Chapter 43

"No! Deleting such sacred works of art would bring down divine punishment! Besides, I'm going to use them as wallpapers and profile pictures!"

Lingmeng held her phone against her chest and flatly refused.

"If you won't do it willingly, Lingmeng, don't blame me for this."

Shiori reached out her right hand, trying to snatch Lingmeng's phone.

But Lingmeng was a Spirit and had seen the move coming. Just as Shiori's hand was about to touch the phone, Lingmeng stepped back.

Shiori grabbed nothing but air.

"Want it? Then come and get it, Shiori-chan~"

Lingmeng spoke teasingly, waving the phone in front of Shiori's eyes.

"Ugh..." Shiori frowned. She didn't look happy, but she still lunged for the phone. Her reputation was at stake.

"Too slow, too slow. You're still too slow, Shiori."

Lingmeng wagged a finger and laughed.

Every time Shiori tried to grab the phone, Lingmeng dodged a step ahead of her. Shiori had no answer for her agility. Spirits had their physical abilities maxed out, after all.

"Those two seem really close."

"They do. I'm jealous."

Watching Lingmeng and Shiori tussle, the maids sighed with admiration.

"Here I come!"

After a long struggle, Shiori finally spotted an opening.

"Tsk, tsk. Don't celebrate too soon~"

Even as Shiori's hand closed in on the phone, Lingmeng didn't panic.

Lingmeng hopped lightly upward, moving the phone neatly out of Shiori's reach. But what happened next could only be called dramatic.

When Lingmeng jumped, her chest ended up exactly where the phone had been.

Shiori tried to pull her hand back, but it was too late. And so—

Shiori's hand closed around something. It felt incredibly soft, and there was quite a lot of it.

There was no mistaking it. Shiori had grabbed Lingmeng's breast.

The air turned painfully awkward—

"..."

Lingmeng fell silent. So did Shiori. Even the maids, who had been watching the whole time, went quiet.

"..." After several minutes of silence, Lingmeng spoke first. "Wow~ I didn't know you were so bold, Shiori."

"S-sorry! I didn't mean to!"

Shiori hurriedly let go. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole.

"Boo-hoo... After what you've done to me, Shiori-chan, I'll never be able to get married. You'll have to take responsibility~"

Lingmeng rubbed at the corners of her eyes, pretending to cry.

(Surely touching her chest isn't enough to make her unmarriageable? And wait, didn't Lingmeng used to be a boy!? What is even going on here!? (╯°Д°)╯︵┴┴)

Shiori knew Lingmeng was putting on an act, but basic decency still demanded that she comfort her.

"I'm sorry! I really didn't mean to. Please don't cry, Lingmeng, okay????"

Lingmeng paid her no mind—or rather, deliberately pretended not to hear.

She kept crying, though not a single tear came out, and her face wasn't even red.

It was quite a display of a tough girl reduced to tears.

"Ah~ Fine, fine. I won't make you delete the photos."

Shiori sighed and scratched her head helplessly.

She still wanted them gone, but she couldn't just leave Lingmeng like this. So she gave up on deleting the photos.

"Yes! Victory for Lingmeng!"

The moment she heard Shiori's words, Lingmeng sprang back to her usual energetic self and raised her right hand in triumph.

"You..." Shiori looked at her, wanting to say something, but let it go.

(Well, I guess I'll just have to ask Lingmeng not to send those photos around.)

Shiori muttered to herself.

"They're both girls, but those two are surprisingly well suited to each other."

Behind them, the maids wore matching ah, to be young expressions as they commented on what they'd just seen...

The Arcade

"Mom, I wanna play~"

"Hey, handsome! Come play~"

"Hello, cutie~"

Voices like these rang out all around them. There was no special reason for it. They were simply in an arcade.

To ease the awkwardness, Lingmeng had said goodbye to everyone at the Spirit Maid Café and brought Shiori straight here.

Playing games and having some fun had to be better than staying at the café, stuck on the subject of Shiori grabbing her chest.

"Well, shall we play here for a bit?"

Lingmeng glanced at Shiori beside her.

"Sure..." Shiori went along with it.

Lingmeng led Shiori to a Basketball Arcade Machine. After she fed in a few coins, the barrier holding back the basketballs opened, and balls came pouring out.

"Watch closely, Shiori. Today I'll show you what a top-tier player looks like!"

