Okada finally turned his head, and when he did, I almost screamed.
Bro looked like a raccoon that hadn't slept since the Meiji era, the ones with black, swollen eyebags. "Okada… Jesus, bruh," I muttered, grabbing his shoulders. "How the hell did you get the game out here?"
He let out a laugh that cracked in the middle, somewhere between proud and one mental breakdown away from a hospital. "Once I got to level five, I didn't have much money to keep on playing so the game asked me to share to more than ten people and get twice in-game currency."
I blinked, amazed that my upgrade in the game of sharing it to other people actually became a necessity. "…You didn't."
"Oh, I did!" he shouted, slapping the desk like he just solved global hunger. "I spent my last ¥5,000, the final yen on my credit card feeding my three hungry succubi after a an orgy threesome. Then I shared it and my achievements on LINE, Twitter, Insta, TikTok any one you can think of and bruh… at six a.m. I saw swarms of people at the door. Swarms! They were begging to download it."
My jaw went slack.
"So I set up QR install codes around the shop," He continued, pointing proudly at the signboard. "Scan it, it debits ¥1,000 straight into my account, they download the APK and refused to leave afterwards. Here didn't have good network so, a rich dude over there volunteered to buy 100GB worth of data just to play and he shared the password bruh, for free!"
I stared at him. He stared back, eyes twitching from lack of sleep obviously and he held up his fingers, paused, counted again, mumbled, "One fifty, one fifty…" then clapped his hands like he'd just discovered nuclear fission. "¥150,000 so far!"
"Just hold on," I said, pressing my palms to my temples like I was trying to hold my exploding brain together. "So everyone… is playing my game? Like literally everyone in this damn room is playing my game?"
Okada grinned, eyes wide, unhinged. "Bruh, look around half of Japan probably will by noon."
"Dude," I groaned, dragging a hand down my face, "you could've woken me up! I would've helped you share, we could've boosted it faster, pulled in, holy shit, I can't wait to check my download rate so far." I fished my phone from my pocket, thumb flying over the chrome app icon and Chrome popped open, fingers typing HellBound: Infernal Desires into the search bar.
The little spinning circle loaded…
And there it was.
The game. My game.
Right there at the top of the page — rating: 4.9 stars. Tags: Action, RPG, Adult. Beside it, a little gray number that nearly knocked me off my feet.
900,000+ downloads.
"Nine… hundred… thousand," I whispered, my voice breaking somewhere between awe and a panic attack. "Bro… we launched a whole damn nationwide inferno while I was sleeping."
"Hold up," I breathed, blinking like the numbers were not gonna stop multiplying on my screen if I stared hard enough. "Wait… it's increasing."
I watched the bar fill upwards, number after number first in hundreds, thousands, then tens of thousands until it finally settled at 1M downloads. Both my hands grasped Okada's shoulders out of shock."Bruh, you are distracting me! I must not lose this level because of you."
Okada squinted at me, sliding his headphones down around his neck. To me, time had stopped. I had my eyes static while my jaw just dangled open out of shock. At first, he thought I was messing with him, but then his expression shifted, "Uh… bro?" He pinched my arm, then waved his hand in front of my face. "Yo, Kaito, you good? Don't tell me you're having a damn apabic attack or something." He snapped his fingers twice close to my eyes.
Nothing. Not a twitch from me
He started pushing his chair back, grabbing off the cord from his phone about to call an ambulance, and that's when I exploded. "PFFFFFT—HAHAHAHAHA!"
The sound tore out of my mouth, everyone's attention literally drawn to me. Heads turned sharply. "I—I'M FILTHY RICH!" I roared, springing to my feet in attempt to make the largest jump ever recorded. "DO YOU SEE THIS, OKADA?! ONE MILLION! ONE M! I JUST WON THE LOTTERY WITH TITS AND DEMONS!"
