Hikaru no DDR -- Round 1

Everybody’s waiting for you!

Author's note: In Japan, Diet Coke is called ‘Coke Light.’  There, you've had your cultural note for the day.  Thanks for all the nice people at for being so helpful, and for David Beach, my awesome room mate, for letting me play on his shiny new modded soft pads whenever the mood strikes me so I don’t have to waste 75 cents at Tate Center.

”Name the admiral who ushered in the Meiji era at the end of the Tokugawa period.”

“What year did Japan join the UN?  What political leader led his country to such a step?  What implications did it have for our economy, our leadership, and our military power?”

“An important human rights leader was assassinated in the US in 1969.  Assassination has long played a part in defining the policies of countries.  Who was the last political leader assassinated in Japan?  Who perpetrated the act, and over what causes?”

It's no use, Hikaru thought, groaning inwardly in despair over the blank answer spaces on the test. I'm even worse in history than I am in English. I just don't remember any of this from class. Maybe I should have studied after all . . .

"Oooooo," Sai said, peering over Hikaru's shoulder at the test he was taking.  "I remember when that happened.”

“Go away," Hikaru thought to the ghost, making a shooing motion with his hand.  "I'm trying to concentrate here.”

“But I remember that.  I taught the assassin's daughter dance for many years.  It was quite a scandal, let me tell you.  Her father disagreed with the victim's views so strongly that . . ."

Hikaru blinked a few times while Sai rattled on about the assassination and all the scandal surrounding it. Then, as if realizing what he was saying for the first time, he began to frantically scribble down the answer to the question.

“Hey, Sai, who was the admiral that ‘ushered in the Meiji era?’  Was it Nobanuga?”

"No, you are four centuries behind. It was Perry, an American.”  Sai rubbed his chin, once again lost in memory.  “Ah, those Americans.  I once had a fling with an American high schooler whose family was stationed in Yokota Air Force Base.”  Sai leaned against the desk, a glint in his eye that made Hikaru inch away from him.  “Such a sweet, tender thing she was . . .”

"Uh, Sai?"  Hikaru thought towards the ghost, his face beginning to blush at the unabashed memory of desire in the ghost's eyes.

”Yes?”  Sai answered in a dreamy voice, still lost in reverie.

“What year did Japan join the UN?”

Sai immediately returned to the present, and shook his head to clear the lustful thoughts that had overtaken his mind. 

“If I recall correctly, it was in . . .”

School was finally over for the day.  Hikaru sighed and tossed his book bag over his shoulder, wishing he was done with grade school and in junior high where he was away from all the little kids.

“So, Hikaru," Sai said smoothly, stepping in front of Hikaru and interrupting his thoughts.  "When are we going to dance?"

“I told you I'd think about it," Hikaru answered impatiently, shoving aside the ghost.  "I'm too young to get into dance cubs.  Only sissies take dance lessons, too.”  Hikaru stopped in the lobby of the school, and bought a soda from the vending machine.

"Ooooooh," Sai said, looking in admiration at the vending machine, the battle over dancing momentarily forgotten.

"This is a soda machine," Hikaru said importantly.  "You put in money and it gives you what you want."

"Ooooooh," Sai said again, sounding impressed, and then he smacked Hikaru hard across the head, laughing at the boy's attitude. "We had vending machines in the seventies, silly. I was interested in the design change in Coca-Cola. It's reverse from what I remember."

"Eh?" Hikaru said, looking at the Coke Light can in his hand. The white and red stripes were familiar to him. "It's just sugar free Coke." He popped the steel can open and began chugging as he walked away.

"Sugar . . . free?" Sai said, actually impressed this time. But Hikaru had already left, his pride injured enough for the moment. Sai hurried to catch him, wondering just what else had been invented in those short thirty years since he had drowned.

Outside the schoolyard, Hikaru and Sai stretched in the warm spring sunshine. The cherry blossoms would be out soon, and both Hikaru and Sai were looking forward to it, even though they hadn't expressed the feeling to the other yet.

"Hikaruuuu!" a female voice drifted across the schoolyard, its projector running rapidly toward her best friend.

"Oh, it's just you, Akari," Hikaru said, rolling his eyes as the girl leaned down on her knees, panting as she tried to catch her breath. "You didn't need to wait for me," he said confidently, tossing his hair a bit.

