Curiosity Heaven
Meanwhile, inside the booth Kayak and Ririyang had decided to try out, the staff were having a conversation of their own.
“There’s just… way too few people.”
The staff members fell silent at the words of the one who had just come back from surveying the other booths.
They were employees of a small-to-medium game company exhibiting at G-Star for the first time this year. And the title they had poured their ambition into was drawing far less of a reaction than they had hoped.
It was a game they had developed day and night, wringing every last drop out of a tiny budget. Even among themselves they had been convinced it would land—yet here they were, barely able to catch anyone’s eye. The show had only just opened, true, but compared to the other booths their numbers were painfully sparse.
It was a common story, and a heartbreaking one all the same.
“Maybe the promotion wasn’t enough?”
“Should we go out front and grab people by the pant legs?”
“It looks plain, but once you actually play it it’s fun…!”
The staff were sighing with disappointment when someone suddenly spoke up.
“P-people are suddenly pouring in?”
“What?”
At those words the staff looked over the booth—and sure enough.
“Holy crap, it’s real.”
Even though a group had just finished their demo and left, people were suddenly flooding in as if nothing had ever been empty. The sparsely occupied seats began filling one after another.
The staff exchanged baffled looks, then started giving the newly seated visitors a quick rundown of the game.
“Our title, The Blitz, is a first-person FPS shooter…”
And then a peculiar sight caught their eyes.
Two cosplayers were sitting at the demo stations, listening to the explanation with serious faces. A pair of women whose quality easily rivaled the booth girls from other companies. One of them in particular had a face that made jaws drop on sight—silver hair, blue eyes, flowing garments.
Anyone in the game industry would recognize her instantly: she was cosplaying Camilla from Abyss.
Except the quality was so high it was impossible to tell whether it was cosplay or simply her real appearance.
The staffer found himself unable to look away for a moment. The other people who had sat down for the demo were the same—they kept stealing glances in that direction even while listening to the explanation.
Some kind of Instagram celebrity…?
Influencers who drew every eye just by existing. The booth staffer roughly figured she must be one of those. At the same time, he finally understood why the booth had suddenly filled up.
It’s because of her…!
Most of the people who had crowded in were men. Their ages ranged from late teens to early thirties as far as the eye could tell, but the majority seemed to have followed that cosplayer in. A few even left their games mid-session to walk over and strike up conversation with her. From what he could overhear, the word “fan” kept coming up. Some even looked like they were getting autographs.
Just as the staffer had guessed, she was a celebrity of considerable renown.
Curious, he waited until the explanation finished, then approached the man who had just been talking with her.
“Is that person famous, by any chance?”
“Oh, Kayak? Super famous.”
The man launched into a full explanation as if he himself had been asked the question—how the Camilla cosplayer was a streamer named Kayak, how she mainly streamed Abyss content, even how many Vtube subscribers she had.
But the part that surprised the staffer most was something else entirely.
“You’re saying the cosplay and the real thing barely look different?”
“Yeah. This is my first time seeing her in person too, and she’s identical. From what I heard earlier, she just matched the outfit—”
So that was why the cosplay quality was so absurdly high. She simply looked that much like Camilla to begin with.
Please let her enjoy our game.
He desperately hoped Kayak would have fun playing—and stay at the booth just a little longer because of it.
Trying out the booth took longer than expected. We had originally planned to mess around for twenty or thirty minutes and leave, but once we sat down and played until we got tired of it, a full hour had flown by.
I lost track of time completely. That was basically another way of saying the game was really well made.
The immersion was excellent, no question. Even though it was a story-heavy game—a type I don’t usually like—I got sucked in so fast I cleared the tutorial without even noticing. I liked that it wasn’t just following a story; there were choices. And more than anything, the controls that actually required skill felt good in my hands.
If the circumstances allowed, I would have wanted to clear the whole thing right there. Unfortunately this was only a G-Star demo, so it stopped at Chapter 1. Once it officially released, I’d have to try it on stream or something.
“The game was fun.”
“Oh my, thank you so much. I’m just glad you enjoyed it…”
I smiled and said goodbye to the staffer standing nearby—only for him to bow so deeply it was almost uncomfortable, pouring out thanks. It was flustering, and at the same time a little pitiful; how badly must he have wanted to hear someone say it was fun?
Come to think of it, there hadn’t been many people playing when we first walked in. I’d never heard of the company name either, and the booth itself was pretty small. Maybe they were a brand-new studio. Well, for us it just meant plenty of free seats and an easy walk-in…
“You were insanely good, though. It looked hard, but you were dodging all over the place—”
“Right? I died a few times even in the tutorial, but Kayak cleared it in one go.”
“Was it that hard? Felt just right to me.”
We kept up the idle chatter as we moved on. Whenever a booth looked interesting, whoever wanted to try it went in while the rest of us streamed from outside with the camera.
I’d already played a fair number of games, and after that nothing else really pulled me in. Most of the booths, aside from a few exceptions, were mobile games anyway—and those just didn’t spark much interest.
Nikang and Ririyang seemed to feel the same; none of the remaining booths really caught their eye either. Honestly, up to this point we’d spent more time looking around than actually demoing games—booth girls, the events happening inside, that sort of thing. That was half the fun of a convention, right?
Along the way we also signed autographs for fans who had come after watching the stream and threw in a little fan service. That had become one of the main contents too. Viewers kept asking if we were doing a fan meeting, so I told them to just come find us for a signature—and after that they kept showing up.
Even now I was signing for a guy who had come sprinting over, completely out of breath. A blond guy with bleached yellow hair came charging up, gasping for air, and thrust a piece of paper at me asking for a signature.
Where the hell did they even get the paper? All I’d said once, briefly, was that it would be nice if people brought something to sign on—and ever since then everyone had been showing up with paper. At first there hadn’t been anywhere to write, so I’d just signed their hands.
“What should I write? What’s your stream nickname?”
“Ah, um…”
Normally my “signature” was just scrawling “Kayak” in English and writing next to it something like “Thanks for watching the stream, ~~-nim—” with their broadcast nickname.
But the blond guy who had boldly approached claiming to be my fan turned out to be rather shy once it came to actually speaking. He couldn’t quite get the words out.
Then, finally:
“…Rin Kayak.”
“Huh?”
“KayakWhoHitRiriyang’sCheeks…”
He then let out an embarrassed “ahem,” clearing his throat and looking away for a moment.
“Alright, sure. KayakWhoHitRiriyang’sCheeks-nim. Got it.”
It was the kind of nickname people would call “toxic,” but at the same time… was it really something to be that embarrassed about?
I didn’t particularly care either way. Still, saying a nickname like that out loud yourself would probably feel a little awkward.
“What’s wrong with my cheeks!”
Ririyang, standing next to me, was the one who completely lost it.
She told him not to touch her complex and made him swear he’d change the nickname the moment he got home.
Seriously, what was the problem with her cheeks? She called it a complex, but they didn’t even stand out that much.
Out of pure idle curiosity I sidled up and gave one a light poke.
“Aah! What are you doing right now!”
“I was just curious…”
But there was nothing special about Ririyang’s cheeks. Just the soft feel of skin, and the faint sense of bone underneath.