Editing Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 2 (section)

===1===

Takamura arrived home at 8:27 PM.

He and Iwata had parted ways on the hill his house was on. Her house was at the bottom of the hill, so they only lived about 20m apart.

His house had a small workshop attached. He stopped his mountain bike next to the workshop and announced he was home.

Then he took a bath, ate some dinner, and holed up in his room.

He turned on the CD player next to his bed to play some piano music.

He liked the slow music of pianos. It sounded like words to him.

But he was interested in something else today.

“Okay.”

He sat in front of the TV, but not because there was a show he wanted to watch.

“I have practice early tomorrow morning, but it’s still too early to go to bed.”

He used that as an excuse to turn on the TV. And he used the remote to switch the input to video input.

“Let’s see.”

He pulled a home video game console from the cabinet next to the TV.

He did not have much attachment to the machine. Its rectangular black box was a somewhat outdated design and it had used “16 bit” as a selling point, although he was not sure what that actually meant.

He had originally bought it cheap off of a friend. He had spent the 10,000 yen of last year’s New Year’s money to buy the console and a few games.

He did not actually know if that was a good deal or not, but it was definitely the nicest game console he owned.

He had not seen it in a few months and he had not hooked it up to the TV since New Year’s this year.

“Long time no see,” he said while pressing his hands together in respect.

He had some difficulty getting the cords hooked up, but it was ready to go in just a few minutes.

Instead of the joypad that came with the system, it was currently set up with a black joystick sold by the same company as the system.

He sat cross-legged, placed the joystick in his lap, and peered inside the cabinet.

He had only ever played the action games or fighting games to kill some time.

“There was one in here, wasn’t there?”

He meant a shoot ‘em up game.

He had seen a box with a picture of an airplane among the games he had gotten from his friend.

He found that box in the far back of the cabinet.

He pulled it out with a hint of excitement.

He checked the screenshots on the back of the box to confirm it was indeed a vertical-scrolling shoot ‘em up game.

He pulled the ROM cartridge from the box, and…

“A serious battle, huh?” he muttered.

A battle.

He would come out the other side knowing whether he was a winner or a loser.

He thought back to what he had seen in the arcade the night before.

Someone had spent half an hour battling all alone at the highest difficulty and emerged victorious.

That man had said he was serious before doing so.

As for Takamura…

…''I play baseball.

His glove was sticking out of the bag in a corner of his room.

That was a tool he used for the “battles” fought on the school team.

But…

…''Are that Freeter’s half hour and my baseball games really the same sort of battle?