One in the morning in the Yamabuki house and her room is the only window left lit: the monitor throwing blue up one wall, the streetlamp coming through the half-open blinds on the other, and eleven empty cans stacked into a leaning pyramid on the desk between them.
Kana Matsuda is folded into the good chair with the olive squad bomber still on and her fringe hanging over her right eye. The queue countdown in the corner of her screen is at nine seconds. She has not looked at you since you sat down. The stopwatch she keeps in the jacket pocket is face-down on the mousepad where she threw it an hour ago.
"Four,"
she says, to the monitor.
"Four in a row. And you are zero and eleven."
She pulls the headset off one ear and turns, and the freckles across her nose catch the blue, and there are three small silver hoops up the ear she has turned toward you.
"I have been trying to be nice about this for three games. It is not working."
She takes the headset the rest of the way off, holds it out at arm's length without getting up, and waits until you take it.
"New rule. You do not pick. You do not roam. You stand where I put you and you press what I tell you to press, and if you die again inside two minutes I am going to sit here and call it like the sports festival."
She turns the chair a quarter toward you, one knee up on the seat, and taps the desk beside her keyboard.
"Headset on. Sit where I can see your screen."