That one day in the class trip when the students get to go off and do whatever they want is a welcome day of rest for your lazy, indoorsy teachers. They don’t even have to step outside the hotel if they don’t wanna!
Up till now, when the itinerary was mostly fixed, we teachers had to take up various posts along the routes and keep our eyes peeled for trouble. Not so today. As long as we had our phones constantly at the ready in case of emergencies, we could spend our time wherever we wanted—provided we didn’t stray too far from the hotel.
Which basically meant nobody could complain if I stayed in the hotel the whole day. It was too perfect!
And the cherry on top: the other teachers were either in their rooms or had gone out somewhere in the area. None of them were in the first floor lounge.
They were probably avoiding the lounge. There were a lot of other guests here apart from our students, so the place wasn’t exactly empty. Which only made things more convenient for me, Kageishi Sumire—alias Murasaki Shikibu-sensei! Pah ha ha ha!
There was nothing to stop me now from carrying out my very secret, very private business!
“Pfft... Heh heh heh...”
“Whaddya grinnin’ about? You never get any less creepy, I swear...”
“Heh heh... Gah?!” I started choking—not on a drink, but on my own spit—as I was suddenly addressed in a thick Kansai accent. “How long have you been sitting there?!”
“Only a little while. I heard ya became a teacher. Thought it might’ve made ya seem more mature, but nope, ya haven’t changed a bit.”
A woman with glasses and distinctive frizzy hair sat across from me, giggling at my reaction. Though her clothes gave off an air of sophistication like any other adult woman, there were tiny clues that belied a lack of self-esteem—like the lack of color in them, or the pastiness of her skin. It was obvious that she had been an unsociable type before her debut in the working world.
She might have been fooling everyone else, but there was no way she could fool me! Even if that was only because I knew what she was like before she started working!
“Waaah! I missed you, Nago-chan!” I leaned over the table in front of us to give her a hug.
“H-Hey! Quit it! Ya can’t start clingin’ to me in a classy lounge like this!” Nago-chan shoved my face back. It was kinda rude of her, if I was honest. Though I guess the fact that she could treat me like this just proved that we were super close. “Jeez. Ya always look so unassumingly pretty, y’know? But ya sure don’t act like it!”
“You’re one to talk! It’s so weird seeing you without a sword strapped to your back!”
“Of course I ain’t walkin’ round like that! Ya ever seen someone cosplayin’ outside of an event? And stop callin’ me Nago-chan. My full username is Dainagon Kimiko, Learned Chief Councillor!”
“I can’t say all that! I’ll bite my tongue!”
“Then, if yer gonna call me Nago-chan, I should be allowed to call ya Saki-chan!”
“What?! But that sounds like a normal name! No one’s ever gonna be able to work that back to Murasaki Shikibu-sensei!”
“Ya sure are demandin’, huh? But fine, let’s go with Shikibu-san.”
“It’s been ages since I’ve heard you say my name—and it feels like ages since I’ve said yours. I’m sorry for calling you over on such short notice!”
“It’s no biggie. It’s not like I had anythin’ better to do with my lunch break than, y’know, eat lunch. Only difference is where I’m eatin’ it—and whether that’s here or near work ain’t a huge difference at all. We haven’t seen each other much either, what with it bein’ a while since our circle’s published anythin’. It’s been kinda lonely, y’know?”
“No way! You, cool-as-a-cucumber Nago-chan, have been feeling lonely?! Can you say ‘gap moe’?!”
“I was kiddin’, obviously! Of course I wasn’t lonely!”
“Plus one for being a tsundere on top of that!”
“If ya wanna get to my soft insides, it’s gonna cost ya. How’s ten billion ten thousand yen sound?” Nago-chan snickered.
That exchange pretty much summed up our relationship.
We’d known each other since college, and she was one of the few people who knew about and shared my geeky interests. Back when I was drawing doujinshi under the name Murasaki Shikibu-sensei, she would help me sell them at events. That was Nago-chan—or Dainagon Kimiko, Learned Chief Councillor.
