Suzuka was maxed out, but the day was still young. Problem was, I’d beaten every B-rank dungeon within commutable distance. Since I didn’t have enough time to reach one of the faraway ones, I ultimately called it a day. On my walk to the train station, I considered what I would need to prep if I traveled out-of-town to a dungeon.
“Man, d’you see that girl just now? She was gorgeous!” a nearby student said.
“I know, right?”
Their conversation snagged my interest. Not to say I was that interested in the girl’s appearance, but who wouldn’t be curious? I looked ahead and saw an arcade amidst a line of storefronts. A glamorous girl stood in front of a crane game machine, exactly as they said. Her silver hair drew stares as it glinted in the afternoon sun.
Is that who I think it is?
Who else could it be than Claire, Yoizuki Guild member, S-rank adventurer, twelfth in Japan, in that exact order. Should I say hello or slide on past her? I might make it weird…
Before I could decide, Claire decisively lifted her arm and pushed a 100-yen coin into the game.
Her expression turned serious, her deep blue eyes narrowing. She seemed to be after a specific prize. I followed her gaze to a wolf plushie with a giant head. It had a black eyepatch over its right eye and a scar over its left eye. Could it see at all?
Wait, I recognized that character… It was Wolfun! Wolfun was from a children’s TV show that aired on Sunday mornings called Magical Dungeon Girls—otherwise known as Magidun, for short.
Magidun was a friendship-heavy action story about girls who awaken to a unique skill called “Magical Girl” and save people from monsters. A dungeon collapses in the first episode (not as much of a disaster as it would be in real life) and introduces Wolfun, the show’s mascot. He’s an unusual life-form that allies with any human with the will to tame him. He speaks in a crude, borderline inappropriate way and has the eyepatch and scar to give him a tough appearance.
Kids didn’t connect to him at all because of his rough way of acting and speaking. Funnily enough, that was precisely what earned Wolfun an adult fan base. They thought his gruff ways were endearing.
Blame Hana for why I knew all of this. I used to watch it every Sunday morning with her. Mind you, I only watched it as a way to spend time with her, but the story was more engaging than I expected.
Oh yeah, Rei was a Magidun fan too. She and Hana texted each other about it. I admit, I could get so caught up in fan theories myself that we talked about the show through dinner and past midnight.
Okay, hold on, not the time to fall into the Magidun theory pit: back to the topic at hand. Claire was in front of me, vying for her prize.
Her eyes flashed as she pressed the button. The crane descended toward Wolfun and wrapped around his body so, so tantalizingly. Claire stared intensely as it lifted his chunky form up in the air—and promptly dropped him.
“Aww,” she said.
The crane’s arm was rigged to be too weak to grip him properly, but that didn’t deter her. She tried again and again and again. Maybe she hadn’t played many crane games. After ten similar losses, she clearly didn’t know how to finesse it.
I shouldn’t just stand and watch. But should I help her?
What if she got embarrassed, knowing that some guy she barely knew was watching her take a crane game so seriously? I didn’t want to put her in that position. An S-rank adventurer definitely had money to burn on silly games. She could buy the whole arcade and not break the bank.
Yeah, I was better off ignoring this!
“Amane-san?” she said.
“Uhhh.”
Whoops. Famous last words. She noticed me, and now things were awkward. Panic overtook her face.
“H-h-how long have you been there?” she asked.
Even I could tell she was asking whether I’d seen her lose so many times. I couldn’t admit I’d watched her from the start. Dang it. Emergency subject change!
“Oh hey, this is just trivia, but did you know that most prizes at this arcade cost less than 800 yen?”
“Why are you bringing that up?”
“Oh, you practically spent double that…so, uh… y’know.”
She glared at me. Oh god, I freaked out and seriously messed up! I couldn’t pretend I only saw her try once anymore. I hadn’t expected her to interrogate me. I was a little afraid she’d turn me into a smear on the sidewalk. Claire was an S-rank adventurer, after all.
Instead, she released a small sigh and her cheeks tinged a soft rose-gold pink.
“It’s my fault for letting my guard down, so I won’t reprimand you,” she said, “but I hope you’ll alert me to your presence sooner next time.”
“I’ll do that, for sure, no problem,” I agreed, practically nodding my head off.
It was creepy of me to rubberneck while she failed at the crane game. I thought of a way to apologize, at least.
“Let me step in,” I said.
“Huh?”
She was confused, but she stepped aside and let me face the machine. I slipped a coin in and the crane whirred to life.
In the past, when I was watching over Hana, she’d often beg me to catch her a stuffed animal or some other crane prize. After playing a bunch of these games for her, I wasn’t too shabby at them. The trick wasn’t to catch the stuffed animal with the crane itself. It would take a few tries, but the best method was to lift and rework its position until it fell into the hole. That said, there was an even better way to snag this one.
I finagled the forward and back buttons until I had the arms dangling where I wanted them. As they descended toward the item next to Wolfun, Claire said, “Won’t it miss Wolfun from that angle?”
“Trust the process!”
Like I expected, the arm caught Wolfun’s tag and hoisted him up.
“Using such an impressive technique…!” she said, clearly shocked.
The machine brought Wolfun to the hole and safely dropped it. I withdrew the stuffed animal from the flap.
“I’m surprised,” she said, her voice carrying a new respect. “I had no idea you were a crane game expert.”
“Yeah, my sister used to badger me to play them a lot. I’m more surprised that you like Wolfun so much.”
“You know where Wolfun’s from?!”