Free Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka Page B

distance between them. Text bubbled over his head.
    > Quit foolin’ around.
     
    While he waited for Tetsuo to regain his feet, Ricky made a show of brushing the dust off his clothes. He still wore the same grin he’d had inside the saloon. Once that texture had been chosen, there was no going back without redesigning one’s whole character.
    The characters’ polygonal bodies moved with extreme fidelity. When they punched, they extended their arms and drew them back. When they kicked, the same was true of their legs. A hit that landed as a character was drawing in his arms or legs was considered a counter. Counters sent characters flying high into the air. Dealing massive damage to a character soaring helplessly across the screen was one of the core strategies of the game.
    Given split-second timing, people don’t have the luxury to think over what they’re going to do. Our bodies react on their own with the action they’re most familiar with. A conditioned reflex. To hone those reflexes, martial artists practice thousands of strikes a day, astronauts run through the same simulations over and over, and I practice my combos on the training dummy. There is no element of chance when you’re up against other players in a virtual world. A good player only wins as often as he deserves to win. I had proven that at the arcade in Shinjuku.
    As soon as Tetsuo stood, he dashed forward to close the gap between himself and Ricky. Ricky backed off and to the right.
    Tetsuo threw a middle punch. Ricky blocked. I canceled the kick I’d buffered after the punch and made a low kick instead. Ricky back dashed. I jumped and threw a middle punch from the air, immediately followed by a high spin kick. Ricky avoided both attacks with a crouching back dash. Tetsuo canceled out of the spin kick. This wasn’t getting him anywhere.
    Tetsuo was waiting for Ricky’s next crouching back dash. Timed right, he should be able to land a counterattack. Tetsuo rushed forward, sticking his knee out in Ricky’s path.
    Only, Ricky wasn’t there. Tetsuo’s knee sliced through thin air. Impossible. As Ricky spun to the left, his knee struck Tetsuo. The counterhit sound FX played.
    Once more, Tetsuo’s body rose into the air. Ricky punched, canceled, and punched again. Tetsuo went crashing into, then bouncing off, the polygonal barrel. Ricky caught him with an open-palmed thrust as he rebounded off the barrel. Ricky dashed forward, canceled, punched, and punched again. A spinning roundhouse kick provided the coup de grace.
    Tetsuo’s lifeless body collapsed across the barrel, jittering as it grated slowly to the ground. A gray web spread across the screen. One final bubble of text flickered over Ricky’s head.
    > Yup. Bacon.
     
    The system booted Tetsuo offline.
    The screen changed to a uniform shade of blue. A tiny message swam in the center of the screen.
     
    WOULD YOU LIKE TO LOG BACK IN?
    I slammed the controller onto the floor. A dull pain rose in my thumb; I’d hit the floor hard enough to split my thumbnail. Blood black as ink welled up from beneath the nail.
    I sucked on my wounded thumb. A bitter, metallic taste filled my mouth.
    Tonight’s score: 0 wins, 1 loss.

CHAPTER 6
     
    A TEPID MIASMA HUNG OVER THE CAMPUS during the rainy season. The weather seemed permanently stuck in an obscene limbo between blistering heat and pouring rain. The humidity in the air made it an effort to breathe. Shinjuku felt like a giant steam cooker. The flame beneath the pot had just been lit, and it would only get worse from here.
    Fumiko Nagihara and I were in the same year and in the same department, so naturally we had the same required courses. Whenever I attended any given class, there was approximately a 70 percent chance she would be there. Fumiko was on campus every day except Sunday.
    Fumiko hated it when anyone used her last name. She said she didn’t like the way it sounded. She had an aversion to the usual nicknames too. I think her girlfriends