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.”