Requiem of a Black Sun Volume I: The Ebony Shogunate

Chapter V: Overwatch

The weekend had since past and we were already at Thursday of the following week; Victoria seemed to have brushed off her harrowing encounter with the mercenaries both inside the game and at school. In the meantime, a more interesting and pressing matter bothered the tranquility of my world, and a computer screen could not necessarily protect me from the threat behind it.

Naturally, an otaku's worst enemy is whatever lies in wait for them in the outside world. A very common answer would be sunlight, which is quite true as otaku are the lovechild between a vampire, a NEET, and a fetishist, all compiled into one organism. By some miracle of evolution, there were more of us now than there ever had been, and we had neither capsized the economy nor been driven to extinction by natural selection. All circumstances considered, otaku were in their golden age at this time.

However, like all creatures subject to evolution, we were also subject to predators. Just as the lonely schoolgirl is prey to the occasional subway-riding creepy businessman, us otaku are prey to...popular people at school.

I had managed to keep up my reputation by rallying the otaku who were too shy to unionize (all of them) and make them into a force that was to be reckoned with in the high school social food chain. Apparently, we were just ahead of the Band Club in the People Least Likely to Get a Girlfriend category in our school's monthly newspaper, and I'm damn proud of that. However, when a popular person sensed the proletariat masses rising beneath them at a rate beyond their liking, they put on their boots and stomped us down hard.

It was not irregular whatsoever to be put down by the school's elite; in fact, it had happened so many times that all of us in the lower social tiers had long since lost count. Despite this, we were still quite content with our position on the social ladder so long as we were not scorned by those above us. However, we were not prepared for the event in which we surpassed the elite, and we did exactly that in those humid spring days of April.

"So did you guys hear that AKM-47's getting a new member? Apparently they found someone to replace Kana-chan, but, ah, I don't really think they can find someone cute enough to replace her if you ask me."

The truth is, nobody had really asked Hide about the status of AKM-47, but, instead, he had rather just assumed it was what our group wanted to hear while we were guzzling down some drinks next to the vending machine. Nevertheless, this was news to all of our ears as we did not expect one of our favorite idols to have her priceless position on the unit replaced so hastily. Whoever had filled her position was bound to be quite talented as Uehara Kana had been, maybe even better in the likely case that they had had their eye on this girl for a while and were scouting her the moment things got serious between Uehara and her boyfriend.

All of a sudden, I received a nudge in my arm from Ichinose Yosuke who was standing next to me.

"Kichirou-kun, cup size DD, red hair, at your 10 0'clock."

Yosuke, as well as the others in my Round Table of Otakudom, was well aware of the code we used to spot out potentially...desirable girls in a crowd who could be approaching us. This was especially useful so we could socially brace ourselves for an awkward conversation should the person of interest approach us. To our credit, we had several decently attractive otaku come talk to us at the previous Summerket, and we needed a way to communicate better with them should that happen again.

However, the DD cups walking towards us were not owned by a sultry mystery female but to house guest who was enjoying her stroll after a presumably supersized lunch.

"Oh, Kichirou-kun, Hide-kun! I didn't expect to see you guys here! How's it going?"

Someone punched Hide in the shoulder at the mention of this phrase; I heard a few vulgar comments directed at us that were muttered under the breaths of some of our friends.