In this world, fiber optics for high-speed internet had been researched much earlier than in Zaboru's previous world. The groundwork was already in motion long before he even considered investing in Sendou Company, which meant the technology reached maturity on its own timeline instead of being dragged forward by his influence.
And yes, Sendou Company was the driving force behind that research. They pushed the field aggressively, secured partnerships, and kept pressure on suppliers and infrastructure teams until progress stopped being theoretical and started becoming visible in real streets. While other companies hesitated, Sendou treated fiber like the next national backbone, not a luxury experiment.
Now the result was in front of everyone: FTTH was ready. Not "coming soon," not "a few years away," but ready to be marketed and installed in homes, the same way Zaboru remembered it only becoming truly available in Japan around the latter period back in his old life 2001 to be exact. The difference was the quality. The speed and stability were far ahead of what this year should normally allow.
In fact, the performance level was closer to what Zaboru remembered from around 2003 in his previous world. That meant not just faster downloads, but a different kind of internet altogether: smoother streaming, cleaner real-time communication, and the ability to move large data without waiting like it was a punishment. For anyone who understood technology, it was obvious.
This wasn't just "really fast." This was the foundation for a new era.
Saturday Night 25 October 1999.
ZAGE Event Building in Tokyo was packed to the edges, a bright sea of faces under stage lights. The front rows were full of invited guests—industry figures, magazine writers, radio hosts, and a few celebrities who'd quietly admitted they spent their nights grinding ZAGE games like everyone else. Behind them were the real engine of the crowd: casual fans, die-hard fans, kids on their parents' shoulders, and older players who had taken the last train just to be here.
Live cameras were everywhere. Japanese stations had their full rigs set up with heavy lenses and tall tripods, cables taped down across the floor like veins. International crews stood near the side with translators and headphones, doing last-minute checks. Red tally lights flickered on and off as directors signaled, and the soft whir of broadcast cameras blended with the crowd's restless energy. Some fans held disposable cameras and point-and-shoot film cameras, aiming them toward the stage, ready to catch the moment the legend appeared.
Because when Zaboru did a showcase, people knew it wasn't just another corporate presentation. It was an event.
The lights dimmed slightly. A wave of murmurs rolled through the hall. Then the stage screens flashed the ZAGE logo, and the music swelled—short, dramatic, enough to make the hairs on people's arms rise.
Zaboru stepped onto the stage.
The reaction hit like a gust of wind. Applause burst out instantly, mixed with shocked laughter and excited shouting. He hadn't been seen in months. The last time the public saw him clearly was during the Z-Pod presentation, and even then he'd looked different—still recovering, still dealing with the aftermath of that accident that left his head shaved.
Now, he looked renewed.
He wore a clean, sharp outfit that didn't scream for attention, but somehow pulled it anyway—simple lines, confident posture. And the biggest surprise was his hair: short, stylish, and dyed with a bold color!. It wasn't loud in a childish way. It was deliberate, like a flag. *Image
A few fans in the crowd grabbed their friends' sleeves and pointed, whispering so fast their words tripped over each other. Some people laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was so unexpected it made them happy this sheer randomness are just like Zaboru.
Zaboru smiled and took the microphone. He waited just long enough for the noise to settle into a steady rumble, then lifted his chin slightly.
"Hello, everyone!"
The crowd answered him with a roar.
He chuckled, tilting his head and briefly running a hand through his hair as if he was letting them look properly. "And how does my hair look?"
Laughter spread through the seats. Someone shouted, "You are Very Cool!" Another shouted something unintelligible that sounded like pure excitement.
Zaboru laughed with them. "Hahaha. It might look a little silly, but I dyed it for this special occasion." His tone softened for a beat, and his smile sharpened into something more focused. "Because tonight is important. Not just for ZAGE." He paused, letting the words hang. "For all of us."
The hall grew a little quieter—still buzzing, still alive, but now listening. Cameras locked onto him. Notebooks opened. Pens started moving.
Zaboru looked across the crowd like he was counting their faces one by one, then lifted the mic again, ready to begin.
Everyone was clapping, still buzzing from the hair reveal, and Zaboru used that energy like a ramp. He walked slowly across the stage, letting the lights catch the blue tint in his hair as he turned his head from left to right, meeting the crowd's eyes.
"Hey!" he called, voice bright through the speakers. "Do you guys know fiber optics?"
A wave of hands went up—some confident, some hesitant. A lot of people just laughed and looked at their friends, like the question had suddenly turned into a surprise quiz.
"Those of you who know—great!" Zaboru pointed into the audience as if he could see each hand clearly. "And those of you who don't… I won't torture you with a textbook explanation."
The crowd laughed.
"Because, yeah," he said with a grin, "that could get boring, right?"
More laughter, louder now. The cameras tightened their zoom. Pens scratched faster.
