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Gaming at the net cafe after dark always gave Ako a sense of thrill. Computers hummed, keyboards clicked, and placid darkness filled everything in between. On a stormy night like tonight, rain pattered against the outside of the building. Everything about it made her feel at peace.
“Udagawa-san.” And her companion today, Sayo, contributed to the atmosphere with methodical clicks and key taps as she and Ako pulled, kited, and blasted down groups of enemies in the Raltzen Caves. “Have you completed the 「Dark Mission Requiem」 quest yet?”
These days, Sayo was more interested in NFO, which was great because it meant she and Ako had more to talk about. It made getting together outside of the band a lot easier. And Sayo even looked up to her and asked her for advice! Being the teacher was neat for once. A teacher of the dark arts.
Ako queued up a sequence of spells, and her character twirled and casted on their own for a bit.
“Yeah, I have! Me and Rin-rin did it a while ago.” She neglected to mention that it had left her so spooked she hadn’t logged into NFO for days. Sneaking through that abandoned tunnel infested with horrifying monsters had not been fun.
“I see. The reason I ask is because it made me wonder about other video games’ prevalence to NFO.” Sayo explained as they rested up after Ako’s character finished off the last few enemies. “I heard that the entire Dark Mission Requiem questline was a reference to Bio Panic, which is a popular horror franchise.”
“Oh wow, I didn’t know that!”
Sayo nodded. “Furthermore, NFO uses NPCs to reference some other games. For example, Alraune the wood sprite, who is supposedly a character in a mobile game.”
Ako’s eyebrows shot up. Alraune? The super cute, super friendly spirit who protected the world tree and helped resurrect fallen adventurers at the tree?
“I didn’t know that either! That means she’s like, some kind of dimension traveler!”
“That’s a good way to view it from a lore-based approach.” Sayo smiled. “One viewpoint I’ve seen online is that such references are a type of tribute or homage. It all made me curious about franchises other than NFO and what they have to offer in comparison.”
They decided to take a break and get some snacks before exploring more. They found a corner to hide in, and Ako put up her force shield, known among players as the AFK shield because it was perfect for creating a miniature safe zone in the middle of a dungeon.
Down the hallway, at the drink and snack vending machines, Ako contemplated what to get and eventually settled for a slushie. Nothing could beat a sweet, crisp slushie on a quiet night.
“So are you gonna try out more games?” Ako asked, watching Sayo dither before the bags of potato chips in the snack machine. Eventually, she settled on the classic seaweed and salt.
“I’m considering it. I’ll have to properly balance my time.” Sayo took a second to open her chips. “Do you have any recommendations? Seeing as you’ve played games longer than I have, and we both enjoy NFO, I figure our taste in games may be similar.”
Ako faltered and had to think about that for a moment. Recommendations—she couldn’t think of anything off the top of her head. Her main thing was NFO. Did going to the arcade count?
Yet, eager to impress, she straightened her back and put her hands on her waist. “Of course! You’re talking to the dark lordess of entertainment and... cool fun things!”
After a moment, she also added, “Can you give me until Monday? I need time to, uh, do great research.”
Sayo nodded. They went back to their booth to continue playing. All the while, Ako bubbled excitedly, and not just from the slushie. Sayo was asking her for recommendations! The Sayo, guitarist of Roselia, the coolest band in the universe, which she only happened to be a part of.
Ako felt like she had just accepted a quest. All she needed now was to find out about some games she could recommend to Sayo. At least two or three would do. Maybe four, if she could find that many.
Normally she would ask Rinko, but Rinko was currently sick with a fever, and Ako didn’t want to bother her despite having lots of experience nursing people (her sister) back to health. Rinko wouldn’t enjoy going out of the way to strike up conversations with random people anyway.
But for Ako, this was the perfect chance to talk to her friends about video games! Deciding that was the move, she turned her mind back to Raltzen Caves to keep an eye out for rare monsters and mining veins. Over the weekend, she would begin gathering information.
「Recommendations from a Princess of Dark」, side quest start!
