Chapter 167: Where They Went

Chapter 167: Chapter 167: Where They Went

For sixty Chapters, no reader had asked what happened to Ren’s parents. Then, in March, the platform reran all five tournament Chapters as a bonus arc, ending with a boy measuring himself against a doorframe in an empty house, and eleven thousand of them asked in a single week.

Mizuno laid the printed comments on the table at the yakitori place on the tenth of March. There was a stack of paper two centimetres thick, tied with a rubber band. She had gone through them herself, which she never did for comment threads, and marked them in pencil.

"They want to know where they went," she said. "The parents. The house by the mill stream, empty for eleven years. Six pencil marks on a doorframe that stop at Sora — 6." She turned her cup a quarter turn. "You’ve never said. Not in the round two Chapter, or the semifinal, or the final. The birth register had their names, and you drew the Gate keeper’s sleeve over them for three panels. Readers noticed."

"I know," Haruki said.

"Do you know where they went?"

He didn’t answer immediately.

He had known since the night he opened the door to his parents’ room, last May, and found twelve years of Haru-chan climbing a doorframe in his mother’s slanted hand. He had drawn Ren’s doorframe from it. He had drawn six marks that stopped at six, because he couldn’t bear to draw them stopping at twelve. He hadn’t let himself decide why they stopped.

"The next arc," he said slowly, "is called Sora."

Mizuno waited.

"Ren finds out where they went," Haruki said. "Not all at once. Over twenty Chapters." He looked down at the stack of comments. "They didn’t die. And they didn’t abandon him."

He explained it the way he had once explained a drawer of letters, slowly, with his hands flat on the table.

Eleven years ago, the winter a six-year-old boy with no thread tied a knot in a five-year-old girl’s fraying thread, a woman in a grey coat had stood very still, then turned and walked away shaking. Readers knew her now as Shiori, an agent of the Bureau, with silver scissors and a black thread wound around the handle.

She had gone back to the Bureau and made a report.

A child had been found who could touch threads without a thread of his own. Nobody in the Bureau’s records had ever seen that before. There was no rule for it and no procedure. The Bureau, which existed to keep destiny in order, didn’t like things it had no rules for.

Within a week, officials had come to the small house by the mill stream.

"Ren’s parents knew what that meant," Haruki said. "The Bureau would take him. For study. For safety. Nobody would ever say for ever, but that’s what it would be." He paused. "So they did the only thing they could think of. They took him to the Gate keeper in the middle of the night. The Gate keeper was the one person in the valley the Bureau had no authority over, because the Gate is older than the Bureau." He looked at Mizuno. "And they asked the old man to hide him. As an orphan. With no name in any register, and no parents anyone could trace."

Mizuno’s cup had stopped turning.

"Then they left," Haruki said. "They walked out of the valley that same night, so the Bureau would follow them instead of looking for a six-year-old. They left their house exactly as it was, and the doorframe, so that someday, if he ever came back, he’d know someone had measured him." He took a breath. "They’ve been gone eleven years. The Gate keeper never told Ren, because he promised them he wouldn’t. Not until Ren came back to ask on his own."

The restaurant was noisy around them, with office workers at the counter and a baseball game on the television in the corner. Neither of them heard any of it.

"Are they alive?" Mizuno asked finally.

"I don’t know yet," Haruki said honestly. "Ren doesn’t either. That’s the arc."

Mizuno looked at him for a long time across the table.

"You couldn’t draw the marks stopping at twelve," she said quietly. "So you drew them stopping at six. And now you’ve given him a reason for it that isn’t death."

He didn’t answer.

"That’s not sentimental," Mizuno said, after a moment. "I want you to know that, because you’ll worry that it is. It’s the opposite. It’s the first time in sixty Chapters you’ve let Ren have something you didn’t." She turned her cup once more. "The readers won’t know that. They’ll just know it’s true."

[Threadless Gate — Arc 4 registered: "Sora" (est. 20 Chapters).]

[Premise: Ren’s parents hid him from the Bureau and left the valley. Status: Unknown.]

