Chapter 17: Kongouin Mirei’s Glorious Victory

That had been the last moment they could afford to spend goofing off. From here on, the team’s development cycle became a living hell.

Their one saving grace was the fact that Aya had been working in advance to finish off the parts they needed for the app they’d shown Eru. Even then, they needed to remake all of the graphics from scratch, and Kai’s lack of familiarity with creative writing led the script to disaster. It went so poorly that he’d wanted to abandon his post and flee, but Aina soon had fixed his head to his laptop with an iron grip.

When he tried to play some social games as a change of pace, he was met with, “How many words have you written?”

When he tried to get up to grab a drink, he was met with, “How many words have you written?”

And even when he tried to go to the restroom, he was met with, “How many words have you written?”

It went without saying that Aina had been smiling as she said all this, but her adorable, featherlike little flower of a face hid a dark pit of sinister malice underneath. At one point, she had hummed, “You won’t find any answers by gazing into my eyes, ♪” and jabbed Kai’s eyes out, legitimately knocking him out cold.

However, that hadn’t been enough to get Kai’s fingers typing. He went into the kitchen to ask Misako (now clad entirely in white like a personal chef) for help, and was met with a line straight out of a battle manga. “Think back!” she told him grandly. “Remember your impetus!!!”

She’s probably viewing herself as a character in some sort of culinary battle story, Kai guessed.

Humans were simple creatures and prone to obedience in times of great trouble, so Kai retraced the initial trigger for his idea. He held meaningless—well, obviously there was some meaning in it—conversations with Nanaka over LIME. It might not exactly have been an ‘impetus,’ but this was where his plan had originally come to life.

These conversations worked perfectly. Kai was so nervous and awkward that their messages ended up being a bit stilted, but they still served to help him identify important qualities: the fun, ticklish sensation of chatting over LIME despite being right beside one another, and the swelling joy in his gut whenever he got a notification, were indispensable.

I need to write the script like I’m talking to Nanaka, Kai realized, and lined the story with the ideal moments he wished to experience with Nanaka in real life. The pace at which he worked was by no means fast, but once he had his objective in sight, he managed to chug along without pause.

Meanwhile, Eru blitzed through the character artwork all at once, while Nanaka handled the UI, touched up on Eru’s work, and finished off other miscellaneous art assets. Aya churned out features one after another, and Aina recorded her lines as soon as Kai finished writing them.

They created, implemented, and tested. Then they’d find something wrong and create, implement, and test again, only to find another strange issue, so they’d create, implement...

Fun and hardship blended together to make the days pass by in the blink of an eye. In the end, they continued working until the due date—9:00 am, on the day they were slated to head to Tokyo.

“Hey,” Aina called out to Kai as he was listing everyone’s names in the final credits. “Don’t put my full name in there.”

“Aina-san...” he said slowly.

“For now, I’m okay with you guys being the only ones to know.” Her eyes grew soft and she smiled as she corrected herself, saying, “In fact, I like it better that way.”

Kai had seen Aina smile plenty of times before, with both the mask of an angel and the smirk of a devil. But this was the first time he’d seen something so refreshingly pure, without a trace of shadow lingering nearby.

She was simply listed as being ‘Aina’ in the credits, and that concluded their work.

Everyone had stayed over with hardly a wink of sleep for the last two days, so Kai’s living room looked like a desecrated battlefield. It would have been pure bliss if they could sleep like bricks now, but they didn’t have the time. Instead, each of them stopped by home to change into their uniforms and immediately hopped aboard a bullet train.

There were no “Good job’s” or “Man, that was rough’s” exchanged between them. Everyone was clocked out for the entire two-hour train ride; there was nobody to speak or be spoken to. Besides, they hadn’t finished anything yet.

They switched over to the Chuo Line at Tokyo Station to head for Shinjuku, just like before. Five minutes before the judging began, the group reached the familiar private school to find that many of the other schools’ students had already taken their seats in the giant, university-style lecture hall.

“Good day to you!” A shrill voice rang out as soon as the Meikun squad found their assigned seats. “Ohohoho!”

“...Kongouin-san,” said Kai, greeting their opponent wearily.

“Indeed! I am Kongouin! Kongouin Mirei!”

You don’t have to repeat your name so often, Kai grumbled internally. I know it. In his current condition, Mirei’s high-pitched voice pierced straight into his brain, so all he wanted was for her to be quiet.

“Well, well, well? What’s this?” she asked mockingly. “You look positively awful. Upon further inspection, that goes for the rest of your lot, as well. Could it be that you’d been working on your submission into the morning?”

“...Yeah, something like that,” he admitted. “Anyway—” Talking to you is exhausting, so could you leave us be? would have been Kai’s next words, but he was cut off by Mirei’s short, sharp claps.

Her lanky, mushroom-headed attendant appeared before them. “Here you are,” the boy said, slithering in front of each of them. His movements were disgusting enough to cause his onlookers physical discomfort, but he had placed a small glass bottle in front of each of the Meikun High students. It was the same brown glass used for convenience store energy drinks, except there was no label on it.

