A month later, on Harvard's campus.
The final filming location had been stamped into the schedule like a seal: the "perfect set," the image marketing would drool over, the kind of postcard shot that made it look like the whole world fit inside this project. Even by U.S. standards - and honestly, by the world's - this place was a stage. And stages don't stay empty when a film crew moves in.
The Death Note set settled in like a temporary city between historic buildings, immaculate lawns, and curious eyes pretending they were "just passing through." There was no real room for discretion when trucks, light rigs, and headset-wearing crew cut across a university that size. Students raised their phones on instinct. Tourists rerouted. Even people who didn't care about movies paused, if only for five seconds, just to stare at the project's name printed on black hard cases.
The buzz was also coming from somewhere else - somewhere Alex couldn't control.
Bleach: The Arrancar Saga was already pushing into its endgame, and even with Sosuke Aizen appearing in only a handful of episodes so far, it didn't lessen the side effect: Alex was the lead, the director, and the writer. His face was no longer just the face of a talented Asian creator trying to break out overseas. It was the face the algorithm had learned to shove forward, the kind of name that - once spoken in an interview - turned into a clip, a headline, an argument.
And as if the universe had decided the noise still wasn't loud enough, the Hollywood actors who'd recently wrapped their scenes had started a spontaneous campaign - shamelessly, spectacularly loud - of worship.
The Streamflix owner, Regan, got asked by a reporter whether Alex's series/film could really be compared to the platform's most expensive production: a superhero blockbuster that had burned through two hundred million dollars like pocket change. Regan's expression snapped shut, like the reporter had insulted someone he loved.
"I think that comparison is blasphemy against a great work," he fired back, not even attempting diplomacy. "Alex is building something that will be remembered. It makes no sense to put this on the same shelf as assembly-line, canned superhero product. If anything belongs in the same conversation, it's the kind of film people quote decades later… something on the level of The Shawshank Redemption."
Then came Christian, calm in that way only a star can be - fully aware any sentence he drops will become a title.
"If you ask me to choose between The Dark Knight and Death Note… I can't," he said. "In my mind, they're both perfect scores."
Megan appeared next, smiling like she could barely hold still.
"Alex is a genius from the other side of the world," she said. "I'm counting the days until this premieres."
Margot was even more direct, as if she were talking about the gravitational center of the entire set.
"This is ridiculously good," she said. "And of course, the legendary 'Mr. 760' is the soul of this film. If I can, I want to keep working with him for a long time."
And Timothée, with the uneasy sincerity of someone saying something he knows sounds absurd, delivered the line that felt exaggerated… but in the right way. The dangerous way.
"I regret being in this movie," he said. "Because I'm certain I'll spend the rest of my life never acting in anything better than this."
It kept going. One interview led to another, and each compliment seemed to require being bigger than the last, like there was an invisible competition to see who could place Alex on the highest pedestal.
Across the ocean, people back in his home country watched it like a reality show with an unlimited budget. Some laughed. Some went blank. Some felt secondhand embarrassment - not because admiration was wrong, but because the intensity was almost indecent.
"I thought only we did this," someone wrote on a forum. "Turns out the foreigners know how to flatter too. And the worst part? They're doing it with Hollywood heavyweights."
Alex skimmed a few excerpts and felt an honest, almost physical discomfort. It wasn't false modesty. He simply knew the kind of death that gets born from the wrong praise - the praise that turns into impossible expectation, the praise that secretly makes the world hungry to watch you fall.
He wanted to tell them to ease off. Wanted to tell them to shut up. Not because he lacked confidence in the project - he didn't waver there - but because being lifted up was just a refined way of setting you up for the drop.
And whether he liked it or not, he knew it: he was about to trend again.
Not because of Harvard. Not because of Death Note… but because of Bleach.
The last two updates had set the fandom on fire. Leorio Sguario, the Fifth Espada, was already showing clear signs of collapse. The Seventh and the Eighth were slipping too. If those three went down, the enemy would lose more than half its core forces.
And next week would bring what everyone had been waiting for - the hundred-year flashback arc.
Sosuke Aizen's stage.
The kind of "next week" that put the entire world on countdown.
On Harvard's set, movement fell into a familiar rhythm, a choreography repeated until it became muscle memory. When Alex finally called lunch break, the crew dispersed with the tired urgency of people running on exhaustion and professionalism alone. In that gap, he peeled away with the script in hand, taking a seat in a corner no one approached unless they had a genuinely serious reason.
The truth was simple: lately, his days hadn't been kind.
He had to shoot the ending of the first half of Death Note, with the exact weight it demanded - the tension could not sag by even a millimeter… and at the same time, he had to rewrite entire chunks of the Karakura Final Battle Arc.
And that wasn't a whim.
It was an old wound.
When Alex was younger - young enough to watch with wide eyes, still believing "the author knows what he's doing" - he remembered feeling baffled when Aizen was defeated. Not baffled like he didn't understand. Baffled like… that's it?
Aizen was a monster. A mind. A god built patiently, layer after layer. The entire series seemed to bend reality just to accommodate the size of him - and then, suddenly, the protagonist learned a new move and that was that.
End.
A blackout.
A casual, "welp, it's over."