The first quest marker appeared above no one other than Tomoe, her very own elder sister. Upon selecting her first dialogue choice, “What kind of games does everyone in Afterglow play?” she ended up hanging out at Haneoka with her sisters’ friends at lunch.
“Ohoho. So the young Udagawa comes seeking knowledge.” Moca’s arm slithered over her shoulder and pulled her in for a friendly but inescapable hug. “Come close, little one, and perhaps you may learn our ways.”
Sandwiched between Moca and Tomoe, Ako did just that, trying to listen to Moca’s voice over the two, three, sometimes even four that could be talking at a time.
Moca suddenly ducked down and pulled Ako with her as Ran lunged at Tomoe over both of their heads.
“Seriously!” Ran half-complained, half-laughed as Tomoe’s arm swung away. “Gimme back my water bottle!”
“Not until you stop swearing in front of Ako,” Tomoe countered, fixing her with a stern gaze.
“Okay, okay, fine. I promise.” Ran received her water bottle and put it down far away from Tomoe. “You seeing this, Ako? Your sister uses her height to mess with us all the time. She’s literally a huge jerk.”
“Really? Sis helps me reach stuff I can’t get all the time.”
Ran rolled her eyes over Himari’s aww~. “I wonder if it’s you who’s getting special treatment or us.”
As Ako centered herself and popped a french fry into her mouth, Moca scooted into Ran’s personal space. “Ran, since I’m sharing my fries with Ako-chin, lemme have some of your curry. Consider it my tip for taking one for the team.”
“None of us forced you to share.” Ran retorted but didn’t stop Moca from spooning away some of her curry.
“Anyway, Ako-chin.” Moca got back on topic and huddled in closer to Ako. “I’ll show you the game all of Afterglow plays.” Moca held her phone out so both she and Ako could see the screen. “It’s called Rise of Realms. Heard of it?”
Ako shook her head.
Moca winked at her while the game loaded. “It’s pretty big. I happen to be pretty good at it, so you’ve come to the right gal.”
On the screen, clouds parted to reveal Moca’s base, a bona fide kingdom with a castle and flag. Mechanical walls protected wizard towers made of black stone and storages full of gold. At training camps outside the walls, warriors, archers, and even a few dragons were just hanging out together.
Moca pointed out her most prized possessions and a few defenses and traps that kept them safe. “Of course, someone with the proper strategy can still get past all of this and steal my resources. That’s just how the game is. But nobody in Afterglow has gotten a perfect 3-star attack on my base.”
She lowered her voice and pointed to a few buildings: her town hall, her spread out storages. “These look like easy targets, but attacking from these sides actually puts you at a disadvantage.”
Ako nodded along, impressed. Even though there were lots of buildings, and laying them all out seemed complicated, Moca appeared to have a lot of tactical experience.
“Now, for the moment we’ve all been waiting for.” Moca clicked a button on the side of the screen. “Today, we wage a war.”
She scrolled through her friends list until she came to a user named “Tomo” and pressed Friendly Challenge.
“Heh heh heh. Sorry Ako-chin, but today we’ll be demolishing your sister’s base. Don’t worry,” she said before Ako could pipe up. “She won’t lose a thing, since we’re friends.”
Tomoe heard her and looked over. “Why am I the example?”
Moca ignored her and showed Ako what Tomoe’s base looked like. It was pretty different from Moca’s; the storage buildings that were spread out in Moca’s base were clustered at the center of Tomoe’s. Every defensive tower was in its own little walled-off compartment, leaving no room to place traps beside them.
“This should be pretty easy,” Moca said gleefully.
The raid began. “First I send in the tanks, and some wizards.” Moca deployed a group of heavyset giants to assault the wall and wizards to raze buildings along the outskirts. Then, she sent in the cavalry: “Hog riders!”
She dragged her finger across the screen, summoning a bunch of muscular, mounted warriors. They leaped over walls, smashed towers, and decimated cannons. They swept through the entire base and destroyed every defense.
“That shouldn’t be allowed,” Tomoe complained, watching from Ako’s opposite side. Moca brushed her off.
“And there you have it,” Moca announced, sitting before a perfect victory. “Now you know how to play Rise of Realms.”
