Author's note

Bet you guys didn't expect to see this updated, did you? I've been looking at it recently out of sheer boredom with the GGO SW-verse, and it's rekindled my interest in continuing it. Expect more chapters than just this one to follow in the next few months.

This chapter is a bit shorter, but I don't think it skimps in the emotional department. And damn, it was one hell of a blast to write. Bring on the harsh criticisms that come with me actually enjoying what I'm writing, I don't even care! Worth it!

That said, before we move forward, there's one thing I want to say. And that is: in the scope of this story, Shino will not, and I repeat, will not, ever stop taking her pills. Yeah, they have side effects, and yeah, she doesn't like depending on them, but I'm of the school of thought that they actually work well enough to justify the drawbacks if the pill is right for the person. I myself would not have come nearly as far as I have in life in general, let alone writing, without prescription drugs. I would not wish going off meds on anyone with an anxiety disorder, let alone such a character I'm actually writing myself.

Okay, with all that out of my system, let's get this party started!


Airsoft Guns, Bamboo Blades, and Unyielding Love

Chapter Four: Bleeding Eyes

She absolutely hated relying on pills to solve her problems. But at the same time, she couldn't imagine how much worse her life would be without them. So she had no intention of stopping use of them anytime soon. Going off of them would be a far bigger risk to her health than just continuing to take them.

She opened each pill bottle and got a single capsule out from each one. Holding them in one hand, she grabbed her glass with the other and drained it, but kept the water in her mouth. After that, she popped both pills into her mouth and swallowed. They went down with no resistance.

Having finished with her business in the kitchen, Shino set the glass in the sink and went back to her bedroom at a leisurely pace, stopping every once in a while to check and make sure that all the lights in the house were out. After arriving in her room, she went right up to her bed and crawled under the covers – she had already gotten dressed in her black cotton pajamas between finishing her homework and starting to game. Before laying her head down on her pillow, she took her glasses off and set them on her nightstand, then turned off her bedside lamp.

Right before drifting off, she grabbed her phone from its charging spot on her nightstand and made sure her school alarm was set. Not a minute after setting it back down, she was out like a light, exhausted from her unusually eventful day.


Upon leaving the house for school the next morning, Shino stole a glance at the house next door. She had the sneaking suspicion that the new girl she'd recently encountered both in-game and IRL had moved in there, but she didn't have any concrete proof to back up her gut feeling.

She waited a few seconds to see if anyone would come out, but ultimately, she realized that this would only make it harder to get to school on time. So she gave up and started walking towards school, thoughts of the strange girl she met yesterday still running through her mind incessantly.

In her high school, the students were allowed to choose their own seating at the start of the year. As a trade off for this, they only got to change seats once in the school year, at the start of the second semester. So if you chose to sit with your friends and you got into a fight with them, you would have to sit with them anyway for a good, long while.

Because of this rule and the fact that her class was three people short of a full roster, Shino had been more or less alone since the school year started that spring, with the exception of lunch time, when the kendo geeks came to sit by their friend, who sat two seats in front of the bespectacled girl. She chose to sit in the far corner, by the window, and because everybody else already had their own cliques formed, that meant that the three seats left empty were the two seats to her right and the one right in front of her.

She didn't mind the solitude, since it meant she didn't have to talk to anyone. But that wasn't the reason she was thinking about it. This had come to her mind because of one, simple reason:

In this small, backwater town, there was only one school for each level, and they were all run by the same people and even shared a campus. Because of that, and the fact that the school itself was rather small, it meant that not only was the new girl sure to transfer into the same school as Shino, but… there was also a good chance that they could end up in the same class once it happened.

And if they were in the same class, then that meant that the girl with a glasses fetish would be taking one of the three available seats – all of which were close to the bespectacled girl's own desk. Which, of course, begged the question: which seat would Kimiko choose? The one two seats away, the one in front of her, or the one next to her?

If she hadn't encountered her so many times the day before, Shino probably could have honestly said she didn't care at all. But after interacting with the raven-haired girl so much, she couldn't help but be… fascinated, for lack of a better word. Kimiko was a doll-like, cheerful, genuine, eccentric beauty with amazing skills at video games. That had a little something to interest almost anyone who came into contact with her. It would be much harder not to be at least somewhat fascinated by her.

Or, at the very least, that's how Shino rationalized this strange, unfamiliar desire to want to get to know someone and borderline obsessive thought consumption. A feeling that, quite honestly, she hadn't felt in more years than she'd care to admit.


Shino made it all the way to her desk without seeing her acquaintance even once. She made it to the classroom full of yammering girls and immediately pulled out her book the moment she sat down at her seat, thereby cutting herself off from the rest of the class. To that point, things went as usual.

However, that was about where it stopped. For some reason, she couldn't fully tune out the incessant chatter of all the girls around her very well today. It wasn't as if they were saying anything particularly interesting. Just standard girl talk, with the occasional geeky line from a special interest group like the kendo girls.

Classes in this school were divided by gender, for reasons that seemed to date back to positively archaic times. This was, after all, a private school in a small, wealthy town where most of the residents were not of school-going age. They didn't have a whole lot of incentives to keep up with the times.

While there were a few events each year, both mandatory and optional, that allowed male and female students to interact with one another, classes of different genders were largely kept separate. Shino didn't necessarily mind this – if anything, the fact that the voices all sounded similar made them easier to tune out most of the time.

