#2 — Gaming Shenanigans

Standing in front of a clear and cleaned table, was Astra and as always, hs wore a small smile on his face as he continued on his work.

"Les rêves des amoureux sont comm le bon vin"

He hums out a tune and then pulled out an egg from the baskets beside him and hovers them above the giant nest shaped all-purpose flour which were filled with dozens of yolks in the center, he proceeded to crack it and separates the yolk and white, he pour the yolk and dump the whites to the second bowl filled with all of the other eggs white.

"Ils donnent de la joie, ou bien du chagrin"

He pulled out a fork and then uses it to gently break up the eggs, careful to not break or damage the flour walls he continued to break the yolks, when he finished that task he

Despite his gentle ministration however, the eggs break through the flour while mixing, yet he didn't panic at all. He simply push some additional flour up against the break-through with his hand, and then continue mixing.

"Affaibli par la faim je, suis malheureux"

He continue working the dough to bring it together into a shaggy ball.

Reaching with his other hand, he sprinkled the surface of the countertop with flour to avoid any sticky moments, before he began to work by kneading the dough, his hands doing all the work, kneading, folding, and shaping as his eyes gained intense focus on the task at hand.

"Volant en chemin tout ce que je peux"

He continued to knead the dough for over eight to ten minutes of kneading, and the results speaks for themselves.

He could feel the texture of the dough had become smoother to touch, and he felt satisfied at his result

As he sees that the dough has comes together, he then shape it into a ball and wrap it in plastic wrap, and now for the waiting part.

[Let the dough rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.]

"Car rien n'est gratuit dans la vie~"

Sniff!

A sudden noise broke him out of his routine, and he looked back to see Kevin staring at him on the doorway with a clear snot dripping from his nose, on his right hand is a box full of napkin that he then pulled out one so he could uses to wipe his teary eyes.

Ptrfff---!!!

Kevin pulled out another paper from the tissue box on his hand, and then proceeded to snorted out very loudly.

Wiping the sticky liquid from his nose, he then gazed at the blank faced Azaka.

"I- I don't know what you were singing while making that dough... But it's soooooo BEAUTIFUL!"

He then took out another tissue and then snorted out again.

All the while, the blond owner could only stares at the teenager with a face devoid of anything.

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[Timeskip]

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"Am I interrupting something?" A certain long haired greenhead walks into the empty Cafe. He sees the owner setting up a gaming console in the middle of the Cafe and asks this while he takes a sip of his coffee.

"Hey, Su! We're planning on playing an otome game that I brought for Astra." Poking his head out from behind the kitchen's door, Kevin greets the teen with a raised chopsticks, his other was holding a plate of pasta with a bolognese sauce all over it.

Eating Pasta with chopsticks, don't ask Kevin.

"Oi Kevin! Don't just sack my newly created rame- I MEAN PASTA! Damn it! Don't just do whatever you want in the kitchen, it's my Cafe! Not a snack bar! And you, Su! Order something from the menu or just eat the Pasta with Kebin, stop drinking only tea dammit!"

"Oh~? So Astra's into men, eh? That explains why there are no girls in this cafe ever since it's opening" Su gave a small chuckle at his own crack.

"Yeah, I figured that too. That's why I bought him this game."

"OI!" Astra takes the game disc out of the box cover and tosses the cover at Kevin.

"Oh, Astra is done setting up. Let's play!" Kevin ducks under the thrown item and continues to eat the plate of pasta in his hand as he walks out the kitchen.

"Hmm... Not bad, but still below Ramen." He commented as he blows some steam of the pasta before plopping it to his mouth.

"We're playing as a female lead, right? What should we name her?"

"..." To answer Su's question, Astra picks up the controller and types in a name with it.

"Seriously?" Kevin cringes at the name that was typed.

"I wish you luck with finding a boyfriend, Asta." Su gives a two-finger salute to the newly christened game character.

"It's asking us difficulty we should pick." Astra ignored the remarks and moves the game along and goes to the next screen.

"Try the super hard mode, I wanna see what'll happen." Kevin tapped him besides by the shoulder and pointed at the screen, at the blood red words that says Super Hard.

"Fine." Agreeing with Kevin, the owner then clicks the super hard difficulty option and skims over the introduction, something about a high school girl making friends and finding love. He sped through most of it. As they get to the first encounter, an auburn haired teenager wearing a school blazer and white undershirt, Astra slows down so that they can read the dialogue.

