Chapter Text
One bright morning in late summer, Sakura arrives to class to find the room in an absolute uproar. Sakura has witnessed his class in many uproars, been the cause of many uproars, and even participated in the uproaring himself when called for, but something about the blatant competition and bloodthirsty smiles on this particular morning make him freeze upon entering the room.
“Sakura!” Anzai exclaims from the center of the commotion, head swiveling a full hundred and eighty degrees to face him. “Good morning!”
The rest of the class shouts out their own variation on a greeting, except Sugishita, who just grunts. If he wasn't the human personification of three containers of soggy cat food with spinal issues crammed into a six foot frame, Sakura feels he might relate to that. As is, Sugishita simply smashes his head back into the crook of his arm and falls back asleep. Annoying.
The rest of the class carries on with their uproaring. Sakura looks around for Nirei and Suo on instinct. Instead, the jokers descend on him.
“Hey, Sakura, have you ever tried out video games?” Kurita asks.
“No, don't ask him that! Sakura, how do you feel about winning?” Takanashi scolds.
“Have you ever played racing games!” Kakiuchi cries.
Anzai pushes them all back and slings an arm around Sakura’s shoulders to stop him from backing away. “The upperclassmen came by before you got here and gave us this!” He flourishes a piece of paper proudly and delivers it with all due dramatics into Sakura’s hand. The volume of the uproar once again pitches up as Sakura examines the flyer.
Semi-Annual Tamon Team MarioKart Tournament! it proclaims to him. Snacks and drinks provided! Must play in! Register with Matsumoto (Class 3-1) by 15 Aug.! Event held at the school on….
Truly a horrid number of exclamation points. Sakura wonders what new fresh horror is waiting for him this time.
“Oh!” interrupts a new voice. Nirei. Thank goodness. “Sakura, I texted you about the MKT this morning! You should totally give it a try.”
Suo, right behind them both, the fiend, chimes in with a, “Oh Sakura, are you going to join? You've done all that training with the Roppo Ichiza!”
The whole class leans in to hear the answer: “No.”
“Come on!”
“Dude, you gotta uphold the honor of our class!”
“Suo, Nirei, you have to help us make him join.”
“Think of the bragging rights, Sakura!”
Suo, infuriating expression fixed in place as usual, says calmly, “Sakura, do you think you can't do it?”
Sakura glowers. They're so transparent in their tactics.
Nirei smiles at him, a bit nervously. “We'll be right there, too! Most of us are also going to enter.”
Sakura glowers harder. Unfortunately, they're also right about him.
“Fine.”
The room erupts back into its original level of uproar. Nirei and Suo beam. Jerks.
“But we're getting in practice before!” Sakura yells. “I'm not going in blind again!”
-
The announcements crackle to life, as they typically do, right after lunch. Umemiya at least remembers the bell announcement button first this time.
“Heeeeey, folks! Good afternoon on this lovely Tuesday! Hope y’all are taking your vitamins and stretching, and don't forget to drink plenty of fluids!!”
He rambles on over the PA system, blatantly steamrolling both the usual formalities of a representative addressing his student body and Hiragi's attempts to course correct. The usual, really.
“....and that was birthdays for today! Happy birthday to all of you who celebrate. And now to events: Three weeks from now is the annual Tamon Team Mario Kart Tournament!....which, as some of you might know, I am sadly banned from. But! y’all have fun! I hear there's going to be quite a few special guests this year, right, Hiragi?”
“Ask Matsumoto.”
“Right, direct all questions and registrations to Matsumoto from Class 3-1! Anyway, now to Momose for some off campus events…”
Sakura ignores the rest of it and turns to Nirei, sitting next to him. “Wait, why's Umemiya banned? Isn't he automatically invited to every team event?”
The question is greeted with a moment of silence just long enough for Sakura to register something as wrong. Nirei and Tsugeura look at him with wide eyes. Kiryu actually glances up from his phone game. Anzai’s head does the swivel thing again, and the three clowns behind him also turn towards their group. Only Suo doesn't react.
Nirei answers in a low voice, “Nobody talks about it.”
“It's the secret second rule of Bofurin,” Tsugeura whispers, or tries to. “Protect the town, and don't ask about the Great Coconut Mall Incident of ‘22.”
Sakura narrows his eyes and for the fiftieth time this year tries to determine if this is a really strange form of hazing.
Suo glances at him, “Don't worry about it, Sakura. It's nothing. Umemiya's just rumored to not be allowed to participate in the tournaments anymore.”
Sakura looks to Nirei.
“All I know is he was banned in a joint decision by the four kings last year,” Nirei huffs, flipping through his book. “And several witnesses mentioned a Coconut Mall Incident. Oh, he is also rumored to be very good at nailing players with green shells.”
Kiryu looks down to be reabsorbed by his game again. “We could probably get it out of Sugi if you want.”
“Nevermind all that!” Anzai interrupts from the next table over. “The Tournament is in a few weeks! Sakura, you said you've actually played the game before, right? Do you need some people to practice with?”
Several people interrupt each other, offering locations and gaming systems. The uproar returns. Sakura considers and subsequently discards the idea of adding “Uproar Tuesdays” to his calendar the guys bought him a month ago.
In the midst of the chaos, Nirei leans over to him and says, deadly serious, “Sakura, I'll make a training schedule. We can do this.”
The look in his eyes—the same one from the stand on the bridge and the fight in the Keisei street alley and the match in the school yard—burns, and even though it's just a racing game against their classmates, Sakura feels himself catch that same fire Nirei has struck.
He grins back, and starts to believe in impossible things. “Let's do this!”
-
“The first rotation on our training schedule,” Nirei explains as they wait for someone to get the door, “is Kiryu's place.”
The day is hot and muggy, with no breeze to break the stifling heat. Sakura huffs and tries to remember when, exactly, Kiryu volunteered his house. Behind them, Tsugeura pesters Suo with more rapid fire questions about his workout routine. It's funny to watch Suo’s normally unflappable expression slide ever so slightly into a flat line.
Kiryu's sister is the one to answer the door. She smiles at the group, then turns behind her to call to her brother as she ushers them in. “Our father is out of town for the week,” she says, “So don't be afraid to be too loud!”
“Won't you join us, Akari-san?” Suo asks. “I'm sure Sakura could use some extra help.”
Sakura's threats are neatly talked over by Tsugeura and Nirei's excited agreement. Kiryu slides in through the door to the courtyard and waves them along outside along the path to his room. Akari hangs back at first, shaking her head and laughing, until her brother joins the chorus of begging.
“I'll get you some snacks,” she promises, and with an indulgent smile she disappears back to the main house.
The group settles in Kiryu's (massive) room in front of the tv as he sets up the game. He hands Sakura a controller and Nirei resumes his explanation of the buttons for the third time in two days.
“Ok, remember: there's four races in a grand prix, with twelve players per race and up to four of them can be controlled by real players and the rest are computerized, aka COMs. You get points based on how you place in every race and they're totaled at the end to give a final ranking. X is the button to go forward, B to reverse (but you probably won't use it, nobody does), left trigger to drift when you go around sharp corners and right trigger to do a trick as you jump off ramps to get a boost. Oh and you can adjust the angle on your drift with the steering joystick-”
Sakura presses his fingers against the buttons as they are mentioned (though why it's called a joystick eludes him. Where's the joy?). They feel strange against his callouses; smooth and bumpy where he usually feels rough brick or stone while climbing over buildings and alleyways. It's not something he's used to, but maybe it could be—the controller fits easily into the shape of his hands. He listens to Nirei continue on about the different tracks and what the number eight in the game title means and how most players pick a “main” avatar and how the “mains” are different from each other, mechanics wise-
Suo gently pokes him. Nirei looks up to see that Kiryu has finished setting up the console. “Oh!”
“Let's put Sakura’s play into practice!” Tsugeura says. “I can sit this round out!”
“Thanks Tsuge!” Kiryu chimes. He tries to hand a controller to Suo, who only raises his hands in protest, smiling.
