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It is entirely too late for Rubens to be awake. He has to go to school tomorrow, and yet, he’s curled up beneath his blankets, his phone inches away from his face, because Kodzuken just uploaded.
He follows most of the popular gaming channels– of course he does, they’re entertaining– but something about Kodzuken is special. Maybe it’s the air of competence that suffuses every playthrough. Maybe it’s the satisfying ease that he destroys every game with.
(Maybe it’s because some of his videos are in Japanese and his favorite volleyball player is also Japanese and so he might pick up some words and impress Ninja Shouyou when his dad finally takes him to Japan to meet him.)
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This Game Reminds Me of Some Old Friends... | Cuphead Part 1
[thumbnail preview: a man with long dark hair pulled back in a bleach-streaked bun is utterly blank-faced as he plays a game. He is in a box in the upper left of the screen, the majority of which is depicting said game.]
2,476,312 Views 17,504 Comments
firetigermelon3 oKAY can we talk about how his English has gotten so much better?? I’ve been watching since almost the beginning, when his accent was way thicker, and I’m so proud of kodzuken for the work he’s put in!!
kingmetatronthethird Is this really the first time he’s played this game? He just… curbstomped half of Isle 1 that’s not right.
louisrui @kingmetatronthethird hi you must be new here. welcome to the kodzuken channel, where our lord and savior kodzuken trashes most games without breaking a sweat.
nishida=god
Roses are red
Goopy le Grande is blue
There’s always an Asian
That’s better than you.canoPEE_lol @nishida=god literally mood i was watching that one green scottish dude play this and he died so many times and then kodzuken comes in and clears most of isle 1 in half an hour…
angelicA @canoPEE_lol exCUSE ME HE’S IRISH
b*zzf**dSOLVED DID ANYONE ELSE CATCH 14:26 WHERE HIS EYES FLASHED AT THE CAMERA RIGHT WHEN HE SAW HOW CLOSE HE WAS TO BEATING THE FROGS??? HIS EYES WERE LITERALLY MOLTEN GOLD
fangirltrash @b*zzf**dSOLVED Nevermind the color can we talk about how he LITERALLY HAS SLITTED EYES
justaboringdude y’all fangirls need to shut up and sit down. all of kodzuken’s merch is cat-themed, he’s just dedicated enough to his aesthetic for custom colored contacts. nobody has gold eyes, and no human has slitted eyes.
what,like.it’s.hard?
Everyone: This game is impossible to beat.
Kodzuken: Hold my cat.
…
Antonio
Hey come over
Rubens
Why?
Antonio
Kodzuken posted again, and… well, I watched the first five-ish minutes of the vid and I really think you should watch it with me
Rubens
Wait but he literally just posted yesterday??
Antonio
Just come over
Rubens
I’ll be there in ten
…
The moment Rubens gets through the front door, Antonio drags him into his room and pulls up the video on his computer. It had been posted seventeen minutes ago. They huddle around the screen, and Antonio presses play.
The video opens, astonishingly, to a bright, sunlit room. Normally, Kodzuken films in near-darkness, artificial lights casting his fine-boned face into sharp relief. The entire community knows that he probably films in the dead of night.
But now, he’s sitting on a couch, sunlight streaming through a window, eyes ringed with dark circles that could be from a lack of sleep or could be part of the aesthetic.
“Konnichiwa, it’s Kodzuken, and we’re doing something a little different today,” he begins, voice soft and measured.
“I have a couple guests with me today–” he’s interrupted by a vaguely familiar face popping up from the bottom of the screen, having been hiding below the frame for the introduction. Despite how loud the guest is, Kodzuken doesn’t flinch, a faintly resigned expression flickering across his face. The wildly different levels of energy has Antonio and Rubens snickering.
“Konnichiwa, minna-san! Kuroo desu!” The man shouts, grinning widely. His hair is spiked up everywhere, jagged bangs hanging over one eye in an artful bedhead.
“For once, we managed to get Kenma here out into the terrifying world that is-” he wiggles his fingers, laughing, “-daytime!” Kuroo says loudly, his English almost as good as the gamer’s.
From previous videos– mostly the brawling games, in which Kuroo loses painfully to Kodzuken no matter how many times they play or how terrible Kodzuken’s character is– Rubens knows that Kuroo works internationally, which explains the English proficiency.
