Sumire finally couldn't take it anymore. The audio was still running in the headphones, the room wrapped in that almost ceremonial concentration, and yet she raised a hand to her mouth and let out a small laugh - quick, muffled, the kind you try to swallow and still lose.
"I'm sorry, Kantoku…" Heat rushed straight to the tips of her ears. "I just… I have zero resistance to cute characters like that…"
(Kantoku - Director)
She pulled herself together immediately, straightened her posture, and snapped back into "professional mode" with an almost exaggerated seriousness, like she could erase the slip through sheer force of will.
Sora Kamakawa didn't mind. If anything, he seemed amused.
"It's fine. And… you look good when you laugh. You should do it more. That's not something you need to apologize for."
The silence that followed landed heavier than it should have.
Sumire turned her head slowly, eyes locking onto him. It wasn't hostile. Not accusatory. Just too direct. And for some reason, Sora felt like he'd spoken "too loud" in a place that demanded whispers. His throat went dry.
Only then did he realize he'd crossed an invisible line - not out of malice, but because the moment had been a touch too intimate, said the wrong way, at the wrong time. To escape his own embarrassment, he grabbed the safest rope available: work.
"Still… it's kind of weird," he said, shifting in his seat like he could hide behind his job title. "Natsume Yuujinchou's production is going… ridiculously well. Even the seiyuu recording sessions are smooth. Nothing like the chaos back when we did Voices of a Distant Star - everyone trying to sync to genga and locked takes."
Sumire exhaled through her nose, her face already neutral again, but this time the weight in her eyes had eased.
"At the pace we're going, we can finish all the animation work for Episode 1 three weeks before the premiere - October sixth."
"Three weeks…" Sora repeated, almost disbelieving. "That's… comfortable."
"It's 'acceptable' for the industry, at minimum." Sumire didn't soften it. "But the real hell comes later. Once the anime starts airing, the deadlines shrink. What you can deliver with a three-week cushion now becomes two… then one… and there are studios that finish V-Comp two days before broadcast, or on the day itself, sprinting to hand it off to the station. That depends on execution. Discipline. On you not getting drunk on a good start and loosening up."
She glanced at him from the side, as if saying, Don't make me repeat this.
"Kantoku… don't let this early streak go to your head. Keep the pace. Because if you slip and delay by a week, those three weeks of buffer become nothing. And then everyone here pays for it with sleepless nights, cold coffee, and burning eyes."
Sora nodded, no jokes, no deflection.
"I know. Leave it to me. I'm not throwing this away."
And he meant it.
The whole day went like that: he and Sumire glued to the recording booth, take by take, cut by cut, listening to the shape of a breath like the project's fate was hidden inside it. When someone missed an intention, Sora guided them back calmly. When someone nailed it, he wrote it down like he'd just found treasure.
At six in the evening, with that hollow-body sensation - as if the last recorded line had drained the life out of them - they wrapped the Episode 1 session.
It was early. Too early by their standards.
Maybe that was why hunger hit like a punch.
Sumire didn't hesitate. She hauled Sora along and, with them, the investor Yumi Noriko - who hadn't eaten either - and dragged both of them to a ramen shop she swore was "the best in the world."
The place was small, tucked away on a student street, thick with the smell of rich broth and chili in the air. No luxury, no posing. Just cramped tables, loud voices, and steam rising like fog.
Yumi tasted the first spoonful, chewed, swallowed… and made a face that said everything.
"That's it?"
Sumire looked genuinely happy, like the ramen was a refuge that still existed intact in a world of deadlines and debt. And Yumi - raised on Tokyo restaurants with star chefs and plates prettier than they were filling - couldn't understand how something like this could matter so much.
Sora saw the look on her face and understood her thoughts before she said anything else.
"It was her favorite spot back in university," he murmured. "There's… memory in the flavor. If you're not used to it…"
"I'm used to plenty, Sora." Yumi answered just as quietly, with a half-smile. "Don't assume I'm some heiress who can't function outside a hotel."
Her gaze flicked toward Sumire, who was eating with a rare kind of ease.
"And besides… if someone takes something they love and puts it in front of you, it's because you're in their circle now. Sharing a favorite is practically… admitting friendship."
Sora blinked, caught off guard. He hadn't thought of it that way.
"Huh… is that how it is?"
Yumi let out a small laugh and, as if to prove her point, picked up a bit of noodle with her chopsticks and slurped with enthusiasm.
In the next second, she started coughing, choking on the heat.
"Damn… that burns…"
Sumire cut them off without raising her voice, precise as ever.
"What are you two whispering about? If you're eating, eat properly. Ramen sitting in broth loses seventy percent of its flavor."
The scolding landed at the perfect timing, and they shut up - not out of fear, but out of respect for the one sacred rule of anyone who grew up at a ramen counter: you don't waste the noodle's best moment.
