After I said good-bye to Kikuchi-san at Omiya Station, I went home, took out my phone, and opened another LINE conversation for the first time in two weeks. I had to tell that certain person who always saw the world from a player's perspective—I had to share with her the valuable lesson Kikuchi-san had taught me. After all, I really didn't want things to end like this. [I'm sorry I want to talk one more time Can we meet up somewhere soon? ] I sent the message and waited for Hinami's reply. About fifteen minutes passed. [Talk about what? ] I could sense the rejection in her short, emotionless message. But I'd already decided to move forward. And I'd made up my mind that I wouldn't hesitate to use my "skills." [I've been thinking a lot I want to talk again ] The notification saying she'd read my message popped up right away. [There's nothing I want to talk about. ] Her reply was cold, but I charged ahead; I knew what I wanted to do here. [You told me to give you back your bag, didn't you? ] Maybe because she wasn't expecting me to say that, there was a pause between the "read" notification and her reply. [I did say that. ] Page 182 Goldenagato | mp4directs.com
[It'll be a hassle to bring it to school One more thing to carry ] [Are you kidding me? ] I could imagine her exasperated expression. [Let me return it during summer vacation ] I sent another message. [Otherwise I might not be able to give it back ] She read it right away. Of course, none of what I'd written was actually true. But Hinami had told me once that in order to achieve a goal and get my opinion across, I might have to put on a false front. If I didn't, I'd never achieve anything. Well then, I'd do it now. I'd fight in her ring. Given her tendency to value sound logic, she'd probably have a hard time turning me down. A minute or two passed. [In that case, you can keep it. ] What? That was her strategy? She'd caught me off guard. As I started to rack my brain for a new angle of attack, another message arrived from Hinami. [But if you want to meet that badly Tomorrow at six. Omiya. ] I did a little fist pump. I couldn't deny feeling she'd given some ground, but the important thing was reaching my goal. It would be worse to give her any less than my best. [Okay. ] I waited until the "read" notification arrived, then turned off my phone. I started to put my thoughts in order for our meeting tomorrow, reflecting once again on what I really wanted. * * * The next day, I took Hinami's bag and headed for Omiya. My back was straight, my mouth firm, my hair styled, and I was wearing an outfit she had selected. It wasn't a mask. It was the armor I needed for our encounter. We were meeting at six. I got to the Bean Tree sculpture at 5:55 and waited for her with an uncomfortable combination of restless anxiety and determination. Page 183 Goldenagato | mp4directs.com
She arrived exactly at six. She stopped directly in front of me and just looked me in the eyes. She wasn't glaring at me or assessing me this time. I decided to speak first to prevent that look from undercutting my momentum. "This isn't the best place to talk. Wanna go somewhere else?" Without waiting for her answer, I started walking toward the east exit. Hinami silently followed a step behind with her perfect, disciplined stride. After we'd walked for a few minutes, I realized something. "…Oh." I stopped in front of a convenience store. It was a completely ordinary convenience store near the station with nothing whatsoever to distinguish it. But for me, it was the place where everything began. This was the convenience store where NO NAME and I had arranged to meet in person for the first time. It was the place where I first talked to the "real" Hinami. My feet had naturally stopped in front of the store. We could have talked anywhere, but for no real reason, I decided this would be a good place. I turned back to Hinami and took a deep breath. "…What I wanted to talk to you about was—" I was ready to dive in. "Did you think of a new excuse or something?" Hinami interrupted with a blank expression, as I would have predicted. But I didn't want that to beat me, so I hurried to keep talking. "It's not an excuse. I realized something." "Realized what?" I thought back to the things I'd learned from Kikuchi-san, and to be fair, the things I'd learned and received from Hinami. Then I told her the answer I'd arrived at. "I like video games." "…Well, that's breaking news." She looked at me suspiciously. "I like Atafami , and I like RPGs. And I liked playing the game of the student council election against you so much I'd happily do it again if I could. Even if it was partially my fault Mimimi had to go through what she did." One by one, I transformed my true feelings into words, almost giving them physical shape. "…Is that so?" Hinami's expression did not change. I recalled my gray memories of not so long ago. "But in Atafami , I'm always a player. I'm on the outside, sitting in front Page 184 Goldenagato | mp4directs.com of the TV, holding my controller and moving my character on the screen.