{Shiro: "Who are you and what are your intention on this School."

{[Answer Him Truthfully] [Hit Shiro To Death] [Defend] [Flirt] [Vaporize Shiro With Destruction Magic] [Nigerundayo!]}

"Hngk!?! What kinda dating sim is this!? It suddenly turned into a turn base Fantasical RPG!" Kevin chokes down on a mouthful of pasta when he sees the choices available.

"This Shiro person is obviously the offending party, talking to a young woman without even introducing himself. Look, he even materialize a sword out of nothing and pointed it at us, fortunately. You can fight back and shift the blame onto him. Try using magic." Su, in a rare moment opened his eyes, revealing his fuchsia iris with a green pupil in the center, and proceeded to do analytical approach to problem-solving.

"Hmm.." Astra clicks the magic option and a list shows up.

{[Strengthen Up] [Magic Up] [Defense Up] [Hastur : Fear Of The Unknown] [The Darkest Star Impact] [Ragnarök: The End of All Things]}

"Hm, a versatile move set, we could buffed ourselves while also having the ability Hastur which act as a debuff by decreasing the opponent's defense as to give us some ease, The Ragnarök skill seems to be something what I call.. Ultimate Skill, however... The name implies that it is not indiscriminate and could also potentially backfire on us, so we should only used this after we cast Hastur and certainly when we have cladded in all of our own buffs, this will instantly generate an instant win and assuming that we're stacked with all of our defense buffs we could still live in the aftermath, this is however my general mind of the scenario assuming this Shiro doesn't have something that could cancel any of our momentum and break our progress like somehow copying swords and their properties in their histories, or even pulling us into a barren world full of swords of various sizes and shapes stabbed to the ground across the horizon... Which i assure you will be very bad, Kevin, what would your supposed pick and act will be?" Su nods in understanding and turned to his friend and asked him for an opinion.

"None of the above! We're trying to get a boyfriend, not a corpsefriend!" The self-proclaimed ramen connoisseur roared out while almost tearing his hair from the sudden turn of events.

"This Shiro person might like strong girls. If he survives, we might unexpectedly get some benefits." Su muttered lowly while giving the screen a critical eye, as his eyes roamed over the figure of Shiro with a narrowed glare.

"Might!? Might survive isn't good either! We're supposed to be finding Boyfriend for GOD SAKE!!"

Unbothered by Kevin's descent into madness, Astra notices something that is amiss on the screen.

"..." The blond owner squints his eyes to see the almost unnoticeable pixels, something that he could spotted thanks to his trained eyes, he then moves his cursor to navigate towards the secret option and click up.

"Oh, as expected of our resident owner friend to have eyes for details, you've found a secret option without even trying." The screen flashes red and when the scene is shown again, Shiro is on the floor with his own sword stabbed in his stomach.

{Shiro: "KUH! So you have bested me. Well, it's not like I was that important anyways. I've already accomplished my task. Now, The Queen knows you're here. She has conquered the hearts of all the boys in this school already. You won't be able to beat her..."}

{Current Objective: Surviv- Defeat The Queen of Void and take her harem of boys as yours.}

"...Is this what's romance for girls are like?" Kevin makes a complicated face as the game goes on.

'I sure HOPE Mei isn't into this kind of things..' The whitehead shudders silently to himself. .

The three then continued to play the strange dating sim-turned-fantasy-rpg-and-turn-based-game, they would occasionally bickered or shouted when there's a secret hidden route, Easter eggs, and many more, but in the end, they then finally arrived at the final stage, where the final boss is currently waiting, The Queen.

"We're finally here... At the final boss..." After a few hours of gaming, Astra mutters this as he huffed in slight exhaustion.

"How the hell did we manage to save the world twice already and still not have reached the final boss beforehand?" The eyebrows on Kevin's twitched as he still can't wrap his hand that, from playing a dating sim turned into a fantasical game where they had to fight Cthulhu-like Abomination and also time-travel into the past, future, and present to save every timeline.

"The better question is, why's the main character of a supposedly otome game even fighting enemies anyways?"Su, in between sipping his green tea, points out one of the game's various plotholes.

