Episode 2 · Hi Score Girl

Hi Score Girl

1991. Haruo Yaguchi is a sixth grader with zero friends, zero charm, and one thing he's actually good at: parking himself in front of an arcade cabinet for hours. He's a somebody in that dim, noisy room. Then Akira Oono walks in. Rich, popular, pretty, his classmate. She picks Street Fighter II and wipes the floor with him. He doesn't claw one back until game thirty. Here's the thing. She won't leave him alone. Every day after school she's there, hunting him down, shoving another controller into his hands. He wants to hate her. He also wants someone who can actually push him. Both are true at once, and he has no idea what to do with that. So what is this, exactly? A rivalry? A friendship? Something neither of them has the words for yet?