Yakusoku (Avara Stadium Book 1)

One More Broken Promise

Fuck everything. She didn't have a partner, didn't have a robot, didn't have anything. She didn't think she'd burn out that fast.

She woke up maybe at seven in a cold sweat and yet another hangover, and she dragged herself to the toilet to throw up.

She'd lost everything. She'd really lost everything. What was she supposed to do now?

Maybe Mom was right. Maybe she needed to stop trying to kill herself, and actually do it.

This was a stupid, shitty mess and she just wanted to curl up and never move again.

But fuck it. Fuck everything. She was going to at least try. She was committed to this one last blaze of glory, no matter how inglorious a dying sputter it might have been.

She got dressed and forced herself out the door, down the street to the technoparlor, and helped herself into the cheap booth by herself. She opened her folder, countless designs spiraling off from where the last one was, right before the accident. She created a new one. When it asked for a design name, she typed without thinking.

Gaman.

She had, what, six hours before the tournament? Six hours to design a robot, buy the parts, bring it to the workroom and build it, and bring it out to the field?

Fuck it. She'd lose if she tried that. There was no way a six-hour bot could beat even the competitors there with Naoki out of the picture. Fuck it, everything was over.

She choked on her own tears, not caring how many people were seeing her cry, as she started putting together a design. Why the hell she was still bothering to make a design, she didn't fucking know. Maybe it was because she was an idiot.

Maybe because it was soothing.

The hours went by. Her stomach dropped more and more the more time went by, the sick feeling in her gut intensifying, knowing she was going to fail, wasn't going to make it. She wasn't going to make it.

It was like she was suffocating. She couldn't breathe.

She finished a design with only two hours left. Who in the world could take a design to reality with two hours? It was a tragic design, a thing barely any bigger than her two hands and with only a two core, but it somehow felt right. It was sturdy. It was one hell of a sturdy design. Natsumi would be proud. Should she have just tossed out the quickest thing to mind, a slapped-together design with four parts and rushed it to the tournament floor?

She picked up the parts from the counter, gladly paying the twenty percent upcharge to get it as soon as possible. She carried her bot in pieces never assembled in a plastic bag, running to catch the JR line southwest, and got to the stadium with thirty minutes left.

Thirty minutes. She'd need at least four hours. She looked down at the bag in her hand, and up at the stadium, and down at the bag in her hand.

Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes. She wouldn't be able to activate the core with thirty minutes.

She turned, and walked back towards the station. It was over. Everything was over.

She'd fucked up her promise. And now she really, really did have nothing left.

*

She was back at the grave again. She tossed flowers onto the top of the pile, sat down in front of it, and just stared.

Her name had been Kiyosaki. She'd never known her, never seen her before the car hit her. And she'd never be able to forget that first, first and last look she'd had at the girl, still a high schooler. Never even got to graduate.