3.2
“Excuse me,” called out a young confident voice, as he stepped down from the platform. Hanzo looked round and should have known it was a young man, but he still slightly cursed under his breath.
“Is it true-ah!” the young man had been elbowed by his fellow, who was now bowing and forcing his wincing compadre to follow suit. “Please excuse us,” said the assailant. “Please excuse us, and thank you for the talk. Pleased to meet you, we are from Taito High School, please be kind to us.”
Hanzo scanned the back of their heads and waited for them to rise. “Indeed”, he said, giving them a small nod.
The young boys looked at each other and then with nods of approval, the previously injured one turned to him and held up his hand. “Well, Hanzo-sensei, can I ask a question?”
Hanzo scratched the side of his nostril, wondering what kind of simple question they could ask. “But of course, please go ahead.”
“Why did you decide to make games for the Meletab? Isn’t that a waste of time?” A slap around the back of the head was effected and the young boy’s short but silky black hair flew up briefly from the impact. “Don’t be disrespectful!” whispered his classmate, quite loudly.
“Well,” mused Hanzo, parroting some marketing bullshit out of his ass, “the Meletab is a good tablet and has the financing of an industry leader. We believe it will compete well with Android and iPad tablets, and as a games developer, you need to spread your titles to as many platforms as possible.”
The three highschoolers nodded intently. It was obvious now which one was the lively boy in class who spoke without any filter and probably got into a lot of trouble and couldn’t understand why. He raised a hand, again.
“So,” he said, “is it true that you work all night long and sometimes don’t go home and showe-ah!” He had been elbowed again. This reminded Hanzo of a comedy routine from the west and he chuckled, before correcting these youngsters. “No, we usually don’t. When I started at GAFY, during the days of pixel art, some of us did indeed stay overnight, we had huge manually operated machines to make the graphics for the games. It took so long and we loved our work and didn’t want the games to be late, so we worked overtime, very often. Today, it’s very different. We have advanced tools and software, it’s very very different. The day starts at 10am and ends at 6pm, so you can even avoid the rush hour at both times.” The idea drew out gasps and various synonyms of “amazing!”
Bidding them well for their futures, Hanzo walked out and through the high halls of the convention building, as the sun shone through the large panes of glass onto the randomly scuffed vinyl flooring. He noted that he should use that point about rush hour in future talks, while shuddering a little to remember the stench of the artists who were chained to their desks, and how he had to collect the bottles of urine, ignoring their pleas for pudding, or to be freed. They didn’t eat pizza like the Americans, they ate end-of-day sushi from the konbini or supermarkets, and sometimes would fight over natto & tuna in the aisles. Hanzo quite fancied one right now, a fresh one, where he could pull back the plastic to release and roll the crispy seaweed onto the moist rice, and the scent of the mustard mixed into the natto beans would make his nostrils flare with lust, and he would make sweet loving with his tongue before his teeth took control. He could imagine biting into the roll, pulling away cleanly to still find strands of fermented beans falling onto his shirt. Damn. Apart from the confused feelings of arousal, amour and murderous hunger, that shit was so damn good.