One Step Closer

A Snackgirls side story · How Nea Joined the Club

1

In the hobbies box on my introduction card, I wrote reading books.

Whenever I opened a new textbook, its spine smelled as though the glue hadn't quite dried. My timetable still lay in its plastic sleeve on the right side of my desk. The girl in front of me tried to turn around and had to push her bag away from her chair leg twice. It was my third day at Seoon Girls' High School. The seating arrangement changed a little each morning, but the things on my desk stayed in yesterday's order.

“What kind of books do you like?”

The girl in front glanced at my form. I went over the little flourish at the end of the last letter for no reason. What kind of books? I had titles I could name. Several, even. But what I'd spent the longest time reading the night before was less a book than the description of a bell clapper I'd found in a game. To explain why the worn-away end of a sentence had sent me around the same castle wall four times, I'd first have to explain why the protagonist had entered the ruined castle at all.

“All sorts of things.”

“Me too. Novels?”

I nodded, and she pulled a mystery novel out of her bag. Its corners had worn round. I'd read it, so instead of giving away the culprit, I asked how far she'd got. The conversation wasn't difficult. She smiled, and when the bell rang, she put the book away and turned back around. I looked down at the words reading books.

I could have said I played games, too.

No one had told me not to. I didn't even know whether she was the sort of person who'd find it strange. Still, I'd chosen the answer she could respond to most easily. Only after the conversation was over did I notice that I'd left out what I really wanted to say. It made me think I'd say a little more next time. If I decided in advance what that little more would be, it almost counted as a plan. The only problem was that next time I might answer “all sorts of things” again.

After school, the classroom filled with the sound of zippers and the names of clubs. I put on my bag and stepped into the corridor. I already knew the quietest way to the library: go west instead of taking the main building stairs, and I crossed paths with fewer groups of students. It bothered me a little that, after only three days at school, I'd learned that route first. But I couldn't very well grab someone's arm and ask her to come along.

I stopped at a noticeboard in the corridor leading to the west wing. Among the brightly colored club flyers was one black rectangle. The picture was so dark I thought the printing had gone wrong. Up close, I could make out a split in a helmet's brow and the tip of a sword. I knew that knight. Three days of seeing my classmates' faces and I still mixed them up, yet I recognized a nick in armor on a tiny screen at once.

Above the picture, someone had written, in thick angular letters, This guy cost me three hours. Rounded handwriting below it said, Want to know why I spent three hours on him? Come to the Media Research Club room, third floor of the west wing! I read that the Digital Media Research Club produced writing, videos, and photographs, but I kept looking at the knight's left hand. There was no shield in it. I remembered the shield I'd seen from the roof. I'd never brought it up with anyone.

I wanted to hear what the person who had chosen that picture had to say. I could have a quick look and leave. I deliberately stopped reading before the words membership consultation.

On the third floor, the cold air of the stairwell lingered behind me. Sunlight from the window at the end of the corridor picked out the polish on the floor. Beside a cleaning cupboard, a mop smelled faintly damp. A low electronic sound came through an open door: a sword striking stone, then a girl's voice.

“I'm telling you, dodging backward here gets you killed.”

“You died because you dodged backward. Did the game grab your hand and pull you?”

“That's why we're making this—to warn people.”

The sign on the door read Digital Media Research Club. I peered inside from behind the doorframe. Monitors and equipment lined the west-facing windows, while papers and bags of snacks lay open across the central table. A red snack can sat on a shelf to the right of the entrance. A backdrop used for taking pictures was rolled up by the wall. I'd imagined a club room full of desks and meeting chairs. This looked more like a room where people had been eating and talking until a moment ago.

The senior with half her red hair tied back leaned toward the monitor. Beside her, a blond senior slowly turned her chair with one foot as she closed the snack can. There was less than a hand's breadth between them, but whenever they bumped into each other, neither bothered to move away. People who had known each other a long time, I supposed, didn't have to pay attention to every little thing.

Then I noticed the title at the bottom of the screen: The Gatekeeper Who Abandoned His People and Saved Himself.

“He might not have abandoned them.”

