Few weeks later

Naoki POV

Kotoko has been working with us on the character and environment designs. She is pretty good and some of her designs are even better than our lead design director. Well, that is after many many iterations with my feedback. I am glad she is growing as a game designer and believe her passion and efforts will take her to places in the future. I sometimes wonder where her passion comes from and how she never gives up even after the criticisms I give her. The next day, she always has a bright smile and asks for feedback on her new designs. I have been working in this industry ever since high school because my dad is the president but shhhhh, no one in this company knows. I know that many designers have too much pride in their artwork and can’t easily give their designs up because they spent a lot of time on it. I understand them, but this is a fast-changing industry and we focus on what our consumers want, not the designers’ wants. But Kotoko is different, she attentively listens to my feedback and can easily throw out her designs. I can tell she worked hard on them as her eye bags are getting deeper everyday. Sometimes I have the urge to just give her some concealer and tell her to go put it on in the bathroom. But, she might take it offensively. Whatever, as long as her work is exemplary, it doesn’t really matter.

Kotoko POV

These past few weeks have been intense. We are almost done with the designs and can soon hand this off to the developers to program everything. I am so excited to see the end result but I know this can take quite a while. Noaki has been giving me good advice and my character designs are getting even better than I ever imagined. I’m glad that I didn't ask Joanne to switch departments and continue to work in R&D. Naoki is a good role model and his knowledge and skills are invaluable. I can’t even learn as much from my college professors. I’m sad that my internship is ending in two weeks. I’ll be seeing our game on the shelves probably a month from now, but sadly I won’t be able to see the development of this. I want to continue designing more games for Pandai and keep learning from Naoki but I know this will all end. Naoki is actually not as cold as I thought. He just takes a while to open up. He is a man of a few words but if he is trying to explain something to me and I had a hard time understanding, he is patient with me and try to explain it from a different perspective. I realized how important his advice is and he really helped me grow as a designer. I wish Naoki will forever be a part of my life.