Friday arrived, the final workday of the week.
The moment Ichin got to the company that morning, he immediately buried himself in work. They would be returning to China tomorrow, so he needed to properly wrap up this week's tasks today while also arranging all of next week's projects in advance.
From Monday to Wednesday next week, not only would Ichin himself be away, he would also be taking several bridesmaids with him. Everyone involved needed to arrange their own work schedules properly as well.
So despite it being Friday, the day was still quite busy.
At ten o'clock, Hazuki walked into the office carrying several documents.
"Ichin, take a look at these. If there aren't any problems, you can sign them."
Ichin nodded, paused his current work, and took the documents from her.
After sitting down, Hazuki smiled and asked:
"Utaha still didn't come in today?"
Ichin signed one of the documents before picking up the next one.
"Yeah. She went to the publishing house today to discuss revisions for the next volume with Sonoko. She'll probably be busy all day. Sonoko will bring her back to the company later this afternoon, so I don't need to pick her up."
After hearing that, Hazuki nodded with a smile.
"Her novel career really is going smoothly. Utaha's writing speed is impressive, and her popularity keeps steadily rising too. But after readers found out she was getting married, didn't that affect sales at all?"
"Actually, not really."
Ichin finished reading another document and signed it before thinking for a moment.
"I asked Utaha about that before. According to her, the publishing house actually did market research on it. There was a tiny bit of fluctuation at first, but only a very small amount. After all, ever since her debut until now, Utaha has never participated in offline autograph events or anything like that. She's always relied purely on her work itself.
"As for the whole 'beautiful girl light novel author' image, the publishing house never intentionally promoted that either. It was something internet users came up with themselves after her identity was revealed. So after all these years, most readers stopped caring whether Utaha was a girl or not. At this point, the majority are simply readers who focus entirely on the novels themselves. Look, even though Utaha's writing style has changed a little recently, it still hasn't affected sales, right?"
"That's true."
A few minutes later, Ichin finished reviewing and signing all the documents before handing them back to Hazuki.
Hazuki stood up with the files in hand and said:
"Since neither Utaha nor Yukino are here today, want to go out for lunch with us? Aoba, Hifumi, and I already planned to go eat sukiyaki."
Ichin nodded.
"Sure, count me in. But Hazuki, you're not having lunch with your future boyfriend?"
Hazuki immediately shot him an annoyed glance.
"Stop calling him my future boyfriend. Nothing's confirmed yet."
"But hasn't it already been quite a while? Still not official?"
Ichin stood up as well and left the office together with Hazuki, planning to head downstairs to the development department.
"Hazuki, don't tell me you're trying to keep him as a backup option? That's not very good behavior."
After hearing that, Hazuki directly smacked his shoulder.
"What backup option? I'm just being cautious, that's all. Besides, we already arranged a date actually. We're having dinner tomorrow night and watching a movie afterward."
"That's good then. I really don't want to see you walk down the wrong path."
Hazuki rolled her eyes at him.
"Wrong path? Your way of speaking is getting more ridiculous by the day. Alright, go do your work. I'm heading back to my office too. Come downstairs later."
"Okay."
After heading downstairs, Ichin first visited the Salt and Sanctuary development team to check on the game's progress.
Since the game was scheduled for release in July, and some time still had to be reserved for platform certification and approval, they really only had a little over two months of development time left.
The game itself was already mostly complete. They were currently making final balance adjustments, refining certain monster designs, and integrating the various large maps together.
After checking around and observing some monster animations still undergoing testing, Ichin returned to the Bloodborne development team and continued handling his own programming work there.
When lunchtime arrived, Ichin got off work right on time and left the company together with Hazuki, Aoba, and Hifumi. He drove the three girls to a restaurant famous for sukiyaki.
Sitting in the back seat, Aoba smiled and said:
"I didn't expect Ichin-kun to come with us today. That's pretty rare."
Hazuki, sitting in the passenger seat, turned around with a smile.
"I saw him eating alone today, so I invited him along. Besides, when the boss is eating with you, do you really think you'll have to pay? Just focus on eating. Not everyone gets this kind of treatment."
"Hehehe, true~~"
After several years at the company, Aoba's skin had clearly grown much thicker. Free food and drinks no longer made her embarrassed at all.
Only Hifumi still retained much of her original personality. Her cheeks turned slightly red, and she did not dare join the conversation.
Meanwhile, Ichin glared at Hazuki.
"It's fine if Aoba and Hifumi don't pay. But Hazuki, you can pay for your own portion."
"Eh?! Such unfair treatment! So Ichin really doesn't like older women after all? Young and pretty girls have the advantage, huh~~~"
"..."
Watching Hazuki put on a dramatic self-pity act, Ichin glanced at the two girls in the back through the rearview mirror.
"You two better not learn bad habits from her, got it?"
Aoba and Hifumi immediately nodded obediently.
Hazuki looked even more depressed.
"You're all bullying me..."
Very soon, they arrived at the sukiyaki restaurant. The four of them entered a private room, ordered their food, and began eating.
Hazuki insisted on preparing the sukiyaki herself rather than letting the restaurant staff do it.
While cooking, she asked:
"Ichin, you're leaving tomorrow morning, right?"
Ichin took a bite of a side dish and nodded.
"Yeah. Morning flight. After landing around noon, we'll eat lunch and help everyone get settled in. On Sunday we'll first check out the hotels we picked, and Monday we'll discuss wedding dresses and the bridesmaid and groomsmen outfits. After this trip, we'll probably need to go back another one or two times in May too. If everything goes smoothly, wedding photoshoots should start in May."
"Wedding photos!"
Aoba's eyes instantly filled with excitement.
"Where are you planning to shoot them? Shanghai?"
Ichin nodded.
"Not just there. We'll definitely shoot some in Shanghai, but we might also visit a few nearby places. We'll shoot some in Japan too. The exact details still haven't been finalized yet. Besides our own ideas, we also need to see what kind of plans the photography team suggests."
Truthfully, this was Ichin's first time dealing with wedding photos too, so he had no idea what it would actually be like. But judging from posts and videos he had seen online, it would probably be pretty exhausting.
He would need to mentally prepare himself for it.
...
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