Want to play ping pong?
In the first match, Go was overwhelmingly won by the girl with her extraordinary skill.
After the match, the principal and the head teacher left, and the teachers also went outside to talk, leaving only the students participating in the exchange activities, sitting at the long table, glancing at each other.
"Shirou~! How did I do just now?" the little girl ran over smiling and asked.
Shirou reached into his pocket, found it empty, and then reached out to pat the girl on the head, smiling helplessly: "Sorry, I don't have any candy left."
The little girl looked at him dissatisfied and said, "What! I didn't come to you for food! But I don't mind being patted on the head, so I'll let you pat me a few more times."
Zhou Meimei felt the warmth on her head, squinted her eyes, and smiled sweetly.
After two days of getting to know each other, the students from both schools finally became familiar with one another, since there were people who could understand the other side and act as translators.
While the teachers were away, they sat at the long table and relaxed, chatting.
"Over here in China, besides studying, what do you usually do for fun?" asked the students from Chiba School.
"Of course, it's this!" The students on the other side smiled at each other and simultaneously took out their phones, opening FGO, the China server version.
"Eh, sorry…." Shirou apologized. Although the Four Great Classical Novels didn't require copyright, so everyone in the China cultural sphere could enjoy them and also engage with a neighboring populous country, making it a perfect choice, arbitrarily altering historical figures was indeed not good, though people didn't really care much about the historical Xuanzang anyway.
"No need to apologize, it's just my personal opinion. It's just that your operations over there really don't understand the China perspective!" The glasses-wearing man slammed the table and shouted: "One girl and three boys? What's good about that! Clearly, Tang Sanzang should be in JoJo style, and Wukong, Bajie, and Sha Monk must be the cute girls, right!"
"Eh? Which version of Journey to the West are you talking about?" Shirou looked at him, puzzled.
"Alright, alright, shut up." The girl with a ponytail, Ling Yue, pressed the glasses-wearing boy back into his seat and smiled: "Ignore him, although he's a pervert, he's actually a hopelessly devoted otaku."
"By the way, I heard that at the start, your side had a mechanism where the initial ten-roll didn't guarantee a four-star servant? And you could only do a single draw? And then the super cards require four stones each? Is that true?"
"…." Upon hearing this, the expressions of the boys and girls around Shirou darkened.
"I heard that because ordinary ten-rolls didn't guarantee a gold card either, there's an urban legend where someone got all craft essences, ten-rolls all black keys."
"…." Even the dark aura from the senior, Kasumigaoka Utaha, faded slightly.
"Support teams could only have one person, battles couldn't even be sped up, let alone skipped, and the training grounds weren't divided by class. There was no 40 AP golden dog food field, leveling up and breaking through was painfully slow!"
"Hahaha, don't say that. I heard that the Japanese server is the test server, the China server is the channel server, and the US server is the official one."
"Now if you tap wrong and enter the attack interface, you can go back and press skills, did you know that?"
"So when will your skill books and Noble Phantasms be updated?"
"… I just want to know how long it will take for Jeanne's NP to come out! One-turn invincibility, two-turn stun, how long must this NP, which is completely outclassed by skills, last?"
"… My self-charge isn't coming yet?"
"… When can I use the Duke in my warehouse?"
"Convenient or not doesn't matter, anyway the NP can't be skipped…"
"…." The entire group seemed to recall unpleasant memories, emitting rolling black aura, and the whole auditorium became gloomy and oppressive.
The atmosphere in the auditorium sank, and there was a long silence.
"Let's talk about something else!" Shirou raised his hand and suggested.
"Hmm…" The Chiba branch students nodded in agreement.
"Agreed." The students on the opposite side also consented.
"By the way, why does it seem that you're okay with this, Shirou?" Zhou Meimei stared at him, curiously asking.
"No, I hadn't played at that time, so I didn't know." Shirou wiped the sweat from his brow, thinking the environment back then was really this harsh? It seemed Mash also struggled hard.