They both turned. The blond senior's foot came down, and her chair stopped spinning. Only then did I realize how clearly my voice had carried into the room. Someone who'd come to look at a picture and leave had no need to correct a stranger's title. And usually you said hello before doing anything like that.

“…Hello.”

My hand was sweating around my bag strap.

2

The red-haired senior looked from my face to the screen and back.

“You play this? Have you beaten the gatekeeper?”

“Yes. I mean, I did beat him.”

She picked up the bag on the chair beside her and set it down by her feet. A charging cable dangled out of the top. She nudged it toward herself with her shoe, then pointed at the chair. She wanted me to sit, though she hadn't even asked what class I was in or why I'd come.

“Hey, ask her name first.”

The blond senior gathered the papers at the end of the table, lifting her fingers slightly so her nails wouldn't catch on them. She smiled at me even as she tidied her things.

“Momose Kirari. This is Akabane Red. We're both second-years. And you?”

“Shiromi Nea. First year.”

“Nea. Want to put your bag here?”

The moment to ask if I could sit had somehow passed. Once I'd set down my bag, saying I was about to leave felt even stranger. I perched on the front edge of the chair. My reflection appeared in the monitor. My mouth was stiff beneath my thin glasses, and the silver-gray hair by one ear stuck out where my bag strap had pressed it. While I smoothed it down, Red rewound the video.

“Why do you think he didn't abandon them?”

The gatekeeper in The Castle Where the Bell Fell Silent stands before an empty village. If you approach, he attacks without a word, and when you defeat him, he drops a broken bell clapper: the piece that hangs inside a bell and makes it ring. The gate is shut. No villagers are in sight. From that alone, he really does look like a knight who saved only himself. I'd thought so at first, too. And after dying three times, you mostly want him to get out of your way, whether he's loyal or a coward.

But even after climbing over a ruined stretch of wall and exploring the village, I couldn't stop thinking about that gate. Behind it was a short, roofed passage, blocked by rubble at the village end. I'd seen that the village was empty, but I hadn't been able to enter the passage. There was something else that bothered me: the gatekeeper was outside, yet the bar was fastened on the inside.

“There's a gap in the roof of the passage. You can see the bar through it. You can't fasten it from outside.”

“You can get onto the roof?”

At that question, the screen began to feel too small. I needed to lean forward to point out the end of the collapsed staircase. I explained where to land on the awning and which window frame to step on next. Red moved the playhead, looking for the place I meant. No, not there. A little earlier. After a few rounds of that, I'd moved my chair closer to the monitor as well.

The gap in the roof was too narrow for the character to fit through. But if you turned the camera, you could see the bar and a shield propped beside it. The shield bore the same emblem as the knight's breastplate. I explained that first.

“So he left his shield inside and came out on his own?”

“I don't know if it's his. The emblem is the same, though.”

Someone behind the gate might have fastened the bar for him. At the very least, there was too much we didn't know to decide that he'd locked the gate himself and run away. I went on to the broken clapper. With the part that rang the bell damaged like that, it wasn't surprising that the bell tower overhead was silent. The words still legible on the clapper were Until the last bell rings, before the gate… The rest had worn away. I kept changing the order of my explanation, but the words kept coming. Earlier, when someone asked what books I liked, I could hardly answer.

A snack bag rustled. I stopped talking.

Red had taken out a triangular chip. Oh. She was bored. As soon as I thought it, everything I'd said seemed to stretch on forever. I'd added evidence to a point I'd already made, then gone back over the beginning so she'd understand the evidence. Of course it had taken ages. I swallowed what I was about to say about the words that might have followed the inscription. Should I apologize now? Explaining what I was apologizing for might take too long as well.

“So you think he held them off alone until the villagers could escape?”

Red wiped the seasoning from her fingers with a tissue as she asked. She had been listening. Before I could even feel relieved, she had another question.

“Then why does he kill us, too?”

I closed my mouth. I'd thought about that. Maybe he couldn't let go of his orders, or maybe he mistook the player for an enemy. The problem was that I had no decisive evidence for either. Red waited for an answer without looking away. She wasn't letting it slide; she genuinely wanted to know.

“I don't know yet.”

“I can't take his side. He took so many of my healing potions yesterday.”

