Time moved into the latter half of June.

Rei celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday without any formal banquet, inviting only the Misaki, Miyu, and ordering a small cake delivered to the villa.

Over a hundred domestic and international partners of various sizes who had direct cooperative relationships with Illumination Production Company and Shirogane Animation sent birthday gifts via personal delivery throughout the day regardless. Watches, jewellery, luxury goods.

By evening the pile stacked in the living room had reached waist height.

Miyu looked at it with barely concealed astonishment.

"If I were not living here now, I would never have understood the scale of your influence, Rei. You never announced today was your birthday, did you?"

"Such information is easy to find out."

"They are genuinely generous. These items are not cheap. Accepting this many gifts, will you not feel obligated later?"

She had an eye for quality. Opening a few packages had been enough to give her a clear sense of the value involved. If she were buying gifts for others she would not spend at this level. Rei was the obvious exception.

"The wool comes from the sheep's back," Rei said. "Works like One-Punch Man, Hunter x Hunter, Attack on Titan, and Demon Slayer are all IPs worth billions or tens of billions. Not all of that money ends up in our pockets.

These distributors, manufacturers, and licensing partners take their share of the profits through various channels. So feel no pressure. They earned their money through their own capabilities, but without the hard work of the employees at Illumination Production Company and Shirogane Animation producing these works, those capabilities would have had nothing to work with.

If they dare to give, I dare to accept. No pressure. And if any of them think they can secure preferential licensing terms from me through birthday gifts, it is not that simple."

He paused.

"Miyu, take what you like, and anything your sister might like. The rest I will bring to the company tomorrow and distribute as project gifts for the Attack on Titan Season Three team."

"I cannot take your things on your birthday. That would not be right." She put down the gift box she had been examining and took out the birthday gift she had prepared from her pocket, handing it to him directly. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you."

The doorbell rang. Miyu went to open it.

Misaki appeared in the doorway in a black gown, took off her sunglasses as she entered, went straight to the living room sofa, and sat down with the specific quality of exhaustion of someone who had been operating at full capacity for months.

"You have worked hard, Misaki-san," Rei said.

The copyright development work for Shirogane Animation had always been Misaki's domain. She had not been especially familiar with the business when she started, but several years of managing Rei's various works with distributors and partners across dozens of countries had made her the primary point of contact for the entire global operation.

Rei focused on creating works. Someone had to handle everything else. Otherwise he would have been exhausted before any of it reached the market.

"It is fine. Just a bit busier during this period," Misaki said. "After Attack on Titan Season Three ended, it triggered a massive response both domestically and internationally. Although the merchandise sales are not as strong as Demon Slayer's due to the thematic differences, the momentum and reputation are showing signs of potentially surpassing it.

Now animation industry groups from home and abroad are all coming to discuss cooperation."

Miyu, listening to her sister and Rei discuss business beside her, felt her head spin slightly.

She did not feel particular sympathy for her sister's workload, however. Rei had always been generous with his subordinates, and considerably more so with Misaki. As CEO at Rei's company, Misaki received a percentage of the company's profits.

Last year alone, with the company earning at the level it had been earning, Rei's personal net profit had undoubtedly exceeded ten figures. Misaki, benefiting from this arrangement, had received tens of millions in dividends. She, a mangaka signed with the Hoshimori Group still building her readership, might not earn annually what her older sister received in dividends. High returns did not come from easy work.

This year, Rei had arranged the copyright negotiations for Reincarnation on her behalf. Her income this year would see a significant increase.

"Alright. It is getting dark. Let us begin. I am hungry," Misaki said, smiling.

Miyu turned off the lights and helped Rei light the birthday cake candles, then took photographs and posted them on social media before the moment could pass.

Under the flickering candlelight, Misaki watched her sister standing beside Rei making a birthday wish, a smile on her face.

"I hope to see your wedding next year."

Rei opened his eyes and laughed.

"I could go get the marriage certificate tomorrow. It is her who insists on waiting until she reaches second place in the magazine rankings before getting married."

"A promise is a promise. You cannot ask me to go back on it." Miyu's ears had gone red. She glanced sideways at him. "What wish did you just make?"

"I will not tell you. It will not come true if I say it out loud. But it definitely involves you."

In the last week of June, the eighth year since Rei had arrived in this world, his twenty-fourth birthday passed quietly in a villa with a waist-high pile of luxury gifts in the living room and a small cake and two people he trusted most.