“I prefer to watch.” he says.
“You have to play at some point!” Tsugeura says. “We gotta know your sick moves!!”
Suo just shrugs enigmatically, smile still fixed to his face. He does not accept the remote.
Sakura groans in frustration. “Just get on with it!”
It takes the group nearly fifteen minutes to get through the character selection menu. Nirei goes for a mushroom character with a spotted hat, Kiryu chooses a cat-costumed peach(?), and Tsugeura, perhaps predictably, lands on a giant monkey with a chest-beating animation that Sakura has decided not to question. Sakura himself, though…
“That's the most basic character in the game, Sakura!” Kiryu says. “Don't you want a more exciting design?”
“You could be on my team!” Tsugeura suggests. “Funky Kong is a good choice!”
Nirei looks a bit put out. “Why Mario of all the characters, Sakura?”
Sakura doesn't see what's wrong with the little red hat guy. Sure, he may be smaller and less cool-looking, but it's fine! Right?
“It's because his name is in the title,” Suo says knowingly.
“Shut up!” Sakura hisses.
What follows is an hour full of truly horrendous fake-driving. Nirei wins many matches, Kiryu right behind him. Tsugeura finds a short cut he claims to have not noticed before. Suo finds new ways to antagonize them all with his commentary. Sakura finds…new and exciting ways to crash his car. Kart. Whatever.
It's a frustrating hour for him. There is only so many times one can come in twelfth place successively and manage to be graceful about losing. Sakura is well aware that he cannot claim to have any experience in being a good loser. Each loss grates on him, especially as the other three nearly always score within the top five podium positions.
And yet, still, Sakura finds himself coming back to pick up the controller. Maybe it's Nirei's constant reminders that the other three have been playing far longer than Sakura, or perhaps it's the way Suo redirects all the potential teasing for losing so often into making fun of Tsugeura's lack of steerage, or Kiryu’s constant encouragements. Whatever it is, he keeps trying.
And he keeps getting last place.
After Sakura’s seventh entry in his last place streak, Kiryu's sister slips in. She brings with her food, and another potential player. Kiryu gladly offers his controller, but she declines.
“No, no! I won't interrupt the game,” She says politely. “You boys must be pretty invested! You've been at it for a while.”
After a brief staring contest between siblings (which his sister wins), Kiryu turns back to the blasted menu screen and its blasted upbeat music. Sakura, internally cursing the controls, character chart, and his own tenacity, prepares to lose again.
But Akari stops her brother before he can start the round. “Miichan, are you playing on hard COMs?”
Kiryu blinks at his sister, then slowly turns to Sakura with a guilty expression on his face. “It was habit! Sorry, Sakura.”
While he flips something on the control screen and scrolls back a few menus, Akari turns to Sakura. “I'm a little out of practice at this game myself; would you mind if I watch over your shoulder?”
In the background, Nirei hangs his head in despair at Suo's continued sly remarks at Tsugeura's expense. Kiryu continues flipping through screens, deselecting certain item boxes.
Sakura can't keep the resigned deprecation out of his tone. “I don't know how much help I can give. I keep getting last place,” He says glumly.
She considers him. “Well, would you accept some tips? I know a fair bit about the game.”
Sakura knows she won't use his mistakes against him. He knows it's good to ask for and accept help when you need it. It's still a struggle, though, to say yes, but eventually he does. Her smile in return is very kind.
And her help is very helpful. Even without the game apparently having been on hard mode, Sakura comes to realize he had been steering wrong the whole time.
“Turn off auto-steer,” she tells him when Kiryu finally pulls up the vehicle selection menu. “It's not that useful and once you get better at the game, it's not good to rely on it because it prevents you from taking some shortcuts.”
Sakura has no idea what auto-steer is, but apparently he has been playing with it the whole time. He turns it off.
She smiles at his choice of Mario, but doesn't comment. Nirei asks her what her character is (a main?) and her smile gets bigger.
“Oh, I usually play as Link!” Akari points to a green guy with a sword. “I like the tricks.”
“Oh! BOTW or Skyward Sword?” Nirei makes an instinctive grab for his notebook. Before he can scribble anything down, Kiryu starts the race and he drops it in favor of grabbing the controller. It's some kind of volcano themed nightmare with too many cliffs and even more lava. Sakura would love to throw whoever designed the lack of railings into lava themselves. He is well acquainted with falling into it by this point.
But this race is different. Akari tells him about drifts—there's some nonsense about tight drifts and wide drifts but the gist of using the joystick to control the radius of the turn still gets across—and he proceeds to fall out of bounds a few times less than he was. In the next race (on some snowy mountain with penguins sledding across the track) Sakura learns what some items besides bullet bill do, and in the one after that, he discovers the coin item and resolves to collect as many as possible. It isn't that much better and he still ends up near the bottom, but the rules and controls have gone from alien to somewhat recognizable by the end of another hour.
Akari, Nirei, Kiryu, and Tsugeura tell him he needs to practice to gain muscle memory. Sakura didn't know you could get muscle memory for something besides fighting. Suo tells him that muscle memory is only possible with babies, and Sakura is not proud to admit he falls for it for a whole thirty seconds.
They retreat soon after that from the Kiryu's house, with many thanks. Sakura feels both better and worse than he did a few hours ago.
This video game thing is going to be harder than he thought.
-
He gets an unexpected call from Togame the next day.
They're in the middle of what is officially Art Class but unofficially Momose-senpai's time to explain the gratuitous graffiti designs that grace (or defile, depending on who you ask) the walls of Furin High, as taught and exhibited by Momose himself. (Each of the leaders of the student body runs a sham of an elective program, Sakura has come to understand. He would have signed up for Hiragi's cooking lessons, wherein they learnt one recipe a week and the other days visited the local eateries to learn about the adjacent career path, especially considering his other choices were Gardening with Umemiya, Fashion and Culture with Tsubakino, or Media Studies with Mizuki. But alas, Nirei had been too enthusiastic to learn about the history of the walls of Furin (literally), and Sakura was stuck following him. Suo just laughed.)
Sakura feels his phone buzz inside his pocket and looks down to see the words, “Ramune King Turtle” blaze boldly across the screen, accompanied by the blurriest picture of a turtle to ever have been taken by a living person. Tomiyama had Ideas about contact names and photos, and got his hands on Sakura's phone somehow at the summer festival. Personally, Sakura blames Suo. (He has no proof. But also it was definitely Suo.)
He rolls his eyes at Nirei and glances at Suo, then excuses himself from Momose-senpai's rant about the lack of Real Art and Meaning in Postmodernism (whatever that is) and Electrostatic Painting Technique (whatever that is) which has grown from the small side tangent he had promised when he started down the rabbit hole twenty minutes ago. It is rapidly becoming a beast of legend which some poor time-sensitive freshman from Team Zojo will be charged with slaying for the sake of the group’s collective sanity. Sakura knew he should've signed up for the cooking classes instead. The hallway is blessedly quiet, so he answers.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sakura!” Togame's voice cuts in. “Are you free this evening-”
Several crashes echo across the line. A horn honks. Someone curses, loudly.
“-this evening after your school? We heard about the Mariocar Tournament-”
“MARIOKART!” Someone else yells distantly, and sure enough, Sakura can faintly pick up the accursed music. He holds the phone further from his ear.
“-Yeah, Mariocar, and since we got invited and now we're already practicing, Choji and I wondered if you-”
A shriek sounds directly into the phone speaker. Sakura jumps and nearly drops it.
“-you know, wanted to come hang out with us. To practice. It'd just be me, and Choji of course, oh and Sako, you remember him right, and maybe Wanijima, and some others too,” Togame finishes.
Sakura looks at the classroom door, then back to the phone in his hand. He doesn't necessarily want to let the whole of Shitshitoren know that he sucks at a racing video game, regardless of how inconsequential it is. Look how Roppo Ichiza went wild with that information. Teasing for weeks!
“Oh! We'll also be getting food too, if you want,” Togame tosses out, like an afterthought.
