Chapter 1 - No Place for Me Here

Click. The instant the door opened, the chatter between the club members that filled the conference room died down into silence. Kurenai Akane, the club’s president, had long, straight black hair that hardly curved as it slipped down to her waist. She remained at the center of that silence, and her footsteps rang out clearly as she entered the room.

For a brief moment, Shiraseki Kai met her gaze when she looked his way. He hurriedly averted his eyes, because there was nothing else he could do. He would have liked to run away, had it been possible, but knew someone would simply pin him down for his troubles if he tried.

There was a large, circular table in the room, alongside a whiteboard (as opposed to a blackboard, which most classrooms were equipped with). With her back to the whiteboard, Akane took the central seat and began to speak immediately. “My apologies for being late,” she began. “Now, let us begin our weekly meeting.”

She had, in fact, arrived late to the 6:00 P.M. meeting by about 30 seconds. It wasn’t enough to warrant an apology, but she was the type to be stricter with herself than she was with the rest of them. Of course, she still expected a great deal from others; winning their president’s approval was the goal of every club member.

“We may have more eyes and ears on us than we normally do,” she continued, “but that does not change what we must accomplish. As per usual, I would like to hear Team 1’s report first.”

“Understood.”

There were ten other students at the table.

If the vast majority of the members in the clubroom were to be considered unrecognized by the president, then those ten at the table would be the exceptions to that rule—those whose achievements she had already acknowledged. Each one of them was a director responsible for supervising the development and management of a social game created by the Tsukigase High School Social Game Development Club.

The male student acting as director of Team 1 pulled a springing cable out of the center of the table toward him and plugged it into his laptop. Shortly afterwards, a projection of his presentation appeared on the whiteboard.

“Team 1, reporting: Team 1’s LW released a new gacha as of yesterday,” he said. “As you can see on this graph...” The presentation document showed a line graph accounting for all sales in the past week, with an uptick on the previous day’s sales. “These are fairly good numbers for an initial release. However, we implemented a popular character, so this is within expectations. As far as noteworthy points—and while this is my personal opinion—it does seem that the ARPPU trends upwards when we release a loli character who resonates with the users—”

“Gahaha! What kind of bull are you spouting?!” said the large, bearlike director of Team 3, cutting him off with a laugh. “There’s no way lolis were the root of those sales! You added a big titty elf character alongside them! That’s obviously what won the users over!”

The director of Team 1 sighed, “Thank you for your opinion. However, it seems clear to me why your project, BloodSat, has an overwhelming number of reviews claiming that ‘All this game has is big-boobed girls.’”

“Huh?! What are you trying to say?!”

“I’m sure you know exactly what I’m saying. Why else would you react so excessively?”

The social game developed by Team 3 was known as BloodSat, short for Blood Satisfaction. It was a game in which the main character had been confined in an abandoned castle by the Queen of Vampires in an attempt to understand human society. While locked up, the main character would then interact with a variety of vampires in a galge-influenced RPG. Those interactions often included suggestive fanservice scenes, and almost all of the vampires laid claim to a beautiful face and a remarkable figure... that is to say, they had large breasts. It was a social game intent solely on targeting a certain demographic of users.

“I do not need idle talk.” One icy warning from Akane was all that was needed for the two directors to shut their mouths. “There is no need for the two of you to give your personal opinions,” she lectured sternly. “Further, there is no need to add anything to your presentation just because your subordinates are here today. Report the objective data first. We can hear your opinions afterwards.”

“...My apologies,” said the director of Team 1, who swiftly resumed making his report on the topics he had prepared. Team 1’s project, LW—also known as Last World—was the longest running title in the Tsukigase High School Social Game Club. The game itself was a simple turn-based fantasy RPG, but the addition of co-op play and consistent updates to take advantage of trends allowed it to garner a large user base.

