Chapter 179: Fifty-Seven Million

Chapter 179: Chapter 179: Fifty-Seven Million

The offer for the last fifty-seven million yen arrived at Studio Hikari on the twelfth of June. It came on heavy cream paper with a Singapore letterhead, and it was the most generous offer anyone had ever made to a studio above a bicycle shop.

Minase read it aloud at the long table at nine in the morning, before anyone had taken off their coats. Her voice was very flat.

The fund that owned sixty-one percent of Studio Kurenai wished to join the production committee for Threadless Gate. It would contribute fifty-seven million yen, the exact shortfall, and the production would be fully funded by the end of the month. In return, the fund would take twenty percent participation in all future adaptation revenue: overseas licensing, merchandise, games, and any sequel or film.

The letter didn’t ask for page six. It didn’t need to. It asked for twenty percent of everything, openly, in the first paragraph, with no small print and no affiliated entities, and a return date of the thirtieth of June.

At the bottom, below the signature of a managing director nobody at the table had heard of, was a single line in smaller type.

cc: Ishikawa Kōji, Advisory Board.

Nobody said anything.

"It’s honest," Minase said at last, putting the letter down. "I’ll give them that. It’s the most honest bad offer I’ve ever read."

"Twenty percent of everything," said one of the animators, a quiet man in his thirties who had worked at Hikari twice, once before Minase left and once after she came back. "For fifty-seven million. On a series that’s going to air in the early evening on the public broadcaster." He shook his head slowly. "They’ve done the arithmetic. They know what it’s going to be worth."

"Ishikawa did the arithmetic," Minase said quietly. "He always did."

Haruki sat at the end of the long table with the letter in front of him and read it three times.

It was clean. There was no hidden clause, no transfer to an affiliate, no eighteen-percent repayment waiting for a creator to need rest. It was a straightforward exchange of money now for a share of the future, the kind of offer any studio in Japan would have signed within an hour.

It was also exactly what Ishikawa had told him in a basement in Jimbōchō two years ago. The industry is too poor to build a golden age. Someone has to gather enough of it together. Fifteen percent of forty series isn’t a trap. It’s a foundation.

And it was copied, openly, to the man who had said it.

"He wants us to know he’s reading," Haruki said.

"He wants us to know he’s offering," Minase said. "There’s a difference." She turned her cup a quarter turn. "The last time his name was on a letter, he saved Kanzaki-kun’s garden. This time he’s offering to finish our show." She looked at the letter. "I don’t know which one is the real man."

"Both," said Tachibana, from his armchair by the window.

Everyone turned to look at him.

He was sitting with his cane across his knees and his tea going cold on the stool beside him. He had been silent through the whole reading.

"I’ve known men like him for fifty-five years," the old director said. "They’re never only one thing. He saved a garden because he loved it. He’s offering fifty-seven million yen because he thinks this show will be worth a great deal of money, and because he’d like to own a piece of something he loves." He picked up his tea. "Both are true. That’s what makes him dangerous. You can’t say no to him because he’s a villain. You have to say no to him because you’ve decided what kind of studio you are."

The long room was very quiet.

"What kind of studio are we?" Ichinose asked, very quietly, from the end of the table.

Tachibana looked at her for a long moment.

"You tell me," he said. "You own a share of it."

They voted at the end of the day, at six o’clock, when the light over the street had turned gold.

It was unanimous. They didn’t discuss it much. The quiet animator who had worked at Hikari twice said only, "We sold nothing when we had nothing. We’re not starting now we have something." Nobody else needed to add anything.

Minase wrote the reply herself, at her desk by the window, in pencil first and then in ink. It was four lines long.

Thank you for your offer, which we have read carefully and with respect.

Studio Hikari does not sell participation in the work it adapts. We are owned by the people who climb our stairs, and so is everything we make.

We will find the remaining funds another way.

Please give our regards to your advisory board.

She signed it. Then, after a moment’s thought, she handed the pen to Haruki.

"You should sign too," she said. "It’s your story."

