The showcase of Digital World made the world explode. When Zaboru described what "ZAGE Digital World" would become, most ordinary viewers couldn't fully fathom it yet. They heard words like fiber, digital library, video, profiles, and online store, and they understood the feeling—faster, easier, more convenient—but not the full shape of what ZAGE was building.
But the people who lived inside technology understood immediately.
Inside corporate offices across the world, the broadcast was replayed again and again on CRT screens in conference rooms. Engineers paused the footage and rewound it. Executives circled phrases on printed transcripts. Assistants ran between floors carrying binders labeled with the same title: ZAGE Digital World.
Microsoft understood first, and it made them uneasy. They had always treated the PC as their kingdom, and now they were watching a game company quietly draw borders inside it—distribution, identity, community, updates, payments, and media content, all tied together. It wasn't one product. It was a system.
Apple saw something different: a unified experience built around simplicity. Not the messy chaos of drivers and random software, but a curated path—library, wallet, store, community—designed to feel clean and reliable. They didn't like how natural it looked on stage, like it had been tested and polished for months.
Amazon's retail strategists noticed the same thing from another angle. Zaboru wasn't just selling games. He was training customers to trust one account, one wallet, one place to buy. That habit was the real prize.
And Sonaya… Sonaya felt the threat in their bones.
They had discussed ideas like this in internal meetings before—online features, digital delivery, stronger accounts, communities tied to games their musics or movie—but they had always pushed it forward with caution. Too early meant expensive infrastructure. Too late meant losing the market. They were still trying to decide the timing.
Then ZAGE walked onto a stage in Tokyo and said: next year.
That was the part that scared them.
ZAGE wasn't talking like a company that hoped it could do it. ZAGE sounded like a company that already built it and was simply letting the world catch up. That confidence changed the conversation in every boardroom.
For Microsoft and Sonaya, especially, it was a cold splash of reality. They realized they weren't competing with a Big game studio anymore. They were competing with a blueprint for the next era of entertainment.
And the most unsettling question kept appearing in their notes, written in different handwriting, in different languages, across different continents:
How did ZAGE prepare this so early?
Then, just a week after the "Digital World" showcase, something happened that even the optimists didn't expect to see so fast.
Sendou Inc's FTTH service sold like hot cakes.
Orders didn't trickle in—they rushed in. In the main rollout areas, the sign-ups surged so hard that it felt like the whole country had decided, at the same time, that waiting for the internet was officially outdated. Some newspapers even threw around a wild number—nearly seventy percent of households in serviced zones placing orders almost immediately—and even if the exact percentage depended on the city, the mood was undeniable.
Fiber became the new topic in every neighborhood.
People who never cared about technology suddenly cared, because the promise was simple and easy to understand: faster, cleaner, stable. Apartment buildings organized group installations to split fees. Homeowners' associations held quick meetings to decide where cables would be routed. In busy areas, you could see Sendou vans parked along streets early in the morning, workers carrying spools of cable and tool bags, marking routes with tape and chalk.
And it wasn't just households.
Tech companies installed it first, of course—eager to show off, eager to be early. But what surprised everyone was how quickly non-tech businesses followed: printing shops, small offices, cafés, schools, even clinics. The moment owners realized they could send and receive large files without treating it like an all-day task, they stopped hesitating. "If the future is coming," people said, "why should we be the last to arrive?"
Within days, Japan's internet speed jumped by an insane margin—not only on paper, but in daily life. Pages felt instant. Downloads stopped feeling like a gamble. The biggest change wasn't a number on a chart. It was that people stopped budgeting their time around the line.
And ZAGE moved immediately.
In the very first week, the ZAGE Forum received rapid updates to match the new reality. The new video upload feature went live, and suddenly the community changed overnight. Instead of only reading stories about a great match, people could watch it. Instead of only describing a secret trick, players could show it. Short clips spread through threads like wildfire—boss clears, tournament highlights, funny mistakes, ridiculous glitches, and proud "first-time" moments from beginners.
Japan was delighted.
Not in a quiet way, either. It was the kind of excitement you could feel in late-night gaming cafés, in school conversations, in office break rooms. People talked about "fiber" the way they talked about new consoles—like it was something you could feel in your hands.
And, naturally, the rest of the world got jealous.
Overseas forums started filling with jokes and half-serious envy. Someone posted a thread titled, "Why is Zaboru Japanese!? It's so unfair!" and the comments turned into a festival of playful complaining—Americans begging for faster lines, Europeans joking about moving to Tokyo, Koreans arguing about who would get it next.
It was mostly a joke.
But beneath the jokes was something real.
For the first time, people outside Japan could see it clearly: the gap wasn't only about games anymore.
It was about the road those games could travel on.
Steam released to the public soon after, and the reaction was immediate. Reviews flooded in almost overnight. Players who already owned ZAGE PC games rushed to write impressions—short, blunt opinions from tired office workers, long passionate essays from hardcore fans, and funny one-liners that became popular just because they were honest.
The best part was that the review section didn't feel like a one-way wall. People could upvote or downvote reviews, so the most useful comments rose to the top instead of being buried under noise. Guides disguised as reviews appeared. Warnings about difficult sections appeared. Players started debating balance, story beats, and performance, but in a way that actually helped new buyers decide what to play. For the first time, it felt like a store that belonged to gamers, not just a shelf owned by a company.
And the digital store itself worked—smoothly. Pages loaded fast on fiber, purchases completed cleanly, downloads resumed if interrupted, and libraries updated without drama. That reliability created trust fast, and trust spread even faster than the discounts.