After the first team came the second, then the third, and so on. Normally, the only people who were allowed to participate in the weekly Friday meetings were Akane (the club’s sole producer) and the ten team directors. But today’s meeting was different, in that all club members were being allowed to participate. This meant that over 300 people had been jam-packed into the conference room, and was also the reason Kai was present, although he would have been called in even if the meeting hadn’t been open to all of the club’s members.

The real reason that all of these members had gathered for the meeting was simple. It was to hear the report from Team 10—the team Kai was in—and nothing else. The presentations went on and on until the time came for Ginjou, the director of Team 10, to make his report.

“Team 10 reporting... We have a lot of things we must report today,” Ginjou began. “First, our sales: we at Team 10 began the week by launching a one year anniversary event in Rondo. Thanks to our pre-event promotion, we saw a spike in active users and expected to see our highest proceeds yet... But as of now, we have yet to garner any sales.”

The large conference room stirred as it filled with murmuring. ‘Yet to garner any sales’ meant that they hadn’t made anything, and for a team in the Tsukigase High School Social Game Club, that was unthinkable. And it had been Rondo, to boot. Girls’ Symphonic Rondo had been second only to LW in sales during the previous month. Now, suddenly, it had dropped to zero? A drop in sales would be understandable, but earning nothing would simply never happen under normal circumstances.

‘Under normal circumstances,’ indeed.

“Silence,” Akane demanded. “I do not remember allowing buzzing insects into this conference room. The numbers do not lie: if you are a member of this club, recognize the truth for what it is. Ginjou, continue your report.”

“The underlying reason is that there was an accusation that claimed, ‘Rondo’s gacha rates are being rigged,’ on the day before the event began,” Ginjou went on. “It should go without saying, but this is completely untrue—a fabrication—and there is no such rigging going on.”

“But the users believed it,” Akane interjected.

“...To support their argument, the accuser leaked our master data, which led to a general opinion that the accusation was true,” said Ginjou. “That data is carefully controlled, so it’s unthinkable for it to have been stolen by an outside actor. I requested the security team to perform an investigation, and there seems to be no trace of hacking, either. The only possibility that remains is... I’m sorry, I can’t pursue this any further.”

Kai winced at his team leader’s performance, which was obviously fake; Ginjou was the type of person who put on this sort of act. His top priority was to climb the club’s ladder, and he was willing to do anything necessary to achieve that goal. His actions were calculated to ensure that people’s opinion of him would never drop. He’d leave the act of finding the culprit to Akane because he himself was a passionate man who’d believe in his teammates until the bitter end—or at least, that was presumably what he was going for.

The leak contained insider information, alongside top secret master data. The culprit was obviously a club member. They were most likely in the same team, as well. For security reasons, each team’s data was only accessible to the members of that particular team. The other club members already knew this and had a culprit in mind.

But still, even then, he wouldn’t sell out his friends; that’s the act Ginjou was putting on. So naturally, he couldn’t utter the name “Shiraseki Kai,” as if he had ever considered him a friend to begin with.

“...Shiraseki, are you present?”

“I am,” he answered, standing when his name was called, all while keenly aware that his movements were being followed by the stares of everyone in the room.

“Keep your answer clear and concise,” Akane instructed him. “Our investigation has made it apparent that the accusation was written with the computer that you use within our club. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“...No.” His response sent another wave through the conference room. Akane waved her hand as if she were conducting an orchestra and killed the chatter instantaneously.

Kai closed his eyes. He already knew the words he needed to say, but they kept getting stuck in his throat. He couldn’t tell if it was because he wasn’t producing any spit, but for some reason, his mouth felt dry all the way to the back of his throat, and it took him a while just to get a breath in.

He took that deep breath and then opened his eyes. He gathered all the moisture in his mouth and quietly cleared his throat. “The message on that computer... was mine,” he admitted. “I am the culprit.”

He’d already known what he had to say by the time he entered the meeting, and with the first bit out of the way, the rest of his words continued to flow out. “With this in mind, I, Shiraseki Kai of Team 10...”

All that was left was for him to say his goodbyes.

“Will withdraw from the Tsukigase High Social Game Club.”