{The Queen of Void: "Welcome Human, to my humble abode!"}

"Wow, they completely forgot about the romance altogether, didn't they? Pretty sure that's a line straight from Dragon Quest." The dryness could be felt from the whitehead's tone.

Astra rolls his eyes at his ramen lover friend's comment and was about to click the continue button when suddenly Kevin went beside him and shakes his shoulder frantically.

"Astra! My gamer senses are tingling! I sense a secret route incoming!"

The trio then stares at The Queen character, somehow she bears an almost similar resemblance to Kevin, same white hair, same facial face, the only thing that contrasted were the golden eyes of hers, if she had a blue one like Kevin, than she would be a perfect carbon of their ramen-addicted friend's clone, if he were a girl.... And doesn't have.. Those six weird contraptions or wings behind her whatever that could be called.

{The Queen of Void: "But before we fight... what flavor of ice cream do you like?"}

A long list of options pops up on the screen.

"...hah?" Astra/Kevin/Su as one blankly.

"I'm getting a feeling that the main character is into green tea flavored ice cream." Su shooks his inputs his opinion as he takes a sip the cup of tea which dubiously sounds like it's still full.

"You're in a Cafe that sells many things; From something unhealthy like Ramen, [Kevin: Hey!] to something expensive like a Cheese souffle, now an Italian pasta and many more, obviously if i'm personally, IT'S MOZZARELLA ice cream. If only because no one has EVER make it." Astra rebukes Su's comment hotly and makes his own choice. He continues to scroll through the options to find his choice

"Does that even exist" Kevin asked towards the blonde owner with a raised eyebrow.

"YOU CAN BET YOUR ASS!" He pauses in his quest to find the option of Mozzarella ice cream to say this. He points at a tub of yellow ice cream in Su's hand. "It's that one."

"Though not as flavorful as the Oo'long ice cream that I have tasted in the past... this is still surprisingly good... If only because from the salty flavour" The teal head takes a bite out of the light-yellow ice cream box.

"Wait a minute, when'd you get that?" Kevin looks down from the box of ice cream up to Su. "You didn't go into the kitchen, right?"

"It was on the table the whole time. Didn't you get it when you made your pasta from Azaka's stash?" Su tilted his head and looks confusedly back at Kevin.

"No, I didn't even know that was a thing. Ast?" Kevin turns his gaze to the blond, who was too busy on scrolling down the screen with his controller.

"I've been playing the whole time..." Astra waves the controller in his hand as he returns to look back at Su and Kebin.

{The Queen of Void: "Oh, that was me. I got hungry while waiting for you Human to arrive, so I sneaked a bite. I will not apologize for not saying so beforehand. It was quite flavorful, for a lowly Human you are not bad, as a reward I have decided to add it as a flavor in the options down at the bottom of the list."}

Astra, Su, and Kevin stare at the television, each with a varying expression on their faces.

Astra: What—

Su: —The—

Kevin: —FUCK!?

{The Queen of Void: "Drats! Did I break the immersion? Tsk, let me get back to the story. Ahem... So, Ningen, answer the question or die. What will it be?"}

[Translator's note: Ni gen means human]

...

..

.

"... I heard that too much gaming is bad for your head, why don't we go for a walk instead." Kevin, in a rare moment of wisdom, decided to quit playing video games.

"...I agree. I also need to pluck green tea leafs to make some brew again."

"There's a new cafe down the street. I heard they had a really good parfait special and something called Boba Tea or something. I also need to scope out their lunch competition." Astra dropped the controller on the table as he then stood up to stretched himself.

"Oh, you mean the one with the maid events currently on-going right now? Let's go!" ~Kevin.

"Then I will also tag along. I wonder what their so-called "Boba Tea" taste like." ~Su.

Pak!

Astra, Kevin, and Su then proceeded to leave to go to the cafe that Astra had suggested.

{The Queen of Void: "Hello? Are you still there? Human! Humaaaaaan~. Please don't leave like that. At least save and turn the game off~ ...Grrrr..."}

The Queen, seeing that they left for real, calls out to them in the off chance that they might turn around. After seeing that they aren't, she starts to pout angrily before she grabs the game's cursor to use it and hit the save button on the screen. A moment later, a White haired figure floats out of the game system and turns off the television.

She took a look around the Café interior, then at the tv screen, the white haired Queen growled to herself.

"Stupid human, I don't know why Big Sister Chief is so interested in this one."