July arrived.

Without pause, Attack on Titan Season Four began airing on Ion TV in Japan. The seventh manga tankōbon volume was released on the same day.

With Season Three's conclusion, the world-building of Attack on Titan had been largely revealed. If watching the first three seasons had carried a quality of unknown and escalating terror, the fourth season shifted the story's centre of gravity toward something different: the relationship between Paradis Island and the world, the grand and unanswerable questions of war and peace and freedom played out at civilisational scale.

Inside the walls, the Eldians were a people seeking survival and knowledge.

Outside the walls, they were the lowly subjects of the Marley Empire. Enslaved people without personal freedom, heirs to a history of crimes committed under the Eldian Empire's rule, regarded by the world as a race that should not be permitted to accumulate power again.

Eren Yeager had spent his entire life pursuing peace and freedom. After leading his companions to the truth of the world, he had discovered that the entire world was the enemy.

What would Eren do with that knowledge.

The answer was not obvious.

From the very beginning of the fourth season, Eren had infiltrated Marley. His personality had changed: calm, collected, carrying a melancholy that the hot-blooded boy from Season One would not have recognised in himself.

The narrative style had shifted completely. Many Attack on Titan fans in Japan found themselves needing time to adjust to this version of the story. The overall quality remained excellent. The disorientation was simply the cost of a story that had committed to following its protagonist into whatever he had become.

But in July, the work commanding Rei's most concentrated attention was Spirited Away.

The film had been in promotional buildup since the beginning of the year. In July, the full marketing budget was deployed simultaneously across every available channel. Cinemas. Television. Offline events. Anime convention sites. ACGN merchandise stores.

Every day, the marketing funds for Spirited Away entered the market at a rate that was visible across the entire entertainment landscape.

A large number of anime fans in Japan temporarily shifted their attention from Attack on Titan toward the animated film.

"Spirited Away... the art style is so different."

"It is not strange. It is quite cute."

"A fantasy-themed animated film from Shirogane-sensei?"

"Honestly, all this promotion is a waste of money. Would I possibly miss a film by Shirogane-sensei?"

"The promotion is not aimed at you. Shirogane-sensei mentioned in an interview that this film is for all ages and all demographics. Suitable for families. Suitable for couples. And specifically, suitable for single people too."

"That is a somewhat extreme claim."

"Shirogane-sensei is credible when he makes statements like this. He often only tells half the story in front of the media but he never tells outright lies. If he says that, this film probably has no bloody scenes."

"The theme song in the trailer is genuinely beautiful. Already looking forward to the original soundtrack release."

"Does this work have a chance to surpass last year's Your Name, which earned 66 billion domestically and 102 billion globally?"

"Stop comparing everything constantly. Your Name's box office was lower than the Demon Slayer film but I still think the Demon Slayer film is far less moving than Your Name. The numbers do not tell you which one stayed with you longer."

"Exactly. What is the point of the constant comparison. Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan have higher ratings but I prefer Hunter x Hunter. Among all of Shirogane-sensei's film works my personal favourite is Five Centimeters Per Second. If we count The Garden of Words as a film, that is number one for me."

"One thing is certain: Spirited Away's box office will not be low. For this year's summer season, investors behind every other big-budget film are afraid of Shirogane-sensei. Throughout July, the only film with an investment over 2 billion releasing is Spirited Away.

All other major productions have clustered their releases into August. But even if Spirited Away does not reach Demon Slayer or Your Name's numbers, what does that prove? It only means the number of people in Japan who enjoy family-friendly works is smaller than those who prefer romance or intense battle films. It says nothing about the relative quality."

"Year after year. Attack on Titan airing its fourth season. Shirogane-sensei's fourth animated film about to release. It is genuinely a little melancholic."

"Hot take: Shirogane-sensei is only twenty-four. Healthy. Wealthy. It is highly likely we will continue seeing his works released throughout our entire lifetimes until we grow old."

"I just want more Hunter x Hunter. Please, Shirogane-sensei, after Bleach finishes do not immediately start new works. Fill in the Hunter gap. You said you temporarily had no inspiration three years ago and this temporary has lasted three years."

"Then at least give us more One-Punch Man first."

Online, the general mood among Rei's fans regarding Spirited Away was one of uncomplicated optimism.

