Chapter 62.

When we all got off the bus we entered the mall together before we finally went our separate ways. Rosa and I headed straight to the arcade. It seemed their group was headed to get something to eat, hungry after they’d just finished a few sets of bowling as a group.

I couldn’t help but marvel at these non-loners’ ability to do such boring activities together as a group and somehow find it fun.

But that’s beside the point. Rosa and I entered the arcade together and started competing against each other in the various games they had.

We started off with skee ball first. It was a light-hearted competition to see who would get the highest score.

It’d been a long time since I’d last visited an arcade and played this sort of game. The last time was when my mother was still alive. She used to take me to a Chuck E Cheese in the city which has since shut down.

It was a bit nostalgic playing this sort of game.

I always aimed for the 100 point corners and managed to get a few shots in. Rosa adopted a safer playstyle and aimed for the line of holes at the center.

In the end, I lost to her by 10 points. What a sad loss it was. But I wasn’t concerned about winning or losing here. I just wanted to keep the games close. Simply destroying someone back to back in games would kill someone’s fun.

When she won she raised her hands up in the air and shot a triumphant smile my way.

“You got lucky I had a bad bounce. I only missed that last shot and got a 10 because of it.” I played the part of a sore loser.

“Better luck next time,” she said, cocky after taking her first victory.

After that, we moved on in search of another game to play.

We stopped in front of a few fighting games then sat down at one that had good graphics. It was Tekken 7. Honestly, fighting games weren’t a specialty of mine. It’s not that I’ve never played them, it’s just that I never went too deep into them to master them.

I knew there was a profound depth to them and there were all sorts of crazy techniques, but that sort of thing wasn’t something I was interested in. Especially not at an arcade where if you lost you’d pay for another fight.

If memory served right, I never owned a Tekken game on console myself, however, I had played Tekken games before. Whenever my mother went shopping I’d go to the electronics section and play the demos they had set up in those stores. It was one of the few fond memories I had from my childhood.

Standing in an aisle in front of the case of video games for all the different consoles available at the time. Looking up, fully focused on the characters on the screen, there typically wouldn’t be anyone around me. I’d be able to enjoy those free demos by myself in peace until my mother finished shopping and came to pick me up.

Aside from that though, I did have a few other fighting games I could draw experience from. I played and owned Soul Calibur 3 for the PS2 so I played that a good amount back then. There were also the Dragon Ball Z and Naruto Ultimate Ninja games I’d played a decent amount. There was even a pretty arbitrary oddball one as well, a Zatch Bell game.

The only issue was all my experience was on a console controller, not an arcade controller. Meaning… I was essentially a noob with a little bit of prior fighting game experience but no technique to speak of. I just knew the bare minimum basics.

I felt a bit troubled. I’d long put gaming behind me, starting around the beginning of high school when I started to seriously focus on my studies and working part-time in my previous life. I didn’t have the energy or time to dedicate to it and I knew it would hinder me.

Oh well. If I get crushed by her, I get crushed.

There wasn’t anyone else around the fighting game machines at the moment, it was just us for the time being. Everyone seemed to be gathered elsewhere watching someone play some other game. It sounded like they were quite impressive. We both put a coin into the machine and started choosing our characters. There were somewhere around twenty to thirty characters to choose from. I was too lazy to count.

Anyway, men should choose macho muscle men characters… that wasn’t something I agreed with. As a man, you picked the hot female characters in the skimpiest attire, right? Skimpy attire equates to a stronger character in my books.

I didn’t know the validity of that claim, but I felt like it was somehow deeply profound, so I went with it. In all honesty, it was probably the exact opposite, but I couldn’t be bothered because the instant I saw a chick with a super short black skirt, I was like, ‘yes please.’

She wore a furry, pastel pink bolero jacket with her name on the back, it ran down her arms and covered her hands with a pink button paw design on the underside. She also donned a pink and black dress with a short, ruffled skirt, with laces in the back and a pink bow. She had pink mini-speakers at her sides, as well as a black cat tail accessory. For her leggings, she had on black thigh-high stockings with a keyhole design in the front with a tiny heart at the top and pink knee pads. Her footwear, a pair of pink and white training shoes with black straps. She also wore pink headphones with black cat ears attached above her head of waist-length blond hair tied into pigtails.

I didn’t like to use the term cultured, but I could only think this was a woman fit for such a title. Bad jokes aside, she was probably a shit character with a bad personality, but oh well. I’d pick watching this chick fight over a sweaty macho muscle man any day of the week.

