Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka Read Free Book Online

truth of it was that they had about as much to do with me as the bat lady, fresh out of hibernation, that I’d met on the streets of Shinjuku.
    I didn’t ordinarily join my classmates for drinks, and they didn’t ordinarily invite me. I decided to go out with them on a whim. Spending time in the virtual world had stirred up memories of my friend who disappeared into the north, and I’d been feeling a little down that day. Maybe like attracts like, because we were all ready for a drink.
    Later, when we left the bar, I broke off from a small group who decided they hadn’t had enough to drink yet and started walking to the station.
    Shinjuku overflowed with sound FX. Squadrons of feet pressing against asphalt. The hum of electricity through neon tubes. Laughs and shouts and the labored enthusiasm of street vendors hawking their wares blended together in a perfect harmony.
    It was at the heart of this maelstrom of sound that I ran into Fumiko Nagihara. She was standing in front of an arcade near the Shinjuku Koma Theater. That a straitlaced girl like Fumiko wouldn’t go out drinking with her classmates came as no surprise. That she would be out wandering around Kabukichō after the drinking had ended did. Good little girls were supposed to be at home at this hour, discussing the nightly news with their parents.
    Fumiko’s attention was riveted on the contents of a transparent bin at the entrance of the arcade. She wore the determined expression of a young child who thought she could bore a hole through the glass if only she stared hard enough.
    Without warning, her burning gaze shifted to me. I can’t say why, but in that instant I knew what it felt like to be a superhero with the weight of a weary world on his shoulders. What self-respecting superhero could look into the face of a helpless girl, eyes brimming with hope, and not heed the call of justice?
    “Etsuro.”
    “Hey.”
    “It’s just too cute. I’ve gotta have it.” She lifted her arm slowly, as though parting the air took great effort. Her outstretched finger came to rest pointing at a crane game. A menagerie of pink stuffed animals breathing fluffy golden flames peered out from within.
    “I wouldn’t waste my time,” I said. “That claw looks loose.”
    “What, are you some kind of crane game expert?”
    “If playing twice, maybe three times in my life makes me an expert, then yes.”
    “I’ll just have to win it myself, then.”
    The soundtrack of the arcade was an old hit exhumed from the graveyard of folk songs past. Fumiko stepped up to the crane game. I could see the back of her neck, pale beneath the loose strands of her short bob haircut.
    The claw missed the spot Fumiko was aiming for by about ten centimeters. She was five hundred yen poorer, and the plush object of her adoration hadn’t even budged. It occurred to me that she might have some sort of congenital defect preventing her from understanding how these games worked. Say you’ve found the stuffed animal of your dreams, but it’s buried under half a dozen other stuffed animals. Only a mental defective would go straight for the stuffed animal at the bottom. If you have a stack of dishes in the sink, you don’t grab a dish out of the bottom of the stack. Where does this common sense go the minute people step up to a crane game? It works just like the dishes: you start with the one that’s easiest to lift and work your way down.
    When I explained this to Fumiko, she puffed out her cheeks in frustration. “So you’re pretty good at games, huh?”
    “Yeah, pretty good.”
    “Like, professional good?”
    “I don’t know any professional gamers.”
    “But you are good.”
    “Sure, I guess.”
    “Then you do it.”
    I arched my eyebrows. “I play shooters and fighting games. They’re nothing like this. I hardly ever even come to arcades.”
    “Why not?”
    “The games I play you play from home, over the Internet.”
    Fumiko was still puffing out her cheeks. On the face of