Editing Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 4 (section)

===1===

On his way back to class, Takamura decided to visit the arcade today.

He felt like he needed something to cheer him up after all his thinking in the clubroom.

More than that, he had realized why he could not dodge the bullets while playing the night before.

He had realized why he kept getting hit. It was something surprisingly simple and the solution was also simple.

He recalled his gameplay from the night before while walking down the hallway.

…''First…

First, he pictured the title screen.

Next, he hit the start button in his memories.

“And.”

He started the game.

It was set to very hard.

The dirt ground appeared and a white fighter appeared from the bottom of the screen. That was his ship.

A few gray enemy fighters appeared from the top of the screen.

He had immediately noticed how fast the enemy was.

The enemy helicopters, fighters, and tanks appeared from the same place as usual, but the timing of their shots was entirely different.

Not the speed of the bullets, but the speed of the shooting.

On normal difficulty, the enemy would fire two or three breaths after appearing. At the very least, he was given some time to react.

But not so on very hard.

As soon as the enemy appeared on screen – about half a breath at most – and the bullets were flying toward his ship.

And while the enemy flew toward him…

…''If I destroy them, they fire at me from within the explosion.

It was almost like they were trying to take him out with them.

Also…

…''The bullets are sped up too.

On normal, the bullets were only a little faster than his ship could move, but on very hard, they were twice as fast as him.

They were so fast it felt like he could hear them roaring toward him.

Also, the enemies were stronger and the bigger ones took a lot of shooting to destroy.

The enemies the same size as his ship still went down in a single shot, but the larger cannons and mid-sized ships could survive even a few solid seconds of shooting.

All of the enemies that had given him a bit of trouble before had become truly formidable foes.

The enemies fired sooner, their bullets moved faster, and they took more hits to kill.

A beginner like him stood no chance against that multifaceted difficulty increase.

He game overed almost immediately.

And last night…

“This is the level he was playing on.”

It hit home how serious that Freeter had been.

Once he had accepted that and found he did not stack up, he had returned the difficulty to normal.

And he had hit the start button.

Something surprisingly had happened 15 minutes later.

All of a sudden, he found himself on Stage 4.

He had never been able to beat even Stage 1 before, but he made it the fourth one and game overed after losing all his lives on the early part of that stage.

“Huh?”

He did not continue, so the words “game over” slowly rose up on the screen.

But he tilted his head while viewing those eight letters.

…''What just happened? How did I get to Stage 4?

He had never even beaten Stage 1 before.

This was not some miraculous breakthrough because he had no idea how he had managed to do it.

…''What does this mean?

He did not know, so to find out, he played again. He figured that must have been a fluke.

But…

“Huh?”

On his second playthrough, he reached the warship boss at the end of Stage 3. The warship’s final cannon shot him down and he could not recover. If he had done a little better, he would have reached Stage 4.

“What is going on?”

He was on a roll.

That fact did not make him happy and he knew that was a sad fact about his personality.

He thought about this.

…''I know why this is happening.

Only one thing had changed since before: he had played on very hard earlier. It had to be that.

But that was too vague to be a real reason.

He had to figure out why playing on very hard had allowed him to reach Stage 4 on normal.

“What’s different between very hard and normal?”

And what had those differences changed in him?

…''What is it?

The answer was obvious.

The enemies fired sooner, their bullets move faster, and they took more hits.

If he brought all that together…

…''What does it mean?

He decided to think about this carefully. Because he felt like this issue would determine whether or not he could stick with shoot ‘em up games. If he figured this out, he might just get good at these games.

So he slowed down and thought. What was it like playing on very hard?

“Well…”

…''The attacks were intense, but it wasn’t completely one-sided.

He had somehow made it halfway through Stage 1.

He had made progress.

How had he done that?

…''I was attacking too.

It was more than that, of course.

…''I watched the enemy movements, based my decisions on that, fired, and…

“Dodged?”

''That’s right,'' he realized.

He had managed to dodge those speedy and rapidly-fired bullets.

His previous thoughts had pointed to how he had done so.

“I was watching the enemy movements.”

Because they fired so soon, he had been watching the entire screen to see where they appeared.

“That’s it.”

He compared his previous playstyle to what he had done while on very hard.

How had he been viewing the screen before?

“It was naturally focused on my ship so I could dodge.”

Basically, he had always been watching just where his ship was. Because if he watched his ship and saw the bullets approaching it…

“That seemed the easiest way to dodge things.”

But was it really?

“No.”

He was confident of that now.

“I can’t dodge the bullets if I’m only looking at my ship.”

Why was that?

…''If I tense up and focus in, it narrows my vision.

While watching his ship and dodging, if the number of enemies and bullets grew, his tense vision narrowed down on just the area around his ship.

If he saw a bullet from the beginning, he could predict where it was going and dodge it. But if a second bullet was fired from outside his narrowed field of vision, he could not react. The second bullet would seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere inside his narrowed field of vision.

That explained how the bullets kept sneaking up on him.

So how could he avoid narrowing his field of vision?

“By keeping an eye on the entire screen and not focusing on just the one point.”

''It’s like being a shortstop,'' he realized.

The shortstop was a defender between second and third base, but he could watch the batter and he was not restricted by having to guard a base.

That was why he acted as a control tower for the other defenders, but…

…''That requires keeping an eye on the big picture.

He had to watch the batter, keep the score in mind, watch the defenders, predict how everyone would move, and move to the best position before actually pursuing the ball.

It was the same here.

When applied to shoot ‘em up games…

…''I have to view the entire screen and grasp the movement of all the enemy bullets.

And if he had to make a slight adjustment in position…

…''Only then do I shift my gaze to look at my ship, but while already preparing for the next bullet.

It was simple enough once he thought about it.

The enemy bullets were flying toward him.

So instead of focusing on his ship and its immediate surroundings, it was better to understand when the enemies appeared and when they fired.

If he knew that, the bullets could not hit him.

Since the enemies had fired sooner on very hard, he had been forced to think about all the enemies appearing all over the screen.

It made him look at the entire screen.

That had stuck with him when he returned to normal and he had managed to reach Stage 4.

“I see.”

He had figured out the trick to dodging.

That meant there ''was'' a trick to it. So…

…''There’s a way to get good at this.

That realization brought something like a tremor to his body.

…''I see.

He had to suppress a laugh.

He felt like he had finally arrived at the starting line.

He could dodge the enemy bullets from now on.

He could survive.

So instead of simply playing the shoot ‘em up games, he could work to understand them and get good at them.

“Wow.”

He had goose bumps.

…''I’m hopeless, huh?

It still felt weird doing all this for a mere video game. He doubted he could tell his friends or parents about this.

But he had learned the trick to dodging.

Without that trick, shoot ‘em up games were just about getting killed.

But with it, he had found a new possibility.

Instead of the possibility of being destroyed, he had the possibility of not being destroyed.

He could get good.

Once he did that, would he be able to play like that Freeter had? And…

…''Will I figure out what it means to take something seriously?

He did not know how serious you could really get about a video game, but this was the newest and most definite form of “serious” he had discovered.

If he could experience that, maybe he could learn to trust himself a little. Maybe he could think of himself as someone who could take things seriously.

So he decided to visit the arcade today.

While deciding to start playing shoot ‘em up games at the arcade, he started up the stairs to his classroom.

But just then…

“Oh, Takamura.”

He heard a girl’s voice from the side.

It was Iwata’s familiar voice, so he turned to find the ponytail girl stepping out of a classroom at the bottom of the stairs.