"...This was the normal development process to begin with. How could anything be achieved overnight?"
After Tangze mocked him so thoroughly, even Taku Itakura, who could barely suppress his fear, could no longer hold back his anger and retorted.
Though he feared this young man, Taku Itakura had a bellyful of grievances about Ryusuke Soma that he had nowhere to vent.
"Ideals, ideals! What project can be sustained by ideals alone? Twenty years—twenty whole years—and he still couldn't find an investor he liked. Is that supposed to be my fault? He was the one being stubborn!" As Taku Itakura spoke, he pressed a hand to his chest, looking as though the matter had genuinely enraged him. "I hinted at it and said it outright so many times. This wasn't a project an independent developer could afford. I told him to keep his internet spirit, sure, but find collaborators when he needed them. Did he listen?"
Tangze turned his head and glanced at the indignant Taku Itakura.
"So you're saying you already did your best?"
"If my technical skills were that bad, you people wouldn't have set your sights on me, would you?" Having finally let out the frustration bottled up in his chest, Taku Itakura spoke much more steadily than before. "Why do you think I switched to CG rendering halfway through? Wasn't it because I could no longer afford projects like this—projects aimed at ideals—just by being a software engineer? If he's accusing me of not putting in enough effort, then did he value this project? Did he ever bring it up to the development scale it deserved?"
At the mention of that, Taku Itakura's expression darkened considerably.
This was not a good setting for such a discussion. The person standing behind him was no suitable listener, but an