In the corner of the office sat the fourth girl.
She wore black-rimmed glasses and had neat twin ponytails dyed a cool shade of purple. Headphones covered her ears as she stared intently at the waterfall of scrolling code on her screen, completely ignoring the argument raging behind her.
She was the company's programmer and part-time emergency illustrator, the taciturn Mochizuki Shizuka.
It seemed that, to her, even if the sky fell, it still would not be as important as fixing a single bug.
Tanaka's eyes swept around the room at high speed, and inside his heart was already bursting with fireworks.
Tsundere black-haired beauty, a sexy blonde, an emotionless programmer girl... this lineup, this starting situation...
Just as Tanaka was mentally showering the system with praise, Kurosawa Rinko's patience clearly reached its limit.
She took a step forward and slammed her stylus onto the desk with a sharp crack.
"I will repeat myself one more time, President!" Rinko's voice was already carrying a fury that could no longer be contained.
"The only reason Flower Company is still barely hanging on is quality. I refuse to work with some outsider who looks like he does not even have basic taste. If he stays today, then I am gone tomorrow."
"Please don't, Rinko-chan!" president Yua was so anxious she was about to cry. She clutched her rabbit plush, completely at a loss. "The deadline for the game's release is getting closer and closer. You are our core. If you leave, what are we supposed to do?"
"Then just disband the company already. I have had more than enough of this half-dead state." Rinko threw down the ultimatum and turned around, ready to pack her things.
Ayase Miki sighed as well. Even though she also could not stand Tanaka, if Rinko walked out, the company would be done for real. She tried to persuade her.
"Rinko, do not be so impulsive..."
The office had dissolved into chaos. On Tanaka's very first day, this already-on-the-brink company was about to enter its final death spiral and fall apart.
And Tanaka, the fuse that had sparked this crisis, quietly reopened the system panel in his mind while everyone else was too distracted to notice.
[Mission: Assist Flower Company in finishing game development (in the physical sense).]
Those words, "in the physical sense," were highlighted in flashing red, bolded as if the system was winking at him with a filthy grin.
Tanaka's lips curled into a subtly wicked smile.
He knew that his real tutorial was only beginning now.
Rinko was genuinely starting to shove art drafts and equipment into her bag. Yua's eyes were brimming with tears, Miki was out of ideas, and the atmosphere in the room was stretched to the breaking point.
At that moment, Tanaka, who had been silent all this time, finally opened his mouth.
"Kurosawa..."
Rinko's hands stilled. She turned her head slowly, her gaze sharp enough to kill. "It is Ms. Kurosawa. And we are not close. Do not call me that like we are friends."
"All right, Ms. Kurosawa." Tanaka rose from his chair, wearing a slightly shy smile. "I just want to ask you one question. You said just now that the lifeblood of our company is quality, right?"
"So what if I did?" Rinko frowned.
"I completely agree." Tanaka nodded, then his tone shifted, and the smile on his face took on a more ambiguous edge. "But in my opinion, the games our company makes, including the works of you, our ace illustrator, have one fatal flaw in terms of quality."
His words made the whole room freeze.
Miki stared at Tanaka as if he had lost his mind. A complete outsider, daring to criticize the company's only pillar, a woman with a real name in the industry, Kurosawa Rinko, to her face? Was he suicidal?
Yua was so shocked she covered her mouth, at a total loss for words.
Even Shizuka, who had been fully immersed in her code, did something rare. She lifted one side of her headphones and cast a curious glance in their direction.
Rinko's expression shifted from icy cold to storm-cloud dark in an instant.
She had been drawing for years, had won prizes, and was adored by countless fans and industry professionals. This was the very first time anyone had dared to say, to her face, that her work had a fatal flaw.
"Oh?" She let out a humorless laugh, eyes icy as she glared at Tanaka. "Then I really must listen closely. You, who cannot even tell the difference between a graphics tablet and a pressure-sensitive pen, master of the arts that you are, tell me. What fatal flaw do my works have?"
She deliberately emphasized the word "master," the sarcasm dripping off every syllable.
She had already decided that once this ignorant fool finished spouting nonsense, she would walk right out of here and never look back, not even for one extra second.
Tanaka did not flinch in the face of her overwhelming pressure. Instead, he walked unhurriedly over to her desk and picked up a freshly drawn sketch.
It was a close-up of the heroine's face in an H scene, her expression drunk on pleasure.
"Kurosawa-san, your drawing is technically flawless." Tanaka began with sincere praise. Then his fingertip lightly tapped the heroine's face on the page.
"But it has no soul."
"What you have drawn is just a surface, pieced together from countless references and templates. It is very standard, very pretty, but it is fake."
Tanaka's voice was calm and steady. Every word was like a surgeon's scalpel, slicing into the heart of what Rinko was most proud of.
"You have drawn her hazy, unfocused eyes, the blush on her cheeks, her slightly parted lips. But you have not drawn the way her pupils suddenly contract and then dilate again in the peak of excitement."
"You have not drawn how her muscles tense up without her noticing, making two faint veins appear along her neck."
"You have not drawn that micro-expression where pain, shame, and surrender all twist together..."
Tanaka lifted his head and met Rinko's eyes, which had widened slightly in shock. The smile at the corner of his mouth deepened.
"Because you do not really understand. All you are doing is drawing. Everything you create is built on imagination and imitation."
He set the sketch down, took a step forward, and leaned close to her ear. In a low whisper that only the two of them could hear, he delivered the final, fatal blow like a murmured temptation from the devil.
"At the end of the day, you are a virgin who has never truly touched a man's body, who does not even know what an orgasm feels like. How could you possibly draw an H-game that can drive men all over the world completely insane?"
Boom!
It was as if a thunderclap exploded in Rinko's skull.
All the blood in her body seemed to surge straight up into her head. Her cheeks flushed so red it looked like they might start dripping.
She wanted to argue, to curse him out, but when she opened her mouth, not a single word came out.
Because everything this man had just said... made terrifying sense.