Redo of a Romanceless Author’s Life Devoid of Love; Another Chance at Youth Chapter 62

Chapter 62. Executing Operation, Codena: Date, Morning (2/4)

When we all got off the bus we entered the mall together before we finally went our separate ways. Rosa and I headed straight to the arcade. It seed their group was headed to get sothing to eat, hungry after they’d just finished a few sets of bowling as a group.

I couldn’t help but marvel at these non-loners’ ability to do such boring activities together as a group and sohow find it fun.

But that’s beside the point. Rosa and I entered the arcade together and started competing against each other in the various gas they had.

We started off with skee ball first. It was a light-hearted competition to see who would get the highest score.

It’d been a long ti since I’d last visited an arcade and played this sort of ga. The last ti was when my mother was still alive. She used to take to a Chuck E Cheese in the city which has since shut down.

It was a bit nostalgic playing this sort of ga.

I always aid for the 100 point corners and managed to get a few shots in. Rosa adopted a safer playstyle and aid for the line of holes at the center.

In the end, I lost to her by 10 points. What a sad loss it was. But I wasn’t concerned about winning or losing here. I just wanted to keep the gas close. Simply destroying soone back to back in gas would kill soone’s fun.

When she won she raised her hands up in the air and shot a triumphant smile my way.

“You got lucky I had a bad bounce. I only missed that last shot and got a 10 because of it.” I played the part of a sore loser.

“Better luck next ti,” she said, cocky after taking her first victory.

After that, we moved on in search of another ga to play.

We stopped in front of a few fighting gas then sat down at one that had good graphics. It was Tekken 7. Honestly, fighting gas weren’t a specialty of mine. It’s not that I’ve never played them, it’s just that I never went too deep into them to master them.

I knew there was a profound depth to them and there were all sorts of crazy techniques, but that sort of thing wasn’t sothing I was interested in. Especially not at an arcade where if you lost you’d pay for another fight.

If mory served right, I never owned a Tekken ga on console myself, however, I had played Tekken gas before. Whenever my mother went shopping I’d go to the electronics section and play the demos they had set up in those stores. It was one of the few fond mories I had from my childhood.

Standing in an aisle in front of the case of video gas for all the different consoles available at the ti. Looking up, fully focused on the characters on the screen, there typically wouldn’t be anyone around . I’d be able to enjoy those free demos by myself in peace until my mother finished shopping and ca to pick up.

Aside from that though, I did have a few other fighting gas I could draw experience from. I played and owned Soul Calibur 3 for the PS2 so I played that a good amount back then. There were also the Dragon Ball Z and Naruto Ultimate Ninja gas I’d played a decent amount. There was even a pretty arbitrary oddball one as well, a Zatch Bell ga.

The only issue was all my experience was on a console controller, not an arcade controller. aning… I was essentially a noob with a little bit of prior fighting ga experience but no technique to speak of. I just knew the bare minimum basics.

I felt a bit troubled. I’d long put gaming behind , starting around the beginning of high school when I started to seriously focus on my studies and working part-ti in my previous life. I didn’t have the energy or ti to dedicate to it and I knew it would hinder .

Oh well. If I get crushed by her, I get crushed.

There wasn’t anyone else around the fighting ga machines at the mont, it was just us for the ti being. Everyone seed to be gathered elsewhere watching soone play so other ga. It sounded like they were quite impressive. We both put a coin into the machine and started choosing our characters. There were sowhere around twenty to thirty characters to choose from. I was too lazy to count.

Anyway, n should choose macho muscle n characters… that wasn’t sothing I agreed with. As a man, you picked the hot female characters in the skimpiest attire, right? Skimpy attire equates to a stronger character in my books.

I didn’t know the validity of that claim, but I felt like it was sohow deeply profound, so I went with it. In all honesty, it was probably the exact opposite, but I couldn’t be bothered because the instant I saw a chick with a super short black skirt, I was like, ‘yes please.’

She wore a furry, pastel pink bolero jacket with her na on the back, it ran down her arms and covered her hands with a pink button paw design on the underside. She also donned a pink and black dress with a short, ruffled skirt, with laces in the back and a pink bow. She had pink mini-speakers at her sides, as well as a black cat tail accessory. For her leggings, she had on black thigh-high stockings with a keyhole design in the front with a tiny heart at the top and pink knee pads. Her footwear, a pair of pink and white training shoes with black straps. She also wore pink headphones with black cat ears attached above her head of waist-length blond hair tied into pigtails.

I didn’t like to use the term cultured, but I could only think this was a woman fit for such a title. Bad jokes aside, she was probably a shit character with a bad personality, but oh well. I’d pick watching this chick fight over a sweaty macho muscle man any day of the week.

