[Amaori Residence, Suburban Tokyo — April 15th, 5:30 PM]
After transferring trains with Renako, Kazama Haru finally arrived at the Amaori family's doorstep at half past five.
The evening air carried the faint sweetness of someone's laundry detergent drifting from a nearby balcony, mingling with the distant clatter of dishes being prepared for dinner somewhere down the street.
"I'm home!"
Amaori Renako deliberately shouted with extra volume—all to ensure her sister, who always looked down on her (but actually adored her beneath that attitude), would hear every syllable.
"Ah, Onee-chan, you're finally back. So, did you manage to make any friends in your new school life?"
Hearing her sister's announcement, Amaori Haruna emerged from the hallway, a half-eaten popsicle dangling from her lips. Her hair was pulled into a cute single ponytail that swayed with each step.
She wore loose, comfortable loungewear—knee-length shorts that left her fair, slender calves exposed to the warm indoor air, radiating that effortless youthful energy only a carefree middle schooler could possess.
"Let me guess, Onee-chan, today you—!"
"Hyaaa?!"
The moment Kazama Haru appeared from behind Renako, the younger girl's voice transformed into a shriek that wouldn't sound out of place in a horror manga.
The popsicle slipped from her frozen lips, hitting the wooden floor with a wet splat. Sticky grape syrup immediately began pooling around her bare feet.
Uh, why is this kid's reaction so intense?
"Ah, you must be Haruna-chan. Hello, my name is Kazama Haru."
Although he couldn't quite understand why she'd short-circuited so completely, Kazama Haru reflexively curved his lips into a polite, gentle smile and offered a slight bow toward Haruna, who remained rooted to the spot like a statue in a temple garden.
"H-h-hello!"
After roughly ten seconds, Amaori Haruna finally rebooted from her petrified state.
Her eyes darted between Renako and Kazama Haru. Following a brief, tense silence, she inhaled deeply—the kind of fortifying breath someone takes before confessing to their crush—and spoke.
"Um... Kazama-san, is it? Excuse me for asking, but... did my hopeless sister do something incredibly stupid to offend you? Something so terrible you've gone to such lengths, even tracking her down to our home to settle the score..."
It seemed a catastrophic misunderstanding had taken root.
"Oww!"
Amaori Renako mercilessly delivered a sharp chop to her sister's head. "Honestly! How little faith do you have in your Onee-chan?!"
"This is Kazama-san, a classmate of mine, and also my newly made..." She paused, her confidence visibly wavering. "...friend."
Despite the obvious uncertainty wobbling in that final word, Amaori Renako still gestured toward Kazama Haru with both hands like a game show assistant presenting the grand prize.
"She actually... genuinely made a friend. And an ikemen of this caliber, no less."
Amaori Haruna's expression cycled through disbelief, shock, and something resembling awe. She stared at Kazama Haru in a daze before suddenly realizing her rudeness, snapping into a perfect ninety-degree bow so fast her ponytail whipped through the air.
"I'm terribly sorry, Kazama-san! Please forgive my rude assumptions just now!"
She straightened slightly, then added: "Um, although my sister is basically a total mob character with zero remarkable qualities, please take good care of her anyway!"
'Sister, you definitely said something completely unnecessary just now.' Dark lines of exasperation practically manifested across Renako's forehead.
"Ah, it's my fault for not explaining the situation clearly, which caused your misunderstanding, Haruna-chan." Kazama Haru tilted his head apologetically, that gentle expression softening his already handsome features.
Even this simple apologetic look caused Amari Haruna—herself an Extrovert who commanded plenty of attention in her own class—to momentarily blue-screen all over again.
Sensing the atmosphere veering into dangerous territory, Amaori Renako quickly flicked her hair with practiced elegance, seizing control of the conversation. "Anyway! Kazama-san is here to play the game I just bought with me. We're heading to my room now, so don't bother us."
"Ah, Kazama-san, could we maybe exchange contact info later—"
"Don't. Bother. Us!"
The two sisters seemed trapped in completely separate wavelengths.
Watching her sister's sheepish, retreating figure disappear around the corner, Renako turned to Kazama Haru with a winning smile. "Come on, Kazama-san. Don't mind that cheeky little brat. Let's go play."
Kazama Haru nodded and followed Renako up the stairs to her second-floor room.
The space was decorated in calming shades of blue—navy curtains, powder-blue bedspread, cerulean desk accessories. Everything was organized with meticulous care. Though not particularly large, the room housed an impressive twenty-seven-inch television mounted opposite her bed.
On the shelf beneath the TV cabinet, a row of game cases was arranged by genre with almost obsessive precision, their spines forming a gradient from action titles to RPGs.
The air didn't carry any particular "girly" fragrance—no overwhelming perfume or scented candles—just the clean, fresh scent of recently laundered sheets and a faint hint of the strawberry-scented eraser on her desk.
