Paying to Win in a VRMMO: Volume 1

by Blitz Kiva

  Ichiro had spent his earliest years in Vienna learning the violin and piano, and he played both at a professional level. Any music event held exclusively for the upper crust could be expected to have him in attendance. The pictures he painted to amuse himself were considered cutting edge works of modern art, and they sold for high prices. Just for fun, he’d traveled around the world, and had discovered over 20 kinds of new insects in the process.

  All in all, Ichiro remained quite busily employed.

  When he had spare time, he would sometimes visit universities as a guest lecturer, and he sometimes served as a paid consultant on asset management as an expert in the field of economics. He had spent two brief years thrilling living rooms as an idol singer, and through skilled investments, he had doubled the money he’d earned there many times over. Even as the rest of the world suffered under the economic downturn, he had more money than he could spend.

  It was his money; he had made it himself. No one had the right to tell him how to use it.

  Now, in Setagaya Ward’s Sangenjaya, there was a luxury apartment complex with rents far out of the reach of the average citizen: Tsuwabuki Pavilion Sangenjaya.

  The landlord was Ichiro Tsuwabuki. The architect was Ichiro Tsuwabuki. The entire top floor was his personal living space. The rent he took in from tenants was chicken feed, but it was enough to cover maintenance costs and employee salaries with change left over.

  It was after breakfast. Ichiro sat on the high-priced Armonia sofa in his living room, enjoying an elegant downtime. The news played on an LCD screen large enough to prompt thoughts of “bigger isn’t always better, you know” from the average observer. A newspaper and a tablet and other reading material sat close at hand.

  At just this moment, Ichiro was on the phone, making small talk with the president of a general trading company.

  “I see you’re just as wicked as ever,” Ichiro said with a smile, spreading his newspaper out on the table.

  “My father thinks so, too. He says you really need to be more above-board about these things. Of course, I personally don’t object...”

  The young man’s flippant tone would make it hard to believe he was addressing the president of Tsunobeni Co., one of the world’s financial leaders. Ichiro often advised him, and he secretly admired the man’s skilled way around the stock market. There was nearly a 40-year distance between them, but their mutual respect had fostered a relationship almost like friendship. Of course, if you probed deeper, their interactions were mostly businesslike, concerned with the coming and going of money.

  “Oh, your daughter? Back in the country, you say? She was in Paris, wasn’t she? With her new fashion line. Oh, is it going well? That’s very nice. She showed me her designs before, but... Hmm? Oh, no, that’s nonsense, of course.”

  As Ichiro carried on his conversation, his servant came out of the dining room with a tray carrying a pot and a cup. Ichiro noticed and, with upraised eyebrow, began steering the conversation to an end.

  “Anyway, tell her I’m not interested, and that I’m unlikely to change my mind anytime soon. Yes. That’s right. That would be best, I think. Yes, thanks. Talk to you later.”

  With the casual goodbye, he hung up.

  The servant gave Ichiro a respectful bow, then poured the contents of the pot into the cup. “Your coffee, Ichiro-sama.”

  “Mm, thanks,” Ichiro responded, without so much as a smile.

  Tsuwabuki kept a single live-in servant, who, incredibly, did her duties dressed as an old-fashioned Victorian maid. The outfit was by choice... her own, that is.

  Sakurako Ogi was a live-in servant that Ichiro Tsuwabuki employed for his own amusement. He’d wanted a reasonably attractive, well-figured, well-educated girl, but she’d turned out to exceed his expectations, acting not only as a servant but as a secretary and chauffeur, as well.

  The rest of her personality was... well, perhaps what you would expect from someone who wore a maid’s uniform for fun. Her room was full of stacks of manga, games, anime and tokusatsu DVDs, action figures, plamodels, and other bric-a-brac.

  Ichiro once asked her what she would do if an earthquake hit, and her answer was a gravely serious, “I would die.” She had previously said that she would be happy to die surrounded by what she loved, so perhaps she really meant it.