As Red grumbled, Kirari laughed and held out the snack can. I took a piece but kept looking at the knight. I felt as though I ought to explain why he attacked when you tried to heal. But then Red would have to wait through another explanation. After a moment, all I said was that she should wait one more beat after his attack ended.

“See? Now she's telling me to wait, too.”

Red shot Kirari an aggrieved look. I stiffened, thinking she meant how long I'd been talking, and only relaxed when I realized they were arguing about the timing of the knight's attacks. It took a little longer before I felt at ease.

“Then show me. The roof you were talking about.”

Red minimized the video and launched the game. She loaded a save at the gate, saying she reused it whenever she recorded, then slid the controller toward me. Seeing the window reflected in the screen, Kirari stood and drew the curtain. Sunlight slipped from the ends of her blond hair, and the dark parts of the monitor came into focus. Only then did I lean back in my chair. The room smelled of spicy snacks. On my right, I heard Kirari set down the lid of the can.

On the bus home, I rested my forehead against the window and thought about the bar I had looked down at from the roof. I thought, too, about how Red had leaned closer when I showed it to her. She still didn't agree with my reading of it. Yet I wanted to hear her objections again. That was strange. When I played alone, it was much more comfortable to be right.

In my bag, instead of a club application, was a note: Tomorrow after school. Bring your explanation of the bell clapper. Rounder handwriting had been added underneath: There will be snacks. When the bus jolted, I tucked the note between the pages of a book so it wouldn't get creased.

3

When I went back to the club the next day, the first thing I looked for was an empty chair. There was a bag in the same place as yesterday. Red picked it up as soon as she saw me. Afraid it might look as though I'd waited in the doorway just to see her do that, I hurried to take out the pages I'd prepared. I'd printed two copies. I put one in front of me and handed the other to Kirari.

The following Wednesday, the club was holding a short video screening. They were inviting students interested in the club to show them what they loved. Each piece could be three minutes long. Red was preparing footage of the gatekeeper fight, while Kirari was deciding what someone seeing the game for the first time needed to see first. Their video was already nearly three minutes long.

“Want to make the gatekeeper one with us? The stuff you told us yesterday?”

At Red's question, I squared the edges of my pages. I felt a flicker of excitement at with us, but before they could see it, I wanted to know what I'd have to do. I could find information for them. I could correct mistakes. Putting my thoughts in front of other people was different. Even in a room with only three of us, I'd kept checking whether I'd talked for too long. Where was I supposed to look while strangers watched the video?

“If we include all of it, it'll go over three minutes.”

“Then let's start with the best part.”

At home, I spread the bell clapper's description across my desk. My green tea went cold before I drank it. Every time I tried to choose one detail, explaining why I'd chosen it took me to the others, and I ended up with more than I'd started with. What I liked most was the sound at the gate. The knight won't follow you below the stone steps in front of the gate. If the player dodges an attack to the side, retreats below the steps, and stops, the knight lowers his sword. About five seconds later comes a noise like wood being scraped. With headphones on, it sounds as if it's right beside your ear. The first night I heard it, I thought someone had been left on the other side of the gate, and I couldn't move for a long time.

Why I'd stayed still was harder to explain. It was a game. I could have tried knocking or searched the area more carefully. But I felt as though the sound inside would stop if I moved. Could three lines of item description convey what it felt like to wait in front of a screen where nothing happened?

I deleted the recording several times. My breath sounded too loud after the words “If you wait here.” When I heard footsteps in the hallway, I stopped playback, then felt foolish when no one came into my room. The video I brought in on Friday was fifty-eight seconds long. I hoped the cuts weren't obvious, though I could remember every missing sentence.

Red watched it to the end, then took hold of the editing bar at the bottom of the screen.

“We can keep this bit and this bit.”

The pause grew shorter. The video moved on to the bell clapper's description before the scraping sound began. I reached toward the monitor, then set my hand on the table before it could overlap hers.

“We have to keep that part.”

“Nothing happens there.”

It was so accurate that I found it hard to answer. Nothing did happen. I'd cut the other scenes to show that. There was something you could only hear if you did nothing for a while. But as I explained it over the paused screen, I sounded as though I were forcing meaning onto it.

