I’m sorry! Kai thought.
Having returned from Aina’s house, he’d gone on to wring his brain for every drop of creativity he had. Nevertheless, he’d failed to produce any decent ideas. But Kai knew that if he gave up now, he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself for it later. Saying, “Nothing came to mind so I don’t have anything,” would be unacceptable. There was a bare minimum he needed to achieve in order to call himself a planner.
Kai may not have come up with anything good, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have anything. He’d dedicated an entire day to work following his encounter with Aina, and during that time a few ideas had taken form. The dead of night came and went, and he distinctly remembered having pushed on until the wee hours of the morning, but two all-nighters’ worth of serious brain power had caught up to him in the end, and he’d only noticed his nap upon waking. By the time he’d done so, he was on pace to be late for the club meeting, even if moving at top speed. So, he quickly rinsed his face off and flew out the door.
The first thing that came out of his mouth when he entered the club room was, “I’m sorry!” When he raised his bowed head, everyone but Eru (who was working away with headphones on) was peering at him with a puzzled look. “I couldn’t come up with anything I’m proud of,” he explained, laying out a few printed proposals. “...I’m sorry.”
“Senpai, don’t scare us like that! Well,” Aya amended with a snicker as she glanced at the papers. “On your end, it looks like things were pretty chaotic.”
“A-Ah-chan...” Nanaka said. “B-But, look, this ‘Characters blow up a balloon until it pops,’ idea seems intuitive—”
“But not quite good?” Aina finished. “It’s just the topics, as-is. There’s not really a twist, is there?” She looked over at Kai to silently convey that she was shocked at how poor his taste was.
“Aina-chan, not you, too,” Nanaka said sadly.
“No,” Kai interrupted, knowing that this wasn’t any time for consolation. “She’s completely right... So, I want to begin with a BSS here with everyone.”
“BSS?” Nanaka repeated.
“Brainstorm session, Nana-sen,” Aya chimed in. “Basically, we all throw out anything we can think of.”
“That...” As soon as Nanaka understood, her bright expression returned like the sun hidden by a cloud. “Yeah, that’s great!” she exclaimed. “I think it sounds perfect! Let’s do it, Kai-kun!” Then she quickly retrieved Eru from the back of the room.
This brought them all together at the same table for the first time in a long time—the first time ever with Aina in the mix. They were to prioritize quantity over quality, and bring up any idea that derived itself from the prompts ‘Character’ and ‘Breath.’ These were the rules as they began their brainstorm, but... in short, it was a nightmare.
“How about a gacha that you can roll with your breath?! Like this,” said Aya, enthusiastically blowing into her phone. “Or how about the game is set in space, so if you can’t pull anything good, you run out of oxygen and die?! It’s a life-or-death battle with the gacha!”
“Mm, what about a game where you blow into a girl’s ear softly to advance the dialogue?” Aina said, blowing seductively. “And the lines could change depending on how you do. Oh, and of course, I’ll be doing the voice acting. ♪”
Kai was happy and grateful that they were coming up with ideas. They were free to say whatever came to mind. But, well, you know, Kai thought. Aren’t you being a little too free with those suggestions?
“Ah,” Aya said, raising her hand like a student in the classroom. “I guess you could say I’ve been doing a little enemy reconnaissance. I was wondering if that blonde-drilled runt’s school posted anything,” she said, placing her phone in the middle of the table. “It looks like they’re right in the middle of a livestream.”
The image on screen was of Kongouin Academy’s club president, Kongouin Mirei—or the “blonde-drilled runt,” in Aya’s words—holding a microphone. There were comments scrolling across the screen from side to side, driving home that the stream was being delivered in real time.
“And that shall conclude our announcements on BeauSt! I’m quite sure all the information regarding the new event has you positively thrilled! Hm?” Mirei paused to read a comment. “...Ohohoho! Your opinions on the gacha are most valued among our management team. Would you kindly redirect your comment in chat to our in-game suggestion form? Our customer support staff will shed tears of joy! ...However! Should your verbiage be so vitriolic, they may very well find themselves in sad tears, so be sure to send those messages to my personal Twitter account... Am I understood?”
The comments rolling by on-screen included:
“Shut up.”
“What bullshit.”
“I’ll send it to both.”
In any case, they were being quite harsh. It felt like her chat was full of nothing but haters. They had seemed like a school with many enemies, but this was worse than expected.
“Well, it makes sense,” Aya explained. “Not only did they put up a new gacha banner yesterday, but the drop rates were lower than usual, there’s no safety net, and the character’s only good if you pull enough to max limit break her—but then she’s overpowered. They pulled out every trick to milk their player base on the banner of a popular character, so they’re getting a lot of flame.”
“I get it, ♪” Aina hummed. “This one was really nasty. Plus, the art is so pretty that it makes me want her!”
“I got her, though,” Aya noted.
“Aww, I wish I could say the same.”
“Huuuh?” Aya’s mouth twisted into a mean smirk. “Are you okay with that, Aye-aye? You know you’ll get her if you don’t give up, right? There’s no character you can’t pull if you keep going, you know?”
“I’m not a junkie like you, Aya-chan. Besides, usually you can’t do that, and you wouldn’t even if you could.” Turning to Kai, Aina continued, “Kai-kun, you don’t keep rolling until you get the character, do you?”
“Uh... This time, I got her straight away,” he mumbled.