"Boss, the company just sent word. Someone mailed razor blades to you."
On the set of Bleach: The Thousand-Year Blood War, Nadia stepped forward and delivered the report in a low voice, her expression serious enough to make it clear this wasn't some tasteless joke.
Sitting in front of the camera, Alex went quiet for a moment, then let out a long, exhausted breath. He had already guessed something like this might happen. He just hadn't expected it to happen so fast. Even so, hearing that someone had actually gone through with something so insane made the whole thing feel more absurd than he wanted to admit.
"Pass it to security. Have them issue a formal warning. No drama, but make it clear I'm not going to tolerate this kind of behavior."
At the end of the day, it already bordered on intimidation. But from another angle, it was also a twisted, unhealthy sign of just how emotionally invested those people were in JOJO. Alex wasn't petty enough to ruin some unhinged fan's life over it, but he did need to draw a line. Otherwise, sooner or later, he'd start thinking twice before killing off any character in one of his productions.
On the other side of the set, Emily caught Bella just as she was about to leave after wrapping her scenes.
"Bella, let me ask you something. Do you want to be the female lead in Alex's next movie?"
Bella froze instantly. She blinked, pressed a hand to her chest, and nearly took a step back.
"Me? No... no, I couldn't. That's not for me."
At least she had a realistic grasp of things. The female lead in an Alex production? On her own? It felt too far away to even say out loud without sounding ridiculous.
"And why not?" Emily leaned closer, lowering her voice like they were conspiring. "I read the script. The character is basically a beautiful, popular girl who's hopelessly obsessed with the male lead. There's nothing impossibly deep about her. With your face and what you already bring on camera, you could pull it off."
In Emily's mind, that role was nowhere near some monumental acting challenge. The entire character revolved around blind devotion to the protagonist. If that were all it took, she could have done it herself.
The real issue was something else.
Alex had already said it with that ruthless bluntness he used whenever casting was involved: the character needed the aura of an idol and a model, not the energy of a femme fatale. Emily had nearly exploded when she heard it.
In private, he loved every curve she had. But when it came time to cast a film, suddenly those same curves became "the wrong fit."
What a hypocrite.
Still, Emily knew exactly what kind of man she was dealing with. Teasing him in daily life was one thing. Challenging him when he had already made up his mind about something serious was something else entirely. Alex could be indulgent, even lazy, in some matters. But the moment someone crossed a line he considered non-negotiable, his response turned cold and absolute.
So if she couldn't get the part herself, then at the very least she could try to push it toward someone on her side.
That was where Bella came in.
If the character needed to look like a beloved model and idol, Bella fit that image too well to be ignored. And as for the role's defining trait - that humiliating, almost painful level of devotion toward the male lead - Emily was fairly sure Bella wouldn't have to act that hard anyway. Ever since the earlier shoot, she had already noticed the way the girl looked at Alex whenever she thought no one was paying attention.
But there was an even stronger reason behind Emily's insistence.
She simply refused to let that role fall into Rebeca Verne's hands.
It didn't matter what it cost. It didn't matter what method she had to use. She just couldn't stand the idea of giving that woman the satisfaction.
"Even so... I don't think I can beat them." Bella lowered her eyes as she spoke.
She knew perfectly well how fierce the competition was. Within the country alone, big-name actresses were already making moves. Rebeca, especially, had been going so far out of her way to get close to Alex over the past few days that even the veteran cast had started watching in visible disbelief. The ethereal, untouchable image she had carefully maintained for years seemed to have vanished overnight.
And it wasn't only the domestic side.
Actresses from Hollywood were circling the same part too.
Faced with that kind of lineup, Bella couldn't see a single real advantage she had.
Emily clicked her tongue, as if Bella were making something simple sound complicated.
"I have a way." She moved in even closer, her lips almost brushing Bella's ear. "You just need to leave him a room key."
Bella's eyes went wide at once. Blood rushed to her face so fast her cheeks flushed crimson in an instant.
That was practically handing herself over on a silver platter.
"You don't want to?" Emily pressed in that same honeyed voice that became more dangerous the gentler it sounded. "Think about it. You get to live out a fantasy you've probably had for ages... and you might walk away with a lead role on top of it."
That was the moment Bella truly understood how terrifying Emily could be when she wanted something badly enough. To keep a rival from benefiting, she was willing to shove a girl from her own circle straight into the bed of the man they both orbited around.
In the end, taking advantage of a moment when no one else was looking their way, Bella gathered her courage, walked up to Alex, and held out a key card with a trembling hand.
"Th-this... this is for you."