There's no way I can get any closer." "Obviously." I nodded. "But I still poured my soul into it because I wanted to become one with my character. The closer I was, the more exciting the world inside the game was." I was getting emotional. "The reason I was drawn to games more than anime or novels or manga…the reason the game world sucks me in more than anything else…is simple." Games have one unique characteristic that none of those other media share. "At least in a game , I can make my character do whatever I want." Only in games could I be a top-tier character. My character's experiences became mine, and that was why that world was so fascinating to me. I mean, in a game, I didn't have to experience my own weakness or pitifulness or the crushing, irrational hatred I had toward myself for being me. In that sense, you could say that I lived more as my characters than I did in the real world. "That's the draw of the game world. I thought the real world was a shitty game. Nothing about it was fun, because I couldn't manipulate the character Fumiya Tomozaki how I wanted to." I thought back again to the gray life of a few months ago. "I didn't mean to mumble, but when I listened to a recording of myself, I realized that's what I was doing. I didn't mean to turn down the corners of my mouth, but when you shoved that mirror in my face, I saw that's what I was doing. I didn't mean to have such bad posture, and I didn't stutter because I liked to." More than anything else, that was what made my life gray. And I never would have figured it out on my own. "But how could I make my voice sound the way I wanted? How could I make my expression look how I wanted? How could I have the posture I wanted—how could I make my character act the way I imagined? All those techniques for playing the game of life, for making real life into something exciting—"
I tried to speak from the depths of my soul. "I learned because you took the time to teach me." Memories flooded my mind. You could call them images from the new landscape that Hinami showed me, full of colors I hadn't known existed a few months earlier. The happiness on the face of my "student" when she told me she'd gotten better at Atafami . The sunny smile Mimimi gave me after I'd struggled in my own clumsy way to help her solve her problems. The primitive yet piercing elation I felt when I realized I'd leveled up. That incredibly fun, silly, lively barbecue. The strange, satisfying, embarrassing sense of solidarity after we'd succeeded in bringing Nakamura and Izumi a little closer together. The warm, happy feeling like snow melting that I got when Kikuchi-san and I had a deep conversation. All those memories sparkled brilliantly like colored lights decorating the dark night sky, burning their afterimage slowly but surely into my world. It felt like magic. "I want to be a character in real life, because thanks to you, I'm starting to like this game, too." That wasn't a lie. There was no way I could deny the appeal of the work I'd put in and the experiences I'd had since meeting her or the ways my surroundings had changed as a result. Same goes for all the new amazing moments that had made the real world more interesting and the colorful magic she'd sprinkled over my life. True, things didn't go how I expected them to more often than not, and sometimes I still felt uncomfortable. At times, my own weakness had gotten me hurt, and I thought my heart was going to shatter into a thousand pieces. But I still wanted to be a character in this game. After all, I'm the top gamer in Japan! I never go halfway on games that I like. "That's what I really want to do."
I waited for Hinami to respond. In the end, what I really wanted was to keep the same stance I'd always had as a gamer. I wanted to throw myself fully into this game I'd come to like and enjoy it to the fullest. And because I liked it, I wanted my character to be deeper and more real than anyone else's. I'm pretty sure that was the only answer I could have given Hinami that was different from hers but still correct. But after a pause, Hinami shook her head. "This idea you have about what you really want—there's no such thing." She was rejecting everything I'd just said. "You're just letting yourself get idealistic and sentimental." I understood that this, too, was correct. "You seem to think that becoming a character is what you really want, but it's not. Your emotions are getting the better of you, and you've mistaken that for your ideal. You're giving it more weight than it deserves." Her tone was as cool as ever. She wasn't budging. "If that's what you genuinely want to pursue, then you have to prove it and stick to it. Otherwise, it's meaningless." Looking back, she could see all the logic she'd used, the actions she'd taken, and the results she'd reaped. Her confidence was based on those accumulated outcomes. That was why she believed so firmly that she was right. Her confidence was built on results. Effort led gradually to outcomes, which led to confidence, which became strength. That's what I'd sensed, on a very minor scale, when I "leveled up." And since Hinami had more results to look back on than anyone else, she was a stronger character than anyone else. But if I took the opposite perspective… "I thought you'd say that." If I was able to break down that argument… "And you're right that I have to prove it or else it's meaningless." Then that would be the surest counterattack possible against Hinami. She was momentarily silent in the face of my confident reply.
