Chapter 14 - Post-Victory

“Alright, let’s update!”

The day of the competition, Miracle Stage was updated to version 1.1.0 on Nanaka’s cue.

For management competitions, each party was required to upload the necessary update data to the BOX by a set date and then enact the update on the day of the competition. Then the judges would look over the two teams’ work for a week, and the team which improved their game most from before the update would be declared the winner.

Their opponent’s social game was a standard fantasy RPG at its core. They, too, were a team that had resigned themselves to the bottom of the ranking board, so it was unlikely for them to have managed their game all that much. Kai was well aware of this, and had confirmed his suspicions when playing through the game. The main story came to a close very quickly, and there wasn’t any other content to continue playing after that, either. They did have co-op quests that were intended to be endgame content, but the small user base meant that the matchmaking functionality didn’t work properly. It was a capital example of the sad fate of an unpopular social game.

That being said, management competitions weren’t based on how fun a game was; they were based on how much work went into improving the game, and how successful that effort was. That was what decided the match.

A simplified list of improvements implemented was turned in alongside the update data, and this list was also visible to the opposing team. Compared to the seventy improvements they’d added, their opponents had a meager three. Furthermore, those three points were all insignificant changes that were clearly only done because they figured they might as well update their game for the competition.

When Kai saw their improvement list, frankly, he felt an intense sense of relief. He had been feeling restless recently because he kept thinking back on Nanaka’s uncertain face as she asked whether their seventy improvements were enough. As in baseball or soccer, social game competitions didn’t have a guaranteed process that ensured victory. Even at Tsukigase, Kai had encountered evaluations from the judges that he’d felt to be unfair. But every time that happened, Akane would tell him, “That is what it means to create a game,” and her words would soak into his heart.

After all, it was the same when he played social games. Sometimes he’d deem a game or event as boring and pass judgment without any real reason. With no regard for the hard work that who-knows-how-many people put in to make it, he’d give it the one-star rating of ‘boring.’ Boring things were boring, and fun things were fun. That was the way of the world. So long as that criterion was in the hands of humans, there would never be a social game that everyone would enjoy; and inversely, there was no social game that no one would find boring.

So, until the very last moment, Kai couldn’t bring himself to say that they’d certainly win. It was almost guaranteed that they’d win, but it wasn’t for sure. Not all the wisdom on the earth could assure that.

However, fortunately enough, the evaluation form that arrived at Meikun High School the following week clearly marked the winner of the competition as being Miracle Stage.

For the moment, that meant the continued existence of the social game club. And in contrast to Nanaka’s gleeful celebration, Kai was so relieved that his legs nearly gave out.

◇

“Nana-seeen, can I start eating yet?” Aya wheedled.

“Ahh! Bad, Ah-chan!” Nanaka said, scolding her in response. “Bad! Eru’s not here yet!”

“I bet she’s not even coming.”

“Don’t worry! I let her know ahead of time!”

“Hmph, fine, I’ll wait five more minutes,” Aya grumbled. “Ah, thanks, senpai.”

Kai handed Aya a paper cup full of orange juice, and then she snuck a bite of the snacks on the table while no one was looking.

The table in the club room was lined up with a handful of different snacks, and Nanaka’s handmade banner read “First Ever ☆ Competition Victory” as it draped across the wall. It was quite modest for a victory celebration, but Kai thought it was more than lively enough for their tiny clubroom.

“Aoi-san,” Kai asked, “did the talks of disbandment turn out okay?”

“Yup,” Nanaka said brightly. “They said they’d reexamine things.”

“...Reexamine?” he asked, feeling that there was an ominous ring to that word.

“Um, what was it... ‘Congratulations on your victory in the routine competition. The immediate dissolution of the social game club has been annulled. What’s that? Your status going forward? That is something that I am unable to decide alone. We shall let you know once we have conducted a reexamination at the student council. Farewell,’ is what she told me,” said Nanaka.

“Was that supposed to be the VP?” Aya wondered. “Nana-sen, you suck at impressions.”

“But, for now, we’re safe from being disbanded!” said Nanaka. “I’m so glad...”

“Hmm... Senpai, what do you think?” Aya asked Kai.

“What do you mean?” Kai replied.

“I just kinda get a bad vibe. It’s like if someone hired me as their new lead programmer but when I ask them about their concrete plans, they hit me with the, ‘It’s a normal RPG,’ treatment,” Aya suggested. “The response is so vague that it has zilch for substance and zero details.”

“...Well, I see where you’re coming from,” Kai admitted. The verdict was too suspicious for them to rest easy. Thinking back on how the student council president had acted, it wouldn’t be out of place for him to say they needed to win the next competition to avoid disbandment again.

“I get it, our school’s packed with useless clubs since everyone’s forced to join one,” Aya said, picking the conversation back up. “For the people managing the school, they’re trying to weed out the bad apples. All these clubs we have cost money, and since our student body’s spread so thin, apparently we don’t have that many clubs that put up good results by going to national tournaments and stuff. Social games are shitty, too, if they’re full of useless parts that nobody wants to play.”