“There's a sound. As if someone's trying to open it from inside.”

Red replayed the clip and tilted her head toward the speaker.

“The gate creaking? But you're not sure, right?”

I said I wasn't. I couldn't claim to know something I didn't. After thinking for a moment, Red suggested showing the fight first and putting the sound under the explanation afterward. In her version, large captions appeared each time the swords clashed. Two attacks, a beat, then a third. It was quick and easy to follow. If I'd seen it first, I would probably have died a few fewer times myself.

I could see that. But if my sound played under the fight, who would hear it? I'd spent a whole night choosing that scene. For everyone else, it would become background noise after the battle. I thought Red couldn't possibly know how much work I'd put into it, and at the same time I wanted her to know at least a little. Unable to decide which thought to say first, I kept repeating that the sound would be hard to hear.

Beside us, Kirari picked up a page.

“What if we cut down the text here a little? I was trying to look at the gate, and I missed it because I was reading about the clapper.”

“You have to see both for them to connect.”

“I haven't played the game yet. I get confused when a lot of names come up.”

“That's why it needs an explanation.”

Kirari's fingertips stopped on the paper. Her lips parted once, then closed. I kept my eyes on the section cut from the editing bar. If we cut the words, I feared we'd lose the scenes that had to go with them.

“You were only planning to show the fight at first.”

Red let go of the mouse.

“That's why we're changing it.”

“There's almost nothing left.”

“I cut mine, too. At the beginning, here.”

I didn't look at the beginning she pointed to. My grip tightened on my copy of the printout, folding a corner under my thumb.

“So all we needed was a cool fight and some pretty scenes.”

The words sounded much meaner out loud than they had in my head. Kirari sat up in her chair. For a moment, the room was quiet. I could hear the computer fan turning and feel the cold tabletop under my palm.

“That's not what I was trying to make.”

Kirari set my pages on the table. I saw the circles and question marks she'd penciled in: Who? When was this? Between explanations I'd rewritten again and again, she'd been writing things down, too.

“I read all of it. Everything you gave me. Does saying I don't understand mean I barely looked at it?”

I should have said no. Saying I hadn't meant that would at least have bought me a little time. But hadn't I? Until a moment ago, I'd assumed she was taking the scene lightly because she hadn't played the game. Even after seeing the questions on the page, I felt as though apologizing first would mean giving up all fifty-eight seconds of my video.

“It would be faster if I made it myself.”

Red looked at me, then said, “Then do that.” There was nowhere to hide in such a short answer. As I picked up my bag, I knocked against the snack can. Kirari caught it before it fell, and its lid clattered against the table. I didn't say sorry then, either.

Out in the corridor, I could hear the distant voices of students I hadn't noticed from inside the room. Even after I closed the door, I could still hear Kirari's low voice in my head, oddly clear. I hurried down the stairs. I meant to stop if one of them called after me. No one did, so I had to keep going.

4

Working alone made decisions easy. I finished the video on Saturday night and corrected the captions on Sunday. It came in under three minutes. I kept the sound at the gate and included evidence against my own interpretation at the end. Now, if anyone said I hadn't explained enough, I could show them.

When playback ended, my room was quiet. I could hear the refrigerator running outside the door. The box of Kancho on my desk was almost untouched. I moved the mouse and played the video again, looking for mistakes. But I knew every line and every caption that was about to appear, so I couldn't tell what felt off. I kept returning to the opening frame, even though I knew it by heart.

I tried to remember the questions Kirari had written and copied them onto my own printout. Then I tried to answer them. Who might have fastened the bar? When had the knight gone outside? I had a sequence in mind, but all I'd actually seen was a gate that was already shut. Whenever I tried to leave only what I knew for certain, I found another sentence to cross out. I'd left saying it would be faster to make the video myself, yet I was spending my time on the things she'd asked about. Perhaps if I finished explaining them, we'd clear up the misunderstanding. But what about what I'd said first? Rewriting a sentence wouldn't make it disappear.