He signed beneath her name, then handed the pen to Tachibana. The old man signed, very slowly, with his stiff wrist. Then Ichinose and the quiet animator signed, and so did every one of the eight owners.

When they were finished, there were ten signatures under four lines, on a letter to Singapore.

"Send it registered," Tachibana said. "So they know we meant it."

[Offer received: Singapore fund — ¥57M for 20% participation (all future adaptation revenue). cc: Ishikawa Kōji.]

[Studio Hikari vote: Declined (unanimous). Reply signed: 10.]

[Production funding: ¥153M / ¥210M (73%). Shortfall: ¥57M.]

It was Tanaka who found the answer. He did it the way he found everything, at three in the morning, with a spreadsheet nobody had asked for.

He sent it to Haruki at 3:12, with a single line above it.

I think I know where the fifty-seven million is. It’s been in front of us since September.

Haruki opened the spreadsheet on his phone, lying in bed in the dark.

It was a list of numbers, gathered over twenty-one months from the platform, the forum, the Lotus Index, #ThreeLines, and #LeftCards. There were readers who had written cards, readers who had left cards on trains, and readers who had bought two copies of a small book so they could tear one card out and give it away.

At the bottom, Tanaka had written a total and circled it twice.

Distinct readers who have written or left at least one card: 61,400.

Beneath it, he had written a second line.

If fifty-seven thousand of them each pre-ordered the first DVD at ¥1,000 above the normal price, with their name in the credits as a supporter, the shortfall would be covered.

They’ve already paid for other people’s doors. I think some of them would like to pay for this one.

Haruki lay in the dark for a long time with the phone glowing on his chest.

His first feeling wasn’t relief. It was something closer to fear.

In November of the first year, standing in front of a Lantern video call, he had refused to let anyone campaign for him in the wildcard vote. The Lantern is for other people. I’m not going to ask them to love me on command. He had posted a single honest message and let his readers decide, and he had got into the tournament by thirty-seven votes. He had been proud of that ever since. It was the one rule he had never broken: he would never use the people who loved his work as a machine for getting what he wanted.

Fifty-seven thousand strangers had written cards and left them on trains for other strangers, for nothing. Now he would be asking them to pay a thousand yen each for his show.

He sat up.

He thought about the woman in Kōfu who had found Tanabe’s card on a train, bought a picture book, and now read it every night to her five-year-old. He thought about the retired baker in Nagoya, the girl in Sapporo who had written a card for her late brother’s series, and a sixteen-year-old with a cat purse who had saved her lunch money since June.

He didn’t know whether asking them was a betrayal or an invitation.

At 6:10, when the window was grey, he called Mitaka. Minase answered on the first ring. She was already at her desk, as she always was.

He told her about the spreadsheet, and then about the rule he had made in November of the first year.

Minase listened without interrupting. When he finished, she was quiet for a long moment.

"You’re asking the wrong person," she said. "Ask him."

She handed the phone across the room. He heard the creak of an armchair and a cup being set down on a stool.

"Amamiya-kun," said Tachibana. His voice was rough with early morning. "Tell me."

Haruki told him.

The old man listened, as he always did, without a word. When Haruki finished, he was quiet for so long that Haruki thought the line had dropped.

"In 1971," Tachibana said at last, "I opened this studio with money borrowed from my father-in-law and eleven people in the neighbourhood. They each gave me what they could, a few thousand yen, because they’d seen a pilot I’d made on a projector in the back of a noodle shop." He paused. "I paid every one of them back, with interest. It took nine years. Three of them refused the money. They said they’d rather have their names on the wall." A creak of the armchair. "Their names are still on the wall. Behind the photograph of the carpenter. Nobody’s ever noticed."

Haruki didn’t say anything.

"You made a rule not to ask people to love you on command," Tachibana said. "It’s a good rule. Keep it." He picked up his tea. "This isn’t that. You’re not asking them to love you. You’re asking whether they’d like their names on the wall." A pause. "Some of them will say no. That’s their right. The ones who say yes won’t be paying for your show, Amamiya-kun. They’ll be building it."