Steam Wallet and Steam Gift Cards became the everyday method. It was convenient: no credit card anxiety, no complicated setup, just a card, a scratch code, and a balance. Parents liked it because it felt safer. Students liked it because it was simple. Office workers liked it because they could grab a card on the way home and download a game before dinner.
Of course, people still groaned. If you lived far from an official ZAGE store, you couldn't always buy gift cards at a perfect one-to-one price. Some supermarkets and electronics shops added a small handling fee—50 to 100 yen per card. It wasn't a huge amount in the grand scheme, but it was just enough to annoy people, especially when everyone knew that 100 yen was basically one dollar in this world.
Fans complained loudly anyway, because complaining was part of being a fan.
"This store is robbing me for one yen!" someone joked, even while buying another card.
"It's fine," someone replied. "I'll pay the extra 100 yen if it means I never stand in a release-day line again."
And that was the truth. The tiny fee didn't stop anyone. If anything, it became a running joke on the forums—an accepted pain, like stepping on a Lego once in a while.
The digital store hit massive success, and Zaboru poured fuel on the fire in the smartest way possible. He announced a Steam Release Date Discount: 20% off all available ZAGE games.
For many players, it felt like stealing.
People who had been hesitating suddenly clicked buy. People who already owned games bought extra copies as gifts for friends. Some players even rebuilt their backlogs in a single night, watching their libraries fill as if the store had turned into a festival. The forums lit up with screenshots of purchase confirmations and lists titled, "What I bought with my first Steam Wallet."
Steam didn't just launch.
It landed.
Still, it was a nightmare for players outside Japan who didn't have FTTH. Steam Gift Cards existed, and Steam still worked—but their download speeds were nowhere near Japan's. In those places, a digital purchase could still mean hours of waiting, and the gap became impossible to ignore.
Then other game developers started paying attention. They saw Steam and immediately understood it was a great business model—but also realized the obvious limitation: right now it was only for PC gaming.
That single detail triggered a quiet rush.
Many developers who had been building their games for ZAGE's ZEPS line or Sonaya's GameStation suddenly wanted PC ports. Some studios wanted simple conversions so their existing hits could reach a new audience. Others wanted proper PC editions with more settings and cleaner performance, because Steam made PC feel like a real marketplace instead of a scattered hobby. A few teams even asked the bigger question: should they start planning PC versions from the beginning, instead of treating PC as an afterthought?
Zaboru welcomed them with open arms. He didn't treat them like competitors sneaking into his territory. He treated them like builders arriving at a new city. The more streets there were, the more people would come.
Then came the question everyone expected to hurt.
"How much does it cost to put our game on Steam?"
Most of them expected a percentage cut. A revenue share. A deal that never stopped taking.
Zaboru only smiled and answered with a number that sounded almost unreal.
"Ten thousand yen," he said. "One time."
10,000 yen. One hundred dollars. That's it.
The reaction was always the same: surprise, suspicion, then disbelief.
"No percentage?"
"No cut from sales?"
Zaboru shook his head. "Not right now. Steam is new. Steam needs to grow."
He explained the one-time fee simply. It wasn't a toll road. It was a gate: verification, storefront setup, and basic support—enough to prevent Steam from being flooded by broken uploads and obvious scams, but not enough to scare away honest creators.
To developers, it felt like ZAGE's personality in policy form. ZAGE wasn't being greedy usual way. They were thinking long-term.
Because Zaboru knew the most important thing for Steam wasn't squeezing developers today. It was the amount of games Steam could offer tomorrow. A larger library meant more reasons for players to install Steam, more reasons to keep using it, and more reasons to tell friends, "Just get it on Steam."
In the short term, ZAGE earned less.
In the long term, Steam would become stronger.
And once Steam became strong enough, the market would shift around it—whether other companies liked it or not.
And the ZAGE Digital World kept moving forward, but Zaboru was careful about what he wouldn't build.
He had seen one future already—his previous life—and he knew how a few inventions could quietly grow into something far larger than anyone intended. So he made a decision early: he would not try to become a "search engine" king, and he would not chase the path of social media.
He didn't want ZAGE to turn into something like Google. Search meant indexing the entire world, collecting endless information, and becoming a gatekeeper without even meaning to. It sounded useful, but it also attracted the wrong kind of attention—the kind that came with regulators, power struggles, and people who would happily twist the rules just to control the flow of information.
And social media was even worse.
Zaboru wanted the ZAGE Forum to stay a forum. A place with threads, topics, and communities built around shared interests—games, guides, fan art, jokes, and discussions that people could enter and leave without feeling trapped. Forums were messy sometimes, but their mess was honest. They didn't need algorithms deciding what people should feel today. They didn't need a system designed to keep users angry or addicted just to increase "engagement."
He remembered how dangerous social media could become once it started competing for attention like a marketplace. It could turn into a monopoly faster than anyone expected. It could shape public moods. It could become a tool for manipulation. And if Zaboru built something like that—something like Facebook—then sooner or later the monopoly rules, political pressure, and invisible deals would crash into him.
He didn't want that war.
So he would avoid it. He would build infrastructure for entertainment and community—Steam, the Digital World, the forum upgrades, video sharing, streaming, the store—but he would draw a clear boundary. ZAGE would not try to own everything. Not search. Not the entire social sphere. Not the whole internet.
If Google and Facebook appeared on their own in this world's future, let them appear. Let someone else fight that battle. Zaboru wouldn't mind.
Because if he stayed focused, ZAGE could become the heart of gaming and entertainment without becoming the kind of empire that invited destruction from every direction.
And it was happening exactly the way Zaboru feared. Especially in the United States, high-tier businessmen and elite circles—the kind of people he always tried his best to avoid—had started talking about him.
To be continue
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