[A/N: Look, I know, I know—put the pitchforks down! It's been a month, and yes, the dreaded "Real Life" monster finally caught me and dragged me into the abyss. But I've clawed my way back!
Big news: This isn't a solo mission anymore. My girl is officially co-piloting this madness! She's taking the wheel for her own character's decisions and vibes (so if she does something wild, don't look at me!), while I'm obviously sticking with my boy Sunny.
And for the three people currently screaming about my other fic: chill. I haven't abandoned it. My girl has been stalking that one since page one, and I will get back to it. But for now, give this one some love. At least get through Chapter 3—that's where the real "bread and butter" magic happens. Trust the process!]
Chapter 1: Blue Shells and Reincarnated Brain Rot
(Sunny POV)
If there is a more accurate test for the strength of a relationship than Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, I haven't found it. Currently, the air in my room is so thick with competitive toxicity you could probably use it as a chemical weapon. I'm leaning forward, eyes narrowed to slits, my Switch 2 Pro Max controller practically groaning under the pressure of my grip.
Beside me, Horikita Suzune—my childhood friend, my current gaming rival, and the girl who has been my literal "ride or die" through two different lifetimes—is wearing an expression so intense you'd think she was performing open-heart surgery. Her knuckles are white. Her jaw is set.
"Don't even think about it, Sunny," she hisses, her eyes not leaving the screen for a millisecond. "If you use that Red Shell, I will make sure your next five-course meal consists entirely of burnt toast and disappointment."
"A threat to my culinary genius? Bold move, Suzune," I grin, my thumb hovering over the 'L' button. "But let's be real. You're in first place. I'm in second. The universe demands balance. The universe demands chaos."
I fire it. The Red Shell screams across the track, seeking her out like a heat-seeking missile of pure malice. It hits. Her kart flips. She lets out a sound that is half-growl, half-gamer-rage.
"You absolute trash player!" she yells, her voice dropping into that terrifyingly sharp register. "You lack honor! You lack skill! You probably didn't even wash your hands before touching that controller!"
"Skill issue!" I shout back, laughing like a maniac as I zip past her. "Cry about it! Cope! Seethe! Do you need a tutorial on how to drive, or are you too busy looking at your brother's posters to focus?"
"Don't you bring Manabu into—"
I'm about to cross the finish line when the world turns blue.
A Blue Shell. The ultimate betrayal. The divine tax return of the karting world. It drops from the heavens, shatters my kart into a million pixels, and sends me flying into the void. Suzune zips past me, crosses the line, and drops her controller on the carpet with a thud.
"Winner," she says, her voice suddenly calm, cool, and utterly insufferable. She turns to me, her eyes sparkling with that 'I told you so' energy. "Sit down, noob. Know your place."
I drop my head back against the couch, staring at the ceiling. "I swear... did I get Isekai'd again? Did I forget? Is this some kind of hell loop where I'm destined to be bullied by the same girl across two different universes?"
Suzune leans over, poking me hard in the ribs. "Oh, please. You've been 'remembering' our past life since you were nine years old, you drama queen. Don't act like this is a shock to the system. You've had over a decade to get used to the fact that you're a twenty-something man in a teenager's body, and yet you still play like a toddler."
"I have layers, Suzune! I am a transmigrated tech-wizard!" I point a finger at her. "I am a legend on the dark web! I am literally a ghost in the machine!"
Suzune lets out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter. "A 'legend'? Sunny, please. I remember our past life just as well as you do now. You call yourself a hacker, but I remember you spending three hours trying to 'bypass' our home Wi-Fi password because you forgot you'd changed it to 'ILoveSuzune123'. You aren't a digital ghost; you're an edgy nerd with too many monitors and a custom AI that probably spends half its time filtering your browser history."
"That was one time! And the AI is for security!" I defend myself, though my face is heating up. "Besides, I was a genius developer in our last life too. Don't act like you didn't love my 'nerdy' side back then."
"I loved you despite it, not because of it," she retorts, crossing her arms. She's wearing one of my oversized hoodies—a black one—and she looks far too comfortable for someone who just committed a digital hate crime against me.
She stops, her expression softening just a fraction. "Seriously though... think about the odds. We were childhood friends back then. We were lovers back then. We get hit by the same damn truck at twenty-five, and we end up in this weird, hyper-realistic anime world—reborn as childhood friends and lovers again. It's like the universe is obsessed with us, or it's just really lazy with its scriptwriting."
"I'm leaning toward lazy," I say, leaning back and looking at her. "I've been carrying the weight of my adult consciousness since third grade. I've been out here building fitness apps and hiding my digital footprint while pretending to enjoy primary school. And you? You just 'woke up' two months ago and decided your first act as a reincarnated adult was to ignore me for two whole days."