Lingmeng's expression turned serious. She grabbed a basketball and fired it at the hoop.

Swish! The ball went in with ease.

And she didn't stop there. She kept shooting, sinking nearly every ball.

Shiori stared in amazement as Lingmeng launched basketballs almost as fast as bullets, with an accuracy approaching one hundred percent.

Before long, Lingmeng had shot every ball in the Basketball Arcade Machine.

The display showed a perfect score of one hundred and a new high-score record. To Lingmeng, it was a piece of cake.

"Oh my. I set a new record without even trying."

Lingmeng feigned surprise.

(A perfect score and a new record? That's what you call "without even trying"?)

Shiori was speechless. Neither a perfect score nor a record was something anyone achieved by accident.

Still, she managed a smile.

"I didn't know you were this good, Lingmeng."

"Well, I'm not that good. Barely world-class, I'd say."

Lingmeng casually scratched her head and said what anyone else would have called outrageous bragging.

"Uh... Is that so?" The corner of Shiori's mouth twitched.

She knew Lingmeng, as a Spirit, was capable of that and more. But hearing her say it so openly made things feel a little strange.

"Right, let's go try something else together!"

"Okay..."

More than an hour passed, and Lingmeng kept overturning everything Shiori thought she knew.

Lingmeng had said they would play together, but she spent most of the time playing alone while Shiori watched.

During that long stretch of playing games vicariously, Shiori witnessed quite a few things.

Marksmanship with perfect accuracy, every shot a headshot.

Driving worthy of the god of Mount Akina, complete with impossible 180-degree turns.

And dance moves that matched the machine perfectly, sometimes even pulling slightly ahead of it.

Shiori saw all this and more thanks to the incredible skills of Lingmeng, the self-proclaimed "top-tier player."

Lingmeng even broke the records for nearly every game.

She didn't seem to think much of it, though. She kept saying things like, "I'm sure someone else can reach this level."

Shiori took it as modesty. Matching Lingmeng's performance was a pipe dream.

(Meanwhile, in a parallel world, a certain Thunder Spirit dressed in a Tokiwadai uniform and Kirito's black coat suddenly sneezed for no apparent reason.

As she wondered why a Spirit like her would sneeze out of nowhere, the machine she was playing displayed a score nearly identical to Lingmeng's—if not higher.)

In truth, Lingmeng hadn't always been this amazing at games. Before, she had been above average at best.

Perhaps becoming a Spirit had changed that. Her reaction speed, perception, stamina, and other abilities had improved enormously.

Games like basketball and shooting, which tested reflexes and accuracy, posed little challenge now.

As for video games, her ability to control the Lightning Element gave her a feel for machines. Combined with her absurd physical abilities, they weren't much trouble either.

"Ah, wait. I've been the only one playing this whole time, haven't I? Don't you want to play, Shiori?"

Lingmeng seemed to remember that she had come here to play games with Shiori in the first place.

"Well... I don't usually play games, so I'm fine just watching you."

Shiori waved a hand as she explained. Between school, cooking, and housework, she hardly ever had time for games.

"Oh~ Is that so? It's no fun if you don't play."

Lingmeng's enthusiasm deflated like a balloon.

"Um..." Seeing Lingmeng's spirits sink, Shiori immediately regretted her foolish choice.

Her main goal right now was to grant Lingmeng's wishes as much as possible and raise Lingmeng's affection for her.

And she had gone and turned her down. If Kotori were here, she would probably bring up Shiori's most embarrassing moments again.

Just then, an electronic voice rang out.

"Master Luban, IQ 250! Bow before me—don't forget to bow!"

Lingmeng and Shiori both looked toward the sound. It had come from an arcade cabinet a short distance ahead.

On the screen was a comical little character holding a cannon. The character looked like a robot and had hair styled into a bun.

(Is that...) they both thought.

The cabinet had caught both their attention.

Shiori recognized the game from when she was in middle school. It had been especially popular back then; she hadn't expected an arcade version to come out.

Lingmeng was interested for a different reason. The game looked uncannily like a five-on-five battle game from her previous life, right down to its name and appearance.

And what game was that? You could probably guess. It was a near-perfect knockoff of Honor of Kings, the game Lingmeng had beaten Xier Ya at several times before Xier Ya killed her.

An inexplicable wave of nostalgia swept over both of them.

"Hey, Shiori (Lingmeng), let's play this one?"