A Peaceful Routine Life
I returned to my mundane everyday life the day after the plum syrup party. As usual, I did the chores then lounged in the living room during my break.
Then, like every other day, Kon announced his arrival with his signature call. “Incomiiing!” Scampering up into the house, he made a beeline for the bathroom, washed his hands thoroughly, then darted into the living room to join me. He plopped down adorably next to me as I watched the TV. It just so happened that the ad for the latest game console started playing, and a question popped up in my mind.
I decided to voice it. “Huh… Come to think of it, Kon, you guys don’t really play video games, do you? It feels like all of you mainly play outside.”
Kon gave me a big nod before lifting his tiny hands and wriggling his small, chubby fingers. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said his hands were tiny—I couldn’t give you an exact age, but they probably were around the size of a human baby or toddler. Naturally, his fingers were also rather short.
I let out a small “Ahhh” of realization. It was probably a struggle for him to hold and use gaming controllers with these hands. Of course, it was only a struggle, not impossible, but it meant that his gaming experience wouldn’t be that comfortable. And that’s why they don’t play video games—or more like they can’t play video games.
Folding my arms, I nodded to myself. “That makes sense… If only there were controllers tailored for beastfolk.”
“Hmmm…” Kon scrunched his eyebrows together and was in deep thought before he replied, “Not just controllers, but I hope they’ll adjust the difficulty too. All the games are way too easy!”
I smiled wryly. “Oh, I see. Well, most of the games targeting children around your age would be relatively easy, yeah.”
“Um, erm, no, not that.” He shook his head. “The ones for adults are also easy. They’re games made by humans, after all!”
“Huh?” I blinked in surprise and cocked my head. The problem isn’t the target age, but because it’s made by humans? Does he mean… Let’s see… Is he implying that games made for and by humans are too easy for beastfolk? “Hang on… I know that beastfolk have impressive physical abilities, but do you also have amazing reflexes as well by any chance?”
He nodded readily. “Yeah. I heard it’s really different.”
My eyes widened. “That much? It’s to the point that games are so easy that they’re boring to you guys?”
After a moment of contemplation, Kon said, “Give me a moment!” before racing out of the house. Roughly ten minutes went by, and he sprinted back with something that looked like a pochette handbag in his arms. He washed his hands once again and dashed into the living room, pulling out a handheld game console from several generations ago out of his pochette.
I leaned in and watched as Kon proceeded to plug in the charger and switch on the handheld console. “So you’ve got game consoles around here, I see. It’s quite an antique though.”
He then placed the console onto the low table, flipped up the foldable screen, and pulled out the stylus pen inserted into the side of the console. He explained, “This type of console was really popular a while ago because you don’t use a controller, but a pen that even we can hold. Above that, the console and the games are cheap because they are old, so all of us have one of these… But everyone got bored of them right away.”
As he spoke, he tapped away lightly on the screen with his stylus and started up a game with practiced ease. It was one of those rhythm games—a game genre where you tapped buttons according to the music that was playing. If you chose to play the game with your touchscreen, you tapped or moved the circles that appeared with the melody using your stylus, and sometimes, you’d even draw spirals on the screen. Performing these actions at the right time would give you points.
Once the game started up, Kon loaded up a save that had a hundred percent completion rate displayed. He swiftly chose the highest difficulty mode for the most challenging song and began one round.
He sat on his knees while facing the low table and held the stylus as if it were a calligraphy pen. Even though the game screen was moving at a considerable speed, demanding high player skill, Kon didn’t falter or panic. I watched him as he played, and the movements of his stylus were eye-opening. He operated it impassively and accurately, and the expression on his face was almost comical in contrast to his incredible reflexes.
He received “PERFECT” for every single action, and his points racked up rapidly. Even when the song got to the climax and a nauseating number of circles began popping up, his playstyle never wavered, no matter what kind of unthinkable movements the game demanded of him.
From the very beginning to the very end, only the word PERFECT was displayed on his screen—he never made any mistakes. When the song and result screen ended, the point ranking was displayed on the screen. Everything from first to tenth place was the exact same perfect score without any mistakes.
He turned to look at me. “See? It’s so easy that it gets boring. When I tried baseball games, I got a home run every time… Even with golf games, which became famous among us because it’s said to be difficult at the start, I’ve gotten to the point that I either get hole-in-one or a chip-in… In the end, the only games we couldn’t complete were things like shogi games.”
He tilted his head, as if he’d remembered something. “Oh, but Daddy, Mommy, my grandpas and grandmas, and so on are still playing brain training games. Plus, adults can hold normal controllers, so they play a bunch of games that we can’t play! Other than that, I think we can also enjoy things like card games?”
Kon closed the game, turned off the handheld console, and carefully stored it away inside the pochette.
I placed a hand on my chin. “Interesting… Difficulty levels tailored for beastfolk, huh? Hmm, maybe games with outrageous difficulties that are trending on the Internet would be just right for you guys? Ah, but games that are insanely difficult with no more substance than that aren’t that fun in my opinion, so I can’t really recommend them. You want a challenge, not suffering. The best option is probably asking a game publisher to adjust the difficulty levels of famous games… Oh, a slight tangent, but if all the beastfolk start playing online multiplayer games, you guys might take the world by storm. With your reflexes and control you have over your hands, you’d never lose.”
Kon cast down his eyes and shook his head softly. “Mikura, PvP games are only fun when you’re playing with people who have the same conditions and are just as strong as you. It’s okay to play them with other beastfolk, but if we do that in online games, it’d be boring and bad manners.”
He spoke patiently and clearly, as if teaching a lesson to a child. Almost instinctively, I stammered, “S-Sorry about that.”
With his eyes still looking down, Kon replied in a solemn voice, “It’s all right. You only have to remember that next time.”
We traded glances. And then, the two of us burst out into roaring laughter at the same time.
That interaction had been kind of silly, but it wasn’t anything that hilarious. However, it tickled our funny bones for some bizarre reason. Partly because Kon was laughing with me, I simply couldn’t stop laughing, and our guffawing went on for a while. Then, after we’d had our fill, we unhurriedly stood up with my suggestion of, “How about we have fun with something other than video games?”