"I understand what Director Sora is thinking," Ryo Yukishiro said with an easy smile.
"Giving it more thought is the right call. The anime industry isn't like other fields. A single project can consume months of your life - sometimes half a year of your time and energy."
He pulled out a business card and held it out. "Here's my card. For the next week, it doesn't matter whether it's daytime or the middle of the night. The moment Director Sora reaches a decision, just call me. I'll be waiting for good news."
Once he finished speaking, Ryo Yukishiro extended his hand.
Sora paused for a moment before rising to his feet. Their hands met in the air in a firm, deliberate shake.
After seeing Setsu's group out of the company, Yumi Noriko and Sumire hurried straight back into Sora's office.
"What do you think?" Yumi Noriko asked, her tone heavy with concern.
"What do I think about?" Sora replied with a smile, as if the pressure in the room meant nothing to him.
"Their offer is incredibly good. Honestly, I can't even imagine what kind of terms they could possibly offer that would be better than that."
Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, Yumi Noriko revealed the smooth line of her pale profile. "So you're really going to work with the Southern Broadcast Alliance?"
Sumire, who had been listening quietly from the side, finally spoke up and went straight to the heart of the matter.
"Director... about what he said - about creating an isekai adventure anime. Are you really confident about that?"
She looked at him without wavering.
"If I remember correctly, you never liked that kind of story. If you force yourself to create something in that genre, won't it affect your writing?"
It was a fair concern.
If a creator who loved serious mystery stories was told to write broad comedy, the result would probably be a disaster. In the same way, asking someone who had no fondness for isekai anime to create one from scratch sounded, at the very least, risky.
"Or..." Sumire continued, "are you planning to bring in a top-tier screenwriter from the industry to handle the script?"
"That would be impossible," Sora said with a faint laugh.
"Whether it was Voices of the Stars or Natsume Yuujinchou, the reason they succeeded was the script. The innovations I brought to storyboarding and direction mattered, sure, but those were enhancements. Finishing touches. If I hand the script to someone else, then the most likely outcome is an ordinary, mediocre work."
He lifted his gaze, and the lightness in his expression disappeared.
"A script is the soul of a work."
Then, after a brief pause, he added in a steady, serious voice:
"And the director is the one who gives that soul flesh and blood."
The office fell silent.
"I really don't like isekai adventure anime," he continued. "But that doesn't mean I can't create one."
There was something quiet and intense in the way he said it, as though those words had been sitting inside him for a long time.
"The truth is... I already have an idea for a story in that genre."
"An idea?" Yumi Noriko's eyes lit up with curiosity. "What kind of idea? The usual formula? Demon king, hero, priestess, mage... that sort of thing?"
"No." Sora thought for a moment before answering, and when he did, his tone turned unexpectedly grave. "It's a story about life and death. About the most ordinary boy imaginable, who gets hurt again and again, sacrifices himself again and again, breaks down over and over - and still refuses to accept a tragic ending. A story where he spits in the face of fate, tears despair apart with his own hands, and forces the world to return every precious person in his life to him, untouched by suffering, untouched by misfortune, untouched by tragedy."
"..."
Sumire was speechless.
"..."
So was Yumi Noriko.
This time, Sora did not have to wait long.
Early the next morning, the front desk of Yume Animation received a phone call. Seiun TV informed them that a team from its production department would be coming to make contact with the company and would arrive in the afternoon.
Not long after that, Sumire and Yumi Noriko were once again gathered in Sora's office.
Although the two of them held only small shares, they were still, aside from him, the only shareholders in the company. In theory, Sora could make every decision by himself and end the matter with a single word. Even so, he always chose to discuss things with them first.
It was a matter of attitude.
And more than that, of respect.
"They even called ahead to let us know when they'd arrive..." Sora murmured, lowering his head in thought.
"Isn't that obvious?" Yumi Noriko said with a soft smile. "If they've already told you they're coming here to discuss cooperation, then of course they need to give you a time so you can make arrangements."
She rested her chin lightly on one hand. "That's just how the production staff at major TV networks do things."