Sai looked on with a blank expression. Akari was cute.

"Ohhhhh, you have a little girlfriend!" the ghost said, running around in joyful circles like a puppy. "Kawaiiii!"

"She's not my girlfriend!" Hikaru thought furiously at Sai, just as Akari put her hands on her hips and squared off at Hikaru.

"I didn't wait for you, Hikaru," she said, jabbing her finger at him. "I just wanted to say hi. I'm meeting my sister at the arcade."

Hikaru pretended that didn’t hurt him slightly. "Well, fine then. Go to the arcade with your sister." Then, as if he pretending to be as uninterested as possibly, he asked nonchalantly, "So, what game are you rushing there for anyway?"

"They just got a second Max 2 DDR machine installed," Akari answered, and started to walk away, attempting to get Hikaru off her tail. The only thing they had in common was a love for video games, after all, but Akari knew that Hikaru was broke and he'd try to bum a few games off of her if he tagged along.

"DDR . . . aw, man, just that stupid dance game," Hikaru grumbled, falling into step beside Akari and kicking a stone absently.

"Dance?" Sai perked up. He had heard the magic word.

"Yeah, you get two people head to head following the arrows on a dance pad," Hikaru answered in thought, shrugging. "I never saw the point, really."

Sai instantly glued himself to Hikaru, causing the boy to stumble as he felt the creepy sensation overtake him again. "Pleeeeeeaaaaase Hikaru," Sai said, squeezing him in a bone-crunching hug.  “Please! I want to dance! I want to dance even if it’s a game!”

“Hikaru?” Akari question as Hikaru began to drag behind by the unseen force.

“Lemme go!” Hikaru thought furiously, but the ghost now had a river of tears running down his face.

“This is my chance – our chance, Hikaru! Please go to the arcade!”

“I don’t wanna!”

Suddenly, thirty years of depression seeped into Hikaru’s consciousness all at once.  “Urgh,” he said, feeling nauseous. He clutched his stomach and dropped to one knee, as his lunch threatened to upend itself.

“Hikaru, are you okay?”

“I want to dance, Hikaruuuuu!”

“Argh, I can’t handle both of you at once!”  Hikaru put his hands over his mouth, trying to hold the bile down while he ran to the bushes.  Akari flinched and turned away when she heard him retching.

“Both of us?” she whispered aloud, and Sai patted her head, even though she could neither see nor hear him.

“Our Hikaru isn’t the type who handles girls well, I see,” Sai said, and grinned to himself.  “I may have to teach him a bit more besides how to dance.”

The crowd outside the arcade was enormous, and Hikaru with Akari had to shove their way in order to find Akari’s older sister.  Once they finally managed to press through near the front, they saw one of the reasons for the crowd.  The two DDR machines sat next to each other, providing room for four people to dance all at once.  One machine was in the process of player change out, but the other one had Akari’s sister dancing against a young green haired boy.

“It’s Touya Akira!” Akari cried in delight, clutching her hands.  “My sister is dancing with Touya Akira!”

“Who?”

“Touya Akira, the rising star of the Dance Dance Revolution world!” Akari sighed pathetically.  “Sheesh, Hikaru, you really don’t know anything about your own youth culture nowadays, do you?”

“How is the game played?” Sai asked excitedly, drifting through the crowd to stand next to the machine.  No one else could see him as he started climbing all over the equipment, peering at the screen.  “Oh, I see.  You step on the arrows in time to the music.”

“Touya sure is going fast,” Hikaru said, watching the other boy’s feet move like lightning.

“He’ll be on Heavy mode, that’s why.  Natsumi is on Light, which is why her arrows are fewer.”  As she spoke, Natsumi missed an arrow, ending a max-combo – it was the first step she had missed in the round.

“He’s not a bad dancer at all, either,” Sai said approvingly from the sidelines.  Akira knew the song well, and he even slipped a few freestyle moves in here and there, spinning around on the pads and once or twice turning to face the crowd smiling, away from the screen.  He ended the song with a flourish, hopping onto the safety rail behind his pad.  The crowd burst into cheers and applause. Akira had naturally won, ending with a new high score on the brand new machine.

“Incredible,” Hikaru said to himself.

