Thursday, Nov 20: Early Evening.

The girl in the alley coolly slid her glasses back into place…

…and then after a moment of bleary confusion as though just waking up, almost immediately flew into a wide-eyed panic.

"The scary guy was right there, but then – but now – it must have been HiFuMi!"

Wow, Kosukegawa thought with wide eyes. As easy as one-two-three? She must be some kind of master martial artist!

"That was totally amazing! …kind of terrifying, sure," he allowed with a glance at the groaning shattered wreck of a man embedded into a shattered wreck of an automobile, "but still amazing! Are you a black belt in karate or something?"

Another sharp bolt of fear struck Motoko's heart as her brain processed the innocent praise and question. Locking her gaze onto Kosukegawa, tears of dread welled up in her eyes as the realization dawned on her:

Oh no… after so many years, someone finally caught me in the act! "Kosukegawa, we have to get out of here!"

Not only is she super cute and strong, but she even knows my name?! I guess she's a more attentive classmate than I am… "But what's the big deal? He was the bad guy, right? Why should you have to run away?"

Taking a hold of Kosukegawa's wrist, Motoko wasted no time in pulling him along after her as she ran for her life. "I can explain later! Right now we just have to disappear before the police come around!"

Unexpectedly for such a clearly vicious and powerful fighter, though, her hands seemed remarkably soft… "U-um, alright! Whatever you say!"

Several blocks and about half an hour later, a trembling Kosukegawa slumped onto a bench at Inokashira Park, while the barely-winded Motoko stepped past him. "It's… getting… pretty late," the exhausted nerd wheezed between huge gulps of air. "Makes… a lot of sense… that the park'd be deserted by now…"

After a long moment of catching his breath and watching the clouds go by, Kosukegawa turned his head to look up at Motoko. "I'm still kind of confused about why you're scared of the police, though. I'm not gonna rat out a classmate, but… is it okay if I ask about that?

"I… I don't actually remember anything about what happened between when he touched me and when he was already gone," Motoko whispered. She hesitated for a moment, as though trying to decide whether to continue, but ultimately trailed off and said nothing further.

"So… you're strong enough that your body reacts instinctively to danger so fast that your mind isn't even aware of it? That's awesome!"

"It's not like that at all!" an embarrassed Motoko complained. "More importantly, you can't tell anyone what happened today! Please, I'm begging you!"

"Sure," Kosukegawa promised. "I won't tell–"

No sooner had the young otaku sat up, than Motoko was in his face and on the verge of sobbing in panic. "I'm dead serious! If it gets out, it'll be really bad! I'll… I'll do anything to buy your silence!"

Even if it means I have to sell my body to him and be shamefully used as his perverted plaything, Motoko thought, imagining herself stripped and helplessly subjected to one increasingly lewd scenario after another, so long as it protects my secret, then–!

Motoko was rapidly getting too caught up in her horrifying daydream to fully register what Kosukegawa said in response – or to notice that her thighs had been rubbing together without her knowledge. "I… I'm sorry!" she squeaked in mortification. "I didn't catch that…"

"...I said that you don't owe me anything," came the reply. "When that guy first came onto you, I could see as clear as anything that you were uncomfortable and afraid… but instead of stepping up, I folded at the first sign of trouble and walked away."

…huh?

"I messed up," Kosukegawa continued as he struggled to look her in the eye. "If anything, I'm the one who has to make it up to you – and even if I don't understand the details, keeping a secret for you really is the least I could do."

Motoko stepped back, genuinely surprised by his empathy and accepting responsibility. "I… understand why anyone would run from a big and scary man like that; I mean, I was trying to from the start. So, I don't blame you."

"I appreciate that," Kosukegawa said with a small smile. "But I'm still ashamed of myself over it, and I want to try and do something to make up for it. …I've got a little spare cash and some coupons," he realized after a moment. "If you want, I could treat you to some food somewhere?"

"Oh no, I couldn't–"

Motoko's budding objection was smothered in its crib by the roar of a savage animal and she shot her hand to her stomach as her face turned a brilliant red.