Once we’d locked in our characters we matched up with each other and began a fight.

“So you picked a female character.”

“Her skirt reminded of one of yours a bit.”

“Wha… you picked a character for that reason alone?”

“n are simple creatures at heart. Don’t bla , bla society. ‘We live in a society,’ as they often say.”

“Hehehe, what the heck?”

“You went and picked a sweaty macho muscle man I see.”

“He has a an six-pack and almost fully bald head, he must be strong. He must have trained so hard his hair fell out.”

“Oh, I can’t deny it, that logic is pretty sound.”

We started fighting. I started off by moving toward her and pressed buttons in sequence to figure out which buttons did what.

It seed she didn’t know what buttons did what either though so I backed off a bit and gave her so room to breathe.

“Have you played a fighting ga before?”

“No, this is my first ti actually.” I was a bit surprised. I thought she’d have at least played one since I saw that controller in her room before. Maybe it’s just not her specialty of video gas or sothing. She could be an FPS type.

“Well, just press each button to figure out what each one does first.” She did as instructed and got the hang of it. Once she did I approached her again and we started to exchange blows.

Punches, uppercuts, high kicks, low kicks, jumping kicks and punches in mid-air… backflips.

Backflips.

And more backflips. There were front flips too. I figured it was an important detail to add. But backflips. I an, backflips, co on they’re backflips, right?

Yes, when I saw the backflip animations, I couldn’t help but want to spam the combos for them. Ah yes, this is what fighting should be about. Hot girls doing backflips in short skirts. Truly the pinnacle of gaming at its finest. Whoever thought this one up, you have my stamp of approval.

In the end, I won the first bout.

“That’s so dirty, you just kept spamming flips.”

“Just like you, I am a complete noob to this, so I have every excuse to spam such moves.”

“There’s no way you have no experience at all in this.”

“Well… I have a little, but they’re all on console controllers. I have no experience with arcade controls like this, so I may have so experience but I have no technique to speak of.”

“Experience still matters even if you have no technique.”

“Either way, if a real pro showed up I’d be destroyed by them in a second. It wouldn’t even be close. If you even try to look at their inputs, a normal person will just think they’re jiggling the stick around like a lunatic with no rhy or reason and mashing buttons at random. What you’ll actually see on screen though, will be soone getting juggled to their death from an endless stream of precisely tid combos linked together seamlessly in one fluid motion.”

“Rematch. I want a rematch.”

“Sure.”

I wasn’t going to bully her in a ga she was completely new to though. I also didn’t want her to be the only one losing money so I decided to take a loss. I made it look like a pretty close fight still.

When she won she was happy. She wanted another fight.

The next fight, I beat her again. I still ensured she was able to have fun as well though, allowing her to land a good amount of hits on .

She requested another match and I beat her by a slim margin again. She was getting more used to it though as I’d given her the opportunity to learn rather than trying to steamroll her.

The fifth match, I lost by a wider margin on purpose. It would be suspicious if every match was too close after all.

The sixth round, I won by a bit wider margin.

We went back and forth up until the tenth match where she’d won four tis and I’d won six tis. It was my overall victory. It had been five to four in my favor and my last win was what settled it. She accepted defeat, but she had a satisfied look on her face. Her mood hadn’t soured which was good.

Since I could play until I lost, she told to keep going until I did. I fought two more tis and won before a guy ca over and sat down at the machine my girlfriend had been playing at before.

I was soon matched up against him.

He‘d picked so dude with a black eye patch over his right eye. Was this guy trying to seal the demon contained within it? I wanted to laugh a little, but I kept my stupid thoughts to myself.

The character overall looked like so young punk off the street who took a few karate classes and thought he was suddenly hot shit. To , he was the type you just wanted to punch in the face for his cocky appearance. Though, I was sure he would probably still be quite popular with girls with his baggy black jeans and chain dangling from his waist. The tight-fitting white shirt greatly emphasized his muscles. The only thing I could voice complaints about in terms of clothing was how dorky the little blue cape which resembled a leather jacket looked. He had it hung from the front of his neck by another chain.

If you took away that stupid little blue cape and eye patch, he might not give off any edgy middle schooler trying to look cool vibes.

Look at mom, I’m so cool.

I couldn’t help but see him saying that.

Well, anyway, the fight began and the next thing I heard was so insanely fast stick movents from my side. I instantly knew I was screwed the second I got thrown up into the air.

I didn’t even bother to watch the screen or the rest of the fight. There was no point. I stood up, turned around, and let him do whatever he wanted to my character.