This work is the result of the monthly poll on my Pa-treon. There are no plans for a part 2 currently but another vote could make that happen.

26 Months after the release of Fairies Story 3

As usual, Aoba was in quite early, one of the first to come in. Carrying two plastic cups of coffee, neither of them for herself, from the nearby coffee shop with her, she stepped into the elevator. And to her surprise, someone else was already there. A short, blonde girl, whose face she couldn't make out because it was hidden behind a dozen papers she was flipping through, back and forth.

Oh, that's right. They're bringing in the debuggers today. If I tell Nene about this on the phone tonight she'll probably complain that we switched from part-timers to contractors. Aoba yawned very quietly and softly. Yagami had explained to her that even though they were called professional debuggers it was really just a company full of people with experience as debuggers and some specialized knowledge. The only real difference between them and a part-timer was the experience and that they were paid the same way any ordinary employee was.

"Morning, Aocchi."

"Morning, Nenecchi." Aoba just stood there, processing her response for a moment before she flung around. "Nenecchi?!"

"Surprised?" Nene smirked wide. "I'm back!"

"Nene, you can't just come and visit me at work pretending to be an employee." Aoba had been very busy over the last two years and so had Nene. She didn't know what exactly Nene was doing now, because she always changed the topic when she asked but she was still attending college.

"How rude!" Pulling out an employee tag, Nene proudly held it up. "I'm one of the debuggers from Validated Code."

"What?!" Aoba couldn't make head or tails of what was happening. "How? Since when?!" But before she could get an answer, the elevator came to a halt and the two girls stepped outside.

"I'll tell you over lunch break." Nene was quite annoyed with the shocked face that Aoba made. "What?!"

"To think you would act like a real employee..." Aoba looked like she was near tears.

"Aocchi..." Nene was a little appalled by the way she being was treated. But when she thought about all her wandering around during the last time she had been there, it kind of made sense.

Stepping inside the offices, Nene took a quick look around. "Is the programmer's office still down there?" Pointing in the direction of her old workspace, Nene didn't want to be caught wandering around first thing after she came back.

"Yes." Aoba simply confirmed and went to do the first thing her job entailed. Waking up Kou and Rin. The latter had adopted the terrible habit of staying over and it was pretty much an open secret why. The coffee was for those two.

Heading towards the programmer's office, Nene looked through the documents again. She had busted her ass over those last 2 years. A couple weeks after the release of Fairies 3, she had figured out that she had never really enjoyed any part-time job more than this one. And enjoying the work was only half of the reason she had changed her career path so much. Looking giddy as she turned around the corner she found none of the programmers were in yet. It put a serious damper on her mood. "I guess I'll set up."

Putting the documents down, which detailed schedules, priority areas for testing and other things including a list of hired debuggers and their experience. Walking over to the part of the office that was still assigned to testers, she could tell because there were small desks with PCs everywhere, Nene got under the table and started unplugging one of the PCs. Carrying the desktop as well as some cables over first, she had to make four trips to get everything, including the console.

Getting back under the desk, Umiko's desk, to hook things up, Nene felt two piercing eyes on her back and she froze. She had missed this piercing gaze.

"Are you from tech? I wasn't notified of any new hire in the programming department." Umiko's voice reached Nene loud and clear.

Lowering the pitch of her voice was much as possible, Nene just reached out with her hand. She was on all fours, her head and face hidden beneath the table. "Can you give me the HDMI connector cable?"

Umiko grabbed the cable from the table and passed it in the hand of the girl below. She then noticed the bundle of papers. These are the instructions that were sent to the debuggers. Flipping to the last page, Umiko saw the employee list and her eyes narrowed. Things immediately became clear to her.

"Is there an USB connector on the table? I think I might have forgotten to bring it." Nene reached out again, still eager to keep up the charade but when no reply came, she started to sweat a little. Staring at the back of the PC under the table, Nene slightly turned her head and saw right into Umiko's eyes, who had gotten under the table herself.

"Sakura-san. What in the world are you doing?" Umiko was surprised to see the girl but she was even more surprised to see her occupy part of her desk.

Nene started four different words and finished none. This isn't how I imagined this to go! "I'm one of the debuggers, and-" Nene tried to get out from under the table and hit her head. Rubbing her scalp, Nene stood up.

"I saw the employee list. I am asking, why are you setting up a testing station on my desk." Umiko crawled out from beneath the table as well. "Debuggers are supposed to stay in their assigned area."

"But..." Nene puffed up her cheeks as much as she could. "We worked together like this the last time, so I thought..."

"I did that to keep an eye on you because you kept wandering off." Seeing how badly Sakura was taking it, Umiko started to feel bad. "Well, it is true that it was helpful to have a tester right next to me, but still, you can't just-"

"Give me a chance! I worked really hard on getting this job because I wanted to work with you again!" Nene blurted out and immediately froze again. "No, I mean, yes, well, not entirely, I mean, I wanted to come back here, and you, err-" Nene's face was turning as red as the error text on Umiko's programming console did occasionally.

And she wasn't the only one that was embarrassed. This girl always just blurts out what she thinks. "How did you even get hired? Two and a half months of debugging work here at Eaglejump shouldn't suffice to be hired as a professional."

"I… might have kinda changed what I do at university. I focused on any programming class I could get my hands on." Nene started to whistle. She hadn't told Aoba about this because she was absolutely sure Aoba would tell her it was a bad idea to change her focus like that. "I really liked working here. And the other places I part-timed at were also pretty nice."

Umiko picked up the pile of documents again and flipped to the last pages, that listed a small photo of the employee, their name, experience and special skills. "C++, Java, python, Unity…" Umiko took a deep breath and put the documents back down. "Sakura-san. Lying on a resume is a criminal offense. You will not only be fired when you're found out, your employer might also press charges."

"How rude! Give me your current build and I'll show you!" Nene grabbed all the remaining cables, dived back under the table and set up the remaining connections.

"First, you can't just move your own workspace next to me without my permission. Second, you-" Umiko gave up because Sakura was not listening anymore. It would be much easier to get her to admit everything and give up, before things got really problematic, if she just put her to the test. "Use your login credentials to access the server and get the current build. Floor staff no longer takes care of that for you."

Powering on her computer and sitting down, Nene quickly opened the browser, entered the FTP server address, her login credentials and then started to pull the current build from the server. It didn't take her longer than 60 seconds to do this. Umiko sat down in her own chair and felt a little nostalgic for when crunch time had come for Fairies 3. She was a really great help, all things considered. But lying on her resume is not something I can tolerate. She got herself hired under false pretenses. Umiko waited for her own station to fully boot up and load everything from startup. I think she got even cuter than before though.

With people like Suzukaze and Takimoto, or more prominently, Yagami and Tooyama, it wasn't really that surprising that she had heightened senses for this sort of thing. She wasn't really predisposed in either direction, mostly because her job and her hobby didn't leave any time for it.

Waiting for the download to finish, Nene pulled an empty bullet shell out of her pocket and put it on the table. It was a gift from Umiko and she had kept it with her whenever possible. She had gotten in trouble that one time when she went out to drink with her much older seniors at the company, they ended up drunk and the police found the shell on her.

Umiko just acknowledged that Sakura still had the shell by looking a little happy and smiling about it. Adjusting the window positions of her own tools, Umiko got back up. "I am going to get myself some coffee." She didn't think to offer any to Sakura because she didn't want to raise her expectations of being able to stay just because they knew each other.

