"I've been alright. School, though. How about you?"

"About the same!" is the response. "Homework assignments: not a thing I'd missed."

Snort. "Wanna play video games?"

Anthony grins. "What do you have?"

"Mm, multiplayer I have... Bomberman and this one racing game and a couple fight ones..."

Anthony turns to Kaede's dad. "Uh, do you mind if we –?"

"Go ahead and have your fun."

He smiles and turns back to Kaede. "Where is it?"

"Here," he says, and leads Anthony to the living room where there's a large TV with a PlayStation 2 attached.

… Oooh.

Anthony goes to check out the list of games.

There are plenty!

He pokes around at them and then – "How about this one?"

It's a multiplayer racing game.

"Sure thing." He gives Anthony a controller and turns the PS2 on.

And his sister appears there at the door, staring at them.

Anthony looks over at her, deems her weird, attempts to ignore her!

Is there a tutorial on the game? He has not played racing games in a while but he hears they're great with friends.

The tutorial is Kaede explaining the controls. He doesn't seem to notice or mind his sister there.

Tutorial by way of person! Anthony tries to take in the controls – fortunately they're relatively intuitive, the controller is not particularly obscure and the game isn't stupidly designed.

It isn't! And it's fun! Kaede enjoys it. And if he slides to sitting a bit closer to Anthony than normal, it's just accidental and being distracted by the game.

Platonic. Very platonic, of course, friends, because Kaede's dad is somewhere, possibly lurking.

But sitting too close is hardly a crime.

Hardly a crime indeed.

Kaede's decent at the game but not amazing.

Anthony has not played the game before! Anthony can swiftly improve from 'not very good' to 'less bad'.

Ahem ahem oh look excuse to move a little closer how weird.

They're almost touching even! But Kaede's not paying attention to that, oh, no, he's just playing.

Of course not, the side-eye is nothing to do with that.

They can pass quite a fun time playing the game, with Anthony looking over at Kaede's sister from time to time.

She's just kinda there, minding her own business.

… Maybe she's lonely.

"How's school going?" he asks, of Kaede.

"Absolutely tedious. Everyone's so surprised I'm just a boy now, though."