Chapter 8 — Round Ocean

"Uh. Why are we here?"

Round Ocean turned out to be four floors of arcade games built around a ground-floor sushi bar, plates gliding by on a conveyor belt that circled the whole counter. Bright signs, loud music leaking down from the game floors above, the smell of soy sauce mixing with something sugary from a crepe stand near the entrance.

Mio had pulled her hair tie out on the walk over. No explanation given. It changed her face just enough that I had to look twice before I was sure it was actually her.

"Talking at school is risky." She sat down at the counter. "Nobody here knows either of us."

"This place is one bus stop from school."

"Doesn't matter."

"That doesn't sound right."

"It's right if I say it with confidence."

I turned to Hina, hoping for backup, and found her three seats down with both hands pressed flat against the counter glass, eyebrows up, mouth slightly open, watching the belt like she'd just been handed good news.

I sat next to her. Mio took the seat to my left, right at the start of the belt.

My phone buzzed.

Ren
where are you
this is important.

That's weird, I thought, because a text like that from Ren usually meant one of two things. Someone got hit by a car, or he was about to say the locker room ghost was actually an alien. Neither one felt worth leaving dinner for.

I flipped the phone face down and turned back to the belt just as Mio grabbed a plate, one clean motion, salmon nigiri, one bite, chopsticks down. Four seconds later she grabbed the next salmon plate the exact same way, ignoring everything else that rolled past.

"You only eat salmon?"

"Same taste every time. No surprises." Another plate, grabbed without looking. "Everything else here is a gamble. I don't take gambles."

Hina, next to me, wasn't checking anything at all. Her hand shot out and closed around whatever was closest, chopsticks already moving before the plate fully stopped.

"You're not even looking at what it is."

"Looking takes time." Swallow. Grab. Something eel-shaped, then something egg-shaped. "Speed is the whole plan."

"That's not a plan, that's just eating fast."

"It's a LIFESTYLE, Kazuki."

Mio set her chopsticks down with a click.

"Let's talk about earlier."

Hina, mouth full: "Talk about what?"

"You know what."

"I really don't."

"You showed up at school. On a day you weren't supposed to be there." Another plate gone. "Do you understand how risky that was?"

"It was the koi pond. Nobody goes there."

"Nobody goes there until the one time someone does."

"Nobody DID though!" Fifth plate, tempura, still chewing the last one. "Ren just ran right past us."

"Ren isn't the problem. Ren shows the problem." Mio's fifth plate, another slow bite of salmon. "You'll take any chance to risk years of planning because you wanted to sit on a bench."

"I wanted to help with the BOOTH."

"You wanted to sit on a bench with him."

Hina stopped chewing.

"That's a different thing."

"It's the same thing wearing a different hat."

"Can we NOT do this over dinner."

"We're doing this over dinner because dinner is the excuse." Sixth plate, click of the chopsticks. "Keep defending yourself."

Hina's hand shot out on autopilot, already mid-sentence, and stopped halfway there.

This plate was bigger than the rest, piled high with something red, sitting behind a paper flag that read EXTREME CHALLENGE ROLL, SURVIVE IF YOU DARE!

"Hina, don't."

She ate the whole thing in one bite, without stopping her sentence.

"I'm JUST SAYING, it's not fair to act like I can't make one choice about myself without a whole meeting about it."

Her eyes went round. Then watery. Her face turned a shade of red that had nothing to do with the argument.

She fanned her own mouth with one hand while, somehow, her other hand was already reaching for the next plate.

"That said. I stand by everything I just said."

I almost fell off my stool.

The chef behind the counter wiped his hands on his apron and leaned over, grinning. "You looking after her?"

"Trying to. Is that thing actually going to hurt her?"

"That one? No. It's a joke plate. We put it on the belt on purpose, kids dare each other to grab it." He nodded at the flag. "Sounds scary but it tastes normal. Just a basic ingredients."

"It kinda looked like it was on fire."

"Food coloring. That's the whole trick." He glanced at Hina, still fanning her face, and laughed. "Most of what you just saw was her, not the food itself."

"She fully committed to dying, though."

"She's a good actress. Tell her that."

Hina had already recovered, one eye still watering, three bites into a new plate, completely unbothered by the fact that she'd looked like she was dying a minute ago.

Mio looked at her sister. Then at the pile of empty plates between them, and the one empty EXTREME CHALLENGE ROLL flag standing upright in the middle of it.

"This conversation isn't over."

