Chapter 153: Taking a Real Detour Part 2

…… To make a long story short, if you manage to satisfy some conditions, you can play ShangriLa Frontier even on the system that you are not the owner of. What this means, is that I can log in and play ShanFro even though normally I wouldn’t be able to do so in three whole days!

This time around I was going to pass on the idea of logging in through that (probably tremendously expensive) machinery at the hotel and use my own slightly older model that I brought with me. My mobile device could link itself to my original terminal through the relay, and I could also do a password verification to access it on a different device. Simply put, I could play wherever I wanted, if only I was going to be patient enough to wait a moment or two for the verification processes to finalize.

Aside from my assigned activities, it’s not as though I need to follow any kind of plan or curfew, so I could technically do whatever I want. So I could play ShanFro and nobody would even bat an eye about that.

「All of a sudden I was struck by this impulse to play ShanFro……」

My schedule for tomorrow was rather packed with activities that were supposed to get me accustomed to the playstyles of other Star Rain members, but as for the rest of tonight…… It shouldn’t be a problem, right?

While I was thinking of excuses that would convince even my own wavering heart, I suddenly heard an unusual voice right in the middle of the convenience store at midnight. It belonged to the other customer beside myself in here, who was apparently nagging the clerk at the register about something. The guy looked really tired, since he must have been right in the middle of his night shift.

「COFFEE! BLACK! GIMME!」

As expected, her order was something truly shady, but since she was a costumer, he couldn’t point that out loud. But if it was someone else that he knew, that person wouldn’t hesitate even for a moment to come up with some toxic retort on the spot.

Thinking like that, what I saw while going from the register was a clerk having a rather difficult time with a girl who was a blonde foreigner. She looked really suspicious, wearing a hat and a pair of sunglasses indoors, and her whole demeanor screamed “You don’t want to have anything to do with me!”. That being said, she was wearing a plaque that suggested that she was staying at this hotel. What the hell?

「Ahh, umm…… Almost all of our coffees are black, so……」

「?? COFFEE, BLACKEST, DARK, DRIP?」

「You don’t really have to force the “black” part into Japanese……」

Oh sh*t, he ended up saying that out loud because he couldn’t bear it any longer. Normally his female colleague would notice his predicament and rush to his aid, but seeing that she was busy serving someone else for the moment, it meant that he was going to have to deal with this annoying foreigner all on his own.

「ARI…… Thanks! AZASSU?」

「No, no, no, no problem. NO PROBLEM, YOU’RE WELCOME?」

When you are Japanese, especially someone who’s working retail or meets lots of people on a daily basis, there’s this skill that you learn called “Business Smile” that allows you to deal even with the most shady of people, even if you’re communication skills are somewhat lacking. It is a skill that comes especially handy in situations when you have to deal with foreigners that try to use broken Japanese in conversations.

「I, like something, big! Oh, but that, dark, watery……!」

「(Could it be that she doesn’t know about the existence of word ‘thin’?) Let’s see, something with caffeine……」

「S, sorry for keeping you waiting…… Umm, one black coffee. As for the checkout……」

「OK! I’ve been waiting for this exact moment!」

It felt as if in this exact moment the costumer had been revived. There are times when silence is indeed golden, so the clerks only watched as she waved a strange glittering card and then waved her hand at them as she exited the store…… Leaving the Japanese clerks with a somewhat difficult of a feeling to put into words.

「Somehow, that foreigner was in really high spirits.」

「Ahaha…… Ah, I’ll be taking these.」

「Ah, payment is in cash only.」

She felt as light as a feather, running under the starry night sky and laughing while she was at it.

Ahh, I know, I know all too well. I shouldn’t be doing this. Even though it’s the game of the same series, I shouldn’t be taking such long detours just so that I could get used to its feeling. Even though its system was completely different from all other traditional battle games out there.

But this is this, and that is that. A game that managed to broke the hegemony of the USA in the game development world with not even a series but with one title…… And from what I heard, everything about that game is simply pioneering as well!

That is why I wanted to make that detour. To be able to check out the game that came out from the country that “he” was from, the only person who is not yet on the level to be called my rival, but he’s cutting it close enough.

I’ll be doing my best from tomorrow onwards, so tonight, just for tonight…… With that excuse in her mind, Silvia Goldberg gets onto the elevator and presses the button that was supposed to take her to the hotel’s top floor, to the VIP suite.

「Oh my? That was the boy that just got to the hotel not so long ago, right? I wonder if he’s part of the “festival” the day after tomorrow?」

Just before the door of the elevator closed, the boy that just got out could be seen letting out a deep sigh. Mere seconds later, his thoughts were swept away towards the ShangriLa Frontier, his second home that he was longing for.

On that day, two people left the Chaos City in search for their ideals.