Yua's little face flushed scarlet in an instant. She buried her head into the bunny plush and mumbled softly, "I... I'm still young..."
Miki reacted like a cat whose tail had been stomped, fur bristling all at once. "What the hell are you talking about! I just have zero interest in men in real life, okay? They are smelly and gross. How could they ever compare to my 2D husbands!"
Her reaction was so intense it practically sounded like she was shouting at the top of her lungs, "Yes, I am a virgin, so what!"
Rinko's cheeks also flared red, but she still forced herself to maintain her icy dignity, turning her head away with practiced calm. "Drawing already takes up all of my time. I do not have any to waste on such pointless things."
Translated: I am single because of my own strength.
Only Shizuka stayed composed. She pushed her glasses up and replied in a level, matter-of-fact tone, "According to statistical data, investing time into romance, a low-return social activity, severely impacts the efficiency of code iteration. Therefore, I choose to remain single."
Tanaka: "..."
Case closed.
He finally understood.
Looking at the four women in front of him, each with theory maxed out, probably more familiar with niche fetishes than he was, yet all with zero hands-on experience, he felt an absurd and indescribable wave of admiration.
A group of virgins who had never even had their hands held by a guy, locking themselves away together, burning the midnight oil while researching how to make "fap material" that would get the entire male population painfully hard...
What kind of internationalist spirit was this? What kind of artisan's dedication was this?
If this game actually ended up selling like crazy, it would not just be an insult to the players' intelligence. It would be a direct provocation against biology as a whole and the entire history of human reproduction.
Tanaka took a deep breath. He knew that as the company's only employee with a fully functioning male body and a wealth of theoretical knowledge, his time had come.
He rose to his feet, walked to the whiteboard at the front of the meeting room, picked up a marker, then turned to face the four embarrassed, flustered beauties.
His expression was solemn and grave, as if he were not in a tiny planning session for an eroge, but at the United Nations Security Council, about to deliver a speech on the future of humanity.
"Everyone," he said in a low, steady voice. "I have finally pinpointed the most fundamental problem in our company."
"Our problem is not a lack of money, nor a lack of skill, nor even a lack of passion."
"Our problem is idealism cut off from practice."
With a sharp snap, he wrote two large characters on the whiteboard.
"Practice."
"Art comes from life, then rises above it. We make games that serve humanity's most primal instincts, yet we ourselves know nothing about that instinct. This is like asking a eunuch to write a harem novel. Do you honestly think that would be readable?"
The four girls stared at him, stunned into silence by his momentum.
Tanaka looked back at them, eyes burning with conviction, his voice gaining even more force.
"Right now, what we lack is not reference material, not existing works, but first-hand data. The rawest, most vivid, most authentic data there is."
"We need to build our own database. A proprietary core database unique to Flower Company, and Flower Company alone."
He spread his arms as if embracing some grand future, his tone filled with a sense of sacred mission.
"And I, Tanaka Jin, as the company's only healthy male sample at present, am willing... for the sake of the company's future, for the sake of artistic authenticity, to offer everything I have."
"From today on, I will not be just a planner. I will become your live reference, your exclusive model, your H-male lead."
"To save this company, and to make our game truly real..."
Tanaka's gaze swept across them one by one: Yua's innocent confusion, Miki's stunned disbelief, Shizuka's quiet curiosity, and finally came to rest on Rinko's breathtaking face, flushed with shame and anger, yet unable to refute him.
He smiled lightly and declared with utmost seriousness, "Let us begin practical data collection."
...
Tanaka's impassioned declaration, righteous enough on the surface to be engraved on a golden plaque, landed like a depth charge in the cramped meeting room.
President Yua was the first to be completely taken in. Hugging her bunny plush, she stared at Tanaka with eyes shining even brighter than when she saw a limited-edition figure, nodding rapidly like a pecking chick. "You are right! You are absolutely right! Practice... our own database... Tanaka-kun, you are a genius!"
In the corner, programmer Mochizuki Shizuka did something unprecedented. She took both sides of her headphones off.
She adjusted her glasses, the gaze behind them roaming up and down Tanaka's body as if assessing a rare experimental specimen.
After a long pause, she spoke in her calm, rippleless tone. "Theoretically feasible. We could construct a dynamic... biological response... database."
Done. Even the emotionless programmer had been convinced.
However, not everyone was that simple.
"Ha." A cold, mocking laugh sliced through the scholarly, research-driven mood that had settled over the room.
Miki folded her arms and looked at Tanaka with a smirk.
"You really talk a better game than you could ever play. 'Sacrificing yourself for art', 'live reference', give me a break. What I see... is a guy trying to dress up his desire to take advantage of us with fancy excuses."
Her words were like a bucket of ice water, instantly dousing Yua's excitement.
Yua's small face paled a little, and she too began to feel that this proposal... might be a bit too... ahead of its time.
"Tanaka-kun." Miki's lips curled into a mocking smile, "Spare me your disgusting rhetoric. I know exactly what kind of creatures men are. Aside from filthy thoughts, what else is going through your heads? Do not treat us like those clueless girls you think you can coax into bed with a few lines of sweet talk."
Her man-hater radar was screaming at full volume now, and in her heart, she had practically already sentenced Tanaka to death.
As for the eye of the storm, Kurosawa Rinko, after a brief moment of shock, her expression had returned to its usual icy chill.
But the way her hand clenched her stylus so tightly that her knuckles turned white betrayed just how stirred up she really was inside.