Before I could fall asleep, my phone buzzed. Checking the notification, I realized it was a message from my manager at work, asking me if I could come to work tomorrow, which was a Saturday. Specifically he asked me if I could exchange my Wednesday afternoon shift with one of my coworkers' Saturday afternoon shift just for this upcoming week.
I didn't have any plans for Saturday afternoon, so I agreed. I also liked the idea of having a free afternoon on a weekday for once. It was a no-brainer.
With that I fell asleep and before I knew it, it was Saturday morning. I woke up at around 11 AM because yesterday was so exhausting. After fiddling with my phone for a bit, I got up and got out of my room, still more or less half-asleep.
As I let out a big yawn, I saw that there wasn't only Mom and Dad in the living room.
"Fufufu, good morning Kiyotaka, seems like you slept well."
"Good morning, Kiyotaka-kun."
I was greeted by not only my family, but the Sakayanagi family. It seems like they decided to have lunch together. This wasn't an uncommon situation, but it was rather unexpected since my parents never told me about this. It seems like this was organized at the last minute.
"Oh," is what I managed to say before composing myself, "Good morning Arisu, Oba-san, Oji-san. Good morning Mom and Dad. I didn't expect this massive meeting in our living room."
[A.N. : I'm not sure how you would address your friend's parents in Japanese. Correct me if I'm wrong!]
I was still in my pajamas and had bed hair, in short, I looked like a mess. This wasn't the first time this happened, so it wasn't a big deal. Our families were really close, the parents got along extremely well and Arisu is one of my best friends, therefore they weren't really bothered by my appearance.
"What made you wake up so late? Were you up playing games late at night again?" Mom asked me.
"No, Mom. I was just tired, a lot of things happened yesterday."
"Fufu, tell us all the details Kiyotaka," Arisu teased.
"Yeah, tell us!" Mom joined in.
Looking around the table, I feel like everyone was curious about yesterday's events. I internally sighed as I had no choice. I told them everything that happened, while leaving out a few details here and there to shorten the story.
"Wow, that's interesting," Arisu's mom was the first one to comment.
"Kiyotaka's quite the popular guy, so I'm not surprised these sort of things happen to him," Arisu said.
"I suppose a handsome young man like him is bound to be popular," her dad followed up.
"You know what they say, like father, like son," my dad joked.
"You weren't nearly as handsome as our Kiyo when you were his age!" Mom teased.
"Hey, that hurts!"
We continued talking for a bit before the parents started preparing lunch. Arisu sat on the sofa watching TV while I excused myself to go to the bathroom to do my morning routine and fix my messy appearance before lunch.
Coming back, I sat next to Arisu on the sofa as I saw she was watching a chess match.
"This guys sucks," she quietly muttered as she turned the TV off.
"He literally only played two moves," I said. Whatever, sometimes I don't get this girl.
"Anyways, how's your class?" I asked her, "Have you made any friends?"
"My class is alright, I suppose. The people are nice, but it's a shame we're not in the same class. I managed to make some friends though."
"That's great, Arisu. And I agree, it would've been fun to have you in my class."
"How's yours? You seem to be having a fun time at school recently, fufufu. You're quite the talk of the town, you know."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, you don't know?"
"No I don't know... what are you talking about?"
"Look at this."
She opened up something on her phone and showed her screen to me.
"What the hell is this?"
It showed what seemed like a bunch of different... guy rankings? There was a "most handsome guy" ranking, a "most gloomy guy" ranking, and any type of ranking you can imagine. Girls are scary creatures!
"Who in the world made this?"
"Girls. You know how it is. But look, you're in the top 3 for most handsome guy, top 3 for smartest guy, and number one for most mature guy."
"That's... good to know, I guess? Who decides on these?"
"Girls vote anonymously and the rankings are based on the number of votes."
"I'm impressed, but how come there is already a ranking for "smartest guy" when we haven't even had an exam yet?"
"I assume that's because many saw you play a chess match against me. Not many people in Japan can hold a tight chess match against me, you know?"
"I suppose."
"You know there are already a few girls who have a crush on you, right? Some girls you don't even know!"
"And what am I supposed to do with that information?"