Ako clapped. “Wow! I mean, I don’t really know what just happened, but it was very cool.”
Tomoe pursed her lips, less pleased about what had just happened than Moca. “Legit question. How do I kill the 30–50 feral hog riders that run into my base while my mortars are distracted by giants?”
“Just DGB.” Moca stuck out her tongue, to which Tomoe grumbled. “Oh, but you know what?
Moca closed the app and opened up another one. “Here’s another game I play that I feel would be more up your alley, Ako-chin. Heard of Puzzle & Wyverns?”
Ako hadn’t, but the name made her sit up straighter.
“I think I’m in the middle of a dungeon,” Moca remarked, just in time for a field of orbs to fall into place. A cute girl with flowery clothes appeared on the screen. Ako recognized her immediately.
“It’s Alraune!” She gasped and looked closer. “She’s even got her leaf umbrella and vine swing!”
“Correct! I’m surprised you know her. Sadly, she stands in my path, and consequently she must be defeated.”
Moca wriggled her fingers and tapped on one of the orbs, picking it up. “As the title implies, this game is all about the puzzle.”
She moved the orb around, rearranging the rest of the board. A cross of yellow orbs. A connect-four of red orbs. A row of purple orbs. When she let go, the matched orbs vanished, and new ones fell in from the top in a comborific cascade.
“Whoa—” Ako gasped as the combos disappeared one by one as Moca’s team charged up an attack and fired up a volley of fireballs, lightning strikes, and a huge blast of darkness that covered the field in damage numbers. Alraune faded away, and Moca chuckled as her team stepped forward.
“Here comes the boss.” A blaring red warning covered the field. “Should be easy. Wanna try?”
Moca offered her phone. Ako took it with reverence, knowing she was about to command great power. A valkyrie stood in her way, sword out, hair flowing out to one side.
“So you just match three or more?” Ako picked up a purple orb and matched it with two other ones. Moca’s team attacked, but it looked a lot smaller and definitely didn’t do as much damage as before. “Oh no, the enemy is getting a turn!”
The screen rocked as the valkyrie hit her for a thousand damage.
“It’s okay, I’ve got plenty of health. That’s the power of the Cradle of Hell Goddess, Persephone.” Moca pointed to her leader, the first unit on the left.
Ako gasped. “I love her name…!”
Moca gave her a quick tutorial. “When you move an orb, it pulls another orb into its spot. You can match a bunch at a time by doing circling motions like this. Oh, and even though you have a limited time to move, you can move as many as you want during that time, so if you’re fast, you can make a combo with the whole board. If you start getting low on health, just match the hearts.”
For a few minutes, Ako found herself locked in battle with the valkyrie. She matched the purple orbs whenever she could and left them at the bottom of the board for safekeeping when she couldn’t. Her combo skills weren’t that impressive, but she was doing damage even when she matched two or three sets of orbs at a time.
“Almost at half health,” she said as she matched a row of purple orbs, which made her feel quite proud of herself. “There!”
The valkyrie’s health dropped below half, and she let out a puff of green smoke.
“What just happened?” she asked Moca, who stopped taking curry from Ran and looked over at the screen.
“She’s changed to her sub-element. Now she’s wood element, which means she won’t take extra damage from your dark attacks. Here, click on the hot girl.”
“Moca...” Tomoe cleared her throat. Moca put her hands up.
“What? She’s literally on fire.”
Ako tapped the character Moca had indicated, and all the wood and light orbs on the board turned into fire orbs.
“Now you can burn through her defenses! Match as many as you can, but try to keep the matches separate so you get a combo.” Ako nodded dutifully and picked up an orb.
She managed to push most of the red orbs into line before she ran out of time. Still, there were so many that they matched themselves as new orbs fell in from the top, adding to her combo. In a blitz of red damage numbers, the boss went down.
“I did it!” She cheered, listening to the happy victory fanfare. Moca gave her a congratulatory pat on the shoulder, and Ako handed her phone back.