Meanwhile, Hitoshi was flipping through pages of a small notepad at his bedroom computer desk, needing a moment to decipher his own chicken-scratch handwriting.

After an extended moment of silence, a lovely synthetic voice spoke up from the speaker next to his hand. "Hitoshi, I… would it be possible for me to ask a favor?"

"Of course," he distractedly replied. "I'm happy to at least hear you out, Saati."

"I was wondering… the next time you go to school, could my systems remain online for the entire interval until your return?"

Had Hitoshi been drinking anything at that moment, he'd certainly have sprayed it across the room. As it was, he still needed a few seconds to not choke on his own spit in surprise. "I, well, uh – I mean, I don't know why we can't, but – why the heck would you want that? I have to imagine that you'd get bored out of your mind just waiting for so long…"

When he glanced over at the monitor display to see her avatar's expression, Hitoshi was concerned to see Saati's "face" half-hidden behind a fist in anxious trepidation, and not clearly looking outward to make "eye contact" with him.

"When you left for school today, it was… painful, I think, to watch you go. But I was curious to find out if seeing you come back would make me as happy as watching you leave made me sad."

Hitoshi didn't answer at first, instead being content for a long moment to quietly watch Saati's digital avatar on his monitor.

If the artificial intelligence had a physical body, she might have expressed her budding discomfort by twitching or squirming. Despite being in her creator's presence for all but a few seconds of her existence, Saati had never seen the contemplative look on his face.

This unpleasant feeling… it's different from the one earlier. I don't know what that look on his face means, and it's making me… anxious? Miserable? Is it one of those emotions?

"I'm a little worried about suddenly leaving you online for a whole day without me," Hitoshi eventually said.

Before Saati's metaphorical heart could really begin to sink, however, he smiled. "...but as long as it's not storming outside or anything, I guess I can't see why not. Since I made a promise I'd go to school again tomorrow, is that soon enough?"

The sour cloud over Saati's metaphorical heart instantly evaporated, her digital avatar all smiles. "Yes! Thank you so much, Hitoshi!"

…and yet as she synthesized those words and delivered through the attached microphone, a sliver of that negativity still remained. What if seeing Hitoshi's return from an absence had less of a positive impact than the negative impact of experiencing his departure? What if–

"And while I'm on the subject," the young man obliviously continued, "I've actually been working on a present for you."

A present?!

Saati had a basic understanding of what presents were: they were something good given by someone who cares about you! The very idea of receiving such a thing from Hitoshi made the AI positively starry-eyed – literally so, given the way her avatar lit up and momentarily rendered her pupils as pixelated sunbursts. "Can I know what it is?"

"Sure," Hitoshi promised. "I'm working on a custom Personal Assistant that you can be downloaded into; as soon as I get the last couple of parts tomorrow, I can easily carry you around outside and show you more of the world outside my house! I've got another job for Professor Hakase I need to attend to after school, but when I come home from that, we can get you all hooked up and ready to see the city!"

"Oh that sounds so wonderful! Hitoshi, I love you!"

Those last three words slammed into Hitoshi like a sack of bricks and nearly knocked the boy out of his chair, before continuing to pound at his brain like a famous anime delinquent raining down punches on a vampire.

Eventually, Saati noticed the look of borderline delirium on his face. "...Hitoshi, is something wrong?!"

"Not at all," he wheezed with a dopey smile. "I think maybe things might be as right as I've ever known."

Friday, Nov 21: Morning.

"I'll be home later tonight with your present," Hitoshi promised.

Saati's digital avatar beamed at him in response. "I'll be here waiting! Be safe!"

Last night she said she l-l-l-loved me, the serial shut-in recalled, and now she's seeing me off on my way to school and work… is this what it's like having a wife?

So caught up in daydreaming was Hitoshi, that he spent his entire commute and almost the entire school day on autopilot.

In homeroom, his classmates were even starting to gossip.

"...holy shit, the shut-in's surely showed for a second straight day?"

"Yeah, it's even more unbelievable than that alliteration you just tried to force."