"It's a LITTLE over. I ate through most of it."

"That's not how conversations end."

"This is how MY conversations end." Hina reached for one more plate, still mid-sentence, when she suddenly went stiff, eyes going wide, and let out a wahhh sound before sliding off her stool and sprinting away entirely.

I followed her line of sight. A claw machine near the wall, UFO-themed, packed with a green alien plush hugging a penguin. She was already there, both hands on the joystick, leaning in so close her nose nearly touched the glass.

"You good?"

"I'm GREAT. Watch this."

The claw dropped, closed around the plush's arm, lifted, held, and dropped it clean into the chute.

"SEE?? Skill."

"That was one try."

"One PERFECT try. That's rarer than doing it a hundred times." She was already inserting another coin, eyeing a second plush with the same intensity a general might use on a battlefield.

I left her to her victory lap and went looking for Mio, who was nowhere near the counter. I found her at the very back of the arcade floor, standing in front of a much smaller claw machine, completely alone, back straight, expression unreadable.

"You okay back here?"

She didn't answer. The claw dropped in front of her, closed on empty air, and rose back up with nothing.

She reached into her pocket, pulled out one more coin, and fed it into the slot without a word, like this was a normal, dignified activity a person did in total silence.

"Mio?"

"I'm busy."

"You're losing."

"I'm STRATEGIZING."

I looked down. There was a small, neat stack of coin wrappers by her foot, lined up in a row like she'd organized her own failures for later review.

"How many tries was that?"

"Irrelevant."

"It's a little relevant."

She pressed the button. The claw closed on the plush, lifted an inch, and let it drop straight back down, bouncing once against the glass floor of the machine like it was mocking her personally.

I heard her exhale slowly through her nose. The exact same sound she'd made over the shark comment back in the locker room, except this time it was aimed at a plush toy instead of me.

"Move," I said.

"I don't need help."

"I didn't say you needed help. I said move."

She moved exactly four inches to the left, which I decided to count as a win. I fed in a coin, lined up the claw, and pressed the button with way more confidence than the situation had earned.

It dropped. Closed. Lifted. And stopped two inches short of the chute, the plush swinging gently off the claw's grip before thudding back down onto the pile.

Silence.

"That was worse than mine," Mio said.

"That was a warm-up."

"You don't get warm-ups. This is a coin-operated machine, not a gym."

"Everyone gets warm-ups."

I tried again. The claw slid clean off the side without grabbing anything at all. Mio made a small sound that might have been a laugh if she'd let it finish.

"Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You made a sound."

"That was a cough."

"It was definately not a cough."

Third attempt, the claw caught the plush's ear, lifted it a solid two feet, and let go directly over the chute, missing by what felt like a personal insult.

"I'm starting to understand your earlier struggle," I admitted.

"Welcome to my evening."

Fourth try, closer. Fifth try, closer still, the claw actually dragging the plush halfway across the machine before losing its grip entirely.

I finally looked at what she'd been aiming at this whole time. Not the big flashy ones up front, the aliens, the penguins, the mascot everyone wanted. Tucked in the back corner of the machine, half-buried under bigger prizes, was a small, slightly lopsided shark plush, stitched crooked at one fin like a factory reject nobody else had bothered fighting for.

"...You've been going for the ugly shark this whole time?"

"He's not ugly."

"His fin is on backwards."

"He's unique."

"That's... the nice word for it."

"I don't need the word. I need the shark." She crossed her arms, daring me to argue further.

"One more," I said.

"You've said that four times."

"Fifth time's the charm. That's just how it works."

"Is that a fact, or a thing you're saying because it sounds nice?"

"Both. It's more convincing if it's both."

Her mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. Close enough that I noticed.

I dropped in the sixth coin, lined the claw up directly over the crooked little shark, and pressed the button before I could second-guess the angle.

It dropped. Closed around one backwards fin. Lifted, wobbling the whole way, and this time it held, all the way to the chute, the shark tumbling down with a soft thud that felt louder than it should have.

I reached in, pulled it out, and held it toward her without any clever line ready, because I'd used them all up on five straight misses.

Mio took it. Turned it over once in her hands, looked at thefin like she was inspecting it for damage, then held it against her chest, just slightly, like she didn't want to admit she was doing it.

Then she looked up at me, and for a second the flat, composed version of her I'd gotten used to just wasn't there, replaced by something smaller and warmer I hadn't seen on her face before.

"Thank you," she said.

I felt my face heat up and had absolutely no idea what to do about it.