Slum Online (21 page)

He wore a black tank top and black leather pants. A white skull was dyed into the texture on his back. There was a black wristband on his forearm. Where his eyes and mouth should have been there was only a sinister mask, its grin done up like those designs the Americans painted on the noses of their bombers during the war. He looked like a middleweight snake boxer.

Tetsuo turned to face the masked man. He was ahead and 45 degrees to the left. Three steps away, Tetsuo stopped.

A bubble of text appeared above the man’s head.

> Karateka. Are you Tetsuo?

With my left hand still on the stick, I pecked at the keyboard with my right.

> I am.

> Let’s fight.

> Are you Ganker Jack?

> That’s what they call me, anyway.

> Sorry, I’ve got a tournament to get back to.

I looked around the screen. The only thing on the ground was that can of kerosene. Tetsuo would need more than that to make it back over the wall. It didn’t occur to me to cut my connection and log in again.

> You running?

> There’s the tournament.

> So that’s why you’re here. Couldn’t take the buzzing of the flies back at the arena? Had to hit the quiet city streets?

> The semifinals are about to start.

> So?

> If I beat Tanaka, I’m in the finals. Beat Pak, and I’m No. 1. > You really believe that?

> What?

> Why do you fight?

> I fight to be the best.

> Then you’re wasting your time with Pak.

> He’s last year’s champion.

> You really think whoever wins in that little ring is the best?

> Why not?

> In boxing, it’s a boxer. In fencing, it’s a fencer. There’s a best for every set of rules. We don’t need an arena to tell us who the best is. Whoever wins in the arena is the champion of the arena. The best in town is the best in town.

Tetsuo and Jack stood in a small alley in Sanchōme. All around them sprawled the slums of the city. The kerosene can rested at the edge of the screen. They were in a virtual space. A city without electricity or gas. Without hospitals or post offices. It was a make-believe city populated with make-believe beings. And Tetsuo had a question for Ganker Jack.

> Why do you gank people?

> Not the first time I’ve been asked.

Jack walked slowly to one side, making a clear path for Tetsuo.

> I picked you for a reason. But if you got your heart set on that tournament, I won’t keep you from it. Go beat Pak. Let everybody tell you how great you are.

The clock on my DVR read 6:31
PM
. If I hurried, I could make it to the ring in about two minutes. Tetsuo and Tanaka’s match started after Pak’s, so if I left now, I still had time.

I knew Tetsuo was good.

Tetsuo practiced combos on training dummies. Tetsuo explored the back alleyways of Sanchōme. Tetsuo could kick off a rolling steel drum to jump an E-rank wall. Tetsuo hunted Jack. Tetsuo entered the tournament. Tetsuo, Tetsuo, Tetsuo… I was Tetsuo, but for some reason, at that moment of all times, I couldn’t get Fumiko out of my mind.

Fumiko and I were two very different people. We thought differently, we lived differently. We had different likes and dislikes. We didn’t even take notes at the same speed. We could see eye to eye on an intellectual level, but we were as different as night and day.

But that was what kept us together.

I’d fallen into the habit of adjusting my life to suit hers. I sacrificed sleep to wake up earlier. I went to lectures I had no intention of listening to. I searched for the blue cat she was supposed to be looking for even harder than she did. I felt as though everything I did had to mesh with her worldview. But that was a mistake. We fought because we had different sets of values, and that wasn’t something worth fighting over. It didn’t matter that we didn’t share a single common interest. It was enough that I was by her side, and she was by mine. And that’s why I cared for her. No, that’s why I loved her. It finally made sense. I could finally admit it to myself.

I loved her, and because I loved her I had to be the person that she loved. I had to follow through with what I had begun. I had to fight. That was the person she had fallen for. If I ran away, if I turned back now, then that person would cease to exist.

I felt the mist around my heart burn away. Funny that I should realize all this online, talking to someone I didn’t know in a side alley of a city that didn’t even exist in RL.