"Are you trying to say you can prove it?" she finally asked, looking at me sharply. Maybe I was wrong, but I didn't sense any animosity in her eyes. "What I really want does exist. I'm sure of it," I declared. I knew that was what she expected me to say. "…Really now." For the first time, she smiled. "Tell me then, what's your evidence?" I smiled back at her. "What are you talking about? You really don't get it, do you?" "…Huh?" she said, clearly very confused. Now that I had her running, I attacked again. "I mean, proving what you really want is a function of simple rules, and they intersect in complex ways. They're not that easy to teach." It was a logical argument—one she'd once made to me when I was first climbing into her ring. For a few seconds, she froze, stunned, until she gave a small, shocked laugh. "Ha… So what do you plan to do?" "It's obvious, isn't it?" I replied jokingly. "When you buy a new game and bring it home, how do you get good at it?" That, too, was one of her own logical arguments. She'd been explaining the most rational, efficient method for improvement. She could see what I was doing, and she sighed. "…I know, I know—you try playing it." I nodded. "Right. You're not going to find what you really want by asking for evidence that it exists. You have to struggle to discover how you feel and move forward in earnest—only then." Hinami furrowed her eyebrows. "You…" "Listen, Hinami," I said with the confidence of a teacher about to deliver an important lesson. "You're good at managing your life, but that's all you do. You always look at the world from a player's perspective. I don't think you know what real fun is." I was trying to get a rise out of her. "…What is with you?" "Just listen," I declared. "I'm going to tell you something. You're a toptier character, that's true. But when it comes to enjoying the game of life, I'm ahead of you now." Hinami smiled, unfazed. "What?" I pointed at her. "Starting today, I'm gonna teach you step-by-step how to really throw yourself into the game.
How can you discover what you really want? How can you get more fun out of life? Of course, I'm not as good as you at putting rules into words, so this will probably be a slow process." Hinami tilted her head somewhat theatrically. "Where do you get off lecturing me like that? You keep talking about these true desires or whatever, and I don't even believe they exist. The closest you get is wishful thinking or a whim. Shouldn't you start there?" I nodded. "Maybe. But try thinking of it like this." She rested her cheek in her hand with interest and smiled combatively. "…Like what?" "For me, those true desires have always fueled my drive to play games." "…Pfft." I stuck my pointer finger in the air. "That's how I got to be the top Atafami player in Japan—and you haven't beaten me." Just for an instant, shock crossed Hinami's face. "Don't you think it's strange? You're number one in academics, sports, the school hierarchy, and most other games. But in Atafami , you just can't get the top spot. We know the effect, so now we just need the cause, right?" For every effect there is a cause—that's one of the rules that makes up the game of reality. That's the unshakable view of games that Hinami and I share. "Of course, but it has to do with the level of effort—" "You're wrong." I cut her off, wagging my finger. "…Then what?" she said, grabbing my finger before it could offend her further. "Haven't you guessed yet? The thing that makes me better than you at Atafami —" I pointed at her again. "—is that I know what I really want, and you don't." "…Oh reall—" I cut her off again.
"The fact is, you haven't beaten me. And that's the best evidence around that I might be on to something. Of course, I can see that because I'm the top Atafami player in Japan, but you might not understand." I grinned to hammer home the point. "If that's frustrating for you, just try beating me at Atafami without knowing what you really want." I beckoned to her with my finger, inviting her counterargument. "No…" She started to argue back but eventually seemed to give up on continuing. Of course she did. I mean, her superstrong fighting style was to climb into the ring someone else had made and obliterate them head-on through sheer effort. After all the work she poured into her goal, she never lost to anyone. But I'm different. She and I aren't just Fumiya Tomozaki and Aoi Hinami. On a deeper level than that, we're nanashi and NO NAME. But this particular arena is built from things you can only know when you master Atafami ; it's illogical and unfair, but here you're only allowed to complain once you beat me. And here, I and I alone am guaranteed to win. Of course, I'll admit I made that ring specifically to reach my own goals, and originally it revolved entirely around me. It was inaccessible to anyone else. Until she came along. After all, she's always chosen to get into her opponent's ring and crush them head-on. She hates to lose with every cell in her body. "…I see," she said with a tired sigh. "What?" "Given you're trying to prove something that doesn't exist, your empty logic isn't half-bad." "E-empty…?" Hinami gave a half-impressed, half-disgusted little laugh. "You're right; I can't come up with a counterargument. On the other hand, you haven't proven anything." "Point taken." I yielded with a nod. Just because I'd argued that she wasn't able to understand my point by putting it into a barely convincing context, that didn't prove anything. "Ultimately, it's impossible to say who's right, so I'll meet you halfway. I'm not accepting that people have some secret deep thing that they ultimately want, but I'll agree that it's wrong to assume they don't." At long last, for the very first time,
