#40: C-Rank Ranked Match — The Match Begins! — Sniper Is a Loner ~On How I Was Quietly Enjoying Some Solo Player-Sniping and Wound Up a Raid Boss~ (WN)

August 6, 2047. The day of August’s First-Period C-Rank Ranked Match.

Space Station, Channel ex1, Marshmallow Smile’s Operator Room.

Shiina, Niko, ChaCha, and me. All four of us, gathered in the Operator Room. Ten minutes until the start; the match begins at 39:00. Preparations are complete, and the Dust Mirage is equipped too. It doesn’t wear down while you’re at a base, so there’s no harm in putting it on this early.

“…”

Niko sits in zazen on the sofa, meditating.

“…Incredible concentration.”

“…Looks the part, doesn’t she?”

“…Y-yes.”

“…Nikki’s a temple kid, y’know~. Zazen’s second nature to her.”

How unexpected. I’d pegged her for a hardcore city girl, through and through.

“Shiina, are you… studying?”

Shiina is writing something on a tablet with a stylus.

“That’s flash mental arithmetic.”

Flash mental arithmetic. Numbers flash up on the screen one after another, and you add and subtract them as they go. I’ve seen it on TV a few times, but…

“So that’s Shiina’s routine, then…”

“That’s right~. She always does it before an important match.”

Far from relaxing you, it looks like it’d only wear your brain out…

“Shikki, don’t you have one? That kind of routine-ish thing.”

“No, nothing in particular. If I had to name one… it’d be this, I suppose.”

I get up from the sofa where I’d been sitting beside ChaCha, turn to face the corner of the room, and sit down hugging my knees.

“…Shikki, what is that?”

“Corner-sitting. It calms me down when I do this.”

Facing a wall is what puts me most at ease.

“Well then, it is about time. Everyone, please gather round.”

At Shiina’s word, everyone gathers in the center of the room.

“Now then…”

Shiina smoothly holds out her right hand.

“? What’s with the hand?”

“I-I don’t know either.”

“What, what? Some kind of ritual?”

For some reason, Shiina goes red all the way to her ears.

“…A huddle, you see, is where everyone stacks their hands like this… and raises them together with a cheer, is it not?”

“”“Ahh!”““

Of course we all know how it goes. What threw us was that Shiina had been the one to start it; she just isn’t the type for this sort of thing, so it took the rest of us a beat to catch on.

“What’s with you? Don’t tell me you just now went, ‘I’ve gotta do something leader-like!’?”

Niko, needling her for all she’s worth.

“…Is that not allowed?”

“Nooot really. I think it’s fine.”

Niko stacks her hand on top.

“You always used to give off this whole looking-down-on-the-sporty-types vibe, though~, Shii. ChaCha lo-oves this kind of thing♪”

ChaCha stacks hers on too.

A huddle… it’s my first ever…! I’m nervous… but I want to try it.

I add my hand to the pile.

“And now—Marshmallow Smile, fight, OHH!!”

“”“OHH!!!”““

We all throw our hands up, and in the same instant everyone but Shiina bursts out laughing.

“Hah! That cheer, not one bit of flair to it…!”

“Serious right down to the bone, aren’t you.”

“A cheer should be simple, do you not think?”

Being a loner myself, I understand exactly how hard she tried. I wonder if what Tsubasa said about her not being fit to lead is still weighing on her.

Wh-what do I do. I want to say something to her. I want to praise her, tell her she did great. I-I’m the big sister here, after all…!

“…Sh-Shiina!”

“Shiki, what is it?”

“Um… that was… really cool!”

“Cool…?”

Crap! I might’ve picked the wrong word to praise her with!

“Hehe. You really are funny after all, Shiki.”

Her smile as she says it is young and childish, a middle schooler’s smile.

“Ehh?! Wh-wh-where’s the funny part?!”

— Bzzt. A blue current runs through me.

“It has begun.”

“I-it’s finally here…”