Over the following week, Episode 1 was finished in layers, like each department stitched its piece into the same skin: sound effects, editing, the score fitted to the exact timing of a glance, a step, a silence.
Then, on September fifteenth, everyone at Yume Animation gathered in the conference room.
Curtains drawn. Lights controlled. A large monitor at the center, dominating the space like an altar.
Technically, the major checks had been done. What was wrong had already been sent back and fixed. This wasn't a crisis meeting - it was a results meeting.
It was time to see, in one sitting, what they'd built across nearly four months.
Sora sat in the front row, dead center. Sumire on his left. Yumi on his right. Behind them, more than thirty employees - practically the entire studio, from admin to the animator who still looked like they lived on vending-machine energy.
No one spoke.
The screen paused for a heartbeat, and then the numbers appeared: 3… 2… 1…
The first scene hit like a punch: a boy in a school uniform, features too delicate to match the danger, sprinting through a dense forest, breath ragged, while something - something not human - closed in behind him.
And there, without realizing it, everyone was pulled inside.
Twenty minutes later, the screening ended.
Sora stayed still for a few seconds, his mind already working on instinct, comparing this version to the one he carried from another life. The image quality had climbed several steps - cleaner, smoother, transitions so careful it looked "expensive," even when it wasn't.
And the designs… especially the youkai.
In the version he remembered, a lot of creatures were almost too simple, too odd - sometimes even unintentionally comical. Not here. Here they had weight. Presence. Sora had steered the team into blending Japanese folklore references with a darker edge, chasing that feeling that every being on screen could truly crush a human with one hand - none of them felt like mascots wandering around a mountain.
The story didn't hit him as hard. He'd seen it too many times.
But when he turned his head, he found Sumire with tears pooled in her eyes, a sheen caught in the corner like she was fighting not to let them fall.
And on the other side… Yumi stared at the screen like she'd forgotten there was a world beyond it.
The ending began.
The room filled with that slow, aching, beautiful melody - Natsuyuusora - and the clear voice of an indie singer Sora had brought in from Kansai, Mayu, came in like wind crossing an open field. It wasn't "perfect." It was human. Too clean to be a lie.
Yumi lasted less than ten seconds.
Her eyes reddened fast, and she spoke almost without sound, as if ashamed to be seen like this.
"Why is this making me cry? There's no tragedy here… no one's dying… but this farewell between the youkai and Natsume…" Her voice broke. "He returned the name… he did the right thing… so why?"
Sora answered just as softly, eyes still on the screen.
"Because it's not only sadness that makes people cry. Sometimes… when something fills you in a beautiful way, when it heals something inside you… tears come from that too."
"Heals…" Yumi repeated, as if the word was strange, but fit perfectly anyway.
Sumire overheard without meaning to. She turned her head, and what she saw behind her made her chest tighten: more than half the room looked like her. Eyes shining. Quiet breaths through the nose. A silence from people who didn't want to break the moment.
And in that instant, something settled inside Sumire.
She had been part of this.
It didn't matter whether, once Natsume Yuujinchou began airing, critics would be cruel or generous. It didn't matter whether the scores rose or dropped, whether the audience embraced it or ignored it.
When, months earlier, after the premiere of Voices of a Distant Star, six mid-to-large studios had tried to hire her… she'd said no.
And there, with tears held back, she understood she didn't regret it. Not even a little.
By the second half of September, the summer cour market was already drawing its curtain. Over a hundred and eighty anime had entered the final stretch, and the "winner" of the season was obvious: a popular adaptation packed with fantasy and romance, The Seven Witches, which had dominated both conversation and numbers.
National ratings sat at 4.43%. In some regions, it hit 4.68%. First place.
On the NatsuYume platform, it held an 8.9 - second-highest of the season - but taken together, the metrics put it at the top with room to spare.
Still, anime that doesn't become a classic rarely keeps its fire forever. The heat lasts a few months, and the world was already turning toward the next big block.
October was coming, and the major stations were pushing their bets like the season was war. Four titles, in particular, were everywhere: The Dragon King Next Door, Card...
In the otaku districts of Tokyo and Osaka, posters multiplied across walls, storefronts, stations. Slogans screamed in bold letters. Variety shows brought production teams on as guests, like every appearance could decide an anime's fate.
And inside that noise, on September twenty-fourth, Natsume Yuujinchou took its first official step outside the studio.
Tokushima TV and the NatsuYume platform published the promotional PV at the same time. In the same moment, the video also went up on Sora's personal account, on Ayame's, on Sumire's, and on the project's official page.
The effect was immediate.
The movement lit up the industry's radar - and, more than anything, the fans'.
And for the first time, Natsume Yuujinchou stopped being something they were making in silence… and became something the world could finally see.
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