Slum Online (24 page)

BONUS ROUND

CHAPTER 1

I PRESSED THE
BUTTON and was no longer Jun Yamanouchi.

I had become Hashimoto.

My thumb worked the directional pad. Familiar music played through my headphones. The lights in my room were off. The storm shutters on the window were closed—I had taped cardboard over them to cover the gaps between the slats. My alarm clock was moping in the corner, collecting dust. It had made audible
ticks
as it counted away the seconds, but that was before I had torn out the batteries. The only source of light in the room was my flat-screen monitor; it cast a pale glow on the game console and my hands gripping the controller.

The nights are quiet in Otaru. The noise from my parents’ television downstairs vibrated up through the floor. I could feel it in my ribs. My body lay half on my futon, my torso propped up on my elbows. But my mind was already wandering the streets of Versus Town.

Sanchōme was filled with the same old digital sounds under the same old turquoise blue sky. It was just past eleven o’clock at night. I spotted some familiar characters moving across the twenty-four-inch screen.

It’d been three months since Pak’s win in the second season tournament.

No one had seen Jack. The Ganker of Sanchōme was gone. But the JTS Saloon was the same as ever. Right where it always had been. Most of the faces there were the same too: Hashimoto, Masumi, Ben, and Ricky. Seemed like RL had gotten its claws into Tetsuo’s player though. Sometimes he’d be there when I logged in, and sometimes he wouldn’t. When I did run into him, he’d oft en just be pacing back and forth along the streets of Sanchōme, like a lion in a cage.

Ninja Hashimoto was currently on the trail of another mystery—the biggest since Ganker Jack in fact.

The caper was a theft in RL: the mysterious disappearance of Pak’s tournament trophy last week. The trophy itself wasn’t particularly valuable. From the pictures I’d seen on the net, it looked pretty cheap. Not the kind of thing you could get much money for.

Pak’s player had been at an arcade event when it happened.

He’d only taken his eyes off of it for a second. Just long enough for the trophy to be stolen.

This intrigued me. Here we had something of extremely little value being stolen in plain sight in a crowded, public place. A trophy like that is valuable only because of the achievement it represents. It doesn’t work the other way around. No pawnshop would ever take it, and you couldn’t put it on your shelf and expect anyone to praise you for it. It wasn’t impressive to
have
the trophy—it was impressive to
be
the player who won it.

Versus Town Networks, Inc., the game’s owner, had put up an announcement on its homepage asking for the trophy’s return, no questions asked. The public forums were up in arms and even the polygons of Sanchōme looked a little jumpy, as though they were afraid something might come along and steal
them

I pride myself on being in the know, and investigating this kind of thing was Hashimoto’s raison d’être, so how could I resist looking into it? Here in Versus Town, the only real “meaning” came from a push of the directional pad. To get any more involved, the player had to put a part of themselves into the game. But that was like throwing dry ice in a bucket to make fog. Stop adding ice, and it all fades away. That was why Tetsuo’s player wasn’t logging in much these days. Jack had been his dry ice, but now that the saga of Tetsuo and Jack was over, he had no reason left to come to Versus Town. That was the nature of the game—and if you have something worth doing in RL, more power to you, I say.

As for me, I have nothing but the game. I got accepted to university in Tokyo only to run screaming three months later. Now I’m a professional shut-in. Who better to poke around the Internet trying to discover why someone would risk so much to steal something worth so little?

When I first retreated into my apartment down in Tokyo, I had this crazy idea that if I just went home the smell of the air would cure me. I’d be a regular person again. But when they finally dragged me back, I found that somehow the hands on my internal clock were moving at a different speed than those of my high school friends. We were off by about five seconds every hour or something. I couldn’t input the correct commands to communicate with them anymore; the timing was all off. So I resumed the life I had taken up so briefly in Tokyo and shut myself away in my room to play games.
What if
, I wondered,
I’m at the cutting edge of human evolution?
Maybe my brain is more highly evolved. It’s the kind of thing that, a century ago, only the nobility or the particularly well off would have even dreamed of contemplating. What would a lounging Roman aristocrat think if they saw how I was living? They’d probably think I had it all. “What a life,” they’d say. Or not. Whatever.

Of course my parents were worried about me. Then again, sometimes I caught them actually being happy about their own son quitting school and coming back home, which only served to reinforce my notions about the stupidity of parents. In any case, stupidity is what let me spend my days playing games, so I couldn’t complain.

I mashed the directional pad, sending Hashimoto running toward Sanchōme. I didn’t take any shortcuts, choosing instead the streets where I knew I’d run into a lot of other characters. Even aft er the text bubbles had faded over the heads of people talking in the street, I could read what they had been saying in my log. I could analyze it later to check for any chatter about the case. If you put together the right team, you could track just about every conversation taking place in Versus Town.

Hashimoto made his way to JTS. Just inside an alleyway, I saw someone on the screen—a man, wearing a school uniform one size too small. Or maybe he was just one size too big. He wore big wooden sandals on his feet. His hair was all spiked, like the protagonist in a manga, and he wore a white headband. It was the karateka Tetsuo, toughest fighter in Sanchōme, a virtual city block brimming with fighters.

I pulled out my keyboard and started typing in a greeting. A text bubble appeared over Hashimoto’s head.