“Good work, child of man. You should download the game if you like it. You can build your own team of dinosaurs, anime girls, and mythological figures. Oh, and I got Hii-chan, Saya, and Kasumi to play too, so you can add us as friends and bring our leaders to support you in dungeons.”
Ako’s eyes opened even wider. A whole community of perplexed—wait, that wasn’t right—um, empuzzled warriors, ready to go to battle any time of day!
“Awesome!!” with extra exclamation points was the only thing she could think to say. “I’ll definitely try it out.”
On the other side of the Afterglow lunch table, Himari leaned forward sipping a juice box. “Say, Ako-chan. Why the sudden interest in phone games? Are you tired of NFO?”
“No, I still play NFO.” She explained how she was currently on a quest to learn more about games. “Me and Sayo-san are expanding our horizons! I’m trying to see what kind of games other people like to play.”
“Ooh, in that case! Why don’t you talk to Rimi? She’s told me she likes playing video games too.”
“Rimi?” Ako did a poor job hiding her surprise.
“Right? You wouldn’t expect it from a girl like her! She claims she’s not very good, but I haven’t seen her play, so she could be super good for all I know.”
“It’s fine! I’ll go find her at school sometime. Thanks Hii-chan!”
“Anytime, uh... sister of my friend!” Himari put on a little Moca impression, to which she received a few snickers from around the lunch table.
“Are you talking about the monsters?”
Rimi’s room was real cute. It was pink all over, she had an awesome beanbag, and her video game collection was nothing short of awesome. Something about the way video game boxes lined up on the shelf just radiated coolness. And controllers were cool too. Ako wished she could play NFO with one, but keyboards had so many more buttons for typing and using skills.
“Monsters? They look like monsters to you?”
Rimi stiffened. Ako wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but the guy talking on screen seemed like the bad guy. The main character didn’t seem to like him one bit, at least. Rimi herself watched with rapt attention, so Ako didn’t want to interrupt. Rimi had been very polite in letting her visit to watch her play games for an afternoon.
After another few minutes, Rimi regained control of her character and proceeded into the dark.
“Isn’t this game super scary?” Ako asked. “It’s so hard to see sometimes. And aren’t there a lot of monsters?”
“Monsters,” Rimi mumbled. She sounded a bit ominous. “I hope they’re just monsters.”
Ako rubbed her jaw, which was sore because she had clenched it too long expecting something scary to happen. “Do you get experience for killing them?”
Rimi tilted her head in thought. “Hm... Not exactly? Sometimes they’re holding or guarding useful items, but most of the time it’s better to avoid them. Horror games don’t really encourage you to fight, most of the time.”
Ako saw the logic in that. Everything about this game was creepy, and there was no health bar, so there was no way to tell how dangerous anything was.
Rimi continued into the dark, wary but nowhere near as tense as Ako was. She held her controller calmly in her lap, socked feet extended out in front of her.
“You must play games like this all the time,” Ako commented on her posture. “You don’t look like you’re scared at all.”
Rimi laughed. “At first I was too scared to play, but after a while I got more used to it. I just find horror games really cool.
“Every now and then, I buy a different game when I feel like trying something new. I replay Bio Panic a lot, but there’s only so many things you can do in horror games before you’ve done everything. This is my first time playing through the Silence Mountain series though, and I’m having a pretty good time.”
Rimi pressed a few buttons and effortlessly jumped over a gap in the flooring. She seemed like she had everything down to a T. All the movements, all the actions. “Wow. That’s super cool...”
At that, Rimi looked a little embarrassed. “I wouldn’t say that,” she said. “I’m not actually that good at video games. I just like to play them.”
“But that makes you get better, right?” Ako sat up. “The more you play, the more experienced you become, and you start learning all the best way to avoid or kill monsters! NFO is kind of like that too, since you level up and stuff. Just, it’s usually not as scary.”
“That’s true, huh?” Rimi looked at her with a bit of a smile. “Did you want to get into horror games, Ako-chan? I could lend you some, or you can come over and play them if you want. Watching people play horror games for the first time is even more fun than replaying them sometimes.”
Ako’s eyes widened at the thought. Then, a loud noise from the TV made her jump as a stack of boxes clattered. From somewhere neither she nor Rimi could see, there was a skittery, high-pitched laugh.