Sakura forgets about the mounting volume of the lecture in the next room. His world narrows in with the viciousness of a starving man finding an unopened box of stale crackers in the dumpster on one thing:
Food. “Sure,” he says, not at all casual.
Togame laughs. Sakura does not. He glances at the clock (3:30 pm) and with one last look of dread at the classroom door, he hangs up and marches back into what has become by now a warzone interrupted only by sporadic refugee camps of students cowering behind desks from the assault of Knowledge, bolstered by the images of free food that now circle his mind.
-
The energy of the bleak war torn classroom, complete with Momose and his many hills to die on, is not uncomparable to the flavor of violence that permeates the Ori on any occasion Sakura has found himself there. If, instead of a short, hooded upperclassman taking center stage, there was a short, wide-eyed Director of the Arts; perhaps one might even venture to equate the absently thrown expo markers of the classroom to Tomiyama Choji's frenetic gestures and habit of bouncing on his toes. Certainly both share equal passion for the Arts.
It is this comparison, and Togame, that greets Sakura this evening as he steps foot into the alleyway that he once walked to the Ori on the second day of school. The guy waves lazily from his sprawl across one of the newly installed benches outside the theater, orange jacket matching the hue of the western sky.
“Got us some food,” he says when Sakura gets within earshot. “Might want to eat outside, sorry.”
‘Within earshot’ today happens to be a bit closer than it usually is. From inside the Ori, music blasts across the narrow streets, drowning out any semblance of quiet conversation. Sakura doesn't glimpse any other jackets, so the whole team must be in there rather than milling around on rooftops or side streets except Togame. He raises an eyebrow.
The older teen shrugs. “We were doing video games, but then Choji got distracted with a dance party.”
Sakura would ask if Shishitoren dance parties are that common, but he is neatly distracted by a more imminent matter. Food. Everything else can wait.
Togame keeps up his ramble of a monologue as the food disappears. He yaps on about how Shishitoren is doing much better now that it has been in years, how more guys have joined since April than the whole previous six months put together. He sprinkles in gossip about Wanijima and some Kraken gang, and regales Sakura with tales from Inugami about how Kaji apparently staked out all of Sako's favorite dessert cafés to corner him in the month after Noroshi. Sakura….doesn't exactly know who Inugami is, but he sounds like a miniature (or un-miniature, in stature) Tomiyama: bright, excitable, and loud.
In a short while, the food is all eaten and Togame’s steady drawl draws to a close. He stands, dusts off his knees, holds out a hand to Sakura, and guides them back to the Ori. The music still blasts from the doors with the escaping AC, though in the time taken for food, the grating bubbly pop has been hijacked by dubstep. The once-abandoned theater now reeks of electronic soundbytes and dubious steppage.
The most hideously impressive part is that Shishitoren can still yell—and be heard—over the awful racket.
In the middle of black hole of commotion that approximates a toddler’s vision of a formalized dance, Sakura glimpses Tomiyama. He is breaking it down. What is he breaking down? Well….another member of his team, apparently. Wanijima, whom Sakura recognizes from the summer festival, stands on the other side of the theater stage, arms raised in a block and a wild grin stretched over his normally calm face.
Sakura turns, confused, to Togame for an explanation, forgetting the volume issues currently abounding in the near vicinity. “What's going on?” he yells.
Togame smiles and points at his ears, then yells something. “DANCE BATTLE…WINNER…MUSIC RIGHTS.”
Really, what is Sakura supposed to do with that except roll with it?
They shove their way to the stage and arrive right as Tomiyama lands a powerful kick in time to the painfully loud beat. The crowd goes wild(er). Wanijima bows and backs off the stage as his leader bounces to the center and raises his arms. Sakura catches a glimpse of Sako in the projector box, glowering and pushing buttons. The music changes from dubstep back to pop. It does not quiet.
Tomiyama finally catches sight of his second-in-command as the two approach. Togame jumps onstage, pulling Sakura with him, to Sakura’s horror and the crowd’s evident delight. He makes a gesture pointing down towards Sako, and the music finally quiets a bit.
“Are you joining us, Sakura-chan?” Tomiyama continues bouncing on his toes. “Winner gets the music choice, you know! The only person not playing is Sako-chan, because he's a party pooper!!”
“We're just here for racing,” Togame intervenes before Sakura can uninvite and then immediately banish himself to the party pooper projector box with Sako, “We'll be in the back room if you want to find us when you're done.”
Tomiyama pouts, but Sako, apparently in control of the music, turns it back up and his complaint is lost to the chorus of the American YMCA song (Tsugeura, of all his friends, put it on the group workout playlist. Go figure). Togame quickly hustles both of them offstage to the back of the theater, where Sakura has never been before. It's nothing terribly exciting, just a maze of halls and the occasional room, but the walls block the pounding music and the crowd to the point of bearability. They turn a few corners until Togame pulls them into a smaller room with a tv and console.
“Welcome to Shishitoren’s Game Room!” He says grandly. It is an impressive introduction for a room the size of Sakura’s apartment and occupied only by a dirty pool table, a dart board that has seen better days, and a worn sofa clearly rescued from the trash. Sakura feels immediately at home.
It is also occupied by Kanuma and Arima. Kanuma shrieks upon seeing Sakura and hides behind his friend, then cautiously emerges when it becomes apparent that Sakura has come alone.
“No need to enforce that restraining order, right?” Sakura overhears Arima mutter to him snidely. The two beat a tactical retreat to the pool table.
Togame waves him to the couch and proceeds to fiddle with the control box and cables for a second before the tv lights up. He hands Sakura a much more banged up remote than Kiryu's was and smiles at him while they wait for the game to load.
“So, who do you…main?” Sakura asks, unsure if he is correctly using the strange terminology.
Togame laughs. “I go with Bowser Jr.! Choji always picks Bowser and he was the one to first introduce the game to me, so I wanted to match.”
Sakura has become good enough friends with Togame by now to know that he takes this particular tone when talking about the past good days of Shishitoren, before Tomiyama took up leadership. Togame is quick to snap back from it, though, and turns the question on him. “Who do you main?”
Sakura stares at the floor. His friends’ gentle teasing about Mario (the avatar) from yesterday passes through his mind. “No one yet. There's way too many.”
“Good answer!” he says. “Do you want any suggestions?”
The character menu pops up and all sixty-odd icons try to wrestle their way into Sakura’s field of vision. “Yes. I chose the red guy last time.”
Togame hovers his selection over a skeleton turtle. “Dry Bowser is the coolest looking character but not that easy to control. But also you might like Metal Mario if you've already been playing with regular Mario.”
Sakura nods very seriously and selects the silver version of the small red hat man. He remembers Akari’s explanation of the cars, selects a large car with the monster wheels, stares once more in confusion at the hang-glider slot, and turns off auto-steer. See? He's not completely hopeless.
(Completely.)
Togame ends up turning off the same items as Kiryu had yesterday: the lightning, the piranha plant, the weird eight, and the inkblot. "Part of the Tournament rules,” he explains. “Normally they're part of the game, but I guess whoever's setting the rules doesn't like ‘em.”
Sakura neglects to mention the only items that he truly knows are the coin and the bullet. He can't be sure Togame isn't pulling his leg here. Some of those don't sound like real items!
The race begins as Sakura could have predicted. Togame is rather good at the game. Sakura is rather bad. Togame quickly pulls into the lead and Sakura quickly falls far behind. The leafy jungle of some wild woods turns into a music themed monstrosity with bouncing notes that knock Sakura completely off the track. A simple circuit around a stadium sees him launched into the air by ramps in every direction but the intended goal, including into the stands, into the mud puddles, and backwards. The final course appears in all its candy infested eyestrain, with a sharp curve that throws him off the cliff every time no matter how wide he steers his drifts. And finally, just as he drops out of bullet bill to pass the accursed villager character in front of him, some green blur crashes him out of bounds. That's it, Sakura decides. No more Mariokart for him. It's just a series of increasingly repetitive and escalatingly painful losses with no redemptive value. Goodbye, Mario. May you forever fall off cliffs and steer yourself into tree trunks and piles of cheese.