That was all she said. Then she turned and hurried away like she had just committed some unspeakable crime.
Alex stared after her, completely baffled. Even so, after a few seconds, he slipped the card into his coat pocket.
Almost no one noticed the exchange.
Almost.
Nadia, who was always close enough to him to catch even the smallest shift in his orbit, saw the whole thing from the corner of her eye. And in that instant, something bitter rose in her chest.
So Bella really did have the nerve for this.
The thought irritated her far more than it should have.
In a way, one of the reasons Nadia had thrown everything aside and come to work beside Alex had always been tied to Bella. The two of them were similar in too many ways: same age, similar background, the same kind of beauty that made people compare them instinctively. The problem was that the gap between them kept growing wider. Bella was rising faster and faster, while Nadia was still struggling to find a firm place to stand.
She didn't hate Bella with the same burning, vicious intensity Emily reserved for Rebeca. It wasn't like that.
But she still couldn't bear the thought of watching Bella climb into an entirely new league right in front of her.
If Bella pulled this off... if she really managed to sleep with Alex and walk away with a leading film role... then by the time Nadia even found her footing as an actress, Bella might already be years ahead of her.
Just imagining it sent a chill through her.
No.
She couldn't let that happen.
A few hours later, with filming nearly finished, Alex took off his coat because of the heat and tossed it over a chair beside the set. Nadia waited. She kept waiting, never taking her eyes off the chance she needed. And when it finally came, she moved without hesitation.
She slipped her own key card into the coat pocket, pulled out the original one, and a short while later made her way to a public restroom.
Without the slightest mercy, she dropped the old card into the toilet and flushed it away.
As the water swallowed any trace of what she had done, Nadia felt a childish, almost triumphant satisfaction rise in her chest.
For a brief moment, she thought she was brilliant.
That night, back at the hotel, Alex still found the whole thing odd. As much affection as Bella had shown before, he didn't believe she was bold enough to take the initiative like that. If it had been Emily, sure. Bella? That was harder to picture.
But after thinking about it for a while, he decided to stop overanalyzing it.
There was no reason to pretend to be some saint when the temptation had already arrived at his door.
He had always despised those webnovel protagonists who went hundreds of chapters receiving painfully obvious signals and still acted like celibate monks. The heroine practically climbed into bed on her own, and the guy kept pretending he had no idea what was happening. In some stories it became downright ridiculous: the heroine would be intoxicated, the sexual tension would be boiling over, and the author would still invent some absurd excuse for the protagonist to "use inner energy" and resolve everything in the most frustrating way possible.
Alex hated that kind of cowardice disguised as purity.
After showering, he checked the room number on the card, slipped quietly out of his room, and moved down the hallway with light, careful steps. If something really was about to happen, the last thing he needed was for someone from the cast to catch him walking in. Luckily, because the entire production team was staying at the hotel, certain hallway cameras had already been conveniently disabled for the night, one of those "temporary measures" everyone knew about and no one openly discussed.
The key card beeped. The door opened.
Alex stepped into a room swallowed by darkness and barely had time to adjust before a soft body launched itself straight into him. Arms wrapped around his neck, and before he could even react, lips were already pressed hard against his.
For a brief moment, he actually thought Bella had a lot more courage than he'd given her credit for.
Then the feeling faded almost immediately.
Within seconds, something felt off.
The uncertainty in the kiss, the lack of experience, the desperate intensity, the way the entire body trembling against his seemed wound tight with nerves... none of it matched the image he had built in his mind.
When the girl finally ran out of breath, Alex pulled back just enough to look at her in the dark.
"Nadia?" His voice came out thick with disbelief. "What the hell is this?"
The lights came on a moment later.
With watery eyes, trembling lips, and a face flushed all the way to the roots of her hair, Nadia looked so nervous she could barely hold his gaze. Even so, she clung to him as if letting go would mean collapsing.
"Boss... I like you."
Alex felt the headache coming instantly.
He hated this kind of confession.
Not because he couldn't understand feelings, but because confessions complicated everything. In his head, simpler arrangements were more honest. If a woman clearly said she wanted something in exchange for something, he respected that. He wasn't the type to sell sweet lies, take what he wanted, and disappear afterward. If anything, he worked by his own crooked logic: when it came to people with power, he loved squeezing them for everything he could get; when it came to women, he didn't like leaving what he considered a debt unpaid.
So once he understood what had happened, he let out a heavy breath.
"So you switched the key cards." He looked her up and down, not entirely sure whether to laugh or get annoyed. "You really are sly."