Zaboru lifted the microphone again and made a small chopping motion with his free hand, like he was trimming away unnecessary details. "What you need to know is simple. Right now, most of us are used to waiting. Waiting for a page to load. Waiting for a file to finish downloading. Waiting for pictures to appear line by line."
He tilted his head, as if he could hear the collective memory of modems squealing in people's homes. "Even with ISDN or the fastest ADSL, you still feel that waiting. It's like driving on a road where everyone is forced into one narrow lane."
He spread his hands wide. "Fiber optics is a highway. Not just a little faster—much wider. Much cleaner. Much more stable."
Zaboru's grin sharpened. "It can multiply our internet speed by a huge margin if you use it. Not a small upgrade. Not a tiny improvement. A real jump."
The room shifted. Not everyone understood the technology, but everyone understood the promise in his tone.
A murmur rippled through the hall. Some people already knew what fiber optic cables were and leaned in, excited, whispering fast explanations to their friends. Others repeated the word under their breath like they were tasting it for the first time. In the back rows, someone asked, loud enough to be heard by the people around them, "So… it's like the current ASDL but better?"
"Way better," a friend answered immediately, eyes shining.
Zaboru heard the exchange and laughed softly into the mic, clearly pleased. "Exactly," he said, as if responding to the entire hall at once. "Better enough that you'll feel the difference without needing to understand the science."
"Fiber optics development and research were accelerated because of Sendou Inc—and its CEO, Himura Sendou-san."
Behind him, the big screens shifted. The ZAGE logo faded out, replaced by clean, high-contrast photos of Himura Sendou: one shaking hands at a ceremony, another standing beside a trench of fresh conduit with a hard hat on, another pointing at a blueprint spread across a table.
Zaboru angled his body toward the screens and lifted a hand as if introducing someone at a ceremony. "This guy didn't just 'fund a lab' and call it a day," he said, voice light but respectful. "He pushed the research forward. He kept it moving. He convinced people who hate risk to take risk anyway."
A few nods rippled through the audience—especially among the older guests who understood how slow infrastructure usually was.
"And yes," Zaboru added, "he had help. Government support, city cooperation, and teams willing to do the boring, thankless work: permits, planning, digging, and laying cable in places nobody wants to dig."
Zaboru smiled. "And ZAGE helped too—with funding—because this project is very important to us."
The next slide appeared: a simplified map of Japan, bright lines branching outward like veins. Major cities glowed first, then smaller ones, then the lines reached toward the edges.
"Right now," Zaboru continued, "fiber coverage in Japan is already being built at scale. The backbone is in place. The rollout is real, not just a promise. And from here, it expands."
He let that sink in for a beat, then tapped the air again. A new map appeared, broader—East Asia highlighted, then a second slide that hinted at overseas connections.
"Soon it won't stop at Japan," he said. "China and Korea will follow. The United States will follow, too. Not under Sendou Inc, because every country has its own rules, its own infrastructure, its own companies." He shrugged slightly. "But the direction is the same. Other partners will handle it there. and next? the Whole World"
The crowd murmured again. People whispered to friends, pointing at the maps. The international camera crews leaned in, translators already murmuring into microphones.
Zaboru turned back to the audience and grinned, the playful spark returning. "But let's talk about the part that actually matters to you."
He lifted the microphone and spoke more clearly, like he was underlining the next sentence.
"And now I'll tell you the main project behind all of this: so every Japanese citizen—every Japanese household—can use fiber directly at home."
A bold title appeared on the screen in big letters: FTTH.
"Yes," Zaboru said, pointing at it. "It's called FTTH. Fiber To The Home."
He paused, then smiled as if he already knew what the next reaction would be.
"And when you see it," he said, voice warm and certain, "you will notice the difference."
Zaboru laughed and began to pace again, letting the tension loosen before he tightened the focus. "But you might be thinking, 'Fiber To The Home? Great, but why should I care?'" He lifted a hand, as if catching the question before it could fly from the audience. "You should care because this isn't a small upgrade. This multiplies internet speed by a huge margin compared to what we're using right now."
He pointed toward the side of the stage. "And instead of talking about it for ten minutes, let me show you. Okay?"
A ripple of anticipation moved through the seats.
Two staff members rolled in a pair of desktop PCs on wheeled carts—beige towers, CRT monitors, and thick bundles of cables taped neatly to avoid accidents. Each setup had a small label placed on the front so the cameras could catch it clearly: ADSL on one, FTTH on the other.
The moment the carts stopped, the stage crew switched the feed. Both computer screens appeared on the giant display behind Zaboru, side by side, so the entire hall could see every click.
Zaboru walked to the ADSL machine first. "Now, as you can see, we have two PCs with different connections." He tapped the ADSL label lightly. "Let's test the current fastest ADSL in Japan."
