One Crowded Hour

One Crowded Hour

Getting separated from your friends in a crowd is always a bit of a bummer, especially when there is someone whose presence was specifically desired. Kimura Ume had been struggling to stifle a series of sighs ever since she received a text from Tani informing her that he wouldn’t be joining them for today’s lunch break after all.

Ume’s consternation has seemingly gone unnoticed by Anita, the foreign girl too focused on responding with a friendly smile when she's confused or can't quite grasp what her companion is saying. Even though she is struggling, she's reached a stage where she can usually understand the first and last words of most sentences, allowing her to infer the meaning of the middle by making logical guesses.

Consequently, the two’s conversations have often been marked by silence, with Anita failing to initiate or contribute to any topic. Ume has had to privately contend with her disappointment over Tani's absence with no one to confide in.

Ever resourceful in regards to making lemonade out of a lemon, Ume proposed they immediately play some games before lunch. She hoped this would lighten the mood and provide a shared topic for conversation, turning a difficult situation into something positive.

In the first game of goldfish scooping, Ume successfully caught three, while Anita caught none. After Ume returned her fish, they moved on to play Wanage. Ume scored six points and won a prize. Anita, however, didn't score any points and left empty-handed.

Next they tried the notorious Katanuki, a game where both failed to flawlessly cut their paper figures. Ume came closer though, her giraffe only losing its tail at the last moment. Anita on the other hand, decapitated her turtle instantly and was borderline inconsolable, cradling the head of the unfortunate creature in her palm.

Now they move on to the next game, but the emotions of what just transpired still linger within Anita’s psyche. Her face twists, and instead of looking forward and avoiding passersby, her eyes are locked on the decapitated head of the paper turtle she’s still tenderly clinging to.

Ume is surprised by the pitiful display, feeling as though she's observing a beautiful, foreign counterpart to Tani, who similarly overreacts to little failures.

"Anita-san," Ume exclaims, as if a profound realization has just struck her, "could it be that you're actually pretty bad at things?" She puts the back of her hand in front of her mouth and continues, "Uwa! I truly believed you were a real-life Mary Sue; I can't believe how mistaken I was!"

“I-I’m just clumsy. I murdered this turtle.”

“It was never alive to begin with! Is there any other game you’d wanna play? Maybe one you wouldn’t be so bad at?”

“Uhmm..” Anita holds her chin and ponders, both translating the words she just heard and then the suggestion itself. “Maybe something faster?”

“Hmm… faster huh?” Now Ume holds her chin and ponders on that suggestion. “Uwa, I have an idea!”

She leads Anita to the Shateki booth, where they join the queue. 

This particular booth is a new and popular attraction at the Gogatsusuai Fest, and it's quite the spectacle. Unlike the typical setups with their simplistic prize targets, this one can be considered a marvel of engineering and design. Targets are mounted on rotating stands, propelled by intricate mechanical tracks connected to the framing of the large tent that move with an almost balletic precision, challenging even the most seasoned participants.

Despite the sophisticated setup, the rifles still fire cork pellets, a nod to the game's traditional roots and its family-friendly nature. However, the increased distance to the targets means that the corks pack a surprising punch, requiring a steadier hand and a sharper eye. 

The club members manning the booth excitedly welcome the two pretty girls when it is their turn to play.

After the host explains the rules, the two are offered three difficulty levels: Easy, Intermediate, and Hard. Each level features different target sizes and movement types. Ume is planning to pick the easiest option, but before she can speak up, Anita jumps in and chooses for them.

“Intermediate please.”

Surprised by her desire to push herself despite being quite bad at every other game they’ve played thus far, Ume can’t help but feel a another pang of pity at her desire to still push herself.

“Uhh, I think we should stick with the easy route, Anita-san.”

“Intermediate!” Anita repeats with a smile.

Ume relents and addresses the young woman manning the booth.

“Intermediate for the lovely lady.”

“Copy that!” the host replies with enthusiasm, and points out the targets and objectives of the game to win the prizes.