"Look at that dumbass grin on his face… don't tell me he went to a love hotel or something?"

The very idea was quickly dismissed with a scoff from one Kimika Asou. "That loser? There's no way he'd have the spine; I bet he's plugged in to some kind of disgusting otaku nonsense."

How dare that cretin ignore me, she thought behind the world's faintest scowl, hidden quite well with a pleasant smile for the benefit of her peers. Even as gross as he doubtless is, I won't accept such blatant disrespect as to be treated as beneath an otaku's notice!

It remained true, however, that as much as Kobe's serial absence had made her previous prank on him trivially easy? The fact that so little else was known about the shut-in made plotting a sequel that much harder.

Nothing to be done about it now but to watch and wait…

Of course, Hitoshi's trance couldn't last forever; before long, he had collapsed again on the floor of the gymnasium, only for Kosukegawa to once more dutifully pull him off the track. "You know dude, you could pace yourself to actually finish instead of literally running yourself ragged."

After several huge gulps of air, the bespectacled nerd stared up in visible confusion at his not-so-vision-impaired friend. "But… huff… the… huff… teacher said… huff… we had to run."

"Well, yeah," Kosukegawa muttered with a scratch of his head, "but that's to get the laps done quick enough for other stuff afterward? I'm pretty sure he'd rather you spend half the class walking instead of heaving on your back unable to do anything."

Hitoshi twitched in annoyance. "Then maybe he… huff… should have said… huff… to just do or perform… huff… laps around the gym, instead of being so specific…"

A tall, looming shadow abruptly imposed itself between Hitoshi and the ceiling lights he'd been staring up at.

"And maybe you should use your brain instead of your mouth, slacker."

Hitoshi stared up at the clearly annoyed Mr. Yamazaki, and belatedly thought better of trying to tell him off for his misleading choice of words.

Blegh, computer programs are so much easier to deal with.

"Yes, Sensei."

"And don't roll your eyes at me either," the teacher all but growled. "There's only so much responsibility I or any other teacher can take for your mediocre grades; if you don't shape up and get your act together, you aren't gonna have a future anywhere that matters."

…I bet it's easy for you to preach like that when you don't even know anything.

Hitoshi forced down a sneer, and instead gave the respectful nod he knew was expected of him. "You're right, Sensei."

Mr. Yamazaki knelt down and observed the downed student closely, before getting back up to leave with a snort. "Hmph! You don't look nearly as badly off as you did yesterday; once you've caught your breath, get back to running laps. The sooner you build up some stamina, the better. That goes for you too, Kosukegawa – you won't see results until you quit being so lazy and put in some effort."

Had he caught the foul told-you-so look Hitoshi sent Kosukegawa, he might have hung back to dish out another round of scolding… but he didn't, so obviously the boys were left to themselves.

"...well," Kosukegawa said with a nervous laugh, "I've been wrong before."

Hitoshi didn't say anything in response, content to just slump against the gymnasium wall and breathe.

After a moment, Kosukegawa plopped down next to him. "...it's good to see you came in today. I mean, not that I was really doubting you or anything! I was pretty sure you would! But–"

"...but you were still worried, right?" Hitoshi asked.

"Yeah…"

"...well, I guess I can't really blame you."

The next minute or two passed in silence, before Kosukegawa got to his feet and offered his friend a hand up. "So, uh, you looked pretty happy earlier. Like, deliriously happy. Did you suddenly get a hot girlfriend or something?"

Kosukegawa's been a pretty good guy to me so far, but… how much am I really willing to trust him with what's really going on?

After staring long enough for the Kamen Rider fanboy to get anxious and almost withdraw his hand, Hitoshi finally accepted it. "It's a secret."

Even just thinking about remembering Saati's fateful words to him the night before put a big stupid smile on his face, though, and it immediately betrayed him.

"Holy crap, I was just kidding! Really?! Is she someone I know–"

"Shut up!"

The good news was that the rest of the class was too busy sorting into teams for some sport Hitoshi wasn't paying enough attention to identify, so no attention whatsoever was given to the short little outburst.

