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.