Aoi Hinami bent just a little. I couldn't help smiling. "Hinami…" "But," she said severely, pointing at me. "If you're going to argue that hard, then you'd better put the time into proving it. Convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt." That struck me as an impossibly hard assignment. But if I was going to follow through on what I really wanted and stay involved with this terrifyingly rational perfectionist at the same time, then I had no choice but to obey. "…Right. Got it." Once she had my promise, her face softened, and a moment later, that expression turned to exhaustion as she pressed her palm to her forehead. "…So…" "…What?" "Nothing… I was just wondering what you want to do from here on out." For once, there was no energy in her voice. "Oh right." Yeah, that was the question. I'd rejected her checklist of goals, so what did I want our relationship to be like now? I hadn't told her yet, but of course I already had an answer. All I had to do was say it. "I…want to keep on trying to beat this game. Just like I've done so far." I genuinely did want to stick with her attack strategy. "…Really?" Unusually for her, she looked away. A tiny, vaguely awkward smile played at her lips. "The skills you've been teaching me are necessary to become a real character, and they don't contradict what I really want, so I'd like to continue." "…But sometimes they do, right?" I nodded. "Yes, and when that happens, I want to opt out." "Essentially…you want to use the skills but construct the goals based on what you really want?" Hinami frowned.
Apparently, she was tired of my selfishness. "More or less. Basically—" I thought back to what Mizusawa had said to me at Tenya. "—my playing style is a hybrid of skills and true feelings." I looked Hinami in the eye and grinned. She sighed again and muttered that if I was that confident, I'd better come up with some proof.
"Well, I'm not super confident, but—leave it to me, NO NAME." As I spoke, I channeled my favorite character in my favorite game and raised my right arm in an imitation of his Attack pose. After all, Hinami and I had a way of communicating that was way faster and better than words. She sighed, predictably fed up but also slightly happy, I think. "Okay then, I'm not expecting much, but I'll leave it to you, nanashi." She raised her right arm, a little reluctantly. I recognized the familiar sadism in her half smile. Yeah, that was the expression that suited her best. We both relaxed our fists at the same time. Neither of us was trying to prove we were right or deny our weakness. Instead, we were slowly approaching each other so that eventually our ideals would link up. Finally… Our palms met softly in midair. * * * We'd talked a lot, and my brain was dead, so at my suggestion, we walked over to a diner nearby. "I think I'll get the salted mackerel set," I said. "What a coincidence. Me too." After we miraculously agreed, we mostly ate our meals in silence. Come to think of it, silence didn't feel awkward with her. I might even call it normal. "Mmm." Hinami popped a piece of mackerel into her mouth. Man, she looked just as good eating Japanese food as Western. Whether she was picking off a piece of fish with her chopsticks and putting it in her mouth or lifting her bowl to elegantly sip her miso soup, she was always beautiful. Even the rice she picked up between her chopsticks seemed to glisten more brightly than other rice. "…What?" "Oh yeah." As she stared back at me, I remembered something else I wanted to do today. I pulled the black backpack she'd temporarily given me out of my nerdy old bag.
"The reason we got together today was so I could return this, right?" I said with a hint of irony. She snorted. "What, you don't want it anymore? If you plan to keep trying to beat this game, you might as well keep it. It's frayed anyway, so I wouldn't use it." She popped another piece of mackerel into her mouth. "No, I'll give it back. I'm going to buy a similar one with my own money… I'd rather do that, actually." "…Is that so?" She took the bag I was holding out and spread it between both hands. As she looked for the frayed section, she smiled a little. "You're silly," she muttered. "Silly? I thought you'd call me a genius." I'd neatly covered the little worn patch with the fireworks pin she'd returned to me on the platform. "I'm giving both of them back to you," I said bluntly, taking a sip of tea. She poked at the pin. "You're giving the backpack and the pin back? But this was supposed to be an exchange for the bag." "Don't worry about it." I wanted to get across my genuine feelings, so I continued. "It's just a small token of thanks for making my world more colorful." I wanted to look away out of embarrassment, but I didn't. She blinked a few times without saying anything, then mumbled, "Really?" She flicked the pin with her fingertips. "If that's the case, then I'll take it." She smiled. On one corner of her backpack, a little firework exploded brilliantly, bringing color to the pitch-black world.