Standing in the kitchen, Umiko felt a little tired already. Not from work or from lack of caffeine but because she hadn't expected to ever see Sakura again. She was a little attached to her from the time they worked together. And now that the spin-off game, with Sophia from Fairies 3 as the main character in a dungeon crawler, was nearing completion, Sakura had showed up again.

Well, she won't be around for long. I'll ask her to quit quietly so nobody gets wind of her lies. I can do that much I suppose. Returning with her coffee, Umiko found the debugger sitting in front of a blue screen. "Sakura-san. What did you do?" To crash a PC like that was quite a feat.

"You have a memory leak in the build. Each time you load up the config from the main menu and change the resolution or graphic options, it updates in real time and loads in the new settings but it doesn't unload the old ones. I only changed the settings about 40 times before the memory leak had eaten the entire RAM of the PC. Trying to start a new game after that, causes the PC to do that. On console I expect it would be even worse. I'm pretty sure you only hooked a sub routine into the update process and the sub routine just gets stuck at some point, so assets don't unload right."

Umiko just stood there without any real expression. That was not the kind of talk that she expected to hear from Sakura. Is that true? Putting her coffee aside, Umiko quickly navigated to the responsible code and sure enough, there was an extra parenthesis in the exact logic that Sakura had talked about, causing the whole thing to fail. "How did you know that?"

"Geez, I told you I didn't lie about my qualifications! I worked really, really hard!" Nene blushed. "I figured that if I can do at least this much, you won't force me back in with all the other debuggers." Nene was really intend on working with Umiko again. And not just with but side by side. She was a long cry from being any kind of real programmer but she could diagnose most errors with way greater specification than I ran there, it suddenly froze.

"Sakura-san. Even if you are as good as you claim, you're not a part-timer. You have company policy to follow and so do I."

"But I cleared this with my section chief already." Nene procured a folded piece of paper from her pocket. "I told him that since I worked here before and very closely-" Nene was interrupted when Umiko just took the paper from her.

Due to my previous experience at Eaglejump, working in close relation with their beautiful lead programmers, one Ahagon Umiko-san, I request that I be granted special permission to work outside the designated debugging area at Eaglejump upon agreement by our contractor. A list of situations that would benefit from this arrangement are attached at the bottom of this document. Umiko read through it. It was a well written letter but there was just one word that stuck out like a sore thumb. Beautiful. Her looks had absolutely nothing to do with programming. But it did make it seem like Sakura had ulterior motives for working with her again.

"Fine." Umiko saw herself beat. If Sakura really was qualified and her gotten prior permission from her own boss, she didn't really see any reason to kick her out, back to where the other debuggers worked.

"Yes!" Nene hissed and made a fist. "I'll get started right away." Restarting her PC, Nene couldn't wait to get to work. "The game is called Sophia-chan's Great Magical Adventure, so I was wondering. Did Aocchi make Sophia's model this time too?"

"Yes." Umiko was not the talkative type when working and she wished Sakura had already picked up on that. And to her surprise, the moment she booted up the game, the childish, immature Sakura Nene disappeared and a focused debugger appeared, as if through real magic.

Both of their co-workers came in soon after. Nene didn't need to introduce herself to the other programmers, they still remembered her. And they were throwing knowing and dirty looks at Umiko, who fired at them with her softgun, telling them to get to work.

When lunch time came, Nene looked with distress at the notepad she had filled. Inventory overflow, missing a parameter to cap maximum value. Softlock if start is pressed in the same frame as an encounter happens. Fireball attack learned at 33 has wrong element affinity, element ID is E instead of 3. Returning multiple times to the same floor in a row from the floor selection causes the floor to duplicate, routine is not unloading previous floor properly if ID of old and new floor match. Stacking same ID buffs… the list went on for a while.

"What are you… doing for lunch?" She had already forgotten about her promise to Aoba. She was also a little cautious about talking to Umiko because she was looking very, very irritated. A lot of the buggy code had not come directly from her but from one of her co-workers.

"I appreciate the offer but I am already behind schedule due to fixing all of this, so please go on without me." Umiko reached for her coffee and stopped when she remembered that she had already finished it earlier.

"I'll see you in a bit then." Nene got out of her chair, stretched her arms and walked away. She let out a long sigh the moment she was out of earshot range. "I guess this won't be easy."

"Nene?!" A familiar voice spoke to her and Nene looked to the side, noticing two of Aoba's coworkers.

"Yo!" Nene put on a smile and raised her hand. "Good to see both of you again!"

"That Aoba, she didn't tell us you were back in..." Yun cursed under her breath.

"I thought we weren't hiring part timers anymore." Hajime could see Nene's employee tag and wondered if they made an exception because Aoba was the one that had designed the lead character.

"Everyone's so rude to me! I'm here with all the other debuggers!" Nene puffed up her cheeks and tried to look as proud as possible. "Aocchi, Umiko, you two, everyone thinks I just sneaked in or something!"

"Well, that does sound like something you would do." Hajime grinned and her grin immediately vanished when Nene started to looked really pissed.

"I can do my job as good as any of the others, I'll show you!" Nene shouted.

"Sa~ku~ra-san." Umiko pointed one of her guns at the back of Nene's head from point blank range. Nene froze and looked like she was caught in the middle of robbing the national reserves. "Taking a break is fine and it is company policy to ensure that employees take breaks but cease shouting over the entire floor if you would."

"I'm sorry!" Shouting her apology, she noticed too late what she was doing and quickly made a mad dash towards the door.

Umiko returned to her desk. Grabbing the cup of coffee, a large plastic cup with a straw, Umiko nearly dropped it when it was unexpectedly heavy. Opening the lid, there was still hot coffee inside. I'm sure I actually drank this a while ago. Noticing a piece of paper that had slipped out beneath the cup, Umiko only found a stylized head of Nene with starry eyes and a thumbs up. The words Do your best were written on it. I sure hope this is not going to end badly. It is so obvious that she has developed a crush on me. Umiko did really think that Sakura was cute but they were several years apart in age and they had, other than their jobs, absolutely nothing in common.

Yun and Hajime caught up with Nene just outside the office. Initially aiming to go to the cafeteria, Nene had instead opted to get some fresh air. "Hey, Nene, wait up!" Hajime called out and quickly made it over to the debugger. "I need the whole story!"

"Of what?"

"How you're working here of course! And don't tell me it has nothing to do with Aoba and Umiko working here." Hajime was really curious about this.

"Yeah, we need all the details." Yun was no less interested.

Coming to Nene's help was her own stomach that let out a loud growl. Laughing awkwardly, Nene looked around to see if there was anything nearby where they could eat. But Yun knew better. "There is a really good gyros place nearby. They have a discount running for purchases of 3 or more right now!"

And so, within roughly ten minutes, the three girls were stuffing their face with some Greek food. "Now, spit it out. The story I mean." Hajime was burning up with anticipation.

"During the release party, Umiko told me that they won't be hiring part-timers anymore for debugging. And… I really liked working at Eaglejump and on Fairies 3. She gave me her number and said to call her if I needed anything so I asked her to introduce me to some other opportunities for debugging work. And I decided right there and then to make that into my job!"

"I knew we were hiring debuggers from a company but I didn't know it was some kind of professional job." Yun was surprised there was enough demand for something like that. Debugging was important but it only made up a small part of game development, mostly towards the end.

