"To the Arcade!"

With midterms finally over, everyone in the class was ready to unwind and have fun. With that plan in mind, the class decided on a trip to the local arcade. Surprisingly, everyone was on board with this idea, even the girls in the class.

"Sensei! We decided to go to the arcade to unwind from midterms, want to come with us?"

Takada yelled out to our teacher down the hall. Our teacher simply shook her head and walked into the teachers' lounge. Takada shrugged and ushered everyone to follow him to the arcade.

"This is going to be fun..."

Came from a student talking with friends. Many of the students in the class were quite excited for the arcade, I know I was. As we got to the arcade, just like in class, many students broke off into their cliques and did their own thing. A lot of students also wanted to crowd around the popular students like Takada. Since I hadn't been to the arcade in years, I went off on my own to see if a record I set had was still unbeaten. As I make it to the game machine, one of my classmates was using it. To avoid any potential argument, I simply waiting for him to finish. But... I ended up waiting for what seemed like forever. 30 minutes or so passed before I started to get a little impatient.

"Um... excuse me, do you think I could check that game really quick?"

I had asked with a bit of nervousness. As I asked, he turned around slowly and glared at me. I could feel his eyes piercing into my soul, as he said to me in a deep tone:

"There's other games available... go play them loser."
"But this one game in particular, I just want to check it... I won't take long.

He got off the game, and I thought he was going to let me use it. I was very much mistaken, as he walked up towards me and got up in my face.

"Just because you got to spend a day or two with Takada, don't think you're automatically cool or something... Got it?"
"I never said that... I just wanted to check the leader boards for the game, that's all."

After a little bit of back and forth between him and I, he finally decided to let me check the game. But although he let me check the game, I could feel him glaring at me. It made me very uncomfortable but ignored it and continued what I was doing.

"Oh wow... someone managed to beat my record."

I mumbled to myself, I was impressed and also a little disappointed. Without thinking, I put in some money to attempt to take back my record. I had completely forgotten that he had let me play to check the leader boards.  

"Hey! I thought you said you were only checking the leader board."
"Sorry dude, my record was broken so I have to set it back."

My classmate seemed confused at my statement; he didn't know if I actually held a record here. But he just decided to watch me play. After a while many of the students from our class began gathering. All watching me as I attempted to break the record again.

"He's that good at this game?"
"I guess he is good for something..."
"It's kind of cool if you think about it."

I tuned the out the voices of my classmates, as I completely locked into the game. I was determined to get my record back. As more people came to watch, even those that didn't even go to the school, the closer I got to beating the record. After 15 minutes or so, I achieved my goat and beat the record. But my inner competitive nature kicked in, I wanted to ensure it would be difficult to beat it. So, I kept playing as long as I could, until I ran out of energy to keep going. As I put down the controller and turn around, I'm greeted with the stares of my classmates.

"So Shiro... you're actually good at something?"
"That doesn't make you cool or anything... but good job, I guess."

The half-assed comments didn't really affect me much, since it was something, I expected. My classmates hated when I actually have something good happen to me. Suddenly I see Takada, Seira, Hiyori, and Ryu come by:

"What's all this commotion about?"

Takada asked, as he looked around at the group of people around me.

"Oh, I had beat the record on this game."
"Congrats man! That's awesome."

After the commotion surrounding that concluded, we saw that the laser tag arena had opened up.

"Laser Tag?! Let's go guys!"

Excited classmates ran over there as I walked with my group.

"Thanks for coming over here when you did..."
"No problem Shiro, we were looking for you anyway."
"What for?

Before anyone answered, I looked at Seira and saw her smiling. I was wondering what her had so happy, but I decided not to ask. As we made it to the laser tag arena, teams were split into groups of 8. As expected, just about everyone tried to team up with Takada. I looked at him and gave him a slight nod of approval, he nodded back and went towards the other students. Leaving only Ryu, Hiyori, Seira, and myself. We ended not having enough people for our team, resulting in the staff having to split the 4 of us into the other teams.

"Shiro I won't let you win this!"

Seira had said to me as she smiled. I didn't know she had such a competitive spirit, but I liked it. As the laser tag game began, the atmosphere was filled with nothing but tension. Everyone was in the game to win. As students got eliminated one-by-one, the atmosphere got even more tense. The game went on for another 30 minutes as everyone got eliminated. After the game was over, most people were tired still from the exams. Resulting in many people going home to rest.

"So, what do you guys want to do?"

Takada asked our group.

"Well... I'm pretty worn out myself, so I guess I'll head home."

I had said as everyone nodded in agreement.

"Well, I guess that settles it then, we'll see each other at school when the scores are posted then."

With that, our short excursion to the arcade ended with success. Not much drama happened, and it seemed like everyone was able to enjoy themselves. Once again, I thought on how my life was slowly improving, and it all seemed to start once I met Seira. She was truly an angel, someone that I cherished despite knowing her for a short time. Something about her just pulled me towards her... I wanted to get closer to her, but I didn't want to rush things. I felt that if I rushed anything, it could ruin the friendship we already have. Walking home, I had finally realized my feelings for her, and thought:

"One day... I'll have the courage to tell her how I feel, I swear it."