Because I couldn’t find the words to say the only important thing there was to say, Fumiko and I had missed our chance. Or maybe life was nothing more than a series of missed chances.

I felt a laugh rise in my throat. I tried to swallow it, but it came spilling out all the same. It was a good thing I was in Versus Town when it did. Here my laugh remained a secret thing. Unless it affected the stick I held or the buttons I pressed, Jack would never know. If he had, he’d probably think I was certifiably deranged.

If Fumiko and I were complete opposites, Tetsuo and Jack were two peas in a pod. They dreamed the same dream and lived by the same code. The spot they were vying for wasn’t a spot on the winner’s platform, it was lurking somewhere down in the slums of Sanchōme. And it wasn’t big enough for the two of them. In the small hours of the night, while ordinary people lay asleep in their beds, Tetsuo and Jack scoured the darkest corners of this virtual town looking for it.

Tetsuo didn’t need to prove his skill to anyone. Neither did Jack. They knew their skill, and that was enough. This was a choice I couldn’t get wrong. To be true to who I was, I knew who Tetsuo had to fight.

I looked into the screen and took a slow, deep breath. I flicked out a command with the stick. Tetsuo dropped into a fighting stance.

I input another command as I typed. Broken down into packets of light my command sped through fiber optic cables to the game’s servers for processing, the resulting calculations reduced again to packets that boomeranged back to my console. After a delay lasting a mere fifteenth of a second, Tetsuo adjusted his white headband.

> Let’s rock.

> Music to my ears.

> You wanna get us started?

> After you.

I counted slowly to three.

My fingers flashed over the controls, giving the command for a speed dash. Tetsuo covered the three and a half steps between himself and Jack in a headlong rush. I canceled out of a punch into an elbow, then canceled again into a throw.

The throw landed. Tetsuo grabbed Jack by the nape of the neck. Jack brushed Tetsuo’s hand away, causing them both to spin 45 degrees around each other before coming to a halt. The two characters stood facing each other a step and a half apart.

Maybe throws weren’t going to work on Jack after all. I put in a slight delay before inputting the command, so even with a throw break in his buffer my throw should have made it through. Should have. But Jack was responding to the throws as they appeared on-screen. It shouldn’t have been possible, but someone with superhuman reflexes just might be able to pull it off.

Jack stepped forward and to the right. Tetsuo advanced, throwing his fastest punch as he did. Jack dodged to the left. Then he turned his back against the E-rank wall.

Tetsuo rushed at Jack. Tetsuo threw a punch, followed immediately by a crouching punch. Jack blocked both, then went on the offensive. He launched a roundhouse kick, canceled it. Jack turned and leapt toward the wall at a roughly 90-degree angle. He air-blocked, then launched a flying kick at Tetsuo as he came out of the triangle jump off the wall. I couldn’t block in time, and Tetsuo took the full force of the attack.

Jack closed in on Tetsuo as he lay sprawled on the ground. Tetsuo rolled to one side, gaining some distance. Jack launched a roundhouse kick as Tetsuo got back on his feet. Tetsuo blocked. Jack canceled out of a spin kick into a crouching punch. Tetsuo’s health fell.

Jack fell back. Tetsuo followed, canceling out of a punchkick combo into a speed dash. Normally this was when Tetsuo would have gone for a throw, but he went with a low spin kick instead. The attack caught Jack in the leg, throwing him off balance. Tetsuo jabbed with his elbow as he advanced, but Jack had already recovered, giving him just enough time to block the attack.

I grunted in frustration.

If you could rule out being thrown, the only things you had to watch out for were midair combos off a counter. Catching Ganker Jack in midair without throwing him would be even harder than I’d imagined. If Tetsuo’s arsenal was reduced to rock and paper, then the outcome was more or less decided before the fight had even begun.