  “Was that the president of Tsunobeni?” she asked.

  “Yes. He wanted to thank me for the financial advice I’d given him recently, and then we chatted for a while.”

  She had come from a relatively ordinary family. The longer she worked with him, the better grasp she seemed to gain of her master’s relationships, but he could remember a time when she had expressed such astonishment at every big name he threw out, they could barely carry on a conversation.

  “Sakurako-san, you enjoy games, don’t you?” he asked after taking a sip of his coffee and lifting his tablet off the table. Sakurako stared for a moment, then burst out into a smile.

  “Oh, yes, I love them. And not just games, but manga and anime, too.”

  Sakurako’s polite yet friendly speech was something Ichiro didn’t hear often from people around him. Frankly, it intrigued him, and was one of the reasons he had chosen to hire her.

  “And recently, you’ve been playing Narrow Fantasy Online, correct?” He tapped his touchpad to open the web browser. He’d been doing research on the game here and there since the previous night. Opinions were firmly divided, and many of them seemed to carry strange biases, which was making it hard for him to learn anything.

  During his conversation with Asuha, he had recalled that Sakurako was a heavy user. And indeed, once the subject came up, she started talking with great excitement.

  “NaroFan! I’m obsessed with it! Last week, when you spent five days in Yamanashi? I spent the whole time immersed in it!”

  “Ah, I thought your room seemed messier than usual when I got back...”

  “I still do the work you pay me for. I hope you can overlook a little dust on the shelves.” Sakurako pouted as she handed him another cup of coffee.

  “I was thinking I might try it out.”

  “What, really?!” Another big smile; Sakurako was the kind of girl who never held one expression for long. “I guess none of your friends play, do they? You’ll have to use pick-up guilds for quests... that can be fun in its own way, but if you’re just starting, I can teach you all kinds of things! What kind of race and class do you want? Have you picked your spec?”

  There was an unusual joy in her voice. But then, she had always been a lively girl.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I suppose I’ll choose when the time comes.”

  “I see! Well, the controls take a little learning, and it’s easy to get motion sick, but knowing you, you’ll probably get used to it right away, Ichiro-sama.”

  “Yes, I am a genius, after all.”

  “You are a genius, after all!”

  Sakurako didn’t even try to hide her excitement. She seemed to be enjoying the thought of playing a game with Ichiro. They’d known each other for five years, but this was the first time their interests had ever intersected. So perhaps it was to be expected.

  “I’m surprised to hear you talking about things like this, Ichiro-sama. Usually I just see you gazing at bugs and grinning.”

  “Nonsense. I’m sure that your expressions while consuming manga and anime are equally unbecoming of your good looks. The truth is, Asuha invited me.”

  “Asuha, your second cousin? She’s in middle school, right?” That immediate recall spoke well for her memory.

  “Yes. She turned 14 this year. She’s at least a decade younger than y—”

  “Hey!” Sakurako thrust out a hand to cut him off. “Ichiro-sama, everyone has sensitive areas that should not be touched upon. To do so could be fatal.”

  “Oh, I see.” She seemed to be quoting some novel or manga, but if she didn’t want it mentioned, he wouldn’t mention it.

  Sakurako told
him to wait just a moment, then walked off with the pot still on the table. He thought maybe she needed to finish something up the kitchen, but she returned soon afterward with something in her hands. It was the package for a game and some kind of large headgear.

  “Here it is, Ichiro-sama!” she declared, her ponytail of wavy, chestnut hair swishing. “This is NaroFan and the Miraive!”

  Ichiro picked up the “Miraive” she had offered him and gave it a look over. It was heavier than he had expected.

  The Miraive Gear was the latest game hardware from Pony Entertainment, a large company that produced video games and systems. They had hired the inventor of Drive technology into their research division, and the system had come out just last year. The girl had gone independent after that and designed the MMORPG in question.

  “So I’ll need one of these to play the game?”

