Yukino headed home for a short visit.
Since her family lived right there in Tokyo, she usually avoided going back to dodge her father's relentless nagging about marriage.
She had suggested that Haruto come with her to meet her "old man," but he politely declined the offer because he didn't want to spend the day acting as a third wheel in her home.
By late afternoon, Haruto sat alone in his living room. He pulled back the floor-to-ceiling windows to watch the winter snow falling outside while he quietly ate his solo dinner.
To an outsider, it probably looked quite lonely. However, Haruto felt fine. After his father passed away, he adapted to this kind of environment. It only felt a little strange because he was used to having Reina Fujimoto, Yukino, and Shizuru around the table to discuss work.
After finishing his meal, he watched a popular anime currently airing and then went to his room to write the concluding scenes for the ALO arc of Sword Art Online. By ten o'clock that night, the sound of the electronic lock at the front door chirped. This caught Haruto by surprise.
He turned around to see Yukino standing there. She was wearing a light white down jacket with her hair pulled into a ponytail. Although she had been carrying an umbrella, her clothes and hair were dusted with snow. Her smooth cheeks were flushed red from the biting wind. When she saw Haruto, a bright smile broke across her face. Feeling the warmth of the air conditioning, she quickly peeled off her jacket.
"Why are you back?" Haruto asked, stunned. Considering she only visited home once every few months, he expected her to stay at least one night.
"What? Am I not welcome?" Yukino walked over to him and grabbed his hand.
"Good grief, you're freezing!" Haruto complained.
"I know. That's why I'm using your hands to warm mine," Yukino said, sitting down beside him and resting her head directly on his shoulder. "Now, to answer your first question." She smiled softly. "I was planning to stay the night, but when I lay down in bed, I suddenly thought about you being all alone in this giant, empty house. I worried you might get scared of ghosts in the middle of the night, so I came back to save you."
"Scared of ghosts? Do you think I'm you?" Haruto scoffed. "And besides..."
In truth, if there were such a thing as a spirit or a ghost, wasn't it the presence of the memories in his mind? That concept held no mystery for him anymore, so he had nothing to fear.
"Could you not just play along with me for once?" Yukino looked at him with a helpless expression before whispering,
Haruto froze for a moment before a smile touched his lips. "Well, I have to admit I was feeling a bit down earlier. I feel much better now."
"See? I told you," Yukino said, her energy returning.
"Yes, yes, my Goddess Yukino. Thank you for not forgetting about me," Haruto teased.
The two of them joked around for a while before Haruto asked a more serious question. "What about your father? He didn't have a reaction to you running out?"
"I told him I was going to my boyfriend's house. He was actually thrilled."
The couple sat and chatted about life until midnight.
A week passed quietly.
During this time, both Sword Art Online and Hunter x Hunter released a new chapter. The ALO arc of Sword Art Online was moving into its final stages. The protagonist, Kirito, was desperately searching for a way to reach the top of the World Tree to rescue Asuna from her birdcage. Meanwhile, the latest chapter of Hunter x Hunter gave Leorio a chance to shine. He managed to finish the battle with Kurapika's opponent by bluffing the unconscious muscleman into waking up and surrendering out of fear.
Then, it was Leorio's turn to face a female prisoner. Their duel consisted of a series of bets where each side proposed a challenge. The female prisoner's first challenge was for Leorio to guess whether she was actually a man or a woman. It was a classic psychological game.
While people who presented as one gender but were biologically another might be rare in the general public, the prison was full of outliers. Regardless of what he guessed, the risk was massive. However, if he guessed she was a woman, he would have to physically verify it, which would allow him to take some liberties. This was the psychological trap she had set for him.
The scene was hilarious, and the readers were in stitches.
Unsurprisingly, Leorio lost that round easily. When it was his turn to propose a challenge, he chose Rock-Paper-Scissors. The manga spent an entire chapter breaking down the psychological tactics and hidden complexities behind this children's game.
The psychological tactics described weren't particularly profound from a professional standpoint.
Anyone with a degree in psychology would already be familiar with those concepts.
However, the brilliance lay in the medium itself. Manga is for the general public, and most readers were unfamiliar with those nuances. Using a simple game to explain psychological warfare in a way that kept the readers glued to the page was an incredible feat.
Naturally, the straightforward Leorio fell right into the prisoner's trap and lost.
Consequently, the fate of the group within Trick Tower rested entirely on Killua's performance. As for Tonpa, the readers had already given up on him doing anything useful.
The days passed in a flash, and Shizuru flew back to Tokyo the day after the break ended, carrying bags full of local specialties for Haruto and Yukino. Reina returned the following day with her own luggage. She brought back protective amulets from a shrine she had visited during the break for Shizuru, Haruto, and Yukino.
