Bubble Bobble
"How... why..."
The Demon King, looking utterly crushed, stared at her fallen demon character with an expression of pure disbelief.
"I've never lost before... I always won..."
That's because you were playing against a computer.
This was probably her first real match against an actual person. The world isn't that easy, you little shit.
That said, did her skills not work on people? Absolutely not. Out of a hundred ordinary folks, ninety-nine wouldn't even take half her health bar.
...Anyway.
The time of reckoning had arrived.
"...Nngh."
She knew it too. Those lips, red as her eyes, had gone pale. A kid who trembled at a mere forehead flick, taking a fighting-game beating? She'd probably assumed she'd win just because she steamrolled the computer every single day.
With this, another line was added to her list of disgraces, following the eighteen-stage Barrel Roulette bombardment.
And my anxiety kept swelling by the second.
"....Hit me."
"...Huh?"
"......Hit me. I can't forgive myself."
She pressed the quit button. Then she shoved her glossy black hair toward me.
"I'm starting training again tomorrow. Next time I'll definitely beat you. Definitely. For sure."
"...Yeah. I'll cheer you on."
I could tell she was dead serious about Iron Fist.
Anyway, this was a massive win for me. For a competitive freak like her to cleanly accept a single-match loss? The shock must have been enormous.
She turned the game off, too.
Which meant...
I could beat the living hell out of her and there wouldn't be any revenge coming back.
If I'd known it would go like this, I would've finished her with a Giant Airdrop.
Some people might see me as a depraved garbage beast for enjoying hitting a girl.
Fuck that.
A male ant who could get crushed by a female elephant at any moment doesn't deserve to be condemned for taking one little bite.
Alright. Time to die...
"Ah, right."
"Huh?"
The Demon King stopped me as I approached, placing a hand on her head and gathering mana.
Thorn Shield — OFF
Titan's Head — OFF
Medusa's Kiss — OFF
Orichalcum... — OFF
Once again, the Demon King was stripping the defensive buffs stacked on her head, one after another. The transparent barriers shimmering across her pale forehead vanished in sequence.
"There. Almost forgot. Now even if you hit me, your hand won't get shredded to pieces."
Fuck! That's not something you "almost forget"! I almost got shredded to pieces!
This detestable pachycephalosaurus squeezed her eyes shut and presented the crown of her head. Permission granted for the bomb drop.
I'm here to collect on a debt, you little shit.
The Demon King's clenched lips and the clasped hands resting on her knees trembled faintly.
...I'm hungry.
The moment I lowered my knuckle-rap hand, the terrified Demon King cautiously cracked her eyes open.
"...Uh, when are you gonna hit me?"
"I'm not hitting you."
"Wh-what?! Are you pitying me right now? Just because you won one match? Let's just go again! Best of ten!"
"I feel like I won with cheap tricks earlier."
"...Cheap tricks?"
I fed her a string of convenient excuses. Your character actually had a type disadvantage. The techniques I used are considered taboo cheap tactics in the Iron Fist league, and so on. The match-obsessed Demon King rounded her crimson eyes and nodded along.
"I see... so I didn't actually lose, then?"
"Well, something like that."
"Really? Then go ahead."
Ziiing. A yellow beam was absorbed into her red eyes. Shit, she really can still use it!
"Whoa, stop! I still won, though! A win is a win!"
"...What, so you won or you didn't?"
Haaah...
"So I'm saying let's do something other than hitting. There's a lingering sourness about it."
"I'll say this up front — I'm not sending you home."
"I've given up on that part."
That was a lie.
"Really? How nice of you. So what should we do instead?"
"Let's stop gaming and eat."
"Huh? Why, why?"
?
Why, though.
Why was she making a more frightened face than when I'd been about to hit her?
"Is it... not fun?"
"Huh? No, that's not it."
"It's because it's not fun?"
The Demon King's pupils trembled violently. Like a little girl terrified that a helium balloon caught in a tree might float away.
"Fighting games... you're too strong an opponent, so I'm a bit tired."
The anxious look vanished at those words I'd tossed out just to sound nice. Man, she was an easy person to read.
"Then we can just play a game we can do together."
...I didn't want to do that either. Well, still better than Iron Fist...
"If you suck at it, I'll kill you."
Ah... goddamn it.
The next fucking... I mean, the next game was Bubble Bobble. You know, the one with the green and pink dinosaurs. That merciless game where you shoot soap bubbles to trap enemies, drown them, then pop them.
...This is boring as hell.
It was genuinely next-level, ultimate, soul-crushing boredom. Sorry to the developers, but this kind of simple gameplay couldn't give any enjoyment whatsoever to a modern gamer like me, living in 20XX and leading the trends.
Meanwhile, this one...
