You Want Me to Teach You the Game?
No matter how gifted you might be, limits always exist. Just as even the fastest runner can never outrun a car, the human body has a ceiling it simply cannot break. I was no exception.
Even with senses as sharp as mine, I couldn't track every raindrop falling from the sky. More importantly, senses and the body were entirely different domains. Even if you perceived something perfectly, it meant nothing if your body couldn't keep up.
Like right now.
Enemies had me flanked on both sides. There was no gap to slip through, and dodging the bullets was already a stretch. One shooter I might have managed—two, and there was simply no way to evade. On top of that, one of them was packing a shotgun, the so-called king of close-range weapons. An SMG I could maybe handle, but I had no confidence I could dodge pellets spreading in every direction.
Bang! Another shot cracked on its heels, and my character crumpled helplessly to the ground.
Blood spilled thick enough to soak the floor, but there was no pain to match it. Whether it was for the user's safety or not, the hurt barely registered—just the sensation of something punching through my body.
I'd heard the expensive Connector models let you adjust how much pain you felt. I wasn't some masochist who enjoyed it, but I envied that feature a little. Without pain, your senses inevitably went dull. Sometimes pain was the best stimulant for keeping a mind sharp.
The black-and-white death screen still felt unfamiliar. Respawn took a moment, so I watched Jump play in the meantime.
He didn't seem to have a good way to break through the enemy team holding the entrance. He stayed crouched behind cover, waiting for their ammo to run dry. Then the enemy fire paused for a beat. Jump, reading the reload timing, immediately aimed toward them. They were still behind cover, but seizing the initiative at least ought to have been possible.
A shot cracked. Another followed, bullets cutting through the air toward the enemy. Instead of hitting the cover he'd aimed at, Jump's rounds landed wildly off-target.
"...I wasn't really trying to hit them. Just suppressing fire."
Jump rushed to excuse himself, clearly embarrassed by the miss. I couldn't see chat, but I could guess what they were typing without much trouble.
Still, he seemed to know how he ought to move. He kept up the suppressing fire and slowly closed in on the enemies' blind side. An enemy player spotted the approach too late and tried to shoot—but Jump had already shifted into a position where he could see them, and he was just a little faster. A bit clumsy, but a successful finish.
Jump let out a short whoop, as if even he thought it had been sloppy. Closing in on their blind side had been the right call, but the execution was inevitably clumsy. He'd been lucky the cornered opponent had rushed the attack. If they'd held their defense and moved calmly, Jump might have been the one tripping over his own feet.
Watching him fight, I offered my personal assessment.
"Do you close your eyes when you shoot? The way you fight is completely brainless, too. At this point I have to wonder if something's wrong with your brain."
"Huh? What are you—"
"You're just too trash. I feel like I'd play better than that with my eyes closed."
"Unknown?"
Maybe that was too much. I'd absentmindedly said the words that had been running through my head. In mercenary life, surrounded by rough men, almost nobody listened even if you tried to be nice. Most conversation was swearing, and it had become a habit.
Then again, so what? It was a little harsh, sure, but I wasn't exactly wrong.
If it pissed him off, he could just be better than me.
Jump froze at Unknown's unexpected verbal lashing. He even died for it—too slow to react despite watching an enemy walk straight at him.
She really has no reverse gear.
He'd felt it from the moment they met. There was no inhibitor in that head. He even wondered if she skipped any kind of filter whenever a thought popped up. Even without a limiter, shouldn't there at least be a speed bump? To think she'd say something that would wound a sensitive person without a second thought.
Jump snuck a glance at the chat window.
Just as he'd expected, chat had exploded a while ago. Jump was grateful Unknown couldn't see it. The messages were filthy enough to sour his mood even when he wasn't the target. It wasn't hard to imagine how Unknown would feel if she read sexual harassment aimed at her.
Have I been too lenient lately?
While he waited to respawn, Jump fired off a message to his manager.
Ordinarily Jump let most swearing slide. This time the target wasn't him, and he had no intention of letting it go.
"The game's almost over. Want to run another?"
At Unknown's words he checked the score, and she was right—it was nearly finished. Three more kills and the match would be a win. Then again, with a slaughterer on the team pubstomping the enemy, it would have been stranger if the game hadn't snowballed.
Jump's mind started turning fast. Playing a few more matches here wasn't going to wring much entertainment out of the stream. Unknown would just farm the other team and the games would end in wins. On top of that, aside from spectating, Unknown barely appeared on camera at all, and the viewers' complaints were no joke. Anyone who didn't know she existed couldn't even tell what was going on. If he ended the broadcast like this, chat would absolutely be wallpapered with Narak.
"Running another could be fun too... but would you maybe consider teaching me the game?"
It was a gamble, as far as Jump was concerned. How many people would actually say yes if you suddenly asked them to teach you? But this was him thrashing to keep the stream alive.
Unknown's skill was already as good as proven. And teaching him would mean she inevitably had to stay on his screen. Her girlish voice riding out over the broadcast was a bonus. Wasn't that exactly what the viewers wanted? He got better at the game; the viewers got to hear a woman's voice. Two birds with one stone. A win-win.
Unknown cut him down without hesitation.
"Jump, you're so bad at the game I don't think there'd be any joy in teaching you."
"Haha, am I really that bad?"
The silence that followed was unbearably heavy. Jump had always believed he had decent Physical. Standing in front of a real mechanical monster, he realized how much of a frog in a well he'd been.
In that sense, he'd thought there might be some common language between people who fought with the same kind of Physical. They fought the same way, so there'd be plenty of advice to hear, plenty of little tips to pick up. His hopes were met with nothing at all.
Chat had long since filled with people laughing at him. Nothing they were saying was particularly wrong, but it still sat uncomfortably in Jump's chest.
Bronze is still Bronze... but how is that Bronze-level play?
If you actually thought about it, Unknown was Bronze because she'd barely started the game. He knew perfectly well that once she filled out her match count she'd hit Diamond at minimum, and they were still talking like this.
He forced himself to ignore the chat and opened his mouth toward Unknown again.
"I'm not asking you to dramatically raise my skill or anything. Just teaching me the basics would be fine."
Jump didn't actually believe he could reach Unknown's level. Even if he learned from her directly, dodging bullets wasn't a trick just anyone could pull off. That was the kind of technique even people with the talent for it might never manage. Simple fundamentals, marksmanship, a few modest tips—that would be enough. The occasional display of perfect shooting, the way she seemed to toy with her enemies—those were things worth learning.
"...Unknown?"
He couldn't take the continuing silence and spoke up again. He knew a refusal would be what it was, but the thought that she would probably say no still left him disappointed. This would be such a good stream bit, though.
Then Unknown's voice came, quiet and low.
"I'm not very good at teaching. Are you sure that's okay?"
"Yes! Of course."
And in that moment, Jump had no idea that this would be the beginning of his suffering.