Alex had an old thought from a past life, one of those half-joking questions people throw around over drinks until someone realizes the answer says something unpleasantly real about human nature.
If you took the most brilliant and ruthless empire-builders in history and dropped them into the same world, the same era, the same stage - would they join forces and reshape everything?
Probably not.
They'd start by fighting each other.
Genius did not always build. More often, it collided. Pride met pride. Ambition grated against ambition. And when two predators claimed the same mountain, one of them usually ended up bleeding.
There was a trace of that feeling in the air between Alex and Gotye.
Not open hostility. Not even obvious competition. Just that faint, almost elegant tension that appeared when two people recognized something dangerous in each other and one of them quietly decided not to test it.
For Gotye, watching Death Note had made one thing brutally clear.
Do not try to trade blows with Alex in film.
Not unless you wanted to lose beautifully.
The worst part was that it wasn't even resentment. Not really. It was something more complicated than jealousy and much quieter than wounded pride. It was the uncomfortable recognition of mastery. Alex had that rare quality artists hated and admired in equal measure - the ability to make control look effortless.
Gotye knew talent. He had spent his life around it, inside it, chasing it.
But there were talented people, and then there were people who seemed to alter the atmosphere just by stepping into a room.
Alex belonged to the second category.
That was what unsettled him.
At home, Gotye genuinely kept up with Alex's work. Not as a rival tracking a threat. Not as a celebrity keeping score. He watched because he liked it. Because there was still enough artist left in him to recognize when someone was building something with teeth.
But liking a person's work from a distance was one thing.
Imagining yourself standing inside that current with them was another.
For a moment, he had even wondered whether he should ask for a role someday.
Not out of desperation.
Just curiosity.
Then the crowd outside swallowed the thought whole.
"Alex! Alex!"
"Aizen! Over here!"
"This is my number - call me!"
"Come see me tonight!"
The security line in front of the theater looked close to collapsing. The fans were not just excited - they were charged. Loud, fearless, almost aggressively alive. The kind of energy that made the whole lobby feel tighter, as if the air itself had been pulled taut.
Even Alex, who had lived under attention for so long it might as well have been part of the weather, blinked at the intensity.
Gotye stayed still.
Anywhere else, attention usually bent toward him on its own. Not because he chased it, but because people always seemed to feel him before they fully saw him. Here, though, the current was running in another direction.
And the strangest part was not being overlooked.
It was realizing that it still surprised him.
"Move! You're blocking him!"
"We're here for Aizen!"
Gotye heard it.
He did not react. He merely shifted half a step, expression unchanged, as though the words had passed through empty space before reaching him. Only the faint tightening at the corner of his mouth betrayed anything at all.
It did not bruise him in the dramatic way it would have bruised someone else.
It offended his sense of order.
That was all.
Or at least that was what he told himself.
The interview segment began soon after, and Alex - smooth, relaxed, perfectly aware of how to hold a room without ever seeming to force it - picked a fan who looked slightly less likely to scream herself unconscious. She was cute, bright-eyed, with purple hair and the exact kind of animated, overcommitted expression that suggested anime had shaped half her personality.
"Alex!" she blurted, nearly tripping over the microphone. "Megan or Margot - which one is your real girlfriend?"
Of course.
No matter the country, no matter the project, fans were still fans. You could give them psychological warfare, layered performances, and a story sharp enough to split open the brain, and they would still want to know who you were kissing when the cameras stopped rolling.
Alex smiled in that practiced way that revealed absolutely nothing.
"I'm impressed," he said lightly. "You turned one question into a live grenade. But if I answer that, I'll become a headline for the next three weeks. I still have a movie to promote, alright?"
The room burst into laughter. The girl groaned in mock disappointment, though she was laughing too.
A few more questions followed, most of them drifting somewhere between gossip and flirtation, until someone in the back asked the only thing half the room had actually come to hear.
"Mr. Alex," the man said, all seriousness now, "is the second half already planned?"
The atmosphere changed immediately.
You could feel the room tighten in anticipation. People leaned forward. Even the people pretending not to care suddenly cared very much.
Because everyone knew what was waiting on the other side of that cliffhanger.
The real collision.
Not hints. Not setup. Not distant mind games.
A direct clash between monsters.
And Death Note had cut away at exactly the point where the audience's hunger became unbearable.
Alex looked out over them and smiled.
It was a very specific smile - composed, elegant, faintly amused, almost cruel in how aware it was of its own effect.
Pure Aizen.
"That depends on your response."
For one second, nobody spoke.
Then the room erupted.
"What kind of answer is that?!"
"Don't mess with us!"
"Just say yes or no!"
Alex laughed and lifted his hands, placating them like a man soothing a beast he had deliberately provoked.
"Alright, alright. More seriously - I've got a lot happening." He said it casually, almost offensively casually. "Bleach Season Three. JOJO Part Three. I want to shoot a new IP. And then there's the second half of Death Note…"
He sighed, as if burdened by success.
"So I'm still deciding what comes first. I'll go with the strongest reaction. Whatever gets the biggest response - whatever people push for the hardest - that's what I'll prioritize."
Gotye let out a short, disbelieving breath through his nose.
He understood perfectly.
You want the sequel? Then prove it. Buy tickets. Rewatch it. Bring friends. Make noise. Turn desire into numbers.
It was extortion dressed in charm.
And annoyingly, it was good.
Marketing had always been its own species of theater. Half manipulation, half instinct, and all of it dependent on how prettily you could package pressure. Compared to the uglier tricks the industry loved, what Alex was doing was almost elegant.
Which, somehow, made it worse.