"I'M RICH!" I yelled again, grabbing Okada by the hoodie and shaking him. He pushed me away embarrassed that he was included in my craziness. I couldn't care less either. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS, BRO? I CAN FINALLY BUY A WATERBED FILLED WITH MOUNTAIN DEW!"
"Dude—DUDE—calm down!" Okada held my collars, threw a slap across my face and let go off me. He adjusted his hoodie in attempt to go back to the game.
"Thanks, I think I needed that." I rubbed the stinging side of my cheek, still grinning like a complete lunatic. "Oi, Okada, send me my cut quick. I need to go shopping. Gonna snag a new suit, maybe hit up Kenshao Corp and personally slam my termination letter into that bastard Roku's smug little face."
Okada tilted his head, one eyebrow twitching. "Bruh… is that necessary? You've already been fired. It's done."
"Necessary?" I leaned close to his face, eyes widened with disbelief and a smug smirk. "Okada… I have to show Roku I am not that worthless worker he can boss around."
Instantly, memories hit me very fast. The days I'd stay past midnight patching bugs, coding features, basically carrying half the damn dev team on my back only for Roku to stroll in the next morning, coffee in hand, and sneer,
'Not enough. The profits aren't high this quarter.'
There was that one time I fixed the server crash in forty minutes flat. Forty. Freaking. Minutes. Do you know what he said?
'You should've done it in twenty.'
And instead of a thank-you, he cut my bonus in half because the "game didn't hit the revenue ceiling he projected." Bruh, it made ¥80 million that month! But nah, apparently unless I coded a game that printed money from the USB slot, it wasn't enough for Roku the Tyrant.
Another time, I suggested a feature that boosted player retention by 30%. You know what he did? He stole the idea, pitched it to the board as his own, and gave me an "attendance warning" because I arrived five minutes late after working three nights straight.
And don't even get me started on the company "celebration dinners." Everyone else got steak and sake; I got to sit at the kids' table with leftover karaage and a single lukewarm beer. Because according to Roku, "coders don't bring the face value, only the product."
My fists clenched, nails digging into my palms. My smirk sharpened into something feral. "I must have my revenge on him, Okada. I'm not just gonna throw my fired letter at his face… I'm gonna ram it down his throat with a platinum credit card attached. Roku's gonna choke on my success."
Okada whistled low, shaking his head. "Damn… no wonder you're barely around, bro. That bastard didn't just work you, he bled you dry. Missing credits, stolen ideas, cutting bonuses when you were the one carrying the company? What kind of boss is that?" He lifted his head from the screen.
"I support your every decision of revenge. Matter of fact, let me leak something to you."
My ears perked up immediately. "Leak? What kind of leak we talking?"
Okada smirked. "Roku has a mistress."
"What?"
"Yeah. And not just any mistress. She works at that café down the street you know, the one you used to pick up his overpriced cappuccinos from every morning while he made you swipe your card for it."
I froze, every neuron firing at once. The café girl? The one who always gave me extra sugar packets with a smile?
Okada leaned closer, eyes gleaming. "She's the one. Saw him last week, handsy as hell in the corner booth. He even left her a fat tip with the company card. Guess the corporate budget doesn't mind funding his little side quests."
My lips curled into a wicked grin. "Oh, Okada… you just handed me the perfect ammo."
I clapped him on the shoulder, grinning ear to ear. "Thanks, bruh. I swear, I won't disappoint you. Roku's gonna choke on his own smugness when I'm done with him."
Okada shoved me back with a snort, yanking his headphones up again. "Man, get out of here, nigga. Go get your damn revenge. Daddy's busy beating succubi at level eight."
I laughed, loud enough to make the other gamers glare at me. "Bet. When I'm done dragging Roku's sorry ass through the dirt, I'll buy you a truckload of energy drinks and the fattest water-cooled rig in Tokyo."
Okada waved me off, already zoning back into the screen. "Just don't forget who held the line when this whole thing blew up. Now bounce, bro, revenge ain't gonna serve itself."