"I suppose that's for you to figure out, fufu. Anyway, girls talk about you often. Well, most of them, anyway."
"Are you part of those girls?"
"Well, sort of. I get asked about you all the time, since they know we're good friends. Almost to the point where my table is crowded with girls during each break. After all, many were there to witness what happened at the club fair. They know we get along. Now I'm an influential figure in our class, fufu."
"Is that why you cornered me into having a chess match with you?"
"Fufu, what do you mean?"
"You somehow predicted I would become popular with the girls, and by having me play you in a chess match and talking to me throughout the match, you attracted a crowd and let people know that we're great friends. Therefore, when I did start becoming popular, people immediately thought of you as someone to whom they could ask questions about me. In the end, as more and more people ask you questions, your own popularity rose as well and knowing you, you probably used this to gain massive influence in your class."
"You know me too well, Kiyotaka."
"You're crazy, Arisu," I said as I shook my head.
"Besides, why do you even need to have that much influence in your class? It's not like each class is going to compete against each other or something ridiculous like that."
"Fufufu, I guess because it's fun. And I'm not crazy, Kiyotaka. I simply call this 5D chess."
Whatever, I already accepted the fact that this girl is not right in the head.
Lunch was quickly prepared and the six of us ate at our dining table, talking about the news, school, and all kinds of things.
After lunch, Arisu and I had a chess match. A real one, as she would call it. However the results didn't differ from the chess game at the club fair. Needless to say, I lost.
The Sakayanagi family then said their goodbyes shortly after and left our house. I had more or less two hours before I had to start preparing for my shift.
I head to my room and turned on a console I for my birthday last year, the Blitch made by Bintendo. Unlike the Ybox made by Megasoft, you can either connect it to your TV or simply play it with the device in your hands. I had a small gaming monitor in my room, so I had both my Blitch and Ybox connected to it.
I launched the popular game called Atafami. I haven't played this game in forever, but it recently got even more popular than it was due to some trend on the internet, which got me to try it out again. It was basically a 2D PvP game where you chose a character and fight another player in a 1v1. It initially became popular because it's easy to play, yet hard to master.
Each player's ranking was quantified by a number which allowed the game to rank the players. I quickly went on the leaderboards to see the top players, and remembered the names in case I come up against them. The number one player in Japan has a ranking of 2231. I currently have a ranking of 1967. However that's due to the fact that I haven't played the game in a while, as not playing for a long time decreases your ranking.
The game came out a year ago, that's when I used to play the most. When I got the game, which was during my third year of middle school, I used to play it all the time. I even got into the top leaderboards in Japan, reached number one for a short period of time before getting bored of the game and taking a break. This is the first time I've played since then.
Before playing a competitive game, I decided to head into a friendly match. After all, your ranking depends on your win rate, you usually don't want to start playing competitively unless you're warmed up. Friendly matches are basically like competitive matches, except they don't affect your win rate. The only notable difference is the fact that the matchmaking is less dependent on your ranking, you can face players within 300 ranking points of you, meaning I could face players with rankings ranging from 1667 and 2267.
I picked my character, launched a friendly game, and quickly found a match.
Opponent found: NO NAME
Opponent ranking: 2154
It seems like luck isn't on my side. NO NAME is the second best player in Japan. The username, the ranking and the profile picture coincided with what I saw on the leaderboards.
As for my username, well, it's a bit embarrassing.
Friendly match :
kiyobaka (1967) vs NO NAME (2154)
Beginning in 10 seconds
Long story short, I started Atafami when Yuki came over to our house and she took the controller when I created my account and chose that as my username. And once you pick your username, you can't change it anymore. Damn you, Yuki.
But the username didn't really matter here, this was exciting, playing against the top players in Japan wasn't an everyday thing, let alone playing against the number 2 in Japan.
Well, I suppose it was an everyday thing when I last played Atafami seriously.
I sat up from my chair and fully focused on the game.
Each player had three stocks and the goal was to bring the number of stocks down to zero with your attacks. There were different types of attacks and you could combine them to perform more powerful attacks and deal more damage to your opponent.
