Chapter 215: Chapter 214: If a True Genius Emerged Who Could Beat Him Fairly, He Would Celebrate It [BONUS]

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The staff at Haru-Yuki Animation were well aware of the rising stakes. Everyone had internally committed to a standard of quality even more rigorous than their previous projects. They knew the world was watching.

Haruto spent his days hunkered down in his office, balancing administrative tasks with a deep analysis of the current animation landscape.

7 Years From Now was officially locked in for a spring premiere on Tokyo TV, which meant the four or five months remaining would pass in the blink of an eye. Haruto held high hopes for this title.

While he didn’t expect it to cause the same cultural shift as Puella Magi Madoka Magica, he believed that if the emotional beats were animated with enough care, it would secure its place as another modern masterpiece.

Strictly speaking, its narrative DNA was very similar to the legendary Steins;Gate. It featured parallel universes, time loops, the desperate struggle of "saving and being saved," and the inevitable convergence of world lines.

The primary difference lay in the scale.

Steins;Gate was a grand epic where the protagonist’s "time leaping" could alter the fate of nations, and the main cast members were destined to become world-shaping figures.

7 Years From Now, however, was more intimate. The world didn’t need the protagonist to save it, nor did he have the power to do so. His entire journey through the ripples of time was driven by his desire to rescue a girl who had died seven years ago and fulfill a childhood promise to meet her again.

As the mysteries of the world-building unraveled, and as the audience learned of the staggering efforts the heroine had made in a previous timeline to save the boy, the true heart of the story would be revealed.

It was a tear-jerking romance wrapped in the shimmering cloak of science fiction. Given how fans had already hailed the brief time-travel elements in Madoka as god-tier writing, Haruto felt confident that the market reception for 7 Years would be overwhelmingly positive.

As for Cyberpunk: Edgerunners...

The progress on this project was significantly slower due to Haruto’s uncompromising demands for visuals. In the original world, this series had served as a spin-off to a blockbuster game and had taken several years to produce.

Haruto had the advantage of a completed script, meaning he didn’t have to deal with the meddling clients that had slowed down the original production.

He didn’t have to argue with developers who thought specific character choices were a mistake. Yet even without those headaches, a one-year production cycle was still a tight squeeze for a studio simultaneously handling two major projects. It all came down to the efficiency of his team. If they stayed on schedule, a July premiere was possible; if not, it would slip to October or even the following year.

That afternoon, after a marathon meeting to iron out production bottlenecks, Haruto handed over the lead theme song he had spent his few spare hours composing: I Really Want to Stay at Your House.

He instructed the music department to adapt the original lyrics into a rhythmic version that preserved the melancholic, haunting soul of the piece.

Over the next few days, Haruto shifted his focus back to the Sword Art Online novel and the Initial D manga. For a hit series like Sword Art Online, the release of collected tankobon volumes usually happened quite rapidly. While Volume 1 wasn’t hitting the shelves just yet, the internal machinery at Kiyozawa Library was already churning in preparation.

Haruto knew he had to dedicate extra effort to the SAO volumes. In his memories, SAO was a sprawling franchise. Because it had started as a web novel before being adapted into a light novel, the timeline was famously messy.

The original creator was often writing detailed expansions of the early Aincrad days years after the main plot had moved on. If Haruto tried to include every single detail of those hundreds of thousands of words in the weekly magazine, he would be at it until retirement.

In the Kiyozawa serialization, he had to maintain a brisk pace. He had to keep the core Death Game plot moving forward, ensuring the romance between Kirito and Asuna and the floor-clearing progress never stalled. If he bogged the readers down in a floor-by-floor grind, they would eventually succumb to fatigue.

To solve this, Haruto created a hybrid version of SAO. He used the anime’s tight pacing as his primary skeletal structure but fleshed it out with the light novel’s depth. This ensured a snappy reading experience without losing the world’s texture. He even decided to trim some of the more indulgent honeymoon scenes between Kirito and Asuna after they started dating.

He figured the modern readership had high standards and might find those Chapters a bit too slow for the weekly run.

However, the upcoming tankobon volumes provided the perfect opportunity to re-introduce that content. He planned to include special Chapters as volume bonuses, detailing how the partnership between Kirito and Asuna first formed, the early internal politics of the clearing guilds, and the more domestic interactions between the lead duo.