Twelve-by-twelve-inch paper targets, each bearing the face of a kappa, glide slowly along a metal belt from one side of the booth to the other. Their undamaged state suggests that despite their unhurried movement, no one has managed to hit them.

Anita, with the focus of a seasoned soldier, steps into position and meticulously examines her pellet rifle. Her golden eyes scrutinize the simple wood and metal as she loads a cork bullet, pumps air into the chamber, and assumes a firing stance worthy of an Olympic shooter.

“Uwawa!?”

The energy shift comes as quite the shock to Ume’s senses.

And the sight of Anita obliterating the kappa targets in rapid succession might as well have been a strike from a semi truck.

Unlike everything else, Anita is certainly not bad at Shateki, in fact, she might even be a savant. Even the young woman manning the booth has her mouth agape in awe when each target is downed in rapid succession.

“Perfect score!” Anita says with a cheeky smile, clenching her firsts and reveling in the game’s winning chimes blaring through a portable speaker.

“H-How??” Ume asks in disbelief.

“I can shoot.”

“I can see that!”

“Your turn, Ume.”

Anita hands her the gun, but for some reason it looks like a bar of molten iron and she shrinks at the prospect of touching it. She’s sure it’s all in her head, but the imagined scent of gunpowder billowing from the barrel hits her like a fist.

“I’m not gonna follow that up, I’d look like an idiot!”

“Are you bad at this game?” Anita innocently asks with a tilt of her head.

That question snaps her out of her intimidated state. The truth is, Ume has prided herself on her Shateki skills for quite a while now, when she was a kid, she and Tani would go to fairs and would always beat him handedly. To add to that, she’s the best player in every first person shooter game she plays on playstation. 

But Anita’s stunning display wiped her confidence out in a split second. When the time comes for her to take her position and start the game, she freezes.

“Do you need help?” Anita asks.

Ume takes offense to this, yet she still has the wherewithal to accept blame for presenting herself in a manner where her foreign counterpart would even have to ask something like that. A competitive fire comes alight from within her, and the burning desire to fight back against that question brings life to her limbs.

“I got it.” she replies, taking aim at the first target, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth heightens her focus.

‘Bang!’

It’s a direct hit.

“Nicely done!” the employee says with a clap.

Ume proceeds to hit every other target on the intermediate level with almost the exact level of accuracy as Anita, and she earns the same score. She doesn’t show any jubilance, instead she lifts the top of the cork rifle to her lips, strikes a pose and blows the imaginary smoke away from the red hot barrel before saying,

“I aim with my eye, I shoot with my mind, and I kill with my heart.”

“....”

“.......”

A shiver runs up her spine and she cringes. She can’t understand why she decided to whip that quote out as though the two people present would have any idea what fantasy book it came from. Even the people in line behind them that were once impressed by her shooting are now firing quizzical glares her way.

“A-A-Anyways! Should we try the next level??”

Anita gestures for her to continue on and replies, “Sure!”

The host rushes to prepare the third and final level of the Shateki game, even calling in fellow workers for assistance with the setup. The anticipation is palpable; no one has ever reached this stage, and the thought of such talented players tackling their elaborate contraption creates an infectious buzz that draws in passersby and a crowd forms behind them.

Three rotating wheels hang from the booth’s ceiling beams, lowering and rising and moving side to side. Attached to the wheels are 5 chain-linked arms carrying small, poker-card sized pieces of cardboard that will fly off once struck by the cork pellet. 

Hitting even one of these cards on accident would be difficult, but Ume confidently puffs and says,

“Kukuku, light work.”

The host and her fellow Shooting club members halt the adjacent games, shifting all eyes onto the incoming spectacle. She holds her hand up and stipulates, “There are fifteen cards here, and you are allowed fifteen shots in a two minute time crunch. No one has ever gotten here, so you and your friend will battle it out for the first prize. You ready?”

Ume looks at Anita, who returns her glare with a nod.

