Haruto raised a hand, cutting off any attempt to continue the topic.
"All right, that's enough," he said with a tired half-smile. "There's no point in me repeating this. The quality and efficiency of your work have exceeded both my expectations and Ren's. Honestly, we still don't understand how someone with no prior experience as a director can move so quickly when it comes to storyboards and defining a work's style. You barely hesitate. You don't get stuck overthinking things. You make decisions-and they work."
He took a breath, resting both hands on the table.
"There's an old saying: when the commander is incompetent, the entire army dies of exhaustion. But the opposite is true as well. When the commander knows what he's doing, the people under him save an incredible amount of effort. Your performance has pushed the production schedule forward in a very real way."
Sora listened without replying. What he felt wasn't pride. It was something heavier-a dense, tangible pressure, as if the weight of the project had finally stopped being abstract.
"If we keep this pace," Haruto continued, "by early March most of the genga should be nearly finished. After that come the preview meetings, the animatics… and that's when you'll truly understand what it means to oversee everything as a director. To see hundreds of drawings, made by different hands, finally begin to move as a single work."
Sora's gaze dropped to the table.
Among the scattered papers, Mikako's character design stood out immediately. In Dream Animation's version, she wasn't merely functional-there was delicacy in the lines, intent in her eyes, a beauty that didn't shout, yet lingered. Beside her, the black mecha looked even more imposing than in the original material: aggressive lines, a heavy presence, almost like a character in its own right.
The girl-small next to the machine-stared toward the horizon.
Distance.
The void between the stars.
A home that was far too distant.
And a boy who, somewhere in an invisible corner of the universe, was still waiting for her reply.
The story was there, silent, trapped on paper, waiting for someone to set it free.
Just looking at the design, images rose in Sora's mind in rapid succession-cuts, silences, the cold gleam of space, the crushing loneliness of staring at the sky and receiving no answer.
"It's strange…" he murmured, almost unconsciously. "The more refined this version of Voices of a Distant Star becomes, the easier it'll be for the audience to put themselves in her place. And the deeper they sink into it… the more painful it'll be to come back out."
Instead of recoiling from the thought, his sense of anticipation only grew.
…
Still, Sora knew he wasn't omnipotent.
Even with the original as a reference, even moving at this speed, it was impossible to master every detail of a production of this scale. And that was precisely where Sumire became indispensable.
Anything that didn't directly affect the core identity of the work-less critical scenes, negotiations, coordination, intermediate adjustments-he handed over to her without hesitation. Otherwise, he simply wouldn't be able to endure it.
The two of them began making frequent trips to the outsourced background studio more than ten kilometers away, discussing every aspect of Voices of a Distant Star's visual world with Ryū. Meeting after meeting, the universe of the work gradually took shape.
January slipped by almost without notice.
And with it, something began to change.
Over that intense month, Sumire's perception of Sora shifted beyond the purely professional. She still saw his shortcomings-there were technical gaps, processes he clearly hadn't fully mastered-but those were ordinary flaws, things any director could learn with time.
What stood out were the core decisions.
His sense of rhythm.
His instinct for framing.
His ability to turn abstract concepts into clear direction.
Every time they visited Ryū's studio, Sumire watched in silence. Sora never asked for something merely "pretty." He explained what he wanted the viewer to feel-and shaped the scenery around that emotion.
When she opened her phone and looked again at the photos she had taken of the completed backgrounds-skies, cities, vast cosmic landscapes-the imagination behind them was undeniable.
Sumire had worked with many directors before.
Most were competent. Capable. And empty.
People who could keep a production moving, yet never left a personal mark. They did what was expected, delivered something acceptable, and vanished along with the work itself.
Sora was different.
From the narrative to the framing, from background composition to scene rhythm, there was something that clearly diverged from the usual pattern of the regional industry-something that didn't feel like it had originated there.
No wonder Ryū always looked so pleased when they showed up.
He was enjoying the collaboration as well.
If Sora knew what was going through Sumire's mind, he would probably feel uncomfortable. To him, many of those techniques came from old references-things that had been commonplace in another life: camera choices, impact cuts, visual solutions repeated endlessly in Japanese anime.
But here, in Tokushima, they felt new.
That was why Sumire was unusually quiet that day.
It wasn't envy. It was comparison.
She had five years in the industry and still didn't have a clear personal signature. Sora, on the other hand, had been there for barely over a month, and innovation seemed to spill naturally from everything he did.
She glanced at him in profile, driving calmly, even humming under his breath.
His face still carried the freshness of youth, but his eyes were steady-as if he had already chosen his path, regardless of who believed in him.
An uncomfortable thought surfaced.
Could he really be a genius?
She cut the idea off immediately.
It was far too early to say.
Besides… Hiroshi had never been anything extraordinary. How could his son be like this?
She pressed her fingers together in her lap, halting that line of thought.
Enough imagining things.
"What do you feel like eating?" Sora's voice pulled her back.
She blinked, startled, then a faint hint of excitement appeared.
"Ramen."
He laughed.
"You really do like ramen, huh?"
"I do."
"Then ramen it is." He turned the steering wheel smoothly. "Good timing-I've still got a lot of questions for you."
…
When February arrived, the bundles of genga began to come in, both from in-house animators and from the outsourced studios.
And with them came the inevitable problem.
Outsourcing was unstable.
Quality varied. Speed varied.
Haruto reviewed the cuts with an increasingly grim expression, muttering as he corrected them. Beyond judging quality, he had to make countless small adjustments to unify the style-otherwise, the differences in line work would jump out at the audience.
Some cuts were so weak that he sent them straight back for a complete redo.
Dream Animation couldn't put that on air.
Because in the end, the first name to take the hit would be Sora's.
Then his own.
And time wasn't on their side.
The cold in Shikoku intensified again, and several outsourced animators came down with the flu. The pace slowed. Minor delays began to pile up.
And just ahead loomed the Japanese New Year.
No matter how tight the schedule was, there was no avoiding it. A minimal break was inevitable. Pushing beyond that would only break people.
Sora knew that.
But knowing it didn't ease the anxiety.
So, with a tight chest and the constant feeling that the clock was running faster than it should, he passed through his first Shōgatsu in this world.
And deep down, one silent question remained:
How many more obstacles would appear before March?