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Akito doesn’t need Eita’s scolding to recognize he’s done something wrong. Kinoshita says as much—using far fewer words—with her sudden departure. He doesn’t think much of it until he steps on her necklace. That’s when the guilt sets in.
When they cross paths at the train station, she abdicates him of the guilt with a smile and kindness he’s surprised she’d offer. But when he catches her in the downpour, he can’t be sure if it’s tears lining her eyes or just rain caught in her lashes. The shame sets back in, made worse when she smiles and thanks him again.
At home, Akito waits for her to log on. He wants to apologize, though he isn’t sure what for, he only knows that she probably deserves better than whatever she’s been going through, and even though it has nothing to do with him, he feels like he’s standing on uneven surface. But unlike their frequent chance encounters recently, she doesn’t log on today, tomorrow, or the day after that. She’d seemed emotionally invested in the game, if at least to vent her frustrations, so what gives?
He checks the guild list to see if she’s online, but after scrolling back and forth a few times, can’t even find her name. Perplexed, he DMs Eita.
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): Is Akane online?
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): Yep! (*^◯^*)
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): I don’t see her.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): What do you mean? (๑╹ω╹๑ )
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): I don’t see her on the guild list anymore.
There’s a long pause.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): She left the guild after the trash thing, dude.
Akito’s fingers stutter over his keyboard for a second.
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): Oh.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): It’s fine. She said it didn’t have anything to do with you.
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): You’re mad at me.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): A little.
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): Sorry.
There’s a telling break in the conversation. Akito waits, stone sitting heavy in his gut.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): Eh, it’s fine.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): What’s done is done! ( ´∀｀) I’m just glad she wasn’t discouraged enough to quit the game altogether. She told me she’s made new friends, so I think she’ll be good ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): Did you log on for the boss event?
Yamada (whispering to Ruri-hime): Ah, yeah, but it looks like red fox is calling a random meeting, so I gotta bounce. Talk to you later.
Ruri-hime (whispering to Yamada): Sure, yeah! Bye!
There is no meeting. Akito falls into bed and stares at his ceiling, rubbing his palms over his face and trying to settle the roiling in his stomach.
—
He steps out one morning and finds a paper bag at his doorstep. It’s unmarked except for his name and a smiley face, written in neat, rounded writing, and taped shut as if its contents are precious. He’s no stranger to gifts in his locker and sitting on his desk, but it’s unsettling to receive them at his house.
He takes it inside to open, pulling out an umbrella and understanding immediately. Relief washes over him, but familiar guilt follows shortly after. Under the umbrella, he finds a tupperware of cookies and a note attached to it with floral washi tape.
Good luck with school! I didn’t know what you liked, so I included two of everything I made. Thanks again! :”)
He takes a handful for the walk to school—they’re shaped liked they were homemade, and taste exactly how he likes them, not too sweet—then forgets about them for the rest of the day. But when he gets home that evening and sees the tupperware sitting alone on his desk, he wonders if she made them for him, or if these are the leftovers.
—
Sometimes they run into each other in FOS. Sometimes she waves, but most of the time, Akito isn’t sure she notices him. He’s relieved to know she’s not so embarrassed that she wouldn’t interact with him. Sometimes some part of him urges him to DM her, ask her how she’s doing, but he smothers the instinct. He can see how she’s doing: fine. Every time he sees her, some part of her gear has improved. When he catches her on the field, her attack damage has increased. Once, he even sees another character with a variation of her name that makes it obvious it’s her, and she’s casting magic. A mage. He comes across an archer with a version of her name, too, but she’s sitting in the main city and AFK.
Another time, she’s sitting AFK in the main city again, but this time there’s a guild icon beside her name, and despite that she isn’t in-game, there’s a round of other characters active around her, in the same guild, obviously talking within their chat. It’s the guild that’s been dominating the guild wars for the past two months. They must have recruited her.
Half a year later, he runs into her again in one of the late-game dungeons. She’s playing a micronest. Her guild icon is different again—a guild he doesn’t recognize. But two months later, they win the guild wars, and then for the next half year, they continue to win. He learns from Eita that she’s the guildmaster. Eita says they don’t talk much. Apparently she’s very busy.