“A creator’s body is her greatest capital!” Mirei declared. “This is Kongouin’s own secret recipe! One dose of this energy drink will blow away a mere two- or three-night’s lack of sleep for at least half a day!”

“...You’re giving this to us?” Kai questioned.

“I should find it quite boorish to be later told that we only won because our opponents were not in peak condition,” Mirei declared airily. “I must ask that you be in top form.”

“We already turned in our app, though, so it’s not like drinking this now’d do anything,” Aya pointed out.

Kongouin Mirei let out a sharp gasp and her eyes went wide. Everything about her body language gave off the impression that she hadn’t even considered that fact.

She’s a lot less put together than I thought, Kai noted. “W-Well,” he said reassuringly, “there’s a question-and-answer portion during the judging, so thank you.”

“O-O-O-Of course! That is precisely why I so generously offered you this gift!” said Mirei, puffing up her chest as she tried to force in her own good word.

Unlike the last time she’d appeared, Mirei had not mounted Kinoyama. Owing to her short size (again, she was as small as Aya), she looked like a grade schooler, beaming with pride that she’d been able to buy groceries on her own.

“Oh, God, that’s bad! Bleeegh...” Aya instantly spat out after a sip. “Nana-sen,” she gasped. “Tea! Gimme some tea!”

“Hey!” Mirei exclaimed. “Refrain yourself from regurgitating my kindness back into the bottle!”

“Oh dear, this is awful...” Eru muttered.

“I-It’s really bitter,” Nanaka agreed. Then she added, “But thanks, Kongouin-san.”

Everyone’s opinions spurred Kai on with a morbid curiosity, causing him to take the bottle into his own hands. He twisted off the metal cap and brought it up to his nose to get a sharp whiff of chemical odor.

The truth was that Kai had been a regular user of energy drinks like these in his time working on Rondo over at Tsukigase. As a result, he had thought everyone’s clamoring was just them being picky. From his own personal experience, he divided energy drinks into two groups: the first was expensive, effective, but short-lived, and the second was cheaper and more moderate in its effect, but lasted longer (or at least, Kai thought so). He’d seen differing opinions online, so he knew his own to be subjective.

Now then, Kai thought, taking a sip... Well, that’s new. He felt as though someone had stuffed his mouth full with raw herbs. It was like someone had gone out and plucked the leaves of the greenest, most medicinal plants they could find, ground them up, boiled them, and stuffed the result into a bottle. And that was the remarkably wild flavor assaulting his tongue.

But they’d probably thought that wouldn’t taste good enough, because it was also sweet. It was obscenely sweet. They had probably looked at royal jelly and figured they’d dump a ton of honey into the solution, but this caused the mixture to become uncomfortably viscous to the point that Kai could only just barely drink it. Even then, each mouthful was less of a chug and more of a gulp. The dense combination of bitter and sweet clung to his tongue and throat as it slid into his stomach.

Okay... this is bad, he concluded.

“...Wooow,” Aina mused. She held the bottle in her fingertips, swinging it back and forth to play with the liquid inside.

“My, are you not going to do me the honor of drinking my gift?” Mirei asked her. “It is also perfectly suited to help you maintain your beauty.”

“Ummm,” Aina hesitated cutely. “I just figured that you should drink it instead of me.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” Mirei demanded.

“Look under your eyes... You’re not fooling anyone. ♪” Aina pointed to Mirei’s face. Upon further inspection, there were light bags present. The fact that they were visible at all in spite of the concealer hiding them indicated that Mirei was just as bruised and battered as the Meikun crowd.

“...How observant of you,” Mirei admitted.

“Hm? Hold on,” Aina said, pressing further. “Umm, I don’t know if I’m misremembering... but you seemed like you had it pretty easy back during your livestream, right? That means you must’ve been working all morning too! We’re twinning! ♪” She put her honeyed voice to work, lathering every word with provocation.

“Hmph,” Mirei lightly scoffed in contempt before calling for her mushroom-boy. “Kinoyamaaa!”

“At your ready!” he shouted, sliding headfirst into the scene with propped up arms and legs to become his lady’s pedestal.

Mirei stepped atop him, folding her arms and puffing up her chest as she went. “...Indeed, I shan’t deny it. I wasn’t particularly attempting to hide my exhaustion—it’s just that to appear beautiful is akin to our brand of courtesy, after all,” she pointed out.

“There is no such thing as ‘taking it easy’ in this world. True pursuit knows no end,” she continued. “Just as you all drove yourselves to the brink this morning, we, too, offered everything we had in our quest for perfection. That is all there is to it... Oh, I’m sorry,” Mirei said suddenly, turning to Kai. “I fear I’ve spoken too much... ‘Speak with your output,’ was it? At this point, I believe that ought to suffice.”