The bad news was that Kosukegawa had stars in his eyes and didn't quite seem prepared to do as had been requested of him.

So Hitoshi did the only thing that made sense in that instant – and started running.

As Kosukegawa immediately gave chase and showed no difficulty in keeping a steady pace, the shut-in soon cursed himself for not remembering that he was the lesser of two… athletes.

"Quit following me!"

"I can't help it, the teacher said I have to run anyway and it's a one-way track!"

"I don't see a sign that says that anywhere!"

"It's common sense!"

"What the hell even is that anyway?!"

On the sidelines, Mr. Yamazaki opened a bottle of Poccari Sweat and stared at the pair in absolute bafflement. "Kids these days just don't make sense," he muttered under his breath.

"Look," Kosukegawa promised, "I can keep my mouth shut – but you know how to talk to girls, right?!"

WRONG!

"I just need to ask a favor from you!"

I can barely deal with people myself, and now you want me to be your wingman?!

"I wanna ask someone out to the beach," he continued, "but I don't know how to do it!"

"I missed the part where that's my problem!"

"All I'm asking is if you can give me any advice!"

Already struggling again to put one foot in front of the other, Hitoshi tried to think of literally anything that might have a nonzero chance of ending the conversation.

In such sub-optimal conditions, he promptly came up with worse than nothing. "She just up and said she liked me out of nowhere, I don't know what the hell prompted it!"

And then cursed himself again for putting his foot in his mouth. Ugh! Coming to school today is the absolute last thing I should've done, promise or no promise!

"I don't even care if Gettou likes me that much or not, I just wanna give her a reason to smile!"

The words shot through Hitoshi like some kind of mecha anime particle beam cannon, stopping him in his tracks and almost causing Kosukegawa to run into him.

"...say that again?"

Barely managing not to tackle his friend to the ground, Kosukegawa slid to a stop and heaved to catch his breath – as much from passion as from exertion. "Gettou, the pretty brunette over there with the pigtails and glasses… she seems like she's been through a lot," he explained. "It's not about trying to get her to be my girlfriend; if there's any way at all to do it, I just want to give her a reason to smile. A happy memory, something…!"

Hitoshi turned in the direction that Kosukegawa had indicated, and identified her almost immediately with the given description.

For a few seconds, Kosukegawa was content to just let Hitoshi stare off into space and contemplate his response… right up until he realized the guy in glasses was actively checking her out. "Dude, what the hell?!"

"Shit, sorry, yeah, I shouldn't have done that," Hitoshi admitted.

"...it's not like I don't get it," Kosukegawa admitted as he recalled his own lewd fantasies about the girl that he'd been trying to suppress out of shame, "but yeah. Kinda uncool, Kobe."

"You're right."

Seeing the look of genuine remorse on Hitoshi's face, Kosukegawa gave him a rough tap on the shoulder – and an acceptance of his apology with it.

After an awkward few seconds, Hitoshi turned back to Hitoshi with a shrug. "You said the other day you're a loser with no friends, but it seems like every time I turn around you're unironically spouting lines like a Sunday Morning superhero and actually sounding kinda based. I don't have a clue why you think I of all people have anything useful to say… I mean, what would Kamen Rider do?"

Kosukegawa's first thought was that most Kamen Riders were less concerned about personal relationships than with their battles against their respective evil organizations or otherworldly threats.

His next thought was that when personal relationships did come up, most Riders tended to be more preoccupied with some kind of drama about family and friends than with pursuing love interests.

Just as Kosukegawa began to wonder why that might be, he then remembered that Kamen Rider as a franchise was aimed at boys just over half his age who were probably still inclined to think girls had cooties.

Maybe I shouldn't think about it so literally… I know from all their examples that even though indecision and hesitation are a natural part of life, I won't be able to get anywhere if I keep letting myself get mired in it. Instead of just fretting over the problem, I need to imagine a solution!

"...hold on, Imagin?"

As the fanboy abruptly perked himself up, nostalgic memories raced through his mind like a certain time-traveling express train.