At lunch on Monday, laughter came from a nearby desk. I looked up and saw two students watching an animal video with a phone between them. A large dog tried to sit on a cushion smaller than its body and slid off to one side. I leaned over, wanting to see more. The first girl to laugh caught her friend's arm and said, “Wait, play that bit again.” A finger dragged the video back, and they laughed at the same part a second time.

My hand stopped halfway through screwing the cap onto my bottle of green tea. They could watch that video over and over. They weren't replaying it to find what was wrong.

After school, I told myself I would only deliver the sheet with my answers. I'd packed the storage drive with my video on it, too, in case it was needed. I hadn't decided what for. All I had to do was hand over the paper and go back downstairs. For someone with such a simple errand, I climbed to the third floor very slowly.

Outside the club room, I took off my glasses and cleaned them. The lenses weren't particularly dirty. I put them back on but still couldn't knock. From inside came the thud of someone falling, followed by the familiar sound effect for defeat.

“Wow. That is so unfair.”

Kirari was alone. The curtain by the window was half closed. Papers lay across Red's empty place instead of a headphone cable. Kirari set the controller on her lap and stretched her fingers. Hands that usually seemed to move so easily looked a little stiff today. On the table were a drink carton with a strawberry on it and the material I'd given her the previous week.

I tapped the doorframe. She looked around.

“You're here.”

That was all. She didn't smile and clear a place for my bag, but she didn't ask why I'd come, either. I held out the paper. She took it and picked up the controller. “Just a second. I want to get as far as that spot.” Did she mean I could go, or that I should wait? I couldn't tell, so I stayed where I was.

The knight hit the character, who staggered with only a little health left. Kirari's thumb moved toward the heal button.

“Don't heal now.”

As soon as I said it, I realized I'd started with an instruction again. Her hand stopped, and another attack landed. The screen went dark. She might have survived if I hadn't spoken. I tightened my grip on the back of the chair.

“I'm sorry. Not now—after you dodge the next attack.”

“I don't know when the next attack starts.”

She didn't hand me the controller. She started again and followed the same route. I could have reached that spot quickly if I'd played. The memory of Friday's pages helped me keep that to myself. Instead, I watched the screen closely. Where should I begin explaining a move I'd grown so used to that I no longer noticed it?

“The knight moves his right foot first. Before he raises the sword.”

This time she dodged. Kirari gave a quick “Oh!” She died to the attack after that. I'd bent so far toward the screen I was almost sitting; when she restarted, I pulled the chair out a little and sat down. The moment to wonder whether I should ask permission had passed.

On her fifth try, she stopped where we could see the gate but the knight's sword couldn't reach us. When I told her to stop, she lifted her fingers from the controls. The protagonist caught their breath, and the knight lowered his sword. Wind stirred a loose piece of cloth in the game. There was a scraping sound, like wood.

“…There is something in there.”

“There might not be. It might be the wind.”

She looked at me.

“Then why aren't you moving?”

My hand was gripping the edge of my chair. She was the one holding the controller, but I was the first to wait. Even as I said there might be nothing inside, I felt that if we listened a little longer, I could tell the difference. I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. Kirari saw and didn't hurry me.

The light in the room looked much as it had on Friday. The end of the table was bright; the space beneath the monitor was dark. That day, I'd pushed my pages into the light and watched my scene disappear in the dark screen. Today I was aware, every second, that the person beside me wasn't pressing a button. I wanted to ask if she found it interesting. I wanted to ask if she was bored. But speaking seemed likely to break the sound we were listening to together, so this time I stayed quiet.

After a long while, Kirari moved the character one step toward the gate. The knight raised his sword again. The character dodged three attacks and fell on the fourth.

“This part is so annoying. But the longer I look at that gate, the more it bothers me. I want something to come out of it, except I'd be scared if it did.”

I watched the screen go dark. That was the feeling I'd wanted to describe. Could I have just said it like that? My pages had the inscription, the bar, and the order I thought things had happened in. They didn't have the feeling of the first night I'd stopped in front of that gate.

“On Friday… I thought you just wanted to pick the pretty parts. Because you hadn't played it.”

“Yeah. That's what it sounded like.”

