December 1st was the day episode nine of Code Geass aired. The broadcast slot was eleven-thirty at night, but Starfall had already handed over the finished episode before noon.
There was still plenty of work waiting after that, but at least they could breathe for a moment.
That evening.
Following the address he had been given, Yuta made his way to Yuzuki's home. Since it had only been overwork and nothing more serious, she had not needed to stay hospitalized for long. It was only the second day and she was already back home.
Yuta had come to check on her, and also to get a sense of her living situation and figure out why she had worked herself to the point of collapsing.
His first thought when he arrived at her door was that the place was far.
It was a long way from the studio.
That said, it was not too far from where Yuta himself used to live, which explained why he had run into Yuzuki that time when he had gone out to buy ingredients for New Year's Eve dinner.
He pressed the doorbell.
"Coming," a clear voice called from inside.
The door opened and a small face peeked out, not Yuzuki, but her younger sister.
Yuta had only seen her once before and did not know her name. Whether she remembered him or not was another question entirely.
She looked at him with a puzzled expression, so he quickly introduced himself. "Hi, I'm Yuta Shido, the president of Starfall. I'm here to visit your sister Yuzuki."
The girl's expression shifted as the memory clicked into place, and she said, "Come in."
Then she turned and headed inside, calling out as she walked, "Sis, your studio president is here."
Yuta stepped in and announced himself with a polite "pardon the intrusion," and then heard a muffled flurry of movement from somewhere deeper in the apartment.
A moment later, one of the room doors opened and Yuzuki came out, her hair and clothes only hastily put together.
She looked genuinely startled to see him standing there. "President, why did you...?"
"I came to see how you're doing," Yuta answered, his eyes moving around the interior as he spoke.
The place looked run-down from the outside, and the inside was not much different. The table and the TV were both old, and there was no sign of a refrigerator, air conditioner, or washing machine anywhere.
Even so, everything was immaculately clean and tidy. Even the corners that most people would not think to notice were practically spotless.
On the far wall of the living room sat an incense burner and two framed photographs.
It clicked immediately. Yuzuki's parents were both gone. From their chance encounter back then, Yuta knew she had two younger brothers and two younger sisters.
The girl who had answered the door was the oldest of the younger sisters. The twin brothers and the youngest sister were nowhere to be seen, though faint voices were drifting out from one of the rooms, so they were probably in there.
With a clearer picture of the situation, Yuta was beginning to understand why Yuzuki had collapsed from overwork. She was carrying the entire household on her shoulders by herself.
"President, I'm so sorry for causing you trouble." Yuzuki's face was full of genuine remorse as she bowed deeply toward him.
"As long as you're okay, that's all that matters." Yuta waved a hand to tell her not to worry about it.
Yuzuki still did not seem to feel right about it and held her bow.
Yuta thought for a moment, then said, "How about this. Could you cook me a meal? I happen to be hungry, and once we eat, we can put this whole thing behind us. What do you think?"
"Eh?" Yuzuki blinked at him in confusion.
"You can cook, right?" Yuta asked.
"Yes, of course!"
Yuzuki straightened up at once. "Please have a seat. I'll start right away."
She turned and headed for the kitchen.
Yuta turned and gestured to the younger sister standing nearby.
She looked puzzled but came a couple of steps closer and knelt down to sit.
"So, would you mind telling me your name?" Yuta asked.
"Rumi. Rumi Takamine," the girl answered.
"Hm?" Yuta paused, a little thrown off.
They were sisters, so why did they have different last names?
He looked at her more carefully. She did not look very much like Yuzuki either.
Unless...
Rumi seemed to read his confusion and explained, "Our parents both remarried. My mom and my sister's dad got together."
That cleared it up.
It made sense now. When they had run into each other before, he had thought Yuzuki's parents must have been remarkably productive.
A blended family from two marriages explained everything perfectly.
He dropped that line of thought and shifted to something else. "Rumi, does your sister usually have a lot to take care of when she gets home in the evenings?"
"Take care of? Not really." Rumi shook her head slightly.
"What about housework?" Yuta pressed.
"I normally handle all of that. She never gets home before ten, and sometimes it's closer to eleven, so there's no time for her to do chores. She does make breakfast for everyone in the mornings though, and she helps out on weekends when she gets a day off," Rumi answered.
Yuta stared blankly for a moment.
If there was nothing demanding her attention at home, then how had Yuzuki ended up collapsing from overwork? Could the job itself really have been that much of a burden?
That did not add up.
"Oh, wait. There's something I just remembered," Rumi said suddenly.
"What is it?" Yuta asked right away.
Rumi did not answer immediately. She glanced toward the kitchen where Yuzuki was working, then quietly slipped into Yuzuki's room.
She came back a moment later carrying a few sheets of rough drawings, and said, "I see my sister drawing late at night a lot. When I ask her if it's for work, she says it's not."
Yuta took the sheets with a puzzled look and glanced at them, and then it all made sense.
It was not for work, that much was true. What Yuzuki had been drawing was layouts for Code Geass, meaning design drafts for the show.
The reason she had not been brought on to do the design drafts for Code Geass was that Yuta felt her style was not the right fit for it. He had never said so directly at the time, only that her skills were more needed on the first key animation side of things.
It seemed Yuzuki was sharper than he had given her credit for, and had simply held her tongue about it given her personality.
So she had been going into the studio and working all day, then coming home and spending her nights trying to produce design drafts for Code Geass on her own.
One or two days of that would have been fine, but over time it had inevitably worn her down until she gave out.
Yuta carefully flipped through the drafts she had done. Compared to what the person he had brought in from outside had produced, there was a noticeable gap, but every single line showed just how seriously she had thrown herself into it.
And it was a gap, not a complete inability. The potential was there.
Regardless, the reason for Yuzuki's collapse had been found. It was ultimately her own doing, but it was fair to say that Yuta had made a mistake somewhere along the way too.
He should have picked up on what she was thinking sooner.
He handed the drafts back to Rumi and asked her to put them back, while his mind turned over how best to bring this up with Yuzuki.
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