"It's all about experience and knowing a bit about programming." Nene spoke with her mouth full and only barely avoided sending a piece of lettuce flying.

"You? Programming?" Hajime coughed a little as some of the gyros went down her throat too quickly.

"I worked part-time between classes. I dropped most classes and only focused on any programming course I could get my hands on. Man, you should see my grades, they're terrible." Nene laughed while both her co-workers made strange faces. "It's fine! The oldest person at our company is 65 and he's been in this business ever since the PES days! He knows a lot about games and he actually gets requested directly by developers a lot so he is paid really well. So this is definitely something I can do!"

"You say you liked working at Eaglejump but if that was all you wouldn't set up next to Umiko." Yun smelled something saucy. There was more to this than Nene let on.

"Don't say that Yun! It was so funny when she thought it wasn't obvious!" Hajime cautiously pulled in her feet in case Yun decided to be angry.

"Am I… that obvious?" Nene blushed like a fire had broken out on her face. Putting her fingers together, she looked really embarrassed for a moment. "But that's fine, if I want to woo her, I can't be discouraged by people looking at me strange! They don't look strange at their gun otaku chief programmer either!"

"They kinda do. A lot." Hajime pointed out. "But you really don't need to worry about that. Yagami and Tooyama are totally together and nobody says a thing. It's super obvious but everyone pretends they can't see it."

"Hajime!" Yun complained and laughed. "Best of luck to you Nene, you'll definitely need it." Getting out of her seat, Yun was about to head back.

"Don't you still have like 20 minutes of break left?" Nene asked.

"Well, yeah, but we're kinda behind schedule. Again. I don't think we'll be going home for a few days. There was a problem with one of the servers and we got rolled back a few days." Yun groaned. "Hajime, you coming?"

The brunette got out of her seat and waved to Nene. "I'm not behind with work but I got enough left to do anyway."

As the two lined up to pay, they found Nene, with the remainder of her gyros stuffed all into her mouth at once, right behind them. She looked like an adorable hamster. She didn't want to stay behind alone.

Back at the office, Umiko was taking a short break at her desk while code was compiling on her computer. "I have to say that I was very skeptical at first, but I also have to admit that you are so far the best debugger I have ever worked with. Half the work is finding the issue so having a debugger that can make at least an educated guess is a tremendous help." Umiko knew just how well Sakura responded to praise. "Please continue your work in this manner until the last day."

Nene's face lit up as she was being praised. "Of course! I'll show you the full extent of my power!" Sitting down, Nene tried to move her character in-game and nothing happened. Bringing up the debug console, something that was useless for most debuggers despite the name, she scrolled up and up until she found an issue. "Umiko-san… it looks like we have a problem."

Umiko was looking at the debug log from the side and she gasped for air when she saw the error that Nene had singled out. A fatal error that popped up when resetting animation circles for Sophia's idle. One of the animations was broken and that caused the whole loop to fail which then ended up freezing the game completely. With a few quick moves, Umiko had grabbed a clip board and was about to storm out of her booth, but not before slamming the print key on Nene's keyboard, printing the selected error log.

Nene followed, not sure how to feel about this. She had found this problem by accident since she had just let the game continue to run while going for a break. But if any player did something similar, the game would lock up on them and due to the very nature of debugging, playing constantly, it was unlikely that the bug would be found. Pushing day 1 or day 2 patches was terrible PR.

"Shinoda-san." Umiko put the error log down on Hajime's desk. "One of your animations is causing an error that results in a hardlock." Hardlock was an industry term that referred to the game becoming entirely unresponsive, freezing up completely. On a console, the entire console had to be reset for that. For anyone working in development, it was among the top of the list of words you never wanted to hear, much less that you were responsible.

"Eh, what?!" Hajime was surprised to hear that. She rarely got any complaints because she usually did a pretty good job.

Nene waved to Aoba, who happened to look because Umiko showing up was always a worrisome thing. "Hi, Aocchi." Nene whispered from behind Umiko and Aoba waved back before returning to work.

"Which animation is it?" Hajime pulled up a big list of all the animations she did. Because she had worked with Aoba, who designed Sophia, she had gotten to do all her animations.

"One of her idle ones." Nene popped out behind Umiko.

"Seriously? Ugh." Hajime opened up the first idle animation and put her tools in full diagnostic mode. It wasn't always clear if an animation was corrupt just from looking at it.

"Sakura-san. You are still on the clock, so please return to your desk." Umiko left the printed error with Hajime. "I need to tell the chief debugger that all but one debugger need to avoid the idle animation cycles, so please go back ahead of me."

"You already told her." Nene looked proud.

"You are the chief debugger?" Umiko didn't know whether she was supposed to be relieved or irritated.

"Well, because I already worked here before and I know a lot about the fairies series and because I asked to be." Nene didn't want to tell Umiko that she had literally begged her boss to take that position. "I'll go tell the others."

There was collective giggling and whispering as Nene took off. Whispers and giggles that immediately vanished when Umiko turned around, stared and then took off herself.

It was past six when Hajime finally found the erroneous animation and the build was updated with it. Nene hadn't found anything else really significant after telling everyone about the broken animation. When Umiko checked the clock she saw that Nene was supposed to have clocked out forty minutes ago. "Sakura-san, the company is not going to be able to pay you for voluntary overtime."

"I did clock out. I'm just here because you're still here." Nene figured that if she wanted a real shot at this, she had to be aggressive. Like Rambo! It was the closest guns thing, next to a Terminator, that she could think of.

Umiko paused typing her code and just hit a quick shortcut to make the code compile for now. She had to address this issue before it got out of hand. "Sakura-san, if your goal to work here was only because you have developed a crush on me, you should go back to the other debuggers. At work, I work. I won't have time for long glances and hand holding the way some individuals do." Umiko was thinking of Yagami, who still refused to not use her last name.

"I know. That's why I'm still here." Talking to one NPC repeatedly, many more times than it had cycles for dialogue, Nene found a minor glitch and wrote it down. "Work is work, but~… after you get off work, I'd like to go for a drink." Nene was over 20, so she could legally drink now.

Umiko hadn't expected any kind of professionalism from Sakura and still there it was. And she certainly seemed to have grown up just a little.

Nene really hadn't grown up at all. She was trying her absolute best to appear cool and collected but her heart was beating so fast that she thought she herself was going to have a blue screen any second now.

"I cannot leave until I compiled the remaining code into the new build and pushed it to the server." Umiko didn't outright say no because she had no reason to. If Sakura really was capable of keeping work as just work, and she owed it to Sakura to give her a chance at that after unjustly suspecting her of faking her resume, there really was no greater reason to not go for drinks with a co-worker. Even if it was blindingly obvious what her intentions were. Umiko had been around Tooyama for too long to not see the signs.

"And because I know that I am still here! Isn't my perseverance almost like that of Buddha?!" Nene looked proud and raised her chin.

The other programmers had already gone home and Umiko was busy with the code. Even though debugging ate up a lot of time for the coders, they still had other work to do. It was past 9 and Nene was just watching Umiko work now. Her mind couldn't process any more gaming on this first day.

The things Umiko did were far above Nene's knowledge level but she was just relaxing by watching anyway. She only realized then, that apparently, she had a date coming up. And she was just wearing totally normal clothes. Starting to get seriously nervous, Nene wondered if she could make it back home and back in time but she already knew that was totally impossible. And there was another big issues. What would she even say during their date? Was it even a date? Was getting drinks with a co-worker a date? Maybe it was in their specific circumstances. Why is this so confusing! Debugging isn't this hard!

