Ruby & Weiss 8

꒰ঌ Ruby & Weiss 8

.

.

One week after that day. After returning to the game club, Weiss fixed the bugs in the game in no time at all. She stood there letting orders fly at Ruby and Natsu, and they crushed the bugs one after another… and they finished repairing the game, a task that everyone had thought was impossible before the competition deadline, in only two days.

And what's more, as if trying to make up for lost time, Weiss began to get deeply involved in making the game. Ruby and Weiss butted heads quite often, sometimes having shouting matches and hurling insults back and forth, and they began to brush up the game. You could say they had a lot of planning meetings with each other. But these were not like the meetings I had been a part of at the publishing company.

But that was to be expected. After all, at that publishing company meeting, not only were we dealing with a pro, but all he did was criticize Ruby's work, so it really didn't feel like they were trying to cooperate to make something. In that regard, these meetings that Weiss and Ruby had, where they clashed over their own ideas of how to make the game more interesting, were more genuine examples of planning meetings.

In the end, as a result of those planning meetings, even the genre of the game ended up changing. With Ruby's approval, Weiss was allowed to also put RPG elements into the game. The title of the game was 'Greed's Labyrinth (Seven Deadly Sins Series, Second Game)'. They ended up putting the text Ruby had written on top of the RPG system that Weiss had made. It just so happened that both their games were set in a labyrinth anyways, so this was a pretty good match.

You should have just done that from the start! Is probably what everyone in the club was thinking, but everyone wisely kept their mouths shut. Of course, changing the genre when the deadline was so close added a lot of work that needed to be done, and naturally things got chaotic as the deadline loomed. In the end, Weiss shut herself in her room and worked overnight (I had gone over to help as well, but Gray Onii-chan turned into a demon and chased me out of the house. It was terrible).

It was quite incredible how they punished and tormented themselves like that. But within that mess, I could also see them having fun. I'm not trying to say that they're masochists. Rather, it was similar to the kind of fun you saw in sports. How should I put it… take soccer, or baseball, or track… you would hone your skills through grueling practices, and then put those skills on display in matches.

I really felt like creating games wasn't any different from that. On the day that they completed the game, I heard the following exchange, "You seriously can write 6kb of text per hour, can't you? I really didn't believe you when you first said that."

"You too… you really got rid of a lot of bugs in such a short amount of time. What's your secret?"

"Well, when all's said and done, it's intuition."

"Intuition?"

"Yes. How should I put it… I really don't know how to say it. When I make games, I can clearly see the parts that aren't proper. That's why I'm really, really good at debugging, fixing game balance issues, and correcting typos. You just have to look at all the digital data from the top down and pick out the unpleasant parts."

Hearing that, Natsu seemed surprised.

"… Umm… so the reason you were able to find that boss's weak points and safe areas was…"

"Ah, yes, that's the same thing. As long as it's in the form of digital data, there's probably nothing that I can't break through."

Weiss looked quite proud of herself and puffed out her chest. It also seemed like she was telling the truth. What was this? Did all gamers have superpowers like this? Ruby seemed excited for some reason.

"Don't tell me… that ability you have… the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception…? T-to think it actually exists…"

Ruby's eyes widened and she shivered, stumbling a bit.

"Please think of this as an honor. From now on, I will call you 'User of the Mystic Eyes" with much respect."

"Did I just get a completely chuunibyou nickname!?"

It seemed that through game creation, Ruby and Weiss had come to acknowledge each other's strengths. See, look… wasn't this exactly like what happened in sports? And then, there was the long-awaited result. How did the game we made do in the competition? Well, we didn't win a prize at all, but we definitely made a splash on the Chaos Create forums.

Back in the current time…

"NOOOOoooooooooooooooooo! They made a thread about the gaaaaaaaaaaaaame! This is terrible! Do these people not have hearts!?"

"You're noisy. Please stop looking for game reviews on the internet and then going crazy over them. And also, that thread is mostly bashing my scenario, is it not? Why does that bother you?"

"T-that's obvious, isn't it!? It's because they're criticizing our game. It doesn't matter which part they end up criticizing!"

"I did what I wanted to do, and the result wasn't well-received by the users. I'm the one to blame."

"If you say that, then let me point out that my game system wasn't exactly praised either! To put it another way, it wasn't even bashed! And the only reason we were in such a rush at the end was because of me! Also, can you just stop it with trying to take all the blame yourself? With these things, the right to feel happy or frustrated belongs to all people involved. Am I wrong?!"

"Thank you for your opinion. Well then, please be as frustrated as your heart pleases. In return, if people in the clubrooms around us come complaining, I'll leave that to you."

"Well then, I'll take you up on that offer then! Ughhh, this is terrible! Gyaaah, I'm so annoyed! But really, Ruby, you're being awfully calm about this. How can you be like that when they wrote such terrible things about the game?" Weiss unhappily poked the screen with a finger, with enough force that I thought she would poke a hole into it.

Ruby scowled at her comrade-in+arms out the side of her eyes and whispered in a detached tone. "I'm already used to it."

So I won't let my feelings show, is how I heard her continue in my head. After all, there's no way she wasn't frustrated. Yes… she's had it tough up until now… her work was trashed by Ibiki-san, and she was relentlessly made fun of by Naruko. And to me, it seemed that the difference between Ruby and Weiss's reactions to this criticism was a reflection not of their own personalities, but more a reflection of the experiences they had had up until now.

"Hey, Haruto Senpai. Are you listening?"