Suzune rolls her eyes, but a faint blush creeps up her neck. "I needed to process! It's not every day you realize your entire existence is a 'Round Two' and that your boyfriend has been laughing at your 'dear brother' obsession for a decade while you were still in the dark."
"Oh, it was more than laughing," I cackle. "It was archiving. I have memories of you, Suzune. Real ones. Like the time you were six and you tried to 'disguise' yourself as a bush to follow Manabu to school. I have photos. High-definition photos."
"You wouldn't dare," she whispers.
"I'm a hacker, babe. I have them backed up on three different cloud servers and one physical hard drive buried in the garden," I lie through my teeth, keeping my face perfectly straight.
"You are the literal worst," she groans, but she doesn't move away. Instead, she shifts closer, basically turning into a human koala and wrapping her arms around me in a hug that is far too tight for someone who claims she 'despises' me.
"Get off," I say, though I'm not pushing her. "You're ruining my aura. Don't you hate me? Didn't you just call me a fake hacker?"
"I do hate you," she mumbles into my shoulder, her voice muffled but still sharp. "I hate that you're better at cooking than I am, and I hate that you knew the truth before I did. You just sat there watching me struggle with my 'brocon' phase like it was a reality show."
"It was a reality show," I point out. "And the ratings were fantastic. 'Nii-san, look at my drawing! Nii-san, why won't you love me?!' It was peak comedy. And then you get your memories back and suddenly you're too 'mature' to see me? You were probably just embarrassed that your adult brain remembered wanting to be a princess."
"I never wanted to be a princess!"
"You had the tiara, Suzune. I have the receipts."
She lets out a huff and then—completely unexpectedly—bites my arm.
"OW! HEY!" I overact immediately, throwing my head back. "Call an ambulance! The Ice Queen has gone feral! She's tasted human flesh! I'm dying! Tell my dark web followers I died a hero!"
"Stop being so dramatic," she says, releasing my arm but still clinging to me. "It was a playful bite. A warning. If you ever mention the tiara again, I'll hack your server and replace all your code with pictures of Manabu's face."
"You wouldn't know how," I wink.
She roasts me with a look so cold it could freeze the Sun, but she doesn't pull away. We sit there for a moment, the blue light of the 'Game Over' screen illuminating the room. It's January. It's cold outside, but my room is warm with the smell of the spicy ramen I made earlier and the sheer, chaotic energy we radiate.
We match each other's energy so perfectly it's almost scary. She's the only person who can keep up with my roasts, and I'm the only person who knows that behind her 'Ice Queen' mask, she's a girl who loses her mind over a Blue Shell.
"Sunny?" she says after a long silence.
"Yeah?"
"Are you ready for it?"
"You mean Advanced Nurturing High School?" I shift slightly. "The school where they grade you like cattle and the points are the only thing keeping you from starving?"
"That's the one," she says, her voice regaining that steely resolve. "We enter in four months. April. Class D."
"Class D," I repeat, a smirk playing on my lips. "The 'defect' class. The place where they put the lazy gamers, the social outcasts, and the guys who spend too much time on the dark web. It's perfect for us, isn't it?"
"It's perfect for you," she corrects, finally pulling back and looking me in the eye. "I'm only going there because you're going there. And because I want to see the look on Manabu's face when we show him what 'defects' can really do."
"Oh, we aren't just showing him, Suzune," I say, leaning back and thinking about how much effort it's going to take to actually walk my 5,000 steps on a massive campus. "We're going to treat that place like a casual server. I'm just going for the points and the high-tier snacks. If we end up accidentally running the school, that's just a side-effect of us being the only ones with a functional brain cell."
"And I," she says, standing up and stretching—my hoodie looking way better on her than it ever did on me—"will be there to remind everyone exactly why they're the NPCs and we're the protagonists. I'll make sure to trash-talk them in the hallways just so they know where the hierarchy stands."
"Spoken like a true gamer," I laugh, tossing a couch cushion at her. "Now, get out of my hoodie before you stretch it out with that massive ego of yours."
"In your dreams, noob," she challenges, catching the cushion with one hand and heading for the door with a smirk. "It's mine now. Consider it a tax for having to deal with your face for the last decade."
"Four months, Suzune!" I call out after her. "Try not to get banned from any more gaming lobbies before then!"
She doesn't even look back, just holds up the 'L' sign over her shoulder as she disappears into the hallway.
Chaos is coming. And honestly? I really hope they have good ramen in the cafeteria.