"By the way~! I have another question! I've always wondered, in FGO, why are ancient Asian women's outfits always so revealing? Is this really your people's preference?" Zhou Meimei
blinked her peach blossom eyes, pointing at Shuten, Ushiwakamaru, and Sanzang on her phone, smiling as she asked the boy.
"No, no, that's not really the case. Look, aside from Raikou, people like Souji or Nobunaga aren't like that at all." Shirou waved his hands.
"But those two, in official manga and videos, aren't they completely naked?" Zhou Meimei said.
… Shirou was speechless. He finally understood why his sister favored two completely different servants at the same time—they shared a common trait.
This was absolutely because Komachi wandered around the house in underwear! When he got home, he had to lecture her!
"Hi-choo~!" Far away in Chiba, Komachi was lying on her bed, watching FGO with friends in the group chat.
She touched her nose and smiled brightly: "Just now, my brother must have been thinking of me, right? Considering a gift for me?! Hehe."
Afterward, the students reached a consensus: it was better not to chat with each other about FGO. They exchanged a glance, nodded politely, smiled, and continued playing separately.
That night, Shirou contacted Da Vinci but still could not determine the location of the Black Mud Servant.
By the third day, the scheduled competition was ping pong.
In the auditorium, behind the rectangular Go tables, two ping pong tables were set up.
All further activities would also take place in this auditorium. The enormous hall had snow-white walls, a stage at the front, and a wide flat area below that could seat five to six thousand people. Even if all activities were held simultaneously, there was enough space.
Chiba sent one male and one female player. On the Xunyang side, the Zhou family's little princess, Zhou Meimei, and the girl with a right ponytail were sent.
At this moment, the ping pong boy, Hoshino, wore a sports outfit: short-sleeved shirt, shorts, and professional golden Butterfly brand ping pong shoes. He held a red-and-black paddle, with 2mm sponge thickness, hardness 40, and played a right-handed penhold offensive style.
He had reached the finals of the Chiba prefecture competition before. In the future, becoming a professional ping pong player and competing in Europe, in the UK or Germany, was not impossible.
In front of him stood Zhou Meimei, wearing sports attire, twin tails at the back of her head, with a relaxed smile, greeting across the table.
"Please take care of me."
"Little sister, I'll take it easy on you. Please take care of me too." Hoshino nodded.
He originally thought coming to this country would be brutal and hoped that this province's ping pong wasn't too strong, so he wouldn't lose too badly. But he never expected the exchange school to show such respect, sending a junior high school girl to compete with him.
If he couldn't win against her, it would be a huge embarrassment to the school's scholarship.
Thinking about the possibility of winning and doubling both scholarship and credits, Hoshino's mood became even happier.
Zhou Meimei frowned and then said: "No, please do your best."
In recent years, the country had heavily supported ping pong, investing a lot of funds. To defeat the Empire's destructive dragon and fierce tiger, they had gone to great lengths, thinking of the only solution: recruiting world champion players as coaches, and training them using the same methods as China.
This was not without effect. The top-level children ping pong players from the other country and China players of the same age now had almost no gap between them.
But the man in front of her was still far from top-level.
"Then let's begin." The girl looked at Hoshino and said softly.
"Alright! I'll serve first!" Hoshino served with a penhold grip.
"Okay, just a heads-up, I'm using long pips." The girl held her racket horizontally in her right hand, the long-pip rubber ready, and pulled the ball.
"No problem, no problem." Hoshino didn't care. At this girl's age, long-pips typically produced almost no spin, at most a little topspin.
But the moment the racket touched the ball, he felt it dropping straight down. Taken by surprise, Hoshino mis-hit the return, the ball went into the net, and he lost the point.
"Is this the four-thousand-year looped spin of the Chinese Empire?"
"I told you it's five thousand years! But it doesn't really matter! Ancient Egypt lasted seven thousand years, but it's gone too, right? What matters is now. Now!"
