Chapter Three: Microwave Food on the Wasteland
Dinner, freshly bought from the convenience store, sat on the coffee table in the living room.
There was a box of microwavable curry rice, an order of karaage, and an empty cup of instant noodles she'd casually left there after finishing it yesterday, with a few greasy noodles still clinging to the bottom.
She peeled back the film on the curry rice and put it in the microwave to heat up.
“Ding.”
She carried the steaming curry rice over to the coffee table, sat down on the couch, and started eating slowly.
Her phone lay beside her.
The screen lit up now and then.
—An alliance member asked about upgrading a building. —R4 announced tomorrow's resource allocation. —Someone in the group chat asked when the next gathering would be.
She glanced at it and casually replied to a few messages.
“Upgrade that one first.”
“Paid upgrades will leave you short on resources. You need to fight for them.”
“You don't need to rush resources early on as a beginner.”
“We'll see tomorrow.”
Once she finished dealing with everything, she tossed the phone back onto the couch.
The engineering station was done, but there was still a pile of little odds and ends to handle in the alliance.
That was the most annoying part of playing this game every day.
It wasn't over just because you'd fought one battle.
After the battle, there was still a pile of things waiting for you to deal with.
She took a bite of curry.
“...I'm so tired.”
Leaning back against the couch, she stared at the convenience-store meal containers and the empty cup of instant noodles on the table.
“I have school tomorrow.”
“And I still need to find a club.”
She was silent for a few seconds.
“Maybe I should just go to sleep.”
The room was pitch-black, and outside the window lay the silent night of the narrow lanes around the aging apartment building.
There were no parents nagging her here, no one to care what time she went to bed, and no one to remind her whether she'd done her homework.
The rental apartment wasn't large, but it offered absolute freedom—and at this moment, she was devoting every bit of that freedom to the wasteland and the alliance business that never seemed to end.
The next morning.
The instant her alarm went off, she felt as if her soul had already left her body.
With two enormous dark circles under her eyes, she crawled out of bed looking half-asleep. Rubbing her eyes, she muttered in a hoarse voice, reflecting on her life:
“...Why did I do this to myself?”
Despite saying that, muscle memory carried her mechanically through a series of morning routines: brushing her teeth, washing her face, changing into her slightly rumpled uniform, and grabbing her schoolbag.
But the moment she pulled open the apartment door with her other hand, she instinctively reached into her uniform pocket.
The screen lit up.
—Alliance group chat:
“Bear in the trap at ten tonight. Remember to join.”
“Got it.”
“Don't forget to turn on auto-rally for monsters, too.”
“Didn't we already turn that on yesterday?”
“You have to turn it on every day.”
“Oh.”
“And remember to use the right heroes for the bear.”
“Which ones?”
“It says in the announcement.”
“I didn't read the announcement.”
“What?”
“You did the same thing yesterday.”
“Hahaha.”
“Don't laugh. Someone else brought the wrong heroes yesterday, too.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“I'll read it today.”
“You'd better.”
“What about the engineering station?”
“Someone's already handling it.”
“Good.”
“Don't forget the bear at ten.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
While reading the group messages, she casually shoved the phone deep into her uniform pocket and closed the apartment door behind her.
As she walked along the early-morning streets toward school, yawning all the while, she silently calculated:
First period was Japanese. She should be able to hide her phone under her textbook when the teacher took attendance and blindly handle a building upgrade, right?
“—Hey?”
In the hallway, the short-haired girl she'd met after class yesterday tilted her head slightly and looked at her curiously.
Noriko jerked her head up from the phone screen, dismissed the endless stream of alliance messages, and gave an awkward little laugh.
“Ah... good morning.”
“You're staring at your phone like that first thing in the morning. Are you sure you're okay?”
The girl pointed at her phone.
“Was that... a gaming group?”
“Yeah. Just the alliance's everyday chatter.”
She slipped the phone into her pocket and sighed.
“The tragedy of mobile games. Besides fighting every day, you also have an endless stream of little chores to deal with.”
“That sounds more like a job than a game.”