When they finally made it out of the theater, the roar of the crowd still echoing behind them, Gotye spoke in a tone so casual it was nearly suspicious.
"When things calm down, come to Bali sometime." He glanced at Alex, hands in his pockets. "I bought a villa there a while back. It's quiet. Good place to breathe."
It was not a flashy invitation. Not really.
It sounded more like an opening than an offer.
Alex smiled, polite but genuine.
"Next time, for sure. I still have a lot of promotion left."
And it was not the easy sort of promotion you did in one country before heading home to your own bed. It was a marathon - airport after airport, border after border, the same hunger repeated in different languages through different microphones.
Gotye nodded and accepted it without pushing.
That was his style. He offered once, cleanly. No neediness. No repetition.
He still exchanged contact information with Alex before they parted, though, filing the possibility away for later.
He told himself it was practical. Professional. Just one more connection worth keeping.
But underneath that, he knew the truth.
He wanted to stay close to that kind of energy for a little longer.
Not to steal it.
To remember it.
To remember what it felt like to care that intensely about making something good.
To want something enough that it sharpened you.
He was still thinking about that when Alex turned, almost as an afterthought, and asked:
"You like driving a Mercedes?"
Gotye looked at him, briefly thrown by the question.
"That depends on the Mercedes," he said.
The answer came out dry and unhurried.
"Some cars buy status. Some cars earn respect. Those aren't the same thing."
Alex gave a low, crooked laugh, the kind that sounded like he had just been privately rewarded.
Gotye noticed.
He also noticed, with mild irritation, that he had somehow missed part of the joke.
But he did not ask.
He was not the kind of man who asked for explanations once a moment had already passed.
Alex, of course, understood exactly what had just happened.
By then, he had already figured out the shape of Gotye's interest. The Bali invitation. The way he lingered without crowding. The careful, indirect curiosity. Gotye was not trying to challenge him. He was circling a possibility.
He wanted in.
Not into fame. Not into Alex's spotlight.
Into the work.
Into whatever current Alex was riding that made art feel alive again.
And Alex, being Alex, had his own private line of thought.
Because the moment Gotye answered like that, his mind jumped straight to an old cultural punchline - one of those absurd lines that should have sounded stupid but had somehow wrapped all the way back around into iconic.
The 86 goes up the mountain.
And the Mercedes goes up the tree.
It was never really about the car.
It was about attitude.
Taste.
The kind of shameless, self-contained confidence that let a person say, with complete sincerity: I like what I like. That's enough.
If he ever did work with Gotye someday - whether it was a cameo, a stage piece, something theatrical and bizarre, something with enough style to border on parody - Alex already knew what role people would assume he wanted.
The cold genius.
The elegant strategist.
The man who won without raising his voice.
But that was not what tempted him most.
What interested Alex far more was the other type entirely.
The man behind the Mercedes.
Yeah.
That one.
Because there was something delightful about the image. The contradiction. The taste. The quiet arrogance of it. The almost childish satisfaction of saying something outrageous with perfect calm and making it sound completely reasonable.
I just like driving a Mercedes.
The promotion tour continued without mercy.
The United States. France. Spain. The United Kingdom. Different theaters, different audiences, different accents asking variations of the same questions. Every stop had its own atmosphere, but the underlying hunger never changed.
Meanwhile, back in Alex's home market, he had not shown up in person for quite a while. And somehow that only made the myth grow faster. His absence fed the story instead of weakening it.
Part of that was his own doing.
The rest came from the fact that the competition around him looked embarrassingly thin by comparison. That year's early releases were full of familiar faces, internet-famous idols, and pretty people who could generate clicks but not carry a film on their backs.
There was visibility everywhere.
Very little weight.
Alex could not help thinking that if Death Note had opened there too, he would have been leaving an absurd amount of money on the table.
Then Gotye - who barely touched social media and treated it like a tool he remembered only when forced - posted something.
Nothing elaborate.
No speech. No strategy thread. No fake enthusiasm.
Just a photo of the two of them together, and a short caption.
Insane.
That was it.
The post spread instantly.
Maybe because it was so understated. Maybe because it felt unmanufactured. Maybe because sincerity, when it slipped through, always hit harder than promotion.
Critics moved quickly too. The aggregator scores came in brutal and gleaming: around ninety-seven percent approval.
Almost perfect.
Sure, early scores always ran a little hot. Audiences got carried away. Critics got dramatic. First waves of hype had their own chemistry.
But ninety-seven was still ninety-seven.
Online, Western audiences exploded into long posts masquerading as casual reactions. Some called it the best intellectual thriller they had seen in years. Others came out of the theater joking that the movie's greatest achievement was making them feel stupid. Some begged people to stop calling Alex by his character names and learn his actual name already.
And then, inevitably, the question that had been waiting ever since the first trailer became impossible to avoid.
Who was smarter?
Sosuke Aizen - or Light Yagami?
Memes appeared almost instantly. Then argument threads. Then essays. Then fan edits and pseudo-academic breakdowns and people fighting in comment sections like the answer might change the structure of reality.
Someone posted that they had watched Death Note and then gone straight into a superhero movie afterward, only to feel like their brain had fallen down a staircase from the sheer drop in complexity.
Forums lit up. Group chats turned hysterical. Theories multiplied. People started picking apart details, trying to predict where Alex would take the second half and whether he would be cruel enough to make them wait.
Because by then, it no longer felt like just another successful film.
It felt bigger than that.
It felt like an event.
And once something became an event, the world stopped asking politely.
It demanded.
It watched.
And it waited to see whether the so-called God of the New World would actually deliver on the promise he had dangled in front of them.
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