The Docked Controller

The small dining-kitchen of a flat in a housing estate in Nagoya on a humid summer evening, a round fluorescent lamp overhead, a pale wooden floor, a small colour television glowing with blurred coloured blocks, before it a low game console twenty-two centimetres wide, a cream-white case on a dark red base, a red cartridge flap, a red lever and two small red buttons on top, every surface plain and unmarked, one dark red controller with a gold face, a black cross-shaped pad and two round black buttons held in two children's hands, the second controller resting in its red holder at the side.