The day had finally arrived. Teruhashi anxiously awaited any indication of her package's delivery with bated breath. Makoto was home today, so she needed to ensure that she got to the door before he did. The problem was, however, that her room was further away from the door than he was since he was always in the same room or the room next to hers. He didn't even eat until she was within a room of the kitchen. She couldn't figure out a way to get him to leave before she heard the doorbell ring. She grimaced when she heard Makoto get up to go to the door, but had no way to prevent it. She had to come up with a unique solution to get him away from the door every time; unfortunately it worked much less often than she liked. Most of the things she asked him to do would not keep him away for long especially if he could hear her shuffling around. Asking him to go pick something up for her usually didn't work because of the next stage of this tiring interaction.
Makoto had a bad habit of opening any package that came to the house regardless of who it belonged to, which obviously came to blows with her desire to keep her mail private. She had prepared very diligently even for this normally inconsequential situation. The post knew who she was, so if she wanted to keep it from them any package she got would have to be addressed to someone else. If she asked Makoto to go somewhere, he would usually insist that he open it before he left. She would need a different reason to stop him now.
She sauntered into the kitchen with her sickly sweet smile and an appropriately perfect expression as Makoto hefted the rather large package onto the table to open it.
"I didn't order anything recently…" he mused as he went to retrieve the box cutter.
"Oh no, I believe it's for father," Teruhashi said as she pretended to inspect the box for answers. The source of his dilemma was the "Teruhashi M." the package was addressed to.
"Oh, Kokomi! I didn't notice you were here! I was surprised when you didn't greet me when you came into the room," Makoto said, turning around with a look that could be construed as either surprise or excitement.
Liar.
She ignored his greeting. "It must have been delivered in error. Let's store it until he gets back," she said nonchalantly, planning to steal it away when he was gone. Nothing with him was ever that easy, though.
"Anything could happen! It's best for me to open it so you can be safe. What if it's a bomb meant for me? I'll never let their jealousy jeopardize our loving relationship, my dearest Kokomi!" Makoto waxed, box cutter now in hand. His bright tone and sparkling eyes were an unsettling juxtaposition to the morbid nature of his words.
"I… really don't think that's correct, Onii-chan," Teruhashi said, bewildered by the gnarled psyche of the siscon. She understood people wanting to die for her if the number of "I live 4 Kokomi" tattoos on various mullet-clad bikers were any indication, but no other brother was even close to this overprotective even in the most exaggerated of media she had consumed.
"Kokomi, I insist you let me take the box. Even if there is no bomb, I need to make sure no perverse materials are ever graced by your eyes; I would be remiss in my brotherly duties if I didn't," he said in a calm, but threatening undertone not picked up by the object of his desire.
Does he think I'm still a child? He's only a year older than me! Kokomi thought, becoming increasingly agitated by her brother's willfulness. She barely held on to her original story that the package was for her father. She would not allow herself to slip again.
"Onii-chan, that package is for father, so I will not see it anyway. I would never let anything ruin the woman I am! Please allow me to take it for you; you deserve the same treatment you give me!" Teruhashi said, quivering under the mounting pressure from her brother.
"No, Kokomi, I will not allow you to make bad decisions for yourself. It's too heavy for your delicate hands anyway," he said curtly as he wrested the box away from her, the edge in his tone becoming palpable even by his normally oblivious little sister. He was unusually aggressive today; the "I'll serve you" tactic was only one she ever used as a last resort and that had not even fazed him. He feverishly opened the box despite her panicked protests.
"Hmm, why would father order this?" Makoto mused, stroking his chin as if there were non siscon related thoughts in his brain; ostensibly he was trying to make sense out of the nested game console.
"Uhm, I don't know! M-Maybe he just needs a break every once in a while?" Teruhashi stammered. She chided herself for projecting her own needs. Had she been more perfect she could have prevented this normally inconsequential situation from spiraling out of control. She felt tears well up, but she couldn't cry like she wanted to. If she did the walls of her house would not contain the distress signal being heard by the entire country. He had pushed her far beyond her edge this time. Normally she would have used the following tactic long ago, but the circumstances caused her to lose control much quicker and much more violently than she otherwise would have. She simply could not allow one of her few safe havens to be breached.