The Demon King, on the verge of being sucked into the TV screen, had her mouth hanging open, pouring her entire soul into it.
But... this little shit... from the start.
Whenever I went through the trouble of trapping something in a bubble, she'd hop-hop over and snatch just the item inside.
I could even forgive that much. I'm a generous man. What pissed me off was—
"Hey! How do you miss that?! I couldn't get the multi-kill because of you!"
That's right.
This girl was a fiercely prideful competitive freak. In team games, she only blamed other people. And yet I had no choice but to keep my mouth shut.
First, for the same reasons as always.
Second.
"No! Why are you so baaad at this!"
"I-I'm sorry..."
"Grrraaah! Why would you send that toward meee!"
"I'm so, so fucking sorry!!!"
Because I'd discovered that I had absolutely zero talent for Bubble Bobble — a game I'd only ever watched, never actually played in my life.
It wasn't just being bad. For someone like me who'd always ranked in the top five percent of any game without much effort, this was a shocking rewriting of history.
Thwack!
Thanks to my trolling, the Demon King's pink dinosaur let out a ridiculous scream and went flying off the far side of the screen.
"....!"
Hiiiek.
My eyes met the Demon King's as she set the gamepad down on her pale knees. Those blood-red pupils blazed crimson.
"...Are you not going to play properly?"
"I am playing properly, though..."
"Don't talk back. You noob."
"...Yes."
Where'd she even pick up the word "noob"?
The Demon King picked up the gamepad again. I supposed I should too.
"Hoo, this won't do. We're not sleeping until we clear it without dying."
Yeah... I expected that much... you crazy bitch.
Three days passed.
How many soap bubbles had I fired over three days? Definitely more than I'd blown every day as a little kid.
And after an eternity of bashing our heads against it, the ending was finally right in front of us.
Unlike me, who'd only been supporting from behind, the Demon King's pink dinosaur — who'd been hard-carrying the entire game solo — had already gone into the graveyard.
Her pink dino had already killed every enemy, and only after draining the final boss's health — whose patterns were brutal — did it run out of strength and die.
In other words, the table was set. I just had to not screw it up.
The insane pressure made my lungs feel like they were freezing over.
This...? It was just like the first period of the college entrance exam.
It brought to mind that place where, in ice-cold air, the only sound was the razor-wind of test papers being turned.
I have to pull this off.
For my mother's sake, for the path of gaming I'd walked, and...
For the Demon King, who'd waited with patience for three days without beating the living shit out of me.
Even now, wasn't she glued to my side, gulping down her saliva? Her expression was utterly serious.
Huh...?
However.
No magic happened in a game I had no talent for.
"Ah..."
The final boss's pattern of giant meteors raining down. There didn't seem to be any blind spots to dodge into.
Taaang!
No!
I have to dodge somehow... somehow...
But there's no way...
Grab!
!!!??
The Demon King lunged at me and stacked her hands over mine, which were gripping the gamepad.
I thought she was lunging to kill me!
That wasn't it. She placed her fingers right on top of mine and started proxy-controlling them this way and that.
...So this is how frantically she'd been pressing the buttons.
Possessed by the omniscient Demon King viewpoint, my green dinosaur suddenly started taking outrageously flashy steps and utterly demolishing the final boss.
"Eeat..."
...She smells like soap. Nice.
From the Demon King's glossy black hair, just a palm's width away from me, came a soft soap scent.
This is the first time I've seen her this close.
Not a single blemish on her skin. Fresh, clean, and pretty, actually. Her face, I mean.
Oops.
I turned my gaze back to the monitor. If I sucked this badly, I should at least concentrate.
Pew, pew, pew, pew.
Almost... almost there. Please...
Before the storm of soap bubbles from the Demon King and me—
GROOOAAR!
The final boss collapsed, spewing Golden Candies that gave a mountain of points in all four directions. And a message popped up congratulating us on clearing the game.
Congratulations!
Golden Candies obtained!
KYAAAA! FUUUUUCK!!
Three days.
We finally cleared it after three days.
I can sleep in a bed now!!! And that rule of only letting me go to the bathroom once every six hours is over!!
If it had taken any longer, I probably would have been foaming at the mouth. I felt prouder and happier than when I'd completed thirty-seven days of basic training.
Of course. I'm not the impressive one. There's a different protagonist here.
"You're really amaz—"
"W-wooooow!"
Tackle!
!!
The Demon King yanked me into a hug and rubbed her whole body against me, cheering in triumph.
"Heheheheh! You did it! Youuu! See, you can do it!"
...
Looking at the Demon King, who seemed a hundred times happier than me, my mood strangely wasn't all that sour.
"Sorry for thinking of you as nothing but a bug I should squash for three whole days!"
So she thought of me as a bug to squash.