December 25 Thursday 1999 ZAGE Tower Japan.
Zaboru leaned back in his chair and smiled. The hardest part of the recent sprint was finally behind him—weeks of planning, reviewing, and finishing the core developnt for ZAGE's "Digital World" websites. So of the pages were already stable enough to show internally, while others were still waiting on final polish, but the foundation was finished. If everything stayed on schedule, the first public release would co within the next month or two.
For once, he allowed himself to relax.
A plate of gyoza sat on his desk, still warm, the sll of garlic and sesa oil drifting up like a reward. Ayumi had made them earlier, and Zaboru ate slowly, savoring the simple comfort after so many nights of staring at screens. Outside the window, Tokyo's winter lights blinked in the distance, calm and steady.
And then there was the quiet reminder of ti.
Zaboru was twenty-five now. He had turned twenty-five on December 15—only a couple of weeks ago—and even though his life moved like a storm, that small fact made him pause. Twenty-five. Still young, but already carrying projects that felt like they belonged to an older era.
The ZAGE Tower itself was unusually quiet. Most employees were already on holiday, and the building had that rare end-of-year atmosphere: fewer footsteps in the hallways, fewer phones ringing, fewer urgent etings waiting to ambush him. For a mont, it felt like ZAGE could breathe.
Zaboru took another bite of gyoza and let the warmth spread through him, grateful for the silence—because he knew it wouldn't last forever.
Zaboru was kind about one thing in a way that surprised even his own executives: he made sure ZAGE employees got a real break at the end of the year.
Inside the company, everyone called it Wellness Week, even though it was longer than a week. It usually started about a week before Christmas and ended after the second day of the new year—aning most people didn't return until January 3. More than two full weeks to rest, go ho, sleep properly, and rember what it felt like to have a life outside deadlines.
ZAGE Tower during that ti felt like a different world. The elevators were quiet. The cafeterias closed early. The usual flood of eting rooms and last-minute approvals dried up. People left the office smiling instead of dragging their feet, and for once the city outside didn't feel like it was racing them.
Of course, not everyone could enjoy it at the sa ti.
Core teams like finance and legal still had to keep a skeleton staff on duty. End-of-year reports didn't stop just because the calendar turned, and contracts didn't pause just because people wanted to eat cake at ho. So of them still ca to the office on rotation, keeping systems running and handling urgent issues.
But even that had rules.
If they worked during Wellness Week, they received their holidays afterward—real ti off, not "take a day when you can" promises. And if soone chose to stay on duty because they preferred the quiet, ZAGE paid them well. Good cash, the kind that made the sacrifice feel like a choice instead of a punishnt. Most people didn't mind, because the end of the year was naturally slower anyway. The pace across ZAGE offices worldwide dropped, and even the people on duty didn't feel crushed.
Employees were insanely delighted by it. Other companies talked about wellness like it was a slogan. ZAGE treated it like policy.
And the reason was simple.
Zaboru rembered what it felt like to be an eternal employee in his previous life—living for long weekends like they were rare treasure, staring at the calendar and wishing ti would slow down just long enough to breathe. Now that he was the owner, he decided his people wouldn't have to beg for rest.
If ZAGE was going to build the future, then the people building it deserved to live like humans while doing it.
Zaboru smiled as he watched the traffic charts inside Steam. It had only been a month since release, but the numbers already looked like a living city. Peaks during lunch breaks. Another peak after dinner. And the sharpest spikes of all on weekends, when people flooded into internet cafés like it was a ritual.
Steam had beco one of the best things the Japanese internet had ever gained, and the cafés proved it. Rows of PCs running the sa launcher, the sa updates, the sa friends list. No more ssy guessing about versions. No more, "Wait, do you have the sa patch as ?" No more hunting for separate installers.
Even ZAGE's older online systems, like Battle in so titles, were being folded into Steam. Not erased—integrated. One login. One account identity. One place to see who was online. Players could jump from ga to ga without feeling like they were entering a different universe each ti.
And it made online play feel better imdiately.
When everyone was on the sa version, matchmaking stopped being a headache. When updates were delivered cleanly, fewer players showed up with broken files. When friends lists lived inside the sa system, it beca easier to form groups and keep them together. Even the small details mattered: a stable connection check before joining a room, a cleaner server list, a smoother reconnect when a line hiccuped.
Zaboru could see it clearly in the data. More sessions lasting longer. Fewer rage-quits caused by technical problems. More players returning the next night.
Then there was the other half of the miracle.
Internet speed.
Sendou's FTTH rollout had arrived alongside Steam like a perfect partner, and together they changed daily life in Japan. Households that used to treat downloads like a chore now treated them like a normal thing. Offices that used to schedule file transfers like a eting now moved data without thinking twice. Internet cafés upgraded their lines and suddenly beca more than cafés. They beca hubs.
Steam wasn't only riding on fiber. It was proving why fiber mattered.
And next year, it would accelerate even more. Zaboru already knew what was coming down the pipe: more online gas, more connected features, more services built for a world where the line didn't punish you.
Team Dynasty Korea was preparing major titles like Ragnarok Online and Gunbound, and those gas would thrive on this new foundation. With FTTH spreading and Steam acting as the common doorway, ZAGE could support worlds that lived online, communities that grew nightly, and updates that arrived without making players suffer.
And beyond gas, the Digital World sites were coming too. More places for people to gather, share, and create.
Japan was getting the road first.
And the rest of the world would have to run to catch up.
Zaboru leaned back and looked out at the city lights. "The tiline in this world is still really weird, huh?" he muttered. "Entertainnt feels like it's lagging by about ten years, but technology is ahead by four or five."