Kiyozawa Library was thrilled with this proposal. Exclusive content in the collected volumes was a guaranteed way to skyrocket sales.

Consequently, Haruto’s mid-November schedule became a mountain of work as he balanced the manga, the novel Chapters, and these new extra pages for the volumes.

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In late November, Kiyozawa Library released the first teaser for a new series arriving in December: The Absolute Realm.

The promotional campaign was massive, but it wasn’t just focusing on the story.

It centered heavily on the creator, Reina, widely regarded as the most beautiful novelist in the industry. With Haruto’s blessing, Kiyozawa Library launched a bundled marketing strategy. Most of Haruto’s current fans had only discovered him through the current Sword Art Online craze. They had no idea about his school history or his rivalry with Reina.

The publisher arranged for a special prime-time interview on Tokyo TV1, featuring both Haruto and Reina as fated rivals. The fans watched the broadcast in a state of collective shock.

As the interview unfolded, the audience was moved by the narrative the publisher had carefully curated. It turned out that Shiori Takahashi and Reina were classmates.

They had been competing in the novel world since they were sixteen years old. For years, Reina had been the eternal second place, tirelessly chasing Haruto’s shadow across every platform they inhabited.

From their debut in a local magazine where they ranked first and second to their arrival on the national stage at the Ascent of New Gods, their paths had been intertwined. Even when Parasyte was dominating the rankings, Reina’s previous work was doing the same in its own field. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

And now, here they were again.

As Sword Art Online prepared its final assault on the number one spot in Kiyozawa Library, the genius beauty Reina had finally secured her own seat in the flagship magazine with The Absolute Realm.

After a long time, she was finally standing on the exact same stage as Haruto again.

The light novel community is a sentimental group by nature. Under the expert marketing of the publisher, both fanbases were swept up in the drama.

"This is what you call a fated rivalry!"

"If Shiori-sensei didn’t exist, would Reina-chan be the brightest star in Japan right now?"

"Absolutely. To be serializing in the flagship magazine at nineteen is a legendary achievement in its own right. She’s a superstar."

"I’m literally moved. These two feel like characters from a manga themselves. The rivals, the partners, the way they push each other to grow... seeing Reina’s determination in this interview is so moving."

"I don’t know if rivals is the right word anymore. Haruto’s commercial numbers are in a different league now. But Reina is clearly the only peer who can even see his back. I’m rooting for her!"

"She’s so elegant and cool. She seems a bit distant at first, but did you see the way her eyes lit up whenever the host mentioned Shiori-sensei? There’s a spark there, guys. I’m calling it now."

"Haruto fan here! I’m officially a Reina supporter too. That one line she said in the interview made me love her."

"Which line?"

"When the host asked who she thought was the greatest novelist in Japan. She didn’t hesitate for a second. She said,

"Right now, it’s Shiori Takahashi. In the future, it will be me.’"

"That confidence! I love her!"

"Seriously, she’s just been unlucky. Imagine debuting at the same time as a literal god of the industry. Her stories are beautiful, she just needs her moment to shine."

"This interview was a revelation. I feel like I finally understand Haruto’s school years. And learning about Reina, the girl who never gave up on catching him... it’s the best content of the year."

"I’m jumping ship. I used to ship Haruto with other creators, but after seeing this chemistry, I’m officially Team Haruto-Reina. Haruto-sensei needs to just debut as an idol already; his potential pairings are too good to ignore."

Kiyozawa Library had only intended to give Reina’s new series a small boost, but the fated rivals campaign exploded far beyond their expectations. Haruto had agreed to the plan purely to help his friend’s debut, reasoning that his own fame could act as a ladder for her.

He was a pragmatist; he wouldn’t let just anyone ride his coattails, but for Reina, he was happy to make an exception.

He didn’t care about the win or loss. He genuinely wanted her to flourish in the industry. He figured if a true genius ever emerged who could beat him despite his knowledge of future hits, it would be a triumph for the era. But as the hype began to leak out of the light novel circles and into the manga and gaming communities, Haruto realized he had inadvertently triggered a massive feedback loop.

He hadn’t just helped Reina; he had successfully reignited the fire under his own brand as well.