"Murakami-senpai, we're heading home."
"Mm, alright, you guys go ahead."
Inside Murakami Kazuo's company, the employees were gradually preparing to go home after work.
At this moment, Murakami Kazuo was practically glued to his seat, staring at the simple game screen without blinking.
On screen, the character still looked clumsy swinging a hoe to dig up the ground. After finally digging out a 10-by-10 grid, Murakami Kazuo happily sowed his new crop seeds in the tilled land, then began watering them. Without wasting a moment, he ran off to the mine to dig with a pickaxe, bit by bit — completely immersed.
Stardew Valley had a time system, with each day having a fixed time span, but for Murakami Kazuo, there was no difference between day and night. All he wanted was to finish as many tasks as possible within a single day.
However, the stamina bar limited his actions. When the character worked for too long, he would become increasingly fatigued, and then would be forced to rest. If ignored, the character would collapse and end up in the hospital, incurring a medical fee.
After going through that once or twice, Murakami Kazuo realized he couldn't keep grinding without restraint — the character needed proper rest.
...
...
It didn't take long for him to find a very balanced and efficient routine — sleeping just enough each day to be optimal, and using the rest of the time to complete as many tasks as possible.
Time passed without him noticing. Every time he told himself he would stop playing after this in-game day, he'd see the character wake up the next morning and couldn't help but want to get through one more workday.
It was really strange.
The graphics in this game were incredibly rough. Logically, he shouldn't be interested in such poor visuals anymore.
Right now should be the era dominated by high-quality, big-budget productions, but this game gave him a different sense of achievement.
Just like that, he seemed to forget the passage of time. Even his sense of fatigue had lessened. Perhaps it was also because of Murakami Kazuo's youth and vitality that he didn't feel tired at all.
Unknowingly, the time had already passed into the next day. When the first employee arrived at the company on time, he faintly heard the sound of mouse clicking and was a little surprised.
How rare — usually he was the earliest one to arrive. Almost everyone else was always late. But in their kind of game review media job, working hours weren't strictly fixed anyway — as long as they submitted quality review articles on time, according to Murakami-senpai's standards, it was fine.
This particular employee was a bit more conservative, so he always stuck to regular working hours. Today, hearing mouse clicks in the office early in the morning, he immediately wondered: had one of his coworkers suddenly changed and come to work early?
Or maybe he had a fight with his wife and came in to cool off?
Whatever the reason, he wanted to see who it was.
He walked toward the source of the mouse clicking, and when he saw who was sitting in front of the screen, he was stunned.
"Murakami-senpai? You're here really early today."
He hadn't expected the boss to show up so early, which made him feel slightly embarrassed. The boss came in early today, and only he had arrived at the company — that was really shameful. The others should feel even more ashamed.
But as he thought that, he also noticed that Murakami Kazuo didn't seem to hear him at all.
Hm?
The employee was confused. He had never seen Murakami-senpai so focused before. What kind of work had him this absorbed?
Curious, he walked behind Murakami Kazuo and saw that he was deeply engrossed in playing Stardew Valley.
At this moment, Murakami Kazuo had spent the entire night grinding — clearing a large area of farmland. The fields were now filled with fully grown crops, a truly satisfying sight, especially for those with OCD — the neatly arranged square plots were incredibly pleasing.
But…
"Mur… Murakami-senpai? You didn't go home at all, did you? Murakami-senpai?"
Murakami Kazuo didn't seem to hear the employee's question and remained completely focused.
Only when the employee worked up the courage to tap Murakami Kazuo on the shoulder did he suddenly snap out of the game world.
"Ah, it's Arisho-san. Didn't you go home?"
Arisho gave Murakami Kazuo a strange look, then glanced at the screen again.
"Murakami-senpai… you… didn't go home, did you?"
"Go home?" Murakami Kazuo was dazed, not quite understanding what was going on for a moment.
But he couldn't be completely unaware of the outside world — it was just that his head had been entirely filled with thoughts like how much land to till and how much to mine that day, with no room for anything else.
Only when Arisho touched his shoulder and pulled him back into reality did he start to realize what was going on.
His eyes widened slightly, a little surprised. "It's… the next day already?"
He felt like he hadn't been playing for that long — just turned a small plot of farmland into a big farm. That couldn't have taken more than… what, ten-something hours?
Murakami Kazuo turned to look at the screen in disbelief.
This? This was the game that made ten hours fly by without him realizing?
That was crazy!
"Murakami-senpai, you didn't sleep all night, did you? You've been playing this game the whole time?"
Arisho was also shocked. He had never seen Murakami Kazuo this quiet about a game.
Murakami Kazuo had gotten hooked on specific games before, but as he grew older and reached adulthood, he no longer did things like this. Mainly because no game could move him enough to grind through it like this.
Especially with gameplay that looked this boring on the surface — digging, farming, harvesting, raising animals, fishing. All of it seemed dull. But… but…
At that moment, Murakami Kazuo instinctively looked back at the screen.
He probably wouldn't finish everything he needed to do today… Wait, that's not what I should be thinking right now. What I should be thinking is how this game managed to make me willingly stay up all night.
In fact, it wasn't just Murakami Kazuo who stayed up — there were several others like him.