Chapter 137: The Price Tag

Chapter 137: Chapter 137: The Price Tag

The email arrived on an unremarkable Thursday afternoon, buried between a Lantern Project scheduling update and an advertisement for drawing tablets Haruki had definitely not asked to receive. He almost skipped past it entirely, the sender name unfamiliar enough to trigger the same cautious suspicion every unrecognized contact still earned from him, a habit the last year had made permanent.

Regarding Threadless Gate — Animation Inquiry.

He stared at the subject line for a long moment before opening it, half-convinced it was spam, half-convinced it was another elaborate trap dressed up as opportunity. The last year had taught him to distrust good news almost as thoroughly as bad news, a reflex he was still working on correcting.

The email was short, professional, and, after a careful read-through with his newly developed habit of checking sender domains and company registries before believing anything, entirely legitimate. A production committee — a genuine one, backed by a studio whose work he’d actually watched and admired — wanted to discuss adapting Threadless Gate into an anime series.

He read it four times before calling Mizuno, who answered with the particular alertness of someone who could tell from the ringtone alone that something significant had happened.

"Tell me," she said immediately.

"Animation inquiry. A real one. I checked the studio, checked the production committee, checked the specific producer’s name against public credits. It’s legitimate."

Silence on the other end, brief, then: "Which studio?"

He told her. She was quiet for a moment longer, and when she spoke again, her voice carried something he rarely heard from her — unguarded excitement, entirely unfiltered by professional caution.

"Haruki. That studio doesn’t pick up projects casually. If they’re interested, they’re seriously interested."

"Is this actually happening?"

"Probably. Possibly. We still need contracts, still need Tachibana Media’s involvement since they hold the licensing infrastructure, still need six months of meetings before anything airs." She paused. "But yes. This is real. This is the kind of email creators wait their entire careers to receive and often never do."

The rest of the afternoon dissolved into a blur of calls — Rika, who immediately began strategizing licensing terms with an intensity that made Haruki simultaneously grateful and slightly alarmed; Suzune, who insisted on personally reviewing every clause in whatever contract eventually materialized, citing "learned professional paranoia" as sufficient justification; Kuroda, who offered characteristically understated congratulations before immediately pivoting to a warning about adaptation contracts carrying their own particular traps, distinct from the publishing kind but no less dangerous if handled carelessly.

By evening, Haruki sat in his apartment, the news still not fully settled into something he could process calmly, staring at the email as though it might reveal itself as an elaborate misunderstanding if he looked at it long enough.

His phone buzzed. Yui, video calling. He answered, and the moment she saw his face, her expression shifted immediately.

"What happened?"

"Anime adaptation inquiry. A real studio. Not a scam, not a trick, not another Horizon-shaped problem wearing a nice email."

Her face lit up instantly, genuine and unguarded. "Haruki, that’s incredible. That’s actually incredible."

"I keep waiting for the part where it turns out to be complicated."

"Maybe it’s just good news this time. You’re allowed to have those occasionally." She studied him through the screen. "You don’t look as happy as I expected."

He considered the observation seriously, the way he’d learned to instead of deflecting it. "I think I’m scared of trusting it completely. After everything with Horizon, everything with the lawsuit, I keep expecting good news to be a setup for something worse."

"That’s fair," Yui said gently. "But it’s also exhausting, living like that permanently. At some point you have to let yourself believe good things can just be good things."

"Easier said than done."

"Most useful things are." She smiled. "Let yourself be excited. I’ll worry about the contract details with you later, if you need someone to talk through the anxiety with. Tonight, just let it be exciting."

He exhaled slowly, feeling something in his chest loosen slightly at her permission, simple as it was. "Okay. Tonight, exciting."

"Good. Now tell me everything, in order, slowly, because I want the full experience of your panic and joy fighting each other in real time."

He laughed, and did exactly that, walking her through the entire email, the calls, Mizuno’s rare unguarded excitement, Rika’s immediate strategic pivot, Kuroda’s characteristic warning wrapped in congratulations. Yui listened with genuine delight, asking questions, laughing at the right moments, grounding the whole surreal afternoon into something that felt real rather than like a dream he might wake from disappointed.

Later that night, after the call ended, Haruki opened his manuscript for Chapter Forty-One, but found himself unable to focus entirely on the page, his mind still circling the animation inquiry, the meetings that would need scheduling, the entire new dimension of complexity about to enter his career. He set the stylus down and instead opened a blank document, typing out a message to the full Lantern Project group chat.

Haruki: Got an animation inquiry today. Real studio, real committee. Wanted you all to know, since half of you have been part of the reason I still have a story worth adapting in the first place.

The responses arrived within minutes, overlapping and enthusiastic.

Sora: THREADLESS GATE ANIME. I called this in March. Somebody owes me money.

Rika: Nobody bet against this, Sora.

Sora: Details are unimportant. The prophecy is fulfilled.

Aoi: Congratulations. Don’t let the studio rush the pacing. Animation deadlines create the same pressure that almost ruined Chapter 24.

Kenji: Good. The archive scene will look incredible animated.

Nanami: I’m insanely jealous and also genuinely thrilled for you. Send details when you have them.

Arata: This is what all of it was for. Every terrible meeting, every lawsuit, every sleepless night. This right here.

Haruki read through the messages twice, something warm and steady settling into his chest that felt entirely different from the anxious uncertainty of earlier that day. Not relief exactly. Something closer to belonging — the specific, hard-won feeling of having built a community that celebrated genuinely, without envy or hidden agenda, because they’d all fought through enough together to know exactly what a moment like this actually cost to earn.

He looked back at Chapter Forty-One’s blank first page, Ren waiting patiently for whatever came next in a story that had started, over a year ago, with a boy standing outside a school gate wondering if he had any future at all worth chasing.

The animation deal would bring new pressures, new deadlines, new opportunities for the kind of panic-driven mistakes he’d already learned so painfully to recognize and resist. There would be meetings, negotiations, probably at least one contract clause that needed three lawyers to properly untangle before he’d feel safe signing it.

But tonight, at least, he let himself simply feel the uncomplicated joy of it — a story he’d started drawing alone in a small apartment, uncertain and afraid, about to reach an audience he’d never fully imagined reaching when he first watched that blue system window unfold in front of him outside his old school gate.

He picked up the stylus again, and this time, the page came easily.

Some victories, he was finally learning, didn’t need to be complicated to be real.

They just needed to be earned.

And this one, without question, had been.