But Pak had done it. On holy ground in a Shinjuku arcade, Pak had won using nothing but rock and paper. Pak, who even then had thousands of eyes on him as he competed in the finals, had pulled it off.

I had to get out of the open. Tetsuo darted into the thick of Sanchōme. Only a split second behind, Jack gave chase.

Another figure appeared suddenly on the screen. The character had scaled the E-rank wall and landed in roughly the same place Tetsuo and Jack had come tumbling down.

I reached for my keyboard. Words bubbled over Tetsuo’s head.

> Wait. Someone’s here.

>You didn’t show for a quarterfinal match. Someone must’ve gotten curious.

> What now? Keep fighting?

> I ain’t stopping. If they’re looking for you, we’ll go somewhere they won’t find you. How’s the back side of Sanchōme sound?

> JTS?

> We’ll finish this there.

> Don’t get lost.

> I’ll be there, don’t you worry.

Jack melted into the alleys of Sanchōme. Tetsuo just stood there, hoping to conceal the fact that they’d been fighting only moments before.

The man who had scaled the wall wore a deep blue ninja outfit. On his feet was a pair of jet-black tabi. He was a lightweight character, a jujutsuka. Versus Town’s very own ninja, Hashimoto.

Hashimoto approached with his usual gait. He turned to face Tetsuo, 45 degrees ahead and to the left. He stood three and a half steps away, just out of Tetsuo’s dash-throw range.

> Well done.

> What did I do?

> You flushed out the fox.

Hashimoto’s slightly out-of-place role-playing was reassuringly familiar.

> Yeah.

> Then my suspicion was correct. The window in which he could safely contact you was small.

> So you saw this coming. Pretty sharp.

> I will take over from here. Make your way back to the arena.

I figured Hashimoto would say as much, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. Tetsuo stood there, an empty text bubble hanging over his head.

> Why do you hesitate?

> Sorry. I can’t do that.

> Pak will be expecting you.

> I don’t care. Pak’s not important anymore.

> I was under the impression being the best in Versus Town was the object of your quest. Do you intend to let this chance slip away?

> My fight is somewhere else. Out here, in the back alleys.

> The arena is also a part of this town.

> No. So long as Pak’s player exists in Shinjuku as Pak’s player, I won’t find him where I’m looking. I know that now. But we’ve already been over this.

> I have no recollection of that conversation.

> Drop the act. I know you don’t like mixing the real with the virtual, but this is important. You keep your two personas as separate as anyone, so you should understand. We talked about this at the arcade in Shinjuku.

> Alas, you are mistaken. I can no longer go to Shinjuku.

> What is lying about it now going to serve?

> Ninja never lie. I live in Hokkaido.

> What?

Hashimoto stood there, three and a half steps away, his expression unchanging. A face made only of textures couldn’t change its expression.

> Tetsuo, is it not possible you have confused me with another? It is true that my player—that I—have been to Shinjuku. But now I am fled north. I live in exile.

> Then you aren’t Lui?

> Alas, this person named Lui is not known to me.

He stood there beneath a bubble of text. Tetsuo’s bubble still held his last question.

I tried to think back on our conversations. I couldn’t believe it. Lui had never said she was Hashimoto. In fact, she’d never said anything about who she was. All she had said was, “Alas, I am sworn to secrecy.” With those words and a wink, she had me hook, line and sinker. Lui knew so much about
Versus Town
that it never even occurred to me she could be anyone else. When I thought about it, it made sense though. Anyone who had ever been to JTS would know who Hashimoto was.

The things she said in Shinjuku could have been said by anyone. There was nothing that only Hashimoto would have known. Looking back, it actually made even more sense coming from someone that wasn’t Hashimoto. A role-player like the person who played Hashimoto would never suggest that an arcade in Shinjuku was more important to Pak than Versus Town itself. Whoever it was would also have had to see what I had seen. Spent hours on end going where I had gone. In all of Versus Town, there was only one other character I could think of who fit the bill.