Paying to Win in a VRMMO: Volume 2

by Blitz Kiva

  0 - Prologue

  One day, two small packages arrived at the penthouse floor of a luxury apartment complex in Sangenjaya.

  That in itself was not unusual; it was a place where people lived, so it was natural for the apartment to receive packages from time to time. Moreover, the resident of this particular penthouse was the young prince of the financial world, Ichiro Tsuwabuki. It wasn’t uncommon for him to receive extravagant gifts — with attached letters reading “hoping for your continued support” — from people with whom he’d had only a single, passing interaction.

  The apartment was so used to receiving such gifts that the arrival of the small packages wouldn’t usually be worthy of any special mention. Except, that day, Ichiro went out of his way to sign for the packages himself. He also gave the delivery person a gift of expensive juice from Ginza Sembikiya, and returned to his living room in high spirits.

  “You seem to be enjoying yourself,” his maid, Sakurako Ogi, murmured as she caught sight of him while bringing him his morning coffee.

  “Could you tell?” he asked.

  “I most certainly could.” Sakurako set the cup down in front of Ichiro, who was sitting on the sofa.

  “Ah, thank you.”

  “They don’t appear to be very large packages. Might I ask what’s in them?”

  “I can tell you what’s in one of them,” Ichiro said as he picked up one of the two small packages and carefully began to unwrap it.

  Sakurako hugged the tray in her arms as she leaned over the back of the sofa to watch. Except when serving his coffee or tea, it was part of her creed as a servant to always remain behind or beside him.

  He opened the thin, flat package, then carefully extracted the item from its packaging paper. It resembled a butterfly made of silver, resting its wings. Its fanciful coloring reflected the room’s fluorescent lighting in a way that was quietly breathtaking.

  “Oh...” Sakurako whispered, her breath indeed taken. “It’s a brooch, isn’t it?”

  “It is a brooch, yes.”

  “The one you wear in NaroFan?”

  “Yes, the one I wear in NaroFan.”

  Ichiro Tsuwabuki’s avatar in the VRMMO NaroFan — in other words, Narrow Fantasy Online — was a rather unconventional one. First, there was the fact that he had named his character after himself, but that actually wasn’t the biggest problem.

  The problem was that, despite NaroFan’s world featuring a general high fantasy aesthetic, his avatar went around clad in dark blue formalwear. A suit with a glossy finish meant to evoke butterfly wings was eye-catching enough by itself, but on top of that, as if to cement the unique costume’s theme, he also wore a butterfly brooch with a rather ungainly design.

  The brooch that Ichiro now pulled out of the box and gleefully pinned to his chest was identical to that one. Its flawless recreation of the design’s exquisite awkwardness reflected highly on the skill of the artisan who had crafted it.

  Yes, this was the work of an artisan.

  “Did you like it so much that you asked that silversmith you know to make it?” Sakurako asked as she checked the name of the sender of the small parcel.

  “That’s right. The design is ungainly and the execution is poor, yet I quite like it.”

  “I see.” Sakurako cast a glance at Ichiro’s chest. The butterfly’s wings were spread triumphantly. It certainly did not, in Sakurako’s opinion, seem appropriate to the high-quality suit that Ichiro typically wore. But she could not deny that the image — of a being spreading its wings regardless of whether it fit in with its surroundings — suited Ichiro to a T. “Has it been a whole ten days since the Iris Brand incident? Time certainly does fly...”

  “A mere ten days, from my point of view,” Ichiro said. “I love how rich my time has felt lately.”

  The two began to speak a bit more earnestly to each other, recalling their shared experience.

  “After that, I had a feeling you’d start something else, and...”

  “Hmm?” Ichiro asked. “Did I start something?”

  “You certainly did...” Sakurako began, before opting not to bring up Ichiro’s outrageous behavior the other day at the Grand Quest. Ichiro had done what he wanted then, and to try to argue would be “nonsense.”

