“Still, Atafami, right now?”
“Yup. Got a problem with it?”
“No, there’s no problem, but…”
Smiling wryly, I chose one of the controllers that Hinami had brought and connected it to the console. She seemed a little different from before—sharper, quieter.
The character-selection screen was displayed on the monitor.
“Then I’m going with this one.” I chose Jack, who I’d made my main a little while ago. It was a little sad that I couldn’t fight with Found, since that was how we’d met, but I might have become even stronger with Jack than with Found lately. Plus, she wasn’t prepared for him, so this might give me an advantage.
“So you really have quit playing Found,” Hinami said sadly, slowly moving the cursor.
And then the character she picked with the cursor was—
“Wait, that’s…”
“I’ve been practicing with him a lot lately. Whenever I’m at home, I’ve just been going crazy.”
“I mean, I did hear about that…but skipping school for it?” Though my smile was still wry, I was a little glad. So it was true that she’d been playing Atafami this whole time.
“There’s no helping that. You changed your main. So even if I used Found, I can’t get any better than that,” she said dispassionately, like she was explaining the facts. “But you know…I did gain something in the process.”
“What was that?”
Hinami looked vaguely at the screen and said, “Your playstyle is visibly refined—a lot of improvisation, but still very good. It was like you pursued what everyone thought of as the ideals of Atafami. But…”
She spoke like it was unimportant.
✦ ✦ ✦
“…I think all I care about are results.”
✦ ✦ ✦
The deep-voiced Atafami narration called a name.
“…Boxman, huh?”
It was shockingly like Aoi Hinami.
Boxman.
He was a DLC character that had been added to Atafami later, and unlike highly mobile characters like Found and Jack, he would avoid enemies and gather materials to power himself up—a kind of defensive character.
He commits to camping and steadily growing stronger, and when the opponent tries to interrupt the process, he counterattacks to gain massive returns—he’s the picture of a cold-blooded character, and a little different from earlier conventions in Atafami.
“All right, sure. We’ll see if you’ve prepared enough to go up against me.”
“…Yeah.”
It was true that before, Hinami had come off as calm and collected—even cold—but now she seemed kind of different. Like she was just focused on the game.
“Let’s go with first to three.”
First to three. In other words, whoever gets three points first is the winner—it’s the typical format for tournaments.
“Sure. That’s the way I like it.”
“…”
I still felt like I was more into this than her, uncomfortably so, as the match started.
✦ ✦ ✦
A few seconds in—Hinami didn’t seem to be attacking, just gathering materials.
“Pretty boring way to play.”
Hinami ignored my attempt to rile her up.
“Attacking means you start having to read each other,” she said. “That’s always risky. So I should just force you to do it alone.”
Boxman would build a wall and hide behind it, digging through the stage to gather materials. In terms of damage and distance between characters, it would appear as if nothing had changed on the screen, but he would be steadily making slight gains through the power-ups.
It was like the perfect heroine, who would devote herself in solitude to her studies.
“If you’re only talking theory, then maybe you’re right…but,” I said, and my Jack rushed toward her, “I don’t care about that.”
Jack cleanly jumped over the wall that Boxman had built and launched a surprise aerial attack. Jack had excellent air speed and fall speed. I wouldn’t say he had an advantage against Boxman, but he could hold his own when we were poking at each other. Hinami went from a shield to a counterattack, but—
“Not good enough.”
From an empty jump, I did a short hop to wait and see, then came behind her while she was guarding. With some tight dash-dancing, I lured her into attacking, then seized the opening for a dash attack. I launched Boxman into the air so that I could get him before he landed.
Boxman’s weakness was being in the air, and when he didn’t have many materials, he wouldn’t be able to use any techniques helpful for landing, which left him at a disadvantage. So you take that opportunity to persistently and continuously slam him to accumulate your rewards. That’s more or less how to deal with him.
✦ ✦ ✦
I quickly and dispassionately executed the basic Boxman counterstrat, and—
✦ ✦ ✦
—the first match ended with my victory.
Hinami couldn’t handle the variety in my attack patterns.
I placed down the controller with a “Phew” and turned to Hinami. “I told you. You didn’t prepare enough to go up against me. But why are you suddenly—?”
Then she tapped a bunch of characters into her phone and stared at it. “—It’s first to three, right?”
Yeah, I’d said that, but it was a new character for her, and my first win had come easily, so she should have been a bit more anxious about it.
“Well, sure, but…”
The next match began.
✦ ✦ ✦
Round two was basically the same thing over again. I was attacking, while Hinami was on the defensive. But if I pulled the same strat as before, we’d just get into reading and poking each other again, so I approached her in a way I hadn’t tried before.
I won a second time, but she’d managed to fend off a number of my attacks, so my victory was narrower than before.