The following morning, ten o'clock.
Genesis Entertainment headquarters, press briefing hall.
The place was chaos.
Hundreds of hastily summoned reporters huddled in clusters, faces caught between confusion and excitement. Flashbulbs fired in relentless salvos, washing the room white.
"What's going on? What's Genesis pulling with this kind of spectacle out of nowhere?"
"Who knows? Maybe their streaming platform's going public?"
"No chance. My bet's on some mega-star signing. Whatever warrants an emergency press conference from Genesis isn't going to be small."
The speculation hit a fever pitch. Then the side door opened.
Under the weight of several hundred stares, Seiji Fujiwara walked out.
A relaxed smile sat on his face, his stride unhurried, as though this were a garden party rather than a press conference.
The man behind him made every reporter in the room inhale sharply.
Mitsumasa Doi.
He wore a crisp pinstripe suit, hair combed immaculately, and had even made an effort to tidy the thinning patch on his crown. The transformation from last night was total. Gone was the hollowed-out ghost haunting the back row of the Silver Dove ceremony. His eyes burned again, lit with something that could only be called fighting spirit.
The two men sat side by side at the podium.
Seiji surveyed the room, waited for the commotion to settle, and picked up the microphone.
"Thank you all for making time on such short notice."
His voice carried cleanly through the speakers, filling every corner of the hall.
"I'll keep this brief."
No pleasantries. No preamble.
"Effective immediately, Mr. Mitsumasa Doi will be joining Genesis Entertainment as Chief of the Production Bureau, with full authority over the planning and production of all content across the group."
The silence lasted one heartbeat.
Then the room detonated.
Reporters surged to their feet, chairs toppling behind them. Hands shot up like a flock of starving birds, voices colliding mid-air:
"President Fujiwara! When was this decision made?!"
"Mr. Doi! Have you formally resigned from TBS?! What prompted the departure?!"
"Does this mean Genesis Entertainment is officially declaring war on traditional television?!"
Seiji answered the tidal wave of questions with a calm smile and a gentle downward press of his hand, signaling for quiet.
Beside him, Doi said nothing. Not a word from start to finish.
He sat there with a mild, composed smile.
But everyone could see what lay beneath it.
A clean, merciless severance from the house that raised him.
...
...
The press conference struck the entertainment industry like a magnitude-twelve earthquake.
Genesis Entertainment headquarters, Strategy Department.
The entire office had crowded around the break room's widescreen, watching the internal broadcast. When Seiji announced the appointment, the floor went dead silent for two full seconds before erupting into deafening cheers.
"Holy shit! Holy shit! The boss is insane!!!"
"That's Mitsumasa Doi! The Golden Hour Magician himself! And the boss poached him?!"
"He gets humiliated by TBS last night and jumps ship the very next morning! Boss just slapped TBS so hard their face is going to swell shut!"
Cheering, whistling, hands pounding desks. Morale went through the ceiling.
...
TBS Television. Station president's office.
The president was hunched over his desk, bowing and scraping into his phone at a board member on the other end, sweat pouring down his temples as he tried to contain the fallout from the Silver Dove backlash.
"Yes, yes... it was my oversight... yes, I assure you, Doi's situation has been handled. There won't be any problems..."
The office door slammed open.
His secretary burst in, too panicked to remember to knock, a tablet thrust out in front of her.
"Mr. President! Something's happened! It's bad!"
"Idiot! Can't you see I'm on the phone?!" he barked.
Then his eyes found the tablet screen, and his voice died.
The Genesis Entertainment press conference. Live.
Seiji Fujiwara and Mitsumasa Doi, side by side.
"That traitor!!!"
His blood pressure spiked so violently the room spun. Black spots bloomed across his vision, his hands and feet went ice cold, and he nearly pitched out of his chair.
Through the phone, the board member's fury detonated like a bomb in his ear.
"You fool! This is what you call 'no problems'?! You incompetent imbecile!"
...
Elsewhere. The Wakaba residence.
Minami Mori was lounging on the living room sofa, an expensive sheet mask on her face, scrolling through a fashion magazine on her tablet.
The television murmured in the background, cycling through entertainment news.
When the Genesis Entertainment press conference footage appeared, she didn't look up.
Not until the camera cut to a close-up of Seiji and Doi. Then she sat bolt upright.