“Uh...” Rimi looked at it for a few seconds before continuing forward. Ako shuddered and exhaled.
“M-maybe don’t lend them to me,” she said with a gulp. “But maybe I could come over and try one. Someday.”
Horror games with Rimi postponed for the unforeseeable future, Ako stood now before the doors of the Yamato household, led here by no one other than Rimi herself.
“People who play video games… Oh yeah! Apparently, Maya-chan plays games too. She mentioned it once when Kasumi-chan and I were talking to her after a practice session.”
Some texts and a day later, here she was at Maya’s place. Thankfully, she still had her number from the time they had gone skiing. That had been pretty amazing. Ako could still remember the snowballs. Oh god, the snowballs.
“Ako-san!” Maya opened the door wearing her familiar shirt with the horned skull and crossbones. “Hello, thank you for coming. It’s been a long time. Have you been doing well?”
“Hey Maya-san! I’ve been great, yeah. What about you? Do you still talk to Misaki?”
“Ah yeah, Misa—er, I mean, Okusawa-san and I still hang out!” Maya stepped back so Ako could come in and take off her rain boots. “Hagumi-san talks to me now and then too. And Hina-san, of course, but we’re in the same group so that’s inevitable. A-anyway, I’m very happy to have gotten to know all of you!”
Maya led the way to her room. “It’s not much,” she said as she opened the door, “But I can show you my computer and the game that I play.”
“Whoa!” Ako stood in the entrance for a second, taking it all in. To say the least, Maya really did like her equipment.
Ako followed Maya over to her desk, which housed a glowing and lightly whirring machine. “I didn’t know you played on the computer too. You’ve got such a cool system!”
“Huhehe, yup. I saved up and bought it with the money I earn from Pastel*Palettes. It’s a bit of a low-end rig, but it can still run most triple-A games out there on medium to low graphics.”
Maya sat down in her desk chair and turned the computer on. “I don’t really play a lot of games, though. But it’s helpful having a lot of processing power and a good graphics card for other programs too.”
“What do you like to play?” Ako asked, peeking at the sleek black computer frame from different angles. “Do you play any MMOs? Or horror games, maybe?”
“Aha, no no.” Maya waved her hand in front of her face with a nervous laugh. “I don’t think I’d be any good at those. Mostly, I just download random free games off Vapor and try them out.”
Vapor being, of course, the biggest platform for computer games out there. Maya opened up her digital library. Her list of games was relatively short compared to the entire shelf Rimi had.
“There’s one in particular that I play a lot,” Maya said, clicking one of her games in the list. The image of a forest lake appeared on the page. “I found out about it a few months ago, and I’ve been playing it whenever I want to relax.”
Ako read the title. “’Fishing Planet?’ It’s a game about fishing?”
Maya nodded. “Yup. It’s a fishing simulator. I really like it because it gives so much attention to detail. It’s one of the most realistic fishing simulators out there, and it’s honestly super relaxing. It’s a free game, too.”
The game opened, and Maya pressed a button and clicked through a menu.
Then another menu. And a different one.
Ako squinted. There were lots, and lots, and lots of words. More words on one of these pages than there were if you opened every menu in NFO at the same time.
“So basically, you go on fishing trips in different locales.” Maya pointed out things on the screen as she explained. “You buy your own equipment from the shop, plan your trips, even check the weather and climate ahead of time to know if it’s a good day for fishing. The money you get from fishing lets you buy more equipment and other things. There’s a lot of stuff to keep in mind, and it’s kind of fun to learn about because everything is based on actual fish behavior and actual fishing. You can even meet up with people at the same fishing spot and chat with them.”
Ako’s brain tried slowly to process everything she was seeing until something clicked. “So it’s like a fishing MMO! Kinda?”
She stopped to ponder the similarities. Preparing your equipment, heading out to fish-filled dungeons, talking to other people who were in the same area. That was all stuff you had to do in an MMO too, just without the whole reading-lots-of-text part.
