"Yes."
Sora's steady voice echoed through the company lobby.
"How much, exactly?"
"So we reached the target, right?"
"Understood. I'll attend the celebration banquet the day after tomorrow."
"The next work?"
"Yes. As for the details and conditions, Kantoku Ryo Yukishiro, we may need to discuss them in person. But I already started production on the new project two months ahead of schedule. If everything goes smoothly, January next year shouldn't be a problem."
The call between Sora and Ryo Yukishiro, head of production for the Southern Shikoku Broadcasters Alliance, ended after only a few minutes.
When Sora lowered his phone and looked up, he found nearly everyone in the company staring at him.
No one said a word.
But he knew exactly what they wanted to hear.
Yumi-san also felt tension tightening in her chest.
As for Sumire, her fingers were clenched so hard she could almost hear her own heartbeat.
"6.06."
A smile appeared on Sora's face as he quickly spoke the number.
At a moment like this, the shorter the sentence, the stronger the impact.
For two seconds, the entire company lobby fell into silence.
Then, in the next instant, the place erupted into deafening cheers.
Sora thought they would simply shout a few times to let out their emotions.
He had no idea who started it, but before he could react, several strong male employees grabbed him, lifted him up, and threw him into the air.
He rose.
Fell.
Was caught again.
And tossed up once more.
What the hell was this?
This was not how people were supposed to celebrate.
He had never heard of this being part of the ritual.
Besides…
It was just breaking a record, wasn't it?
It was only the first work in more than ten years to surpass a 6% rating.
Was all this really necessary?
More than a decade ago, works with that level of performance had existed.
It wasn't as if Re:Zero had become the greatest anime in Japanese history.
After several minutes of being bounced through the air like a human trophy, Sora was finally placed back on the ground, dizzy and nearly seeing double.
He threatened to deduct everyone's salary with a fierce expression, but the employees only smiled with faces that clearly said they did not believe a single word. Then they crowded around him, asking where the staff gathering would be held that night.
"Seriously… it's just a six." Sora took a deep breath, slowly calming himself down. "I understand being happy, but isn't this a little too excited?"
"That's because not everyone is a genius like you, Kantoku."
Standing beside him, Sumire paused briefly before speaking in a soft voice.
"To you, maybe it feels natural to believe you'll be able to create a work that surpasses Re:Zero in the future. But to them, today is probably already the brightest moment of their entire careers as animators."
She looked at the lobby, still filled with laughter, shouting, and embraces.
"For an ordinary professional who loves animation, being part of a work that achieved Japan's highest ratings in recent years, one of the best audience scores, and tremendous commercial value… that kind of pride is something a genius like you may never truly understand."
"And you?" Sora was silent for a moment before looking at her. "What are you feeling now?"
"Excitement? I think I already experienced that last year, when I won Best Kantoku with you for the first season of Re:Zero."
Sumire stretched her arms behind her and took a deep breath. A rare softness appeared on her fair face.
"Right now, I think I'm more curious."
"Curious about what?"
"About how you plan to surpass yourself."
A smile curved Sumire's lips.
"If I were in your position, facing such a powerful past version of myself, I might already be afraid. Do you really think you can create an anime capable of surpassing Re:Zero?"
In his first year after debuting, he had won Best New Kantoku.
In his second year, he had won Best Kantoku.
In his third, he had broken the best performance record for a Japanese animated work in more than ten years.
And then, next year?
"Next year, the works our company will broadcast are Steins;Gate and AD."
Hearing Sumire's question, Sora answered with almost disarming ease.
At that moment, the two productions were still only in their early preparation stages, and Sora had not yet released all the scripts.
Steins;Gate was only producing the opening episodes, while AD had only its first thirteen episodes written. On top of that, Sora was personally handling the storyboards for the first and second episodes. The storyboards for the following dozen or so episodes had been handed over to Sumire and four other episode Kantokus.
From their perspective, it was only natural that they had not yet sensed where the true brilliance of those two works lay.
"From your tone…" Sumire asked curiously. "Is one of those two works stronger than Re:Zero in your mind?"
"Not one of them."
Sora answered calmly.
"Both of them are stronger than Re:Zero. The only difference is that, unlike Re:Zero, they take a little longer to warm up."
Hearing those confident words, Sumire no longer thought, as she once had, that he was simply a talented boy who was too optimistic about the future.