At 9:30, Umiko was finally done. All that was left to do was wait for the code to compile properly, if she hadn't messed up anywhere, and push it on the server. Nene had taken a walk around the office earlier, but most people had already gone home. "What makes you think I even prefer women?" Umiko was not really bothered by shame. Unless it was her last name. She still wasn't over that.

I can't tell her it's because I asked Yagami-san and she said she's never had a boyfriend in her life. Nene thought and just lied. "Even if you don't, I still like this job so no regrets! None!" She immediately regretted not saying something more cool, something that would really impress Umiko.

But she had already done so. "Well. If you can do your job every day as well as you did today I might consider accepting a date." Umiko knew very well how to push someone's buttons. And after everything was said and done, Sakura had come back after constantly being scolded, reprimanded and watched. And she was cute. Taking a closer look, Umiko thought that maybe cute only applied because of her behavior and clothes. With a different attitude and some better clothes, she might even pass as sexy.

"So are we going to get a drink?" Nene looked very enthusiastic now.

"There are a few things I would like you specifically to test for me over the next two weeks. As long as you are fine with talking about those, I will get a drink with you instead of going to my airsoft field." Umiko had never really given dating any real chance because she liked her job and she wanted to be even better at it. And her hobby ate quite a lot of money and time as well. Unless she would date someone that could join in on both occasions, she wouldn't really have the time.

And so, about sixty minutes later, they sat in one of Umiko's favorite bars, ordering drinks. Japanese alcohol was quite different from what they served in the west so it was easy to drink even for Nene. Sitting next to each other, Umiko didn't want to launch back into work immediately. "What is it that you like about me?"

Nene froze. "W-Well, you're pretty cool. The thing with the guns is a little scary at first but after I looked it up online, it actually looks pretty amazing. You're also super hot!" Nene covered her mouth. "I mean you're really beautiful and-" She stopped when Umiko started to laugh. This was the first time that Nene could remember that she had seen her laugh.

"In most cases blurting out what you think would not be considered a virtue but I believe it suits you well, Sakura-san. But why change your entire career plan, just to ask me out?" Umiko wanted to hear about her choices in more detail, to make sure this wasn't just a youthful crush gone too far.

"I really loved my time working at Eaglejump. Video games are never going to go away and since they get bigger and bigger, debuggers will always be needed. So don't treat me like a child!" Puffing up her cheeks had almost become a habit. She did it every time someone upset her. "It's true I switched with someone from the group that went debugging for Pentendo. They pay a lot more and they have better connections, but there's no Ahago-" Nene covered her mouth in a panic.

Umiko punished Nene refilling her glass again. "Drink up. And I hope you have your ID on you. I don't want to get stopped by the police because it looks like I made an underage girl drink." Watching Nene chug her drink, Umiko was impressed. Not only because she could drink alcohol just fine but because she didn't seem displeased by the taste at all. A stark contrast from that time she tried that demon lord frog energy drink.

"You will never guess what I spent my most recent paycheck on." Nene lived on her own and she was actually doing very well for herself, considering her age and qualifications.

If she is bragging about it, it must be something that is supposed to impress me. Umiko felt it wasn't so bad to receive all that attention from someone that had pretty much already admitted to having a crush on her. "I cannot possibly imagine." Umiko didn't make much of an attempt to pretend she cared that much.

Nene pulled out her cellphone and brought up a photo of a girl in full protective gear, wielding two handguns. "Tada! It took a lot of sessions for me to get used to it, but it's actually kinda fun to bully other players by firing at them!" Laughing in a childish and mean way, Nene made Umiko's face light up. This is it! This is the reaction I wanted. It was so worth it spending all that money on the gear, guns and training!

"You've started playing airsoft? What kind of field do you like? Are those handguns your personal ones? How many sessions did you do?" Umiko got very passionate about her hobby, even with people that only showed passing interest. And now Sakura-san had even bought her own equipment and taken up airsoft for her? Umiko was swayed between being moved and being worried but she decided to go with being moved instead.

"I don't really like the muddy kind and rain kinda sucks. Yeah, those are mine. I actually wanted one of those big guns you have but they are so expensive and the shop clerk said that someone short and quick like me should focus on lighter weapons and I didn't want to drag you down when we kick everyone's ass, so I kinda listened." Nene was really happy her efforts were paying off. It had been a long road.

When she had just gone back to college, she hadn't really thought about Umiko that much. But once every day life settled back in, she started to miss the work. Classes were boring and really uninteresting compared to debugging, even though the latter was far more tedious most of the time. She also missed Aocchi and as she thought about her, she also started to miss Umiko.

Recalling that moment at the party, she still had that card on her desk. As the days passed, she realized that working in the game industry had been the best time of her life, at least outside parties and the likes. And as much as Umiko scolded and scared her, she ended up thinking about her more and more. The cool demeanor, her professionalism. Before Nene knew what was happening, her friends at college were asking her if there was a boy she liked because she looked lovestruck. They took it with relative indifference when Nene just blurted out that she thought she had a crush on her female boss from her part-time gig.

Calling Umiko a few days after that, asking her where she could go for other debugging work, Nene realized that her feelings weren't gonna go away so she might as well be a proper adult and pursue her feelings. Unlike Aocchi, who just kept throwing herself into work.

From there, one thing had lead to another, eventually resulting in this; talking with an excited Umiko about her airsoft experiences and having drinks together. It was almost midnight when they left. Nene was completely drunk, past the point of giggling like a girl and talking to phone poles. Umiko kept refilling her glass almost on instinct because they had a good time but she now saw that making someone, who was clearly not used to that much alcohol, drink so much was very immature and careless of her.

Taking responsibility for her carelessness resulted in Nene waking up on an unfamiliar couch, in an unfamiliar apartment. H-Have I been kidnapped? A cute, smart, beautiful, grown up lady like myself, kidnapped?! Or so Nene thought before she noticed the numerous weapons and survival clothes all over the place. Oh, this has to be Umiko's place then. There was a moment where no thoughts at all were in Nene's head. Umiko's place?!

Umiko peeked out of the bathroom, already dressed and brushing her teeth, when she heard a loud thud and something not quite heavy hit the ground. "We are going to be late for work. I have disposable brushes in my cabinet, please take one and get ready. I do not have a change of clothes for you so please make plentiful use of the deodorant I left on the table for you."

"D-D-D-D-Did we-" Nene was so hyper that she wasn't thinking straight

"We had drinks together and I carelessly got you too drunk to send you home. You spent the night on my couch."

"B-B-But what am I gonna tell everyone at work?!" Showing up together, with the same clothes she wore the day before, that was gonna raise all sorts of flags with people. "I'm not mentally prepared!"

"Sakura-san." Umiko noticed, with great pleasure, that calling out her name like that was still very effective. "Please get ready for work. Yagami wears the same clothes so often that nobody is going to even notice that your clothes did not change from yesterday."

"Sir, yes, sir!" Nene saluted and put her feet together as a joke. She won a smile from Umiko, which made this instantly the best morning she had in years. Taking off her shirt in the middle of the living room, Nene grabbed the deodorant bottle and got rest of as much of the bar, alcohol and sweat smell as she could.

Umiko was leaned back just a little too much to not be suspicious, glancing into the living room where Sakura stood in just a skirt and bra. They're surprisingly big. Umiko had never really paid one iota of attention to Sakura's physique before, but now that she was so very much aware that the girl had a crush on her, she was kinda interested.