The arm around her waist shifted, as if he were about to pull away, but Nadia only clung tighter.
"I'll be honest. Right now, I don't have a role that truly suits you."
It was a direct answer. Harsh, maybe, but sincere.
With Bella, it was different. Alex had already given her enough opportunities that he didn't feel guilty about "collecting" a certain kind of devotion in return. With Nadia, no. He had no intention of mixing casting and sex in such a crude, mechanical way. In his mind, casting was casting. Sleeping with him was never enough to earn a part.
But Nadia panicked the moment she heard that.
"That's not it!" she blurted out, tightening herself against him. "I didn't do this because of a role. Please... don't misunderstand me."
Her grip became so desperate that one of her legs curled around him on instinct, as if she were trying to stop him from escaping altogether.
For a moment, Alex didn't know what to say.
This was getting dangerously close to the kind of situation that tested even the limits of his own shamelessness.
And then Nadia lifted her face, looked up at him with those unsteady eyes, and in a voice so soft it almost melted in the air, she said a line that hit him like a direct strike to the heart - a line from one of those bizarre secret scripts he sometimes left scattered on his desk, the kind of project he would never show the public.
That single phrase, delivered in that tone, shattered the last defense he had been trying to hold onto.
He stared at her for a moment, stunned, before finally asking:
"Where did you even learn that?"
Nadia lowered her eyes at once, embarrassed down to the bone.
"I... sometimes saw those weird scripts on your desk. I read a few pages. By accident... or not entirely by accident."
For the first time in a very long while, Alex actually felt his face heating up.
Even for someone like him, the thought of Nadia stumbling across those particular pages was mortifying.
Still, a curiosity he couldn't suppress slipped out anyway.
"And which character did you know best?"
Nadia hesitated, bit her lip, and answered in a voice so soft it barely survived the silence in the room.
It was enough.
Alex lifted a hand, rubbed his face, and laughed under his breath, defeated in a way he would never have liked to admit. There was something in that answer, something twisted and oddly specific, that aligned far too perfectly with his own tastes.
After that, the conversation stopped having any real shape.
The last of the tension dissolved, and the rest of the night disappeared into the dimness of the room, into the rising heat between them, into the absurd feeling that some defeats arrived disguised as surrender.
The next morning, Bella showed up on set with dark circles under her eyes and the drained look of someone who hadn't slept at all. Emily nearly jumped when she saw her.
For a split second, one ugly thought crossed her mind first: had Alex really been that rough? Rough enough to leave a girl looking like this after the first time?
Then Bella threw herself straight into Emily's arms and nearly broke down.
"He never came," she said, her voice shaking. "I waited until two in the morning. Nothing."
Emily went still.
That, more than anything else, felt impossible.
She knew Alex too well. If the opportunity landed in his lap, he wasn't the kind of man who would simply turn away from it. That wasn't his nature.
So something had happened.
And, as she soon suspected, the confirmation came not long after - if only indirectly.
Just before filming resumed, Alex arrived on set with his usual unreadable expression. But there was something different about him that morning. A sharper edge. A controlled severity. As if he had decided to cut a problem out at the root before it had the chance to become a pattern.
"Before we start," he said, sweeping his gaze across everyone without exception, "let me make one thing clear. No one here is going to try to influence casting decisions with cheap tricks, side games, or anything else in that category. Anyone who does can leave immediately."
The temperature of the entire set seemed to drop.
Mark and the other senior actors barely dared breathe, let alone argue. Everyone responded that they understood.
Emily, on the other hand, lowered her head and stuck out her tongue for a second like a child caught misbehaving. It wasn't hard for her to tell that part of that warning had been aimed squarely at her.
And because she knew Alex well enough, she also understood she would need to find some way to make it up to him later.
A few days passed.
Then, on a weekend night, the studio's official account posted the message countless fans had been dreading and waiting for at the same time:
The final episode of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders airs tonight at 8:00 PM.
The reaction was immediate.
Across the internet, the mood was the same everywhere: anxiety laced with preemptive grief.
Two weeks earlier, the journey had already taken Abduel and Iggy. Last week it had been Kakyoin and Joseph. And now, with the ending finally here, more and more viewers kept making the same comparison: this arc felt like one of those old stories where the villain slaughtered the hero's group one by one until only the title of the work was left standing.
And the more people thought about it, the more cruelly accurate it seemed.
After all, the title was JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
And in this generation, the JoJo was Jotaro.
Meaning that if the pattern held, he'd be the only one left alive.
