Chapter 2 - Misako, First Thing in the Morning

“This dream again...” Kai squinted his eyes at the light leaking in through the gaps of his curtain. The spring sunlight felt warm and soft, but the terrible dream had ruined it for him. There were still ten whole minutes before his alarm was set to go off. He unset the alarm on his smartphone and sluggishly got up. How many times would he have to relive that dream?

“...gh.” Kai covered his mouth as his nausea began to swell up. Whenever he dreamed about that school or thought back on it in any way, his stomach would begin to turn, or he’d become unbearably dizzy. He’d run from both his club and his school, but couldn’t even get away in his dreams. What was he meant to do, then?

Slowly, and as deeply as possible, he breathed in and out to clear his mind. “Phew,” he finally exhaled, letting out another deep breath. After a moment of staring at the pitch black screen of his phone, Kai finally calmed down, and then it was the time he’d set his alarm for in the first place.

Figuring he should wash his face, Kai got out of bed and went into the living room. There was no need to turn on the light, since it was already on. There in front of him was the very image of someone who had just woken up; dressed in a jersey and watching TV, Kai’s older sister, Misako, was loudly slurping a cup of tea.

She pushed up a pair of strong glasses and looked over at him with a dead gaze. There were huge bags under her eyes. Usually, her long, silver hair would be running wild due to bed head, but today it seemed soft and obedient. She probably hadn’t slept at all.

“Good morning, Kai,” she said.

“What are you doing, nee-san?”

“I’ve made so much progress with my work that I figured I needed something to do with all my spare time,” Misako explained. “So I figured I’d come check in on my little brother, who’s not used to living by himself yet.”

“I keep telling you this,” he retorted, “but I think your manuscript will stay white as snow if you come over.”

Misako froze solid and began staring without saying a word. She then knocked back the rest of her tea and silently took off her glasses. The eyes behind the glasses were almond-shaped and, along with her slender face, gave off a fox-like impression.

“Don’t take off your glasses just to glare at me...” he told her.

Her squinting eyes made a deep wrinkle in her brow, wasting her pretty face just for the sake of glaring. If Kai tried something like that, he’d probably look like a scrunched up persimmon.

“Kai,” she said icily.

“What?”

“You better apologize quickly, or else...” Misako smiled, as if she were about to unleash her hidden trump card. “Your older sister’s gonna... cry.”

When foxes play tricks on humans, this must be the look on their faces. That’s what her smile made Kai think.

“I’m gonna cry, I’m about to cry!” she wailed. “I’m gonna cry in three seconds! Ooooone, twoooooo, th—”

“I’m sorry,” Kai quickly apologized. “I went too... well, I didn’t go too far, but maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Splendid,” said Misako, contentedly replacing her glasses. “Now, allow me to prepare a portion of tea for you. But first, I do implore you to go and wash that uncouth look off of your face.”

It seemed that her current novel included characters that were something like nobility or knights. Misako changed her speech mannerisms at the drop of a hat depending on her mood and, being a novelist, the stories she created.

“Thanks.”

“What’s this, mademoiselle?” Misako asked grandly. “Have you fallen for me?”

“I’m a guy, remember?” Kai was about to tell her that she should wash her face too, but managed to stop himself. Conversations with Misako tended to go on and on once they started. Instead of just blabbing on one-sidedly, she had a habit of wrapping the other person up in the conversation as well, causing it to drag on endlessly. Instead, Kai sighed as he finally made his way toward the washroom.

That being said, it wasn’t as if his home was exceptionally large. There were only two rooms: the bedroom, which held his bed, and the living room, which currently held Misako. Other than that, there was only a hallway connected to the living room, which in turn led to the powder room, laundry room, and bathroom. It was more than big enough for a high schooler living on his own.