  The Iris Brand incident had taken place shortly after Ichiro had begun playing NaroFan. It had all started with a girl whom he had met while searching for new equipment. An interesting girl, in Ichiro’s opinion.

  That butterfly brooch had brought them together. As Ichiro had said, the design was ungainly and the execution poor; it was also statistically deficient, offering a mere two skill slots and a luck modifier of +3. The difference between it and the equipment painstakingly crafted by the game’s official designers was like night and day. A sad little item, but still Ichiro liked it.

  “Now, then...” Ichiro stood up, leaving the other package untouched.

  “Are you ready to head out?” Sakurako asked.

  “Yes. I believe the ceremony was to start at 11:00. Would you drive me?”

  “Certainly, sir.” Sakurako offered him a reverent bow, still hugging the tray to her chest.

  As she did, she glanced back upwards, and asked...

  “In the interest of caution, Ichiro-sama, may I ask...?”

  “Yes?”

  “You’re attending a party at the store run by the daughter of the president of Tsunobeni, Inc., aren’t you? The young woman starting her own fashion brand.”

  “Yes, Megumi Fuyo. She’s opening her first boutique, and, well, we are acquaintances. I’ll only be stopping in briefly, though.”

  “I’m sure it’s meaningless to ask, but... will you be wearing that?” Sakurako was referring, naturally, to the slightly awkward brooch that Ichiro had affixed to his chest.

  As mentioned earlier, the brooch had been designed by a girl Ichiro had met in NaroFan. She was a bit rough around the edges, but a forthright girl. Sakurako was fond of her, too, and she knew that Ichiro enjoyed that sort of personality, which made him like the brooch all the more. But even so, it wasn’t something to be worn to his current destination.

  “Nonsense,” Ichiro said, brushing off her doubts in his usual way. “From an objective point of view, I recognize that Iris’s design is sloppy, lacking in originality, bizarre in the ways it does try to be original, and so ungainly that it could never compare to the fashionable, universally accessible yet slightly high-fashion designs of Megumi, the woman who I am about to go see...”

  “W-Wow... That just about covers it...”

  “...but that is merely the objective point of view. I like this brooch, and thus, I will wear it. Any further questions?”

  “It was the answer I was expecting, so no, not really,” Sakurako responded as she set Ichiro’s empty coffee cup onto her tray. “In that case, Ichiro-sama. I shall bring the car around. I’ll call you when preparations are finished, so please, wait a moment.” She gave him another reverent bow.

  As he watched her head out, he stroked the silverwork butterfly on his chest with a sense of satisfaction, and said: “Yes, very good.”

  1 - Noble Son, Boast

  Tsunobeni, Inc. was a large company, one of the leading drivers of Japan’s financial world alongside Tsuwabuki General Trading and Tanaka Manufacturing.

  Its president, Eikei Fuyo, had been blessed with a daughter while in his mid-thirties, and had raised her like a princess. Early in life, she had demonstrated an unparalleled talent for the arts.

  That daughter, Megumi, had finally achieved her dream of starting up her own fashion brand, MiZUNO. Most of the apparel that they sold was designed by Megumi Fuyo herself.

  She was a young female en
trepreneur, single, in her late twenties, with no scandals to her name. This naturally led to many young businessmen coming to her boutique’s opening ceremony with flowers in hand. Megumi Fuyo greeted them all, and, with the dazzling smile of the born elite, as well as overwhelming charisma and not a word out of place, she dashed the ambitions of each of them in turn.

  It was just around that time when...

  “Congratulations on your new brand, Megumi.”

  Our noble son appeared from the midst. For some reason, he was carrying a bag instead of a bouquet. Of course, he was the much-envied prince of the economic world, and the others could only gnash their teeth at his incredible aura of personal charisma.

  For the first time that night, the smile on Megumi Fuyo’s face was genuine. “Ichiro! It’s been so long! So you really did come.”

  “Yes, I did,” he said.