"I thought you didn't believe in that stuff?" Haruto and Yukino were quite surprised by the gift.
"You three can believe in them for me. I was bored during the break and just treated it as a walk with my family," Reina said with a faint smile.
With the holidays over, Haruto's life and work returned to their usual rhythm.
The atmosphere in the ACG industry became somewhat tense. This was the time when animation studios preparing for the April spring season began buying ad space and promotional spots to build hype for their upcoming releases.
However, this year's market looked a bit strange.
"The anime adaptation of the popular battle manga 'Rain Finder' has been officially moved from the April season to the Fall season."
"Renowned screenwriter Kenichi's first original project in four years, 'Heavenly Engine,' has been rescheduled for the Winter season."
"The game adaptation 'Frenzied Metal' has been delayed."
As February progressed, fans didn't see more information about their favorite upcoming shows. Instead, they were greeted by a wave of delays from several major studios. The reason for this mass exodus was an open secret in the industry. Typically, every anime season is competitive, so moving a show doesn't usually make a big difference. Studios don't like the hassle of rescheduling. They usually just air their shows and let the ratings decide the winner.
However, the past two years had changed everything. Two years ago, Madoka Magica dominated its season so thoroughly that it left only scraps for everyone else. Competing shows not only saw their ratings crushed, but their subsequent Blu-ray sales were forty percent lower than projected, turning potentially profitable projects into massive losses.
Last year, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners repeated the feat, with its influence bleeding into the following season.
Now, in April, Haruto's new project, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, was set to premiere.
The first teaser for Code Geass released during the Cyberpunk movie event had surpassed 50 million views online. With a total investment of over 3 billion yen, it was the largest project of Haruto's career. He had even gone on record saying it had the potential to surpass Madoka Magica.
Faced with those statistics, it wasn't surprising that his competitors chose to flee the April season. Rescheduling and delays were simply something fans had to get used to. However, once an anime starts production and a slot is secured, a massive amount of capital is tied up in the project. Investors want their returns, so a show can only be delayed for so long. This resulted in an incredibly crowded Fall season, as everyone tried to hide from Haruto in April only to run into each other later.
Even so, they were unwilling to face Code Geass directly. No one knew if it would be another industry-defining masterpiece, so they chose to clear the path. Only the low-budget studios stayed behind, knowing that the "battle of the gods" wouldn't affect them. Their niche audiences would watch their low-quality trash regardless of what else was airing.
When Haruto arrived at the office and saw the market report summarized by his staff, he had a strange expression on his face.
"Code Geass is a fifty-episode epic that spans two consecutive seasons. It will air from April through next spring," Haruto noted with a touch of irony.
He wasn't trying to suffocate his competitors, but the reality was that those shows moving to the Fall season would still be crushed by his popularity. In fact, their situation might be even worse.
The early stages of Code Geass featured some slower, slice-of-life school segments as it established the setting. The protagonist, Lelouch, starts as an arrogant teenager, and his true charisma takes time to manifest. By the time the story reached its later stages in the Fall and Winter, the plot would be firing on all cylinders. Those who fled April would find themselves running straight into the climax of his show.
"Well, it isn't my problem," Haruto muttered, shaking his head. That was just the nature of business competition.
In early February, Haru-Yuki Animation struck while the iron was hot by releasing the second teaser for Code Geass.
Unlike the first one, this teaser focused heavily on the heroine, C.C., and showcased her voice acting. Haruto had auditioned over a hundred voice actresses before finding one whose tone perfectly matched the C.C. from his memories. The day the teaser dropped, related terms immediately hit the top ten trending spots on various ACG forums.
Within twenty-four hours, it had over 5 million views.
The competitors could only sigh and shake their heads. Even before April arrived, it was clear who the king of the season would be.
The following day, a new chapter of Hunter x Hunter was released. The cover of the magazine featured a striking illustration of Killua wearing a chilling, predatory smile. If you asked Hunter x Hunter fans which scene defined Killua for them, seven or eight out of ten would immediately point to his fight with the mass murderer, Johness the Dissector, in Trick Tower.
That fight was a core memory for many fans, but like Kurapika's recent moment, it was a polarizing scene. While it gained him countless new fans, it also alienated some readers. Those with a rigid moral compass found the sequence disturbing.
After all, Killua was a member of an assassin family who understood the art of killing better than a literal serial killer. How could someone like that be part of the hero's party? In any other manga, the protagonist would have cut ties with such a person immediately.
But in this world, Gon didn't care about any of that. Could a boy who befriended killers like Killua or Hisoka truly be considered a "good person"?
This was the fundamental nature of the world of Hunter x Hunter. Some found it uncomfortable, but many more found themselves completely obsessed.