“...I agree,” Kai replied, naturally locking eyes with the haughty girl. He found himself stuck in a staring contest, as neither side was willing to be the first to turn away.

But then, a loud thud, thud, thud began to sound outside, and culminated in the lecture hall doors bursting open. Kai saw the same tattered jeans, accompanied by the same leather jacket, with yet another anime character peeking out from a t-shirt underneath. Hifumi Tetsuya’s bald head and shoulders cut through the air, and his sunglasses shone as he solemnly made his way up to the front of the room.

Upon stepping to the podium, he removed his shades and snorted at the sea of students in front of him. After lording over them for a moment, his lips twisted into a gratified sneer and he announced, “Alrighty, let’s hurry up and get to the judging. There’s a lot of you, so we’re gonna be quick about this... Hm.”

Suddenly, Tetsuya froze in place. His wrinkly, unhealthy eyes swam around in thought as he put his hand to his chin with a groan of contemplation. With his free hand, Tetsuya pulled a crumpled cigarette from out of his pocket, which he then placed into his mouth.

“It’s gonna be a pain if you throw a fit later, so let me get this out of the way,” he announced. “Listen up: I know they’re calling this a ‘judging’ or a ‘critique’ or whatever, but it’s not that big of a deal. Simply put, the winner will be whichever game suits my taste better—whichever game I like better. That’s it.

“You might be thinking, ‘What the hell is this guy on about?’ but that’s how it is,” he went on. “I mean, we’ve got a giant mix of different genres, themes, and target audiences here in the first place. Would you be able to accept some numerical score on your game? Well, if any of you dare to waste my time with something that’s obviously not up to snuff, I’ll chew you out all you want.”

He took a moment to survey the crowd and suck on the unlit cigarette. “...Pwaah. So, my point is, don’t worry about it too much. Er, I guess you can worry all you like, but lemme add some disclaimers for you: first is that, if you win, you just so happened to make a game that I ended up liking. So, don’t get it twisted around. And if you lose—as long as it’s not a flaming pile of garbage—you just so happened to miss the mark on what kind of game I like. So, don’t get that twisted, either. Think of me like a self-proclaimed game critic who dropped a review for your game in your comments section.” After another pause, he said, “That’s it for the intro. Any questions?”

Everyone present had come too far to ask anything now. And thus, the judging began. Once again, a giant screen came down from the ceiling above the podium, and the projector mirrored the display on Tetsuya’s smartphone. All the apps from every school had already been installed, and he went through them all in the same order as the initial drawing.

Tetsuya himself seemed to be going in blind, having not played any of the games prior to this moment. The students were allowed to speak up at any point during their game’s presentation. Some chose to offer supplementary information, while others waited to answer one of Tetsuya’s unpredictable questions.

Meikun and Kongouin had been paired at the very end of the drawing ceremony, so they were going to be the closing act, and Kai’s anxiety was through the roof. To begin with, only the top performing schools had been invited to be here. All of the apps shown thus far had been high-quality products, regardless of genre, and each passing presentation caused the terrible worry in Kai’s body to grow and grow.

Kai and his team had done everything they could, and he’d felt a definite sense of accomplishment when they had uploaded their final submission. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was going to be enough.

Despite what he’d said, Tetsuya had yet to chew anybody out—perhaps owing to the surprisingly high level of work on display. He seemed bored, but nothing had made him lash out at a lack of quality. Kai knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help but pray that one of the clubs before theirs would get beaten to a pulp so that the bar wouldn’t be so high.

When it came to the members of Meikun High’s social game club, Kai couldn’t vouch for all of their characters, but their skill was undeniable. And he’d spent his fair share of time at Tsukigase, so he knew they lined up with the top talent. They were all incredible.

If their work was stamped down into the dust... well, the person who came up with the whole thing had been him, Shiraseki Kai. He had watched as their output continuously exceeded his wildest expectations, giving birth to new ideas and specifications. He knew he’d been troubling Eru, Aya, Nanaka, and Aina as he did so, but he’d never stopped reaching for higher heights—and the time they’d spent doing so had been great fun.

However, fun didn’t guarantee a good result. The real question was, had they been correct? Kai didn’t know if there was such a thing as ‘correct,’ but he still wondered if they had really been reaching for higher heights. This was something that they’d all made together; it was something that they’d all decided on together. A rejection of their work wouldn’t be the personal responsibility of Shiraseki Kai alone; it was the team’s responsibility. He knew that. He’d known that. He was completely aware of the fact.

But the beginnings of this proposal had laid inside of himself, and that scared him.

“Kai-kun,” said Nanaka, her faint whisper drawing him back to reality. In the seat beside him, she mouthed, “Let’s do our best,” with a bright, yet evasive smile.

Since they were sitting right next to each other, Kai knew right away what she was avoiding. He saw Nanaka’s hand tighten into a solid fist on her lap, packed tight with all of her nervousness. At a time like this, her bright kindness was painfully blinding. Everyone’s the same, Kai reflected. Focusing on myself like this makes me look so stupid.