Once we’d locked in our characters we matched up with each other and began a fight.

“So you picked a female character.”

“Her skirt reminded me of one of yours a bit.”

“Wha… you picked a character for that reason alone?”

“Men are simple creatures at heart. Don’t blame me, blame society. ‘We live in a society,’ as they often say.”

“Hehehe, what the heck?”

“You went and picked a sweaty macho muscle man I see.”

“He has a mean six-pack and almost fully bald head, he must be strong. He must have trained so hard his hair fell out.”

“Oh, I can’t deny it, that logic is pretty sound.”

We started fighting. I started off by moving toward her and pressed buttons in sequence to figure out which buttons did what. 

It seemed she didn’t know what buttons did what either though so I backed off a bit and gave her some room to breathe.

“Have you played a fighting game before?”

“No, this is my first time actually.” I was a bit surprised. I thought she’d have at least played one since I saw that controller in her room before. Maybe it’s just not her specialty of video games or something. She could be an FPS type.

“Well, just press each button to figure out what each one does first.” She did as instructed and got the hang of it. Once she did I approached her again and we started to exchange blows.

Punches, uppercuts, high kicks, low kicks, jumping kicks and punches in mid-air… backflips.

Backflips.

And more backflips. There were front flips too. I figured it was an important detail to add. But backflips. I mean, backflips, come on they’re backflips, right?

Yes, when I saw the backflip animations, I couldn’t help but want to spam the combos for them. Ah yes, this is what fighting should be about. Hot girls doing backflips in short skirts. Truly the pinnacle of gaming at its finest. Whoever thought this one up, you have my stamp of approval.

In the end, I won the first bout.

“That’s so dirty, you just kept spamming flips.”

“Just like you, I am a complete noob to this, so I have every excuse to spam such moves.”

“There’s no way you have no experience at all in this.”

“Well… I have a little, but they’re all on console controllers. I have no experience with arcade controls like this, so I may have some experience but I have no technique to speak of.”

“Experience still matters even if you have no technique.”

“Either way, if a real pro showed up I’d be destroyed by them in a second. It wouldn’t even be close. If you even try to look at their inputs, a normal person will just think they’re jiggling the stick around like a lunatic with no rhyme or reason and mashing buttons at random. What you’ll actually see on screen though, will be someone getting juggled to their death from an endless stream of precisely timed combos linked together seamlessly in one fluid motion.”

“Rematch. I want a rematch.”

“Sure.”

I wasn’t going to bully her in a game she was completely new to though. I also didn’t want her to be the only one losing money so I decided to take a loss. I made it look like a pretty close fight still.

When she won she was happy. She wanted another fight.

The next fight, I beat her again. I still ensured she was able to have fun as well though, allowing her to land a good amount of hits on me.

She requested another match and I beat her by a slim margin again. She was getting more used to it though as I’d given her the opportunity to learn rather than trying to steamroll her.

The fifth match, I lost by a wider margin on purpose. It would be suspicious if every match was too close after all.

The sixth round, I won by a bit wider margin.

We went back and forth up until the tenth match where she’d won four times and I’d won six times. It was my overall victory. It had been five to four in my favor and my last win was what settled it. She accepted defeat, but she had a satisfied look on her face. Her mood hadn’t soured which was good.

Since I could play until I lost, she told me to keep going until I did. I fought two more times and won before a guy came over and sat down at the machine my girlfriend had been playing at before.

I was soon matched up against him.

He‘d picked some dude with a black eye patch over his right eye. Was this guy trying to seal the demon contained within it? I wanted to laugh a little, but I kept my stupid thoughts to myself. 

The character overall looked like some young punk off the street who took a few karate classes and thought he was suddenly hot shit. To me, he was the type you just wanted to punch in the face for his cocky appearance. Though, I was sure he would probably still be quite popular with girls with his baggy black jeans and chain dangling from his waist. The tight-fitting white shirt greatly emphasized his muscles. The only thing I could voice complaints about in terms of clothing was how dorky the little blue cape which resembled a leather jacket looked. He had it hung from the front of his neck by another chain.

If you took away that stupid little blue cape and eye patch, he might not give off any edgy middle schooler trying to look cool vibes. 

Look at me mom, I’m so cool.

I couldn’t help but see him saying that.

Well, anyway, the fight began and the next thing I heard was some insanely fast stick movements from my side. I instantly knew I was screwed the second I got thrown up into the air.

I didn’t even bother to watch the screen or the rest of the fight. There was no point. I stood up, turned around, and let him do whatever he wanted to my character.