Nene was absolutely oblivious to this development though. Putting her shirt back on, Nene felt the smell come back. Taking it back off and spraying the shirt itself pretty intensely, Nene could hear the bathroom door close. "Umiko-san?"

The toilet was flushed a moment later. About a minute after that, Umiko came out of the bathroom. "Please hurry." Umiko returned to her bedroom to gather her things. Her employee tag, keys, wallet and so forth. Nene looked around the somewhat spartan bathroom as she brushed her teeth with a really simple brush. Nene wondered for a moment why Umiko kept disposable brushes in her cabinet but then she realized that they had to be for longer survival game sessions. A bottle of water, toothpaste and a brush was all someone really needed to not breathe their teammates to death out there.

"Sakura-san." It didn't sound the same way it usually did.

Frantically waving out of the bathroom, Nene signaled for Umiko to wait a little longer. She was pretty good about hygiene, normally at least. I can't wait to brag to Aocchi about spending the night with Umiko!

"Nene-san. Just finish, we need to go. Traffic will be terrible if we wait any longer and coming in late together will most likely end with Hazuki-san annoying us for months." Umiko had not the best of relationships with her boss.

N-Nene-san? The girl's face was like a living Christmas decoration, going from bright shine to crimson red in regular intervals. Quickly cleaning her mouth, Nene headed towards the door.

"Sakura-san, your tag." Umiko was quickly back to calling the girl by her last name. Spoiling her wouldn't do any good. And after Nene quickly dashed to the table and then out the door that Umiko held open, the two women almost raced towards Umiko's car.

5 weeks later

Nene could not feel her legs or arms. She wasn't outright terrible at airsoft, but compared to Umiko, she might as well have been. They were 9:6 on matches won and lost. And for today, they were done. "Sakura-san, can you stand?" Umiko still called her that. Occasionally she rewarded the girl by calling her by her first name but she found that doing so was best reserved for the special occasion.

"I don't think so." Nene didn't even want to try. She had been running around, doing her best, so much that she just fell over the second the match had finished.

"Well, it appears I have no other choice then." Putting her gun away, strapped to her back now, Umiko first holstered Nene's guns before she picked her up. But instead of doing a princess carry, she did it like a soldier would, putting Nene over her shoulder.

At least I have a nice view of her butt from here, Nene thought and smirked. And to make it even better, she didn't have to walk.

"You fought bravely today, Sakura-san." Umiko was quite glad with how things had went. Winning 9 out of 15 matches was below her acceptable threshold for solo matches but as a team, that was quite good. And she could see that Sakura really put in the effort required.

Arriving back at the tents, other teams were already taking off their gear, ready to go home and take a nice shower to wash off the dirt and sweat. Far above them were thick, black clouds, ready to provide said shower free of charge. "I wish we could go and see a movie or something." Nene was disappointed. The workload had become absurd because of a last minute addition to the game and it was causing so many bugs all over the place, the debuggers were always clocking overtime, all of them, and on some days, Umiko and Nene didn't get to go home. It was just like that added panty shot function that Hazuki-san had wanted towards the end of the development cycle of Fairies 3. Just a hundred times more disruptive.

"The art department is under even more pressure than we are." Umiko took off her helmet and started to peel off her protectors. She wore just a tight sports bra beneath her uniform and since it was already getting dark she didn't really care about others seeing. Until she noticed Sakura's irritated expression, again with her puffed up cheeks. Before Umiko even realized what she was doing, she pulled the zipper of her uniform back up. That she cared about Sakura's mood so much came as a surprise. Not an unpleasant or pleasant one, just a surprise.

"Aocchi was calling me yesterday, telling me how they suddenly had to do over 2000 mini sprites to cover all the monsters, five sprites for each monster She called me from work because she hadn't really gone home in a while." Nene still talked to Aoba a lot. Around the office, Nene had become known as the one and a half debugger. Every time she found a bug she didn't understand, she carefully watched Umiko fix it and ask what the reason was. Slowly but surely she was understanding little by little how the game worked. However, she was still years away from being able to code anything herself.

"Our office is very lucky we have a public bath nearby." Umiko made use of that sometimes as well.

"Are you really going straight home? Do you want to stop at a bar?" Nene wanted to spend more time with Umiko outside of work.

"Do you remember what happened last week when we went to have drinks after this?" The woman with tan skin still remembered how sore and exhausted she had been the following day. It had been like torture. All because she indulged Sakura.

Nene made an uncomfortable face. "I do." In truth she just wanted to say Let me stay at your place! But Umiko had already turned her down on that, saying that as long as they worked together, that was not going to happen unless extraordinary circumstances took place.

Pulling herself together, Nene put away her own stuff. She brought an extra backpack just for that reason. Umiko on the other hand brought a big duffle bag with her every time, since she favored larger guns and she brought multiple of those. "Are you dropping me off at my place?"

"Naturally." Umiko sometimes liked to tease her a little bit. "I would worry that you fall asleep on the train and end up somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Or that someone might steal you."

"How rude! I wouldn't fall asleep on the tr- Ah.." Nene remembered that one time where Aoba had counted on her to wake her up.

"You have improved since the last time. I was initially concerned you might become sick of partnering with me due to our difference in skill and experience, but you are getting better. I felt safe trusting my back to you." The brunette had a pretty good grasp on how Sakura worked. Staying strict with the occasional moment of praise or kindness worked really well to keep her both motivated and interested.

"The first few times I played I really didn't like it. All the getting dirty and constantly being hit by stuff sucked really bad. But it was kinda fun when I got quick enough to shoot people! Pew, pew!" Nene gestured with her hands since her guns were already put away,

I guess she is never going to outlive that childish personality. But it's kind of cute. "It certainly is an acquired taste, much like alcohol. Do you have all your things?"

"I do." Nene picked up something from the ground. "But you lost your participation tag." It was just a number that was fixed on the clothes with a hairpin. But because Nene had been over at Umiko's place a handful of times now, mostly for survival game matters, she had found a cupboard with several albums, detailing every session, with the tag of each session glued into the books.

"Thank you." Umiko rewarded Sakura with a smile.

Leaving the grounds and heading to Umiko's car, Nene let out a yawn. Now that the adrenaline was gone and it was about to rain, she knew why it was a bad idea to try and do anything else, other than take a shower at home and crash into bed. The first drops of rain hit their hair just as they loaded their stuff into Umiko's car.

"I'm so pooped." Nene deflated in the passenger's seat and put on her seat belt. "But I had fun. Maybe we should invite Aocchi and her friends sometime."

"I have a distinct feeling that they would only be frustrated to join in at our level." Umiko smiled again. "You are not a beginner anymore, Sakura." Leaving off the honorific, Umiko was very, very slowly conditioning Sakura.

Just as the programmer started the car, the rain really started coming down. It was a thirty minute drive to Nene's apartment and just two minutes after they started, Nene was lightly snoring in her seat. The two of them couldn't agree on their music taste, so the radio stayed off when they drove to and back from the survival game field.

Umiko kept her yawning suppressed but she was fairly exhausted herself. She was genuinely impressed that Sakura kept up with her for the entire day. She wasn't the most accurate shot but her low height and happy go lucky demeanor made other players always underestimate her. Out of 24 kills between them, Nene had scored 8 of them.

