"Something easy would most likely be best," Farah confirmed, following the brothers' lead. "What is MarioKart?" she asked, checking her phone with false hope she would see a text from Saul. To her evident dismay, there wasn't a single notification on her lock screen.
"Um… it's a racing game, pretty much. Do you know how to drive?" Aiki asked, pushing open their bedroom door. There were two beds, one on each side of the room, and one side was noticeably cleaner than the other.
"Yes," Farah replied, stepping into the room. Once she had entered, though, she became hesitant, not knowing where to go or sit. She didn't want to appear rude or impolite by any means.
Aiki and Eiji both sat on the floor in front of the TV and picked up controllers. Aiki handed one to Farah while Eiji turned on the TV and got the game booted up. Aiki started explaining the basics of the controls as well as they could to Farah.
Farah simply followed the boys' lead and did her best to pay attention to the controls while Aiki explained it. "Darling," she said when he was finished, "I really appreciate you explaining this to me, but I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing. I could just watch you two play."
"But you might enjoy it! And it'll be a fun story to tell everybody when you get back." Aiki smiled encouragingly up at Farah and Eiji got the game set up. "You could at least give it a try, and if you don't like it, we won't force you to play."
Farah sighed and looked at them. Aiki was too adorable for her to decline his offer. "Oh, alright," she relented. "But we have to play it at a beginner's level. And I have to practice."
"Alright! We'll go easy on you! Right Eiji?" They asked their brother, elbowing him in the side. Eiji nodded in confirmation as he swatted Aiki's hand away. "Yeah, we can do a race with just us three to practice." He selected the parameters for the race and went to the character select screen, where he selected Yoshi and Aiki picked Isabelle.
Farah looked from the controller to the screen. "Um, how do I…?" she trailed off, figuring out how to move her icon to select a character. "Oh! Now, how do I pick one…?" She felt slightly embarrassed and stupid for not knowing how any of the controls worked. Just because the Otherworld had video games didn't mean that she had played any of them.
"Just move this joystick until your color, which is yellow, is in a square around whichever character you want to play. Their stats aren't really different enough to matter, in my opinion, especially not for a beginner, so just pick whichever one you like the look of and press the little button that says 'A'." Aiki explained, pointing to each of the things as they mentioned them.
"Thank you," Farah murmured appreciatively and followed their instructions to select Peach as her character. "Now what do I do?"
Eiji moved to the next screen and Aiki helped Farah pick a kart combination, pretty much just giving her the same one that they and Eiji were also using. "Alright, you should be set! Now, when we get in the game, the 'A' button will make you go forward. I turned on assisted steering for you so you don't have to worry quite as much about steering, but this joystick is the directional one. This bumper lets you use items, and the other one lets you drift, but don't worry about drifting."
Farah paid close attention, mimicking the buttons Aiki was demonstrating with her own controller until she was relatively comfortable with the controls. "Items?" she asked. "What are the items?"
"You'll run into item boxes while you're driving, and they have stuff in them that will either power you up or impair other players somehow. You can get shells to throw, or invincibility stars, and other stuff like that." Aiki explained, and Eiji looked up. "The further back you are from first place, the better items you get, usually. At least… they're easier to get. Higher percentage since the game is trying to help you catch up."
"Lovely," Farah remarked a bit sarcastically. Still, she knowingly smiled. "I should be getting lots of those then. Shall we get started?"
"Yep! We can get started if you think you understand the controls." Aiki smiled brightly and Eiji started up the game. The familiar countdown played on the screen, and the both of them quickly set off after it went to zero.
Farah blinked and did her best to keep up, but her car kept steering wildly over the track. "Oh!" she cried as she drove straight into the barricade. "Wait, that was the wrong button." Slowly, she began to improve as she understood the right buttons to press at the right times.
"You're doing great! See? You're figuring it out already." Aiki encouraged, their focus on Farah since they and Eiji had already completed the three laps. "You've still got the assisted steering on, so that should help you stay on the track."
"It's not doing very much assisting, is it?" Farah muttered, managing another turn without steering her cart off course. "Isn't this supposed to be fun?"
"It should be fun once you get a hang of the controls. You're already picking it up a bit, see?" Aiki offered an encouraging smile, and Eiji watched the screen curiously.
Finally, Farah's character crossed the finish line, and Farah sighed with relief. "Well that was quite an interesting game," she murmured.
"You did great! We can do some more practice if you wanted to try an actual game against the computers later, but you don't have to if you don't want."
"I'll try it," Farah gave in with a sigh. "But I'd really just prefer to watch you two play. The stress I got from that race was too much for a game!"
Aiki laughed softly. "We'll have you try one more round against the computers, and then you don't have to play anymore if you don't want to, okay?" Eiji set up a game with the computers set to the easiest difficulty.
Farah smiled and shook her head. "Alright. I don't know how you rope me into these things…" Her gaze alternated from the tv screen to Aiki to Eiji and back again.