyway.
    Better make sure we use it all before he inevitably turns up and asks for a refund.

    I put my head down on the table, playing around with the controller in my hand as I waited a quarter hour or so.
    …Haruka didn’t come back.
    He just went out to give the kid his prize. This was taking way too long.
    Where on earth could he be, taking all this time?
    The click-click-click of the second hand on the classroom clock was the only sound I could hear.
    After the exhibition ended, all the classes needed to clean their homerooms and head home by five p.m.
    We were no exception to this, but it’d take quite a while for just the two of us to get everything squared away
    “…That bastard isn’t trying to skip out on the work, is he?”
    —No, that seemed extremely unlikely for someone like him. He knew that I’d punch him out once I tracked him down, and besides, he was way too straight-and-narrow to pull something like that.
    But if not, then it was unnatural for him to be gone for this long.
    I thought over what might be taking up so much time when a worrisome concept crossed my mind.
    Could it be that he had one of his attacks while running around, trying to catch up with the kid?
    I knew from before that Haruka’s illness was life-threatening.
    But what with his personality and the way he acted, it sure didn’t seem that way. I’ve never given even a second thought about it.
    Still, think about it. He’s been working day and night on this stuff for the past while, was on his feet all day today with me, and now he’s running around like a chicken with its head cut off outside.
    The more I thought it over, the larger my sense of dread ballooned. My heartbeat quickly began to accelerate.
    I shot up off my chair, accidentally knocking it over in the process. It clattered to the floor with a loud, echoing bang.
    But I wasn’t concerned about that any longer.
    For all I knew, Haruka may be collapsed on the ground somewhere right now.
    He might be in pain, struggling, someplace where nobody would notice him in time.
    The thought made it impossible for me to just sit there.
    I really should have realized it sooner. He was a weak guy. Very weak.
    But I never paid him any concern whatsoever. I forced him to go through all of this hard work.

    “Haruka…!”
    I headed for the door and whisked it open…and as I flew out of the room, my body slammed against the person standing in front of me.

    “Aghh!”
    “Yeoww!”

    I fell back toward the classroom, landing on my rear as I marveled at how far I had sent the other guy flying. I groaned in pain as I looked up, only to find a familiar pale-skinned man lying in the hallway, eyes rolling.
    “H-Haruka?!”
    “Oww…That was pretty rough. What’s up, Takane? You look like you’re in a panic or something.”
    “—You idiot…! I was so worried…!”
    Filled with relief and concern over knocking him down, I stood up and raced toward Haruka, all but ready to hug him tightly.

    —But, noticing the sauce around his lips and the boxes of food that now littered the hallway floor, my emotions converted over to wanting to kick him through the wall.

    “…What were you doing?”
    I rubbed my rear end as I stopped in front of Haruka, looking down at him.
    “What? What do you mean, what? The booths are all closed, so I figured I’d grab whatever food’s left before they threw it out! I mean, check out all this stuff I got! I could practically cater a house party with all of it! Isn’t that awesome?!”

    I could feel the anger well uncontrollably within me.

    I felt my fists and my cheeks burn. Giving even an ounce of concern for this guy made me feel like such a moron.
    “…Takane? Are you mad or something?”
    The moment Haruka asked the question, my fist landed directly upon his forehead.

    Around the time I hit him, the school speakers reported that our class presentation had been awarded first prize among all the displays in the school festival.
    It was sadly drowned out by my angry shouting and Haruka’s plaintive screaming, so it took several more days for us to hear the news.

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• Title: Kagerou Daze, Vol2_ Headphone Actor
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