"Mitsumasa Doi?"
She peeled off the mask slowly, staring at the screen in disbelief.
When did this happen?
There hadn't been the faintest whisper of it. Doi was TBS through and through, a lifer born and bred in the network's ecosystem. The idea that someone could pry him loose...
Minami's fingers tightened around the armrest as she watched the broadcast, unblinking.
...
...
One hour after the press conference ended.
While the media was still frantically drafting copy about the "poach of the century" and the internet raged over "TBS's traitor" and "Genesis's new king," the eye of the storm itself was eerily quiet.
The Genesis Entertainment Production Bureau.
Every staff member stood at their workstation, expressions a cocktail of excitement, curiosity, and nerves. They looked like soldiers awaiting inspection, eyes darting toward the door that now bore a freshly mounted nameplate: Production Bureau Chief's Office.
The door opened.
Doi stepped out.
He'd shed the suit jacket. A white dress shirt, sleeves rolled crisply to the elbows, exposed solid forearms.
Eyes sharp as a hawk's swept across the office floor.
No first-day pleasantries. No hollow motivational speech.
His opening words were simple, direct, and cut like a scalpel.
"Who's in charge of Heartbeat Signal House Season Two?"
A young producer in his thirties, black-framed glasses, shot his hand up. "Th-that would be me, Bureau Chief Doi. My name's Yamamoto."
"Follow me."
One glance, and Doi turned on his heel toward the largest conference room.
Yamamoto grabbed his laptop and scrambled after him, heart hammering.
Behind him, his colleagues exchanged loaded glances.
The conference room door closed.
Ten minutes later, it opened again.
Doi walked out, expression unchanged. He addressed the floor: "All project leads. Conference room. Twenty minutes."
Yamamoto trailed behind him, dazed, and drifted back to his desk on autopilot.
"Yamamoto, how'd it go?" a colleague whispered.
Yamamoto looked shell-shocked, as if he still hadn't processed what had happened. "Bureau Chief Doi reviewed my proposal. Found thirteen errors. Cut twenty percent of my budget."
"He said... he said what I'd made wasn't a dating show. It was an expensive game of house."
"But the thing is..." Yamamoto adjusted his glasses, awe overtaking the shock. "He was right. About every single one."
Silence rippled outward.
Then a chorus of sharp intakes of breath.
...
Twenty minutes later, every project lead filed into the conference room on unsteady legs.
What they found was a war machine already running at full speed.
Doi stood before a massive whiteboard, its surface covered in a web of connections he'd drawn in red marker, mapping every active Genesis Entertainment project.
"Your project management is sloppy!"
He scowled, disgust plain on his face.
"Every success you've had so far was carried by Fujiwara-sensei's scripts and supervision. Brute-forced to the finish line!"
Revised proposals slapped down onto the table, one after another.
"The rest of you would be doing well just to not drag the team down."
"You're nowhere near the standard Genesis Entertainment should be operating at!"
"Now get up here, take back your proposals. I've marked my revisions. Read them ten times each!"
Dead silence.
Every producer in the room stared at this man who seemed to burn with an inner fire, and whatever doubt or condescension they'd carried in with them evaporated on the spot.
They knew. Genesis Entertainment was about to change.
A stage that didn't depend on the boss's genius alone. One that belonged to the creators below.
It was coming.
...
...
Meanwhile, the death rattle of the old guard echoed through every corridor of TBS Television.
Doi's defection hit the century-old broadcaster like a tsunami, washing away its last shred of dignity.
Station president's office.
The president, freshly revived from his near-collapse, now faced the full wrath of a board of directors video conference.
His face was whiter than paper. He bowed, over and over.
"Yes... yes... it was my failure... I..."
"You fool!" The largest shareholder showed no mercy. "You didn't just lose one man. You sent a signal to the entire industry: TBS can't keep its talent! You showed them our weakness!"
All the president could do was keep apologizing, cold sweat streaming down his face.
...
Director Suzuki fared even worse.
The stolen project, Urban Battle Royale, had disintegrated without Doi's meticulous oversight. It became a catastrophe from top to bottom.
The set was a mess. Guest talent threw tantrums. Post-production editing was a disaster.
"Useless! All of you!" Suzuki jabbed his finger at a group of young directors in the editing bay. "You can't even handle something this simple! If Doi were still here, he would've..."