It wasn't that Alex idolized Aizen. It was that the conclusion felt rushed, and Alex hated endings that carried the smell of someone trying to leave the room too fast. The story deserved a better farewell. It deserved the dignity of a real war, with real scars.
The thought had lodged in him like a quiet obsession: give Bleach a closure that left the reader orphaned, but satisfied. Something clean and brutal, the kind of ending he admired in stories that didn't betray their own intensity.
And then the idea arrived - simple, ugly, effective.
Kill someone on the heroes' side.
It was ironic, because the argument always circled back to the same place: "overpowered protagonists." Naruto, Ichigo, Luffy - characters who gained power at the edge of defeat, and got shredded for it. Especially when the change felt like it dropped from the sky, like the script had invented a shortcut.
So why hadn't people crucified Goku the same way when he became a Super Saiyan?
Alex knew the answer. Two answers, really.
The first was technical: it had been planted, for a long time - tension, buildup, promise.
The second was emotional - and it was the one that actually mattered.
Krillin died.
And Krillin's death made the world stop for a second. It made the air go heavy. It made the transformation feel less like a "power-up" and more like a scream - an inevitable consequence of desperation.
When you kill someone the audience loves, the power that follows stops being "writer convenience." It becomes catharsis.
And there was another advantage: death, when used right, isn't just shock. It's atmosphere. It's the cruelty of war. It's a reminder that no one is protected by an invisible contract.
The final arc of Bleach had always suffered from a balance problem, and Alex could see it with a clarity that almost irritated him. Aizen's side paid in blood - alliances collapsing, bodies dropping, defeat and disappearance stacking up - while the heroes crossed the chaos with few real losses. At most, a traitor taken out, a death that felt "necessary," but not devastating enough to change the temperature of the story.
The gap was too wide. And in a war, a gap like that broke credibility.
He stared at the script as if the paper might answer back. The pen felt heavy in his hand. It was a delicate decision: choosing who would fall without destroying the future of the plot, without turning the story into gratuitous cruelty - while still avoiding a sanitized, consequence-free ending.
That was when his phone rang.
"Husband…" The voice came syrup-sweet, laced with that playful heat that only belonged to one person. "You won an award…"
Alex closed his eyes for a moment, as if he were physically holding his exhaustion by the throat.
"Speak like a human."
On the other end, the giggle died instantly. Emily's tone shifted so fast it always made him suspicious - she had a talent for reading his emotional weather and adjusting herself like a thermostat.
"You got nominated for the Golden Eagle Award," she said, crisp and direct. "And it's not a small nomination."
Alex went quiet for a second. Not because he was moved, but because he was calculating the true cost of that sentence: time, flights, schedule, interruption.
Back home, it was one of the most important television awards in the industry. Winning didn't change the quality of a work… but it changed how people looked at it. Cheap prestige, sure - but prestige all the same.
"Can you guarantee I'll actually win?" he asked, flatly. "Because if I'm flying back just to stand there as someone else's decorative supporting piece, I'd rather finish everything here."
Emily clicked her tongue, offended on principle.
"Alex, for God's sake. Bleach turned the year upside down. The committee would have to be insane not to give you the award."
He almost replied that "insane" was exactly how committees behaved. He remembered an edition where they'd handed trophies to a popular pretty face - more because of fandom noise than merit - and it had made one thing crystal clear: fairness and awards didn't always walk together.
But arguing wouldn't change anything. And deep down, Alex knew the award was a game he had to play - if only to plant a flag.
When he hung up, he stood still for a beat. Then he rose, crossed the set, and addressed the crew with a clarity that left no space for negotiation.
"We're shutting down for a week," he said. His voice didn't crack. "When I'm back, we finish."
No one complained. There was no reason to. They were already near the end, and what remained was too small for anyone to risk friction. If he'd said a month, they would've swallowed it too.
That was when the youngest actress in the cast drifted up, clinging to him with a boldness that mixed bratty charm and nerve.
"Alex…" she said, drawing the word out like a tease. "Let me go with you. I want to walk the red carpet with you…"
His answer came before his smile.
He tapped her forehead with a sharp, precise flick - half punishment, half affection.
"Red carpet my ass." Alex narrowed his eyes. "You trying to get me locked up for thirteen years or what?"
She grabbed her forehead, indignant, but she didn't back off.
Alex didn't need to explain. The internet loved building monsters. After one "golden boy" had gone down in scandal, armchair detectives started hunting for the next. And Alex's name showed up in those conversations with an irritating frequency, always dragged in by the same "evidence" people invented: his proximity to the youngest actress on set.
It was the kind of poison that didn't kill you in one bite… it just left an aftertaste.
Strangely enough, no one suspected Violet Grant. People called Alex all kinds of things online - some unfair, some just stupid - but even the nastiest ones seemed to agree, deep down, that he wasn't sick to that extent.
The problem was, one doubt was enough to become a headline.
Alex exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of the week ahead: the award, the cameras, the questions, the mandatory smile. And in the middle of it, the story he still had to fix - so it wouldn't end in a hurry, so it wouldn't betray its own promise.
He looked back down at the script in his hand, and the same thought returned like a warning, almost like a verdict.
Krillin died… and the whole world believed in the power that came after.
Maybe that was what had been missing.
Maybe that was what he'd finally have the nerve to do.
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