Chapter 2 - The Life And Stupid Death Of Akira Maximilian

It started as just an ordinary day, with all the same business goings-on as usual.

The young CEO was on a private jet home after a successful meeting with some investors in Dubai, characteristically marveling at his own reflection in the window: His hair, dyed red with the blood of the many throats he'd cut on the stock exchange, was slicked back in a spiky pompadour. His finest Louis Vuitton suit and tie, which he only ever took off before showering, and sometimes before bed. A pair of Gucci shades, plucked straight from his private collection.

Akira Maximilian was his name, and he exuded style and class with every breath—living a lifestyle 99% of people on this Earth could only dream of, at only 18 years of age.

As he dug in to his plate of filet mignon—courtesy of the 5-Star Chef on board—his Apple iPhone 13 vibrated across the polished hardwood table; no doubt, due to a nonstop torrent of notifications for generic 'Happy Birthday' texts, received from his many clients and business partners.

Akira Maximilian rolled his eyes, as he never did think much about his birthday. Because what could someone possibly gift the world's richest, youngest, cutthroat playboy billionaire CEO, that he doesn't already possess?

Some hours later...

After Akira's private jet touched down, he descended unto the tarmac flanked by a crew of body guards, shielding him from crowds of crying, screaming fans, that swarmed him all throughout the bustling airport.

It was the Tokyo International—the fifth busiest airport in the world, and proverbial hellscape. Akira struggled to maintain his cool facade through the ensuing bombardment of screams and camera flashes. Like anyone else, all he wanted to do was have his personal fleet of bikini-clad high class gravure models collect his luggage for him, make it through customs, and get the hell out; but Time Magazine just had to write that article on him. And ever since then, there were people tracking his every move, posting his boarding info in real time to online fan sites for all the lustful teens, preteens, and their shameless mothers to track.

Yet despite the noise and hassle, and how weary he was after the back-to-back nine hour flights, Akira grinned to himself.

It felt good to be on top of the world, with so many beautiful women to fawn over him.

Once he'd finally crawled into his limousine, though, after so graciously signing a few autographs with a quick scrawling of his phone number, he sighed with relief.

'What a wild ride it's been,' he thought to himself. 'All the sacrifices it's taken to get here...'

Akira laid back and closed his eyes, letting his consciousness fade as the limo rode off into the neon-lit night.

...

The school bell rang, signalling the end of another school day.

Akira was still at his desk, jotting down extra notes, when he was suddenly disturbed by a chorus of giggles.

Glancing up, he saw a group of girls standing in front of his desk.

He smiled, showing off his sparkling white teeth. "Tomiya-chan, Sato-chan, Uchida-san."

"He remembers our names!" Sato-chan whispered excitedly, as the three exchanged timid glances.

Akira gave a warm chuckle—the type to make any young lady's heart melt. "Of course I'd never forget the names of such beautiful girls."

These flattering words were met with blushing faces, accompanied by more giggles and squeals, before all three girls then abruptly grew quiet, as the other two looked expectantly toward Tomiya-chan who was standing at their center. It was then, as she was swallowing her lip nervously, Hina Tomiya slowly extended a sealed, pink envelope in her hand, toward Akira.

"This is—" He murmured in surprise as he reached for it, but just as soon as he took the note the girls all quickly scurried away, out of the classroom, with bright red dyed faces.

Akira knew, without even opening it, that it was a confession letter—one of many he'd received in the days before he became an unapproachable rich, young, cutthroat playboy billionaire CEO. It was not the first, and certainly not the last he would receive, but in the special case of Hina Tomiya...just thinking about it caused something to catch in his throat.

In contrast to his usual cool and composed outside appearance, Akira was shaken.

'Tomiya-chan...has feelings for me?'

Hina Tomiya was not just any other girl, after all—by his evaluation, she was easily the prettiest in his entire year, with among the largest breasts...

Regardless, Akira didn't have time for dating; or indeed, most normal things enjoyed by teens.

The reason why was because Akira had convinced himself, from a very young age, that true greatness was an exceedingly rare achievement. As such, it was to be enjoyed by only a small few, which required a similarly great amount of effort and sacrifices to be made in order to attain it. More than anything else, Akira wanted to be great, and would give up anything in pursuit of his goal; no matter how much it hurt, or how much he would have to give away.

Long ago, he'd accepted that such was the way of this world—whether he liked it or not.

Thus, he crumpled up the note from Hina Tomiya, without even reading it...and threw it in the trash.

Akira woke from his slumber just as his limo had arrived at his destination.

As he stepped out—letting a luggage handler take his things for him—he gazed up at the skyscraper before him, which dwarfed all else in the busy commercial center of downtown Tokyo.

Marked in bold red letters at the very top, for all to see, was the name "AKIRA."

The Akira Building, as it was known, was the center of Akira Maximilian's global business empire. As he pushed past the glass doors and briskly walked his way toward the front desk, he was greeted with a respectful bow from every employee, visitor, child and baby in a stroller that he passed by.

Shizuka Maximilian was at the desk, answering several phones at once when she saw him.

Gasping, she quickly slammed all the phones back unto the receivers.

"Welcome back," she said with an uneasy smile, her light brown pigtails bobbing as she gave a quick duck of her head in a bow. "How might I help you this evening, Nii- san?"

Akira waved as he greeted her, rubbing his eyes. "I'm too tired to talk right now, Shizu."

Mid-yawn, he added, "Could you have a caterer send big brother some lobster in an hour?"

Shizuka Maximillian, plastering on a look of determination as she gave an affirmative nod, showing him an equally unconvincing 'thumbs up'. "G-g-got it!"

As he walked away toward the private elevator, Akira smiled to himself. Despite his parents' concerns over Shizuka being only 15 years old—to say nothing of child labor laws—it seemed his little sister was still keeping things under control at the front desk, making that one less thing he needed to constantly stress about.