“You completely get it.”
Walking beside her toward the classroom, Noriko asked casually,
“By the way, yesterday you said... that I should just pick a club and join one first, then figure things out later?”
“Yep.”
The girl nodded with a smile.
“The school only does a formality check anyway. Get in and claim a spot first. We can figure out how to slack off later.”
“That's a good point.”
Noriko's eyes lit up.
“Which club did you decide on in the end?”
“Me? I picked the art club.”
“The art club?”
She remembered yesterday's eerie plaster statue and the four-hour sketching hell, and the corner of her mouth twitched.
“...Don't you have to draw for four hours there?”
“That's why I plan to practice sleeping there.”
The girl shrugged as casually as could be.
“As long as I'm holding a pencil and sitting there, looking like I'm working out a composition, it'll be fine.”
Looking at her classmate, Noriko suddenly felt that the girl seemed to have some serious experience with slacking off, too.
“...You really know what you're doing.”
“Likewise.”
The girl smiled and glanced down at the club flyer in her hand.
“Anyway, all we need is somewhere we can coast for a while.”
“Yeah.”
Noriko nodded.
“At least then we won't have to worry about club stuff every day.”
“What about you? Have you decided which one you want to join?”
Noriko lowered her head and looked at the thick stack of flyers in her hands.
“Not yet.”
“Then take your time.”
“Yeah.”
The two of them chatted as they walked into the classroom together.
At noon, during lunch.
The classroom was buzzing, filled with the aroma of boxed lunches.
A few girls had gathered around several desks nearby, excitedly chatting about the latest clothing trends, which newly opened dessert shops were fun to browse, and how heart-pounding the plot of last night's TV drama had been.
Sitting at her desk and biting into a rice ball, Noriko casually opened her phone.
—Alliance group chat:
“Your first time?”
“Yeah, first time fighting the bear.”
“How do you fight it?”
“Pretty much the same as rallying against monsters.”
“But don't use the same hero lineup as you would for monsters.”
“Why not?”
“The mechanics are different.”
“But my hero is the strongest.”
“Right, but use your three strongest ones.”
“Don't use the heroes for rallying against monsters.”
She scrolled through the screen, watching the alliance leader and several officers scramble to type messages, post stickers, and highlight key points in the group chat while trying to explain the rules to the new player. Someone even got so frantic that they sent a voice message.
Just then, a voice beside her interrupted her thoughts.
“Hey, did you watch that trending TV drama yesterday?”
She looked up, somewhat blankly, at the classmate who had turned toward her.
“...Huh?”
“The one that aired last night. Everyone's talking about who the male lead ended up choosing.”
“No, I didn't watch it.”
She honestly shook her head.
“Are there any fun shows on lately? I see you looking at your phone all day.”
“No. I'm playing a game.”
She waved the phone in her hand.
The other girl's mouth twitched. She wore an expression that said she didn't know what to make of that, then gave an awkward laugh and turned back to rejoin the lively fashion conversation at the nearby tables.
“Never mind. Pretend I didn't ask... How much is that store's clothing discounted?”
Noriko didn't pay much attention. She lowered her head and continued scrolling through her phone.
Which three heroes were you supposed to use against the bear?
Why were people still asking about this?
Were they running short on resources?
It absolutely had to be fought at ten tonight.
Looking at the alliance leader on the verge of a breakdown, she silently deleted the message she'd started typing.
Never mind.
She'd just look through the announcement herself.
At least then the alliance leader wouldn't reach through the internet and strangle her.
The afternoon classes finally ended with the ringing of the bell.
The campus entered club-recruitment hour. The hallways surged with people, and flyers of every color fluttered through the air.
Holding the thick stack of flyers that had just been thrust at her from various booths, she stood expressionlessly in the middle of the hallway. She looked less like someone searching for a club and more like someone reviewing official documents.
To find the club best suited for slacking off... no, the club least likely to interfere with her gaming schedule, she decided to conduct an on-site inspection herself.
She walked up to the badminton club's booth, where a male member in charge of recruiting greeted her enthusiastically.