But during the rare times when they didn't just melt away into the background, it got to be really annoying. As in, she wanted to just yell at them all to shut up and storm out of the room. She really couldn't deal with chaotic noise very well after the incident that caused her to move here.

So rather than continually try to read as her anger and anxiety slowly built up, Shino decided to retreat deep into the recesses of her own mind and try tuning it out that way. As she closed her eyes from behind the protection of her open book, she decided to just start thinking about the first thing that came to her mind.

"You're already cute without them. I bet your glasses really suit you!"

Actually, she took it back. She'd go with the second thing that came to her mind. Surely she'd get something less… confusing and distressing the second time around, right? She couldn't have such bad luck twice in a row. So she cleared her mind and tried again.

"Oh, you're the cute glasses girl I met!"

God damn it. Well, this wasn't really lowering her anger or anxiety much at all, was it? Luckily, before she could try a third time, a gentle yet gruff, masculine voice projected across the whole room brought her out of her thoughts and to attention. Apparently, the period one teacher, Mr. Nishida, had arrived and began addressing the class without her noticing. Shino put her book down the moment she heard his voice.

"Good morning to all of you!" the nearly bald, bony-faced man in a gray suit and tie addressed his class. Once everyone's attention was on him, he continued. "Glad to see everyone's so lively today! Makes this next part a lot easier!"

Next part?

"See, something interesting starts today," he explained, his smile making the bespectacled girl wonder what the hell he was thinking of. "Starting today, a new girl from Tokyo will be joining us in this class. She's a talented kendo practitioner who has been training since she could hold a shinai. And on top of her athletic prowess, she got a perfect score on the entrance exam in all subjects, too – you all could learn a thing or two from her!"

So, it looked like Kimiko would be coming to this class after all – wait a damn minute here, something seemed wrong. Did he just say perfect scores in all subjects on the entrance exam? Shino studied regularly and she was a B-grade student! This school's exams were hard! Could he really be talking about the same weird, straightforward girl with a glasses fetish that Shino met the other day? Could Kimiko really score perfect in every subject?

And beyond that, was there really any chance that the same Kimiko who trashed her in one of her favorite video games so effortlessly also be a talented athlete? The more she heard about this new transfer student, the more it solidified in the bespectacled girl's mind that they couldn't be the same person.

"Kirigaya-san, you can come in now!"

This didn't mean it was her! Kimiko had a sister who was much more level-headed and seemingly responsible. It could definitely be her that got those perfect scores and had the kendo talent! Yeah, that had to be it. There was no way Kimiko could really be that—

Shino's thoughts were cut off by the sound of footsteps making their way into the room. Her eyes immediately locked onto the person entering the classroom with the swiftness of a speeding car. And when she registered what she saw, she had to push her glasses up as far as they would go to ensure she was seeing right, that the sight before her wasn't the result of some glare she didn't notice. When they settled into place…

Still looks like Kimiko.

She blinked, once, twice, ten times. Meanwhile, the raven-haired girl walked up to the blackboard and wrote her name on it with the nearest piece of chalk. She even went as far as to write it a second time in hiragana, leaving no room for misinterpretation of her name's reading and pronunciation. It read:

Kirigaya Kimiko

Yeah, no mistaking it now. It's Kimiko… fuck.

Shino closed her eyes in disbelief at how amazingly she'd misjudged this girl. It wasn't that she had something to appeal to almost anyone she met. It wasn't that she had a good balance of strengths and quirks that drew people in. It was that she was so goddamn perfect at everything it made the average onlooker's eyes bleed!

Well, this was just freaking perfect. Up until that point, she had honestly considered befriending the girl she'd somehow come to see as alluring. But in that moment, any notion of doing any such thing flew right out the window. After all, it was those very people… the bright, supposedly cheery people who were good at anything they tried…

It was those very people that Shino hated the most. And this girl seemed to be the very embodiment of all the things she hated about them. When she opened her eyes, a sharp glare ready for battle, she found two expressive gray irises staring right back at her. This girl was looking right at her with a great big smile on her face! Even after seeing her glare, she didn't even falter! The nerve!

As they maintained eye contact, Kimiko began to speak, her voice bright, cheery, and suddenly so very annoying. Even though she was addressing the entire class, the bespectacled girl felt like the message seemed to be intended for her and her alone. And god damn, did it get under her skin now.

"My name is Kirigaya Kimiko! I look forward to working with you!"

Just fucking great, Shino thought, her anger and anxiety getting the better of her in her thoughts alone. This is gonna be a long, annoying school year.


Author's Note

Oh my nonexistent god, you have no idea how immensely satisfying it was to write Shino into hating Kimiko, whom I usually write as a living female chick magnet, the ultimate of lady lady-killers. This is gonna be so fucking amazing to continue now! It's gonna be a struggle for them to just become friends, never mind lovers! Pacing problems of the original, you just got solved!

My own self-hype aside, what do you guys think of this chapter? I mean, about a third of the reason I write is to please my audience, which is definitely enough to care about your opinions. Contrary to what I said above, if you want to blast it to hell, I'll listen to your concerns and take them into account when writing future chapters. If you liked it and want this kind of writing to continue, that's awesome, but please at least tell me what I'm doing right. If you're somewhere in the middle, tell me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong.

That's about it. We're still kind of world building here, so I don't have a whole lot of in depth stuff to explain outside the narrative. So I'll just let you go with this:

See you next time! And trust me, there will be a next time.