“Alriiight, last one,” Hifumi Tetsuya said, turning to the Meikun students. “The final pair is Kongouin Academy and Meikun High School. The theme was... ‘Character’ and ‘Breath.’”

“Yes!” Nanaka responded, rising from her seat.

“That shall do,” Mirei affirmed, doing the same.

The plan was for Nanaka, in her capacity as the club president, to handle the question-and-answer session. Kai would only break in to explain anything she needed help with.

“Okay, let’s start with Kongouin,” said Tetsuya, and the corresponding app appeared on the projector. The Kongouin Academy logo appeared over a pitch-black loading screen, and then quickly disappeared as the dark slowly gave way like a car exiting a tunnel, incrementally gaining speed as it transitioned into brightness.

The incoming light carved the silhouette of a running girl from out of the blackness, which was running directly toward the player. Accompanied by a prismatic rainbow of light, she sprinted with all her might toward the position of the fixed camera, eventually running past it.

The moment she passed by the camera, a tired panting could be briefly heard, but then quieted as she ran farther and farther away. The camera swiveled and began to give chase, the sharp turn blasting away any remnant of darkness. Now, the screen displayed the girl’s back as she ran. Every step she took caused a polychromatic ripple in her wake, giving color to the world around her. Her windblown hair, her body, her shadows, and even the townscape around her grew clearer, until the title, ‘RUN GIRL,’ floated up into view, just where her back had been.

The scene was masterful. The initial cutscene alone caused a number of students from other schools to be taken aback—almost to the point of disgust. The character and scenery had all been rendered in 3D, and the quality of their graphics was overwhelmingly beautiful. It was as if the app itself was shouting out to the heavens: this is Kongouin.

“Hoo boy,” Hifumi Tetsuya rubbed his chin and nodded his head a few times. “The looks aren’t so bad.”

“Ohohoho!” Mirei gloated, “It is indubitably so! Is it not our victory?!”

“I didn’t say that,” he snapped. “God, you’re noisy.”

“Oh my, how rude of me! Please, do go on and enjoy the rest of our game!” With her spirits high, Mirei’s head tilted similarly upward as she shot her opponents a sideways glance, loudly snapping her folding fan open as if to declare herself the victor.

When Tetsuya tapped on his phone, the title faded away and the game began seamlessly. In simple terms, the game was a standard endless runner; the user controlled the 3D girl who had been shown earlier, running forward while also avoiding obstacles. Swiping left and right moved the character, while pulling down slowed the character’s movement. Flicking up caused her to jump. The farther one ran, the higher their score. It was a simple game, but the beauty of the graphics took everyone’s breath away.

But there was one more thing. This game had a certain gimmick, which had probably been added to fulfill the ‘Breath’ component: so long as the player managed to successfully avoid the obstacles in their path, the character continuously sped up. As she sped up, her panting grew heavier and heavier, and her response time for commands like jumping became sluggish. By manually slowing her down, the player could let her catch her breath. Instead of a typical energy bar, this game relied on the main character’s panting—that is to say, her ‘Breath’—to convey how much stamina the player had.

Thanks to the lack of UI elements cluttering the screen, the beautiful graphics stretched to fill the entirety of the user’s vision. Kongouin’s means of handling the constraints given to them also served to highlight their greatest strength; even as their opponent, Kai couldn’t help but marvel at their ingenuity.

“I see...” Tetsuya remarked. “Your solution for the prompt is very direct.”

“The path we take is none other than the royal road!” Mirei declared. “We have no need for petty tricks!”

“But I’m a pretty messed up guy,” Tetsuya reminded her. “That just makes me wanna tell you that it’s boring because there isn’t any twist.”

“B-Boredom and fun have nothing to do with how we interpret the prompts!” Mirei protested.

“Huh? You know this is a game, right? Don’t you think its fun-factor is important?”

“Th-That is a mere sophism!”

“It’s not a sophism,” Tetsuya told her coldly. “Like I told you, I’m just saying whatever I want. Well, whatever. It’s not like your way of thinking is wrong, either. This ‘royal road’ of yours feels more like a tidy little alleyway, but I’ll admit that it’s pretty.” With that last remark, Tetsuya decided he was finished with Kongouin’s critique. “Alright,” he said, closing the game. “Here’s the very last one. Meikun, you’re up.”

“Y-Yes!” Nanaka replied with a wavering voice.

“But, man...” Tetsuya began to grumble but caught himself. “Well, whatever.”

Kai knew where he was coming from. The cause of his concern was probably the app’s icon. It was a white speech bubble surrounded by green, with the word LIKE typeset in the middle. Being only a single letter off from LIME, it was hard to tell the difference at a glance—in fact, the icon had been an exact copy of LIME until late into development, where the team figured they ought to at least change one letter.

“...Hm?” Tetsuya mumbled.