“Isn’t he just? I want a turn.”  Akari fumbled around in her purse for a fifty yen piece.  “Hikaru, are you gonna dance?  You’ll need one hundred yen for three songs on these machines.”

“Akari, you know I don’t have a hundred yen,” Hikaru grumbled, but nonetheless began to scrounge around his pockets for some spare change.  In the meantime, Akari placed her fifty yen piece on the plastic screen front, beside two more yen pieces that belonged to other people. 

“I want to play, Hikaru!” Sai whined.  “This looks like so much fun!”

“I’m ten yen short,” Hikaru explained, showing his handful of change.  He had managed to dig up one fifty yen coin, three ten yen coins, and two five yen coins.  Sai began crying.  “The machine isn’t going anywhere.”

Sai sighed, and leaned on Hikaru’s shoulder.  They looked at the new game that was starting; Akira was apparently taking a break, for two girls around Hikaru’s age had started playing.  They were both on Heavy mode , and their short little legs moved as fast as Akira’s legs had gone.

“They say that no one is better at DDR than an eleven year old Japanese girl,” Hikaru said with a smile.  “Even though the game is popular around the world now, the best players still come from Japan.”

“I though you didn’t like this game?” Sai asked, watching the girls dance furiously to a song in English.

“I like all video games.  I just don’t like dumb dance games.”  Hikaru shrugged, Sai lifting with the action.  The ghost didn’t weigh anything, but it felt strange to have anyone, especially someone weightless, use your shoulder for a headrest. Sai was entirely too touchy-feely for Hikaru’s taste; probably a product of his fast society culture.

“Hey, look Hikaru.  On the ground.”

Hikaru looked down by his feet.  There, laying innocuously upon the waxed tile of the arcade floor, lay a fifty yen piece.

“Hey!” Hikaru said, and reached down to grab the coin, glad for an opportunity to shake the clingy ghost. “We can play now.”

“We?” Akari asked, returning from her sister’s throng of friends on the other side of the crowd.

“I meant, you and I,” Hikaru said hurriedly.  “I can play against you now.  I manage to find a hundred yen.”

Akari shook her head.  “Look, there is already another coin beside mine.  You have to wait your turn, Hikaru.”  She explained, “The coins on the machine are an honor system for determining order.  The one closest to the right is the one who plays next.  Some players even have a specially marked coin, so that no one gets confused.”

“Oh,” Hikaru and Sai said at the same time.  “I’ll go . . . mark my turn then.”

As Hikaru approached the machine, Touya Akira returned from his break, and immediately a fan girl posse oozed into being around him.  Akira placed his coin, an American quarter, on the machine right after Hikaru.

“Hi,” Akira said with a friendly smile.  “It looks like we’ll be playing each other.”

Beside them, the girls playing finished their first song.  One of them had set a record on the machine for that song.  

“I’m, uh, looking forward to it,” Hikaru said, nervously.  “I’m Shindou Hikaru.”

“I’m Touya Akira,” the other boy answered in kind.

“Yeah, my friend told me.” Hikaru narrowed his eyes.  “A lot of the girls seem to know your name.”

“An eleven year old Don Juan, he is,” Sai narrated to Hikaru with a leer.

Akira blushed and rubbed the back of his head. “They always follow me around.”  Akira cleared his throat.  “What level are you on the game?”

“Uh, I don’t know . . . but I think I’m pretty good,” Hikaru said.

“How can you not . . .?” Akira started, and then shrugged.  “Well, some people seem to have a gift for it.  The game demands physical fitness, foot-eye coordination, and an innate sense of rhythm.  If you have all those things, you can learn the game very easily.”

Hikaru nodded, pretending to understand, and Sai nodded in genuine comprehension.

“Sai, are you sure you’re going to be good at this?” Hikaru asked in his mind.

“Oh, I’m quite sure.  The arrows are basically simplified labanotation, which is the writing system that dancers use to record their dance steps.  It’d be like asking a physicist to read a third grade science textbook.” Sai looked very smug. 

The two girls who were on the dance pad ended their turn, and Hikaru, Akira, and Sai watched as Akari and a rather sulky looking boy with red hair stepped onto the pads in their place.  Both of them chose Standard mode, and then they argued for a few minutes over what song to pick, eventually choosing “Trip Machine –Luv Mix.”