For a brief and blissful moment, Sakura is free of Mario and his karts. He imagines a world where he never heard of video games. What a beautiful place. He wishes he lived there.
Togame smiles at him like he too sees that world, which is a lie. He then smashes it via running it over with a car, and a bike, and a paraglider, and maybe even twelve of them.
“Wanna go again?” he asks brightly, like he didn't just witness Sakura get worse at the game right under his nose in the past ten minutes.
…The really sad part is that he is correct. Sakura will go again. Quitting is worse than losing. He is his own worst enemy.
And Mario. Mario is also his worst enemy.
To his credit, Togame isn't a half-bad training partner. He doesn't have the game on hard mode, he takes the time to explain a bit more of the game mechanics (apparently the orange and blue ground markers are “boost pads” that accelerate you), and he lets Sakura pick tracks instead of the game randomly selecting. He warns Sakura away from the rainbow roads and calls them “unforgiving cosmic red flags”. It helps a little. But Sakura still falls off the road more often than not, and has little to no idea how to use the other items. He has no clue about shortcuts, or whatever jump tricks are. Occasionally he tries to use an item only to have it missing from where it was displayed only moments before.
It culminates to being a very frustrating time. Sakura is ready to punch the stupid cloud guy who keeps dragging him back inbounds directly on the nose and hope it breaks his stupid glasses, too. They get another grand prix in, and Sakura finally gets a place that is not twelfth but eleventh, which is not nearly as impressive as it should be because the computer player in front of him only falls behind at the last second from some sort of bomb item. It honestly feels a little like a cheating sort of win, which never fails to infuriate Sakura. He's not one for quitting but right now, oooh. Right now it is really tempting him.
As Sakura struggles over the last finish line, Togame turns to him with a serious expression, all amusement dropping off his face. “Ok, I don't think this training is working. Can I suggest something else?”
Sakura knows he's really asking, Do you trust me? To his own slight surprise, he doesn't hesitate before saying yes.
Togame smiles and nods. “I'm gonna get Choji and some of the guys in here to race with us, and I want you to watch one of us. You pick up things real quick from watching, so I think you might learn best here by observing. Watch when I start my drifts, what I do with the items, and how I steer to avoid the edges of the road. Yeah?”
“Yeah.” It's frustrating to be put in the backseat, but he's right. Sakura has found that in the past, he learns well by watching first, then doing. Togame leaves to grab Tomiyama while Sakura takes one last minute to press his fingers against the buttons, trying to burn the memory of which controls do what into his hands.
Tomiyama breaks into the room and into the angry silence Sakura has been carefully cultivating. “Heyyyy Sakura-chan!! Ready to race??”
Togame strolls in after him, pulling Sako by the elbow. A bigger guy follows them, sunny smile on his face and bouncing on his feet like Tomiyama. The former takes a seat on the couch, while Choji crouches on the armrest in a way that would make anyone else uncomfortable but him. The newcomer flops excitedly on the floor.
“Hope you don't mind Inugami coming too,” Togame says to Sakura. Oh, right. This must be Inugami.
“Hi Sakura I've heard so much about you!!” Before Sakura knows it, his hand is seized and Inugami pumps it up and down enthusiastically. “And if you're worried about not winning don't be!! Sako hasn't played in two years because he was on a revenge side quest! He sucks!”
He makes no attempt to quiet the last comment and continues to pump Sakura’s hand. In the corner, Sako sputters and attempts to deny both the revenge side quest and being bad at the game. Inugami just laughs loudly.
Togame once again boots up the game as Tomiyama migrates through four or five progressively insane ways of sitting on an occupied couch. He and Inugami keep up a wildly whiplashing conversation that goes through about six topics per sentence. Sako keeps his eyes fixed on the tv with increasing desperation as they try to drag him into their heckling to little success.
Togame wrangles the game and more controllers into submission, then the group takes off. He picks his small dinosaur turtle, and sure enough, Tomiyama goes for the big dinosaur turtle after watching his cursor flicker once over every option on the board and kicking his feet against the floor in time. Sako sullenly selects inkling boy and Inugami cheerfully chooses raccoon mario. Sakura didn't even realize that was a choice. The game begins.
It is much more relaxing to simply watch the combatants. As Togame had advised, Sakura mainly observes him, but the others don't escape his notice. Sako, as Inugami had loudly declared, does in fact not perform well. He may be a little better than Sakura, but Sakura finds it nice to watch someone besides himself careen over the side of a cliff. Entertaining, even, to watch the little blue haired character fly into lava, or a river, or across a chasm. He constantly forgets to drift, steers into walls, and misses the item boxes.
Sakura might be enjoying his suffering a little too much, but, well. He was rude on the second day of school and Sakura’s only other interaction with him, so. All’s fair in gang wars and mariokart, sucker.
Inugami is similarly terrible at the game, but in a different way. While Sako clearly knows the controls but is out of practice in using them all together, Inugami plays as a man who doesn't need or care for a steering wheel.
He does need one though. Quite badly.
“Ooh! A shortcut!...Oops.” Another wall is divested of its self-respect. “Look Sako! Another mushroom for the next shortcut!”
Sako does not look on account of cursing two green shells with a very heartfelt and sincere wish for their unexistence that is immediately undercut by a third green shell lovingly grazing his tires. Sakura watches him wipe out and then turns to find Inugami driving off another cliff, on purpose this time. He decides then and there that Inugami is the funniest person he's ever met. In another life they would have been best friends.
In this life, however, Inugami risks a third cliff for a double item box, and the cliff wins. He goes down with a dramatic wail.
Tomiyama, on the other hand, holds his own quite well. He and Togame usually score first and second place, vying for the top spot. His one weakness appears to be an item shaped like a golden version of the usual mushroom that Sakura has not yet had the pleasure of using correctly.
“It's the best item!” Tomiyama declares. “It's like a normal mushroom but better!!”
And off he zooms, accelerating across the rough edges of the track to neatly overtake his second-in-command and win at the last minute. Sakura would applaud if he wasn't so deep in trying to understand the game mechanics. On the lower segments of the screen belonging to players 3 and 4, he watches Sako (7th place) accidentally blow himself up with the bomb item. Inugami whoops as he passes him to finish 6th.
“That's why the coin is the best item!” Inugami says, cementing himself as the most intelligent person in the room.
Togame turns to Sakura as the round ends and holds out his remote. “So, ya ready to try again?”
Sakura finds himself grinning. He takes the controller.
-
The following day finds him at the doorstep of a small home just beyond the train tracks. That morning had dawned bright and warm and cloudless, and now as the lunch hour edges into true afternoon, Sakura feels the heat from the blazing sun toasting his skin. The sleepiness of a hot afternoon after a strenuous morning of exercise seeps into his bones. He knocks.
Anzai answers the door a moment later with a flourish and promptly tosses a friendly arm over his shoulders, practically dragging Sakura inside. “Hey! Don't mind the mess!”
The air conditioning breezes into their faces in a welcome respite from the stifling heat outside. Contrary to Anzai's words, Sakura only sees a small, tidy apartment, though it does happen to be filled to the brim with pictures, sentimental decorations, and familial pride. It's nearly the complete opposite of the Kiryu's main house. Sakura finds himself relaxing for some reason. Anzai steers them into a back room with a TV and some familiar faces.
“Hi Sakura, do you remember us?” Tsuchiya waves, controller already in hand.
Nagato slouches on the floor but straightens up when he notices them. He attempts a smile, and though it comes out nervous, it still strikes Sakura directly in the chest with something warm in a way that the August sun hasn't been able to achieve yet.
“Hi,” Sakura says. He feels Anzai squeeze his shoulder, and then he is shoved towards the couch. Anzai withdraws to what is, assumedly, the kitchen. Both the other two scoot over to make room on the sofa. After an exchange of what Umemiya has told him are termed social pleasantries—sounds horrifying, frankly, but Suo says it's not so bad once you get some practice in—the conversation turns to the subject at hand.