Kai knew where his confusion came from, too. Tetsuya had tapped on the icon and was probably wondering why the app wasn’t opening. The truth was that the app was designed to display a smartphone’s home screen the first time it was launched. It was the usual display, lined with icons, with the time, cell power, wi-fi signal, and battery percentage listed along the top.

However, after three seconds or so of confusion, a pop-up notification appeared. It contained a brief notice that everyone had seen before: ‘New message available.’

When Tetsuya tapped the notification, he was taken to the chat window where the only thing he was asked to input was his name. The girl’s text plainly read, ‘Are you awake?’ The audience could tell she was a girl thanks to Eru’s artwork, which was sitting in the icon slot.

Instead of a keyboard, tapping on the message window at the bottom yielded a set of multiple-choice stamps that read, ‘Good morning,’ ‘It’s noon,’ and ‘I’m sleeping.’ The rest was simple. The player selected one of the options and conversed with her. Every decision changed some back-end parameters, which then changed the way the user interacted with the girl.

For example, she might switch from using the user’s last name to their first name. The player might figure out her interests through her peculiar preference in stamps. The user’s options might change from ‘I’m sleeping’ to a more casual ‘Zzz.’ The girl might send pictures or videos. All of this culminated in their relationship changing and the gap between them closing.

With absolutely no experience writing a proper story, Kai had ultimately been forced to open the drawers of his own mind. The happy, itchy feeling in his heart when Nanaka first called his name and the unforgettable smile on her face when he reciprocated in kind; he took the precious memories locked in his heart and crammed as many of them into the game as he could.

That was all there was to it. Honestly, Kai felt like he couldn’t even call his work a “story,” as it was merely a reproduction of his experiences with Nanaka. He wouldn’t be able to defend himself against anyone who said as much, but this was the only thing he could drag out of his soul. If it wasn’t enough to get the message through, then there was nothing more that he could have done. After all, that’s how brilliantly these fragments of memory shone to him.

After the chatting continued for a while and certain flags were set, the girl finally brought up the topic of fireworks. There were scenarios where the user invited her and others where the girl invited the user that varied according to past interactions, but either way, in the end, the phone began ringing.

The only thing displayed was her name and the call time.

“Are you awake?” Aina’s voice repeated the same words that the game began with. Her timbre was ticklish to the ear. There were different lines based on the user’s previous choices, but ultimately all the voice work was restricted to this one scene.

“Are you really okay with this?” It was only natural that Aina had raised her concerns during development. She’d pouted, clearly unhappy with how things had played out. “Why not make more use of Aya’s 2D to 3D tech? It’s crazy good, right? We could make that the main dish, like a video app or something. Can’t we just do what we’re doing now, but change the focus to video-calls?”

Her doubts had been well-founded, as the software Aya had come up with was a teensy bit baffling. Kai couldn’t just not use it, though, so he’d included it for the videos that the character sent, though there weren’t many of them.

A logical counterpoint would have been to say that the ridiculously advanced technology also required an equally ridiculous amount of art assets. There was only so much they could do in the short time they had... But that wasn’t the answer Kai had given.

The trigger for this plan had been Kai’s correspondence with Nanaka. Aya’s program might have been the way to go, quality-wise. But he had the feeling that it would stray from the epiphanic moment that brought him here. All he had been able to offer was the vague explanation that, “I’m not trying to convey a feeling you can see.”

“...I see,” Aina had replied shortly. “Well, I’m fine with that. If that’s the answer you came up with after racking your brain as our planner, then I’ll believe in you. Just you watch: I’ll show you what I’ve got with a single word.”

Aina hadn’t seemed totally convinced, but the fact that she believed in him led Kai to harden his own resolve. Her words may have been the anchor that kept him grounded till the end.

Finally, the game concluded when the girl sent a picture of herself with fireworks in the sky behind her.

“............Hrmm...” Hifumi Tetsuya folded his arms, knocked his head back toward the ceiling, and let out a low, beastlike groan.

Is he on the fence for our results? Kai wondered. In this competition, critique wasn’t the only thing Tetsuya had to offer: he needed to choose a winner between Meikun’s app and Kongouin’s. He had to decide whose app was more excellent, whose was more suited for victory. It was plain for all to see that the two works had gone in completely different directions, so it was no wonder he was confused. Kai wouldn’t have been able to come to a conclusion at all.

What is he going to—

In the middle of Kai’s thought, Tetsuya snapped his head back down and announced, “Meikun High wins.”

The brevity of his delivery dumbfounded Kai with shock to the point that he momentarily had trouble understanding what had been said.

Meikun High... That’s our school.

Wins... That denotes victory.

We... won. He said we won.

Nanaka had simultaneously gone through the same train of thought. Kai turned up to catch her gaze and saw that both her eyes and mouth were wide open in surprise, and realized that his face probably looked the same. We did it! he wanted to exclaim, but an angry, spear-like howl cut through the air, aimed directly toward the podium.

