The Great Hanshin Earthquake.
He remembered it was this year, but couldn't recall the exact date.
He never expected it to happen today.
The scrolling text at the bottom of the screen flashed a glaring red: Kobe City, Shindo 7; Osaka, Shindo 6-plus. And Tokyo—Shindo 1-2.
No wonder.
Though the old Japanese house was aged, its traditional wooden structure, with its mortise-and-tenon joints, possessed remarkable flexibility. Moreover, Tokyo was hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter, so the negligible tremors were not amplified like they would be in high-rise buildings. The thick foundation and bedding had perfectly filtered the motion.
Neither he nor Eri had been awakened by the faint tremors during the early morning earthquake.
The sizzling sound from the kitchen abruptly ceased.
Eri turned off the stove and hurried into the living room.
She stared at the TV screen, which showed a city reduced to rubble, her hand still clutching the wooden spatula, her knuckles turning white from the force.
"Is that... Kobe?" she asked softly, as if afraid to disturb the people digging through the ruins in the image.
"Yes," Takuya Nakayama exhaled heavily, setting the remote control back on the table. "In Kansai... the sky is falling."
The aerial footage on the screen swept across a neighborhood of burning houses, black smoke obscuring half the sky.
The images on the screen continued to shatter the morning's tranquility.
In the upper right corner of the screen, the stark white time was frozen at 5:46:52.
Just two hours earlier, most people were still curled up in their warm beds. But beneath the Akashi Strait, north of Awaji Island in Hyogo Prefecture, the earth had split open.
34°35.9' N latitude, 135°2.1' E longitude, with a hypocenter depth of only 16 kilometers.
For geologists, this was an extremely dangerous figure.
A shallow-focus, direct-hit, Richter magnitude 7.3 earthquake.
This meant there was no buffer.
The immense energy had slammed vertically into the ground like a sledgehammer, followed by a frenzied horizontal tearing motion.
The camera cut to Nagata Ward in Kobe City.
It was no longer streets, but a sea of flames.
Old wooden houses were instantly flattened by the violent vertical vibrations, then engulfed by the fire ignited by ruptured gas pipelines.
Black smoke billowed, blotting out the sky. Fire truck sirens wailed in the background, but they sounded utterly powerless—the water supply network had also been severed. Firefighters stood helpless, holding limp hoses, watching the flames spread unchecked.
"This is... Shindo 7." Takuya Nakayama stared at the glaring red text at the bottom of the screen, his voice dry.
Before this, Shindo 7 had been merely a theoretical maximum in the Japan Meteorological Agency's seismic intensity scale, a level never before recorded in actual observations.
Until today.
Kobe, Ashiya, Nishinomiya, Takarazuka—these bustling towns in southern Hyogo Prefecture had been transformed into a living hell.
The camera shifted to that famous highway.
The Hanshin Expressway, once a symbol of Japan's infrastructure pride, now lay like a broken-backed dead snake. Its massive concrete piers had snapped at the base, and the entire roadbed had collapsed sideways. Cars and trucks, caught off guard, hung precariously like scrap metal at a cliff's edge.
It wasn't just the roads.
The piers of the Sanyo Shinkansen had fractured, and the docks of Kobe Port had sunk into the sea due to liquefaction of the foundation. In the face of this disaster, the lifeline infrastructure that modern cities so proudly boasted of proved as fragile as a sheet of paper.
Water, electricity, and gas—all had been paralyzed.
"What about Osaka?" Eri's hands gripped the back of her chair so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her voice trembled as she asked, "Grandma and Grandpa are in Osaka—"
"Although the tremors in Osaka and Kyoto were intense, reaching Shindo 6+, they didn't suffer catastrophic destruction," Takuya Nakayama said, pointing to a disaster distribution map on the screen. He tried to suppress the horror in his heart with rational analysis. "This was a typical direct-hit earthquake, with the destructive force concentrated in a narrow zone around the epicenter. As you can see, Nagoya only experienced mild shaking, and no buildings collapsed there."
He paused, his gaze lingering on the images of collapsed high-rises.
"But the economic lifeline of Kansai has been severed."
The transportation network connecting to Kobe had been completely disrupted, and Kobe Port, one of Japan's most important ports, was essentially inoperable.
This wasn't just a natural disaster. For the Japanese economy, still recovering from the bursting of the bubble, it was like being shot in the knee.
And for the gaming industry, which had been dreaming of striking it rich, it was like being doused with a bucket of ice-cold water.
With logistics paralyzed and consumer spending frozen, the paralysis of the entire Kansai market was inevitable.
Nakayama picked up the remote control on the desk, but hesitated to change the channel.
He saw the rescue workers digging through the rubble with their bare hands, the survivors shivering in blankets in the biting wind, and the constantly rising death toll.
On that pale winter morning, the year 1995 bared its savage fangs.
Eri set down the bowl of miso soup, a few drops splashing onto the mahogany table. Without wiping it, she turned and rushed to the phone.
Only the frantic, maddening ring... ring... ring came through the receiver—the desperate signal of an overloaded line.
"Don't worry," Takuya Nakayama said, shoveling down a few mouthfuls of white rice. "Everyone in Japan is calling right now. The lines are bound to be jammed." He grabbed his coat and threw it on. "Even though the Shindo rating was high in Osaka, if the houses are structurally sound, Grandma and Grandpa should be fine. You stay here and keep trying the phone. Also, check with our other relatives in Osaka. I'm going to Headquarters to get updates on the situation there. If you hear anything, call my direct line at the office."
Without another word, he pushed the door open and left.
Inside the Sega Headquarters Building, the atmosphere was heavier than usual.
Employees clustered in small groups around the television in the break room, staring blankly at the still-smoldering streets of Kobe.
Takuya walked straight through the corridor and knocked on the President's office door.
Nakayama Hayao stood with his hands behind his back, gazing out the window. Three cigarette butts already filled the ashtray.
"Father, we need to act," Takuya said bluntly, cutting to the chase.
"Why are you moving? The logistics are completely cut off." Nakayama Hayao turned around, his face grave.
"Roads can be rerouted, but spirits can't be broken." Takuya Nakayama walked to the desk and quickly scribbled numbers on a sticky note. "I'm requesting special approval to transfer 5,000 GamePockets and 30,000 cartridges from the Yokohama warehouse.
Focus on puzzle and RPG titles like Tetris, Puyo Puyo, and Pokémon. Not a single action game with violence or explosions."
Nakayama Hayao raised an eyebrow. "Sending game consoles to the disaster zone?"
"Shelters don't just lack water and bread; they lack ways to pass the time and quell fear." Takuya pointed to the key points on the note. "Headphones are essential. Shelters are overcrowded, and when children cry, adults get agitated. Headphones can provide a quiet corner, which should help maintain order."
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