“Anzai filled us in on your gaming stuff!” Tsuchiya says. “We heard you just started a few weeks ago? How has it been? Do you like it?”
Sakura makes a vague noise of affirmation, a little bedazzled under the onslaught but a bit nervous of the intensity of the questions. Tsuchiya must read it off his face because, to Sakura’s relief, she doesn't press and keeps chatting. Conversations with genuine intentions are still a bit strange, but Sakura knows he's getting better at them. They're not too bad, either. It's kind of nice, too, how Tsuchiya leaves gaps for either him or Nagato to slip in. It reminds him of the rest of the guys in class.
Anzai makes his grand re-entry into the room, and best of all, he brings food with him. “I got us some snacks! Are you guys ready?”
The games today start off with a challenge: all three of Sakura’s companions dare each other to only use what they call a ‘sports bike’.
“We usually have some sort of challenge,” Tsuchiya tells Sakura. “Otherwise this guy-” she pokes Nagato with her foot, “Usually smokes us.”
“It's also good for learning the other ways to play the game!” Nagato protests, and Sakura is pleased to see that none of the earlier nervousness nor any of the weary shame from the last time they had seen each other remains. “B-besides, I don't always win!”
Anzai laughs. “Sure, sure!”
He too nudges Nagato, who ducks away but cannot hide his smile.
The game boots up with its familiar music, and this time it is less a precursor to frustration and more of an occupant of the warmth of the house. Sakura, who is rapidly making a sport out of trying every single character option, picks Nirei's mushroom guy.
Anzai whistles. “Good choice, Sakura!” and Sakura heaves an internal sigh as his face decides to turn a light red.
Anzai himself chooses a worm caterpillar hybrid that Sakura privately thinks should be in a zoo somewhere instead of on a racetrack. Nagato picks a guy with what the other two affectionately term nerd glasses, and Tsuchiya selects the baby version of the green guy with the moustache.
“I used to main Toadette when we were kids,” she explains, “But then I decided green was my favorite color.”
“I think you were just jealous of his mustache,” Anzai says slyly. Nagato snorts.
Tsuchiya laughs and kicks him. The TV lights up with Toads's Harbor. Sakura feels very encouraged. He is playing as Toad; therefore he must have the home field advantage. Right?
Not right. Toad feels the effect of many red shells in his harbor this race. The ghost blob steals his items at the worst times. He misses so many coins he could weep. And evilest of all, an accursed facet of the public transportation system rides the streets, uncaring of the innocent citizens of the harbor passing innocently by and thoroughly discouraging all thoughts of ever making the tight drift around the inside of the street curves. The evil creeps up the hill behind Toad and his compatriots to body any unsuspecting victims: The Trolley.
It is just Nirei says about Trolleys being a Problem, Sakura muses as Toad does a wipeout animation after drifting too close to the sun. Considering the layout and name of the place, Sakura hopes somewhere around here there is a regular Toad tied to one of the tracks, and the rest of the colors of Toads tied to another set. Mario would flip the switch, he thinks. Mario would flip all the switches.
The trolley comes back for round two in the second lap. The small pixels that make up Toad and his kart go spinning into a wall.
Sakura would flip those switches too, he decides. Sometimes video games don't deserve to live, or have answers to common moral thought exercises.
Meanwhile, Anzai, Tsuchiya, and Nagato are facing their own problems. Tsuchiya seems to be adjusting pretty well to whatever a sportsbike is, but Nagato and Anzai, in an exciting and brand new twist of fate, share Sakura's difficulty with steering and controlling their drifts.
“It's my handling stat, it's just my handling stat,” Anzai chants. The Wiggler wiggles down the big hill towards the finish line and mistimes its mushroom. The grass welcomes its worm back to the soil. Anzai groans. Nagato speeds past him to claim fourth place, his friend left in the dust to the unmerciful whims of Mario.
Sakura, however, sees an opportunity here. He, by some virtue of skill or luck, is not in twelfth place but eighth. He is also, by virtue of both luck and skill, armed with a shell of the red variety.
Anzai has just gotten stuck in seventh.
This is the third lap.
A smile wiggles its way onto Sakura’s face; not the kind he found himself wearing in Pothos a while back, though this one would still give his classmates pause; nor is it the kind of smile one would like to see on a child or teenager. No, this is an Evil Smile, and it plots many things.
(This is probably what Suo feels like every day, Sakura guesses.)
He glides across the boost pad and lets the red shell fly, just like Togame showed him. The smile widens as the aim is true. Down the hill it ghosts, past the road bumps and buildings. It gains speed, going down, down, down until-!
The switch flips and the trolley runs over a Toad, but instead of a Toad it is his beautiful, wonderful, perfectly thrown red shell. The shell that was a moment away from hitting Anzai and beating a real person at the game of MarioKart disintegrates upon contact with the trolley problem. Sakura doesn't even have time to register the great defeat before the trolley hits him, too.
“Come on, Sakura!” Nagato cheers, wide-eyed. “You can still catch him!”
On the screen, Toad gets back up. Sakura puts all his focus on crossing the finish line.
“Use your fireballs!” Tsuchiya says. “Give him a barrage!"
Sakura looks up and discovers that, (possibly) by the mercies of being toad in a harbor of them, he does have another item: a fireflower icon. He spams the button, and a wave of small fireballs wiggle their way towards Anzai. Almost, almost-
There!
The trolley does not strike, but Toad does. A joined whoop goes up from the onlookers as the Wiggler wipes out a car length from the goalpost. Sakura holds down the accelerate button as hard as he can. He flashes past just as Anzai shakes it off.
Seventh Place. Not bad. Sakura, possibly in a daze, turns to his friends.
“YES! YOU DID IT!”
“Nice job!!”
Anzai, to his credit, looks perhaps more proud than he would if he had actually won. “I'm sending a picture of this to the group chat,” he laughs. “You're getting so good!”
The rest of the afternoon slips by quickly, bolstered by Sakura's first ever win. Semi-win. Whatever. Listening to Kiryu's sister and watching Togame did help him. It feels so good to know that even in just a few days, he has gained a new skill.
It's also different here, he thinks. The warmth in the summer air has made its way to his bones by the time the sun starts to set and Sakura has to bid them farewell. The three of them are clearly so comfortable with each other and it makes him happy to see their mended bonds of friendship. For that is what he finds the warmth is: happiness.
He is happy.
The smile on his face as he leaves the house and steps back into the August heat is not an evil one. The afternoon has turned to evening and a golden glow slants its way across the pavement. It lights its way across the three faces that wave goodbye to him from a little house by the train tracks and creeps up his own figure.
Laden with leftover snacks and the afterglow of something like victory, he turns towards his own place, but he'll be back. After all, they've already invited him.
And he has a tournament to win. That too.
-
Over the course of the next week and a half, Sakura practices his skills. He races against most of his class, except Suo who continuously finds excuses to just watch. The upperclassmen come by occasionally, both to snoop on who is rather good at the game and who they need to watch out for, and who they do not. During one memorable meeting between the first and second year officers, Matsumoto (the loud third year vice captain in charge of the MarioKart Operation) stopped by just to ask Kaji if he had gotten any better in front of the whole group of underclassmen leadership. The dark glares he had gotten from Kaji, Enomoto and Kusumi only made him laugh and slap Kaji on the back. Sakura had watched the resulting near-fistfight derail the entire meeting until Enomoto called Hiragi in to drag him away.
These people really do take this whole tournament thing pretty seriously. Sakura would be surprised, but that's what video games do to people, he supposes. After all, just look at Suzuri.
Suzuri now, though, may be a bad example. Sakura finds himself with Suo and Nirei in tow heading to the restaurant breakroom in the red light district after a text from Nakamura. How Nakamura had gotten his number, he does not know. Probably Tsubaki. At least his contact naming scheme was far more legible than Tomiyama’s.