The rain got even worse when Umiko took a corner and finally brought the car to a halt in front of Nene's apartment complex. "Sakura." There was no response. Is she that fast asleep? Umiko just sat there and turned the car off. With how energetic and out of control Sakura could be, she really liked this peaceful side of her.

The soft, pure lips of Sakura Nene slightly parted by her breathing, the 20 year old girl just sat there, deep asleep, in Umiko's passenger seat. She didn't notice at all then strands of brown her slowly moved over in her direction, one hand resting against the door, another against Sakura's seat. Umiko had spent enough time with her to become attracted to her. She hadn't planned on it, but she welcomed that it was happening to her. "Nene." Umiko whispered to the short girl, who still refused to wake up. Umiko's smile made way for a more sensual look as she focused on Nene's lips.

Leaning forward first, Umiko then pulled back for a second, only to move a golden strand of hair away from Nene's forehead so it wouldn't get in the way. Her own, brown hair tickling Nene's arms, Umiko let her own lips graze against Nene's, a fleeting kiss. She remained calm on the outside and the inside was not much different. Her heart beat a little faster but she knew that this was almost natural for her to do. Nene liked her and had said so on multiple occasions and she wasn't opposed to it at all.

A second kiss, no more grazing but real contact, Umiko felt an inner peace she otherwise only knew when she cleaned and maintained her guns. This might be right for me after all. Returning to a proper position in her seat, Umiko raised her voice. "Sakura-san!"

Nene suddenly rose in her seat. "Y-Yes?!" Half asleep, she responded to the summons.

"We're here. I don't have an umbrella to lend you, but you will be showering afterward either way. Do you need help getting your stuff?" Umiko pressed the button that unlocked the trunk of the car.

"Nah, 's just a backpack." Nene opened the door a tiny bit and licked her lips so they wouldn't dry out. And she thought there was a weird taste on them. Did I forget to wash dirt off my face? Doesn't taste like dirt though. Getting out of the car, running around the car to the back, grabbing her backpack from the trunk and making a mad dash towards her door, she quickly opened up, turned around and waved to Umiko, who was just now pulling the passenger door shut and waved back before restarting the engine.

As Umiko drove away and had to stop on a red light, she put her index finger to her lips. Kissing a woman is better than I thought it would be. Taking a turn and heading home, Umiko was not looking forward to work the next morning. Management sometimes got weird ideas about the schedule.

During lunch break the following day, Umiko was on her own because Nene was so busy testing out the limits of the new build and making sure the old bugs were all fixed that she didn't have time to take a break. They had added a monster capturing system to the game at last minute. They only displayed as small miniature versions in an extra area at the base, outside the dungeons, but each of them did a unique thing and she had to test all of them.

Eating by herself, Umiko saw a very exhausted looking Yagami and Tooyama couple arrive in the cafeteria as well. Spotting her, the woman with tan skin couldn't manage to make a scary expression in time. "Where is your mini me, Ahagon?" Yagami mocked the programmer.

"It's Umiko." She was already starting to be annoyed. "She's busy confirming the build is solid. What was Hazuki-san thinking, pushing something like this so far into the development cycle?"

"It was not actually Hazuki's fault. A few investors and some of our marketing affiliates really wanted this feature to be in because of the PokiminGO craze that is going on. They think it'll help sell a lot more copies and improve the longevity of the game." Rin explained. "I think most of our department went home yesterday for the first time in a week."

"It is causing all sorts of unexpected behavior in monster AI and movement patterns." Umiko could have kept complaining for a week straight. "I'm lucky to have a dedicated tester. I sometimes do smaller updates of compiled files and she tests them before I push them through the server to everyone else."

"You're getting pretty close with Nene, aren't you?" Kou had a dirty smirk on her face.

"Are you in any position to try and tease people about that?" Umiko looked first at Yagami and then at Tooyama. "Human resources is leaving you alone because you both do your work. You should fill out the HR form before it blows up in your faces." She didn't really have the patience to indulge their We're totally not dating despite everyone knows but we don't know that comedy routine. "I have to get back to work." Finishing her lunch quickly, Umiko picked up coffee on her way out.

Suzukaze and her friends from the art department, looking like they hadn't really seen a day off in a while, walked past her, only saying hello in passing. Leaving one cup of coffee next to a burned out looking Sakura, Umiko sat down at her own desk. "And?"

"I found three that have minor bugs. It looks like just the sprite assignment is wrong. ID 272 suddenly turns into ID 271 when using the jumping animation. All three of them are off by one ID count." Reaching for the coffee, Nene felt really, really tired. "How many days off release are we again?"

"17 days. I don't think I'll be able to go anywhere with you until release date." Umiko enjoyed their little excursions together. On one hand, Sakura was a valued co-worker that was really shining in her work now. She caught sometimes really obscure bugs that would otherwise be found by the masses and then they would be all over social media. There was one bug that resulted in Sophia being naked that Nene caught. That would have been really, really bad and someone from Marketing came down personally to thank her.

"I don't think I have any time to go anywhere either." Nene looked at her to-do list and it was so long she needed four pages. "I should stay over tonight but these clothes..." Nene sniffed her shirt and the deodorant was slowly failing her.

"Go home. You most likely have enough overtime for the company to pay you an entire additional week if we had to." Umiko thought about it for a moment and changed her mind. "Go home, change clothes, bring another change and come back. I really could use your help with a few things and I am definitely not going to be able to go home tonight."

"You just can't be honest and tell me you want me to stay over at work with you." Nene had grown brave enough to try and tease Umiko but it usually backfired on her.

"If you try to crawl into my sleeping bag, again, I will shoot you. If you try to spy on me when I change, again, I will shoot you. And I just told you that I want you by my side for the night." Umiko knew exactly how that last line could be interpreted and it made Sakura's head light up in red.

Returning to work, Nene clocked out at 6 sharp. She was supposed to leave at 5 but for the last week she had never left before 10. And today she had to stay an extra hour because there was one bug that they just couldn't track down and Umiko had to push updated builds seventeen times. It took a long time to push it to the servers because she had to update the full build for that but if she only updated the necessary files and pushed them just for Sakura, she could test them quickly and under supervision.

"Hey Ahagon, can I borrow Nene for- huh, she's not here?" Yagami showed up and immediately had to take cover outside the booth because Umiko was about to shoot her. "Did she go home early today?"

"You realize that all debuggers are supposed to clock out at 5 and that most of them do because we cannot pay them for overtime. That Sakura is staying behind late every day shouldn't be something you take for granted."

"I never thought I'd hear you defend her. I wanted to borrow her so she could stand model for me for a minute. I'm supposed to draw the promo art for one of the big placards but I have trouble getting the pose right because they specified it way too much."

"Ask someone from your team." Umiko was not about to rent out Sakura to Yagami. After fighting a promotion with everything she could, Yagami really wanted to stay on as lead designer for at least the spin-off game. If she wanted to draw so badly, she should just draw and stop trying to poach her personal debugger.

"They're all neck deep in sprite work. I think if I don't send Yun home she is going to overheat and crash."

"You're bothering me, Yagami." Umiko stopped typing, looked up and let out an annoyed sigh. "Sakura will be back between 7 and 8. But she is coming back precisely because we're completely overworked and way beyond schedule because of the monster capture addition. You of all people should know how swamped everyone is."

Yagami saw reason. Umiko did look really busy and there was a huge to-do list on Nene's part of the desk. "So, are the two of you staying over together tonight?"