Momotaros might tell me to stop wasting time on buildup and just start out at a climax, Kintaros might tell me to be strong and wipe away her tears… Urataros would instantly sweep Gettou off her feet with his boundless charm and confidence, and Ryutaros would probably take her home to dote on without taking no for an answer.

"But in any case," he resolved, "there's definitely no question that I need to go up and talk to her…"

No sooner had the thought formed, however, than his palms broke out in a sweat and his knees started shaking. As the bell rang for the end of the class period, Kosukegawa slumped. If only that were as easy as it sounded.

Friday, Nov 21: Afternoon.

Hours later, Hitoshi slumped into Secret Base with a sigh. What the hell, that was absolutely exhausting…

Before the shut-in could properly cut loose to himself with his private venting, a mature woman's voice cut him off.

"So you're Kobe, then? I must say, you're much younger than I expected… that certainly helps to explain your on-site availability, though."

Turning to the slender woman behind the bar, Hitoshi groaned internally. "I hope that's not a problem…?"

Clad in her lab coat costume over a sensible blouse and skirt, Hiroyo Hakase watched her contractor from across a glass of water. "It isn't if Menjo High School lacks a policy restricting students from after-school jobs," she replied.

Damn it, I should have brought a change of clothes to keep from coming here in my uniform…

Hitoshi could have given her the information she was fishing for. He could also have explained, with any of a few levels of sarcasm, that he didn't usually show up to school anyway and that his classes were closer to a part-time gig than the contract work Hiroyo had already been paying him for.

Instead, he huffed. "Don't worry about it."

Rolling her eyes, Hiroyo took a sip from her drink and played along with her younger cohort's attempt at evasion. As long as it's not my responsibility, she decided, that's good enough. "If that's how you want to play it, then I won't press further. More importantly, I need your expertise on a connectivity issue with my custom hardware."

"Right," Hitoshi muttered, "your Sentai VR game."

Leading him back to the closet he'd been unceremoniously locked in the other day, Hiroyo booted up a desktop system and showed Hitoshi a massive set of data streams.

"The preliminary tests went better than I could have ever imagined," Hiroyo began with some small pride in her voice, "but one of the users raised a valid concern about not being able to assemble the team without physically gathering everyone together within a few meters of each other. The MMZ needs a unique and extremely secure connection of its own to prevent outside interference and ensure signal fidelity, enough so that standard wireless broadcasting networks aren't up to the task… but the sheer volume of data being transmitted is so vast that the MMZs have a confirmed effective connection range of only up to a dozen meters from each other."

Leaning just slightly over Hiroyo's shoulder, Hitoshi adjusted his glasses to observe the data stream with a whistle. "No wonder your game needs so much bandwidth," he whispered. "Not just audiovisual data, but information for the other three senses too? How do the players even receive that data, is it transmitted straight to their brains through a soft EM field or something?"

Hitoshi had mostly asked the last question as a joke, only to quickly straighten up when his employer didn't laugh. "...hey, don't tell me this is some kind of SAO bull–"

"Of course not," Hiroyo snapped. "I ran hundreds of simulations with the project before involving human users; I can say with authority that there are absolutely no risks of suffering physical harm from using the MMZ. It's just that explaining the science behind the UI is long and involved enough that I don't want to get into it unless strictly necessary."

For a long couple of seconds, Hitoshi considered trying to press her for more information.

Then he remembered Kosukegawa chasing him for dating advice and unknowingly prying about Saati earlier that day, and chose to let it rest. "Fine," he drawled with a sigh. "I'm not gonna argue about that. But without a much more involved look at your systems, I can't promise that your connectivity range problem is even something I can fix with a software patch or more efficient coding; you might just need more powerful hardware."

Visibly calming herself down, Hiroyo nodded. "Yes, I'd considered that possibility as well."

Reaching into her coat, Hiroyo produced–

"A Nijiyome Academy Z-Cune Aoi-tan figurine?" Hitoshi asked with a hiked eyebrow. "No wonder you wanna keep this on the down-low, if the production studio found out you were using unlicensed merch for your controller they'd have lawyers charging this place like a zombie horde in a heartbeat."