And then—one year later—she disappears from FOS.
—
Akito falls off from FOS eventually, too. He commits to pro-gaming, because why not? He’s never been confident about staking his life on it, but he’s never been confident about staking his life on a normal 9-to-5, either.
Being a professional gamer full-time is a completely different world from part-time gaming. His agency sets expectations and goals, they give him a development plan. It’s exhausting. After two years, he starts to wonder if this is really what he wants. After three, he starts making plans to exit. But the longer he waffles, the harder it gets to leave: he’s the most popular member of his team, pulling the majority of their streaming numbers.
One morning, he’s in his usual standup with his team. They review the plan for the week, what they’ll be working on, what scrimmages they can expect.
“We’ll have most of you working on etiquette. Tani, you tilt too hard. Aqua, people don’t get you.” It’s an eternal battle, making the rest of his team digestible. Akito, on the other hand, is allowed his eccentricities, because combined with his looks, he comes across as “mysterious.”
“The photographer wants you for the promo material, Akito. The organizers need a couple more options for the upcoming tournament now that one of the teams had to pull out.”
“Alright.”
“And on that note, your new opponents for the finale should be an easy takeover. They just added a new member to replace a sudden termination, so we don’t imagine they’ve had enough time to acclimate.”
Tani, Gobou, Aqua, and Kim break into chatter. Akito offers the occasional automatic response, but for the most part, he’s checked out of this meeting. When they all finally leave, he makes his way to the kitchen to rummage in the fridge for breakfast. He pulls out leftovers his mother had packed from her visit over the weekend. She’s taped a note to the top of the tupperware.
I can’t believe you only have one piece of tupperware! I’ll have some more delivered to you this week. Be good! I love you :-)
It takes him a second to place the tupperware, but when he does, he’s overcome with a heaviness he can’t name. After he pours the contents into a bowl, he washes the tupperware, wipes it dry, then shoves it to the back of a cupboard he never reaches for.
—
They’re revealed the way teams are usually revealed: as their portrait blows up on the screen, followed by shouts, screams, and all assortment of cheering, the spotlight over their head fades on to reveal them in their seat. First is Gobou, then Kim, then Aqua, then Tani. Even though Tani is their leader, their management always saves Akito for last.
The team they’re playing against is one of their usual opponents, save for the fact they have a new member. Red Fox and five other teams regularly switch out as finalists, always vying against each other for the top spot. This team— Eternal Oblivion —unlike Red Fox, reveals their team members in order of seniority. Usually Akito ignores this part of the whole thing. He’s here to play, not be paraded or watch other parades. But his attention flickers when the team leader is announced early.
There’s a delay after Hideki is announced. Akito knows that from the audience seats, the stage is pitch black until the spotlights come on, but from his seat at the counter, he can make out the silhouette of the new member. They look slight, and they seem to be spinning side to side in their seat. The announcer seems to go on and on, waxing poetic about Eternal Oblivion’s history, about how they’ll make history anew with this member, about how this is a turning point for eSports as a whole. Akito fights not to sigh.
“Now, enough with the introduction! Let’s all give a warm welcome toooo—KINOSHITA AKANEEEEEEEEEE!”
The cheering is wild. There are piercing screams, and for the first time, Akito realizes that the crowd is made up of more women than usual. Somewhere to his side, he hears Tani exclaim, incredulous, “Rio-Rio?!?!” But Akito is too distracted by the announcer spouting facts over the din to ask what a "rio-rio" is.
“First female professional gamer in eSports in 7 years! Her love started with the casual MMORPG ‘Forest of Savior,’ where she gained friends, fans, and followers over a year and a half before moving into streaming part-time. From there, she eventually took a full-time role as a solo-gamer, and is recognized as a pioneer for re-invigorating gaming for girls!
While we usually save the opening remarks for the team leaders, Eternal Oblivion has made a special request to have Kinoshita provide those remarks this time.” The crowd goes quiet except for a wave of whispering.
