3. It would be nice to have a town to visit after school
Akihabara has changed compared to the past.
I heard that a lot, but it was only about five years ago that I first came to Akihabara.
It hadn't changed all that much since then, so I didn't really feel it.
They said it transitioned from an electronics district to an otaku town, and even as an otaku town, it underwent major changes.
The increase in tourists seemed to be a big factor, but there was no doubt that it was still an otaku town today.
However, if you asked me whether it was a comfortable place for an introvert like me to hang out, I wouldn't say so.
"It feels like acquaintances you aren't even close with are coming over to gawk at your shelf of otaku merch."
That was what my father had to say about it.
It felt like he hit the nail on the head, but at the same time, I didn't quite get it.
Maybe I didn't understand because the current Akihabara was just so normal to me.
It was only one letter off from my family name, so I felt a sense of affinity for it—wait, that had nothing to do with anything.
I left the station, made my way down the crowded sidewalk—which was packed even on a weekday—and turned off the main street into a back alley.
After a few minutes of walking, I reached the Oda Building—no, Ota Building works just fine.
Maybe it was because of the location in Akihabara, but it seemed like more people called it the "Ota Building" anyway.
It was a rundown two-story building over thirty years old, with a game shop occupying the first floor.
There was a steep staircase next to the shop's entrance that led up to the second floor.
The second floor served as the shop's office, and I opened the door and stepped inside.
"Good work today," I called out.
There was a long table just past the door, where one of the first-floor staff members was sitting.
The clerk, who was drinking tea, silently raised a hand in greeting.
Next to the long table was a row of lockers containing the clerks' aprons and personal belongings.
I had no business over there.
A part of the floor was partitioned off by a cabinet and a curtain, and my destination lay just beyond it.
I wanted to forget the time Ayari took one look at this place and said, "It looks like the adult video section."
She had probably never even seen an adult video section before.
Beyond the curtain was a space about the size of a six-mat room.
Two desks sat lined up against the wall. One held a 27-inch monitor and an LCD tablet of the same size, while the other was being used for storage.
There was also a leather sofa in the corner of the room, making it entirely possible to wrap oneself in a blanket and stay the night—however, since I was still a high school student, that was strictly prohibited.
"I wonder if I can get others involved..." I muttered.
This six-mat space was the "Development Room."
The staff for The Mirage's Future Tree had already disbanded, so even though it was called a Development Room, I was the only staff member left.
During the development of my previous game, external staff members would occasionally drop by, but now it was completely deserted.
Getting others involved was the least of my worries; there was simply no one else in my circle but me—
"Phew..." I sighed.
I turned on the desktop PC underneath the desk and took a seat in my chair.
First, I checked my emails, only to find a progress check from a doujin circle I was acquainted with.
Now that I was a high school student, I was allowed to work a part-time job without hiding it, so I had been taking requests from other circles.
Many doujin games were produced entirely in-house, but larger-scale projects sometimes relied on outsourcing.
I was the head of a doujin circle, but I was also on the receiving end of outsourced work.
Right now, I was working on a background art request.
Backgrounds were crucial assets for building the world of a game, and many circles were particular about commissioning entirely new artwork rather than relying on free assets.
I uploaded the background rough draft I finished yesterday to the cloud and replied to the email.
I was still unsure about how to draw certain parts and didn't really want to submit it yet, but they wanted to see the current draft, so I had no choice.
Game development was a collaborative effort, so I had to prioritize the overall progress over my own personal fixations.
"All right, send... And that's that. Now I've got some free time while I wait for their feedback."
I was planning to get this background all the way up to the line art stage today, but my plans had changed.
"Guess I'll work on the project proposal," I muttered to myself.
I started The Mirage's Future Tree from my own project proposal last year.
Naturally, I intended to start my next project from the planning stage as well, but the words just wouldn't flow.
It was too early to be burnt out—no, I had more than enough motivation, but my hands just refused to move.
Should I create a successor to The Mirage's Future Tree, or should I make something in a completely different genre?
I hadn't even been able to decide on something as fundamental as that.
"My next project... I never thought it would be this hard to make progress," I groaned.
I had developed The Mirage's Future Tree between my second year and the first half of my third year of middle school.
Even with high school entrance exams, which was around the summer of my third year, I should have had plenty of time to brainstorm ideas.
Why couldn't I put together a project proposal?
Even if I couldn't write the proposal in text, I was an artist; I could always just draw up an image board.
Did I just not have anything left that I wanted to draw?
"...No way. There's no way," I muttered, firmly denying the thought.
I rejected the idea without any real basis, violently shaking my head to clear my thoughts.
I opened up my PC's word processor and booted up a file titled "Junk Soft 2nd Project Proposal."
Junk Soft was the self-deprecating name I had given to my circle.
I named it with the humble implication that we couldn't make anything all that impressive, but my staff were all so talented that it was honestly probably quite rude to them.
No, it was just a bunch of students messing around anyway, and our sales were nothing to write home about, so we should just make what we want and have fun—
If only I could treat it that simply, I wouldn't have had to worry so much.
"I wonder if it's the old man's blood in me..." I mumbled.
My father neglected his family, but when it came to his work in game development, he was frighteningly serious.
Once, some of the company's staff came over to visit the Akiba household, and they were secretly flabbergasted. Does this guy really have a family? they wondered.
It seemed his subordinates just couldn't believe that my dad—a notoriously demonic director at work—had an ordinary family like anyone else.
Apparently, not only was my dad extremely particular, but he was also a fierce dictator, which was quite rare these days.
"Yeesh, that's the absolute worst kind of person," I muttered to myself.
I loved drawing and had my own strong preferences, but I would never dream of forcing them onto someone else.
