Alicia slept.

~*~

“You sound nervous,” Akari said, her voice tinny through the phone’s speaker.

Christine rolled her eyes, although she knew that Akari couldn’t see that. “Of course I’m nervous,” she replied. “I’ve never even produced a game in an established franchise, much less for my own original concept.”

“At least your bosses seem to trust you,” Akari said. “And you’ve been a production assistant on what, four titles?”

“Five,” Christine said. She drummed the steering wheel nervously. The car in front of her was driving a bit under the speed limit and she knew that there wasn’t a place to pass for another couple of miles. Although springtime in upstate New York was beautiful, it was even nicer when she wasn’t stuck behind a slow pick-up truck.

“Five, then,” Akari said. “The execs know what they’re doing. And more importantly, they know that you know what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, I guess. That doesn’t make it less stressful.”

“Of course not. I still get stressed before every surgery, no matter how many times I’ve performed it before.”

“That’s hardly the same; you’re dealing with people’s lives, I’d hope you’d be concerned.” She finally passed the car, accelerating back up to her usual speed of five miles over the written limit.

“Concerned and stressed are too different things. I actually had to really work at getting less anxious in the theater, since I started making mistakes from the nerves. It’s good to be aware of your responsibility, but that has a limit. You should also keep in mind that it will be difficult enough without you making it harder for yourself.”

“I know, or at least I do intellectually. It’s a lot harder to get the lizard brain to understand that as well.”

“It’s more of the amygdala working in concert with other higher order brain regions, but I take your meaning.”

“Whatever, Doctor Ishikawa.” Christine tried to channel as much sass into the phrase as possible and was rewarded with a distorted laugh.

It was about a half-hour commute to the studio, a compromise they’d made to ensure Akari was close enough to the hospital if she was called in. Normally Christine would just listen to a podcast or an audiobook while she was driving in. However, since Akari was currently back in Japan, they had settled for calling during her commute since that was one of the only times they were both awake and weren’t busy.

“How’s Osaka?” Christine asked after a moment. She was getting close to her office and was painfully aware that she had mostly been talking about herself.

“It’s actually really nice. The weather’s been a bit cold recently, but it’s really beautiful here. The cherry blossoms are going to bloom soon as well.”

“And your grandfather?”

Akari was silent for a moment, but Christine knew to just give her the space to gather her thoughts. “He doesn’t seem to be doing any worse, but it’s hard to know if that’s any indication. And he remembered Mom the last time he was awake, which is an improvement.”

“That’s good to hear,” Christine said, because there wasn’t anything else to say.

“Yeah, I suppose,” Akari responded. There was another pause. “It’s just hard to see him like that.”

Christine tried to find the right thing to say and came up empty. She was saved the trouble as the speaker carried the sound of rapidfire Japanese from someone in the background. Akari had a brief conversation, then switched back to English. “Okay, that’s Aunt Fujiko telling me to get off the phone and go to sleep. I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

“Sure,” Christine said. “Love you, dear.”

“Love you too. Good luck!” Another burst of Japanese and then the phone went mute, leaving Christine to drive the rest of the way in silence. She didn’t know how to feel about Akari’s trip to Japan. On one hand, she knew that Akari’s grandfather was very important to her and her family, enough so that she had taken a whole month off work to fly to Osaka with her parents. On the other hand, she had gotten used to life with Akari, and suddenly going back to cooking on her own in an empty kitchen and sleeping alone in a queen sized bed was depressing. In her worst moments, she caught herself wishing that Akari’s grandfather would just die already, although she was immediately remorseful and made sure to knock on wood afterwards.

With these thoughts heavy on her mind, she almost forgot to be nervous. It was only as she pulled into her parking spot at the office building that her anxious thoughts returned. She put the car into park and pulled the keys, taking a moment to gather herself. Then she strode in as confidently as she could, passing the reception area and taking the elevator up to the fifth floor, where she would be meeting with her team for the first time. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate; she had worked with most of the people before, but this would be the first time working with them while she was solely in charge.

Seven men turned to look at her as she entered the conference room. She recognized all of them from previous projects; two writers, three programmers, the company’s lead composer, and finally Lukas, her former boss and a talented animator. They had been chatting amongst each other but went silent as she entered, looking at her expectantly. She went over to the computer and pulled up the presentation that she had spent the last week working on.

“Everyone, thank you for coming to this meeting. As you’re aware, I’ve been appointed as the producer for our latest project. This is a game idea that I’ve been independently developing for a little over three years now, so I look forward to working with all of you and making this a reality.” Christine saw the programmers exchange uneasy glances, although the rest seemed intrigued. She progressed to the next slide, which had the words Garden of Estelar written in a large, scripted font.

“The working title is Gardens of Estelar. Gameplay-wise, it’s a combination between a turn-based roleplaying game and a dating simulator. Think Final Fantasy meets Otome game. The way I pitched it to the higher-ups is that this can be a gateway to get more women interested in other more traditional RPGs, so it’s really important we nail both the combat and the dating side of this.” One of the programming leads tilted his head as if he had a question, but she had practiced too long on this pitch to be interrupted now.