Akane starts speaking. Akito hears it in his own headset like she’s whispering in his ear. “It’s on? Oh my god, it’s on! Sorry!” Laughter ripples through the audience, and she laughs along. “Hi everybody! Wow, this is so exciting, I can’t believe I’m here! I don’t really have much to say except the usual—Let’s all have fun and learn something new today, okay?”
The crowd shouts along with her at the last part. It must be her tagline from when she streamed. Akito doesn’t hear when the timer to start buzzes, it takes Tani socking him in the ribs to bring him back to earth. And as they play, he's surprised by the resourcefulness and inventiveness she plays with. Not like any traditional player. More like someone who stumbled into gaming and made up ways to win on her own. For the first time in a long time, it's... interesting.
Ultimately, Eternal Oblivion loses for an easy accident that anybody could make. When the ending ceremony is over, Akito slips out to the bathroom. He’s passing by a broom closet when he hears voices, both familiar but for different reasons.
“It’s okay, Takuto,” Akane soothes. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s a mistake anybody could make! Not a skill issue at all.”
“We could’ve won, though, and I just… fumbled.” It’s their youngest member, a high school boy going by Keshi online, recruited the moment he was a freshman. He’d made headlines for his age, something Akito had avoided by forcing far more anonymity.
“We all do sometimes! And not just at games. The bad news is you’re only in high school, so you’re gonna do it a lot more, but the good news is that if you learn from it, you’ll always get better! And you can always ask anybody for help. Anybody!”
The temptation to linger is strong, but Akito pushes himself onward. When he’s about to enter the bathroom, he hears the door he passed open up, hears the lock click. Akane is laughing, Takuto is grumbling about something she’s said, but all seems well again. Akito looks over his shoulder, and he sees her ponytail swinging behind her. Despite the years between now and the last time he’d seen her, Akito can’t help the feeling of familiarity.
—
After the VIP meet-and-greet, Red Fox is corralled out the back to get to their bus. Akito sees Eternal Oblivion exit the same way from a door further down. Despite the precautions taken, there’s still a suffocating crowd to navigate through, and for 30 minutes, their teams are trapped just outside the doors. Akito sighs and taps Tani on the shoulder. “I’m going to head that way for a minute.”
Tani gives him a curious look, then shrugs. “Good luck.”
Akito pulls his hoodie further over his head. He’s able to navigate horizontally through the crowd relatively unscathed and unrecognized with some ducking and winding, though it seems to take another 30 minutes. By the time he reaches Akane’s side, the crowd has thinned considerably.
She’s in the middle of talking to a fan. Her face is lit up, interested; overjoyed when the fan is exuberant and somber when the fan’s excitement dips. Eventually, they hug and take a photo. Once the fan is out of sight, Akane drops her waving hand and turns. "Yamada!” She smiles. “I thought I saw you coming. Been a while, huh?”
He's struck that she noticed him. There’s so much he wants to say, but he has no idea how to say it. It must be two minutes before he finally manages a short, “Yeah.”
There’s a beat. Then Akane bursts into laughter. “You haven’t changed at all!”
He feels the smile slip up one side of his face, completely out of his control. “Guess so. You, too.”
She grins. “Yeah.”
They fall into another silence. It’s awkward. Akito sighs. “Sorry.”
Akane’s bright smile softens. She shrugs, laughing easily. “No worries! I had fun, and that’s all that matters. Did you have fun?”
“Yeah,” he says, not missing a single beat, surprising himself with his answer—and the honest truthfulness of it. “I did.”
Her grin grows wide again. “Good! I’d be sad if the person who motivated me to get better wasn’t happy anymore. Thank you for that, by the way. I never got to tell you.”
“Oh. Um—yeah. No problem.”
“It looks like I’ve gotta go now. It was really good seeing you again! Tell everybody I said hi!”
With a skip and a jump, she’s off, waving back behind her before turning around when her teammates call for her to hurry up. She’s almost to the bus when Akito shouts.
“Akane!”
She jerks to a stop and looks over her shoulder.
“Are you still in Tokyo?”
“Yeah!”
Akito hesitates—then goes for broke. “Wanna grab a drink sometime?”
Akane blinks. And blinks. Then grins.
“Sure!”