Leave a comment

After lunch, everyone was free to go wherever they wanted.

Hijiri, who had spent the whole morning with Kou, went back to the clothing store, this time to find clothes and underwear for herself. Sora went to buy other things he figured Kou might need now that she was a girl, so he was also gone. That left Kou with a lot of free time, with Subaru remaining as her bodyguard, and so they went to the mall’s arcade on the fifth floor to kill time.

2D fighting games. That genre of games had reached its peak in terms of graphics way before Kou’s generation was born, but their gameplay features became more complex with time, making them extremely niche and specialized, with only a select few getting into them anymore.

But there was still a core audience of hardcore fans, who preferred being able to stand face to face with an opponent, when most games were played online.

Walking through the arcade, Kou looked amongst the colorful cabinets, searching for the latest entry in a long-running series known for having high-octane action and flashy combat, and once she found one, she put a coin in.

Her presence there caught the attention of many other gamers, who began lining up to challenge her. The first one was a cheeky student who just wanted to teach a lesson to the young girl who walked in.

It was obvious that he was heavily underestimating Kou, sitting down with a mocking attitude. But then he was swiftly defeated twice in a row before he could even reconsider his behavior, without being able to deal even a bit of damage to Kou, and was forced to step back in humiliating defeat.

At this point, it was still possible for the audience to reason that he had given Kou an easy win just because she was a girl. But then the second and third challengers suffered the same fate, so it was starting to become obvious that Kou was actually a powerful foe, and they began to take her more seriously.

Then came the fourth challenger, who was also knocked down in the blink of an eye by Kou’s knight that wielded a greatsword clad in lightning.

“…What a joke!” Kou’s opponent, who looked like an office worker on his way back from work, shouted loudly. His face was red as he stood up kicking his chair back, closing in on Kou.

“I know what you’re doing! I bet you’re hiding some cheating tool under your hood, right?! You damn brat!!” He began shouting incoherently as he raised his arm.

This can’t be real.

Kou’s brain was frozen, unable to comprehend how a grown man like that could raise his hand towards a small girl, and in a public space no less. That also delayed her reaction though, so Subaru had to jump in between the two, his arms raised to block the hit.

“Suba..?!” Realizing that her friend was about to be hit made Kou see everything red, filled with explosive anger… But luckily things did not end that way.

“…Dude, why would you act that way just because you got beaten by a girl?”
“..?!”

The man’s arm was caught by another young man standing behind him. That youth looked tall and lanky, but it was clear he was not weak by any means, as the other man’s arm was held tight and unmoving.

His black hair was unkempt and grown long enough to cover his eyes, and he wore plain jeans and a shirt, making it seem like he did not really care about his appearance.

“I’d like to go next…could you stop getting in the way?”
“Um…sure…”

His voice was perfectly composed as he said that. That attitude made the enraged man feel intimidated, and he scurried away as fast as he could.

“Aight…wanna go for a match then?”
“Oh… Yeah, sure.”

It was almost like he was disconnected from the tense air filling the arcade as he spoke with little care, but that helped everyone relax again. Kou also sat back down and looked at the screen.

Then the young man sat in front of her and slipped a coin into the cabinet.

“Umm… Thank you for that.”
“Nah, it was nothing.”

He gave a disinterested reply, like it did not matter to him.

I guess he’s one of those guys who’s only interested in games?

Thinking that, Kou focused back on the game, and the knight with a burning sword that had just entered to challenge her. And what followed next was something neither Kou or Subaru had anticipated.

……
………

The first one to fall flat on the ground was the knight with lightning, Kou’s character.

I lost?

Kou was stunned that her opponent had won the first round. That whole round Kou’s attacks seemed out of pace, and she had been unable to recover a single time.

“Did he just…”
“Yeah… He knows what he’s doing.”

Subaru was surprised too, and Kou nodded before shaking off the tension on her hands. At least the previous rounds had helped her warm up.

“This time…I won’t hold back.” She did not think she had not taken her opponent seriously, but she had gotten complacent after her previous consecutive wins.

But she would not make the same mistake twice. She would use everything at her disposal, even the combos that her friends at school had often called unfair and broken. So with her mind made up, she licked her lips and grabbed the control stick again.

The second round started. She could not afford to lose again, so rather than playing reactively like before, she jumped right in to attack as soon as she could. Seeing the change in Kou’s behavior surprised her opponent, who opened his eyes wide for a moment, and gave Kou an opening of just a few frames.

You’ve let your guard down!

She started with a weak attack, followed by a dust attack and aerial combo, and the moment her opponent hit the ground she launched him right back up, at which point she activated a special attack that made her knight unsheathe his lightning sword creating a long bolt of lightning that took away the remaining HP of her opponent.