Living alone cost money, so Kai initially planned to live in a smaller one-room apartment. However, Misako (who had already been living in the area) put up a lot of resistance to this notion, so he’d scrapped the idea. According to Misako, Niigata was a snowy region, and its winters were much colder than anything in Tokyo; a single room wouldn’t retain warmth without a vestibule, no matter how long you ran the heating unit.

In the living room behind him, Kai could hear Misako humming as she made tea. He listened to her strange humming all the way to the washroom, where he pooled the water flowing out of the faucet into his hands and splashed his face vigorously. The Niigata tap water soaked into his mouth; its flavor was far removed from his slowly fading memories of Tokyo. For the first time, Kai felt as if he could wake up from his nightmare.

“Did you need something?” he asked, upon returning to the living room.

In response, Misako shrugged her shoulders in such an exaggerated motion that it looked like they were about to fall off. “Don’t be so cranky,” she reprimanded him. “I’ll have you know that your parents have kindly asked me to watch over their precious son.”

“And they told me to look after my careless sister,” he retorted.

“It goes without saying that I care for my baby brother every day,” Misako went on, completely ignoring his rejoinder. “But of course, today is the day my brother sets out on his journey in a new world! This calls for...”

“For...?”

“A prayer that you’ll screw up your first impression spectacularly!”

“You’re terrible...” he muttered. In all likelihood, this was the true purpose behind Misako’s visit, which is why it wasn’t funny. She was definitely being serious, because it’d be more fun for her that way.

“I mean, you didn’t really need to leave your school in Tokyo to come out to the country in the first place, did you?”

“...Why are you asking that now?”

“It might be the start of a new year, but it’s your second year... Everyone else has already spent a year together, and they probably at least know the faces of the other people in their year. Plus, they have connections through their clubs. Is it really possible for a new student to fit in like that...?”

“Can you quit building up my fears like a nervous monologue?” Kai asked bitterly.

“Haha! Make sure to screw up as spectacularly as you can,” Misako advised him. “If you half ass it, it’d be too normal to even laugh at.” Then, the lips that were so happily teasing Kai stopped, and Misako gave him a puzzled look. “You’re not gonna do that thing?”

“What thing?”

“The ritual where you line up a bunch of smartphones in front of a laptop,” she reminded him. “You used to do it all the time, remember?”

“Ritual...? It’s not that big of a deal,” he told her, although even now, he had four smartphones. Of these, he used one as his main phone for calls and text messaging. The other three were used only for smartphone game applications—that is to say, he had them to play social games with.

Playing a lot of social games made his mornings very busy. There were daily login bonuses (presents that you can get just for opening the game every day) that he needed to collect, play points (points needed to play the game, usually called stamina or something like that) he needed to use up so as not to waste any, and events he needed to run. Every morning, he’d do all of this with four phones in order to maximize his efficiency. The laptop was to log his data in.

Kai supposed that lining four phones up on a desk and robotically tapping at the screens all while logging a bunch of data into an Excel spreadsheet could seem like some sort of religious ritual, from someone else’s point of view.

“...I don’t feel like it today,” he admitted, knowing that it was all because of that dream.

He’d already been feeling down because it was his first day as a transfer student, but that sort of nightmare was a death blow first thing in the morning.

“I see,” Misako observed neutrally. “‘Today,’ huh?”

“Is that really worth noting?” Kai asked.

“Yup, it’s important. It might just be some weird ceremony to me, but to you, it’s a precious piece of your everyday life.”

“...Don’t just decide that on your own,” he told her.

“Are you gonna join the social game club here, too?” she asked next.

“...No.” He’d transferred from Tokyo just so that wouldn’t happen. Kai never intended to step into the developer’s side of social games ever again.

“I see,” said Misako, nodding with a gentle expression.

Kai couldn’t think of anything to say in the face of her sudden change in demeanor, and he turned on the TV once he could no longer bear the silence. What he’d thought was going to be the morning news was, for better or for worse, a ranking list of the top smartphone games as of this morning. First place was StrikeMon, second was D&P, third was...