  The smile that she presented him with — denied to the men who had offered her bouquets before — was a purely girlish one. Well, perhaps “girlish” was not the right description for a woman of 28 years, but... let’s not pry into that one any further. At any rate, Fuyo’s welcome for Ichiro was different than it had been for the others.

  He wore his usual odiously composed expression, and he hadn’t brought flowers. The young heir was known as an iconoclast, so it came to no one’s surprise that he hadn’t prepared the standard offering. Yet this just gave the young, status-seeking hopefuls of the economic world all the more reason to scrutinize Ichiro’s gift to the woman of their designs.

  “First, Megumi, I prepared this to celebrate your new business,” he said, presenting his gift.

  “My!” With her hands pressed to her chest in delight, Fuyo was every bit the image of the charmed maiden. “I never thought the day would come when you’d give me a present, Ichiro. You’ve always been so... well... uncooperative.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “I possess the desire to celebrate a friend’s new venture, just like anyone else.”

  Fuyo would have liked to say something about one particular word in that statement, but her upbringing had not been the sort that taught a person to say everything that was in their heart. For now, she simply accepted the item that Ichiro pulled out of the bag and handed to her.

  It was a wooden carving with a tribal air about it.

  “My...”

  “It’s a god of prosperity worshiped in a small island country in the South Pacific,” he said. “I went there some time ago in pursuit of new bug species, and it was given to me by one of the locals. When I heard you were embarking on a new business venture, I decided I’d give it to you if we ever had a chance to meet.”

  It was a gift in bizarre taste, and some might wonder if he was mocking her. But Ichiro Tsuwabuki was very serious. It was enough to make the young businessmen gathered in the hall back away a step.

  “I’m so happy...”

  But what was even more incomprehensible to them was the way Megumi Fuyo hugged the wood carving to her chest.

  “I’ll treasure it,” she said. “Er, it may not fit to the store’s atmosphere, so I’ll have to keep it at home, but...”

  “Do with it as you wish, Megumi. I leave it up to you. As long as it makes you happy, that’s what matters.” There was a curious satisfaction in Ichiro’s expression.

  Ichiro Tsuwabuki was a man of great refinement, blessed with impeccable aesthetic sense. How could someone like him choose a present like that? And now that they looked again, the butterfly brooch pinned to his chest was also rather cheap-looking and crude for a bit of artisanal silverwork...

  But Megumi Fuyo, the present’s recipient, seemed no less than overjoyed by it.

  Was there something about the exchange that only those of the beyond-rich-and-famous class could understand? Or was it an exchange unique to Ichiro Tsuwabuki and Megumi Fuyo? The young businessmen racked their brains over the sight.

  Ichiro and Fuyo had known each other for about five years — both a long and short time, depending on how you looked at it.

  At first, their connection had been a rather superficial one, based solely on the fact that she was the daughter of the head of Tsunobeni, Inc.

  But they were relatively close in age, and during a time when Fuyo had been racking her brain trying to decide what to do with her life, Ichiro had given her some useful advice. She had formed a strange emotional attachment to him that day, and things had been like this ever since.

  For his part, Ichiro didn’t think of them as particularly close, but he didn’t dislike her, either. He thought of her as a friend. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have come to her business’s opening celebration, and he certainly wouldn’t have given her a present. He was well aware that Fuyo’s attitude and feelings for him went beyond that, but to do any more for her would be nonsense. In his own mind, Ichiro had drawn a line.

  The main ceremony had finished, and it was time for the guests to socialize and network. Naturally, Ichiro had quite a few prominent figures attempting to cozy up to him, which had him quite annoyed. It was at this point that Megumi Fuyo took the initiative to speak to him.

  “Ichiro, are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.

  Given his experience as described above, he couldn’t claim to be enjoying himself at all. In truth, he was mostly thinking about what he would do in Narrow Fantasy Online when he got home, and wondering what Sakurako was up to in the Lincoln in the parking lot. Ah, but as far as the latter went, the answer likely required no deep thought; she was likely just playing games on her cell phone or watching a DVD.