The Oogi, when they arrive in the calm quiet of an early morning, is just getting started for the day. The workers bustle about with cleaning and prepping but without the customers and hosts and performers; its usual hectic, vibrant energy has settled back into the brick facade to be upstaged by delicate focus and the smell of coffee. Sakura takes a cup, as offered.
Nakamura and Shizuka greet them just inside the door, sharing smiles with Suo and warm words with Nirei. Nakamura ruffles Sakura’s hair and Sakura makes the usual attempt at biting his hand off. Shizuka laughs.
“Tsubaki said he’d be by soon, too! We got Suzuri to come as well,” she beams. Her demeanor seems to have entirely recovered from the incident only a month ago and a few blocks down. Not only has her smile reappeared, but it is also wider than before. Even off the stage, it makes Sakura get why Tsubaki always talks about her being able to light up a room. She leads the way to the back room that Sakura had first encountered the mortifying ordeal of Mario Kart in.
The room, though just as decked out as the last time that he, Suo, and Nirei were here, appears to be empty aside from two of the Roppo Ichiza lieutenants. Well. Sakura assumes they are Nakamura’s second-in-commands. They hang around him too much for people who don't seem personally invested in his drama. To be honest, he has no idea how the Roppo Ichiza gang is structured.
Nirei could probably tell him, he thinks.
Nakamura, upon glancing at the current occupants of the room, gives something that sounds like a laugh and a sigh. A laugh-sigh? “Suzuri?”
The tall, short-haired one (Hideka? Sakura thinks. He makes a note to ask Nirei later) grins and gestures to the back door. “Said something about feeding the cats. Told him you would be waiting, boss.”
With the most indulgent smile Sakura’s seen in a while (no easy feat, considering he sees Tsubaki ask Umemiya about his garden, like, multiple times a week), Nakamura strolls to the door and nudges it open. The back alley beyond is filled with the shadows of late dawn and golden lines from where the light gets in. Suzuri crouches half in one such shadow, hand outstretched, and freezes as artificial light from the overheads in the restaurant cuts into the alley. The shape he was reaching for gives a sharp, startled meow! and darts away as the door creaks open. Nakamura sighs, but Sakura can hear the fondness in it.
There is a brief, murmured exchange, and then Suzuri follows Nakamura in. He smiles at them. Nirei gives a wave.
“Alright! We're here to race!” Nakamura begins at a volume unsuitable for seven A.M. in a closed bar, but quiets as the piano player guy (Otowa?) and Hidaka shush him. “Sorry, sorry. It's just me, Otowa, Hidaka, and those two today. Miyoshi said he had a ‘prior commitment'.”
“Because he's no fun,” Otowa posits. Hidaka laughs.
“Because he's no fun,” Nakamura nods. “Speaking of fun! Suzuri, are you ready to show Sakura and his friends how real racing’s done?!”
Suzuri, already halfway through setting up the console and controllers, makes a noise of assent.
“Yeah! Exactly!” Nakamura crows. He produces a controller from somewhere in his suit jacket.
“You always come prepared, Nakamura-san.” Suo says admiringly.
If Suo wasn't Suo and Sakura hadn't spent so much time falling for his schemes, he would've missed the teasing in his eyes. Nakamura does, though. He continues on about racing games and talent as Suzuri finishes connecting the controllers (including the one from Nakamura's pocket) and hands them out. Suo, as expected, declines the offer, but Nirei takes one. Sakura hesitates, then follows his lead. Nakamura holds his out to Shizuka, who grins shyly.
Hidaka and Otowa just smile at Suzuri as he tries to give them the last controller. A staring contest begins, is fought, and ends in defeat. Suzuri smiles back and becomes player four.
In the meantime, Nakamura and Shizuka chance asking Nirei for his thoughts on the comparison between King Boo (Nakamura’s character) and Peachette (Shizuka's character). By the time Sakura remembers which characters those are, Nirei has stopped talking about character design and started on about weight classes and heavys and medium lights and the randomizer choosing effective options-
Suo gently taps him on the head. Nirei stutters to a stop and laughs. The character menu blinks in front of them. “Sorry! Didn't mean to ramble…”
Sakura bumps their shoulders together and decides on a funny looking green lizard. Yoshi and him are going places today, he chooses to believe.
Nirei grabs his usual Toad, and Sakura watches closely as Suzuri selects a blue princess with a blob-shaped companion. Nirei gasps. “Rosalina is pretty hard, Suzuri-san!”
Suzuri shrugs. “She is challenging,” he says softly. “But fun.”
Sakura makes a note to himself to never pick the blue princess. This game will not make him suffer more than necessary, no thanks. He already shows up and agrees to play, and that should be enough.
The tracks this round are no less unforgiving than last time. They start off with a somewhat unremarkable race circuit in a stadium, but this time there are no “excitebikes” and far less jumps (thank goodness). Thanks to watching Togame, practicing with Anzai, and all the rest, Sakura does not do so poorly. He drifts (and overdrifts, oops) around the corners, pushes the button for tricks on the jumps, and even succeeds in using a mushroom on the last segment of the race to slide past the empty pipes sticking out of the ground and into a respectable eighth place. It feels good.
Or it does, until he looks at the scoreboard. Nirei, Suzuri, and Shizuka all sit in the top five. Sakura doesn't even have the energy for anger. He looks mournfully at the door and reaches for another cup of coffee. Suo pats him on the arm.
Nirei and the Roppo Ichiza loudly declare that he'll do better next time and it was just Mario and Bad Luck, but Sakura is far more comforted by Suzuri and Shizuka's silent nods of commiseration. Sakura can see the pain of mario in their eyes, too.
He supposes that they also just started playing and are also accustomed to racing against friends who had the opportunity to practice their whole lives. Suzuri just started to have a stable job and a place (and console) to play, and Shizuka must have had not more than a few months longer.
“Don't worry, Sakura,” Shizuka says. “I was just like you when I first started. It just takes time, and practice!”
The next race takes them to a highway. So do both the races after that. There sure are a lot of highways in a game where everyone drives without a license, Sakura thinks as he hits a car. Maybe the car hits him. Who's to say. Sakura is the one who goes flying anyways. Yoshi is way less of a menace on the road than the rest of these people on Moonview Highway. And Shroom Ridge. And Toad's Turnpike (At Least There's No Trolleys This Time: the version). Apparently the places Yoshi is going today are the journey, not the destination.
The destination, though, is always eighth place. Still. At least he's graduated from getting last?
He ends up, funnily enough, in eighth place overall, too. Shizuka fistbumps him from sixth. Nirei comes in second, and to everyone's surprise, Suzuri wins the round. Nakamura slings an arm over his shoulders and yells encouragement.
It isn't until Sakura can sit back and watch Suzuri and the Roppo Ichiza play together that he fully understands how ridiculously good at the game Suzuri has somehow become in just a month or two. He usually ends up in the top two of their races, and regularly comes in first, even when the group agrees to switch the COMs to hard. His use of items, his timing and control over his car, and most importantly, his ability to recover from setbacks (of which there are many) put Rosalina up with and even ahead of his competition. Three seasoned players and Suzuri somehow beats them all, eight times out of ten.
Nakamura and co. are no slouches either. All three of them are incredible to watch as they make the game more intense and entertaining. Adding to that, all three continually chime in with things they claim Miyoshi would say.
“I hope this red shell finds you before I do,” Otowa says, Nakamura in his sights. “Miyoshi told me to say that.”
“I have one response: Fireball.” Nakamura replies. “Miyoshi said that last week.”
“No, he would be like, ‘It's Pink Gold Peach, not Rose Gold,’” Hidaka laughs, barreling down the other two but spinning out on a banana thoughtfully left in his path by Suzuri. “And then he would actually hit the red shell instead of miss it by a mile- Suzuri! STOP LEAVING BANANAS.”
“‘I do not wish for us to come to blows, Otowa’,” Nakamura says intensely. Otowa dodges right in front of him to steal an item box. “Miyoshi said that.”
Sakura begins to suspect that Miyoshi would not actually say these things. Suzuri by now is so far ahead of the second place that the game has started taking pity on the rest of them. Hidaka crows in delight as he receives an invincible star in second. Nakamura cackles from third, holding three circling red shells.