"Little sister, then let's have a really fun match." Hoshino put away his previous disdain and acknowledged the girl's skill. He served again. With his height and strength advantage, there was no reason to lose!
"Are you misunderstanding something? I already told you I'm using long pips." The girl responded proudly, flicking the ball with her horizontal racket, turning a backspin into topspin.
Hoshino carelessly returned a high ball.
Attack!
The ball quickly flew to the left corner of the table and bounced up.
Hoshino chased and returned, but the rhythm was already controlled by the opponent.
The girl was an offensive long-pip player, combining fast attack with looping strokes. She had been calm before, but once the game started, she showed decisiveness and ferocity.
Ping pong is a speed-based sport.
When spinning, the small white ball rotates at over 100 revolutions per second.
When smashing, it flies at over 10 meters per second.
Excellent players must train their reflexes, and ensure their actions and movement speed keep up.
Fast! Faster! Rapid! Even faster!
Giving the opponent no chance to breathe.
Right!
Hoshino ran to the right and returned the ball.
Left!
He ran left, but this time too hastily, the ball flew high over the net and bounced.
Smash!
"You have a weak backhand! An inaccurate forehand!"
"Sloppy footwork! Slow reaction!"
"Not a single move is proper!"
The girl raised her racket and pointed at him, scolding sharply:
"You still want to compete with me? Keep dreaming!"
Hoshino chased the ball, but it flew out and hit the ground.
After that, Zhou Meimei demonstrated looping backspin strokes and backhand drives.
According to ping pong rules, a single game is won by the first to 11 points; if tied at 10, the first to lead by 2 points wins.
In the end, Hoshino lost to Zhou Meimei 0:11.
"How… how is this… a goose egg, a goose egg…"
"Hmph, if you were still a child, I might have let you score one point." Zhou Meimei snorted.
The audience behind erupted in cheers. Even the high school students were impressed with the little girl, applauding enthusiastically.
"The princess is so cool!!" "The princess is amazing!!"
On the other side, the female doubles match also ended.
"Too strong… is this actually Shanghai, Liaoning, or Guangdong?" a Chiba student said with a dismayed face.
The white-haired principal sat with his usual gentle smile.
For him, victory was simply natural, nothing remarkable. Just like Liu Bang in his time, skilled at cuju, could not have imagined why the national football team would perform so poorly compared to Gao Qiu, who rose from servant to one of the Four Great Villains.
The British who invented ping pong in India, or those who first held official competitions in Berlin, Germany, surely didn't expect that this sport would exist for one German to compete against nine Chinese players for a Grand Slam.
Zhou Meimei seemed to notice the boy's gaze, raised a V-sign, and smiled sweetly.
Now Shirou somewhat understood why the people at the Xunyang branch were so friendly and polite. Probably because victory was assured, there was no pressure—they just needed to act generously and kindly to make the exchange go smoothly.
Sure enough, the next day, the badminton singles and doubles matches were also lost. Compared to ping pong, the scores only looked a bit better.
In the hotel restaurant, the mood among the specialty students of the school was completely different from their previous confident demeanor.
One by one they stared blankly, as if questioning life itself—especially Hoshino, who had been shut out.
"Hahaha, don't worry! Don't worry! We came here to learn from them, after all!" a middle-aged male teacher said to the losing students.
"Yes! Today's defeat is tomorrow's victory! Cheer up!"
"How about this! Today, the teachers will specially treat you to delicious street food outside!" Hiratsuka Shizuka encouraged the students.
"No thanks, I'll get fat… though since I lost, I don't even have anyone willing to go shopping with me…"
"Thanks, teacher, but I have no appetite. And with no one who understands me, what's the point of going out…"
"We're full. Let's return to our rooms and face the lonely night. Good night, everyone…"
The students trudged toward the elevator.
Only the two teachers, Shirou, Kasumigaoka Utaha, and the girl who had done the flower arrangement remained, looking at each other.
"Teacher Hiratsuka? Why are you clutching your chest and look like you're in pain? Are you okay?"
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