Umiko slowly got up and grabbed a fully automatic gun from her wall. Taking a magazine from a locked drawer, Yagami quickly escaped when she realized what was about to happen. Putting the gun away as soon as she could no longer hear Yagami's footsteps, Umiko sat back down. Normally she wouldn't really be bothered, since it should only take a few minutes, but she felt oddly protective of Sakura.

And at 7:40, Nene returned. "I took a shower as well." Just in case. I don't want to smell like anything weird.

Umiko looked up and saw only a small duffle bag that Sakura had brought. "Sakura-san." That still made the blonde pay intense attention. "You forgot to bring a sleeping bag, didn't you?" Umiko wanted to say that it was on purpose but the shocked look on Sakura's face spoke for itself.

"And I put it on the couch, too, so I wouldn't forget it!" Nene groaned. "It'll take me at least an hour, probably a little more because the trains are running fewer times now, but Ill go get it!"

"Forget it. If you spend that much time in transit, you'll be too tired when you get back. Just start to work. I will make an exception and let you use my sleeping bag." Umiko kept hers below her desk just in case something came up and she had to stay over.

"Only if we share. Otherwise I'll just sleep in my chair." Nene hoped that she could pressure Umiko into cuddling with her, sharing the same sleeping bag. Thankfully, Umiko was slim and not as absurdly busty as Hazuki. And she herself was tiny. They could fit in together!

"Then you will be sleeping in your chair then. Don't complain to me if your back hurts tomorrow. I pushed a new build to your PC fifteen minutes ago, please test if this fixed the 52th floor hardlock." Umiko wasn't going to just indulge her like this.

"Yes..." Nene looked disappointed but got to work anyway. And I put on some good underwear too.

It was past 11 when they took a break, both of them working way overtime. A lot of lights were still on; proof that everyone was overwhelmed with this sudden new addition. After the success of Fairies 3, the spin-off was supposed to introduce people to dungeon crawling and also bring in even more people. People that generally didn't like RPGs but would start to buy the series if they really liked the spin-off.

"After playing it so much, what do you think of the game?" Umiko was just leaned back in her chair, sipping some iced coffee.

"The art is still super cute but I think the mechanics are actually what's shining this time. The dungeons are always random and pretty original! If you get really going, there is almost no downtime at all and the animations skip feature makes it so you can go really fast. It's a lot of fun building Sophia-chan up. It's a good game. I think the lack of different weapon types hurts the game a bit but… it's okay, Sophia-chan with a sword would be really weird after all." Nene was full of opinions. She didn't know how often she had answered this question already. "I thought about Fairies 3 a lot when I played it too, but now that I understand how parts of the game work, it really makes me appreciate the gameplay more."

"I'm glad that working with me and working so much overtime didn't make you hate the game." Umiko was genuinely glad about this.

"I'm pretty sure working with you on it made me like it more, because, it's kinda like my girlfriend made it. I-I don't mean you're my girlfriend, I haven't even asked you out or anything but-!" Nene realized she had said too much again. Just like that one time during the release of Fairies 3.

"Why don't you?" Umiko thought that she had strung Sakura along long enough. Sakura liked her, and by now it was obvious to herself that she liked her back. Not as strongly as Nene liked her, but it was a start.

"Because you're just going to be all Sakura-san and shoot me down." Sakura puffed up her cheeks to the absolute maximum.

"Well, that is certainly the case. At least for the next 17 days." Umiko smiled and put down her iced coffee. "Would you like the rest? I'm going to the bathroom and we should resume work after I come back." Without waiting for Sakura to reply, Umiko left the booth and headed towards the bathroom, just outside the office area.

Indirect kiss, indirect kiss! Nene got all excited and then realized that she had experienced this exact situation at least a dozen times already. Not that that lessened her excitement at all. Looking at her save file of of Sophia's game, Nene had an idea. She tabbed into the save file directory and copied all the files into another folder in her private files. Loading the save and opened a save point, she proceeded to fill all 99 slots with the same save game, closed the game, opened it and pressed load, only to have the game freeze up. Umiko is going to kill me.

At 2 AM, the save file bug was taken care off, Nene was at her absolute limit, coffee or not. Umiko was not faring much better.. "Ah… shit." Umiko cursed, something Nene had never heard before. Deleting an error, Umiko ran one final compile before she leaned back into her chair. "That's it for tonight."

Nene was already half asleep on the desk, her arms crossed and supporting her head, she was just about to nod off. Seeing her there, cute, sleepy and having worked 9 hours overtime without being paid for it, Umiko couldn't really let her sleep in that chair.

"Sakura-san." Umiko didn't get any reaction from the girl. "Nene." Now that made the girl looked up and yawn. "You can sleep in my sleeping bag. With me."

Nene was so far gone she could not even think about what was being offered anymore. She just wanted to close her eyes and drift off. Putting out the sleeping bag under her desk, Umiko only bothered to take off her shoes, panty hose and hotpants. As if she was in a trance, Nene imitated the programmer.

It was tight. Even with Nene being as tiny as she was and Umiko being thin, it was tight. Lying on her side, facing the wall, Nene was cuddled up against her, her short arms going around Umiko's waist. They had only been in there for about 45 seconds and Nene was already gone.

Umiko wasn't far behind. She only stayed awake long enough to smell Nene's hair, which had a pleasant apple shampoo scent to it.

Early in the morning, a little while before the office got really busy, Nene woke up first. She was blinded by a familiar chestnut colored sight; Umiko's hair. The events of last night came back to her quickly. If she could have, she would have pumped her fist in the air multiple times while shouting Yes. But since that was not an option, she simply went for shouting Yes inside her mind. She was so close to Umiko that she felt her breathing, even though the programmer had her back turned towards Nene.

Ah, I can feel her butt. Yes, it was totally worth staying over! So worth it! Noticing that her hands were resting on Umiko's stomach, Nene thought that if not now, she'd never get a chance like this again. Slowly moving her arms up, little by little, while pretending to just move in her sleep, Nene reached Umiko's breasts, first merely resting her hands on them, then groping a little. They're way more firm than I thought. Squeezing a little harder, Nene started to be turned on. She was finally, finally, doing something erotic to Umiko.

Continuing to grope the sleeping programmer, Nene started to pant. S-Should I try for her panties too? But… if she catches me that would be really bad news, right? But as she thought about it, she squeezed a little too hard and a moan escaped Umiko.

"Sakura-san. What is the meaning of this?" Was the immediate response that followed. Being woken up by the groping and feeling Sakura's hands on her breasts, Umiko was pretty pissed.

Nene tried to pull her arms away but since there wasn't really any space in the sleeping bag, she instead ended up squeezing down on the Okinawan's breasts really hard. Umiko twitched, kept down a moan, and then calmly opened the sleeping bag. Getting out of it, putting on her panty hose and hots pants, Umiko took a large caliber hand gun from her desk. "Sakura-san." Firing bullets on Nene, who was using the now empty sleeping bag as a shield, Umiko exacted her revenge.

Around the corner were the two programmers that worked with Umiko and both of them looked at each other with a look that just said We didn't see or hear anything.

Nene eventually came out of the sleeping bag and put her skirt bag on. Walking to where she could clock in, she worried about whether Umiko was going to stay mad at her now. Picking up coffee on the way back, Nene found that Umiko was much more mature than she herself was.