Kenma’s deadpan is highly amusing after the extreme energy of Kuroo. “One of my friends finally has some free time, so we’re going to revisit some of our high school memories and–”
Again, Kodzuken is interrupted by a head popping up, on his other side now.
Rubens shrieks and nearly falls out of his chair. Antonio snorts, though that does not disguise his excitement.
“-And we’re gonna play some volleyball!” Ninja Shouyou finishes happily, beaming at the camera.
He claps his hands and offers a seated bow to the camera. “Hello everyone, I am Shouyou Hinata, a pro volleyball player.” His English has a strange accent– the soft consonants of Japanese and the rolling Portuguese blending in his mouth.
He smiles cheekily, brown eyes glinting. “You might know me from the Olympics.”
Kuroo reaches an arm over Kodzuken’s head to smack Ninja Shouyou on the head– he misses, barely, fingers ruffling ginger hair.
Rubens wheezes on his exhale, still sprawled on the ground. Antonio, the traitor, keeps laughing.
…
The video cuts, not to a beach, but to an indoor court, and Rubens can almost taste the disappointment.
Ever since that text message from his dad– something that he’d been so sure was a joke– Rubens has been crawling through the sports channels to see what circuit Ninja Shouyou was playing on. Then, the Olympics happened, and Rubens watched with despair as an orange head flitted around the indoor courts on Japan’s team.
Kuroo is holding the camera, dressed in a red t-shirt and athletic shorts. He puts a peace sign up to the camera.
“This is what different career paths do to you,” he sings, pointing the camera at the two shorter men.
They are both on the floor, stretching. Ninja Shouyou is in his athletic gear, tanned legs thick with powerful muscles. Next to him, Kodzuken looks stick-thin and ghost-pale, wearing a red uniform that has faded from age. He’s surprisingly flexible, legs wide to the sides and his torso lying nearly flat on the ground. Rubens is very strongly reminded of a cat in repose.
“Say hi to the camera, guys!” Kuroo says. Ninja Shouyou waves cheerfully, but Kodzuken’s glare could flash-freeze boiling water.
“I would like to be clear that this video was not my idea,” he says, turning his face towards the ground. His voice, though muffled by the floor, reeks of irritation.
Kuroo walks closer, completely unfazed. “But you’re diversifying! One-note YouTubers fade into obscurity; you need to have variety!”
Kodzuken twists his spine as though he has no bones, flipping his face towards Kuroo to send him a scathing glare, though he doesn’t say anything.
Ninja Shouyou gets up and takes the camera. “Since we only have three people, I invited a couple other people so we can play a 3-on-3!”
He spins the lens around to feature a girl, probably in her last years of high school, holding a volleyball and sporting a brilliant smile and even more brilliantly ginger hair. Though she is shorter than the two people behind her, she radiates energy.
“Meet my sister, Natsu! She and a few of her friends are gonna join us today!”
Natsu bows at the camera. “Konnichiwa!”
Behind Natsu, two other girls wave shyly.
“Anyways, let’s pick teams!” Ninja Shouyou cheers. The camera shakes as Kuroo takes it back.
“We should split the adults up so it doesn’t get too overwhelming,” Kuroo says, “so, Shouyou, why don’t you go with your sister and–”
Kodzuken speaks up, his normally quiet voice steely. “I will set for Shouyou. Kuroo, you can be on the other team.”
Kuroo’s expression is absolutely, comically devastated, and his free hand clutches his shirt. He splutters in Japanese, and it is a while before he recovers his wits.
“Does ‘childhood friends’ mean nothing to you?” he wails dramatically.
Kodzuken’s face appears next to Kuroo’s shoulder, barely in frame. “Shouyou’s better.”
His deadpan expression cracks just a tiny bit when Kuroo splutters incoherently.
…
Kodzuken is not an athlete. Anyone can see that.
He and Ninja Shouyou and the taller of the brown-haired girls are on one team, and Kuroo and Sister-of-Ninja-Shouyou and the other brown-haired girl are on the other.
While Ninja Shouyou lives up to his name and flits around the court with blinding speed, and the girl gets massive height on her jumps, Kodzuken kind of lurks near the net. He’s comically still compared to the frenetic activity around him, arms hanging listlessly at his sides, though his golden eyes track the ball unerringly.