He gave a quiet chuckle, more disbelief than humor. "Even Windows XP. In my old world it was a 2001 thing, but here it already showed up in 1997. And it arrived around the sa era as ZAGE Diablo 2." He shook his head slowly. "It's… different."
It wasn't only one example, either.
In gas and pop culture, you could feel the missing years like a gap in the air. Certain trends hadn't happened yet. Certain styles still looked older than they should. So franchises that would have dominated the late nineties in his mory felt like they were still waiting backstage.
But outside entertainnt, the world moved faster.
Hospitals and dical tech looked more advanced than they had any right to be in 1999. Automotive design was sharper, safer, more ambitious. Even office infrastructure felt more mature, like industries had skipped a few steps.
And of course there was the biggest proof of all: FTTH.
Fiber to the ho in 1999 sounded ridiculous if you said it out loud, but Sendou's project had been researched for a long ti in this world. The foundation existed before Zaboru ever touched it. When he added Steam on top of that foundation, it didn't feel like a lucky coincidence anymore.
It felt like this world had been waiting for soone to connect the pieces.
Even wireless was already becoming normal here. Not perfect, not unlimited, and definitely not always as fast as a cable, but common enough that you saw laptops built to use Wi-Fi without people treating it like magic. In cafés, in offices, in eting rooms, you could feel the early shape of a future where the internet wasn't chained to one desk.
Zaboru exhaled. "The scary part isn't that it's ahead," he said softly. "The scary part is that it's ahead in the places that change everything… while entertainnt is still catching its breath." Zaboru grinned "or its not just scarry its exciting hehehe"
Then Zaborn—Zaboru's ghost friend—slipped out from the edge of his Emulator Mind like a shadow stepping into lamplight. He wore that familiar grin, half-mischief and half-adoration, as if the world's weird tiline was a joke made just for them.
"Hehehe… it makes it more unique, right, Zabo?" Zaborn said, floating a little closer. "I an, you can make more gas faster from your old world, right? You already have so many ideas. So many mories. And honestly…" His grin widened. "I can't wait. Please, hurry up and make the PS2 era co!"
Zaboru leaned back and chuckled, letting the chair creak softly under him. "Heh. So you ca back already?"
He glanced at Zaborn like he was looking at an impatient child in a candy store. "And even though you can still play PS2 inside my Emulator Mind… you still want to play gas from this world?"
Zaborn folded his arms proudly. "Of course."
Zaboru's smile turned sly. "You're greedy."
"Hehehe," Zaborn said without sha. "I'm alive again in the only way I can be. Let enjoy it."
Zaboru sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Dude… part of you is still in my soul. So you never really died. Not completely. Not yet, anyway."
Zaborn shrugged like it was the most normal thing in the world, the grin never leaving his face. "Yeah, yeah. I get it. Technically I'm a fragnt. Technically I'm still attached."
He floated a little higher, hands behind his head like a lazy king lounging on air. "But I'm also a ghost, okay? I don't get to eat, sleep, travel, or do any of the stupid little human things. So when you let exist in your Emulator Mind…"
Zaborn's eyes softened for a mont, and his voice dipped into sothing almost sincere.
"…I can finally enjoy what humans enjoy. Music. Food you imagine so perfectly it feels real. Gas. Stories. Even just walking around a room without people looking through ."
He snapped back into his usual tone, playful again. "So yeah. Thanks for that, boss. Let be greedy. It's basically my only hobby now."
Zaboru shook his head, amused. He understood the hunger. Zaborn wasn't asking only for entertainnt. He was asking for ti to move forward—proof that their plans weren't trapped in one decade forever.
"And besides," Zaborn added, leaning in like he was whispering a secret, "the PS2 era isn't only gas. It's the mood. The leap. The mont when everything starts to feel bigger."
Zaboru's chuckle softened into a thoughtful breath. He looked back out at Tokyo's winter glow.
"Yeah," he murmured. "Bigger."
Zaboru's grin widened, and for a second the glass and steel of Tokyo outside his window felt smaller than the ideas in his head. "The PS2 era in this world would be completely different," he said.
Zaborn's eyes lit up. He spun around Zaboru in a lazy circle, like an excited child orbiting a prize. "Honestly, I can't wait, Zabo!"
Zaboru chuckled. "You act like you're the one paying for the hardware."
Zaborn pointed at him, shaless. "You are. That's why I'm excited."
He floated closer, lowering his voice like this was the most serious confession a ghost could make. "I've beco addicted, okay? You let live inside your Emulator Mind. You can conjure anything from the real world in there, and you can even summon mories from your past life up to 2005. What am I supposed to do? Pretend I don't want more?"
Zaboru shook his head, amused, but there was warmth in his eyes. Zaborn wasn't wrong. The Emulator Mind was a strange kind of rcy. A place where a fragnt could laugh, play, and exist without being swallowed by silence.
"Sure," Zaboru said. "But people in this world will need to be ready."
He leaned back, fingers tapping lightly on the armrest. "Because when 2000 starts, ZAGE won't be ssing around. Hehehe. Digital World isn't just a na for us. It's a direction."
Zaborn grinned like he could taste the chaos already. "Heheh. Dude, I can't wait. And I can't wait to watch it in two days, too." He pumped a fist like a fan at a stadium. "The ZAGE End of the Year Event!"
Zaboru nodded, smiling. Yes. In two days, ZEB Japan will be full again. Caras, crowds, bright lights, and a stage big enough to carry promises into the next century.
And even here, in the quiet of a holiday tower, Zaboru could feel it.
The countdown had already started but before that there are one last stop which is the ZGBA prices and detailed gas..
To be continue
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