“You’re not wrong, but...” Kai understood what she was trying to say, yet he felt uncomfortable putting school and social games on the same level.

“By the way, senpai...” said Aya, who suddenly scooted closer to him.

“W-What is it?” he asked, noting that Aya was so short that he had to look down on her even when they were sitting together. Her collarbone was as white as an unused eraser, and was visible from the neck area of her sloppily worn blouse as she forced her way into Kai’s field of view.

“Can you stop with the ‘Oushima-san’?” she requested. “It’s way too stiff for me.”

“Huh? Why is that?”

“Oh, and that ‘polite business partner’ tone can go, too,” she added.

“Ah, I was thinking that too,” Nanaka chimed in from the doorway, where she was waiting for Eru.

Aya continued, “You can call me Aya, no honorifics. I figure Ah-chan’s too hard for you.”

“You can call me Nanaka, too!”

“W-Why so suddenly?” Kai asked.

“Mmm, I mean, there’s kinda some distance between us, y’know?” Aya pointed out. “Trust is important when you’re developing social games, you feel me?”

“That may be true,” Kai protested, “but—”

Aya cut him off. “Man, I’m telling you I don’t need that ‘That may be true’ kinda thing.”

“Kai-kun, do you not want to?” asked Nanaka.

“It’s not that I—” His consciousness finally caught up to the fact that she had called him by his first name. KAI KUN. Kaikun. Kai-kun. The way it sounded when she said it continued to roll around his head like the beautiful marble in a ramune bottle. As soon as he’d noticed, Kai became unable to pull his eyes away from Nanaka.

“B-Being on a first name basis is... it’s something that’s reserved for good friends,” he tried again. “Like best friends, or someone really special, or—”

“...Pfft!” Aya cut off Kai’s excuses with a loud, sputtering laugh. Nanaka had the same pained expression of desperately holding in a laugh.

“C’mooon, aren’t we good friends?”

“Don’t you think we’re good friends?”

The two of them asked him at the exact same time.

“...Is this really okay with you?” Kai asked cautiously, and got an immediate response.

“Kai-kun,” Nanaka coaxed him, “try saying my name.”

“Ao—” Nanaka shook her head, so Kai prepared himself. “Nanaka...... -san.”

“...-san?” Nanaka questioned.

“Um... This is my limit,” Kai confessed. “Please let me keep the -san... I’ll attempt to—er, I’ll try to talk as casually as I can, so...”

Nanaka grinned and happily teased him, “I guess that’s good enough.” Her smile was physically painful for Kai’s heart, and he desperately tried to keep a straight face.

“Senpai,” Aya said, “me next!”

“Aya,” he said simply.

“Hey, what the heck!” she objected. “How come you had to conquer some internal struggle just to add a -san to Nana-sen’s name but you say mine so casually?! If this were a galge, my affection rating woulda dropped!”

Kai began to laugh at Aya’s fiery protest, to which she responded by becoming even more over-the-top with her anger, and the situation spiraled out of control. Nanaka started to laugh out loud. Aya, despite her anger, got swept up and joined in. The tiny club room was filled to the brim with the sound of their bright laughter.

It felt as though Kai was sitting in a patch of warm sunlight. He had never felt this way at Tsukigase, and he wondered for a moment if it was alright for this same social game club to be so different.

“Oh dear, it seems you’re all getting along swimmingly.” A tense voice arrived like a clap of thunder in a blue sky. Eru looked at them as she stood by the doorway, one step outside of the room.

“E-Eru, you’re late.” Nanaka approached her friend despite the prickly atmosphere between them.

“It’s not as if I came to celebrate,” Eru said coldly. “I didn’t exactly contribute to the competition, after all. You ought to enjoy yourselves as you wish.”

“Eru, don’t say that. You’re a member of the club too,” Nanaka protested.

“...Nanaka, dear, I came here to ask you a question.”

“To me?” asked Nanaka, clearly surprised.

“You were the planner for this competition, were you not?” Eru asked pointedly.

“Yup... but that was only thanks to Kai-kun.”

“I couldn’t care less who it was thanks to. And? Are you going to continue onwards as a planner?”

Nanaka dragged her feet in answering, but after hesitating for a moment she quietly muttered, “Yeah.”

“...I see.” Eru’s face was robotic, like a man-made wall, and she let out a sigh. “Then this is farewell.” She pulled out a piece of paper from her bag and handed it to Nanaka. The lettering at the top of the paper was bigger than that of the rest, and Kai was able to read, ‘Club Withdrawal Form.’

For an instant, she turned to Kai and flashed a glare so full of fury that he could hardly believe how expressionless she had been just a moment ago. Before Nanaka could say anything, Eru forcefully turned on her heel to express with her body that she was finished talking.

“Dear,” said Eru, “I didn’t join this club for you to be like this.”

Nanaka slowly crumpled to the ground, as if the weight of Eru’s words had crushed her.

Eru shut herself off by putting on the headphones that were dangling from her neck and walked away without looking back.