"One… one hundred and three thousand, five hundred twenty-one…"
Inside the Fushikawa Bunko Editing Department.
Sonoko Machida stared at the number glowing on her computer screen, murmuring it over and over again.
Her voice trembled. Her body trembled. Her very soul trembled under the sheer weight of joy flooding through her.
All around her, silence.
Then—like a thunderclap tearing through the heavens—
"OOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
"We did it! We won!!!"
"First-day sales over a hundred thousand! I'm not dreaming, right?!"
Every editor, men and women alike, leapt to their feet.
They hugged, high-fived, shouted until their throats burned. Papers and reports flew into the air like confetti, like soccer fans celebrating a World Cup victory.
The tension that had been smothering them all day erupted in one glorious, unrestrained explosion of joy.
At the office doorway, Editor-in-Chief Ryuji Aida watched the frenzy. His eyes glistened.
Slowly, he raised a hand and pressed it down.
The room gradually quieted.
Dozens of eyes turned toward him, brimming with reverence and fervor for the commander who had personally steered this insane gamble.
"Everyone," Aida's voice was hoarse with emotion, but it carried a force that shook the walls.
"Today, we made history!"
"But! This is only the beginning!"
He swung his arm and jabbed a finger at the head of sales.
"Right now—get on the phone with every printing house in the country! I want twenty-four-hour nonstop production!"
The sales manager's voice shook. "Chief! Then… how many do we print this time?"
Aida sucked in a long breath. He held up three fingers, his eyes gleaming like a man possessed at the gambling table.
"Three hundred thousand copies!!"
BOOM!
The office detonated again.
Three hundred thousand?!
My god—was this a declaration of war?
Plenty of bestsellers didn't reach three hundred thousand in an entire year. And they wanted to toss that number into a single reprint run?
"Chief, isn't this… isn't this too risky?" one of the senior deputy editors asked carefully. "Yes, the launch is phenomenal, but sales could taper off…"
"Taper off?" Aida cut him down with a laugh as sharp as broken glass. "You think a masterpiece like A Certain Magical Index is going to 'taper off'? Let me tell you—right now it isn't us begging readers to buy. It's the readers, crying and begging us for more! Three hundred thousand? Honestly, I still think that's too low!"
He swept his gaze around the room, eyes sharp as blades.
"My decision is final! From this moment on, we won't wait for the sales to cross the 350k wager line!"
He paused, then slammed down the verdict.
"Prince Warukawa's royalties will be settled immediately at the maximum rate—fifteen percent! Finance! Process the entire advance plus reprint royalties, post-tax, and wire them to Warukawa-sensei's account—now!"
The office froze.
Breathless silence pressed down on them.
To pay the highest royalty rate before the bet was even won?
What a declaration.
What audacity.
Ryuji Aida had just chained Seiji Fujiwara and Fushikawa Bunko together in unbreakable steel. He was showing the author what absolute trust—and absolute respect—looked like.
"Is that clear?!" Aida roared.
"YES!!!"
The editing floor erupted in a tidal-wave roar of loyalty and passion.
――――
Three days later.
A Certain Magical Index smashed through 150,000 copies sold.
The number rang out like one deafening slap after another across the faces of every cynic.
The once-rowdy internet went eerily harmonious.
The so-called "critics" and "industry insiders" who had sneered and postured vanished into silence, as if stricken with collective amnesia. Every word they'd spat before, conveniently forgotten.
Haruhiko Okochi, the critic who'd published "The Lament of Literature," straight-up locked his comment section and played dead.
But envy doesn't die that easily.
When someone shines too bright to be denied, slander and nitpicking lose their edge. In their place comes a subtler, more insidious weapon—praise sharpened into poison.
The "Industry Winter Theory."
An anonymous post by a veteran author from Kadokawa Bunko dropped on an industry forum, quietly sparking a brand-new firestorm.
[Thread Title: Shouldn't we stop and think—Is Index good or bad for the industry?]
[OP (Anonymous): Fellow authors, after seeing Index's numbers, my heart is torn. On one hand, I'm happy such a masterpiece exists in our field. But on the other, I feel nothing but fear.]
Have you considered? Prince Warukawa has singlehandedly raised the ceiling of light novels to an unreachable height! His worldbuilding, his pacing, his commercial value… all unprecedented.
And the result? Readers' tastes will be permanently spoiled. After experiencing Index, will they ever find joy in our ordinary, by-the-book stories again?
And what about editors? Won't they wave Index's sales sheet in our faces and say, 'Look at Warukawa-sensei—why can't you match him?'
Prince Warukawa is like a black hole, sucking up every ounce of attention and every resource in the market. The brighter he shines, the less space there is for the rest of us.
This isn't salvation. This is the industry's winter. One man is destroying the balance of our ecosystem!
Every line hit like a dagger.
It didn't attack the novel. It attacked the man—Seiji Fujiwara—by setting him up as the enemy of every "normal" author.
You're too good, therefore you're guilty.
Your existence is our doom.
The rhetoric spread like wildfire among jealous authors, burning with resentment but powerless to resist.
"OP nailed it! I haven't slept in days, the pressure is crushing me! My editor's already brought up Index three times this week!"
"Damn it, how are we supposed to write now? If I just write a normal school romance, readers will call it shallow, lacking ambition!"
"This is straight-up dimensional warfare! How are we supposed to compete?!"
"Prince Warukawa is raising the bar so high he's strangling us all! He's gonna kill us!"
The "Industry Winter Theory" howled across the forums.
Even as Seiji Fujiwara was raised onto a godlike pedestal, countless peers quietly branded him an "enemy of the industry."
And the man at the center of the storm?
He couldn't care less.
Seated on his living room couch, Seiji tapped open his mobile banking app. The row of digits shining back at him stretched long and beautiful across the screen.
52,500,000 yen.
The advance royalties for a 500,000-copy print run—calculated upfront at fifteen percent. (In Japan, light novels are paid by print run, not sales. If it's printed, the author gets their cut.)
Ryuji Aida's decisiveness had even caught him off guard.
But Seiji liked working with men who were both shrewd and bold.
"Another payday like this, and I'm on par with top earners in Japan's hottest industries, the kind who grind for ten years just to save this much."
He stretched out lazily, then called toward the kitchen, where a graceful silhouette busied itself with dinner.
"Utaha."
"...What is it?" Utaha Kasumigaoka's voice floated back, tinged with subtle, conflicting emotions.
These past few days, she'd witnessed the miracle storm of sales with her own eyes. Her heart was tangled in awe, frustration, and a gnawing determination.
Part of her was shaken by the man's meteoric success. The other part drove her deeper into her own novels, desperate to prove herself.
"Let's eat out tonight," Seiji said, standing up. "Celebrate a little. And pick up a few things while we're out."