"Make arrangements..."
Sora let out a weary sigh.
Back in his previous life, when he had still been just another salaryman, he had already done this kind of thing countless times - helping his company prepare to receive important visitors. He had never imagined that now, even after becoming the president of a company in Japan, he would still have to deal with the same routine.
Anime itself might be pure.
But anime production never was.
Fortunately, the profits related to Natsume Yuujinchou had already reached at least fifty million yen. Even though most of that money likely would not actually arrive until over the next couple of weeks, spending a little now would not matter.
That afternoon, to show proper respect, Sora and Sumire personally went to the airport to receive the group from Seiun TV. The wind was bitterly cold, and the flight was delayed by half an hour, which left the two of them wasting a fair bit of time in the waiting lounge.
"Sorry," Sora said, glancing at the tips of Sumire's ears, which had turned faintly red from the cold. "I should've come by myself."
"How could that possibly work?" she replied at once. "If the only person our company sent to receive them was the president, they'd think Yume Animation barely had any staff at all."
She adjusted her scarf and straightened her back. "I'm fine. Really."
It was January in Tokushima. The wind cut through the air, and a thin dusting of snow drifted with it, so fine it seemed almost weightless.
It was not until six-thirty in the evening that the Seiun TV group finally arrived.
The person leading the team was a manager from the production department who oversaw animation acquisitions and investments, a woman named Shizuka Sudo.
She was already in her forties, but she had taken excellent care of herself. There was still a mature beauty about her, the kind that made it easy to imagine how stunning she must have been in her younger days.
The moment the two groups met inside the airport, Shizuka Sudo's gaze rested on Sora's face for a few seconds. Then it shifted to Sumire - and lingered there for far longer than it should have.
"Hello. I'm Sora, president of Yume Animation."
"And I'm Sumire, an employee of Yume Animation."
The two of them greeted the visitors warmly and with perfect courtesy.
"Seiun TV. Production Department Manager, Shizuka Sudo," she replied in an even, restrained tone.
It was only one simple sentence.
But both Sora and Sumire could hear the indifference hidden underneath it.
Sometimes, the slightest shift in tone could say far more than the words themselves.
Someone who had climbed to that position inside a major network could not possibly be some clueless newcomer with no sense of workplace etiquette. If she sounded cold, then she had intended to sound cold.
Sumire, whose mind was usually fixed entirely on anime production rather than office politics, still wondered whether they had somehow failed in their reception and made the other side dissatisfied.
Sora, however, understood almost immediately.
This was deliberate.
Before the negotiations had even begun, she wanted to make it clear who was in the superior position.
Later that evening, in a private dining room at a high-end hotel in central Tokushima, Sora and Sumire, as hosts, treated the five members of Seiun TV to dinner.
Business did not always need to be discussed in a company meeting room. More often than not, a dinner table made intentions surface much more quickly.
So Sora did not waste time with empty pleasantries. He went straight to the point and directly asked Shizuka Sudo what kind of cooperation Seiun TV had actually come to discuss.
Her answer made his heart sink.
Their target had been clear from the start.
They wanted the second season of Natsume Yuujinchou.
The first season had exploded in popularity. Barring anything unexpected, the second season would naturally inherit much of that momentum, the audience's attention, and the commercial value the first had already built. In other words, Seiun TV was not interested in betting on a possibility.
They wanted to step directly into a project that had already proven itself a hit.
The offer they presented was simple on the surface: Seiun TV and Sora would each invest ten million yen, creating a total production budget of twenty million yen for the second season of Natsume Yuujinchou.
But the real issue was not the amount.
The problem came after that.
The network wanted to share ownership of all rights to the work from the second season onward. And more than that - if Sora wanted to produce a third season in the future, or any further continuation beyond that, he would only be allowed to do so in partnership with Seiun TV.
And the broadcast rights would also remain exclusively with them.
They had no intention of investing now, watching the second season become another massive success, and then letting Sora turn around and use the increased market value of the franchise to negotiate with some other network.
As soon as he heard those conditions, Sora frowned.