“I’m ready!”

“On your mark, get set, go!”

The wheels begin rotating, jumping up and down and darting from one side of the booth to the other. Ume analyzes it the best she can without wasting too much of her valuable time, and comes to the decision that if she shoots the targets moving horizontally first, it would help free up some time to tackle the more difficult vertical wheels.

‘Bang!’

The first shot blows away a card.

She reloads, and fires again.

Another hit.

Repeating this motion smoothly, she rattles off the rest of the horizontal wheel before moving on.

‘Bang!’

This time it’s a miss.

Her first miss of the entire game.

This serves to rattle her, and she proceeds to miss the next one, drawing moans from the crowd that has gathered behind her, bringing heat to her face and sweat to her temple.

(C’mon, regroup!) she thinks to herself.

Steadying her nerve, she hits five targets in a row, and now the crowd is cheering her on.

Sensing the momentum of it all, she feels as though there’s no way she’ll miss the last four targets.

‘Bang!’

She hits one.

‘Bang!’

Down goes the other.

Only two left and she’ll have an incredible score.

However,

‘Riiiiiinnnnnngg!’

The alarm goes off and she runs out of time.

“Uwa!?”

In her heightened state of focus she lost track of where she was on the clock. But still, twelve out of fifteen is nothing to sneeze at and the crowd roars with appreciation of her efforts.

Wiping the sweat off her brow, Ume hands Anita the rifle, only this time she spares no pageantry and doesn’t strike a nerdy pose. Instead, Ume delivers a silent and competitive glare, immediately communicating a desire to win that strikes Anita with the force of a cold gust of wind.

Ume is taking this one seriously, and isn’t looking upon Anita with pity like she was earlier.

“Good luck.” Ume says.

Anita’s shoulders jump and she nervously turns towards the targets that have just been replaced.

“Mm..!”

She has an advantage after seeing how the wheels move, so she comes up with her own plan to tackle the wheels. She even has a strategy to use her time as efficiently as possible.

“On your mark,” the host says, snatching the attention of the crowd. “Get set, go!”

The wheels begin moving.

“!!”

But they don’t move in the way Anita expected. To her surprise, the targets have a completely different pattern than what Ume faced, this feature was purposely built in to make each shooter’s experience a unique one. So Anita has to waste a valuable few seconds to figure it out and alter her game-plan.

With fifteen targets and fifteen bullets, she plans on using exactly five seconds for each shot, which adds up to a total of one minute and fifteen seconds. A very ambitious goal to say the least, but if she can calculate the pattern of the moving targets, she’s sure she can pull it off. Because of this, she decides to spend her entire first thirty seconds studying what’s in front of her. All the while, the crowd’s whispers and objections build to a crescendo before she takes her first shot.

‘Bang!’

She hits the vertical rotating target first, sparing herself exactly five seconds, and then hits the next one on the other vertical wheel.

Not too dissimilar from an anime, the patrons say out loud what they’re seeing. “She’s choosing the more difficult targets first??”

“But isn’t that risky? If she wants to beat twelve points with such little time, she should be going at it horizontally!”

What the onlookers don’t know is that Anita's strategy is meticulously planned, based entirely on visual cues and precise timing. She selects the vertical wheels first with the idea of moving to the horizontal last, because this sequence minimizes any gap between targets, ensuring that a white card is always visible against the booth's dark backdrop every five seconds, thereby increasing the likelihood of an accurate shot.

Ume understands however, and she stands stiff as she watches Anita pick off each target methodically. Inexplicably, Ume’s heart suddenly sinks. Certain that she is about to lose this game, and although knowing that she should be impressed by the performance, she’s found herself quite upset at the prospect of this loss.

(What am I even thinking?) she says within her mind, watching Anita blow away the next few targets.

The cheers of the crowd grow louder, but come across like a dull, muffled ringing in her ears.

(I’m not actually upset that she’s better than me at this stupid game, am I?)