“I cannot accept this...!!!” Kongouin Mirei declared, snapping her fan shut and pointing its tip directly at Tetsuya, in order to pierce him with her animosity.

“...Well, I figured as much,” he said, scratching the back of his head. He let out a profoundly annoyed sigh and pointed his resentful gaze toward—Kai, for whatever reason. Kai locked eyes with Tetsuya before he even had a chance to look around and make sure the comment was being aimed at him.

“Meikun High,” Tetsuya said.

“Yes?!” Nanaka practically jumped as she answered.

“Ah, not you. The boy sitting next to you,” he clarified. “You.”

“Y-Yes...?” Kai rose to his feet.

“Yeah, you,” Tetsuya nodded. With a devilish grin, he said, “This has got to be foul play. What, did you want to pull off a once-in-a-lifetime self-destruction?”

“U-Um,” Kai stammered, “I don’t understand.”

“Huh? You were the one that made this plan, right?”

“Yes,” Kai admitted. “But, um... How did you know it was me?”

“No way... You’re telling me you didn’t do this on purpose?” Tetsuya asked incredulously.

On... purpose? Kai wondered. He had no idea what was being said to him, or why he was being called out, or even how Tetsuya had figured out that it was his plan. With so many questions, Kai’s processing power was reaching its limit. He glanced over at Nanaka, but that only led them to tilt their heads in confusion together. I don’t get it.

Seeing their reaction, Hifumi Tetsuya exploded into laughter. There was no performance here; he was in hysterics. With his hands on his sides, he desperately wheezed for air. “Wow, that’s terrible!” he cried. “Alright, consider this the price you pay for winning. Get ready, kid.”

Kai couldn’t have nodded along if he wanted to. What was he meant to get ready for? He considered the possibility that he’d done something wrong, but in that case Meikun wouldn’t have won the contest.

“You, what’s your name?”

“Sh-Shiraseki Kai, sir.”

“Kai, eh? Lemme ask: did you get your crush’s LIME contact, happily chat away with her, do a little dance when she sent you a picture, and then get invited out to go see some fireworks?”

“...............Huh?” Kai asked, dumbfounded.

“What I’m saying—ah God, this is embarrassing,” Tetsuya briefly paused to mutter to himself. “What I’m saying is that this game is basically a love letter to the girl you like.”

When truly frightened, humans tend to turn away from reality. In Kai’s case, a bunch of pointless things ran across his mind. On the last day of their development, Nanaka’s head had kept dipping up and down as she nodded off due to their all-nighters, and Kai thought that had been very cute. Aina had been pouting at her lack of work. Aya and Eru had been acting like children, kicking at one another from underneath the table, and he had tried (and failed) to pacify them, but that caused Nanaka to laugh. The tangential memories drifted to mind, one by one.

Kai’s mind was not calm. The term danced around in a corner of his head: love letter, a romantic message. He’d also seen it called an epistle of adoration in a game at some point, but that didn’t matter now. If he were to crack open a dictionary, he was sure “love letter” would be defined as a form of written communication to convey affection and yearning.

It was true that Aya had seen through the fact that Nanaka was the model the project had been based on. But Kai had figured that was only because they were in the same club, and Aya knew what kind of person he was.

Apparently, he had been wrong. The beginning of this game was his correspondence with Nanaka. The half-baked ‘story’ he’d written all came from things he’d talked about with Nanaka. That was it.

“Your feelings, Kai. As long as your feelings are in it, it’ll be alright.” The meaning of his hopeless sister’s advice finally sank in.

“I mean, well,” Tetsuya resumed, “It’s nothing special. It’s actually pretty common for creators to make a work dedicated to a specific person. So, I’m not judging you off of that. But that you went ahead and made it this obvious in a game that you were showing me... Pisses me off.”

Kai did his best to reassemble his scrambled brain, and despite his failure to do so, he managed to reply, “...What does?”

“You do, Shiraseki Kai. I was over here thinking you knew about my plan to become a grand wizard among wizards when you came up with this idea, but you’re just an airhead!” Tetsuya told him. “Don’t fuck with me!”

“Wizard...?” Kai asked, befuddled.

“Yeah? You don’t even know that? If a man stays a virgin past his thirtieth birthday, he gets to be a wizard,” Tetsuya had to explain.

It wasn’t as if anyone had been speaking in the first place, but the entire auditorium was now at a loss for words. Kai couldn’t help but ask himself, What the hell is this guy saying?

Tetsuya didn’t seem to mind at all as he continued, “The issue is this part that pisses me off. You see, I was bored out of my damn mind. Near the middle of the judging, I was close to losing it and storming off, but work is work; I grit my cigarette and pushed through. Every last one of you built up some neat and tidy bullshit, and it’s all boring as hell. I’m gonna forget all of this by tomorrow; I won’t remember a single one of you. But at the very last moment, you came prancing along.”