I couldn't hide behind my pages this time. Looking at a patch of worn paint on the edge of the table, I said I was sorry. Kirari didn't say it was all right straightaway. She lifted her drink carton, but it must have been empty; the straw made a small sucking sound. I waited for it to end.

“I still don't know this game very well. But I wanted to know which part you loved. If I don't understand next time, I'll ask. I wasn't just skimming through it.”

I nodded. My throat seemed to close for a moment, and my answer came late.

“I didn't explain it well, either.”

“The thing about his foot—that helped.”

She rolled a pencil that lay beside my notes. I reached out, worried it would fall, then drew back when she stopped it with her wrist. Apologizing didn't instantly put us back where we'd been. But I could stay in the chair beside her.

5

Quick footsteps sounded in the corridor. Red came in carrying two pairs of headphones and stopped when she saw me. I couldn't decide whether to stand, so I only shifted my knees. “Oh.” “Hello.” “You came back.” While Red and I exchanged those three short remarks, Kirari flattened her empty drink carton. Each fold made a crisp little sound. None of us supplied the next words.

Red set down the headphones.

“I didn't delete your part.”

“I know. I still have the original.”

“That's not what I mean.”

My face grew hot. I think I'd known from the start she wasn't talking about the original file. I just wasn't sure which meaning I was allowed to take. I'd been waiting for her to ask me to work with them again, while making it impossible for her to say it.

“I cut it on Friday without listening to you. Sorry.”

Red said it standing up, nudging the chair beneath her hand back and forth. I'd thought she was the sort of person who would look straight at someone while apologizing. But her eyes were on the space below the monitor, not on me. It occurred to me that she might not know what expression to wear, either.

“I didn't look at the part you cut, either. I thought I was the only one losing anything. I'm sorry.”

“I took twenty seconds out of mine. The bit where I die three times.”

“That was a shame,” Kirari said. “What you say when you go down the third time is the best part.”

Red gave a brief laugh. I unzipped my bag. My fingers touched the storage drive, but I hesitated before taking it out. Neither of them had asked to see it. I could just say I'd brought something. But then they'd both know I'd come back because I wanted to make the video with them again.

I'd already climbed to the third floor and was sitting between them. What was the point of hiding only that?

“I made a version. Would you watch it?”

Red pulled out her chair and sat down. Kirari turned toward the monitor, too. Neither touched the mouse while it played. When my recorded voice came on, I was too embarrassed to look anywhere but a stain on the monitor stand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kirari tilt her head when a caption changed. I made a note of the spot. This time I wanted to ask what had confused her.

When the video ended, Red suggested opening with the final question: who was the knight waiting for?

“That's what I want to know most.”

I nearly said that they needed to know the evidence first. Instead, I asked Kirari what had confused her when the caption changed. She drew an arrow between the clapper and the knight on my page. “What does this clapper have to do with him?”

“It's what you get when you defeat him.”

“Oh. Tell me that first.”

I put that sentence at the start of my narration notes. I'd thought the order would be easy to follow because it was the order in which I'd found things out. Maybe the two of them were still deciding which part they wanted to know about.

“If I start with the part you're curious about, would you want to see what came before it, too?”

“I think I would.”

As Kirari answered, Red propped her chin on her hand.

“But I still don't know if he's a loyal knight. What if the people inside barred the gate because they were scared of him?”

I didn't like that possibility. If I thought of him as a knight who'd stayed behind to protect someone, the hours I'd spent wandering an empty village felt a little less pointless. Perhaps the village was empty because he'd protected its people. But all that remained on the clapper was Until the last bell rings, before the gate… I'd been reading it as an order to wait there, or to protect someone. Nor did the shield inside the gate say whom he'd protected. I didn't even know whether it was his, or who'd put it there. Wherever I couldn't read something, I'd filled in the words I wanted to find.

“That's possible, too.”

“Then let's put both in.”

“We only have three minutes.”

Red opened her footage of the fight. The knight attacked, and she dodged before landing the final blow. I'd thought she was good the first time I saw it, but after sitting beside Kirari through all those deaths, the same clip looked different. How many attempts had it taken to fight almost all the way through without getting hit? Red selected the whole sequence and cut it. Only the knight's first downward strike remained.

