For the first time in a long time, he had supper at home. He had a while yet before he got in the bath. Temari had softened somewhat from the immediate aftermath of the anniversary incident, but she some coarseness lingered because Shikamaru hadn’t made any attempt to bridge the distance between them while he was running around busy at work. From where he sat at the table, he looked over his shoulder at her back as she stood at the sink washing dishes.
What can I say to her?
Should he tell her he was sorry about the whole thing? No. He’d only make things worse if he brought it all back up. Maybe he should casually start talking to her like nothing had happened. But if she demanded to know why he was suddenly acting so friendly, he’d be stuck for an answer. He wished—painfully, keenly—that he hadn’t forgotten to buy those flowers from Ino. And Ino knew he was buying them to apologize to Temari, so she wouldn’t do anything so tactless as deliver them to the house just because he forgot to take them with him. She would wait for Shikamaru to show up at the store again.
Mind stuck in this endless chain of nonsense, Shikamaru turned his eyes toward the open window. Shikadai was sitting on the veranda, playing video games as he basked in the warm evening sun. Shikamaru didn’t know the name of the console or the game. Shikadai was already earning his own money, and as long as he didn’t blow it on junk, Temari didn’t say anything to him about what he spent it on. He hadn’t heard his wife yelling about their son’s spending or heard a word about what he was buying, so he figured that Shikadai was making do in his own way.
“Take care of one thing at a time then?” Shikamaru murmured too quietly for either his wife or his son to hear and let out a short sigh before standing up. He slowly approached Shikadai and sat down beside him without saying a word.
He peered at the console screen. A formidable giant of a man in armor was fighting some weird creature. The mechanical clash of battle assaulted his ears. All of Shikadai’s fingers were in constant, quick motion. Each time he pressed a button, the large man on the screen swung his weapon violently.
“You like this stuff?” he asked.
“Mm. You know,” Shikadai offered, sounds that could be taken as neither confirmation nor denial. He probably couldn’t focus on anything else at the moment. He certainly didn’t look like he had the bandwidth to be answering questions from his dad.
For a while, Shikamaru sat quietly and watched the game play out on screen.
Every time the man lunged brutally, his son yelped, “Oh!” or “All right!” He was really focused on this thing. The game was the world; Shikamaru and everything else were invisible to him.
Now that he thought about it, when he was playing a game of shogi against a strong opponent, there were times when Shikamaru stopped seeing the world around him too. And it wasn’t just sight: his auditory circuits would forget to do their job, and the whole of his being would be focused on thinking about where to make his next move. The only thing his eyes took in were the pieces on the board before him. He would even lose sight of his opponent at times. There had been times when he was so focused on a game that the world went dark and silent around him until he was shaken back to awareness by his opponent.
Is this in our blood too? Shikamaru wondered as he watched his son smashing the buttons hard enough to break a finger.
“Ngah!”
The armored man, beaten bloody, finally fell. Shikadai cried out in frustration and threw his hands up. He almost tossed the game console out into the garden, but stopped himself before he broke the machine and let out a long sigh.
“Dammit! I was doing super good, too. There’s no boost there. Now I have to start over. What a drag,” his son muttered, shoulders slumping in disappointment.
“Is it that much fun, that thing?” Shikamaru said.
“Well, you know,” Shikadai answered as he finally noticed his father’s presence again. “My friends play it too, so it’s a drag if I don’t get my level up.”
“You play because your friends play?”
“That’s not what I mean,” his son replied, puffing his cheeks out ever so slightly. He set the console down between them and sat back, propping himself up with his hands.
“So then what?” Shikamaru pressed.
“If you mean is it the most fun I’ve ever had or something, then I guess not. I don’t feel like it’s that great. Actually, lately I’ve been playing it out of sheer inertia.”
He sounded so much more mature now. Although he was still young enough to be called a child, he was fighting as a full-fledged ninja. Maybe it was only natural that he would be able to dig more deeply and investigate his thoughts more thoroughly than other children.
“So you do it out of inertia?”
“Well, there’s no end to this game, so.” Shikadai nodded.
“No end?” Shikamaru arched an eyebrow.
“If you change out your equipment, then even the same quest—”
“H-hang on a second there. What’s a quest?”
“A mission,” Shikadai answered, an annoyed scowl on his face.
“I see,” he said, and his son continued with what he had been saying before Shikamaru interrupted.
“The level of difficulty changes depending on your equipment and affiliation, so it’s not like you can win if you just get your level up. And this game isn’t actually about finishing, really.”
Isn’t the point of playing a game to finish it? Shikamaru cocked his head to one side. “So what do you do when you don’t finish it?”
“You have fun on the quests. When a group of us get together and play, it’s different from playing by yourself. You get to hang out and help each other with stuff, which is fun. And when you play solo, you can grind and stuff so you’re ready to play with your friends. But when you’re alone in a fight you could only do in multi—”
“Multi?”
“Play with everyone else.”
Shikamaru dipped his head a little in apology for interrupting, and Shikadai continued.