Tetsuya took a drag out of his wrinkled, unlit cigarette and smiled from the bottom of his heart. “Good for you, Shiraseki Kai. Among all the people in this lecture hall, you’re the only one who made me remember your name. That’s why you won.”

“Hold it right there!” It was only natural that Mirei would cut in. A single conversation with her was enough to know that she was not the type to back down here.

“Man, this Kongouin brat sure can holler,” Tetsuya observed.

“I cannot accept defeat under a reason such as this!” Mirei insisted again.

“Geez, shut up. What, ‘Our game had better graphics, more action, more gameplay, and higher quality, so our game should win!’ Is that what you want to say? Well, Meikun’s work was really plain for the most part...” Tetsuya admitted. “But the tech they used in their video messages was kind of insane.”

“B—” After stuttering once, Mirei tightened her will, declaring, “But still! I object!”

“You must think your work was perfect,” Tetsuya observed dryly. “How young. Well, you need that kind of bent in this industry, but... Alright, how about this! Instead of telling you why they won, I’ll explain why you lost... Sound good?”

“I would have it no other way!”

Tetsuya heaved a massive sigh. He lifted up the index and middle fingers on his right hand and pinched his cigarette for a drag, after which he brought the same two fingers out in front of him. “Two points. They’re sort of the same thing, but, well, two points.”

“Hmph,” Mirei puffed. “Then may I ask you to share your wisdom?”

“The first is the panting gimmick,” Tetsuya told her. “I know one of your themes was ‘Breath,’ so it may have seemed like you found a clever solution. But yours was no good.”

“W-Why is that?!”

“I don’t mind having a stamina system or some other gameplay limitation. Otherwise, the game would be too simple. But integrating sound as a gameplay element means that ‘being able to hear’ becomes a prerequisite to play... Do you think you could play this game when your phone’s on silent?” Tetsuya pointed out. “Like I said before we began, I’m judging off of my personal preferences. And my preference is that—console games aside—I don’t like these kinds of gimmicks in mobile games. Well, maybe you could still manage to play, but would it be anywhere close to how fun it’s supposed to be?”

Mirei had no time to cut in, as Tetsuya quickly continued, “That was your first fatal mistake. And the second... This one’s not exactly present in your work, but just a bit of my own conjecture... You completely overhauled the specifications of this game in the middle of development, didn’t you?”

“W-Why on earth would you think that?” Despite choking on her words, Mirei pushed through the restless feeling growing inside her. However, the panic in her voice was all the evidence he needed.

“I have a feeling this game was supposed to be something you showed off in VR. It was going to be an app where you ran alongside a beautiful character to see some beautiful scenery.”

“Wha—”

“Looks like I’m spot on,” Tetsuya observed. “I’ve been studying up on VR recently myself, so I picked up on a few of the idiosyncrasies in the camera movement. But in that case... it’s all the more disappointing. Geez, I would’ve rather seen you swing and miss. It would’ve been forgivable if the reason you gave up on VR was because of a lack of experience or time, but it looks like you’ve been experimenting with it quite a bit, if your livestream was anything to go by. So that can’t be it.”

“...You watched our livestream?” Mirei asked incredulously.

“Duh, you left a VOD of it up on your channel,” Tetsuya scoffed. “I do my work properly, and not just for you; I’ve checked through most of the past work and accomplishments of every team here. But right now, we’re talking about you. You overhauled your game mid-development. You changed it by throwing out VR and adding a shallow gameplay system... probably because of the criticism in your comments section, bashing how poorly your games played. Don’t you think that’s a bit flimsy? Don’t just bend your will over like that.” Though his final words were spoken softly, they carried a passion that echoed in the core of everyone who heard them.

After sucking on his cigarette once more, Tetsuya waited a moment before he added, “Well, that’s my reason... Regardless of whether you were aware of it or not, that kid,” he said, pointing to Kai, “stayed true to himself, and you folded on something precious. That’s the biggest difference between you two. Don’t you think that’s more than enough for you to lose this match?”

Tetsuya’s question brought all the eyes in the audience onto Mirei. She opened her mouth to answer, but finding no words, she closed it again. This was, no doubt, utterly humiliating. Mirei’s tiny body trembled and her frowning face flushed a bright pink. She was holding herself back at the precipice of explosion.

Had he been one second slower, Mirei surely would have broken into tears. “Mirei-samaaa!!!” Kinoyama shouted, again sliding headfirst into the walkway as if that was the natural course of action.

“Kinoyama,” a whisper escaped her lips as her trembling rage gave way to surprise. She opened her fan wide to hide her face and took a deep breath. Then, with even more pomp than usual, she stepped out into the walkway and onto the back of the groveling Kinoyama.

After glancing at the Meikun team, Mirei stared down Hifumi Tetsuya on the podium. “This contest... is our loss!” After the brusque proclamation, she went through the familiar routine of calling, “Kinoyama!” and riding her steed out the door.

