(A/N: Nice)
***
Kazuya was left staring at the beautiful girl for a few seconds before he broke out of his reverie.
"You look stunning, Hayasaka" He smiled at her.
She pouted slightly and said, "We're not at work anymore, you can call me by my first name."
"Ai then?"
"Hm, that's good." She nodded.
"Shall we go in?"
"Sure." They walked in through the entrance of the mall.
"Do you want to get something to eat first or should we go directly shopping?" She asked Kazuya.
"I'm not hungry right now, let's eat after we buy some stuff. I was planning on buying some clothes for myself too." Kazuya told her.
"Great. That means that I won't be the only one buying clothes,"
They went into the first shop where there were mostly women's clothes and Hayasaka picked up a few tops for herself.
"Do you mind waiting there? I'll change into the tops and ask you what you think about them." She pointed to the seating area close to the changing rooms.
"Not at all."
A few minutes later she came out wearing a different type of crop top. It was tightfitting and left her belly bare, emphasizing her bust, it was a side shoulder crop top with one side being a full sleeve and the other leaving her arm and shoulder bare.
"I love that top Ai. It looks both classy and sensual at the same time. I think you should buy it."
Admiring her for a few seconds Kazuya noticed the slight definition of her abs that seemed to have been well-trained.
'Talk about the perfect follower for Kaguya. She can even serve as a sort of bodyguard for her.' Kazuya understood the situation of the Hayasakas and knew that they were a subordinate family of the Shinomiyas before their fall. Ai was probably an aid of Kaguya who had been trained to serve her since childhood.
The next top that she showed him was a layered frilly top that Kazuya wasn't a big fan of.
There was another designer back-pattern top that Kazuya liked very much. It was a full-sleeveless top with a round neck. The back of the top was designed in a criss-cross pattern that made her defined back look even more sensual.
The last one was a see-through fishnet top that she wore over a tight-fitting tube top. It had separate fishnet sleeves with a high neck and left her shoulders and upper arms bare. The fishnet top arose a sense of desire in Kazuya's heart to see both Mami and Chizuru wearing nothing but the fishnet top, looking slutty as hell.
After choosing a few tops for Hayasaka, it was Kazuya's turn to get clothes. She paid for her tops and took him to a men's clothing shop.
She got him different types of clothes and helped him match them up to look amazing. He could tell that she had an amazing fashion choice and only brought him with her for fun. Or maybe on Kaguya's orders, but he didn't plan to care too much about that anymore.
She helped him pick out a few outfits before they rolled back to her again and she chose a few dresses this time.
Kazuya would be lying if he said that her actions didn't pull his heartstrings. She was essentially modeling in different outfits for him, with one being more sensual than the other.
The clothes she got for him were also very fashionable.
There was a slight sense of chemistry between them when they flirted back and forth a few times.
"How is this Kazuya?" Hayasaka had dropped the honorific in lieu of him not using one for her either.
She twirled around while wearing Kazuya's one weakness, a sundress. It was black with a low-cut neck and had thin flat straps on her shoulders.
When she twirled and looked at Kazuya with a smile on her face he couldn't help but walk toward her slowly.
"You look amazing," He held one of the straps and fixed it so that her bra strap wasn't visible anymore since it got slightly messed up during her twirl. His finger brushed against her bare skin, giving her slight goosebumps.
"Thank you." She blushed and looked down after that slight intimate gesture.
They both spent a few hours shopping before deciding to get something to eat in the food court.
Kazuya's hands were filled with bags and he wasn't in the mood to go to a restaurant carrying all those bags.
"So, did you like hanging out with this humble secretary?" She joked with him.
"Humble secretary? You're the most high-profile person that I know."
"What?! No~ I don't believe you." As if offended at his remark, she pouted and looked to the side.
"Hey, I say what I see. But that doesn't mean that being high profile is a bad thing. You sorta bring a good amount of liveliness to the work with your subtle dry wit."
"I take offense to that."
"You shouldn't. It was a compliment."
"Fineee~ Quick question, cats or dogs?" She asked him hurriedly.
Kazuya instantly answered, "Dogs. Without question. They're the best. I'm going to be getting one soon." 'Then again, I keep wanting to have my girl cosplay as a kitty…'
"Really… I never thought that you'd be a dog person. Interesting."
"Don't look at me as if I'm some sort of psychology test subject. It's unnerving."
Their conversation is filled with slight banter and also some flirting.
When they were done eating it was almost evening so they both decided to leave the mall.
Ai had called a cab for herself since she was going to go back herself and would be taking her bags filled with clothes.
Kazuya called a cab for himself too since he had quite a number of clothes that he'd bought and he wouldn't be walking home with so much stuff.
"I should really get a fucking car for myself. It's becoming more and more of a pain without one. I've already made quite a bit of money with the novel application so I have more than enough to spend lavishly."
The novel assistant application was an instant hit among the writer community. Especially with its accuracy with the story that is fed into it. The suggestions and the self-generated story were so amazing that they eased quite a bit of the workload of the writers.
There were already tens of thousands of users who'd bought the subscription. It might not seem like much but the application wasn't targeting the layman anyway. It was targeting successful writers who would be willing to pay a big buck.
The subscription fees were quite high at around 100 dollars for the basic subscription and 200 dollars for the higher grade algorithm and Kazuya had already generated around ten million dollars of annual income from just the novel AI after the first day.
The high user base also had to do with the success of the marketing team. It was more like Kei's success only though. There was no one in the marketing team besides her for now.
She'd outsourced a lot of her work at first but now she'd be hiring more people to work under her.
He knew that with two applications that showed so much success, he was already more than a small blip on their radar.
Sooner or later he'd be getting a government contract based on his AI mastery and that was something that he was expecting to happen within the next couple of months.
'The next project is going to be an art generator that would make the workload for animators and artists extremely easy. But for that, I need a heavy-duty server.'
'My temporary home servers can only handle so much workload. Although my application is very much efficient when it comes to processing, I still need dedicated servers for all the applications.'
Kazuya called up his amazingly competent CEO since he wanted to get things done soon.
"Shinomiya?"
"Kazuya-san." She curtly replied.
"I need you to do something."
"Are you finally planning on setting up our own servers?"
"Yeah, you know me so well, Kaguya. Anyway, I don't trust other companies' cloud services with my application and its code. I am confident in the non-hackability of the core programming but for that to happen the core programming has to be under my control."
"Understood. We have a few options for setting up our own servers— One we could buy our hardware and set up the servers from scratch. Two, and this is my recommended solution, we could buy a failing crypto mining company. The mining industry has recently taken a hit and multiple such companies have gone under, we could capitalize on them and buy one of them for their hardware. What do you think?"
"That sounds like a good idea but the mining rigs that these companies are based on heavy calculation analysis based on graphics cards. So, they might not be as efficient as dedicated processor rigs… Forget it. We can update it later on. Buying a crypto-mining company comes with its own benefits. We won't have to hire the staff to manage the servers either. Look for a company based in a cold country, like Greenland or maybe somewhere in northern Asia."
"I'll get on it and set up meetings with potential sellers."
"Perfect. You're amazing Kaguya, thanks." With that Kazuya cut the call with a smile.
Gimme those power stones!
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