The first couple rallies see Ninja Shouyou setting to the girl, being encouraging and lovely and generally the best person on the planet, barring Rubens’ mom.
Kodzuken has yet to touch the ball even once.
“I don’t think he’s moved at all since the match started,” Antonio remarks, digging an elbow into Rubens’ side. They snicker.
Antonio comments, “Kuroo’s surprisingly good.” He’d made a couple of diving saves already, each receive incredibly stable and confident. “Do you think he was a libero?”
Rubens doesn’t reply, eyes fixed on Ninja Shouyou, who had just set a gorgeously high arc for the girl.
“Liberos are in charge of receives in indoor, by the way,” Antonio continues, undeterred. “Though I think Kuroo’s too tall to have been one.”
As if confirming his thoughts, Kuroo shouts at Ninja Shouyou, “Fight me, middle blocker to middle blocker! You’re not a setter, I won’t play you as one!”
The ball hits the court on Ninja Shouyou’s side, courtesy of a sneaky setter dump by Sister-of-Ninja-Shouyou. He picks up the ball and cheekily says, “I’m a wing spiker now, remember?”
Kuroo shakes his head, the spikes of his hair bobbing with the motion. “That’s still not a setter!”
Ninja Shouyou laughs and serves the ball– gently, and it is received cleanly by the shorter brown-haired girl, who beams at her success.
There is a casual, laughing back-and-forth, and then Sister-of-Ninja-Shouyou sets a beautiful, perfect ball to Kuroo, who spikes it devastatingly fast towards the ground.
Ninja Shouyou receives it, but that means he can’t set the ball anymore, and it’s not quite close enough to the net for the dark-haired girl to hit, and–
The ball lands neatly in Kodzuken’s hands for a split second, and then there is a precise, terrifyingly quick set to the girl, who was waiting at the opposite side of the net.
She looks as shocked as Rubens feels, and the ball smacks into her arm, which she had never pulled back into a spiking position.
The ball’s diminishing bounces are the only sound as four out of the six people on the court stare at Kodzuken, who looks awkwardly away, one arm wrapped around his body.
Ninja Shouyou beams, and there should definitely be a warning at the bottom to not stare directly into that light for too long.
Kodzuken barely lasts a second before looking away from him, too.
“Okay, alright, I’ll play for real now, please stop looking at me.”
Kuroo cheers obnoxiously loudly, and Ninja Shouyou laughs.
“That’s the spirit!”
…
Despite Kodzuken’s primarily sedentary lifestyle, it’s clear that he’s motionless only in the way a cat is– observing his surroundings, expending minimal effort for maximum results.
He’s also unexpectedly brilliant at volleyball, having almost a sixth sense for where everyone is on the court. The one game he played against Ninja Shouyou, he kept track of his blindingly fast disappearing acts as if they weren’t even an inconvenience.
The video’s cut so that there is no clear indication of winners or losers, and they all gather around Kodzuken at the end to wave goodbye at the camera. They’re boisterous and gleeful, having very clearly had fun. Kodzuken is still in the middle of the frame, a single, short pillar of calm in the storm.
Ninja Shouyou’s very cute sister blows a kiss at the camera. Kuroo sticks his tongue out.
“Please never make me do this again.” Kodzuken says tonelessly, though the corners of his mouth are twitching up.
“Awww okay…” Sister-of-Ninja-Shouyou says.
Kuroo smiles wickedly. “Same time next week then?”
Ninja Shouyou slings an arm around Kodzuken’s shoulders. “Sure thing!”
Kodzuken just sighs, having seemingly resigned himself to his fate.
…
After the video fades to black, Antonio nearly closes it, but Rubens sees that there are still fifteen seconds left in the video.
It opens again to the court, and Kodzuken steps off of the spot he’d stayed for all the games.
His tennis shoes unstick themselves audibly from the floor, and there is a clear indication of where he’s stood in the ground– dull where the rest of the floor is shiny.
The camera shakes as someone starts laughing in the background, and Kodzuken gives a golden-eyed glare off to the side.
“I will set a ball into your face,” he threatens, voice more lively than the entire rest of the video combined.
The background laughter only gets louder, squawking like some kind of chicken.
An orange head– the sister?– pops into frame briefly to toss a volleyball into the air.
Kodzuken eyes it in the air, and the laughter abruptly cuts off.
“Wait, Kenma–”
Thunk.
“Owwww…”