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.