He stopped mid-sentence.
Because the young directors were looking at him with something cold in their eyes.
"Yeah," one of the bolder ones muttered under his breath. "If Doi-sensei were still here, this project never would've ended up in the hands of a hack like you."
Suzuki's face flushed the color of raw liver.
Morale had collapsed.
Without its linchpin, TBS was a battleship with no helmsman, spinning wildly in the storm. Projects fell apart in sequence. Ratings cratered. Sponsors pulled funding. Resentment festered in every department.
And the tremors spread across the industry.
...
Tokyo, Ginza.
An exclusive, discreetly hidden members-only bar.
Two star producers, one from NTV and one from Fuji Television, sat at the counter nursing expensive single-malt whisky.
"Heard the news?" The NTV producer swirled the ice in his glass, voice dropping low. "Genesis made another move."
"You mean... they've been reaching out to our people through headhunters?" The Fuji producer's brow furrowed.
"Not just ours. Word is every producer across all five major networks got an offer."
"What kind of terms?"
"Terms... too good to turn down." The NTV producer let out a bitter laugh. "Doubled salary is the baseline. The real hook is final cut authority for producers, plus creative freedom with zero advertiser interference. Same deal as Doi."
Silence settled over the bar.
Creative freedom.
For men who'd spent years dancing in chains inside the system, those two words were an impossible dream.
"But... walking away from a place you've built a career at for twenty years, the risk is enormous." The Fuji producer was still wavering.
"Risk?" The NTV producer fixed him with a look. "You think staying isn't a risk? Look at what happened to TBS. Audiences replaced their remotes with phones years ago, but our presidents are still patting themselves on the back over fractions of a ratings point. The world's already moved on!"
He drained his glass in one go, something resolute hardening behind his eyes.
"If we don't jump ship now, we go down with the wreck."
Without waiting for his friend's reply, he walked to an empty corner, pulled out his phone, and dialed.
"Hello, Mr. Kurosawa?"
"Yes, this is Nakajima. Regarding your previous offer... I think we should talk."
A talent exodus that would reshape the entire Japanese entertainment industry had become inevitable.
...
...
Several days later. Evening.
The Wakaba residence glowed with warm light.
Minami Mori glided into the living room in an elegant silk dress, making her way to the corner where her daughter sat.
Mutsumi Wakaba was eating a carefully portioned meal in silence.
Minami studied her daughter's delicate features, and the idea that had been germinating in her mind hardened into certainty.
No more waiting.
"Mutsumi."
She settled beside her daughter, wearing her warmest, most maternal smile.
"?"
Mutsumi looked up slowly. Those striking amber-gold eyes were full of wariness and resistance.
"Why don't we invite Fujiwara-sensei over for dinner?" Minami leaned in, her voice honeyed, coaxing, as if soothing a child. "He's done so much for our family. It's only proper that we thank him in person, don't you think?"
"No."
The refusal was instant.
Mutsumi's voice was barely above a whisper, laced with a tremor she couldn't quite suppress.
That man's name was a key, and it unlocked everything. Every mortifying, terrifying memory flooded back at once.
That intoxicating night. The maddening pleasure that had torn through her...
Each image made her recoil. She wanted nothing more than to never see Seiji Fujiwara again.
"Mutsumi, don't be childish."
Minami's smile didn't flicker. She spoke at her own unhurried pace. "You're already involved with Fujiwara-sensei. That's an enormous advantage. Other girls would kill for a way to get close to him and couldn't find one."
"Why not make the most of it?"
"Beg if you have to. Play cute. Even the crumbs that slip through his fingers would be enough to keep the two of us comfortable for a lifetime."
Her tone stayed light, but an unmistakable pressure had crept into it.
"If you won't reach out to him, I will."
Those words sank like a stone in Mutsumi's chest.
If she refused, her mother would take matters into her own hands. And where that would lead... she didn't dare imagine. Her mother would do anything to climb higher. Anything at all.
Better her than...
Mutsumi looked into her mother's eyes, bright with calculation and hunger, and felt something inside her surrender. She had no choice. She'd never had a choice.
A long silence.
Then her gaze dropped.
"...Fine."
Her voice was almost inaudible. "I'll contact him."
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