However, perhaps the boy moved more vigorously than she’d anticipated, or otherwise she was simply too tired to maintain her grip. Just as she passed by her opponents and her piercing glare made contact with Kai, her fan slipped out of her fingers. Her mouth opened in surprise and she looked back over her shoulder to see it fall, but Kinoyama continued onward without noticing a thing. The two of them flew out of the lecture hall with great momentum.

Kai picked up the fan only to be struck with awe. The quality of the materials was staggering: he was amazed by what seemed to be peacock feathers, but the real gemstones that sparkled along the handle were even more amazing.

There’s no way they’d leave without it, Kai thought. But... he also couldn’t quite imagine them coming back. If he’d been in their shoes, he wouldn’t have been able to come back—that was out of the question. And he couldn’t leave this fan that cost who-knows-how-much lying around.

“Kai-kun,” Nanaka urged him with a nod.

Kai got up, holding the fan with both hands (God forbid the thing break on his way there) to go rushing after the Kongouin duo. He caught no sight of them in the hallway outside the lecture hall. However, when he looked at the elevator in the middle of the hall, he observed its lamp switching from the second floor to the first. Knowing that he wouldn’t make it in time if he waited for it to come back up, he flew down the stairwell to his right.

Once Kai got out to the entrance hall, he knew where they were, straight away. He heard that unforgettable, shrill voice now drowning in a sea of tears.

“Oh, we’ve lost, oh, we’ve lost, oh, we’ve lost!!!” Mirei wailed. “Kinoyamaaa! We’ve lost because of my decision!!!”

The two of them were along the wall beside an unpopulated hallway. Kinoyama, nearly two meters tall, had been pushed up against the wall, and Mirei was pounding away at him (and not the wall) with clenched fists. Mirei only had the same 140-some centimeters of height that Aya did, so her arms didn’t reach up to the boy’s chest. Instead, she was punching him in the gut, but Kinoyama took it all without the slightest change of expression.

As the repeated tremors shook his body, the flattened glass milk jugs that Kinoyama called “glasses” fell off his face with a clack. Underneath were two sharp, calm eyes.

“I beg your pardon, but I told you as much,” he said. There was no trace of the unhinged boy that squealed with delight upon being stepped on. Like a gentle breeze blowing over the surface of a lake, he pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to Mirei.

“My lady, you are best as you are,” he told her. “You are the most beautiful when you live as you are—as you believe fit. The words of the masses have no place among your ear. That has been clearly proven today. Let us reap this lesson as our harvest for this occasion.”

Muttering something with a silent voice, Mirei once again began to whale on him.

Kinoyama watched over her with a tender gaze until, suddenly, he turned toward Kai. It wasn’t as if he’d been hiding or peeping—it was a matter of course that he’d been found. After a moment, Mirei noticed Kinoyama’s change in demeanor and lifted her face up from his shirt to face Kai.

“Shiraseki Kai...!” she spat.

“Oh, uh... Um, here,” he said, offering her the fan.

Mirei glared at him with a puffy face, absolutely dripping with tears. But her appearance changed in an instant when Kinoyama pulled out another handkerchief and wiped her down. Of course, that didn’t magically get rid of her bloodshot eyes or the traces of the tears that had previously streaked down her cheeks.

Tap tap tap. Mirei’s footsteps rang out as she walked over and said, “...My gratitude,” while accepting the fan.

I’m sure, Kai thought, that I’m not supposed to say anything here. There were no words that could be given from the victor to the loser. That was a lesson that popped up in many of the games he’d played. And true enough, he couldn’t think of anything to say. He was drawing up a perfect blank.

And yet, by the time he was aware of his actions, he had extended his arm out.

“...What is the meaning of this?” Mirei demanded.

“...Thank you very much,” Kai said simply.

Meikun High School had won. That made Kai happy, and moreover, it was the truth. But it was no mere flattery to say that Kongouin’s app had been incredible. Among all the apps today—and even those that had been previously released—theirs had been polished to be a cut above the rest. The moment he’d laid eyes on it, their app had overwhelmed him and grasped at his heart. That was his honest opinion, regardless of the final results.

But Kai knew that saying so now wouldn’t have been the right decision. He knew, and yet he couldn’t allow himself to let his story with the Kongouin team end on a one-off note like this. Their work had been too good for that: it would be a colossal waste.

Mirei stared at his hand. After a short while, she exhaled deeply and stepped forward with her own right hand extended out. It stopped just shy of shaking Kai’s.

“You would do well to remember this, Shiraseki Kai.” Slap! A refreshingly sharp sound echoed in the hall. With a magnificent smile, she’d twisted her hips to slap Kai’s hand away with her whole body. “Today, that boorish judge simply had no taste! When we next meet, I swear to you that I will beautifully blow away that nonchalant attitude of yours! With that, I bid you adieu!”

Kongouin Mirei let her hair flutter elegantly as she walked away with all the dignity of a victor, leaving Kai with the feeling of passion stinging in his hand. And at long last, Summit—the event that had caused his summer days to feel both long and short—came to a close.