> Tetsuo. It has been too long.

> About a week, right? I’ve been busy.

> Be warned: the way of the housewife with too much time on her hands is a dangerous path.

> Me? A housewife? Hardly.

> It was merely a jest.

I entered a command and Hashimoto nodded knowingly.

I could see Tetsuo was his usual new self: a stressed-out carnivore. Though his texture-mapped face hadn’t changed one pixel, he was moving
listlessly
. Or maybe it was just that Tetsuo’s player’s clock and the clock of this virtual city weren’t quite in sync.

Tetsuo spoke.

> Okay, to tell the truth, I got this problem IRL. Thought I’d head down to JTS and talk to the guys there about it.

> No good ever comes of bringing RL problems here, friend.

> Oh, I know that. It’s just not the kind of thing I can talk to anyone in RL about.

> It is the way of things to discuss RL problems with RL people, is it not? Have you no friends in whom you might confide?

Tetsuo seemed to think for moment.

> There were some guys in middle school and high school I used to think were friends. But we’ve grown apart since entering university. I guess I have one friend I could tell, but I haven’t talked to her in months. She might not even be around anymore.

> A sadder tale I have not heard for some time.

> It’s different with you?

> There are those whom my player considers to be friends. However, whether or not they consider my player to be a friend is unknown.

> No surprise there.

Tetsuo flung up his arms on-screen. In a place like the net, where a new hero was born every day, it was sad to think that this foundering, lost fellow was the man who rubbed Ganker Jack’s face in the dirt and got away with it. I knew I should have let it rest, but my fingers moved of their own accord.

> Tell me, Tetsuo. What troubles you?

Tetsuo didn’t move. Aft er a few moments, words began to fill the bubble hanging over his head.

> You hear about Pak’s tournament trophy getting stolen?

> How could anyone who has been in Versus Town over the last week not have heard?

> Great. Figures.

> This is what concerns you? I fail to see how Pak losing his trophy would affect you in any way.

> It wouldn’t if it were only missing.

> I am afraid you’ve lost me. What possible connection could there be between Pak’s loss and your distress?

> Look, first I need you to promise me you won’t tell anyone.

> A ninja says nothing.

> I mean it.

> … > Very funny.

> I promise you I will speak of this to no one.

The moment the words appeared on-screen over Hashimoto’s head, Tetsuo quickly forward-dashed from one end of the narrow alleyway in which we stood down to the other and back—checking to see if any other characters were close enough to eavesdrop on our conversation.

> This is quite the build-up.

Tetsuo approached and addressed Hashimoto again. His features betrayed nothing. Characters in
Versus Town
showed no sadness, joy, anger…or fear.

> Just between you and me, I know where Pak’s trophy is.

> This is most unexpected news! Though I cannot see why you would wish to conceal it. You should tell everyone as quickly as possible.

> Can’t do that.

> Why not?

> Because it’s at my house.

For a second, I stared at the words on the screen, not comprehending. Hashimoto, in full ninja garb, stood there on the screen like a lifeless puppet. It wasn’t until Tetsuo started typing again that my brain finally grasped what he was telling me.

> Someone sent it to me. Out of the blue. I don’t even know who it was.

In some ways, I had always thought of Tetsuo as Hashimoto’s shadow. Or perhaps you might call him another possible Hashimoto, the path not chosen. The path that Tetsuo’s player
hadn’t
chosen in RL was the path on which I found myself. Somewhere back in the endlessly branching tree of possible paths, he had taken one path, while I stood mired in the same spot at the fork in the road, unable to follow. In this way, I felt we were connected.

In RL, Jun Yamanouchi was his parents’ only son. I had a birth certificate and even health insurance. But from the viewpoint of productive society, I might as well have not existed. All this made me feel that as Hashimoto I should take this opportunity to help the character Tetsuo. Though one might consider it ironic for a person left stranded at the crossroads of life to lend aid to one who had already passed beyond him, it occurred to me that maybe this sort of thing actually happened all the time.

I found myself chuckling. The chuckle transmitted itself down my arm into the directional pad, and, without warning, Hashimoto executed a perfect somersault on the screen.

Tetsuo seemed surprised.

> What was that for?

> Alas, my hand merely slipped. Tetsuo, your concern is now my concern. Have no fear. All will be resolved.

CHAPTER 2

TETSUO OFFERED ME HIS RL PHONE NUMBER, but I refused and began my own investigation. Tetsuo was a bit dubious about my prospects, but I had already decided to see this through Hashimoto’s way. No good would come of intruding too far upon another player’s RL existence—or from another player intruding upon mine. In Versus Town I was only Hashimoto, and Tetsuo was Tetsuo, and that was the way it should be.

Also, it occurred to me that if the trophy thief had been able to uncover Tetsuo’s player’s RL address, then it couldn’t be all that difficult for me to do should the need arise. Tetsuo’s player hadn’t been so rash as to post his address online, but someone at Versus Town Networks, Inc., would certainly have access to it, and a simple scan of our conversation logs would shed some light on where he lived. From our limited conversations, I already knew that he was a university student with too much time on his hands. Of course, there was also a possibility that the thief was someone already known to him—maybe even someone who lived next door—who just happened to be a resident of Versus Town as well.