Editing Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 3 (section)

===2===

Takamura sprang up to a sitting position.

“Hold on.”

He could feel his heart racing.

He thought about the supposedly ordinary line he had just spoken.

…''I want to get good at this.

That was obvious. Why else would he be trying to dodge those bullets?

But the words held great meaning for him.

Because…

…''This isn’t just for fun?

“Hey,” he said while forcing a self-deprecating tone. As if to ask why he would think something so silly. “This is just for run, right?”

And yet…

…''I want to get good at this game?

''That’s crazy,'' he thought. ''It’s just a video game,'' he added.

This was not sports or school. It was a game and he wasn’t even competing with anyone.

On top of that, he was keeping it a secret.

He knew people generally thought of video games as bad things. In shoot ‘em up games, you fought a simulated war where the point was to destroy objects and machines with pilots inside. That was only acceptable because it was fictional.

And most of all, he would not earn anyone’s praise by getting good at this game.

That was why you only did it “for fun”.

But even if it was just for fun, he had been searching for a way to dodge the enemy bullets, so…

“I clearly want to get good at this game, don’t I?”

The game’s title screen appeared on the CRT TV as if to answer his question.

He could see something else reflected on that screen: his face and his baseball bag in a corner of his room.

Baseball.

He practiced that on a daily basis and worked to improve in it.

…''Am I treating this like baseball?

“Do I want to get good at this game?”

The self-deprecation deepened on his reflected face, but he could not deny it.

His time with baseball had taught him the fun and meaning of getting good at something. It had done so through the sense of achievement felt after catching a sharp hit and the gratitude of having reliable teammates.

He had gained something by getting good at baseball.

He did not know if that would happen with video games as well. But…

“You can get good at them.”

Video games were not sports or school. Improving there would not earn anyone’s praise.

…''But some people are good at them.

The existence of video games meant there was a challenge there and something that could only be obtained by getting good at them.

So…

“Is it fun once you’re good at them?”

And…

“Can I do it if I get good at them?”

He spoke the words that had been lurking deep in his heart lately. This was something he had been unable to do with baseball.

“Can I get serious with them?”

''If so,'' he began.

…''I don’t know if I can or not.

He might simply be unable to get serious about anything.

But…

“What if?” Bitterness entered the smile on his lips. “What if I can get serious about video games?”

With that, he straightened up, took a breath, and directly faced the screen.

He nodded once and spoke.

“Let’s see this through until I know if I can or not.”

His expression changed from relaxation to tension.

He readied the joystick.

“Okay.”

His gaze pierced the word “options” in the center of the title screen.

Most home game console games had options to set the difficulty and the number of lives you started with.

With this game, you accessed that by selecting “options”.

When he moved the cursor to “options” and pressed the button, the title screen vanished and a screen full of English text appeared.

The topmost entry was labeled “level”.

The word “normal” was displayed to its right.

That was the current difficulty level. It was the default setting.

“There’s my mistake.”

He made sure the white arrow was next to “level”.

Then he moved the joystick in his lap left and the word “normal” changed to “hard”.

But he moved the joystick left once more.

That changed “hard” to “very hard”.

He moved the joystick left yet again, but the text did not change.

He had the game on its highest difficulty setting.

He took a breath and pressed the start button.

The title screen returned.

“Very hard.”

He had never played on that difficulty before. In fact, this was his first time changing the difficulty at all.

He simply wanted to do what that Freeter had done.

Maybe he wanted to be like that man.

Back when he first started playing baseball, he had worn the cap of his favorite player’s team.

Now he wore his own team’s cap.

He closed his eyes and calmed his breathing.

“Okay.”

He hit the start button and opened his eyes to see a single word on the screen: Start.

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