The game was tighter than I expected. I expected to get absolutely cooked since I haven't played in so long, but that wasn't the case. He took my first stock with ease, but I adapted and slowly I took his first stock. I somehow managed to take his second one, but after that I struggled to hit him and he took my remaining two stocks after a close fight. It was fun, I wanted to play against him again, or perhaps it was a "her", who knows.
I pressed on the rematch button quickly, hoping NO NAME would do the same and he did. I somehow spent the remaining time before my shift playing friendly matches against NO NAME. We played a total of nine matches, counting the first game. The first few matches were wins for him, the record was 4-0 for him, but they were really, I mean really close, which was probably why he accepted to keep playing.
He accepted a fourth rematch, and I won the fifth game. From there I won four in a row, making it 5-4 in my favor.
Wow, I just beat the number 2 player in Japan five times in a row. Maybe I should become a professional E-Sports player.
I sent him a message.
kiyobaka : thx for playing with me, i gotta go
NO NAME : no problem, ur way too good for someone with that ranking
NO NAME : ur better than the players i come up against
kiyobaka : thx, i haven't played in a while so i lost points in ranking
kiyobaka : i used to be number 1
NO NAME : really? when?
kiyobaka : about 9 months ago
NO NAME : oh i remember now
NO NAME : u were on the leaderboards when i first started playing
kiyobaka : yeah that mustve been me
kiyobaka : ur really good too, it was nice playing with u
NO NAME : do u live in the kanto region?
That was out of the blue. Perhaps he wanted to meet up? Realizing there's no danger in saying I live in Tokyo, I decided to do so.
kiyobaka : yeah, i live in tokyo, wbu?
NO NAME : same, i was thinking maybe we could meet up
kiyobaka : that could be cool
kiyobaka : ill think about it and ill let you know
kiyobaka : can i add u as a friend?
NO NAME : ofc, lets play again sometime
NO NAME : lmk if u wanna meet :)
With that, my encounter with NO NAME came to an end, with one more user added to my friends list.
"What an interesting experience," I thought as I head to the bookstore on my bike.
I wonder how this NO NAME user looks like in real life.
~~~~~~~~
Coming back from my shift, we ate dinner and then I played some games with the boys.
"You guys remember how I used to play Atafami?" I asked.
"I remember, you were absolutely cracked on that game," Shiro answered.
"Oh yeahhh, weren't you number one in Japan at some point?" Takuya said.
"Yeah, I was, a long time ago."
"What about it?" Eiichiro curiously asked.
"Well, I played it again today, and came up against the current number two in Japan in a friendly."
"No fucking way, that's sick!"
"Wow, did you win?!"
"We played nine games. I lost the first four but I won the last five. So I guess I won 5-4."
"Dude, I always knew you were insane. You could easily become top 1 again."
"The game gets repetitive at one point though. But that's not even the main point. The guy wanted to meet up, I told him I'll think about it."
"Dude, you should totally meet him!!"
"Yeah, but I wanted to think about it first before deciding. He could be a serial killer on the loose, you know," I joked.
"Then you'll just be unlucky. Maybe he's just some old dude," Shiro said.
"Nah, but maybe he's some guy that showers once a year, you should wear a mask if you ever meet him," Takuya joined in on the banter, "Don't wanna get diseases from a guy that touches grass once per year."
"Maybe it's a beautiful girl that happens to be your age?" Eiichiro said.
"That's rather unlikely," I stated, as the others agreed.
"Who knows, you'll never know unless you meet him... or her," we laughed as our conversation continued into the night.
~~~~~~~~
Author's Notes : Let's go! I managed to update two days in a row.
For those of you who don't know. The game Atafami is a fictional game in the universe of the manga / anime Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki-kun. I thought it would be interesting to introduce it here since Kiyo is quite the gamer in this fanfic.
In the manga, the person behind NO NAME is a popular high school girl called Hinami Aoi. I don't plan on making her an important character in the story, that's not gonna happen, but I think making Kiyo meet her could make an interesting SS. What do you guys think? Should Hinami Aoi be introduced in this fanfic? Let me know your thoughts on the matter.
Kiyo's interpretation of Arisu's actions at school during their conversation before lunch is a glimpse of his natural intellect. Although not near the level of the White Room, he can still analyze other people's actions and behavior.
That's all for this chapter, thanks for reading as always and see you soon!