Month Later

"That's not something we control...I'm pretty sure...Then you can do that...I don't really care...I don't care if that's not the correct way to talk to a customer...I am the manager...I am the boss...As I said, I don't really care...I'm sure we'll do fine without you...I look forward to your revenge...Have a nice day."

Hanging up the office phone, I raked my hands through my hair before gently massaging my temple, hoping to nurse the tiny headache that had formed after talking to a user who was complaining that we/I was the reason he couldn't get a match on Tinder.

"Sigh. Anivia, how did he get the office phone number?"

"It's on the company website, sir."

"Oh, right. From now on make it so that any inquiries like that have to go through email, I don't want the phone clogged up with useless calls like that."

"Yes, sir."

Leaning back on my office chair, I closed my eyes and stroked Bean's fur as I thought about the past month.

After trading gold for a full server rack, I went back home to set up enough of them to last me until I rented a place out where I could set up the entire thing. Once that was done, I looked over the list of rental properties that Anivia had compiled that met all the requirements I asked her to look for.

Unfortunately, the list of requirements was things that narrowed down the list drastically, and taking into account the funds I had on hand, it narrowed down the list even further. But there were some that I liked, and knowing that I could get the funds by doing some jobs and selling ad space, I set up appointments to tour the places anyway.

The rest of the day was spent by me going over all the offers that ad agencies sent me before deciding on one of them. The smarter thing to do would have been to hire a lawyer to look over all the paperwork and make sure there was nothing that would come back to bite me in the ass, but considering I was low on funds, I settled for having Anivia do a once-over.

Of course, I first asked her to learn about the law and the most common loopholes used in contracts before reading the contract, which ended up with her finding no loopholes. But a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that told me I would end up getting screwed over led me to ask my parents if they knew a lawyer who could look over the contract, which they did.

Early the next day, I sent over the contract to my parent's lawyer and he told me there was a loophole that would end up with me owing them more money than they offered. Apparently, it was worded in a way that any two-bit lawyer would have missed it, which explains why Anivia missed it considering she wasn't yet versed in lawyer literacy.

So, considering the ad agency tried to screw me over, I got the second-best contract offered by another ad agency checked, and it turned out it was very generous for a first-time contract. The lawyer said they were clearly trying to establish a mutual friendship by offering me such good terms, so I decided to sweeten the deal for them by telling them about my two other apps and offering them first dibs for ads.

The ad agency was more than happy to amend the contract to include the other two apps, as well as leave it open for more apps should they be created. And that very same day, the contract was signed and Tinder now had ads. But I did make it clear they wouldn't be the pop-up ads that appear randomly and ruin the entire mood but would be integrated as a profile which they were fine with.

Even though the whole thing ended well, it made me realize that I would need to hire a lawyer to take care of legal things which would be coming up more and more. That's when I remembered that lawyer show Suits and searched up the only character's name I remembered, Harvey Specter, who as it turned out, existed and who I decided to hire eventually, if not him at least the firm he was a part of.

But I decided to put that on the back burner since there were more pressing matters to take care of, like putting out Flappy Bird and Candy Crush as well as finding a rental property to finally establish an HQ of sorts. Luckily, Flappy Bird was already ready to be published in the app stores and Candy Crush only needed some voice lines to be done before being ready to ship out.

So I tasked Anivia with publishing Flappy Bird while I asked Aunt Karen to help me out with the voice lines for the female characters while Andrew helped me out with the voice lines for some of the male characters.

They both realized that I could've done it myself or hired someone but chose them because I wanted them to have some way to make money, so they did their best and it turned out great.

So great that the very next day, Candy Crush was ready to be published in the app stores, ready for middle-aged moms all over the world to download. But I decided to hold off on publishing it because it would also take up some servers to run which meant I first had to decide on a rental property to establish my servers on.

Thankfully, I had the foresight to set the tour dates of the rental properties on the day I finished Candy Crush. And a whole day of looking at rental properties later, I decided on renting a standalone building located in South Lake Union, which is one of the districts in Seattle with the most people who have a job related to the tech industry.

And even though the whole building wouldn't be put to use right away, I decided it was smarter to rent out a whole building instead of a single office, sooner rather than later. I also chose it in the hopes that I would eventually be able to buy the whole thing, but if I couldn't I'm sure I would be able to buy somewhere else.

The unfortunate thing was that I did not have enough funds to rent the place, so I had to do some freelance hack jobs. But a week, and a few dozen hack jobs, later, the first weekly payment from the ad agency in addition to the money I had made with freelancing was enough to rent the building for two months.

So, the same day the ad agency money came in, I and my parent's lawyer, who I paid instead of him doing it as a favor, went to the leasing office in charge of the building where we spent the first half of the day hashing over the commercial lease which was much more complicated than a residential lease.

We had to go over the base rent, the usable square feet, utilities, rent increases, security deposit, length of the lease, improvements/changes that could be made by me, commencement date, extension, late fees, taxes, the obligation for repair, permits, covenants, indemnity by the tenant, rent abatement, condemnation, and option to purchase.

But with the leasing office/landlord being very amicable, plus a good lawyer, the commercial lease was very favorable for me with them even giving me the option to purchase should I wish to in the future.

And so the day ended with a firm handshake between me and the landlord, with a picture taken for the future documentaries that would surely be made about my company.

After that, I moved into the building and set up the servers I had bought, migrated everything to the new servers, and shut down the old ones before adding them to the new ones. Once that was done, I released Candy Crush and advertised it on Tinder and Flappy Bird.

And that was the day Chronicle HQ, the name of my company, was established.

"Three weeks since then." I said to myself, snapping out of my thoughts.

"Meow." said Bean.

"I know I haven't done much since then besides answering a phone call every now and then, but I can't help it. Sloth is my deadliest sin." I said to her.

[Mission Available]

'Spoke too soon.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AN

So I decided to time skip and summarize what he did over the past month instead of doing chapters for what happened just because I felt like it's better to progress the story rather than to have more chapters, which is something I will admit I'm guilty of prioritizing sometimes.

I've also decided to not go super detailed on the business/tech side of things which is a hole I keep digging myself deeper in. I like to strive for realism when it's needed which is why I research everything I write about, whether it be commercial leases or hacking or servers, I like it to feel realistic. But I also realize that's not always the best thing to do, which is why I'm trying to go away from that and keep it general.

But I've always been one of those people that reads something in a fanfic and tells themselves 'that's not realistic' or 'that's now how it's done in real life' which is an odd thing to think when reading a fanfic but it's just who I am, which is also the reason for my need to research everything to make it seem realistic.

Anyway, weird tangent, but I'm trying to say that I'll try to keep the details broad and general since this isn't one of those Library of Science and Technology novels where they explain everything in super detail which is nice but also sometimes ruins the flow of things.

Also, this next mission will be more slice-of-lifey than the previous one. While I was hoping to hold off on making him go on another mission for a few chapters more, I decided to bite the bullet since it's becoming a little harder for me to write about his homeworld activities only.

I've had it and the mission after this upcoming one all planned out in a word document for a long while now and I really like them and am excited to write them out. Hope you guys will like them too. (●'◡'●)

And consider this AN my thoughts and feelings chapter.