They didn't linger outside and headed into the pet hospital together.

Since they had already made an appointment, after confirming their information at the front desk, Ichin and Utaha took their cat to the consultation room, where the doctor in charge of the checkup was waiting.

As for Akane Akasaka, after watching Ichin and Utaha go in first, she and Umi Boshima also brought their cat in for its spay surgery.

On Ichin's side, this wasn't their first visit to this hospital, so they were already familiar with the doctor. The checkup went smoothly, and Peppa remained calm—especially after being rewarded with a few snacks, obediently letting the doctor examine him.

A routine check and a small blood draw later, the checkup process was mostly complete.

After waiting for a little while, the report came out. The doctor looked it over and then gave Ichin and Utaha a reassuring smile.

"Don't worry, this little guy is very healthy. He may look a bit chunky, but that's pretty normal for orange tabbies. That said, you should still be mindful of his diet. Don't let him eat endlessly, and try to schedule regular exercise—like using a teaser wand to get him to run and jump a bit."

"Got it. Thank you, doctor."

Ichin patted Peppa on the head, gently returned him to the carrier, and he and Utaha left the exam room.

As soon as they stepped out, they saw Akane Akasaka and Umi Boshima waiting near the operating room. Since spay surgeries require anesthesia, it would take a while before their cat was done.

Naturally, Akasaka noticed them too and immediately waved them over.

Utaha said to Ichin, "You go ahead, I'll go take care of the payment."

"Alright."

Ichin nodded, picked up the carrier, and walked over.

He sat down beside Akasaka, placing the carrier on his lap, and glanced toward the operating room door.

"How long's it been?"

"Ten minutes. Still a bit more to go."

After answering, Akasaka leaned over to peek inside the carrier. "Such a cute orange kitty. How old?"

"He's still a baby—around seven months. I adopted him from a stray animal rescue center."

Since they were going to chat for a bit, Ichin decided to take Peppa out of the carrier entirely.

Held in Ichin's arms, Peppa curiously eyed the two unfamiliar two-legged creatures beside him.

Umi Boshima's eyes sparkled as she looked at Peppa.

"He's so cute!"

Ichin handed Peppa over. "Want to hold him? He's really well-behaved."

"Can I?"

She looked at Akasaka, who nodded with a smile, and only then did she carefully take the cat into her arms.

Even though she was a stranger, Peppa didn't squirm or struggle—he simply lay there calmly in Umi's embrace.

The reason was simple—this embrace felt just like being held by Utaha: soft, warm, and very comfortable.

Ichin noticed Peppa squinting in bliss and couldn't help but silently complain in his heart, What a shameless cat. Then he turned his attention to chatting with Akane Akasaka about company matters.

"How's your company's game development coming along, Miss Akasaka?"

"Very smoothly, extremely smoothly," Akane replied with a smile. She didn't seem worried at all about her cat currently undergoing surgery. "We've passed the halfway point, and the whole dev team is confident in the final product. How about on your end, Ichin-kun? Things seem to be going well too, right?"

"Of course. With me and a few others overseeing things, there's no way anything's going wrong." Ichin was not about to lose in the confidence department.

"And at our current pace, the release date might even be pushed forward. If you're interested, Miss Akasaka, once development is done, I can send you a few physical copies for the Switch and some Steam CD keys."

"I'd really appreciate that. When our game is finished, we'll send you a copy too. Hopefully, you can give it a proper review after playing it."

"Absolutely. I've never been shy about giving praise when it's deserved."

Although he'd only seen the promotional PV for Akasaka's game, Ichin understood that in open-world games, as long as the content was rich and the combat system solid, the experience generally wouldn't be bad.

Even though he'd been burned by too many bloated open-world games from Ubisoft in the past, he was still willing to give new ones a chance. Who knows—he might stumble upon something genuinely different.

"But I have to admit, I didn't expect you guys to jump straight into making an open-world game. That type of project must've been full of hurdles early on, right?"

"Absolutely, tons of issues."

Akane nodded in agreement. "Character design and such wasn't a big deal—we've got a strong art team. But because it's an open world, even deciding on the world's size took us nearly a week of meetings. And even after settling on it, we made several adjustments during development. The current map size is… just barely acceptable to me."

Just barely acceptable, huh…

Looks like the map development really gave her a tough time. In the end, she probably had to scale it down somewhat.

Which was completely understandable.

With open-world games, making the map too large introduces a whole set of problems: how many NPCs and enemies to populate it with, how many buildings and models need to be made, how many side quests are required to keep it from feeling empty…

Blindly making a massive map drastically increases dev costs and burns through both time and energy.

From the looks of it, Akasaka hadn't tried to bite off more than she could chew. She was more pragmatic and cool-headed than Ichin had expected.

"Open world, huh…"

Ichin mused for a moment, then smiled. "That's a genre I'll definitely explore in the future too. I'll be paying close attention to how your game turns out, Miss Akasaka—consider it a valuable case study. After all, we're both still young companies."

Footsteps approached—Utaha had finished paying the bill.

"It's about time. We should get going."

With that, Ichin took Peppa back from Umi Boshima, returned him to the carrier, and, together with Utaha, bid farewell and left the pet hospital.

As they watched the two leave, Akane Akasaka softly asked, "Umi, do you think our game, once it releases next year, will outperform their Persona?"

"That's hard to say."

Umi Boshima thought for a moment, then shook her head. "I don't really know much about game development… but aren't the two games different genres? Maybe they'll be evenly matched?"

Akane didn't reply. She simply stood in silence, deep in thought.

*

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