Social games had completely permeated normal society. At the very least, they had enough influence to have a morning TV show with a time slot dedicated to their sales rankings.

Most of the younger generation played them, and ever since social games had been directly tied to children’s schooling, their parents had begun to care, as well.

The reason social games had grown to this point was because of what the government called the “IT Facilitation Act,” a piece of legislation that had established an Information Technology Facilitation Program and led a push toward students developing social games as a club activity.

“I have no clue what I’m looking at,” Misako remarked. “But the game you were working on was on this ranked list before, right?”

“...A few times,” Kai admitted modestly.

“That’s incredible,” she said. “I mean, there are game companies that even I’ve heard of on this show.”

There had been a lot of progress made in the realm of game development, and now there were student-made social games that were close to the same level as corporate titles. In particular, the high-performance game creation engine, Alchemia, raised the bar on student-made games as soon as it appeared on the scene. Its creator was unknown. The only thing anyone knew about the developer was that he called himself “Gacchaman.” The circumstances were as suspicious as they come, but even a corporate-led security analysis confirmed it wasn’t some sort of malicious virus, and the engine itself was so phenomenal that a large number of social games currently used it as their development engine.

From the corporations’ perspective, the increased number of students with immediate working knowledge of the field led to these top-tier IT companies sending out unofficial job offers to those who put out good results. And up until a few months ago, Kai had been at one of the most distinguished high schools for social games in the country. Now that he’d transferred, though, that was in the past.

Hey, wait a second. Kai rewound his brain a few steps. There was something peculiar about the news show he just watched. That’s it! D&P was second?! Nonononono, it was number one for three months straight! I can’t imagine D&P’s team dropped the ball anywhere, so StrikeMon must have done something. What kind of plan did they put into action? I need to check—

“‘...I’m not going to join the social game club,’ was it?” Misako asked.

“I-I was just curious because I happened to see it on the TV and—” Kai stopped his hand from unconsciously reaching for the phone in his pocket, and Misako giggled the way a child laughs at a prank.

Kai’s new school wasn’t in a big city to begin with, so it was doubtful they even had a social game club. IT companies generally based themselves in urban areas, and social game clubs were mostly prevalent in Tokyo. A smaller city like Niigata would probably have people who played social games, but on the creator’s end of it, any social game club here would pale in comparison.

Misako had said that he didn’t need to come out to the country, but that rural environment is exactly what Kai had been aiming for: he wouldn’t have anything to do with a social game club. That’s the entire reason he’d run away from Tokyo in the first place.

“...I won’t join it,” he declared adamantly.

Misako was clearly getting tired of him, but she still gave him a dampened smile. “It’s not that easy to throw away your everyday life,” she told him.

◇

The school was about a twenty-minute train ride from Niigata Station, and the train was full of students, all of whom were wearing the same uniform as Kai. It must always be like this around the time school starts, he thought. The train car was alive with the loud back and forth of high schoolers talking, and the few cleanly dressed adults on their way to work looked hideously uncomfortable.

Despite having the same uniform, Kai also had no one to talk to, and he felt closer to the suit-wearing adults than his fellow students. He stuck a pair of earphones in and joined the businesspeople in grimacing while the train swayed back and forth.

Meikun Private High School’s motto was “Pen and Sword.” With the creation of a middle school branch a few years ago, it became a combination school available to both age groups. From Kai’s research online, he’d found that the big points of interest were their large variety of club activities and the fact that the declining birthrate had led to issues with a shrinking student body.

The school itself was surrounded by rice fields in every direction, and at the end of those fields lay a mountain ridge, unobstructed by man-made buildings. Kai stopped for a moment to think that this may have been the first bit of country scenery he’d seen since moving to Niigata.

He stopped by the teacher’s lounge before heading towards his classroom. Even if he’d wanted to go straight there, he wouldn’t have known where it was. When he explained his situation to someone at the lounge, he was sent over to an older teacher with deep wrinkles and grizzled hair. He was probably only a few years away from retirement.