Despite her overall confidence in gaming--- a pursuit that inherently involves frequent losses--- Ume is disproportionately affected by this particular outcome. Anita moves onto the horizontal targets and hits the first one with ease. Only one more for the tie and two more for the win.

But why are Anita’s successful hits against the targets landing with the force of hammer blows on Ume’s chest?

Time leading up to the final result drags to a halt for Ume, and within this bog she allows a series of dreadful thoughts that have nothing to do with the Shateki game to hijack her mind...

The momentary victory of defeating Anita in all the earlier games finally gave her a sense of superiority over the perfect foreign girl who had so abruptly entered her life. Up until this point, she had watched Anita effortlessly excel at just about everything, keenly aware of how much Tani had supported her, showering her with most, if not all, of his attention.

All the subtle clues she had deliberately ignored are now crystalized. From seeing Anita stroking his hair while he drank tea in the classroom, to Charl's pointed remarks about Anita's role in his manga where Tani is the main character, all the way to Tani's choice this very morning to be sick on Anita's side of the car instead of hers. 

Not to mention all the small interactions she plays spectator to daily. The effortless, frequent conversations the two share in a language only they understand has never made her feel more isolated.

This overwhelming defeat in Shateki isn’t what has Ume feeling so crushed--- no, it’s something much worse. It's almost as if she has stumbled upon the source of the Nile after wandering through a jungle of unwanted emotions, only to find it dried up or filled with toxic waste. 

It’s something that she’s seen countless times in anime and manga regarding the childhood friend and the new girl in class. Even the old Japanese romance films she’s a sucker for have developments just like this, and she can’t believe she disassociated herself from the glaring evidence until just now. 

(I… I can’t beat her.)

Ume squeezes at her dress and bites her lip.

(Oh no, I'm the losing heroine!?)

‘Bang!’

Anita fires, but this time she misses.

“!!”

The crowd’s sudden shift in energy snaps Ume out of her daze.

‘Bang!’

It’s another miss, the cork bullet has hit the chain-linked wheel and bounced harmlessly away.

Anita calmly reloads, lifts her rifle to fire, and…

‘Bang!’

One final miss before her time goes out. Due to her 5 second intervals after waiting thirty seconds before her first shot, there are still 4 targets standing.

“Eh..?”

The crowd erupts and congratulates Ume, accrediting her for her amazing performance; but Ume’s eyes remain locked on Anita, who softly places the rifle back down on the table and gives a little bow to the host before turning to face her with a smile.

“Great job, Ume! You are amazing.”

“...T-Thanks?”

Ume is in disbelief, there is no way she brought herself all the way down to the depths of mental anguish only to come out on top in this game. The sudden and unexpected victory has the residual effect of feeling like she's covered in slime, she moves slowly within that muck as she is handed a Tokyo U Shooting club medal, and given the option to choose any prize she wishes on display.

Not giving the prize much thought, she chooses a fancy and expensive looking ink pen, says thanks to the host, who clambers over the table and begs her to join their club once she graduates high school. The host is comically desperate, reaching out to her with outstretched hands and tears in her eyes. She even offers to help Ume secure a scholarship. 

These gracious offers are awkwardly refused by Ume, and with Anita following close behind, the two girls disappear into the still buzzing crowd. Ume’s mind is already elsewhere, processing the recent victory not as an end, but as a prerequisite for the next game in front of them.

This game is a different kind of competition, one that feels heavy with yet to be established stakes. It's certainly not a normal game, well, at least not one designed for enjoyment or casual sport like Shateki or Wanage. 

Ume is prepared to play for keeps this time. 

The only problem--- the one knot of uncertainty she can't untangle--- is whether Anita is after the same exact prize as her. 

It's an uncertainty that Ume now has every intention of resolving. Her personal stakes are too high for guesswork, the prize too valuable for a blind-sided loss. If she wants any realistic chance of winning the true, underlying game she thinks the two are engaged in, she has to know exactly what she's up against...

To Be Continued!