“Hey, Otowa, where'd you go? I have a favor to return!”
Otowas's comeback is drowned out by Suzuri's third win in a row. Shizuka and Nirei cheer. Suo applauds. Nakamura red shells Hidaka twice before they are both overtaken by Otowa.
“Eat my exhaust, suckers!”
“NOOOO.”
“That's the grand prix!” Nirei says excitedly. “Congrats!!”
“Did I hear Suzuri won!” booms a new voice. “Everybody cheer right now!”
“TSUBAKI!” Nakamura shouts, still in contempt of the early hour that by now is not that early. “Welcome!”
Tsubaki sweeps into the room, the Sakaki twins at his heels like a flock of pigeons after being offered bread once. Seryu winks at Sakura while Uryu stares into space. Sakura gives a little wave back.
“Sakura!!! And Nirei and Suo!!” Tsubaki laughs, strolling up to the bar as though he was just passing by and not intentionally walking in front of the TV. “Do take some more coffee, here!”
Nakamura groans. “That's for the employees, and you know that!”
Tsubaki flaps a hand at him. “Shush, Kanji. Shizuka, Suzuri, are you putting this man in his place?”
They dissolve into squabbling. Seryu leans over to Sakura and grins. “We were just passing through on our way to practice for the show tonight, but then Tsubaki heard the music and dashed over. He's really bummed to not participate in your guys’ tournament.”
The group turns to stare at the pair of bickering men, occasionally fueled by the rest of the Roppo Ichiza seconds. Sakura feels sorry for anyone on Keisei Street that likes peace and quiet, which of course is no one. Absolutely no one on this street cares for any volume lower than shouting. He always forgets that fact until he gets here.
“Uryu and I keep telling Tsubaki to just organize his own but, well….” Seryu sighs. “Organization and Team Jikoku don't really go hand in hand.”
“I WANT A DIVORCE, AND I'M TAKING SUZURI WITH ME,” Tsubaki hollers.
“THIS ISN'T A MARRIAGE, AND HE'S MY EMPLOYEE,” Nakamura shouts.
Sakura looks over. Suzuri has, in spite of the loudly arguing men directly behind him, gone back to Mariokart. To Sakura's great surprise, Nirei and Suo(!) have joined him, too. For once, the race is more peaceful than the circumstances outside the game. Sakura did not know that could happen. He watches them race while Seryu yaps in his ear and Uryu scrolls through his phone and Shizuka sighs and tries to descalate the yelling.
“Uryu and I usually main Lemmy and Larry, Tsubaki says it's because we're ‘two halves of the same clown’. He always plays as Inkling Girl, though he did go through a phase where he was Yoshi, probably because that's Umemiya's main. Middle School was a weird time, man.” Seryu glances at Uryu and nods, like the other has contributed anything to the conversation. “Oh yeah, he also was Pauline for a while when we first got to high school. You know, in between the gang warfare and whatnot. Nearly started a brawl with Momose once because he mains Birdo and they started arguing over which one was cuter-”
In the background, Otowa, Hidaka, and Shizuka cheer as Nirei snipes Suzuri with a green shell. Suo, who Sakura has never seen touch a controller before and who he assumes chose the exact same character and kart set up as Nirei did for the purpose of trolling, does something that makes a few of the npcs go flying. Sakura sits back to watch. The atmosphere washes over him again, no longer subdued and sleepy but chaotic and eager. Soon the manager of the restaurant will storm in and scold Nakamura and Tsubaki both for hogging the backroom, and soon Suzuri and the Roppo Ichiza will have to leave to prepare for their day jobs. Soon, Sakura, Suo and Nirei will get shooed down the street, their arms laden with to-go cups of coffee and boxes of slightly stale but technically ‘unsellable’ scones, and the late morning sun will chase them back to Furin. Sakura will roll his eyes but smile. He'll see them again, after all. They're invited to the tournament too.
-
A few days later, Sakura and his friends step into Pothos and are immediately cornered by the third years. There are four of them. Sakura recognizes none of them. Nirei probably knows not only their names but also their weight, diet, and last notable fight. He's funny like that. To Sakura's surprise, they don't ask for a fight or even look at him besides an initial greeting.
“Nirei Akihiko!” The leader says. “We heard that you are the best freshman at Mariokart!”
Sakura has never seen Nirei look so meltable. Melty? The feeling where he becomes a puddle, as a facial expression. Nirei blinks.
“Y-yes?” he nearly whispers.
“Would you do us the honor of racing, as brothers in Furin?”
Sakura watches in real time as Nirei loses the ability to compute. He and Suo share a look, for once on the exact same page, and prod (Sakura via an elbow, Suo playfully poking) him forward.
One of the other third years rolls his eyes and grins at them. “Anzu, you're scaring them! It's really not that serious, but if you would like to race with us-”
“Of course!” Nirei manages to say.
The third year blinks. “-cool. Let's go!”
All five of them are out the door and across the street before Sakura can lift a finger to ask where they're going. He watches them disappear into the bustling crowd.
“I think Nirei just got kidnapped!” Suo laughs. “Good for him!”
“I think it was the other way around,” Sakura mutters. Nirei would've kidnapped himself for a chance to hang out with the third years.
“He is a kidnappable person,” a voice behind the bar says. Kotoha steps up to the register. “The usual?”
“Ye-”
But Sakura is interrupted once again before he can respond. “Nope! Today he's coming with me!”
Umemiya Hajime blinds all three of them with a mega-watt smile from where he sits at the other end of the bar. Surprised that he hadn't noticed him until now, Sakura immediately scans the corners of the room for Sugishita, but it’s just Umemiya, sipping coffee and surrounded for some reason by papers. Sakura nearly doesn’t recognize him with glasses.
“Umemiya-san!” Suo greets. “Aren’t you supposed to be giving parent-teacher conferences today?”
“Hiragi was too busy hanging out with Kaji and the second years,” Umemiya sighs. “We're rescheduling. He left me a bunch of the paperwork, though. Mizuki keeps threatening to change the phone lines if we keep messing with the students’ progress timetables. Something about the legalities involved. Of course, we don't want the state on our back!”
Sakura blinks.
“I run a school,” Umemiya explains. This actually explains very little.
“This is why I don't go to school,” Kotoha says. “Too much ‘timetables’.”
“You manage a restaurant?" Sakura says, bewildered. He doesn't entirely know what that entails but it definitely has something to do with schedules.
Kotoha just flaps a hand, shooing them away in favor of the next customer. Sakura begrudgingly sits down next to Umemiya. Suo does not sit, instead making a motion towards Sakura, then the door, then he waves. Sakura waves back, and Suo turns and walks towards the door, following Nirei down the street from a few moments before.
“He's going to watch Kiryu and the second years practice.” Sakura mumbles before Umemiya can ask, preemptively fielding the question.
“Ah, all you freshmen are so popular,” Umemiya says proudly. “Back in my day, we had to communicate solely through punching! Not to mention the que line to ask for an audience. Everyone's so casual now.”
“Careful, you're beginning to sound old,” Kotoha reappears, pouring coffee. The rich liquid streams into mugs, then reaches its last drop and droops sadly onto the counter. Kotoha glares at the spill.
“Back in your day was like, two years ago,” Sakura says suspiciously. “I know texting was around then.”
Umemiya laughs. “Well, today is also my day! So, how ‘bout it? Mariokart with us orphanage folks? Kotoha, you should come too after work!”
Sakura makes a face.
“Natsuki's been asking about you,” Umemiya tacks on slyly.
Sakura sighs, ignores Kotoha’s accusatory glare for being weak against children, and gives in. “Fine.”
Umemiya cheers. Kotoha silently shakes her head in judgement, but Sakura knows her well enough by now to expect to see her tonight at Furinen. A racecourse awaits them in the future, and Sakura finds himself excited for the match.
.