  “And of course, you’ll need an internet connection, too. Of course, the quantum connection in this house gives incredible bandwidth, so your home network environment should be smooth and crisp!”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  Ichiro had signed a special contract with a communications company to install quantum internet in the apartment complex he owned. It allowed for far greater data transmission than the standard household connection. Even Ichiro knew that you needed just the right home setup to play online games smoothly, and he was once again glad that it wouldn’t be any special trouble.

  “Ichiro-sama, will you be going to buy a Miraive today?”

  “Hmm.” Ichiro handed the Miraive Gear back to Sakurako, then looked down at his tablet once more. “That’s the Miraive Gear X, correct? The market version. The IPU is eight teraFLOPS? Quite impressive...”

  “It’s expensive, though, compared to other game hardware... And nowadays, most people play consumer games on mobile devices, so they really aren’t selling that well.”

  Ichiro’s tablet browser was opened to the Pony product information page. But it wasn’t the home user page. It was the one for companies. “If I’m going to play, I’d like hardware with good specs.”

  “Oh, you mean the next-generation one? It’s got a slightly bigger hard drive, and it’s lighter. Though I’ve heard the first wave of them had a lot of bugs...”

  “No, I mean this Miraive Gear Cocoon.” Ichiro pointed to his tablet screen, and Sakurako’s eyes went wide.

  The screen displayed an apparatus with a curved form suggestive of a mini-car, along with a snappy catchphrase. The base color was metallic silver, with eye-catching black plastic transparent facings.

  The near-future silhouette was similar to Sakurako’s own Miraive Gear X, but the specs were totally different. The image processor’s floating-point calculation was 200 teraFLOPS. It was like the supercomputers of ages past. What a terrifying world they lived in, for things like this to be in circulation on the general market.

  Sakurako spoke up hesitantly, to confirm his statement. “Um, you mean this commercial hardware?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “The ones that arcades and network cafes use for their VR games?”

  “Yes, those.”

  “The super-expensive ones that even the biggest arcades can only afford one or two of?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “Y-You’re going to buy one?!”

  “It’s not as if it’s all that expensive. And if I’m going to play, I want to do it in the best environment possible,” Ichiro said, clearly ignoring her conversational hints.

  Accustomed as Sakurako was to her master’s eccentricities, this still had her in a daze. Her already wide eyes opened even wider — an amusing sight, perhaps, to an outside observer.

  “I-Ichiro-sama! I am but a commoner! Please do not commit such reckless spending in my presence! You don’t know what it’s doing to me!” Tears were building up in her eyes. Her plea seemed sincere, but Ichiro ignored that, too.

  “I was thinking of buying one for you, too,” he said.

  “Please do! Thank you!” she said immediately.

  Sakurako was defeated. Greed was truly a terrifying thing.

  Asuha Tsuwabuki was a 14-year-old girl attending a middle school in Nagoya.

  She didn’t yet know what she wanted to be when she grew up.

  She was related by blood to the Tsuwabuki family, who had run a zaibatsu in Satsuma, Kyushu, before the war. Her family tree was full of world-renowned celebrities, but her own family life was relatively banal.

  Her father was a white-collar worker in the area, and her mother was just rather good at English. They were a slightly intellectual but otherwise ordinary husband and wife.

  Asuha’s own personal achievements included taking second place in her elementary school traffic safety slogan contest and maybe being the ace pitcher for her rather weak elementary and middle school softball clubs.

  A week ago, she had gone to her great-grandfather Hayato Tsuwabuki’s birthday party... to invite her cousin Ichiro to play the VRMMORPG Narrow Fantasy Online.

  The next day, when he had sent her an e-mail to announce that he was buying the game system and software, Asuha had nearly jumped in the air. She had wanted to log in immediately and go to meet him, but the thick wall of reality stood in her way: Term finals were coming up, and her parents had forbidden her from playing any online games.

  So she sent Ichiro a tearful apology e-mail, then spent a week obsessively devoted to the pursuit of academic learning.

