The next morning, the office smelled of instant coffee and dust.
I arrived early. Too early, perhaps, but I liked the silence before the others arrived. Kisaragi was already there, hunched over a stack of papers and his NEC PC-9801. The fan rattled, a low, uneven rhythm.
"You're punctual," he said without looking up."I prefer it that way," I replied.
No one else had arrived yet. The desks were empty, monitors dark. Floppy disks scattered like forgotten memories.
I turned on my own machine. The screen flickered for a moment, a gray haze, then stabilized. A small test program from yesterday still ran in memory. I watched it loop, the pixels moving in their predictable pattern.
Kisaragi glanced over."Memory leaks are the least of our problems."
I raised an eyebrow."Really? What's worse?"
He finally looked at me, eyes tired but sharp."The deadlines. The tools. The clients. And… us."
I didn't answer. It was obvious he meant the team. There were three others, scattered across the room. Two men, one woman. None looked up from their work. The woman, with dark hair tied in a bun, typed furiously. A man in a worn jacket was drawing pixel art on a tablet. The last, hunched over another PC-98, muttered to himself while debugging.
"This company is small," Kisaragi continued."Everyone wears multiple hats. You'll be programming, sometimes designing. Occasionally you'll deal with clients. And always, always, you'll find the limitations."
I nodded.I didn't feel intimidated. I was used to limits. University projects, part-time work, late nights solving bugs.
He leaned back, pushing his glasses up."And if you can't handle it?"
I shrugged."Then I learn."
Kisaragi seemed to consider that. Then he simply nodded and returned to his screen."Fine. Today, I'll show you the codebase. It's messy. You'll survive if you pay attention."
The day passed slowly. I navigated through hundreds of lines of assembly, debugging routines, sprite management, and convoluted memory tables. Each file had handwritten notes, smudged and fading. Each function, a labyrinth.
By evening, I could trace a crash, predict behavior, and even propose a small optimization. Kisaragi glanced at my notes."Not bad," he said, almost approvingly.
I smiled faintly."Thanks."
He waved it off."Don't get used to it. Tomorrow, you'll see just how fragile our system is. One wrong change, and everything collapses."
I didn't flinch.I had a feeling this was exactly where I was supposed to be.
When I left the office, the neon lights of Akihabara blinked in the dusk. Game posters, second-hand stores, and the faint smell of fried food. The city seemed alive, but the office, small and cluttered, was another world entirely.
I walked home slowly, thinking about sprites, memory, and deadlines. And, in the back of my mind, a quiet curiosity grew: how far could someone push this tiny company before it broke?
I had a feeling I was about to find out.