Furinen, filled with children, noise, and one enthusiastic ex-alcoholic with constant printer trouble, finds Sakura tripping up the steps late that night. The afternoon rains had washed the town streets in the golds and purple-reds of dusk by evening, and Sakura had lost a fair amount of time soaking in the colors. He arrives late, but in time for Kotoha’s cooking, which is what really matters, of course.
Natsuki greets him at the door, all four and a half feet of impetuous nine-year-old. She immediately glomps onto his arm and scowls at the room.
He laughs. “Hey, kid.”
She squints up at him. “You should visit more.”
Umemiya, following behind her, also laughs. “He comes almost every week! If he came more, he'd have to live here.”
He winks at Sakura and ruffles his hair. Sakura and Natsuki give him identical scowls. Umemiya beams.
“Food's getting cold!” Kotoha calls from the dining room, and Sakura hears Shitara, the caretaker, say something to her about kids needing friends. They hurry in.
Dinner is an excellent affair. Kotoha's cooking is restaurant worthy, and though the children take the conversation through a number of seemingly nonsensical twists and turns, Sakura does find himself enjoying the experience. Shitara and the lady that Sakura assumes is his wife are talented in redirecting inappropriate jokes and potential conversational hazards. They ask Sakura about himself and don't press when he gives a vague and mumbled answer. Umemiya and Kotoha and a few of the other older kids take on the brunt of the talking and let him fade into the background. It's nice.
Natsuki watches him during the meal. Sakura glances over to find her looking at him and then readjusting the grip on her chopsticks out of the corner of his eye and has to hide a smile. Umemiya catches his eye from across the table and winks subtly (which is not something Sakura realized he knew how to do, until now. He seems so loud most of the time, and then he does something quietly that rocks Sakura’s world. Like when they first met, or when he faced Tomiyama, or when he told Sakura his story on the roof, or-
Well. Sakura supposes anyone can be loud and quiet at the same time. Umemiya just chooses to be kind with that power.)
The guy in question slides another plate of food towards Sakura and smiles. At the other end of the table, Kotoha and the other girls laugh over a joke. Natsuki bumps their ankles together under the table. The room is warm, and Sakura is full.
After the dishes are done and the leftover food is put away, the kids hustle to the back door excitedly.
“Can we play outside?” They look to Shitara with begging eyes.
“Alright. But don't go far!” he says. “It's almost dark out!”
“Okay!”
The rest of them gather around Umemiya as he diligently sets up the TV. Sakura watches them play what seems to be an intense and extra complicated round of rock-paper-scissors to determine who gets to play first. Natsuki unsticks herself from his side to slaughter the competition and then frowns at the controller they hand her. Sakura recognizes the confusion in her eyes, and gently pries it from her grip and passes it to Kotoha.
“Watch me play before you try it,” he tells her. “‘s not much fun until you know what to do.”
Natsuki continues frowning but allows this. Kotoha winks at her and Sakura looks up to catch the tail end of an Umemiya Smile. Ugh.
For this round, Sakura lets Natsuki decide who they should play as. He vetoes her on Rosalina but goes with her second choice of (pink) Shy Guy. Umemiya, as Sakaki Seryu had told him, picks the Yoshi lizard. Kotoha selects the yellow flower lady. The other kid who won the rock-paper-scissors who Umemiya had called ‘Mao-chan’ (and looks like a baby but is probably just a middle schooler or something. Sakura isn't sure. He's never had much practice with guessing age) clicks over to Peach. She gives Kotoha a fist bump.
Today Mario takes them on a journey. Dolphin Shoals welcomes them, but Sakura does not welcome it back. All these dolphins need to go back to the aquarium in his opinion, a place he has never been but he assumes is similar to underwater jail. The dolphins would fit right in there. Shy Guy jumps off the ramps through hoops and is green shelled; he jumps off of mysterious pipes blowing air and is red shelled; he jumps off a giant dolphin's back and is run over by an invincible star. The aquarium is not a place he will ever go, actually. Maybe Natsuki would be better off watching someone else tonight.
He drifts through the last curve and swerves to stay on the track until he stumbles to the finish line. Umemiya's dinosaur does a victory dance from first place. Of course it does.
“Sakura,” he began pensively, “Did anyone ever explain the items to you? You had a mushroom, you could've cut across the rough to finish earlier.”
Sakura raises a somewhat defiant eyebrow towards him.
“Ok! Just wondering!” Umemiya laughs. “If you don't mind, I can explain it to Natsuki?”
“Sure,” he replies, shoulders relaxing. He knows what most of the items do. He thinks. Probably. But for teaching Natsuki, it could be clarified.
“There's the coin item, the mushroom and golden mushroom, bananas, green shells, red shells, blue shells, bullet bill, a star,” Umemiya lists.
“Bombs, boomerangs, air horns,” Kotoha continues.
“And fireballs, piranha plants, and a boo,” Umemiya finishes. “There's a couple more, but we don't use inkblots or lightning or the crazy eight in tournaments. Breaks the game too much.
“Coins make you go faster in general, mushrooms accelerate you over short periods (and you can spam the golden one), you can leave bananas for other players to hit, red shells target the player in the place in front of you to hit whereas green shells are for sniping only, blue shells will hit the player in first place but on the way they can still hit you even if you're not in first. Bullet bills drive for you and make you invincible for an amount of time. So do invincible stars, except they only make you invincible. Bombs-”
“-are complicated,” Kotoha says with disgust.
“-explode!” Umemiya ignores her. “And can be thrown. Boomerangs too. And fireballs. Airhorns destroy or crash everyone around you, including shells and bananas. And boos steal someone else's item for you while making you invisible for a little.”
Natsuki blinks. Sakura blinks. Umemiya smiles proudly.
“It's a lot of information but it is easy to learn while playing!” he insists. “Next race!”
Kotoha hits the button. The stupid volcano pops up. Sakura will throw himself and Mario into lava.
The night passes quickly, the other kids rotating in and out of racing. Umemiya's explanation has helped a lot. Sakura now finds himself better able to utilize the items and also know what they do. He makes it all the way up to fifth place in one round, surprising even himself with a well aimed shell-and-mushroom combination that takes out the Inkling Girl npc (sorry Tsubaki) and the yellow guy with the mustache. Natsuki cheers along with the rest of the watching kids, and Sakura feels his ego expand. Mario is quick to put him back in his place in the next race, but it feels good. By the time the kids have to go to bed and Sakura has to leave, he thinks he learned something.
“It's up to you and Sugisihita to carry on my legacy!” Umemiya says with finality after Shitara gives them a time warning. The rest of the small children have been ushered upstairs towards bed besides Natsuki, and the bigger kids have mostly followed them. The Player 1 cursor hovers over the start button, bright in the dark of the room. Umemiya claps a hand onto Sakura’s shoulder. “I'll be rooting for you!”
He smiles.
All three of his friends wave goodbye to him at the door, though Natsuki has to grip Kotoha's leg to stay upright. She blinks sleepily.
“Come again!” Umemiya says. The other two echo it.
Those echoes follow him all the way home. That night he dreams of warm food and good company.
-
Sakura stands in the middle of the street and squares his shoulders. His entire class (besides Sugishita) gathers behind him. Together they stare down the enemy fortress and shout encouragements to him and each other.
“You can do it!”
“Go for gold!”
“Stay strong, Kachiuchi! We must live to see the dawn!”
“Hold me, Kurita, I need the support-!”
Sakura turns around. The class shuts up and waits. A dramatic wind buffs their hair and gusts across the street. Leaves drift like tumbleweeds over the open plains of the sidewalk. Sakura swears he can hear a guitar riff from somewhere.
“Do your best,” he says to them.
Nirei starts crying. Suo dramatically wipes his eyes in a moving display. Kiryu looks up from his phone game. Tsugeura whips off his jacket. The rest of the clowns cheer. The uproar startles several birds out of nearby trees.
He smiles and turns back around to confront the final enemy, the ultimate threat, the undefeatable foe, the accursed name:
Mario.
He won't win today, Sakura knows. Today, he is mario. And he has a tournament to win.