  Ichiro responded with an e-mail asking her to meet up with him in-game the day the tests were over, and Asuha used that as fuel for her spirit, pencil gripped tightly in hand.

  So tightly, in fact, that she had ruined five pencils by now. Never underestimate the grip strength of an ace pitcher.

  At last, after conquering the fearsome foes known as English and math, she returned home in triumph. Her mother pulled out her Miraive Gear with a smile and a warning not to overindulge, and returned it to her.

  “Asuha, I hear Ichiro’s going to play with you. Is that right?” her mother asked with a knowing smile. “The family tells me that you don’t talk about marrying him anymore, even when you go to Grandpa’s house for New Year’s.”

  “Stop talking about that!” She had been expecting to be teased about it, and having that confirmed just caused Asuha to bark out in protest. “I’m not a child anymore! I’m in middle school now!”

  “Really? But you wanted to play a game with Ichiro, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but... oh, never mind! I’ll be down for dinner!” Asuha huffed as she stormed out of the kitchen.

  As she stomped up the stairs, her obsession was already turning from academics to something else.

  Her mother didn’t understand anything. Asuha Tsuwabuki was no longer a child. She was 14 years old, after all.

  It was true that a long time ago, she had earned snickers by hanging on to “Itchy” and insisting she was going to marry him. She understood that. But that was in the past.

  It had been allowed while her age was in single digits, but as of her tenth birthday, she had officially abandoned those childish ideas without a single particle of regret.

  It was true that “Itchy,” Ichiro Tsuwabuki, was handsome and smart and really nice to her. Girls liked him because he was so rich. He was athletic, he was talented, he painted beautiful pictures, he played instruments and sang well, and he had great taste. And when they used to go shopping together, he always picked out the best outfits for her.

  He was a wonderful man. And they were only second cousins, so there was no legal reason they couldn’t be married... but she was like a little sister to Itchy, and he would never see her as a romantic partner. Besides, as her grandmother said, unrequited first love was the most beautiful love of all.

  But as for her motives this time around...

  Yes, the reason she had invited Ichiro to play the game with her went beyond the mere childish impulse to spend time together. She wasn’t without an ulterior motive... but that motive was, ye
s, something much more profound. Something her mother wouldn’t understand.

  Some of this introspection was just boasting to cover up her own blossoming embarrassment, but Asuha didn’t realize that, of course.

  “Whew!” Asuha strode into her room with her Miraive Gear and slammed the door with a bang.

  Six months ago, she had begun begging her parents to buy it for her. Of course, half of the cost had come out of her New Year’s money.

  She hadn’t wanted it because of any interest in the game. She was looking for someone. There was someone inside the game that she had to find.

  Unfortunately, the game world had turned out to be much bigger than she had expected, and a character’s level and spec severely limited where you could go. A nice older lady had told her that teaming up was the fastest way to advance, but no guild or party would take on a player like Asuha who was busy with real-life club activities, and game systems were expensive, so she couldn’t just expect her friends to sign up.

  That was where Ichiro came in.

  Ichiro had more than enough money and time. He would probably conform to Asuha’s schedule, and he was smart, so he could probably help her. At least, that was Asuha’s thought.

  Of course, Ichiro would start as a beginner, too. Asuha had been playing the game for far longer. This was, in fact, another important point for her. After all, Ichiro was the “flawless superhuman.” It wasn’t often that she’d have a chance to teach him something. Her straightforward leveling had born fruit, and Asuha’s avatar was already in the high 30s. Thus, the first thing she would do was go around with Ichiro in the field and help him level up.

  She chuckled as she turned on her Miraive Gear and connected it to the internet with her LAN cable. The corners of her mouth twitched upwards.

  “Itchy, I’m not going to be a child forever.”

  She was going to shock him with how capable she’d become.

  Although she did have to admit... Ichiro’s live-in servant, the maid Sakurako, was a concern. She also played a lot of video games. Then again, she had lots of distractions, too. She had to clean Ichiro’s big house, and prepare three meals a day. She probably hadn’t played much more than Asuha.