“Hey, want to consider the badminton club? Our club has an amazing atmosphere!”
She nodded, raised her phone slightly, and asked in an even tone,
“Excuse me... am I allowed to keep my phone on the whole time during club activities?”
The boy froze for a moment. Seeing her serious expression, he gave an awkward smile.
“Well... when you're playing badminton, you need both hands on the racket, so if you're staring at a screen the whole time, you might get hit by the shuttlecock, and...”
“I see.”
She nodded calmly.
“Then it probably isn't a good fit.”
Before he could respond, she had already turned and walked toward the next booth.
This time, it was the Go club's table, where several members were studying a board.
She stopped and looked at the male club president sitting across from them.
“Excuse me, if I sit here and scroll through my phone the whole time, would that disrupt the club's quiet atmosphere?”
The club president looked up, pushed his glasses up, and furrowed his brow slightly.
“Go requires an extremely high level of concentration and room for thought. If someone nearby kept using their phone or getting distracted, I'm afraid it might affect everyone else's ability to think.”
“Understood.”
She withdrew her gaze without changing expression.
“Sorry to bother you.”
She passed booth after booth. Whether it was an active sports club or a quiet arts-and-culture club, she could always use a few questions about whether she was allowed to keep her phone on the whole time during the latter half of the conversation to land the other person in an exquisitely awkward silence.
A few steps behind her, several students she'd questioned earlier gathered together and lowered their voices.
“...What was up with that new girl?”
“Seriously. She went to every booth with that huge stack of flyers and asked if she could scroll through her phone the whole time. What did she even come here for?”
“She didn't seem to take the clubs seriously at all, right? That attitude... Was she looking down on us?”
Their discussion was neither loud nor quiet, and the breeze carried it into her ears.
She stopped and turned her head slightly.
She hadn't meant to look down on anyone. She was simply objectively evaluating whether these places could accommodate her burdensome personal obligations.
However, explaining to a group of high schoolers who took club activities seriously that “some things can't be interrupted” would probably be harder than reaching the heavens.
Without looking back, she silently rolled the stack of flyers into a tube and stuffed it into her uniform pocket.
Just as she lowered her head to glance at her phone—
“Whoa!”
Because she hadn't been watching where she was going at all, the toe of her shoe caught directly on a raised edge along the hallway.
With a cry of surprise, she stumbled forward. The stack of new-student flyers in her hand scattered into the air and fluttered all over the floor like a shower of white snowflakes.
Her phone skidded away with a smack and landed face-down on the floor.
“...You've got to be kidding me.”
She rubbed her slightly sore elbow and was just about to bend down to pick everything up when a hand had already reached out beside her, gathering the scattered flyers one by one.
“Are you okay?”
A gentle voice spoke.
She looked up and saw a male student from her school crouching on the floor. He neatly gathered the stack of flyers, then picked up the phone that had fallen to the side and held it out to her.
“Thanks.”
She took the phone, glanced at the screen, and only relaxed after confirming that the game hadn't disconnected.
The boy stood up and dusted off his hands. His gaze fell on the flyers he'd just helped collect, and he couldn't help smiling.
“Looks like you're having a hard time. You still haven't decided which club to join?”
She sighed, put away her phone, and said with some distress,
“Ugh... I can't find a club where I can keep scrolling through my phone.”
“Scroll through your phone?”
The boy blinked, seemingly not expecting that answer, then looked thoughtful.
Seeing how exhausted she looked, he considered it seriously for a few seconds before making a suggestion.
“Instead of looking for a club where you can use your phone, wouldn't it be better to find one that lets you leave school on time and doesn't take up any of your after-school hours?”
She froze.
“...Oh.”
The boy smiled, waved at her, and turned to disappear into the crowd.
Watching him leave, she stood there and blinked. She didn't think much of it, merely lowering her head to look at the stack of flyers in her hands.
“Leave school on time...”
She flipped through the club flyers she'd collected.
If she didn't need to slack off during club activities, then all she had to do was find somewhere that wrapped up around five.
As for where—
Her gaze fell on several of the flyers.