Yumi let out a slow breath, as if she were afraid to say the title out loud.
Natsume… Yuujinchou.
She'd heard about that project even before setting foot in Tokyo. Not through gossip, not by accident - someone at her father's company, the kind of person paid to "sniff out" opportunities, had mentioned it. And when a young producer starts walking around with an anime proposal folder under his arm, knocking on door after door, it doesn't take long before the industry starts talking.
They said it was a story about the everyday life of yōkai.
And honestly, that explained why Yumi hadn't felt any real urge to invest at first.
Slice-of-life anime, in general, tends to stand on two pillars: comedy or romance. "Yōkai slice-of-life" was… different. There was no clear market track record, no obvious comparable title, no sense of safety. Sure, it could blow up and become a phenomenon - but no investor in their right mind likes to bet on "maybe." Most of them put money where the return looks almost inevitable.
Even so, Yumi read the proposal carefully.
It was an old habit - almost a personal vow. Anything connected to anime, manga, or games - no matter how good or bad - she judged with her own eyes before she opened her mouth. With millions of followers watching her every take, she couldn't afford to just echo whatever the internet decided to hate that week. Being fair was the line she refused to cross.
Of course… that didn't mean wasting time on pages of "market analysis" stuffed with pretty numbers and inflated promises. Every company knew how to write that kind of thing. She skimmed straight past it.
What mattered was the heart of the project: the script.
And as her eyes moved through it, something inside her shifted - quietly, without ceremony, like a door closing to keep the outside noise away.
A boy who could see spirits and yōkai.
Natsume grew up as someone else's burden, passed from one relative's house to another like an awkward package nobody wanted to keep for long. He learned early that being different scares people. He learned even earlier that when people are afraid, they reject what they don't understand.
So he forced himself to pretend.
He pretended to be ordinary. Pretended to be normal. Pretended not to see what no one else could.
At school, on the way home, inside the house… he acted like any other student. He looked away. He swallowed words. He smiled at the right moments. And all the while, the yōkai remained - too present to be ignored, too invisible to be explained.
Natsume Yuujinchou had an atmosphere of its own. Quiet. Soft. Almost gentle.
It wasn't the kind of story that shouted to hold your attention; it simply pressed itself against you, carefully, and stayed. And the characters - especially those who could see what shouldn't be seen - carried a loneliness that felt inevitable, as if that ability came with a built-in curse: the need to hide, just to keep the few relationships that still mattered.
Keeping human bonds was hard enough.
Keeping them while being pursued, provoked, hunted by creatures that could smell the difference on you… that was survival.
The script continued - contained, unhurried.
By chance, Natsume wandered into a temple and broke the seal that bound a cat-shaped yōkai. From there, he discovered something about his grandmother - a woman who could also see yōkai - and about the legacy she left behind: the "Book of Friends," where yōkai names were sealed.
And the cat… began to follow him like a stubborn shadow.
In the first story, a big-eyed yōkai attacked Natsume. The motive seemed simple: the boy had the Book of Friends, and the name sealed inside it needed to return to its owner. It was the kind of conflict Yumi had seen a thousand times, dressed up in a thousand different ways.
She almost predicted the ending.
The cat-yōkai would appear, defeat the attacker, save the protagonist - done. A safe opening for episode one.
But the script… chose a different path.
Because when Natsume touched the Book of Friends, the sealed name wasn't just an "object." It carried memory. Feeling. Presence. As if, for an instant, the boundary between human and yōkai thinned.
And Natsume felt it.
He felt what no one else could see, what no one else could perceive: the heart of that big-eyed creature.
It was lonely. And the loneliness there wasn't some cute detail - it was the kind of emptiness that becomes habit, that becomes existence. And somewhere in the distant past, it had met a girl who could see it.
Her name was Reiko.
The same Reiko who once defeated it, took its name, sealed it in the Book of Friends… and still made a promise.
When I call you, come running.
It was almost childish. Almost arrogant. Almost affectionate.
And time passed.
Spring, autumn, winter, summer - again and again. Year after year. And Reiko never called. Never spoke to it again. Never returned.
So… was that attack on Reiko's grandson really about reclaiming a name?
Or was it just the last desperate impulse of someone who wanted, even once, to see again the only person who had ever looked at it and said its name was beautiful?
Yumi reached the final line and stayed still, the pages in her hands, as if she'd forgotten where she was.
For a few seconds, she didn't even blink.
The silence wasn't awkward. It was impact - the kind that doesn't explode, only tightens inside you, in the cruelest way: slowly.
Beside her, Sumire watched with a calm, knowing focus, as if she already understood what that story did to anyone patient enough to truly feel it. Yumi wasn't like the loud, restless fans who needed an explosion every five minutes to stay engaged. She was there - fully present, taking it in.
And the wet glimmer that kept threatening at the corner of her eyes - held back each time with a steady breath - was proof enough.
When she finally closed the folder, Yumi spoke with a calm that bordered on cold, as if she needed it to keep her voice from betraying her.
"This proposal… and no one wanted to invest in it? In Tokyo?"
Sora Kamakawa straightened instantly, like he'd just been handed an opening.
"For now, no," he answered quickly, trying to sound lighter than he really was. "But it's a temporary situation. There are people interested. I still have meetings with other investors over the next week… but if Yumi-san is interested, then I won't have to waste time chasing the rest."
Sumire didn't need to say a word.
She just glanced at him from the side.
Liar.
She knew that particular gleam in Sora's eyes - the look of someone holding the line out of sheer stubbornness, because if he let his guard drop for even a second, everything would collapse. The truth was simple: almost everyone he'd approached had turned the project down. And if he couldn't find someone willing to put money in within two weeks, Sora already had a "Plan B" tucked away.
A nasty plan.
He'd mentioned it in a low voice one night in Tokushima, like he was confessing a sin. Strip the costs to the bone. Concentrate the budget on the first episodes. Let the rest lean on the script.
Sora knew - through experience and scars - that even a miserable production could become a hit. He still remembered the case of Back Street Girls, which became a talking point despite looking like "PowerPoint animation" in places. If it came down to it, he'd gamble.
Five million yen on the table - he'd make whatever he could.
Three episodes with decent quality to hook an audience and build word of mouth. Then… the remaining nine would do whatever they could with what was left, trusting the story to grab viewers by the chest even when the visuals wavered.
It was the worst-case scenario.
But behind the smile he was wearing now, that was exactly what he was preparing himself to face.
Yumi ran her thumb along the edge of the folder, thoughtful, and then asked what was already obvious - still, she wanted to hear it from him.
"Why did they refuse?"
Sora didn't try to dress it up.
"Almost all of them said the same thing: 'unclear commercial prospects.'"
Yumi nodded slowly, as if confirming what she already knew.
"And you?" She lifted her gaze, direct. "How do you see the commercial prospects for Natsume Yuujinchou?"
Sora smiled without hesitation.
"I think it's going to blow up. Once it airs, it'll become a major success - the kind the market can't ignore."
The corner of Yumi's mouth rose, amused… but there was a blade behind that smile.
"You think you can land it in a prime slot on a major national network, and that's where this confidence comes from?" She tilted her head. "Because as far as I know, the four major commercial broadcasters in Tokyo don't make room for a small anime backed by an investment on the scale of ten million yen. And when they do pick up an anime for broadcast, they almost always come in through the production committee too - putting money in and demanding a stake. From what I'm seeing… you're nowhere near that kind of structure. So tell me, Sora-kun: why can you talk about it 'blowing up' so casually?"