Even with The Mirage's Future Tree, there were quite a few things I wasn't completely satisfied with, but I let several of them slide and gave my approval.
After all, making a game is a collaborative effort—it isn't something you create entirely on your own.
That was probably why watching my dictator of a dad made me feel so on edge.
Then again, Junk Soft only had one member, so there was no way for me to be a dictator even if I tried.
"Just me, huh..." I sighed softly.
With only a single member... I might not be able to accomplish anything at this rate.
"Argh, what am I brooding over?" I groaned, waving a hand in front of my face. "The air in here is awful!"
I stood up and decided to open the window.
A stifling wave of hot air immediately flowed into the room from outside.
"...Hmm? What's that?" I murmured, squinting outside.
I had suddenly noticed something.
Right beneath the window of the Development Room was the narrow street passing in front of the Ota Building.
It was an impossibly desolate road for Akihabara, and currently completely deserted—save for a single person.
"Is that blonde hair...?" I whispered in confusion.
I could see a mop of golden hair flickering from the shadow of a utility pole.
Blonde hair wasn't particularly rare in itself; Akihabara had plenty of foreigners, so you saw it all the time.
However, the suspicious blonde hiding behind the pole had the most radiant hair I had ever seen—she was gorgeous, despite acting incredibly sketchy.
"...Wait, huh?" I blinked in surprise.
As I took a closer look at the person's outfit...
"...Are you serious?" I muttered in utter disbelief.
For some reason, I spoke in a hushed tone.
Then, crouching down, I stealthily slipped out of the Development Room and made my way down the narrow stairs.
I looped around the back of the Ota Building, creeping closer to the spot right beneath the window I had just been looking out of.
"Lambert-san?" I called out tentatively.
"Waouh!" she shrieked in shock.
Literally leaping into the air, the blonde girl jumped right on the spot.
Her short skirt fluttered up delightfully, giving me a dangerously close glimpse of her thighs.
"Ah, it really is you," I said, offering a wry smile. "What are you doing here, Lambert-san?"
"A-Akiba-san...!" she gasped, her eyes wide.
It was my blonde classmate, Noël Lambert.
The person hiding behind the utility pole was indeed her.
"So, Lambert-san," I began smoothly. "It looked like you were scoping out the entrance to the store."
"T-That's, um, well...!" she stammered in a panic.
"You do know this is an eroge shop, right?" I pointed out flatly.
"Eroge...!" she repeated, her voice trembling.
I pointed a finger straight toward the store's entrance for the shocked Noël.
The signboard at the entrance clearly displayed the store's name, "Vierge".
"Ah, I guess you wouldn't know what an eroge is just from hearing the word," I mumbled awkwardly. "Um, how should I put this..."
I hesitated a little; explaining something like that to my beautiful classmate felt rather awkward.
"I-I understand perfectly!" Noël shot back with unexpected pride. "I have completely mastered the Japanese language!"
"Is that so," I replied, unimpressed.
I found it pretty surprising that words like "eroge" were included in her so-called perfect Japanese.
"Well, just so you know, it's an eroge shop, so you can't go inside wearing a school uniform," I warned her.
"I-Is that so? Good to know," she replied earnestly.
Noël whipped out her smartphone and started taking notes.
Even though she would likely never have another opportunity to use her newfound knowledge about eroge shops.
"Well, I get why you're curious," I said gently. "Though I suppose you can't really tell what kind of store it is just by looking at the name."
"Vierge is actually French," she informed me simply.
"Wait, really?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.
I saw that store name almost every single day, but I had never really cared about what it actually meant.
"I had no idea," I admitted. "What does it mean, by the way?"
"Virg—I-I mean, maiden!" she shrieked, her face turning crimson.
"...I see," I replied dryly.
I completely understood what she had meant to say, including the part she had so desperately tried to cut off.
"Naming an eroge shop 'Virgin'... it somehow feels perfectly fitting, yet completely ironic at the same time," I mused aloud.
"Please don't say it out loud!" Noël wailed, covering her face.
"S-Sorry," I apologized with a wince.
I suppose I had lacked a little tact just now.
Noël seemed like the sort of girl who had a very high sense of propriety; say the wrong thing, and she might just sue me.
"Well, normally people don't even call it Vierge anyway. For some reason, they skip the middle part and just call it 'Viju'," I explained with a shrug.
"T-That is definitely for the best," Noël stammered out.
Well, obviously.
To Noël, hearing the store's name over and over would be exactly the same as having someone repeatedly chant "virgin, virgin" at her.
"Anyway, why were you hanging around the front of the store, Lambert-san?" I asked, crossing my arms.
More accurately, she had been acting like a totally suspicious individual scoping out the entrance, but I kept that thought to myself.
She seems like she has a lot of pride, so I should probably avoid telling her the truth.
"W-Well, about that..."
Just as Noël started to say something in response, we were interrupted.
"Nah, man, we should've just come to Vierge from the start," a voice called out.
"It's rare to find a place with such a good selection nowadays. I wish they'd do store-specific bonuses, too."
"Yeah, getting bonuses through mail order is just so boring."
Three men suddenly appeared in front of the store.
They looked to be in their thirties, dressed in casual clothes, but I didn't even bother wondering what they were doing out on a weekday afternoon.
Akihabara was a city of chaos, after all; this level of weirdness didn't even register as suspicious.
"Whoa, what's with that girl?" one of the men asked.
"A high schooler? And a blonde, to boot?" another chimed in.
"Maybe a tourist in cosplay...?"
The trio of seemingly unemployed men in their thirties stared openly at Noël.
"U-Um, Akiba-san!" she whispered nervously.
"Yeah, I know," I muttered in response.
Even I wasn't dense enough to misunderstand a situation like this.
I quickly grabbed Noël by the wrist and began leading her up the narrow, steep stairs.
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