“Mm… Kind of, yeah!” Maya came to her rescue. “It’s not exactly massively multiplayer, but it is definitely online. The core mechanics may be vastly different, but the gameplay loop and progression are probably pretty similar to an MMO. I like that comparison!
“So I’ll just start a fishing trip right now to show you what it’s like.” Maya hummed as she selected an area and prepared her equipment for the trip. “The areas you can visit and the fish you can catch all depend on what licenses you have. What’s funny is that you can even choose to keep fish that you aren’t licensed to keep, or fish that are too small, but if you get caught you have to pay a fine. It’s such a strange thing to include in a game, don’t you think? They really went all out on the realism.”
“Ohh~ That is kinda funny. Do you usually keep them?”
Maya shook her head. “Nah, I just throw them back. Well, my first fish, I kept it. It felt special and I wanted to keep it just because, but after that I decided I didn’t mind letting the smaller fish go. It’s not like there’s any need to keep all your catches anyway.”
“Oh, cool! I’d probably want to keep them all... which means I would probably get caught.” Ako stuck her lip out. Catching a fish you couldn’t keep didn’t sound too fun.
“Well, you’d just have to get really good at getting away with it!”
They shared a laugh. Maya realized Ako was still standing up and pointed to a chair Ako could pull over to sit down. Maya shifted over so they could sit down together in front of the screen.
“Another interesting thing about this game is it was all made with the Unity engine. Yet the animations are fluid, the lighting is realistic, and the gameplay is intricate. There are so many moving parts! It goes to show what a good game designer can do even with a system that most people consider pretty limited.”
There was a soft splash as Maya cast her line into the lake. Ripples spread across the surface of the water.
“You can’t really map a fishing rod to a mouse and keyboard very well, so fishing was kind of difficult at first.” Maya picked up her mouse to show Ako. “See, there’s all these things you need to do, like casting and striking and adjusting your reeling speed while you’ve got a fish hooked. The way you move your mouse is super important in this game.”
“Casting and striking sounds a lot like you’re fighting the fish,” Ako remarked. “Hm, I guess you are technically fighting it, right?”
Maya nodded “It’s kind of like a battle, yeah. It’s very satisfying to pull it off and finally catch a fish though. The devs did a good job emulating all of that. This game is definitely one I would say is easier to learn but harder to master. You know, if they had a fishing rod–shaped controller, I’d get it in a heartbeat. The mouse works fine once you get used to it, but it would be super cool if it felt like you were actually fishing.”
Ako tried imagining what it would be like, spinning the reel on a fishing rod as if she was sitting on an actual beach with a fish on the line. “That,” she said after a moment, “Would be awesome! If you get one, can I come watch you use it?”
“Sure, Maybe I’ll look for one!” Maya laughed, and Ako did too. Maya was a lot of fun to be around and talk to. Hearing Maya’s laugh made her feel like laughing too.
For a while, the waters and their conversation were calm. Maya jiggled her mouse a bit, a movement she started explaining shortly after.
“What I’m doing right now is lure fishing. Since there are bass here, I’m moving the lure with slow and steady movements, like this.” Maya highlighted how she reeled in, stopped for a few seconds, and reeled in again. “Lure fishing is all about getting the fish to mistake your lure for actual prey, so you have to be mindful of how deep your lure is, how much you move it, and stuff like its color and weight.”
Her explanation made Ako’s head reel, too. “That’s a lot of stuff,” she admitted, having gotten about 25% of all that. “I didn’t realize fishing was so complicated.”
Maya laughed. “Yeah, I know how you feel. That’s the way I felt at first, too. I always thought fishing was just casting your line and waiting, but in reality there are so many ways you can fish. Lures, poppers… oh, and fly fishing! Fly fishing isn’t in the game, but I found out about it while I was trying to learn how to play, and it seems really interesting.”
“What’s fly fishing?” Ako asked, wading even deeper into the hole of learning fishing techniques from Maya.
“It’s a kind of topwater fishing where you catch fish with a fly-shaped lure. The way you cast is really, really interesting, kind of like you’re flinging the line. Looks very professional, too. I hope I’ll get to try it someday, but Okusawa-san didn’t seem too interested in fishing, so I would need a different guide.”