[Editor: Approved (Mizuno Rei).]

The news broke on the fifteenth of March, while he was at Hikari storyboarding episode one’s second act.

Minase was the first to see it. She was reading the trade news on the battered computer at her desk by the window at 4:20 in the afternoon, when she went very still, then turned the monitor toward the long table.

It was a short article on an industry news site, in plain type.

Studio Kurenai announces restructuring. Investment fund converts outstanding debt to equity, assumes majority ownership.

The fund was based in Singapore. The article named it.

Beneath the headline was a single paragraph. Studio Kurenai’s forty percent debt holder had converted its loans into shares, giving it sixty-one percent of the studio. The new owners said they intended to strengthen Kurenai’s position as a leading producer of adaptations for the Asian market. Current productions would continue under new management.

At the bottom of the article was a list of Kurenai’s current productions. The second line was Crown of Ash — Season 2 (in production).

Nobody at the long table said anything for a long moment. Ichinose had put down her pencil.

"They waited," Minase said at last, very quietly. "Until the first season sold overseas. Until it was worth buying." She looked at the monitor. "It’s what Ishikawa told you they’d do to Hikari. They couldn’t do it here, so they did it there."

Haruki’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

It was Kanzaki. He wasn’t writing through Akari, or sending a message. He was calling, which he had done only twice in two years.

Haruki answered.

"You’ve seen it," Kanzaki said. His voice was very flat.

"I’ve seen it."

"My second season," Kanzaki said. "Episode three was in storyboards. The garden. The sister, the crown of grass. Minase-san’s replacement fought for it to stay four pages. The new managing director called this morning." A pause. "He was very polite. He said the new owners are reviewing all current productions for international pacing. He said the garden scene would probably be cut to thirty seconds."

Haruki closed his eyes.

"There’s something else," Kanzaki said. His voice changed, very slightly. "The letter from the new owners. The one announcing the review. It went to every creator whose work Kurenai is adapting." A pause. "It was copied to their advisory board."

He didn’t need to say the name.

"He’s reading," Kanzaki said quietly. "Isn’t he. He said he would be."

Haruki didn’t answer for a moment. Across the long room, Minase was watching him, with Ichinose beside her and the storyboard for episode one still spread across the table between them.

"What are you going to do?" he asked finally.

"I don’t know." Kanzaki’s voice cracked for the first time. "My contract is with Yamashita. Aya-san says Yamashita licensed the anime rights to Kurenai two years ago, under Ishikawa, and the licence runs for three seasons. She can object to changes, but she can’t stop them. Not legally." A pause. "Minase-san’s gone. The director who fought for the garden in season one is gone. It’s a building full of people I don’t know, answering to a fund I’ve never met."

Haruki thought about a red pen lying on a rookie’s desk on the ninth floor above the Imperial Palace moat, parallel to the edge, with a folded note underneath it.

"The note," he said. "Under his pen. Do you still have it?"

The line went quiet.

"For the garden scenes," Kanzaki said slowly. "Don’t let anyone cut them."

"He wrote that the day he left."

"I know what he wrote." Kanzaki was quiet for a long time. "You think I should write to him."

"I don’t think anything," Haruki said. "It’s your decision." He paused. "But you once told me he said the people who matter should hear the truth first. And he’s on the advisory board of the fund that just bought your studio. He copied himself on the letter. That’s not an accident. He wanted you to know he’d see it."

Kanzaki didn’t answer for a very long time.

"If I write to him," he said at last, very quietly, "I’m asking the man who cut the garden in the first place to save it."

"Yes."

"That’s insane."

"Yes," Haruki said. "It’s also the only person in that building who ever cried over a crown of grass."

There was a long silence on the line. Then Kanzaki let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

"You’re the worst rival in the history of manga," he said.

"Everyone says so."

"I’ll think about it," Kanzaki said, and hung up.

[Studio Kurenai — Majority ownership: Singapore fund (61%). Crown of Ash Season 2 under review.]

[Advisory board copied: Ishikawa Kōji.]