“Won't you miss it?”

“I will.”

She saved the cut fight to a separate file. A gap opened in the timeline. Knowing that the wait and the sound I'd wanted to keep would go there, I found it hard to thank her, or to ask her to put her own footage back. I wanted to check first whether anyone could hear the sound when we played it again.

I cut my explanation, too: the part where I'd started with the bell tower and read through everything in order. I kept one sentence saying that the clapper came from the knight, along with the surviving inscription. In small letters at the bottom of my page, I copied the sentences I'd cut. Taking them out of the video didn't mean I could throw them all away.

Kirari changed the title to Who Is That Knight Waiting For? We changed the order as well. We showed the gate first, then had the player dodge one attack and retreat. The sound came while the player stood still. Kirari tried it on her phone and said it was hard to hear. I worried that reading a caption first would take away the feeling of waiting. This time, I told them why it worried me.

“What if we let it play once on its own, then replay it briefly with an explanation?”

Kirari copied the section and pasted it directly after the first. Only the second clip got a short caption describing the sound. Anyone who missed it the first time could listen again. I watched the gate appear twice and nodded. When we played the whole video, we came in a few seconds under three minutes.

The sunlight on the table shifted slowly to one side. Red passed me a pair of headphones, and when I'd listened, I passed them to Kirari. Red thought it sounded like metal scraping; Kirari thought it sounded like someone slowly pushing a chair. I'd thought it was wood, but after hearing them, I could almost hear metal, too. I was less sure than I'd been on Friday. I didn't want to close the video and go home, though.

I took a triangular chip from the bag Red had opened, and my mouth burned. Red handed me a water bottle. Kirari laughed at my expression, then pushed the bag back toward Red. As I drank, I wondered if the two of them ate this much spice all the time. It was a little worrying. If I was going to come here often, perhaps I should bring my own snacks.

“I'll bring some tomorrow, too. Kancho.”

“Good. Tomorrow won't be spicy, then.”

Red looked wounded at Kirari's remark. I laughed, then realized I was the one who'd said tomorrow first. Neither of them pointed it out. That spared me from looking for a reason to take it back.

6

On Tuesday, I brought the Kancho I'd promised. After dividing it between the three of us, I rerecorded my voice.

On Wednesday, we arranged six chairs in two rows at the front. As they filled, Red stayed behind the laptop at the back, and I pressed myself against the wall beside her. I noticed dust caught under a chair leg and the cables beneath the table. It was better to think about them than about my voice in the video. I'd rerecorded it three times yesterday, yet that morning I'd still wished I'd read the first line a little differently.

Kirari straightened a crooked chair in the row, then stood up. She smoothed a crease in her skirt with her palm, spotted me against the wall, and pointed toward a gap at the front.

“Bring over a chair if you can't see.”

I shook my head. I could see perfectly well. From there, I could even see when someone in the front row looked away from the screen. I knew there was no need to check, but I didn't want to move any closer.

The lights went out, and the gate appeared on the screen. As Red's voice began, the sword came down. A student in the front row flinched, then glanced at her friend and laughed. The player character survived by a hair and retreated. The knight lowered his sword.

The five seconds began.

When I'd edited the video at home, they had felt too short. Here, it seemed I could hear every turn of the projector fan. Someone in the corridor called out the name of another club. A student in the front row recrossed her ankles. I was rubbing the back of my hand. What if everyone thought the video had frozen? Nothing happens there. Was this what Red had meant that day? I wanted to turn up the sound now, but the few steps to the laptop would be more noticeable than anything on the screen.

Then the student at the front left tilted her head. The scraping sound came, very faintly. When the caption appeared on the second play, she leaned a little toward the screen. I let go of my hand. I couldn't know whether she'd really heard it. But at least one person hadn't looked away.

The lights came on, dazzling me. Scattered applause followed. One student asked which video was next; another said the game looked too hard for her. I looked at the gate on the screen. Not everyone would stay there with me. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, but I didn't want to ask the people picking up their bags for another five seconds.

A student sitting by the aisle in the back row raised her hand.

“Is there someone inside?”

Red looked at me. I stepped away from the wall. A moment ago, my voice had been coming from the speakers. Now I had to answer for myself.