For someone who had freely wandered in and out of his childhood friend Ajisai's room since elementary school, Kazama Haru naturally wouldn't panic like some romance manga protagonist experiencing his first encounter with feminine territory.
Amaori Renako, however, was visibly struggling. The blush creeping across her cheeks from sheer embarrassment was nearly impossible to disguise, no matter how she angled her face away.
To mask her inner chaos, she quickly powered on her PlayStation console and inserted the brand-new "Modern Warfare" disc with slightly trembling fingers.
"Kazama-san, just so you know, this game requires actual skill." She deliberately adopted a somewhat haughty tone, settling cross-legged on the carpet. "Think you can keep up without dragging me down in co-op?"
"Hmm, the game content itself shouldn't be a problem, but..."
Kazama Haru examined the controller Renako handed him, his expression troubled.
Who uses a controller to play an FPS?!
Even knowing aim assist existed, Kazama Haru still couldn't accept the concept of shooting with thumbsticks. It felt fundamentally wrong, like eating ramen with a fork.
Fortunately, he had the system.
Add points!
To properly enjoy this gaming session with Amanori Renako, Kazama Haru mentally waved his hand and spent 1000 wish points without hesitation.
Ding.
「Skill 'Shooting Game' LV1 (Beginner) acquired.」
Ding.
「Skill 'Shooting Game' has been upgraded to LV2 (Proficient).」
Ding.
「Skill 'Shooting Game' has been upgraded to LV3 (Professional).」
Every system notification that chimed in his ears sent another surge of confidence flooding through his veins.
Time to show my true power!
As the battlefield environment for their split-screen co-op mode finished rendering, Kazama Haru felt reality blur at the edges—as if he'd genuinely been transported into that war-torn digital space.
The controller transformed from a clunky plastic brick into a natural extension of his nervous system. Every micro-adjustment of his thumbs, every calculated trigger pull, flowed with the precision of instinct honed over thousands of hours he'd never actually played.
"Kazama-san, there's a fog-of-war section coming up ahead." Renako's voice came through slightly muffled by her own concentration. "Enemies might pop out from behind those cargo crates at any second. If you get tagged once, the follow-up shots will chain and delete your HP bar instantly."
Kazama Haru didn't respond to her warning.
It wasn't arrogance keeping him silent—he genuinely couldn't hear her anymore.
...There.
A faint scuff of footsteps. Barely audible beneath the game's deliberately tense orchestral score, designed to mask exactly these kinds of audio cues. But to Kazama Haru's enhanced perception, that sound cut through the noise like someone pounding on a door at three in the morning.
Concepts like gun weight and recoil compensation seemed to evaporate from his mental dictionary, leaving behind only an absolute, crystalline sense of control.
His left thumb guided the analog stick; his index finger depressed L2 for aim-down-sights. His right hand calmly pressed R2—the trigger—directing his barrel toward a specific point in the swirling digital smoke.
Bzzzt—!
The controller vibrated with satisfying kill feedback.
"Ohhh, not bad at all, Kazama-san!"
Amaori Renako pumped her fist excitedly. Though privately she suspected that shot had been pure beginner's luck, she still showered him with enthusiastic encouragement.
"Renako. Left side, two hostiles." Another whisper of virtual footsteps reached his ears, and Kazama Haru calmly relayed the intel.
"Eh?!"
Amaori Renako's eyes widened as she frantically shoved the joystick to spin her character around. Before her camera could even complete the rotation, a volley of enemy bullets punched through her avatar's chest.
"Ahaha... yeah, I definitely shouldn't have picked Veteran difficulty for my first run."
Watching her screen fade to that familiar death-gray, Renako sighed in theatrical defeat.
Before purchasing the game, she'd seen countless forum posts complaining about this exact section's brutal difficulty spike.
Now even she—someone who'd been gaming for over a decade, who knew every enemy spawn pattern in the entire franchise by heart—had fallen. This level would probably require grinding through a second playthrough to—
Her wandering thoughts snagged on Kazama Haru's profile.
He remained completely absorbed, oblivious to how his headphones had flattened one side of his usually perfect hair into a messy tuft. His pupils reflected nothing but muzzle flashes and tracer rounds.
That serious expression is unfairly handsome too.
Unfortunately, being handsome wouldn't translate into actual gameplay skill.
Hm? That's weird. Those two elite enemies should have spawned ages ago. By her calculations, he should have died right after her. So why was he still staring at his screen with such intensity?
Renako propped herself up on one elbow, leaning closer to peek at Kazama Haru's half of the split-screen.
BANG. BANG.
Two crisp, devastating gunshots pierced through the battlefield's ambient chaos.
The bullets from his equipped weapon—"Burns"—seemed to possess homing capabilities, threading through the obscuring smoke with surgical precision to perforate the skulls of both elite-class enemies.
「HEADSHOT KILL: Hound」
「HEADSHOT KILL: Ghost」