The meeting, or rather the announcement, wrapped up fast, and everyone drifted back to their seats carrying their own thoughts.
Dan Heng and Bronya turned back to face their mountain of code. Stelle and March 7th huddled together, murmuring about something. Kiana put her headphones back on, but no game sounds came through. She just stared blankly at her phone screen. Mei reopened her sketchbook, pen hovering.
Arthur sat back down, forced himself to breathe, and started working through the wealth of knowledge the system had dropped into his head from another world.
At the same time, from the corner of his eye, he caught Kiana and Mei picking up their phones almost simultaneously, fingers moving fast.
A moment later, his phone lit up several times in quick succession.
The first message was from a contact saved as "Tuna":
"Hey, Captain, that was quite the speech. But if you blow this one too...
My dad mentioned the other day that his European branch is looking for a creative, flexible marketing consultant. Great environment, room and board included. Something to think about. (winking emoji)"
Right behind it, a second message, from "Cook":
"Arthur, the new game concept sounds genuinely challenging.
If, and I mean if, the studio ever needs a more stable environment to actually make things, the R&D center Raiden Group runs in Tokyo has always had a soft spot for indie teams. Full support across the board. That would, of course, require the core team to be willing to come on board." (gentle smile emoji)
Two messages. Two options. Both pointing toward the same exit: leave this place, stop grinding, and step into their world.
Arthur looked at his screen, the corner of his mouth tugging into a barely-there smirk.
Right on schedule.
He didn't bother responding. He just flipped his phone face-down on the desk.
When you're buried deep enough in trouble, one more problem stops registering. This particular headache could wait.
He needed to think clearly. He needed to get the skeleton of Honkai Impact 3rd's first chapter built out as fast as possible.
He was deep in concentration, pulling specific details of the Prologue out of his memory, when someone tapped lightly on the edge of his desk.
He looked up. It was Bronya.
She had left her corner at some point without making a sound, and was now standing quietly beside his desk. Beneath her silver-gray hair, those blue eyes held no particular expression.
She just looked at him, then slid something across the desk.
A bank card.
An ordinary savings card, its corners worn smooth from years of use.
"There's two million in there."
Bronya's voice was flat, no emotion behind it.
"Money I saved from competitions over the years, plus some freelance work. The PIN is that default password you used when you fixed my computer that one time."
Arthur went still.
"The studio can't go under."
She kept talking, unhurried, each word landing clean.
"Kiana and Mei, they have other options. But this place... is somewhere that games can actually get made."
Her eyes moved across the office, a chaotic, worn-down, uncertain space that had somehow still managed to be the birthplace of countless ideas.
"My dowry money," she said, pausing briefly like the word felt a little odd coming out of her mouth, but she didn't take it back. "Call it a loan for now. If it's not enough," she pressed her lips together, "I'll figure something out."
She didn't wait for a response. She didn't even look at his face.
She turned around, walked back to her corner, found Dan Heng, and went back to writing code.
Arthur looked down at the slightly worn card sitting on his desk.
It was light. Right now it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
The air in the office seemed to freeze. Kiana, not far away, glanced over. Mei tilted her head slightly. Dan Heng's typing skipped a beat. Even Stelle and March 7th went quiet.
Arthur exhaled slowly, deeply, and closed his fingers around the card.
The edge pressed into his palm, sharp and grounding.
In front of him, visible only to him, the system screen flickered faintly. Below the line reading [Tutorial Quest: A Glimmer in Desperation], a new marker had appeared, small but real.
This path, full of obstacles, untraveled by anyone before him, now had its first modest foothold.
The card was cold and hard against his skin, and it cut through the noise in his head enough to let him think straight.
Not enough. For a real game launch, especially the Honkai Impact 3rd he had in mind, with high-end art and fluid 3D combat, two million was a drop in the bucket. It would barely cover a decent rendering server or a few months of wages for the core team.
But what it meant had nothing to do with the number.
This was trust. A bet. A stake in something that hadn't proven itself yet.
That hit him somewhere in the chest.
He looked up instinctively toward her corner.
Bronya was already back in her own world. Her profile was calm and still, only her fingers moving steadily across the keys. Like what she had just done was nothing more than passing someone a sticky note.
And yet the air in the office had shifted, quietly, because of it.
Crack.
A barely audible sound, like plastic giving out under too much pressure.
Arthur turned, and spotted the edge of Kiana's phone case, the one with the Homu print. A hairline crack had formed where her fingers had been pressing in without her realizing it.
Her face still wore that same half-smirking, I'm just watching this play out expression from before.
But in those bright blue eyes, something had dropped fast, then just as quickly lit into two small, restless sparks.
She was staring at Bronya's back, the corner of her mouth twitching, like she was grinding her teeth.
(Bronya, you absolute idiot! You couldn't wait five minutes? What do you think you're doing, handing over a bank card right now?! What, you're the only one who actually cares? Unbelievable.)
Almost at the same instant, a sharp, slightly too-hard scratch of pen on paper came from Mei's direction.
The landscape sketch in front of her, soft and careful up to that point, had been cut through by one abrupt, heavy line.
Mei lifted her pen quickly. Her fingers curled inward.
Her lashes dropped, hiding the flash of surprise and the edge of frustration that crossed her face.
(Bronya. She moved fast.
To do it like this, at a moment like this... I underestimated her.)
Their eyes crossed in the air for half a second, then snapped back to their own screens.
To the two messages they had just sent.
Which now, somehow, felt off. Distant. Like there was glass between them and the moment they'd been trying to reach.
Kiana's message, breezy and laced with the offer of being taken care of.
Mei's warm but carefully angled invitation. Both of them, held up next to Bronya's worn, tangible bank card, suddenly felt a little thin. Not quite enough. Not quite honest.
Like three runners at the starting line, the starter barely getting the word "ready" out, and one of them had already blown past the ten-meter mark without saying a word.
Were they just going to let that go?
Not a chance.