You’d think Hinami would be feeling pressed, but she didn’t panic, just staring at the notes she’d taken on her phone. Her expression was so calm, it was bizarre, as if she wasn’t at all afraid of losing.
“Hey, if I get the next one, then I win…,” I said.
“…Hold on a second.” Patiently, as if she was reviewing her notes one last time before a test—she said nothing and only studied the screen intently.
“…”
Hinami closed her eyes a bit, started muttering something, then eventually said, “…All right, let’s do it.”
“Man, taking your time, huh.”
And so we picked up the controllers, ready for round three.
The third game. Though we were getting into a weird rhythm, I wasn’t the type to get tilted over that. After all, I’d played hundreds of games online and maintained my position at the top of the leaderboard.
“…Huh.”
I guess I should have expected this from NO NAME, as she was fending off the attacks that I’d already tried on her. Of course you wind up reading each other because there’s no way she could respond after seeing the attack. But when Boxman successfully reads you, it often makes the exchange not worth it, meaning that you need to successfully read him over 50 percent of the time. That was why I was varying my attacks randomly between all the patterns I had used thus far, so that she wouldn’t be able to pin me down.
But.
“For this…I go like this.”
The game was getting tougher as the competition wore on. When we were reading each other around fifty-fifty, the outcome was to my disadvantage.
In the third match—Hinami won.
She got me on her last stock. It felt like a waste—at the very end, if I’d just gotten her with my KO move, I would have swept the race to three.
It was two–one. I needed one more win, but Hinami only needed two. Now that the scales were balancing, I had to stay on my toes.
Her eyes were fixed on her phone screen. “This wasn’t right… I’ll adjust here…”
I found myself smiling wryly. Just how committed was she to victory?
“All right, next,” she said.
At her pace, as always, the fourth match began.
“…”
It would be hard to describe what had changed, and how. But she was closing the gap between us.
Hinami was just calmly fending off my attacks, as if she was dealing with something she already knew.
“I saw that before… This one, too. Oh, I was wrong. I’ve got to look more closely.”
“…!”
I hadn’t made a single mistake as far as I could tell. My fingers had even warmed up a bit, and I felt like I was doing better. But when I was the first one to lose a stock, I realized something was off.
I was clearly at a disadvantage.
Against Hinami’s defenses, there was no such thing as a singular way to attack. But when we were evenly matched when reading each other, I lost because I was less rewarded by a win. That’s why even if I kept going in to play mind games, I had to make full use of Jack’s mobility at every strategic point to take advantage of her mistakes, poking and chipping away at her—but I couldn’t find any opportunity to do that.
I mixed up my attack patterns, feinting and occasionally backing off. But even when I was doing that repeatedly, she fended off everything I did, and I was running out of ideas.
“…I see,” I said.
In other words, this was Hinami’s playstyle.
Gathering materials would accumulate very minor rewards; at a glance, this would look like defensive play, but it was also an offensive strategy that slowly led her toward victory.
“Just to confirm…,” she said.
“?”
“If we run out of time, we’re deciding the winner by tournament rules, right?”
“…!”
In this game, if seven and a half minutes passed before a player lost all their stocks, the game would end. In the actual game, the player with more stocks would win, and if both players were tied, it would initiate a sudden death game where both of them would die instantly if any attack hit—but that didn’t happen in tournament rules.
If they were tied, then the one with more damage would lose.
For that reason, rather than knocking off all the opponent’s stocks, if you were in an advantageous position, it was a valid strategy to just continue to wait until time was up.
✦ ✦ ✦
In other words—I was under pressure to attack since time was running out.
✦ ✦ ✦
“…So you’re considering that, too. Well, that’s very you.”
In actual tournaments, using up the whole seven and a half minutes happened less than 10 percent of the time, and it was a rule that you didn’t really have to account for that much outside a situation where neither character had a way of breaking the other’s guard.
But Hinami was anticipating a victory by time out.
This was beyond low risk and middling returns—her manner of play could be described as no risk, super-low returns. Frankly speaking, if this game was on a stream, the chat would tear you a new one, complaining about how it’s boring or whatever.
But—if you wanted to win, then it was the right way to play—nothing wrong about it.
“How I feel about it or whatever doesn’t really matter.”
Her eyes were fixed on the game screen.
“I just keep doing the right thing to do.”
She played dispassionately, handling what I threw at her. She looked a little gloomy; she wasn’t styling or playing mind games or engaging with the game concept, only making one logical move after another toward victory. Her playstyle was like the devil’s.
—When you got down to it…it was so Aoi Hinami, I couldn’t even complain.
“Ngh…”
Eventually, the fourth game ended.
My Jack went down. In other words, Hinami won.
Now the score was two–two. Whoever won the next match would be the overall victor.
“…I see.”
Winning the first two in a first to three, then having two games taken back is something you see occasionally in Atafami tournaments. Generally, the side that’s put the pressure on tends to be at a mental advantage. Technically, the situation should be fifty-fifty, but you’re more likely to imagine that they’ll continue their streak into a third win.
But while I felt anxiety, I didn’t let my guard down.
“—Phew.”
I already knew that she’s really good at the game.
Since NO NAME was the first Atafami player who I had acknowledged.
“Let’s start the final game,” I said.
Hinami didn’t seem to be paying attention as she pressed the start button.
“Not gonna look at your notes?”
The screen changed, and Jack and Boxman landed on the stage.
“No, I’m fine,” she said.
The match began, and immediately, Jack began to attack Boxman.
—However.
“I get it now.”
My attack was abruptly warded off.
“Huh…?”
When I left an opening, Jack was launched and hit with a massive combo that kept juggling him in the air. Suddenly, the situation was to my disadvantage.
“Get what?” I asked.
“Your attack pattern. How I should respond with Boxman.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no way you could figure it out in just four matches…”
“Of course I can.”
And then she gathered materials again to continue powering up her character. As before, she didn’t attack at all, simply watching what my character was doing.
“Have you forgotten how I became good at Atafami?”
Her cold gaze only captured reality.