Today was the first day of the new semester, and since the course load wasn't too heavy, Ichin and Utaha headed straight to the studio after their afternoon classes.
Eriri didn't come with them. She had been provoked by something Utaha said during lunch and decided to surprise her during the midterms instead. After school, she went home with Yukino, planning to have Yukino tutor her properly.
Yukino, of course, had no objections—after all, studying could be done anywhere. And if any new requests came to the Service Club, Hiratsuka-sensei would know, and they could deal with it then.
Now that she had set her sights on becoming a lawyer, Yukino wasn't as fixated on club activities as before.
After all, how many high school students actually had that many problems that needed solving?
When Ichin arrived at the studio, he hadn't even made it to his own office before Hazuki called him over.
As he stepped into Hazuki's office, he saw Mozuku sprawled out on her desk, napping.
Ichin scooped up the chubby little thing and sat down on the sofa, petting the cat as he said, "Hazuki, have the livestream plans been finalized?"
"All set~" Hazuki replied with a smile. "The livestream is scheduled for next Friday and Saturday night. Friday night on Bilibili, and Saturday night on YouTube. As for the guests, besides you and me, we'll bring on Jun Fukuyama and Mamoru Miyano. One voices the protagonist, the other voices Ryuuji. That should give us plenty of interesting topics, and their schedules are clear."
"Alright, then it's settled."
Ichin took the planned stream agenda from Hazuki and started reviewing it.
The stream was set to last about an hour, starting at 8 PM. The location would be the studio's conference room, which could easily be prepped for streaming, and it had great soundproofing.
As for the content: they'd start by replaying the already-released promotional PV, followed by a brief introduction of the characters voiced by the two guest. After that, they would show off some action and combat sequences from the first Palace.
Since it was their own official livestream, they didn't need to bother with flashy gimmicks or filler segments. The goal was to pack the full hour with solid, worthwhile content that fans actually wanted to see.
Hazuki's program schedule was mostly solid, and after reviewing it, Ichin said, "Looks good. Let's go with this. I'll also think about whether we can add anything else in the next few days."
Though there would be two separate streams, Ichin knew that the viewer experience on each platform would probably be very different.
With Bilibili, since they'd have Japanese voice actors on, Ichin figured he'd need to help with translating during the stream. But that wasn't a big deal—he could bring in a few skilled translators to handle live interpretation. All it would cost was a bit of budget.
Still, having Jun Fukuyama and Mamoru Miyano in the first stream? That was bound to be full of memes.
After all, one had famously voiced Lelouch, and the other was Ultraman Zero.
"Hey,"
Ichin glanced at Hazuki with a sudden idea. "What do you think about slipping in some Lelouch and Zero references in the game?"
Hazuki looked at him like he was nuts. "Come on, the voice recording's been going on for ages already. Don't go adding extra work for the team. You can make jokes during the stream, but leave the game itself alone."
"Hahaha, it just popped into my head, so I thought I'd throw it out there. I know where to draw the line."
Once Hazuki was reassured, Ichin didn't stick around much longer. On his way out, he took Mozuku with him.
Watching Ichin leave, Hazuki shook her head with a smile. "Seriously... he didn't forget to swipe my cat on the way out."
Back in his own office, Ichin turned on his computer and logged into Bilibili, posting a livestream announcement update:
> Next Friday at 7 PM Beijing time, we'll be hosting a livestream for "Persona" on Bilibili. Two voice actors who voiced characters in the game will be joining the event, so if you're interested in the game, feel free to drop by and check it out. We'll also be doing another stream on YouTube Saturday night—come by if you'd like! Alright, I'm off to keep grinding on development. Please look forward to next week's stream!
After posting the update, Ichin didn't pay it much attention. But within an hour, the comments had already exploded past a thousand and were still rising rapidly.
What Ichin didn't notice was that ever since Persona was announced, the follower count on his verified account had been skyrocketing. Before he realized it, it had already climbed past 500,000—nearing 600,000.
It wasn't until he got home that evening, opened his computer again, and logged back in that he noticed what had happened.
"What the heck? Why are there so many followers now?"
After refreshing the page, he saw the follower count had gone up by another dozen or so.
Then he checked the Persona promotional PV on his homepage—and the view count had hit five million.
Just then, Utaha walked in with two glasses of freshly squeezed juice and saw Ichin sitting there with a dumbfounded look on his face. She walked over curiously and asked, "What's wrong?"
Following the direction of his pointing finger, Utaha saw the view count on the video too.
"Five million? When did that happen?"
"I have no idea," Ichin said, shaking his head as he took a sip of juice to calm down. "I haven't been keeping close track these past few days. I figured two or three million would've been impressive enough… but five million? And my account followers shot up to over half a million with it."
As he spoke, he opened YouTube and found that the view count there was even crazier—over six million.
Sitting down next to him, Utaha chuckled. "Still, this is a good thing, right?"
"Yeah, it's definitely a good thing."
Ichin smiled as well.
"The more content we reveal about the game, the more attention we'll get. After all, we're only promoting what's actually in the game. There's no fear of anyone calling it fake—we're just going to keep making it better and better."
"I feel like you're taking a jab at a certain Polish donkey."
"Now, now~ don't say that," Ichin replied with mock seriousness. "That's a senior in the industry, you know? How could we speak ill of our seniors? They've simply provided us with a valuable example—a reminder of what we shouldn't do as game developers!"
…No, you're definitely throwing shade.
Utaha couldn't be bothered to argue with him. She just poked his cheek with a finger, grabbed her laptop, and went back to working on Volume 2 of her new novel.
Her new book had just passed the publishing house's review, and it was about to enter the promotional phase. And now, Ichin could finally learn the title of her latest work.
Watching her type away with a soft smile on her face, Ichin couldn't help but think—
She'd managed to keep the contents of this new book hidden from him until now. That kind of self-restraint? She must've learned it from him.
...
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