Story of a Rhythm Game Couple

Chapter 23. Back to the game

"Are you sure your hand is alright?"

They had just finished their lunch. Asahi was in the kitchen cleaning up, while Sana sat on the sofa, carefully caressing her bandaged fingers. Normally, Sana would be the one to do that post-meal task, but since her fingers hurt with even the slightest movement, Asahi took on all the household chores, leaving Sana to rest.

"It will probably heal soon. It's not supposed to last that long. If anything, I have to practice more. I haven't played the game for a while now."

Due to her recent mental breakdown, Sana had been taking a break from the arcade entirely, and without company, Asahi had skipped it out, too. Instead, they stayed in and spent a lot of time together, mostly doing their own work side by side in the living room. Over two weeks had passed since then, and she was likely in the mood to play MaiDan once more, so they both decided to go to FunZone this afternoon.

Moreover, they had registered for MaiDan's Glorious Crown Cup 3 during an outing at Megami. Only two days remained until the qualifier round concluded, prompting them to hone their skills before the announcement of the schedule for subsequent rounds.

"Don't overwork yourself. Without you, it's going to be over for me."

"Don't say that. Here, come have a seat."

Asahi left the kitchen for the living room and took his seat on the sofa, looking exhausted. Perhaps he had grown used to having Sana handle half of the work, which took a toll on him today. When he looked at the clock on his phone, it was past one in the afternoon; it was almost time to start going to FunZone now.

Suddenly, his phone buzzed with a bunch of incoming ZEN notifications.

"Is that the guy you were telling me earlier?"

"Yep. Apparently, he has been messaging me a lot now."

Those messages were from Haruki Aihara, whom he had met a few weeks earlier at Megami. After a few friendly credits together that day, they exchanged contact information and had been chatting with each other ever since. It was mostly Haruki talking, as Asahi generally limited herself to short messages such as "okay," "alright," or some random stickers. Asahi didn't particularly find his talkative nature annoying, but sometimes he wished he would tone it down a bit.

Asahi unlocked his phone and checked the messages.

"Hey Noguchi-san, I found a new MaiDan arcade."

"It was actually my brother who came across it. It is kind of in the middle of nowhere, though."

"We're going to have our session there in the afternoon. Then I'll be reviewing it for you later."

"For now, I'm still at Megami, lol."

""You received a new photo.""

The photo was of the MaiDan login screen displaying Haruki's player data. He was doing a play-by-two credit with someone named "Saikyuu." Asahi made an educated guess that Saikyuu is Haruki's brother, as Haruki had mentioned accompanying his brother to Megami. It seemed they had reconciled and were going to arcades together again.

Two players in the photo, "Nonbiri" and "Saikyuu," were literally two GCC champions. Asahi couldn't yet imagine what the Aihara brothers would look like when they played together, but considering that they had each won the first two GCC iterations individually, they would be formidable opponents that he and Sana might have to face in subsequent rounds if they teamed up this year. Just thinking about it made Asahi subtly gulp down his saliva.

Asahi didn't know much about Saikyuu as a person, but the name was not unfamiliar. He had seen it frequently at the top of many difficult chart leaderboards. Saikyuu had also achieved the world's first rironchi on many charts across different skill sets, making his username quite fitting.