So before the episode even began, a huge portion of the fandom was already mourning Polnareff in advance, treating his death like the next inevitable blow waiting to land.
When the clock finally struck eight, countless viewers opened the episode page almost simultaneously. The screen had barely finished loading before the comments started pouring in, turning the page into something closer to a public tribunal than a normal viewing experience.
Some were cursing Alex for turning the arc into an emotional massacre. Some were holding a prayer vigil for Polnareff's survival. Some still hadn't recovered from Joseph.
Even after everything he had lived through before, a lot of people simply refused to accept that he could fall to DIO like that.
But the episode hadn't even truly started yet.
The first surprise came immediately.
Instead of opening with the usual theme song, the episode plunged straight into the main story with no warning, no preparation, and no mercy.
Joseph lay collapsed, unconscious, his throat pierced. DIO, triumphant, lifted his face with that godlike arrogance and looked toward Jotaro. Across from him, Jotaro stood with his head slightly lowered, his eyes hidden beneath the brim of his cap, but the hatred pouring off him felt almost tangible.
This wasn't ordinary anger.
It was the kind of fury that had already gone beyond the point of return.
"Kakyoin is dead," DIO said coldly. "And as for Polnareff... he's probably hiding somewhere. It doesn't matter."
Then he raised one hand and pointed forward.
The posture, the framing, the monstrous confidence in that single gesture - everything about it carried too much weight. The audience knew instantly that they were looking at an image destined to burn itself into memory.
"You're next, Jotaro."
"You bastard... DIO."
With his face twisted, veins standing out beneath his skin, Jotaro began walking toward him.
"So you're coming to me?" DIO smiled, almost delighted by his own supremacy. "Instead of running away, you choose to approach me? Even after your grandfather used his last breath to tell you the secret of The World?"
Jotaro didn't stop.
"If I don't get closer... I can't beat the hell out of you."
DIO's smile widened.
"Then come. Get as close as you want."
The atmosphere turned suffocatingly heavy. It wasn't just tension anymore. It was the feeling of imminent death, of two overwhelming forces moving straight toward collision with no room left for retreat. Plenty of viewers found themselves holding their breath without even realizing it, their hearts pounding harder and harder.
And then, right at that exact moment, one comment slid across the screen and broke the solemnity in the most ridiculous way possible:
The tragedy of two short-range stands: if they don't walk closer, they can't punch each other.
Somewhere else in the city, Lena, watching from home, nearly choked from laughing. The audience comments during this show were an entity unto themselves.
But the laughter didn't last.
Because in the very next second, the fight began.
"ORA!"
Star Platinum moved first.
The World appeared almost instantly, blocked the blow with brutal force, and countered in one smooth, vicious motion, tearing a gash into Jotaro's leg with a precise kick.
"Weak," DIO sneered. "Far too weak. The World is the strongest stand. Even without stopping time, its speed and power surpass Star Platinum."
Jotaro lowered his gaze for a brief moment, forcing his mind to work through the rage.
"So it's the same type as Star Platinum... short-range, but overwhelming power and precision."
DIO laughed, intoxicated by his own superiority.
"I did want to test exactly how much stronger it is than your stand. But honestly, I don't even need to anymore."
"That's what you call a test?" Jotaro shot back coldly. "Attacking without even being able to hurt your opponent? What a shame about my two-thousand-dollar pants."
The audience lost their minds.
The exchange was so intense and yet so strangely stylish that even in the middle of a life-and-death confrontation, it still carried that bizarre charm only this series seemed able to produce. It was one of JOJO's signatures - that strange, unexplainable energy everyone recognized the instant it appeared.
Then came the direct collision.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"
"MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA MUDA!"
Star Platinum and The World traded iron blows in a storm of fists, thunder striking thunder. Behind their stands, Jotaro and DIO remained fixed in place, motionless in contrast to the violence exploding in front of them.
Jotaro stood with both hands in his pockets, face hard, focus absolute.
DIO leaned forward slightly, his hands raised like blades, grinning with wild, theatrical savagery.
It was such a perfect image it felt as though it had been born already destined to become iconic.
A lot of viewers barely had time to think about saving a screenshot.
Because right there, at the very peak of that clash, the opening theme finally began to play.
Clockwork gears filled the screen. The pendulum swung. Faces from the past emerged through metal and time, as though every generation of that bloodline had gathered to witness the inevitable end.
Naturally, most viewers had the same immediate instinct: drag the timeline forward and skip the opening so they could rush straight back to the fight.
But before they could, an official on-screen comment slid across the top:
Friendly warning: what comes next is pure impact. Do not skip the opening.
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