“Maybe you could go with Hagumi?”
For a second they considered it, then shook their heads.
“There’s no way she’s into fly fishing.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
They sat there for a while. No fish bit yet. Maya reeled in her line and cast again, starting the whole process over again.
“Sorry if it’s not that interesting to watch,” she apologized and scratched her head. “A lot of the time, I think about other stuff while I play, so it’s more like an idle activity. You were probably hoping it’d be cooler, like an RPG, huh?”
Ako shook her head. “Nuh uh! It’s plenty cool. Waiting for the fish to strike, then following their movements so you can catch them...” She mimed pulling back on the fishing rod to yank an imaginary fish from the water. “It’s, uh, a bedamning task!”
“B-bedamning?”
“Yeah! There’s fishing in NFO too, but you only have to wait like, 5 seconds. Sometimes you fish up stuff like rare monsters though.”
“Aha, I see! Fishing in a fantasy world must be a lot of fun.”
Right as she finished speaking, Maya’s line went taut. She and Ako gasped in sync.
“We got a bite! Let’s see if I can bring this one home.”
Balancing out reeling with patience, Maya fought the fish for a few minutes. Eventually, shimmering scales broke the water. Hanging from the line was one floppy fish. Next to it, a text box appeared showing the fish’s size and type.
“Neat! It’s a pretty small largemouth bass. But we can keep it!”
“Woohoo!” Ako clapped for her anyway. “Wow, after all that waiting, that was kind of exciting!”
“Yeah, it doesn’t always go this well! We got lucky today.” Maya stored the fish somewhere and looked at the time.
“I’m feeling a little hungry. Have you eaten lunch yet? You can eat here if you’d like.”
“Seriously? Thank you!” Excited, and hungry now that it had come up, Ako followed Maya to the kitchen.
Maya opened the fridge and started taking out some containers. “I made curry the other day, and I got some croquettes and fried shrimp from Hagumi-san. If you want, I can also make some hamburg steak to go with it.”
“That...” At the mention of croquettes, fried shrimp, and Hagumi, Ako suddenly recalled vivid memories of sitting in the snow under a blue sky, an endless plate of curry and way too many toppings before her. “Oogh… Please don’t remind me.”
“H-huh? Did I say something wrong?”
The weekend passed. Ako went through school with a spring in her step, and after band practice, Sayo came up to her while she was relaxing in the CiRCLE lounge.
“Evening, Udagawa-san. Good work today. I wanted to ask you about the job advancement quests for...”
She trailed away when Ako didn’t look up at her. “Oh? What are you playing?”
“One second...” Ako bit her lip, scanning the board for a way out. She couldn’t go right without messing up her matches, but she wanted to match this dark orb so her leader would attack. But where could she go?
“Aw.” Her turn ended before she could come up with a plan, and she puffed out her cheeks. Three combos wasn’t bad. She could do better, but for now that was okay. “I’m playing this game called Puzzles & Wyverns! Moca-chin introduced me to it.”
“Moca? I do recall seeing her play a game that looked very similar at some point. If you like it, perhaps I should give it a try.”
“Yeah, we can add each other as friends!” Ako smiled. She hadn’t even needed to ask, and Sayo was already interested! Yet another friend to add to her legion of… darkness… buddies.
“Oh yeah, Sayo-san, Sayo-san! Listen to this.” She put her phone down and leaned over the table. “Did you know Rimi plays horror games?”
“Ushigome-san? She plays those types of games?”
“Yeah, right? Isn’t that crazy? She’s playing Silence Mountain right now, but she’s played every game in Bio Panic like, twice! Oh, and Maya plays this game called Fishing Planet, and it’s like an MMO but for fishing!”
“A ‘fishing MMO?’” Sayo repeated, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know such games existed. Is its fishing as good as NFO’s?”
“It’s like, way better! Like actual, real fishing. She said it’s super relaxing too. Are you going to the net cafe again this weekend? I can tell you all about it, and we could even try it out if you want! I learned the basics from Maya, so I could totally try teaching you!”