"Huh… what is it?"

"Weiss, you're giving me a really scary look. Ah, but whatever. Today I'll listen to your complaints through to the end. Even though I couldn't be any use at all… I was frustrated too.

"Up until now, I've thought that reacting emotionally to criticism just shows a lack of appreciation for the people who took the time to play your game, and if you have time to do that then you should spend it improving. I thought that only idiots with no self-control get worked up over anonymous internet opinions. But, when I see something I made getting treated like this on the internet, I have to revise my opinion. Keeping calm in the face of anonymous internet criticism? Hah, that can eat shit and go to hell! Things that piss me off just piss me off, goddammit!"

Bam! Weiss smashed her hands onto the keyboard.

"C—calm down… girls shouldn't say things like 'eat shit' and 'goddammit'. Come on, that's just not right."

"As if I care! I-I'll definitely kill these people! I'll definitely, definitely kill these people! The people who are writing these comments on forums without a care in the world, and the people who are posting on blogs with their smug expressions, they're all guilty! Gyaaah! You better prepare yourself, you pigs! I'll find out who you are, secretly friend you on mixi, and kill you in an offline meeting!"

Bam bam bam bam! Weiss continued to bang on the keyboard with incredible force.

"Hey, stop that! You're going to break the keyboard!"

"But…! But… ugh…"

She is just way too frustrated! I'll bet that the people making these criticisms would have never guessed that the game staff would wish for their deaths so fiercely for each and every one of their comments.

"I'm sure everyone thinks that way! It's not just me!"

"No, it's not like that!'

I desperately tried to calm Weiss down, for the honor of all the creators in the world. Ruby, who had been doing her own work on her own PC, also seemed a bit fed up.

"Seriously… what if you just stop looking up reviews online?"

"E-even if you tell me that, I can't help but search for them! And what's more, I dug up all the criticism that even the search engines didn't show! I'm good at that! Oooghh… w-what's with this helpless feeling I have!? H-h-how do I make it go away?!"

"Make the next game. Make the next game so interesting that it will just floor everyone who plays it."

Ruby said that without taking her eyes off her screen, and not letting her typing pace drop a bit.

"Doing that will be much more satisfying than going off and killing each and every person who criticized your game."

"At least you're an expert with words… rather, you're a pretty forward-looking person, Weiss."

"Hmph, it's just that there's no other way to deal with this… but in any case, I have a plan for a game that will teach all those people who made fools of us a lesson. Are you in?"

"Of course. This time I'll be involved from start to finish… so it'll definitely be amazing! By the way, we're going to make the protagonist a stylish, macho man, like the ones you see in Jojo!"

"Rejected."

These types of conversations in the clubroom… they were very much a part of the club life that Ruby had gotten for herself. She had tried so very, very hard, and in the end found just one companion. Both Ruby and Weiss probably weren't happy about the outcome here at all.

So no matter how much I praised them, I doubted they would accept my praise honestly. That's why I kept what I was thinking inside my heart. You two are really quite something.

And one day after that, Ruby sent an email. It had an empty subject line, and all it said was "I'll be waiting at three thirty behind the school building." It almost felt like she was challenging me to a fight or something.

"I wonder if I did something…"

When I arrived at the designated spot behind the school at three thirty, I found Ruby in her uniform waiting for me. When she realized I was there, Ruby quietly stood up. She spoke to me in a barely audible voice.

"I… have something I want to report to you."

"Huh?"

"Lots of things have improved… things in class, other things… so, I'm reporting them to you."

Drop by drop, her words slowly and haphazardly came out. As always, she was bad when it came to speaking with other people. Usually, when someone did something in such a roundabout a way as this, they wouldn't manage to get anything across to the other person. But I knew. I also had a guess as to why she called me out here like this. She probably wanted to thank me. So, even though the words themselves might have sounded strange.

"Nah, I didn't really do anything much."

"No, that's not true at all!?"

"Really…?"

"Yes… I was happy when you told me that you were worried about me as me, and not as your sister's replacement."

As she spoke, Ruby looked down at the ground. W-wait… this girl… what was she saying…?

"I was happy when you told me that you would prefer being called 'Senpai' over 'Nii-san'."

Was she nervous? Was that why the hands she had clasped in front of her skirt were slightly shaking?

"Joining the same club as me, worrying about how I was alone in class, backing me up during my presentation, even choosing to spend less time with Lucy Senpai and your band… and being with me. It… It made me really, really happy."

W-what this? Was I dreaming? My jaw dropped to the ground in dumbfounded amazement. To think that someone who was usually so difficult… to think a person like that would smile at me like that, would thank me like that… anybody would feel the same way in my position. I was so surprised that my brain was just a mess.

"U-umm… S-Senpai, I want you to close your eyes for a second."

"W-why?"

"J-just do what I say!"

"A-alright."

I didn't know what Ruby wanted with me but I did what she told me. As I close my eyes I heard the sounds of her approach.

"… !"

I felt a soft sensation on my cheek.

"Now you can open your eyes."

When I open my eyes I saw Ruby's flushed face moved away from mine, leaving only a faint, sweet smell behind.

"Wh… wha…!"

D-dd she just… kiss me!? What the hell did she think she was doing… is what I wanted to say, but my voice suddenly became hoarse and the words vanished from my mind.

Even as she flushed deep crimson from ear to ear, Ruby gave me a downright wicked grin.

"And that ends of my report."

Wha… what the Hell!?

.

.