"Brother, just leave it alone! Why do you have to treat me like I'm a delicate flower all of the time? Just leave me alone! I hate you! I hate you so much!" she exploded, her rage boiling over. She shuddered violently as she looked up to observe her comically blanched brother collapse. The floor let out a dull thud as his corpse met it. It appeared that his soul had already passed on to whatever afterlife awaited siscons.
She quickly grabbed the package and stumbled upstairs. She slammed the door behind her, fell to the ground, dimmed her aura, and sobbed silently.
Teruhashi inevitably forced her way into Saiki's house under the pretense of completing the school project. She put on a ditsy act to get him to explain things she already understood and only worked for an hour each day, spending the rest of it on various pre-planned activities and eating meals with his family. After the project was completed, she just came over to continue cooking lessons with his mother, which of course ended up becoming bonding time for the two women. It did a wonderful job of distracting her from her cruel joke of a home life.
She made sure to bring something new over every time as if her visits were something more akin to a show and tell. Her scheme was deceptively straightforward. Small talk did not come easily to Saiki, so she made sure to come prepared with something for him to focus on. Bookmarked pages with silly situations in various shoujo manga she had read, interesting looking books and other knickknacks for him to use psychometry on, and various sweets that she had "accidentally" made too many of were a few of those items. She had come up with the psychometry one after he had told her about an experience with a detective novel series and the love war involving the 3 strikingly unattractive people that according to Saiki "gave Nendou a run for his money".
While this was going on, she became somehow even more diligent with her activities than before, prioritizing and finishing everything as quickly as possible so she could grind out Monster Hunter and get close to the same place as their joint account. She tried to slow their progress again by acting ditsy, but she was also aided by the steadily increasing time it took him to complete quests and the amount of lives he lost as the days went on.
Just like most things she was able to pick up how to at least partially conceal her thoughts quickly while Saiki's lack of social skills picked up the rest of the slack. She was not perfect at it, of course, but it was just good enough.
As expected of Kokomi Teruhashi, she figured out a way to make up for her lack of experience with video games. She pored over every piece of game knowledge she could find. Thankfully the knowledge barrier for the game was just as high as the execution barrier. Her research proved more fruitful than she ever thought possible. The things she discovered reached even outside of the gap between their skill levels, allowing her to happen upon the intricacies of a curious phenomenon she had observed.
She thought to research it because she noticed another player join Saiki's game every so often. It annoyed him, but they never joined his quest so he just let it be because he couldn't be bothered to figure out why it was happening. She figured out that it was due to the "online session" feature that he clicked through absentmindedly when he started up the game. It turned out that it was possible to look up someone's session through a browser. He didn't play much on his own since she was around so often, so her plan would involve catching him when they were both at home. While sessions were stamped with the host's name there were still many to sift through. Finding him could prove to be difficult, but with a bit of luck it could work out. She found him quite easily.
On the fateful day that she happened upon his session, she waited until she finally saw him start up a quest. She took a moment to muster up the courage and joined him. He did not know how to use the chat feature either, so she could only guess at his reaction.
She played through the quest with him, electing to use her accumulated skill and knowledge rather than pretending to be ditsy. They still completed the quest without much difficulty despite the fact that she lost a life. They quested together for a bit longer until she had to leave so she could focus on her "lover's spat" with Makoto who had just returned from filming.
Saiki had become more than accustomed to playing games alone his entire life, so his surprise and subsequent chagrin from seeing another player force their way into his quest was understandable. He'd have to figure out how to prevent people from joining his games later. Why this player had the audacity to join him uninvited was beyond him. This player was quite far behind him in skill level, but made up for it in persistence. Still, he couldn't deny it felt nice to have someone to wade through the game with.
Though setbacks were bound to happen, he still had never felt the satisfaction of improvement and overcoming obstacles. He had even went so far as to not read the manual for the game to at least create the illusion of a challenge. As his knowledge increased, so too did his boredom with his sham of a "normal" life. At least when he played with someone else, he could vicariously experience the struggle of normal people like he did with his idol, Hiroshi Satou.
It did provide him some benefit, though, even if he'd never admit it to himself. He was always crabby about people ruining his day, but the prospect of being able to have a modicum of randomness helped him feel a bit more normal as well. Online gaming provided a nuisance-free haven for him to experience this precious feeling.
So, he quested along with the interloper until they had to leave for some unknown reason. He chided himself for the growing hole in his gut that he couldn't quite explain; the fact that he couldn't help but hope they would come back vexed him greatly.