“A tough one,” Akira commented.  “A seven foot in trick mode, if I remember correctly.”

“Foot?” Hikaru and Sai asked simultaneously.

“Seven foot,”  Akira repeated, misunderstanding the question.  “I’m so glad they went back to the foot system.  The system in 6th Mix was very confusing.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Hikaru asked Sai.

“Beats me,” Sai answered.  “Hey, Hikaru, ask him about the Feet of God.”

Hikaru didn’t have a chance, because the crowd around them began to groan.  Akari and the boy weren’t doing so well; they had chosen a very difficult song, and the machine issued forth canned boos and hisses from a virtual audience as the missed step after step.  Eventually, the boy’s bar sunk all the way into the red.  Akari desperately tried to keep up, but soon her bar also turned red. 

The screen flashed an angry “Failed” at them, and the two dancers stopped, gasping for air.

“Aw man, that has to suck.” Akira shook his head in sympathy.  “Never choose a hard song on their first try.”  He nodded his head toward the machine, which Akari and the boy were reluctantly leaving.

Hikaru gingerly stepped onto the platform, removed his fifty yen piece from the queue, and tried to familiarize himself with the arrows.  Beside him, Akira was flipping through options, among hoots and cheers from the female population of the audience. 

“Let’s see . . . I’ll be doing a heavy mode, but you can do whatever.”

“I can do the same as you,” Hikaru said defiantly.  Akira looked at him questioningly, and then shrugged.

“I can keep us alive if you fail.  Let’s play . . . oh, something easy.  Drop the Bomb is only a six foot on Heavy.”

Hikaru grunted in assent, since he had no clue what Akira was actually talking about.  He watched as the other boy set his options with the up arrow, then hit the start button.  Sai wormed around him a bit, and then finally decided to stand right behind him, leaning against the bar.  He was tall enough that he could see the screen over Hikaru’s head

Heavy mode. Six foot. Whatever that meant.

“Hey, Sai, how are we going to do this? By the time you tell me what arrows to hit, it’ll be too late and the timing will be off.”

“You’ll have to let me take over your legs,” Sai said.  “I think I can do that.”

“Icky! No way.  I don’t want you taking over ANY part of me.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

The song started.  Next to them, Akira began tapping his feet in time with the rhythm.  A sparkle had appeared in his eyes; he was smiling in anticipation of the song. 

“He has a dancer’s spirit, on this modern dance floor,” Sai commented as the arrows drifted up from the bottom of the screen.  Tears of joy streamed down his face.  “Oh, how I have missed this! The intensity and joy of the dance . . .now, Hikaru.  Let’s go!”

Suddenly Hikaru’s legs jerked out from under him.  His arms and upper half flailed around for a bit, earning laughs from the crowd and a confused look from Akira, who was free styling on the relatively easy song.

“Stand up straight!” Sai barked.  “Hands up at your side! If you lose balance, I can’t help you!”

Hikaru felt like a marionette from the bottom down as Sai forced his legs to move faster than Hikaru had even known they could move.  He struggled to stay upright, finally finding his balance by sticking his arms out, chicken style.  His lungs worked furiously to oxygenate the blood that pounded from his heart to his newly awaked feet. The arrows flowed relentlessly for two minutes of hell for Hikaru, before mercifully stopping at the end of the song.

Hikaru fell right through Sai to lean on the safety bar, gasping for air.  His lungs burned and his heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest any minute.

“Weak,” Sai criticized mildly.  “Akira isn’t hardly even winded.”

“Shut up,” Hikaru choked out, and wiped the sweat from his face.

“Not bad,” Akira said with a friendly smile as their scores appeared.  “I was freestyling that, so I’m actually not surprised that you scored higher.”

Hikaru blinked, and sure enough; while both of them had earned an A and thus cheers from both the virtual crowd around them and the virtual crowd in the machine, Hikaru’s score was almost a hundred points higher.

“Wow,” Hikaru croaked.

“Two more songs to go.  Let’s do something hard and fun.  No one’s played Max 300 on this machine yet.”   Akira selected the proper options, and Hikaru reluctantly did the same.  As soon as the first few notes of the song began to play, the crowd around them immediately hooted for joy.  Max 300 was the second hardest song in the entire game.

