Slum Online by Hiroshi Sakurazaka Read Free Book Online Page A

it, we might have been tied at one win apiece, but if you weighed one pilfered attendance card against a notebook full of quiz answers, the attendance card came up awfully light.
    I stepped in and put my hands on the controls.
    On my first five hundred-yen coin, I won three stuffed animals. I even won the little flame-breathing guy, but Fumiko was unimpressed. She yanked on the strap of my bag and told me she wanted to try a different game. I told her it was a waste of time and money, but my objections were overruled. I found myself being forcibly dragged inside.
    Out of all the games in the arcade, Fumiko decided on a fighting game in a head-to-head cabinet. It was brand-new, and it used the same fighting system Versus Town did. Games in head-to-head cabinets were designed so you could either play against the computer or another person in the arcade. The cabinets contained back-to-back screens so you could fight an opponent literally standing opposite you on the other side of the cabinet. The winner of the match got to keep playing, but it was game over for the loser. If the loser wanted to play again, he had to pony up more money. If the loser kept putting in coins, the winner could conceivably keep playing indefinitely. Fighting games were all about the survival of the fittest.
    Before the Internet took off, it had been a very profitable setup. I’d heard of entire arcades filled with nothing but fighting games. Grown men with pockets stuffed full of hundred-yen coins would go to the arcades to meet up with their friends and battle away the hours. Stories like that had captured my imagination as a kid, but before I was old enough to do it myself, the fighting game fad was already a distant memory. Now the arcades had only a handful of fighting games tucked away in the corners, patronized by a steady stream of nostalgic diehards.
    I slid a coin into the slot.
    Fumiko chose a karateka. She wasn’t bad. Under her control, the karateka held its own against the computer. Using different combinations of joystick motions and button presses to execute moves was a difficult concept for the uninitiated to grasp, but it only took Fumiko two or three tries before she was pulling off some of the trickier attacks. Compared to her performance on the crane game, she was a natural.
    She had just defeated her second computer opponent when a challenger appeared. He was good. He countered Fumiko’s attack, and her karateka sailed into the air. Before the karateka had a chance to plant its feet solidly back on terra firma, its health gauge was at zero.
    Fumiko frowned. “What was that?”
    “That was a midair combo.”
    “I figured that much out. What I want to know is why’d he use different attacks in the air than he used on the ground?”
    “You noticed? I’m impressed.”
    “Don’t make fun.”
    “He was watching you to know what counter to use.”
    “That’s impossible.”
    “People do it all the time. It’s like baseball. If a batter can read a pitcher’s body language, he can figure out what kind of pitch he’s going to throw.”
    “If it’s that easy, why doesn’t everyone hit a homerun?”
    “Knowing what’s coming isn’t everything, but it’s a start. If you practice, and have a response for anything he might throw at you ready to go in the blink of an eye, then you’ve got the upper hand.”
    “Isn’t that cheating?”
    “The guy who taught me to play said there’s no rule against reacting to what you see.”
    “What happened to ‘cheaters never win’?”
    “Look out, here comes the next round.”
    It was a best-of-three match, and Fumiko lost both games in a grand total of twenty seconds. It was hardly a match at all.
    “That is really frustrating.”
    “Sure is.”
    “I wanna go again.”
    “Fine by me, but you’re gonna lose.”
    “I won’t know until I try.”
    I sighed. There were things I understood that Fumiko didn’t. She was a kid who’d just swung a bat for the first time, and now