Houjou Emu didn’t usually have trouble getting into his apartment, which is why he was surprised when the front door rebounded into his face after opening only a few inches. He tried it again more carefully, applying a little more force against the resistance behind the door, and made enough room to squeeze his way through. The obstruction turned out to be an immense heap of cardboard boxes blocking the entry way, a lot of them looked like they once contained computer parts.

When he looked to his right into the “living” area of the LDK where his little futon-sofa and TV lived, there was a brand new computer sitting on the floor by the coffee table. And cables everywhere. And his TV had been moved against the far wall. And there was another, older, bulkier CRT TV in the middle of the room taking up very nearly all the space available. The new old television had a lot of cables running between it and the new PC, it and a few old game consoles, it and some boxes of not immediately obvious function, and cables running to the pair sitting on the sofa laser focused on the game they were playing. Neither looked away from the screen when Emu closed the front door loudly.

“Yo, Emu!” The young woman with her long hair tied back out of her face said. “We meant to clean that up before you got home but we’re still doing the test run.” Saiba Nico, pro-gamer alias ‘Genius Gamer N’, she’d previously sworn eternal vengeance against Emu but now hung out at his place occasionally to play games with the man seated next to her.