He sat down, adjusted the mouse, and opened a simple download page prepared for the demonstration. The file was ordinary on purpose: a short promotional video clip, about 100 megabytes. Nothing fancy. Something realistic.
"Watch the number," Zaboru said.
He clicked.
A download window popped up. The speed meter climbed, stabilized, then hovered in a familiar range: 126 to 150 kilobytes per second.
The audience murmured. Not disappointed—more like nodding along. That was the speed many of them knew. That was the speed that felt "fast enough" until you actually watched time get spent.
Zaboru smiled and leaned back slightly so the cameras could see his face. "Quite fast for now, right? At this speed, a 100MB video or file takes around ten minutes." He glanced at the crowd. "Do you think that's impressive?"
A lot of people nodded. Some clapped politely. A few even whistled, because compared to the old days of waiting forever, ten minutes felt like progress.
Zaboru nodded too, acknowledging it honestly. "It is impressive—for today." He paused, then stood and stepped toward the second machine, the one labeled FTTH. The corner of his mouth lifted like he was about to pull a curtain off something dangerous. "Now… let's compare it to what comes next."
Then Zaboru moved to the other PC and grinned. "Wait until you see this."
He sat down at the FTTH machine, rested his hand on the mouse like he was about to perform a magic trick, and clicked the exact same link.
The download window appeared.
The number jumped.
It didn't climb slowly the way ADSL did. It leaped, stabilized, and then the progress bar sprinted across the screen like it was late for the last train.
Six seconds.
Seven.
Done.
For a beat, the hall went quiet—not because nobody cared, but because people's brains needed a second to accept what they had just watched. Then a wave of gasps rolled outward, followed by startled laughter and scattered shouts.
"No way!"
"Already?!"
Someone near the front actually clapped once, sharply, like they were trying to wake themselves up.
Zaboru stood and stepped aside so the cameras could catch both screens at once: the ADSL window still crawling, and the FTTH one already finished, clean and undeniable.
He spread his hands. "Notice the difference?"
A cheer rose, but it came in waves. The people who understood what this meant were exploding with excitement—tech writers, engineers, network staff, students who had been dreaming about faster lines. They leaned into their neighbors, whispering fast, hands moving like they were drawing graphs in the air.
"That's not a little faster," someone said.
"That's a different world," another answered.
But plenty of casual fans only felt impressed in a vague way. A fast download was cool, sure, but in 1999 the internet was still something most people used for web pages, email, and small files. They hadn't yet built the habits that would make speed feel life-changing.
Zaboru noticed immediately. He could read the room the same way he could read a market.
He laughed, waving a hand as if to loosen everyone up. "Hahaha. I know you're trying to be excited. Don't force it!"
The crowd chuckled, and the tension turned warmer.
Zaboru paced across the stage again, microphone steady, voice sharpening. "You might be asking, 'That kind of speed… for what?'" He tilted his head, mimicking the skeptical tone. "'It's not like I'm an astronaut, right? I'm not sending rockets to space.'"
He shook his head. "No. This isn't about rockets."
He lifted a finger. "It's about time. It's about removing waiting from everyday life."
His steps were measured now, deliberate, like he was building a bridge from a simple demo to a bigger truth. "All these years, I've had ideas—ideas that can change the way we live. Everyday technology. Everyday entertainment. Things that feel normal once they exist… but impossible while we're still chained to slow lines."
He gestured back at the two PCs. "Why haven't those ideas appeared yet? Why does the future always arrive late? Why i and ZAGE not implement it?"
His smile tightened into something confident. "Simple. Because of internet speed."
A low murmur spread through the hall, more attentive now.
"Right now, we design around limitations," Zaboru continued. "We design around waiting. We design around the fear that someone will give up halfway through a download. We design around the fact that sharing something big is a hassle, that updates feel painful, that even sending a simple video can steal an entire evening."
He opened both hands, like he was pushing a door wide. "But with FTTH… you stop designing around waiting. You start designing around possibility."
He pointed toward the audience, row by row. "Students can access full lessons without the clock punishing them. Offices can move real data without treating it like a precious jewel. Artists can send work without burning it onto disks and praying the mail doesn't bend the package. Families can use the internet without one person hogging the line and ruining it for everyone else."
He paused, letting the images settle.
"And for games and entertainment," he said, voice warming, "it means the world gets bigger. It means updates and new content don't feel like punishment. It means online play becomes smoother, more stable. It means we can deliver experiences faster and more fairly, instead of relying on who lives closest to a good connection."
Zaboru grinned again, the showman returning for a beat. "So don't worry if you're not cheering yet. You will."
He paced once more, and this time the audience energy followed him—curiosity turning into real excitement, as if the room had finally understood that they weren't watching a speed test.
They were watching the beginning of a new era.
Zaboru grinned. "And now, let me show you one of the dreams I'm going to build. It's called Steam."
To be continue
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