'Best to start on your path to success as early as possible,' he mused.

On the long ride up to his Penthouse Suite on the 110th floor, he leaned his weary head back against the wall, listening to the gentle whirring of the steadily climbing cab--his thoughts beginning to aimlessly drift.

'Something's missing...

'But how can that be!? I have a skyscraper with my name on it!

'I can't figure out what it is, but I can't help but feel there's something my life still lacks.'

The loud ding of the elevator, as it reached its final destination, returned Akira to his senses. He stepped out into a darkened space, summoning the lights with a clap of his hands to reveal a space that would appear luxurious in the eyes of most, but to Akira Maximilian it was all the norm: Polished marble floors. The highest end electronics and appliances money can buy. A framed photograph of him and Donald Trump at a golf course in Kyoto. On the outside patio was a Jacuzzi and an infinity pool—the latter of which was the current record-holder for the coveted "highest-placed infinity pool in all the world" category.

Akira had it all, one might think, as the world's richest, youngest cutthroat playboy billionaire.

And yet, as he laid atop the covers of his $700,000 bed that night, expecting a caterer to be at his door delivering lobster at any minute, Akira felt a slight tug of an emotion he hadn't for quite a long time; he craved something, while lying in bed awake that night, more than anything else in his life.

Akira Maximilian realized that what he wanted, more than anything in the world, was a girlfriend.

Surprised by this sudden epiphany, he shook his head and laughed at the mere thought.

"Women are a bad investment!" He blurted out loud, laughing still. "First comes love, then comes the alimony payments, right?"

Like sea cucumber at a sushi grill, they were better off viewed from a distance.

Seeking a distraction, he started fiddling around on his phone.

Using an anonymous Instagram account, he posted suggestive comments under model selfies. Then, he rated actresses in a thread on 2chan for how attractive they were. After that, he checked on his stocks—yep, all on the rise—followed by a bit of browsing the current news headlines, not seeing anything that concerned his business enterprises. Nothing that mattered.

He combed through hundreds emails, gazing blankly into his phone screen at the endless stream of bland, repetitive birthday wishes coming from people he barely knew outside of professional settings. After all, it wasn't like he got invited to very many drinking parties at his age.

Today was a slow day, otherwise. With a distinct lack of fires to put out.

He was getting desperate. So much so, that once he'd gone through the entirety of his regular inbox, he took a plunge into the depths of his junk mail hoping to find some misplaced contact email, regarding some such "urgent matter" he could devote the next few hours to resolving.

Instead, he found something quite out of the ordinary.

It was a message sent to his address, mere minutes ago, risen atop a flood of phishing scams and Viagra sellers spam. An email with only "CLOSED BETA KEY" for its subject, and "Anonymous_Girl99" as the sender.

Stricken by curiosity, he performed an action which, in the majority of situations, would be most ill-advised—

In that, he actually opened it.

"Congratulations!" he read aloud from the message text. "You are one of the lucky chosen!"

"You are now old enough to register an account for our latest MMORPG title: Maiden Quest Global BETA, where all your darkest fantasies become reality!"

Initially, Akira couldn't make sense of it.

"Massively...multiplayer...online role-playing game," he repeated to himself, confused.

But, with his interest sufficiently piqued, he searched the term up on Boogle, concluding: "so, it's a game all about cooperation and competition, alongside other players from all around the world."

'Like running a business,' he thought, but then quickly shrugged it off. 'Yeah, right.'

Returning to the contents of the email, he spotted a hotlink to a "Closed Beta Registration," at the bottom of a lengthy description of the game and its features which he chose to just skim through.

'What am I even thinking, by looking so far into this?' he asked himself. Since he'd always considered gaming a waste of time—something only losers had time to dabble in.

"A true cutthroat billionaire doesn't have time to waste on silly games!" he scoffed, even as his mousepoint still hovered over the "Closed Beta Registration" link, and wouldn't budge.

In reality, there were a few things that kept him from immediately closing the email.

Something about the promise of adventure, as advertised by the promotional images of fierce dragons and noble heroes, made it hard for him to look away. Detailed renders of large-breasted young girls in ludicrously lewd outfits made it (and him) even harder.

Most of all, Akira Maximilian wondered if it would be possible to pick up girls through this method.

As a lone teenager operating in a world of adults, he'd never had many opportunities to branch out and connect with someone on any meaningful level, since most of the gold diggers only dated much older CEOs.

'Could it be possible that, through a video game, I might finally obtain a GF?'

As weirdly nervous of the notion as he was, his libido informed him that he absolutely had to try. Thus, he pressed the link, and...there was nothing. No page loading. No popup window. Zilch.

Akira exhaled, having unconsciously held his breath all throughout the brief ordeal.

'Did I seriously get all excited over a broken link in a spam email?'

His stomach grumbled.

Checking his gold Rolex watch, he saw that it was past midnight.

'That's right...the lobster should have been here by now.'

Following a long elevator ride downstairs, he saw that the front lobby now laid darkened and empty, as it was well past closing time.

'Shizuka must have forgot,' he figured, with a sigh. 'I'll have to dock her pay for this.'

If not lobster, then he would just have to settle for a cream cheese stuffed danish from the convenience store across the street, since he didn't feel like cooking.

While waiting with a crowd to cross the street, he thought about that weird email.

'I hope I don't get a virus because I clicked that link.'

Feeling anxious about his stocks, he took his phone out to check on them—a huge mistake, that would cost him everything.

Just as he brought up his phone, he felt a pair of hands shove him from behind.

The last thing Akira Maximilian saw as he fell forward, into the street, was a bright pair of high beams....of a truck that was barreling straight toward him.