“I haven't managed to get inside yet. You can reach the village by another route, but the passage behind the gate is blocked by rubble. Even through the gap in the roof, you can only see the area just behind the gate.”

“Then what's making the sound?”

I wet my lips. I still wanted to give her every explanation I'd put together. One question brought all the evidence that might follow it to mind. But she was still looking at the gate. For now, there was only one thing she wanted to know.

“I want to know that, too. That's why I keep going back.”

The student mentioned the knight we'd seen earlier. What if the sound wasn't coming from inside? What if he was outside, scraping at the gate with his sword because it wouldn't open?

Red rewound to the scene before the sound. We could see the knight lower his sword. Then the picture zoomed in on the gate, and his arm moved out of frame. I'd edited it that way. Red opened the unedited footage, too, but when the sound played, the hand holding the sword was hidden behind the protagonist's shoulder. Even when I played the game myself, I'd watched only the gate at that moment. I couldn't remember seeing what the knight's arm did. There was something else I hadn't seen in a screen I thought I knew. My face grew warm. If I'd expected that question, I could have prepared an answer.

Beside me, Red said quietly, “Looks like we need to go back.”

I told the student I hadn't checked the movement yet. Even after Red suggested going back, I kept looking toward the hand hidden behind the protagonist's shoulder.

After the screening, we moved the chairs. The students filed out through the door I'd left by on Friday. Kirari tried to carry two chairs at once, then put one down. I took it. As I slid it beside the monitor, its legs scraped the floor. I paused to see whether it sounded like the noise in the game. Not quite. Kirari had turned toward me, too. I didn't ask whether she'd had the same thought, but I smiled first.

Red gathered the application forms left on the table. When she reached for the one in front of me, I put my hand on it.

“I'll fill this one out.”

“You're joining?”

I nodded. Red let go of the form. “We might fight again, you know.” Kirari tapped her arm and asked why she'd say that now. I uncapped my pen. Oddly, Red's words reassured me. If she'd promised we'd understand each other from now on, the next time something like Friday happened, I might have felt I'd failed all over again.

“I still don't agree with your interpretation.”

Red laughed.

“Then join and keep arguing.”

I wrote my name and year, then came to the hobbies box. I could write reading books. I did read books, and nothing bad had happened when I wrote it before. I held the pen still for a moment, then wrote games. In parentheses, I added reading item descriptions. The words ran right up to the edge of the box. I should have written smaller. But I didn't erase them.

Kirari glanced at the form.

“Nea, can I call you Shiro-chan?”

My pen stopped. Shiro-chan. It sounded like a name for someone else. I almost told her that Nea was fine, but she was waiting for my reaction. She wanted to call me that. I kept my eyes on the name box and gave a small nod. My ears were hot. I thought I'd give myself away if I looked up, but someone sitting right beside me could hardly have missed it.

Red placed my application on top of the others and squared the corners. Kirari said I could come back at the same time tomorrow and picked up her bag. Putting on my bag would mean it was time to go home. Red suggested starting the game to check the knight's arm. Kirari pulled over another chair. Its back bumped Red's, and Red shifted her own chair a little to the side without taking her eyes off the screen.

I took out the box of Kancho I'd brought again that day, opened its folded top, and set it between them. I remembered accepting a snack on my first visit and forgetting to eat it. Today I looked inside the box and chose an unbroken piece. Red had already started the game. Kirari's sleeve brushed my arm. I considered moving my chair, then left it where it was.

The player character climbed the stone steps. The gatekeeper wasn't in sight yet. Just as Red was about to turn right, the way she always did, I pointed to a dark opening on the left of the screen.

“We haven't been down there yet.”

Kirari leaned forward. “Will we die if we fall?” Probably, I said. Red studied the edge for a moment and said that meant we should try it.

I'd meant to go home once we'd checked the knight's arm. There was no reason yet to go down to the left. I hadn't found a clue there or prepared an explanation of what we might discover. I pointed because I wanted to see.

Red changed course. I pushed the snack box a little farther onto the table so it wouldn't tip over, and drew my chair a little closer to the monitor.

— The End —