That afternoon, after finishing all of his work for the day, Ichin rarely opened up a game on his office computer and started playing.
And naturally, the game he was playing was developed by Akane Kosaka's team last month.
Ichin had already received both the physical and digital editions before the game's release, but since he had been out taking wedding photos at the time, he simply had no chance to play it properly. Even now, he was only halfway through the game.
Since there was not much left to do this afternoon, Ichin simply picked up a controller and decided to seriously push through some progress. The story Utaha wrote for the game was genuinely excellent, and the graphics, presentation, and gameplay systems were all quite solid as well, making him want to keep playing.
After a while, Utaha opened the office door and walked in, immediately spotting Ichin sitting there with a controller in hand and headphones on while gaming.
After walking closer and taking a look, she could not help laughing softly. Without making Ichin remove his headphones, she quietly pulled over a chair beside him and peacefully watched him play.
Unlike Ichin, Utaha already knew the entire story of the game. She had even cleared it herself immediately after development was finished.
Ichin naturally noticed Utaha coming in, but he was currently in the middle of a boss fight, so he did not take off the headphones.
Ten minutes later, after the boss battle and cutscene ended, Ichin finally removed the headphones and smiled.
"You're not continuing to play downstairs anymore?"
Utaha smiled and shook her head.
"Nope, I already tested all the maps currently in development, so I came back up. Ichin, are you finished with work?"
"Yep. Otherwise I wouldn't be gaming right now."
Ichin waved the controller in his hand.
"And besides, this is a game where You wrote the story, so of course I'm going to clear it completely, right?"
Utaha happily nodded while looking at the game screen.
"You're already past halfway now, so you should finish soon. Go ahead and keep playing. I'm going to read for a while too. I still haven't finished the books I bought a few days ago."
Even after graduating, Utaha still constantly read books to improve herself. She usually carried one in her bag as well and would read whenever she had free time.
"Alright then, I'll keep going. We already agreed to eat dinner outside tonight anyway, so there's no need to go home early to buy groceries and cook."
Nodding, Ichin put the headphones back on and continued gaming.
At six in the evening, after work ended, Ichin and Utaha left the company and headed to the restaurant where they had reserved a private room.
Yukino, who had spent the entire day attending classes, had arrived about ten minutes earlier and was currently inside reading while drinking tea.
Seeing the two arrive, she happily set her book down.
"You're here? Hurry and order. My sister should be arriving soon too."
"Alright."
After putting down his bag, Ichin called over a server and started ordering dishes.
Another ten minutes later, Haruno, who had just gotten off work, also arrived at the restaurant, and the four of them began eating dinner together.
While eating, Haruno smilingly brought up something amusing.
"Hazuki has a boyfriend now, right? Even though we never really announced it publicly, Shizuka still somehow found out. She even called me today to complain, asking whether our company had any men around her age that I could introduce to her. Hahaha, I nearly died laughing. Even through the phone, I could practically taste all the jealousy in her voice!"
"Huh~~~ Hiratsuka-sensei already knows too?"
Ichin nodded somewhat unexpectedly.
"Well, it's already been two months, so there's no way she wouldn't find out eventually. Hiratsuka-sensei has a good job, good looks, and a good family background, but honestly, her personality and hobbies are probably hard for a lot of guys to accept."
As friends, none of them minded, but if Hiratsuka Shizuka were seriously trying to date someone, just her habits of drinking and smoking would already scare off quite a few people.
On top of that, her personality was simply a little too bold and carefree, which was not especially popular in Japan.
Taking a bite of tempura shrimp, Yukino thoughtfully said, "Hiratsuka-sensei has already gone on many arranged dates though. Since people have pointed out those issues before, hasn't she tried changing them?"
Haruno replied, "She's definitely cut back on smoking a lot. You rarely see her smoking anymore. But asking her to quit drinking too is basically impossible. Besides, those things aren't even the main issue. A huge part of it is simply her personality, and that's not something she can really change. All we can do is hope she eventually meets someone she genuinely clicks with."
As she spoke, Haruno glanced at her younger sister, secretly feeling that Yukino's current situation was honestly not bad either.
After all, while Yukino's personality problems were nowhere near as extreme as Hiratsuka Shizuka's, finding a suitable partner for her would still have been genuinely difficult.
Even though Yukino's relationship with Ichin was complicated and could not really be shown publicly, as long as Yukino herself was happy, nothing else mattered that much.
After dinner, the four returned home together.
As they passed by the villa district still under development, Ichin looked over at it a few extra times before saying to Utaha beside him, "Haruno-nee said this villa area should be finished next year, right?"
Utaha nodded.
"Yeah. Around the second half of next year. I'm guessing by the end of next year, Kō and the others will all move over there too. It's definitely going to become really lively."
"That honestly sounds pretty nice."
Even though their current house was already huge, Ichin still occasionally missed the days when they all lived in the apartment building together. Kō and the others had lived downstairs back then, making group dinners and hanging out together much more convenient.
Everyone had cars now, so meeting up was still easy, but living closer together still felt better.
Three days after release, Salt and Sanctuary's sales across all platforms had surpassed four hundred thousand copies and were steadily approaching five hundred thousand.
Although those sales numbers could not compare to games like Dark Souls or Persona, they were still very impressive considering the game's development budget.
Besides, the game's difficulty was actually even harder than Hollow Knight in some aspects despite both being side-scrolling games, so it was inevitable that some players would get discouraged early on.
Ichin was not worried about that at all. His expected final sales target for the game had only ever been around one million copies anyway. At worst, it was merely a question of earning more or less profit.
For Ichin, games like Monster Train, Salt and Sanctuary, and even the newly started development project Phasmophobia were more important because of the creative ideas proposed by the company's employees themselves.
No matter how many ideas Ichin personally had, eventually he would run out.
Only when the company's employees could continuously produce fresh inspiration would the company truly have a chance to keep creating more excellent projects.
Speaking of Phasmophobia, development had actually run into a slight difficulty.
The biggest issue was voice recognition technology. Even Umiko had temporarily put aside her Bloodborne work to go help with it. Meanwhile, her original tasks were now being handled by Ichin himself along with Nene.
Stretching lazily, Ichin stood up.
"Let's go check on their progress."
...
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