“We can talk about specifics later; right now I just want to get through the main sketch of the game and the narrative. The game is set in the country of Estelar, which has a sort-of steampunk Victorian vibe going on, so we can probably get some use out of the models we made before Nyarlathotech got canned.” Lukas nodded in agreement, and she clicked to the next slide, this one containing a few preliminary sketches she made of various locations. She spent a few minutes talking about her ideas about the background designs and the important locations, noticing with approval as the men began writing down notes on their notepads. She clicked to the next slide, which had an unfilled outline of a female shape with the word ‘protagonist’ next to it.

“For the main character, we’re going with some kind of character customization, since that’s become a staple for both RPGs and Otome games. I’ll leave the details of that for the programmers and animators to hash out. From a narrative standpoint, the main character is a commoner who discovers her magical power. Half the game will be set at basically a magical high school, which is where she’ll meet most of the capture targets, as well as the first antagonist.” She clicked the slide once more and now there were six fully-colored illustrations; five handsome men in Victorian clothing with smiles that ranged from icy to rogueish, and finally a woman with flowing blond hair wearing a dark red dress and staring out with a disdainful expression.

“Here, in order, we have the prince, Alsander Estelar; the knight, Henry Valian; the priest, William Richmond; the merchant, Marcus Strayed; and the foreigner, Alyx Tetravar.” With each name, she pointed to the corresponding man on the screen. “Each one corresponds to a different romantic archetype, although I’m hoping we can make the dialogue interesting enough to keep it from feeling cliche. We’ll need to have another meeting in a bit to flesh out their characters and talk about what we want the dating mechanics to look like.”

Christine finally pointed to the final character sketch. “The last person here is Alicia Estelar, who will insult the protagonist and will form a love triangle between her and the prince. Focus group data suggests that this kind of antagonist is important for player engagement in dating sims, both to motivate the dating options and for the sense of righteous revenge the player eventually gets to take. When the player captures the target, we’ll have some kind of cutscene where Alicia is stripped of her power and authority.”

Christine took a deep breath; she was almost done with the presentation. “Now, for the overarching narrative. Once the player progresses the main quest far enough and successfully captures a target, it will trigger the end game where the country is attacked by a foreign power, and the player will have to fight off the final boss.” The next slide showed the young lady again, although this time her skin was covered in black lines like lightning and she was wrapped in glowing red energy.

“We’re reusing Alicia for this, since the player should already have an emotional connection. The narrative reason is that she gets corrupted by an artifact from the other country, gaining incredible power at the cost of her own life. Once the player beats her, we can have credits roll, and then if we have any extra time in development we can add some postgame content.” She smiled crookedly and some of the men chuckled--they all knew there was never any extra development time.

“I’ll go over specifics with each of you at a later time, but that should be the gist of it. Any questions?” She felt some of the tension leave her body, relieved to have gotten through that without any major mistakes.

There were several questions, of course, and she spent the rest of the meeting talking about design decisions, programming challenges, and potential logistical issues. Before she knew it, three hours had passed and they all agreed to take a lunch break before everyone went back to brief their teams on the new game. Christine herself felt exhausted, but at the same time there was a strong exhilaration. Her pet project was finally, finally, coming together.

She didn’t know exactly where the idea for Garden of Estelar had come from, or why she had felt such a need to realize it, but it was a huge relief to be making it. The whole world and most of the characters had just come to her one day, springing full-fledged like Athena emerging from Zeus’ thoughts, and she knew then that she had to create it. She had first pitched it three years ago, but at the time it had been dismissed as being too risky a gamble. Now, after proving herself capable, she was bringing it to fruition, and with a team that seemed like they could do it justice.

Before she could do that, though, she needed to get some food. She walked back to her car, but the world started to fade around her. Even as she was walking, she became aware that she wasn’t moving at all, that she was in fact lying down beneath a heavy comforter, and that she was in fact still asleep.

~*~

Alicia woke up slowly. It took a moment for her to recall who and where she was; it was almost a surprise to not see the plain green wallpaper of Christine’s bedroom but rather the dark blue designs that more befit a lady’s room. She sat up and looked out the window at the familiar dark shapes that outlined the grounds of the estate. She could feel her heart beating rapidly in her chest. Burned into her mind was that illustration, what was unmistakably herself but with cruel black lines along her skin like her blood had turned to ash. The expression had been so filled with hatred and despair that it made her want to weep. Patiently she waited for the dream to fade, but it seemed to only get clearer in her mind, as if she had lived through it yesterday.

The sun was hours yet from rising, yet Alicia found herself unable to go back to sleep, scenes from the memory repeating in her head. She still didn’t know where the memories came from or why she was experiencing them, although she had a suspicion about the connection with the Fate-aspected Bloom. However, she was sure of this: these memories could no longer be safely ignored.