The building was old.
Not abandoned, but clearly past its prime. The sign reading Kisaragi Soft was clumsily bolted above the entrance, some of the letters faded by the sun. I climbed the narrow stairs to the third floor, listening to the echo of my own footsteps.
I knocked on the door.
"Come in."
The office was smaller than I had imagined. A single space divided by low shelves, cables crossing the floor, and the constant hum of aging fans. There were four visible desks, three of them occupied.
At one of them, a middle-aged man looked up from an NEC PC-9801 monitor.
"You here about the notice?"
I nodded.
"Yes."
He gestured toward a folding chair in front of his desk.
"I'm Kisaragi. Director… though that sounds more important than it really is,"he said flatly, adjusting his glasses.
He pulled a sheet of paper from a coffee-stained folder.
"Name."
"Aoyama Haru."
"Age."
"Twenty-two."
He wrote without looking at me.
"University."
"Tokyo. Computer Systems."
That made him glance up, just a little.
"…I see."
He didn't smile. He didn't look impressed. Just tired.
"I'll be straight with you, Aoyama,"he said, leaning back in his chair."We can't pay like a big company. We're not stable. And what we make here won't end up in magazines."
"I understand."
It wasn't a rehearsed answer. It was simply true.
Kisaragi studied me for a few seconds. Maybe my pink hair. Maybe my blank expression. He didn't comment.
"Any experience?"
"Only university projects."
"Languages?"
"C. Some assembly."
"PC-98?"
"Yes."
That was true. Not entirely, but enough.
Kisaragi turned his monitor toward me.
"We've got a project stuck. A simple RPG. Top-down view. The problem is memory management. It crashes for no clear reason."
He didn't ask me to fix it.
He just showed me the code.
I read in silence.
I didn't think about anything in particular.
"Here,"I said after a few seconds, pointing at a section."The sprite loading doesn't release memory properly."
Kisaragi blinked.
"You sure?"
"Not completely,"I replied."But it's the most likely cause."
He didn't argue. He simply turned the monitor back and started checking.
Several minutes passed in silence. The sound of typing filled the room.
"…Damn it,"he muttered.
The program stopped crashing.
Kisaragi took off his glasses and rubbed his face.
"How much would you ask for?"
I gave him a low number. Not because I undervalued myself, but because I didn't need more.
He nodded.
"You start tomorrow."
There was no handshake.No immediate formal contract.Just a practical decision.
"Welcome to Kisaragi Soft,"he said, pointing to the empty desk at the back."It's not much, but it's what we've got."
I looked at the assigned space. A PC-98 slightly slower than the others. An uncomfortable chair. A stack of hand-labeled floppy disks.
It was enough.
"Thank you."
Kisaragi had already turned back to his screen.
"Don't thank me yet,"he added without looking up."No one stays here very long."
I didn't respond.
I sat down at my new desk and powered on the computer. The fan made a deep, tired sound.
As the screen booted, I thought that this company would probably disappear without leaving a trace.
I didn't mind.
For now, I had something to do.