  Ichiro Tsuwabuki was not one to mince words. “To be blunt, I haven’t been enjoying myself much.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose you haven’t changed in that regard.”

  “Indeed. Change is never easy, and I have no need to do it in the first place,” Ichiro said.

  At that point, Ichiro noticed the woman that Fuyo had brought with her. She looked a good ten years younger than Fuyo, and a bit younger than Ichiro, as well. She was wearing a business suit that smelled faintly of desperation, and her expression was awash with the tension and exhaustion of one who had too much to do every day. All that aside, it was rare to see a young woman like her at an occasion like this.

  “Megumi, who is this?” Ichiro, realizing Fuyo would be interested in introducing them, decided to beat her to the punch.

  “This is Azami Nono, a young businesswoman,” Fuyo said with a bright smile.

  The description “a young businesswoman” would seem to apply to Fuyo, as well, but... yes, of course. The more he looked at her, the more he noticed how young this girl was. She looked as though she had only just lost her baby fat.

  But that name, Azami Nono. There was something familiar about that name...

  “The male businessmen still far outnumber us, you know?” Fuyo said. “So we find ourselves exchanging opinions quite often.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, Ichiro Tsuwabuki,” the girl said politely. “I’ve heard about you.”

  “A pleasure, Azami.” Ichiro smiled cheerfully as he took the outstretched hand of Azami Nono. “Only good things, I hope.”

  He looked at the card she offered him, and his eyes narrowed.

  “What’s this? President of the Thistle Corporation? Ah, so you’re the head of Thistle...”

  “It’s a small company, only just founded,” she said.

  The Thistle Corporation was a recent start-up meant to develop software that incorporated virtual reality technology, but Ichiro Tsuwabuki was familiar with it for other reasons. The VRMMORPG Narrow Fantasy Online that he’d started playing and had become engrossed in recently was Thistle’s main product. In other words, the person standing before Ichiro right now was the one in charge of the all-powerful development team.

  “I’ve been enjoying NaroFan,” he said. “Do forgive me for putting such a burden on the server the other day.”

  “Ah, certainly... So that was you after all, was it?” Azami asked with a straine
d smile.

  Fuyo tilted her head in confusion.

  Ichiro was talking about something that had happened a few days ago, during the Grand Quest to liberate the Delve Necrolands. He had, to put it bluntly, gotten into a fight with another player. Then, during the match, he had taken advantage of his own connection speed and the overwhelming processor power of his commercial-grade hardware to inflate server traffic and cause a slowdown attack. Such attacks were known as DOS attacks when done maliciously, or, more commonly, F5 attacks.

  It was likely that the only players on the server who had been able to move properly during that time were Ichiro Tsuwabuki and possibly Sakura Ogi, who shared his play environment. The blessings provided by the high-capacity quantum connection were vast.

  “It did seem a rather immature tactic, though,” Azami said.

  “Nonsense,” Ichiro laughed. “I love doing things that test the boundaries of the rules. Though now that it’s been prohibited, I can’t do it again.”

  It seemed that the dev team hadn’t anticipated that form of attack, either. The next day, they had done emergency maintenance to reinforce their servers, and added a line forbidding DOS attacks into the user agreement. There had also been concern that the swell of pay-to-download potions and other items he had bought to cause the traffic surge would wreak havoc with the game’s economic balance just by existing, so Ichiro had destroyed them all personally.

  “Ichiro, do you play VR games?” Megumi asked. She looked surprised, as if she had finally caught up with the conversation.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, I’ve always had interest in Drive technology. How to put it... Some time ago, I heard the stories of a young prodigy who had graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of ten. I learned of the theory by reading her graduate thesis, though I thought it would take five or six years to put it into commercial use.”

  “Yes, that was me,” Azami said. “That was nine years ago now, I suppose... and I developed the Miraive Gear with Pony Entertainment three years ago.”

  President Azami rattled all this off lightly. An unreadable something crept into Ichiro’s expression.