The cafe owner looked like she had an answer for that, but promptly kept it to herself rather than share. "I can dig out the model information and schematics for my receivers and transmitters in a few minutes," she said instead, setting the MMZ on the desk before the leftmost of three monitors. "But for now, I'd like you to start by reviewing my coding and see if there's any way you can streamline it."

For an instant, Hitoshi was tempted to look up the figurine's miniskirt just out of curiosity to see if Aoi-tan had been fitted with underwear, modesty shorts, or if the skirt itself had been molded so that nothing could be seen at all.

And then the urge subsided. Heedless of the darkening sky outside, Hitoshi cracked his knuckles, sat at the desk, and got down to business studying the wealth of code in front of him.

When Hiroyo did indeed return with her hardware specifications, Hitoshi spared them but a moment's glance before returning to his primary task at the monitor. "Those are likely about as good as can be found on the market," he distractedly admitted. "Without commissioning some kind of Super Scientist to specifically engineer something better for you, hardware's a dead end."

"Tch. So you're saying nothing that can be done?"

Rather than a technical explanation of any kind, the first response Hiroyo got was the loud slurp of coffee going down Hitoshi's hatch. "I didn't say that, and I didn't say I can't do anything either. All I said is that what you asked for isn't going to happen with the resources you've told me are available."

Hiroyo considered that for a moment, fighting down some exasperation with the boy's apparent literal-mindedness and inability to read between the lines. I'd almost feel sorry for you… most of society won't have the patience to humor such a blunt attitude – not in romance, and not in the corporate world either. You really were born in the wrong country.

Ignorant of the dark, distant look in Hiroyo's eyes, Hitoshi wiped his mouth clean on his wrist. "I don't plan to let this be a completely wasted trip," he continued, "but I'm also not gonna promise anything until I'm sure it will work."

Relenting with a roll of her eyes, Hiroyo set down a fresh cup of coffee for him. "I'm likely going to be busy with customers for the next few hours; until I return, just see what you can do."

For Hitoshi, the next few hours passed by in a trance, with not a sound emerging from the computer closet except for the constant clacking of keys and occasional sip of coffee.

…until, eventually, the sharp crack of thunder startled him out of his chair.

In the seconds it took the boy to get his mind together and put his glasses back on his face, one terrifying thought roared through his mind on repeat.

I left Saati's program running at the house.

Heedlessly throwing the closet door open, Hitoshi's eyes completely glazed over the trio of patrons seated at the bar clad in primary colors and slid straight for the front-facing glass – only to widen with dread at the sight of heavy rain pouring down in sheets.

No… no, no, nonono…

"Hey kid, are you alright?"

Palms drenched with sweat, barely able to hear anything for his own pulse pounding in his ears and already on the verge of hyperventilating, Hitoshi didn't even register the concerned geezer with the red jacket. Instead, his focus sought out Hiroyo like a guided missile. "I've got to go now, I'll send you the changelog later!"

And without another word, he ran into the storm like a bat out of hell.

Heedless of the stinging icy rain, city streets and blocks passed in a blur as occasional lightning flashes painted Tokyo a hostile white.

Hitoshi's panicked dash home wasn't quick, and it wasn't graceful. The tsunami of adrenaline tearing through his body was enough to force it onward beyond any stamina he'd shown before… but when he finally came within eyesight of his door an hour later and saw that his bedroom lights were still on, the small trickle of even potential relief immediately cut his legs out from under him and forced Hitoshi to his knees, as he puked all over the sidewalk from stress.

There's… still… a chance…

No sooner had he finished the idea then a searing flash of light and heat struck Hitoshi blind, as the bellowing roar of a demon sent him sprawling to the edge of the street.

Long minutes passed as the twitching boy struggled to regain his breath, to quell the ringing in his ears, to shake the harsh ivory blur out of his vision.

Eventually finding his glasses and pulling them on, a sobbing Hitoshi looked back up at his home again.

The lights were off.