“Karumi told me you were in a bit of a pickle, but she didn’t mention you were hanging out in dullsville. Where even are you?”
“This is my workplace. Labyrinth #228.”
“So it’s a foresty one, eh? Kinda nice, actually. Karumi said you were the cream of the crop this year, but have you even finished the tutorial?”
“Uh, no. I actually didn’t even know there was a tutorial.”
“What the heck? You should’ve gotten a user manual and a new manager tutorial! Even if there wasn’t, you could’ve asked your hecking supervisor!”
Well, yes, normally there would’ve been documentation to consult, or a coworker or manager to ask for help. But I hadn’t had that luxury.
“I didn’t have a manual, or a tutorial, or a supervisor to ask for advice.”
“What, for real? Explain.”
“Yeah, I’ve actually been wanting to vent about this.”
I explained my situation to Suzu, being careful not to sound too mad given Karumi was around and all. Her jaw practically hit the floor when I told her how the place had been when I first got there, and she looked pretty indignant on my behalf for a while, but she calmed down as I kept explaining. By the end, she was looking at me with this pitying look, like I was a little lost puppy she’d found on the way home. Man, it sure felt good to get all that off my chest.
“Jeez, dude, you’re lucky to be alive.”
She seemed pretty impressed by how I’d started fending for myself without so much as a guide.
“Well, I did work my ass off. And I have played a lot of survival games and whatnot, you know? Ha ha ha.”
“Oh come on, you seriously think there’s anyone else out there who would actually last through a situation like that just based on what they learned playing video games? I play a lot of hecking games myself. Mostly management and strategy games, though, not so much the survival thing.”
I was surprised to hear that Suzu was a gamer, too.
“I’ll play pretty much anything as long as it looks like fun, but I’m mostly into competitive games. You said you’re into strategy games, Suzu?”
In retrospect, I should’ve seen it coming. Familiarity with games had been right there in the help wanted ad.
“I bet those games set you on the path to success as a labyrinth manager. Maybe I should call you the labyrinth tsarina.”
She’d worked her way up from a nobody to a top-tier labyrinth manager in only three years. I had to give her props for that.
“That’s a rather specific choice of words. Hey, Aoi, you ever play a game called Flaming Crest?”
Now that was a blast from the past. Flaming Crest was a series of historical strategy games focusing on post-World War II power struggles. I wondered if people were still playing it.
“Yeah, for sure.”
If Suzu associated the word “tsarina” with that game, maybe we’d even played on the same server?
“I don’t remember hearing about anybody named Aoi playing it. If you’re such a hardcore gamer that your survival game knowledge pulled you through getting dropped into an unbuilt labyrinth, I’m sure I would’ve heard of you.”
Suzu put her hand to her chin and thought. Sure your handle would only be notorious within the game where you used it, but truly great players were as well known to other gamers as any pop star to a normal person.
“Aoi... Wait, so like, Blue? Were you the guy called ‘Blue’ in US-West 3?”
She got it in one. I’d even gone out of my way to use a nondescript name back then.
“Yeah, that was me. Did you play on that server too?”
“I did! That Blue guy ran the northern alliance that beat us over and over again. You remember right after the unification war, when infantry rifle armies became the norm? I was in charge of the southern tsarship back then.”
Huh, so she was on the other side? Man, I remembered how insane the southern tsarship’s resource productivity was. That’d been a close match.
“That was a great match. It’s one of my fondest memories from back then. Suzu, were you Tsarina Belka?”
“You bet your ass I was. Man, you wiped the floor with us each time, no matter how much prep work we did. By the end of it everybody was calling me the Loserina!”
She may have looked back on it as a failure, but the way she’d always been able to go back and amass another huge force, despite getting completely wiped out each time, was proof of her ludicrous management abilities.
“I can’t believe this shit! I worked so hard at management games and still couldn’t reach the top, so I became a labyrinth manager and worked my way up, and now you’re here too?!”
Suzu flailed her arms around a bit, pouting.
“Pardon me for interrupting your friendly chat, but could we focus on the matter at hand?”
Oops. We’d gotten a bit carried away reminiscing. Karumi dragged us back onto topic, explaining to Suzu how we needed to get Labyrinth #228 into a shape where it could pass the performance evaluation.
“...I see. But really, there’s no way you’re going to make up for twenty years’ worth of work in six months. Maybe if you at least had a functional labyrinth, but all you’ve got is a hut.”
“I see your point, but we have to do it anyway. How do you rake in all your achievements, Suzu?”
“Me? I’m located near a sea, and my labyrinth’s purpose is to gather resources, so I made a salt pan and gather salt and fish. I dry the fish and stockpile it all in a warehouse, selling it off for a steady income stream. It doesn’t even matter how much I sell as long as the warehouse is always stuffed, so passing the evaluation is easy.”