This time, she truly began wondering where the shining points in those two works were, the ones that allowed Sora to believe in them with such certainty.
She did not doubt him.
If anything, she doubted her own eye.
"All right. Go get ready," Sora said. "In a little while, we'll have the company-wide celebration banquet."
He looked at her and added,
"We were both the Kantokus of Re:Zero, so we'll have to go on stage and give speeches. Re:Zero is our company's first anime since establishing ourselves in Tokushima. A filming crew will be recording everything tonight, preserving this moment for the future. So don't embarrass yourself. Otherwise, twenty or thirty years from now, when new employees start digging through the company's history, they'll end up laughing at you, Sumire."
"Twenty or thirty years from now?"
Sumire raised her eyebrows.
"You're already thinking that far ahead?"
"You really do think far, Kantoku Sora."
"Of course." Sora spoke as if it were obvious. "Besides, lately I've been paying extreme attention to my daily life, my reputation among fans, and even what I say online. Especially those dumb teenage jokes and ridiculous viral news stories. I don't comment, I don't like them, I don't touch them. What if fans find my personal account someday?"
"Why?" Sumire asked, genuinely curious.
"Because that would become black-history material for Japanese anime fans to mock me with decades from now. Maybe even a hundred years from now."
"You think people will still remember you a hundred years from now?"
Sumire laughed.
"If animation still exists as an art form in Japan by then…"
Sora turned his face toward her.
"Then in the history of animation, I, you, and Yume Animation will be names that cannot be avoided. After all, we'll be the number one team in the industry. How could anyone not know us?"
Sora's words sounded like a joke.
But they struck Sumire like a bullet between the eyebrows.
So that was why.
It was not that he did not feel happy about breaking a ten-year industry record or winning Best Kantoku. He did. He simply restrained himself.
Because Sora did not want to be the best of a single year in Japanese animation.
He wanted to become the first name in the history of Japanese animation.
That night, Yume Animation directly booked an entire five-star hotel in Tokushima for the celebration banquet attended by its hundreds of employees.
By now, the company had basically entered a stable track.
The continuous revenue from Re:Zero and Natsume Yuujinchou fed the company accounts and maintained a healthy cash flow.
The Blu-rays for the first season of Re:Zero had all been released, and the sixth volume had sold more than one hundred eighty thousand copies in its first week alone. Overseas distribution rights had also been sold.
The merchandising and licensing sales for the second season of Re:Zero were about to begin as well.
And 5 Centimeters per Second would soon premiere in theaters.
At present, the account of Yume Animation under Sora's management still had at least one hundred million yen in liquid funds. Naturally, he would not be stingy at a celebration banquet.
Besides, more important than the banquet itself, the main purpose of that night was to distribute project bonuses to the employees.
Combining the first and second seasons of Re:Zero, Sora would earn at least several hundred million yen in net profit. The work had also turned him into one of the strongest names in Japanese animation. And all of that had happened under an extremely tight production schedule, with immense pressure and exceptionally high quality.
But Sora was not the only one who had spent the past year burning himself out for anime.
The entire company had done the same.
Almost everyone there had sustained a daily routine of more than twelve hours of work, day after day, as if they were burning their own lives to keep the production standing.
On that point, Sora had always been simple.
Every employee would receive a bonus equivalent to six months of salary, calculated according to their position.
Adding that to the six-month bonus everyone had already received during the New Year, the year was only halfway through and the employees of Yume Animation had already received more than a full year's worth of income between salary and bonuses.
Sora carried the memories of two lives.
And whether as a boss or as an employee, what he hated most was an employer who sold empty promises.
What he liked most was a boss who placed the bread directly into people's hands.
The entire company celebrated through the night.
The next day, everyone returned to their workstations with swollen, sleepy eyes and alcohol still weighing on their bodies.
After all, the previous day had already been spent celebrating.
Today, there was no more time to waste.
Only one month remained before the theatrical release of 5 Centimeters per Second.
In reality, however, some production details were still unfinished.
Considering the final copies of the completed material, the accelerated official approval time thanks to Noriko Animation's connections in the film industry, and the later communication with theaters, there was no room left to keep basking in the joy of Re:Zero's results.
After all…
Re:Zero had achieved extraordinary success.
If 5 Centimeters per Second failed at the box office after that, it would become major news in the animation industry.
And Sora, the Kantoku and public face of the company, would undoubtedly be mocked without mercy by haters across all of Japanese animation.