“When didja move over here?” the old teacher asked.

“Well, I’ve been here since March,” Kai told him.

“So I guess you’ve had some time to get used ta living around here. Ho ho ho!”

The way the old teacher laughed was the spitting image of a cheery old man. His name was Haimura. He taught classic literature, and apparently, some students called him Hai-jii. His old man accent felt a bit exaggerated, but strangely enough, Kai thought it fit him well.

“You can call me by whatever name you’d like, son,” Haimura offered generously.

“Understood... Haimura-sensei.”

“Aw shucks, you’re no fun,” the old teacher sighed. Kai thought that maybe Haimura had been trying to ease his nerves with a light joke while walking down the hallway together. As they approached class 2-D, he shot Kai a glance as if to double-check something. “Are ya all readied up?”

“Yes, I’m ready,” Kai affirmed.

“...You sure? There’s uh, that thing, right?” Haimura asked, hazarding a guess. “If you muck up your high school debut nowadays, it’s a whole mess, ain’t it? You’ll get canceled on Twitter and RNR’d on LINE, and, uhh, what else was there?” It wasn’t quite what you’d call working knowledge, but he at least seemed to be familiar with a lot of slang terms. To think he’d have to keep up with all of that at his age, teaching must have been a busy job.

“...I think I’ll be fine,” Kai replied.

“Alrighty, let’s go on in.”

When Kai followed Haimura in, it felt like he was being skewered alive by everyone’s gazes. He thought he’d seen the “transfer student at the beginning of a semester” trope enough times in manga and anime to be sick of it, but being put into the hot seat himself was something he could only describe as a living hell.

First of all, the staring was relentless. That alone was already painful and exhausting. It wasn’t often that he’d been judged by others so extensively. Next, once Kai took his place on the teacher’s platform, the stares were coming from right in front of him. There were two girls sitting next to the window who exchanged glances, and Kai read their lips to figure out that they were saying, “He’s kinda average.”

I’m sorry for not being hot, he replied mentally. Just let me off with the fact that I’m not a horrible person, okay... Wait, I don’t have time to be apologizing in my head. Everyone’s waiting on my self-introduction.

Akane’s teachings suddenly flashed across his mind. “—Clear, concise. Listen up, Shiraseki. A planner has to converse with many different developers. It’s common to present your plans to them, too. The most important thing you can do in a situation like that is to explain yourself in a clear and concise manner. I won’t tell you to make it interesting or funny. Clear, concise. That’s all I want you to keep in mind at first—”

...Clear and concise. He repeated the phrase in his head and took a deep breath. Then, he slowly opened his mouth. “M-My name is Shiraseki Kai. Before I moved here, I went to high school— Er, well, I mean that was obvious but, uh, I-I went to high school in Tokyo. It’s only been a month since I moved, and I still, uh, don’t really know anyone... T-Thanks for having me.”

A few stray claps went his way, and he responded to them with an awkward half-smile.

He’d originally planned to smile normally, but his mouth just wouldn’t move into position. From his classmates’ perspective, it was doubtful if they could even tell if he was trying to smile or not.

“Look, see? I told you you’d mess it up,” said his inner vision of Misako, looking smug.

What the hell, Kai internally castigated himself. What do you mean, “I don’t know anyone, so thanks for having me?” Thanks for what? Why?! Couldn’t you at least have said, “Let’s get along?!”

No, well, I was planning on saying something like, ‘I don’t have any friends yet, so I’d like to get along with you.’ He had even practiced the night before while taking a bath. Still, the words just wouldn’t come out when he got up for the real thing, and the end result was a “Thanks for having me” devoid of any actual meaning. All he’d managed to do was to let the world know that he didn’t have a single friend in Niigata. This wasn’t clear nor concise at all!

Kai took his seat in the far back, next to the window, and let out a heavy sigh. If he could have gotten away with it, he would have liked to bury his face into the desk.