Once school was over, Ichin and Utaha headed to the company—Eiriri came along too.
As a member of the art team, she naturally had to attend the meeting. As for Yukino, she had cleaning duties at school today. After finishing, she planned to head straight home and pick up some groceries for dinner.
By the time they arrived at the company, the team had already received Ichin's message sent on the way out of school, so everyone had wrapped up their tasks and was waiting in the main conference room.
Leaving Utaha to take care of her own arrangements, Ichin and Eiriri entered the meeting room together.
"Since everyone's here, let's keep it brief and get started."
Not wasting time, Ichin took a sip of water, then looked around the room. "You all should know the release date by now. The game is set to launch on May 1st, which means we need to submit the finalized build to Nintendo by mid-March. That way, they'll have enough time to produce the physical cartridges and handle distribution. So if we exclude the Day 1 patch, we only have one month of core development time left."
He paused and swept his gaze across the room.
Seeing that no one looked particularly alarmed, Ichin continued, "Good. Looks like everyone's confident about the schedule. Based on our current plan, we should be able to wrap everything up even before mid-March. Of course, I'm not asking anyone to work overtime or rush—just stick to the schedule and keep things steady. Now, let's go around and have each team report on what they're currently working on and what's still pending."
After over half an hour of reports and discussions, the team members gradually left the meeting room and returned to their workstations.
However, Hazuki, Yagami Kō, Toyama Rin, and Umiko stayed behind.
Leaning on the back of Ichin's chair, Hazuki sipped her coffee and said, "One month to fully complete the game, then over a month left for the Day 1 patch, polish, and fixes—should be plenty."
"Yeah, it is," Ichin nodded, "but we've got more to do besides that."
Snapping his fingers, Ichin turned to Umiko.
"Umiko, your workload isn't too heavy right now, is it?"
"Right. It's manageable—no need for overtime," she replied with a nod. "Is there something you want me to help with?"
"Yup, there's something I'd like you to get involved with."
Ichin smiled. "We need to keep recruiting—especially programmers. Since I got into Todai, I'm planning to target graduates from the University of Tokyo's Computer Science department. In a few days, I'll go visit Todai and talk with the department heads about holding an internal recruitment drive. If we can reach an agreement, I'll leave the screening and hiring process to you and HR. Is that okay?"
"Oh! Hiring, huh?"
Umiko folded her arms with some interest. "Todai grads, huh... I just wonder if they'll be interested in our company."
"Before graduation, they're just students who haven't entered the workforce yet—no need to put Todai on too high a pedestal."
Even though he'd be attending Todai himself, Ichin didn't bother to hype it up. After all, besides being a student, he was also the boss of a game development company.
Standing up, Ichin smiled. "Of course, we'll need to have that meeting with the collage first before anything can move forward. But I don't think it'll be a problem."
Even Todai grads couldn't guarantee they'd land dream jobs right after graduation. And frankly, Ichin's company wasn't some no-name startup—he wasn't bragging when he said many of those students might not find better salaries or benefits elsewhere.
"So that's Umiko's task sorted. Now for you, Kō." He turned to Yagami Kō. "Once the art team finishes the required in-game assets, I'd like you to lead the creation of five promotional posters before the end of March. You'll be in charge of the selection and approval—completely your call. These will be used for outdoor marketing."
"Promotional posters? Got it. Leave it to me!"
Kō accepted the task with full confidence.
With everyone's assignments laid out, they exited the conference room. Ichin returned to his office, while Kō went off to organize the poster work.
Inside the office, Utaha was lounging in Ichin's executive chair, casually browsing websites with the mouse in hand.
When she saw him walk in, she smiled. "Meeting's done?"
"Yeah, everything's been arranged."
Walking over to her, Ichin saw she was browsing light novel forums—specifically, posts discussing her latest book.
"The reviews online seem pretty good, huh?"
"They are." She nodded while scrolling. "Even if it's just a light novel, since it involves workplace themes, I'm not going to write nonsense. I want it to be entertaining and grounded in reality. After all, it's a modern urban setting—no sci-fi or fantasy elements here."
Once she finished reading the post, Utaha closed the browser and got up from the chair.
"Here, it's your turn. I'm going to go play with the kitty."
Their cat, Peppa, had come to the office earlier with Kō and the others. With so many girls around—plus Hazuki's cat—Peppa never got bored like at home.
Ichin nodded and sat down to get to work.
As he said in the meeting, the goal was to finish the game within a month. And as the boss, he was very much part of the dev team. It wasn't his style to just delegate and sit back.
Even though he wasn't in the programming department's physical space, he stayed in sync through internal chat tools and voice comms, so working from his office didn't lower productivity.
He stayed focused until nearly 6 PM, when Utaha opened the door and gently tapped him on the shoulder.
"Ichin, it's quitting time. Take a break."
"Yeah, got it."
Nodding, Ichin took off his headphones, stretched, saved his progress, and shut down the computer.
"Let's go home."
Tonight, dinner was being made by Utaha's mom, so there was no need to eat out.
As they stepped out of the office, Ichin noticed Eiriri gathering her things.
"Eiriri, want us to drop you off?"
"Absolutely! Let me hitch a ride!"
*
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