By Way of Thanks
A little show of sincerity, by way of thanks—that was only proper, wasn't it?
Elementary school.
All-school assemblies, the kind where every last student was forcibly packed into the auditorium, were horrific beyond description. Standing dead still was horrific. Being allowed to sit was still fairly horrific, because that meant the bare auditorium floor, no cushion and no backrest. And just when it seemed to be over, the principal's address—which swallowed a ridiculous amount of time—was downright horrific.
But if anyone had asked the me of those days whether I wanted all-school assemblies abolished, she would have shaken her head and said no. That wasn't it. There was something I wanted.
The crown jewel of the all-school assembly.
The award ceremony.
You walked out in front of the entire student body and accepted the certificate the principal held out to you. In that moment, the whole school applauded, congratulating the student who had received it.
Back then, I could not have envied the stars of those ceremonies more. Looking back now, I suspect my hunger for recognition had simply been working overtime.
Anyway, that was why I tucked a goal into a corner of my heart: at least once in my life, I would walk up during an all-school assembly and take a certificate.
...I only tucked it away. I never achieved it.
Becoming the star of an award ceremony required a certificate of considerable rank. In gacha terms, it felt like a five-star character. SSR gear. And unfortunately, reality was a garbage game, so there was no pity system—even though Knight Rise grew one later.
And so I became the proud owner of a government ID without ever once starring in an award ceremony, and the words "all-school assembly" and "award ceremony" were naturally erased from my mind.
No. I thought they had been erased.
But the longer I stared at a silver button that looked an awful lot like a plaque—no, a knockoff Silver Button—the memories of that era, which I had thought forgotten, came rising back up.
...Memories? I never got to be the star of an award ceremony, so shouldn't I be calling them trauma?
Anyway. I was supposed to be deciding the knockoff Silver Button's fate, and here I was suddenly remembering award ceremonies. Truly out of nowhere.
Unboxing the knockoff Silver Button, and an award ceremony....
"But... just unboxing it like this is honestly pretty boring. Awards and plaques are supposed to be received in front of people, with some applause! Right? There's supposed to be that thrill of getting hyped up!"
Chat alone couldn't satisfy it—the visual punch and the audio punch were both lacking, I guess. Anyway, it was a shame. Dragging viewers out of the narrow little channel that was the chat window, and not one or two of them but dozens, hundreds, was obviously impossible———
No.
Why couldn't I drag them out?
"...Everyone. Did you know?"
Nonsense? That stings.
"The one about a prestigious American university holding its graduation in Crafting and Mining?"
A top-tier university in the States, I'll have you know.
Crafting and Mining.
You could call it the most famous sandbox game in the world and still be underselling it... and I had never played it once. When I first learned it existed, I was busy inhaling anime like my life depended on it. The mindset was simple: in the time it would take to play that, I could watch another episode.
Even so, I knew what kind of game Crafting and Mining was, about as well as the next person. Freedom so absurd that the veterans built every last thing under the sun, right? The time the algorithm shepherded me toward a video of someone recreating a real-world building, a hollow laugh escaped me all on its own.
A game with that much freedom was bound to get tangled up with a keyword that had once set the whole world on fire.
The metaverse.
I remembered it clearly enough. Back when the metaverse was deafening, a prestigious American university held its graduation inside Crafting and Mining, and the whole thing became a topic—metaverse commencement this, metaverse commencement that. And the me of back then had just gone, huh, sure, and moved on. I had no particular reason to care about somebody else's college graduation.
But now I had to care.
If a college graduation was possible, was an award ceremony really out of reach?
Right. Invite about a hundred viewers, and hold a bedroom award ceremony—no, a bedroom knockoff Silver Button ceremony!
"It tops off the romance meter."
Still, you ought to be the star of an award ceremony at least once in your life, right? So let's go make a wish come true!
"To the metaverse we go!!"
I declared it with great bravado, and locked my destination in on Crafting and Mining.
"Let's head out...."
I ran aground in exactly five minutes.
...Why is this so complicated? Realms? Bukkit? Private servers?