“I like this song already,” Sai said, and closed his eyes for only a second behind his green half moon glasses.  They flew open as the first arrow hit, and Hikaru’s legs sprang to life again.

This song made the previous one look incredibly easy.  It was so fast that Hikaru could feel the muscles in his legs snapping in agony.  Even Akira couldn’t dance a routine; his eyes were riveted to the screen in front of them, watching the arrows flash by almost as soon as they came up from the bottom.

Sai’s mental directions were precise, however, and even as Hikaru’s legs protested, he never missed a step.

“One hundred combo!” the machine shouted in delight.  Akira, startled by the sound, made the mistake of glancing over at Hikaru’s screen; even though he knew the song well, it was quite easy to get off step that way.  His bar shrunk to halfway before he recovered.

‘Two hundred combo!”

Hikaru’s legs began to falter, and his sneaker caught on the edge of one of the metal squares between the arrows, causing him to miss a step.

“Oh, combo stopped,” the machine said in disappointment.

“Go to hell!” Hikaru cried as Sai forced him to begin again.

“One hundred combo!” it answered, only this time, it was for Akira.

They continued on brutally, each earning a one hundred combo but then losing it, until the song ended.  Hikaru actually collapsed on the platform, and even Akira had to lean down with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily.

“It’s a new record!” the machine cried as it tallied the scores.  Both Hikaru and Akira looked at the screen, and then Akira dropped to his knees in disbelief.

Hikaru had beaten him by at least two thousand points.

“How much experience did you say you had?” Akira demanded, rubbing his sore legs.

Hikaru waved one hand feebly, and tried to pick himself up from the platform.

“Um, it’s my first time playing,” he said, and rubbed his sore calves gingerly.  “Ouch.”

“Your . . . first time?” Akira asked in disbelief.  “You set a record on max combo on your first time?”

“Err . . . hehe,  yeah . . . I guess so.”  Hikaru finally struggled to his knees, leaning heavily on the safety bar. 

Stunned, Akira stared at him intensely, before stomping off the pad in anger.  “Liar,” he bit out, and the friendly expression was now gone, replaced by one of disgust.  “I can’t believe you’d lie about something stupid like that. I’ve never seen you in the tournaments, but no human could manage to set a record on Max 300 without months of practice.”  Akira stomped off, and the crowd, who as a whole had never seen that side of Akira, parted like a wordless sea.

“A ghost could, however,” Sai said calmly.  He lit up a ghostly cigarette.  “I don’t think you’re in any shape to finish up the round.  Thank you, Hikaru . . .”

Hikaru half stumbled, half crawled off the dance platform, and the next set of dancers decided not to miss the chance for a free round under Akira and this newbie Hikaru’s names.

That night, Hikaru soaked for a long time in the furo, letting the hot water melt the knots of tension from his royally abused legs.  Sai was on the toilet, fully clothed of course, looking at the wall like Hikaru had angrily instructed him to.

“I’m never playing there again,” Hikaru grumbled, as he had been complaining all night.  “That guy called me a liar in front of everybody.  They’ll probably . . . beat me up or something if I show up again.”

“Oh, but surely there are other machines like that in the city?” Sai pleaded, the cigarette dropping from his lips as he wept for the third time that day.  “And those others mentioned tournaments! I would so love to dance in a tournament . . . I could match up against dancers from around the world, and thus find the Feet of God.”

“What the hell is the Feet of God anyway?”

“To dance so perfectly and beautifully that the dance seems blessed by the gods themselves.”  Sai took a drag on his cigarette and leaned back against the toilet tank, closing his eyes.  “It’s an old noh theatre term.  A performer reached the feet of god when he or she could dance no better.”

“Whatever,” Hikaru griped, sorry he’d asked.  He massaged his legs again. 

“You’re going to need to start exercising, if I’m to use you as my dancing body.  As you are now, you won’t be able to walk for a week.”

“And it’s your fault!” Hikaru shouted, splashing his hands into the hot water angrily.

“I’ve already apologized,” Sai reminded him.  “But it’s your fault for being such a couch potato.  Tomorrow, we start training.”

Hikaru sank lower into the furo, wondering what the hell kind of training the creepy ghost had in mind.

End Round One