"I should have expected something to this effect. Please get to work. And do not bother with apologizing, I should have been aware that this would happen." Umiko's cold attitude was worse than being actually angry for Nene.

They spent the day without exchanging any non-work related words and the tension in the air was so palatable that the two other programmers wished those two would just make up already. Only when the time came for Sakura to clock out did Umiko concede that it was time to stop being irritated. "Three weeks after the release of the spin-off, I will have 10 days of vacation plus weekends. I would like you to come with me to a 7 days survival game camp during the first week of my vacation." Umiko knew she should sweeten the deal but she wanted Sakura to just think about it for a moment.

"I don't really get vacation days, I think." Nene was irritated by this now that she thought about it. "But I can ask a friend at work to cover for me."

"All participants have to bring their own gear, including tents and sleeping bags. My current bag is not at all suited for outdoor camping so I am going to be looking at a new one. I need to know if I buy a normal one or one that is extra large." Umiko didn't come right out and say it but Nene picked up on it.

"An extra large one. I'll pay my part. I'm a responsible, working, adult after all!" Nene looked proud. The tension significantly lessened after that, for about one hour. After that, Nene found a critical bug. "Umiko-san… You remember how I talked about the inventory overflow on the first day?"

"Don't tell me the bug sprung up again. I should have thoroughly fixed it." Umiko paused her typing.

"No, but… I found a much more severe bug that also results in overflowing item quantities. It's best if I show you." Nene waited for Umiko to move over with her chair. She opened the inventory and unlike many games, that didn't pause the game. Quickly switching between items at the border of the inventory, Nene then started slamming the equip, drop, eat and use buttons all at the same time.

Umiko hit the table with her fist when she saw the result. The item was being replicated endlessly within the inventory, stacking endlessly, with each stack being 255 in quantity. But the overflowing was not the worst part. The item duping itself was a problem. "I think this is because the game briefly removes the item from the slot when you try to do something with it and then places it back and if you move them at the same time as you do all those actions rapidly, it just gets confused and puts multiple items back. And because it doesn't really know the quantity of those additional ones it puts back it just uses FF. Probably because it doesn't process the inventory that quickly."

There was groaning and cursing from behind them. Both of the other developers turned around. "Overnight stay?"

"No, I will handle this." Umiko already had an idea of how to fox it. "Good job finding this, Nene."

It were these sorts of glitches that speedrunners eventually found years down the line. But in rare cases someone found it early and it ruined the experience of people when they didn't have the willpower to resist the easy way.

Nene didn't realize it at first but when she noticed that Umiko had called her by her first name, without honorific at that, in front of co-workers, her heart lit up.

And that day too, it was almost time for the last train when the three programmers called it a day. Nene had stayed behind and found multiple ways to get past Umiko's improved security against duping. They had finally found a solution that Nene couldn't crack, so they called it a day. "This will be the most bug free game we have ever released." One of the programmers said as she left.

"I will drive you home." Umiko was so incredibly tired, she almost wanted to take the train but then she would need to take the train in the morning as well.

Nene was always glad when she got to spent some extra time with Umiko. Considering her little adventure that morning, the blonde still thought that things were going really well. She was doing her job, and even getting better at it, and she was getting closer and closer to Umiko.

Driving through the nearly empty streets, Umiko yawned almost constantly. "I can't believe I am more tired now than I was during the last few days of Fairies 3. You're really creating a lot of extra work for me. But I'm sure the players will really appreciate both of our work."

"I hope so. I am not sure I'll want to play the game from scratch when it comes out. Not for a few weeks at least." Nene had invested so many hours over the last several weeks that she had even seen repeats of dungeons despite there being over 60,000 distinct variants.

"We will spent one week away from video games entirely when we attend the Eisenkreuz Survival Games." It was a famous survival game festival for airsoft fans all over Japan. There was prize money but Umiko really didn't believe that she could get there. There were some insanely good people out there.

"They… do have showers and toilets there, right?" Nene was worried about her hygiene.

"They do." Umiko chuckled. "It is one thing to not have them on standard fields where people just have matches and then go home. But they can't really not have them on a big field with many teams and almost all of them staying there for a week."

"What was it like after Fairies 3 released?" Nene wanted to know.

"Calm, for about one day. After that, we had to start patching some issues we didn't find during debugging. I assume I will have almost nothing to do post-launch for this title." Umiko glanced at Nene with a smile on her face. She truly appreciated having such a dedicated helper.

"I'm surprised you didn't do any DLC for Fairies 3."

"It was either DLC or the spin-off and since both the writer and Yagami thought that DLC would just hamper the story, management decided on a spin-off game instead." Umiko let out an especially loud and long yawn. There is no way I can make it all the way to my place safely like this.

"Do you… have any plans for Fairies 4? But even if you did you probably couldn't tell me."

"Our next project is actually already being planned. From what I've been told, it will be a tactical, free moving RPG like Valkyries Chronic. The current development name is just Dark Fairies." Umiko knew this was, in the absolute strictest sense possible, against company rules. But surely Nene knew better by now than to blurt out things in public.

They finally arrived at Nene's place. Letting the blonde out, Sakura looked back into the car. "Good night, Umiko." But before Nene could close the door, Umiko took off her seat-belt, turned off the engine and pulled her keys.

"Do you have a couch I can sleep on? It is unwise to drive when I can barely keep my eyes open. And without someone to talk to, I don't trust myself to make it home safely." Umiko saw how excited Nene appeared to be. "I am just staying over because I am exhausted."

"But… the thing is, I only have one bed and it isn't really that big." Nene lived in a small flat. There was no actual living room so to speak. Only her bedroom. A kitchen. And a bathroom.

"Can you promise me that you will not repeat what happened this morning? In exchange I will not say anything when we visit the Eisenkreuz contest. And I expect that once we have passed release day, you will ask me out properly."

"I totally will! I mean, ask you out. Not about the groping and stuff. Although I probably will. During the contest I mean! And-"

"Sakura-san." Umiko wondered if this was going to keep working. It was almost a nostalgic feeling at this point, to see Nene get all tense. "Can we go inside?"

"S-Sure." Nene fumbled her keys and dropped them but she then opened up the door. The apartment building had a separate lock at the front door, a key that every resident had. Making it all the way to the third floor, Umiko just really wanted to go to sleep already.

"Do you have an alarm clock?" The programmer didn't want to be tardy when it was nearly crunch time.

"I wouldn't get to work in time without one." Nene admitted freely and opened up her flat's door. It really wasn't much but it was all hers. Her own four walls. Her own bathroom. Her own Umiko. Although the last one was sort of questionable.

"I apologize if I smell slightly unpleasant but I simply can't stay awake another minute." Undressing sloppily and quickly, Umiko fell face first in Nene's bed. "It smells like you," Was the last thing the tanned woman said before she fell asleep, leaving an anxious Nene behind. The temptation was incredible but Nene pinched her own cheek really hard to get a hold of herself. She hadn't worked her ass off for 2 years just so she could ruin her chances by not keeping her word.

Brushing her teeth after she undressed halfway, Nene hoped that Umiko could pick up a toothbrush somewhere on the way to work. Because she only had that one.

Ready for bed, Nene slipped under the covers with the woman from Okinawa who she was in love with. And it looked like she was finally being loved back. She couldn't wait for tomorrow. The week after. And so forth. She liked her job and she had found someone she liked that liked her back. Life was good. "Chocolate goddess..." Nene murmured, just before she fell asleep.

Continue? (Insert Coin)