Asking someone who had never once touched Crafting and Mining to build a server that could comfortably hold a hundred people was an absurdly difficult challenge. I could see it already... a future in which I thrashed around on the floor alone trying to make a server, only for Raider's servers to open first!
"If I was going to do it that pathetically, I never would have brought it up!"
Whatever I thought I was going to accomplish in Crafting and Mining, I needed to abandon the idea, and fast. That didn't mean I was ready to give up outright. No teeth, then you chew with your gums. That was simply how you lived.
If I couldn't use Crafting and Mining, I only had to find a game that could stand in for it. Something where hundreds of people could gather online, where controllable avatars could deliver a visual spectacle, and where you could actually hand items back and forth.
The answer came at once.
"Change of destination! From this moment on, we are going to Maple Leaf Story!"
An MMORPG. The world was full of them, so why Maple Leaf Story specifically? Of course I had reasons. Not one—three of them, no less.
First, it was an old game, so the download would be smaller than any of the latest MMORPGs. I wanted this wrapped before Raider's maintenance ended. Second, I remembered that Maple Leaf Story still pulled a decent share of the internet-cafe crowd, and figured a viewer-participation stream would draw a respectable turnout.
And the most important third reason....
"I may not know much else, but I know this one and this one. Especially this one, seriously.... If she were a playable character instead of a boss? I absolutely would have played Maple Leaf Story at least once. Man.... It is not easy to get this worked up over an SD sprite.... And the pixel art is gorgeous, too!"
A character existed in there that plucked at the otaku soul inside me. If I was going to play something anyway, better a game that satisfied even a little more of my otaku needs, right?
And so Maple Leaf Story began. I worried that if nobody showed up, I'd have to wander off in search of yet another game, but....
"...Guess I don't need to worry about the head count."
That particular worry, it seemed, had been mine alone. If anything, I was starting to wonder whether keeping this many people in any kind of order was even possible. In here, even if some troll decided to sabotage the bit, there was no way to kick them out.
Still, I'd already burned time on the download. If only so that time wouldn't go to waste, I had to see it through.
"Okay! First I need to pick a principal—the person who's going to hand me the stand-in knockoff Silver Button, yeah? Who wants to play principal?"
The moment I said it, people started hammering Me! into chat like their lives depended on it. Across the screen, a perfectly legal speech-bubble duplication bug bloomed into view.
...The visual effect, at least, was undeniable.
Honestly, wasn't Maple Leaf Story the single game most optimized for an award ceremony? Thinking that, I started picking through the swarm of SD pixel characters one by one. If I could help it, I wanted someone whose outfit screamed principal at a glance....
"Oh, this person looks good. BoomerForeheadLady? Do you happen to have a stand-in knockoff Silver Button? ...You've got a silver ingot? Then we're set! Mind playing principal for me?! ...Okay! Casting's locked!"
Now I accept a trade request from the person cast as principal and receive the item that will serve as the stand-in knockoff Silver Button. And if, at the same time, everyone else sends up a roaring cheer? The bedroom knockoff Silver Button ceremony ends in success.
So now, time to really get it started....
"...Hold on. I am getting way too many trade requests."
At this rate, the principal's request could get buried.
"Stop the trade scams! The second this knockoff Silver Button ceremony is over, I am deleting Maple Leaf Story! If you're going to scam somebody, go scam a bright-eyed newbie, not a person who's about to quit! ...Trade requests are the principal's privilege! Defend the privilege!!"
With that, I rejected every trade request that had come in. People kept sending them anyway.
...Nothing for it. I would have to snatch the principal's request out of the flood with the sharp eyes of a world champion. They were firing off trades now, but once the ceremony actually began, they might read the room and stop. ...Probably.
So now, for real this time———
"...The pretty outfits are definitely pretty, though."
I needed to officially begin, and yet characters dressed far more lavishly and beautifully than I—the supposed star—kept snagging my eye. In the real world I was a national-treasure-class beauty, and in here I had been reduced to an ordinary girl?!
"Still, they did provide the venue for the bit...."
In the end, the cursor begins to move.
"A little show of sincerity, by way of thanks—that's only proper, right?"
Toward the cash shop button.