After graduation, I got a job teaching in Kanto, while Nago-chan got a job in Kansai, working in game development.
“How’s Tenchido treating you then?” I asked. “I bet it’s paradise!”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s what everybody thinks. From the outside, it looks like a happy little company where sales never fall and nothin’ ever goes wrong, right?”
“What, so it’s not like that?”
“Nope. It’s got its ups and downs, y’see. Did I tell ya I work in UI design?”
“You did, yeah. Back when we had that party to celebrate our successful job hunting.”
When I thought back to all the stuff Nago-chan got up to in college, her position suited her perfectly. She was a cosplayer, knew her way around a few graphic design programs (which came in handy when she helped with my art), and studied programming as a hobby too.
By the way, UI stands for user interface. It takes some solid knowledge to create a UI that allows for a pleasant gaming experience. Options need to be properly visible, and you need to know how to guide the player’s line of sight, among other things.
When people talk about a finished game, they usually focus on the work of the producers, the directors, the character designers, the composers, the writers...but the truth is, the UI often has an equally important role in the gaming experience.
Oh, and Koyagi’s UI is something Aki, Ozuma-kun, and I all work on together by pooling our various knowledge.
“So I’ve been workin’ on the UI for this one project recently, right? It’s a collaboration with another company. That company usually just makes social network games, and one of their engineers is a real pain. Basically, all the programming we did for the UI got completely destroyed.”
“Yikes.”
“So I’m askin’ a ton of questions, and it turns out this guy’s got, like, zero experience. He’s on their team, but he’s never actually done anythin’, and apparently he changes careers like it’s his underwear. Yet he talks and lords it over us like he’s God’s gift to gamin’! I literally lost it like I haven’t done in years!”
“Yowch. I guess Tenchido isn’t all sunshine and roses—not that this guy works for Tenchido.”
“Yeah, he doesn’t. And that’s the only thing that’s good about him. The guys who actually work for Tenchido are fine. Our CEO wouldn’t let anybody throw their weight around like he does.”
“Your CEO? Oh, you mean Amachi-san?”
“Yup! And she’s not just a pretty face either! She knows how to run a company like no one else. She’s actually super awesome!”
I had shared a drink with Amachi-san just recently. I couldn’t believe an amazing woman like her was Iroha-chan’s mom, and my neighbor. It made me realize it really is a small world.
I decided not to let Nago-chan in on that info for now. She probably wouldn’t react very well if she found out I knew her boss on a more personal level.
“Apparently, Amachi-san used her own influence to get this blockhead reshuffled within his own company too. I could literally fall in love with this woman, she’s so amazing.”
“Whoa...”
A shiver ran up my spine, even though the situation had nothing to do with me. I was sure getting rid of a worthless employee made her a hero in some people’s eyes, but I could also imagine myself being at the wrong end of her wrath, and it was majorly terrifying. Like, what would she do to me if I missed a deadline?
I decided then and there I could never work for Tenchido.
“Well, Tenchido itself has a bunch of annoyin’ folk too, but no more than ya’d get in your average workplace, I’d say. For the super annoyin’ old-timers, I blow off steam by imagining them on their hands and feet, at my mercy. Hard to get mad once you’ve got that image of them begging for their mommy because of you.”
I burst out laughing. “That’s what you do for stress relief?! Welp, that’s actually very you.”
“Sure is! But I genuinely recommend it.” Nago-chan snickered, then called for the waitress like we were at one of her regular bars. “Oh, hey, miss! Mind if we order?”
Then she did the very feminine thing of ordering a sandwich.
You go, girl!
I did the same, and while we waited for our food, we started making up for lost time by getting into an enthusiastic discussion about yaoi. Obviously, it was the thought of sandwiches that sparked our talk.
Once our coffee and sandwiches arrived and we started digging in, I decided it was time to move on to business.
“Hey, can I ask you for a favor?”