Nobody seriously entertained the possibility of this film failing. Even the media outlets and self-media bloggers whose traffic model depended on anti-Rei content had, at worst, expectations that the box office might not exceed 60 billion.

Nobody believed a film with a production budget of 4 billion yen and nearly the same in marketing would suffer a catastrophic failure.

This was the reputation Rei had built in Japan across eight years and over a dozen works, none of which had received poor critical reception or disappointing commercial results.

Nothing in this world was absolute. Shirogane-sensei's works certainly had the theoretical potential to fail. If he could create ten thousand works in a lifetime there would inevitably be some that fell short.

But his fans had developed a firm belief: within his short hundred-year lifespan, among the few hundred works he might actually produce, there would be none that received genuinely poor reviews. The track record over eight years had simply never provided a data point to suggest otherwise.

The most suspense-free summer film season in Japan's history.

Across the film industry, the animation industry, and among the general public, almost nobody could be found who would openly argue against the consensus expectation. Cinemas had made their own assessment of the situation accordingly.

On Friday, July 15th, Spirited Away was scheduled for at least seventy percent of available screening slots across Japan.

Simultaneously, merchandise featuring characters and spirits from the film was being produced in factories across Tokyo and other major cities.

Overseas streaming platforms and international cinema chains were ready. Merchandise manufacturers and sales distributors had prepared for the specific kind of industry-wide activity that accompanied a Shirogane-sensei theatrical release.

This twenty-four-year-old, through decisions made at his company and at home, was already influencing the work and income of tens of thousands of people in Japan and worldwide, and capturing the attention and imagination of tens of millions, potentially hundreds of millions, of ordinary people.

The first half of July ended.

Time reached mid-July.

Rei began a full-scale fan meet-and-greet promotional tour across Japan's major cities for the final push before Spirited Away's release. With this kind of promotional activity came the expected bold statements to media.

For instance: Rei told reporters directly that Spirited Away was, in his personal assessment, the strongest animated film he had produced to date.

He was not speaking carelessly when he said this.

The Demon Slayer film was certainly good, but it carried structural incompleteness and narrative discontinuity that came with adapting a single arc rather than a self-contained story.

Your Name was also excellent, but compared to Spirited Away, there was a gap that Rei could identify clearly from having lived with both works across two lifetimes.

Everyone had their own favourites. Taste was not objective and Rei understood this completely.

But purely in terms of the completeness of an animated film as a standalone work, Spirited Away was the top tier among everything he had produced.

A story that began and ended within itself, that built its world and its characters and its emotional logic entirely within its own runtime, without requiring prior knowledge of a serialisation or leaving threads deliberately unresolved.

Rei's statements to the media were treated by some as promotional posturing and by others as something close to gospel, circulated across fan communities as confirmation of what they already believed.

Regardless, time passed day by day until the night of July 14th arrived. The eve of Spirited Away's theatrical release.

That night, on Japan's major media platforms and trending charts, the hashtag Spirited Away Film Releases Tomorrow dominated consistently. The heat was partly the result of fans' spontaneous activity and partly the consequence of Rei deploying promotional resources with the same lack of restraint he applied to production budgets.

The fan community became very active.

"Tickets for the 10 AM showing tomorrow, anyone joining?"

"I bought tickets for both the 10 AM and 12 PM showings back to back. With Shirogane-sensei's works you do not watch once to decide whether to watch again. You simply buy both in advance."

"Going to see Spirited Away with my wife tomorrow. Last year Shirogane-sensei said Your Name was absolutely perfect for couples in love. I listened to that advice, took her to the premiere, and proposed successfully afterward. Supporting Shirogane-sensei again this year."

"That was brave of you. Were you not afraid it might be another Five Centimeters Per Second situation?"

"Afraid of what? I still have the most basic human trust in Shirogane-sensei."

"Then I will bring my girlfriend to the premiere tomorrow morning. Ring is ready. Proposing tomorrow."

"But Spirited Away does not have romance elements."

"The main characters might not have romance but that does not mean the supporting characters do not. Use your imagination. Just trust."

"I will not sleep tonight. It is agonising. I hope the hours pass quickly."

"Envious of students who can watch the 10 AM premiere. Those of us who work have to wait until the 6 PM showing after leaving the office."

"If you are only watching at 7 PM tomorrow, do not go online after noon. The internet will be completely flooded with spoilers by then."

Throughout the night the online discussion heat for Spirited Away never subsided.

Time arrived at July 15th.

...

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