"So? Are you getting used to this?"
The entrance corridor was longer than it looked on television. As he walked beside the event staff, Sora tilted his head slightly and spoke in a low, casual tone, as if he wanted to ease the tension before it had the chance to settle into something heavier.
"A little nervous…" Sumire admitted.
Her fingers were laced together, twisting around each other in an unconscious gesture. Deep down, she knew better than anyone who had truly carried Re:Zero to success.
She had been nominated for Best Animation Kantoku because of the overwhelming momentum the series had gained, and that only made things harder. Standing there at the center of it all, sharing the spotlight of such a massive production, stirred an uncomfortable feeling in her chest, as though she had somehow been swept along by a wind that did not fully belong to her.
"And you?" she asked softly, continuing to walk beside the staff.
Sora smiled faintly and turned toward her.
"Last year, when I came here alone, I was just like you. Pretty nervous."
"And now?"
"Now I'm not."
Sumire looked at him for a moment.
"Why?"
"Because last year, I had only just stepped into this world. There was still so much I didn't know about anime production, scheduling, direction, editing… I learned most of it from you. I knew I was still inexperienced, so being tense was only natural." He paused briefly, his voice calm and steady before continuing. "But now it's different."
"How is it different?"
"Because Re:Zero has already proven, with results and with facts, that our partnership doesn't need to fear anyone in Japan's anime industry." A trace of boldness appeared in his smile. "There's no reason for us to be afraid. The ones who should be uneasy are everyone else."
The moment the two of them stepped out of the corridor and appeared at the entrance to the main hall, the overhead spotlights swung toward them all at once.
Their images also appeared on the giant screen above the stage. Sora, with his clean, composed presence, and Sumire, beautiful and cool in her usual quiet way, walking side by side toward their seats.
More than a thousand people were already seated in the auditorium.
And yet, the instant they entered, the attention of the entire room seemed to shift.
Nearly every gaze landed on them.
More precisely, on Sora.
A Kantoku producing one hit could be called lucky. Two hits still left room for debate. But Sora had debuted in the industry with only three productions to his name, and all three had created enormous waves across the Japanese anime scene.
That was no longer the kind of thing anyone could explain away as chance.
Some time later, the duo of Touga Kuze and Natsuyuki Shirasawa entered as well and took their seats a few dozen meters away.
As always, Touga Kuze wore a cold, almost expressionless look, staring straight ahead with a detached calm that bordered on indifference.
Natsuyuki Shirasawa, on the other hand, kept glancing in Sora's direction.
On this same day one year ago, she had told him with full confidence that she wanted to face him with a new work in the following season. Back then, she had still believed in herself completely. She wanted to reclaim lost ground. She wanted to erase that defeat with one of her own.
But now…
She let out a short sigh and shook her head ever so slightly.
Not far from them, the Seiun TV delegation also took their seats. Among them, one of the network's executives looked at Sora and Sumire for a few seconds. At first, a flash of resentment crossed her eyes.
But almost immediately, that resentment was swallowed by something much more obvious.
Fear.
The awards ceremony that night would decide her future.
If Dragon's Breath Blaze walked away without winning either of the two most important categories - Best Anime and Best Animation Direction - then by the next day, a dismissal notice from Seiun TV would almost certainly be waiting for her.
Inside that hall, every person carried a different thought, a different desire, a different fear.
The old saying that sorrow and joy never belong to the same world seemed to be taking shape right there in front of everyone.
Since he had already attended the Tokyo Animation Festival the year before, Sora was much more at ease this time. The moment he sat down, it didn't take long for boredom to set in. He leaned back into his chair, rested his head, and closed his eyes for a brief moment of rest.
The camera, naturally, caught every bit of it.
And on the other side of the broadcast, the fans went wild.
The live comments immediately filled with amused reactions, with people laughing at how absurdly relaxed Sora looked, wondering if he was seriously planning to doze off in the middle of the biggest awards night of the year. Others answered that there was no point worrying now anyway, and if he was that calm, maybe it was because he already knew exactly how the night would end.
There were still some who insisted that Dragon's Breath Blaze, being a Seiun TV production, still had a chance to pull off an upset.
But a large portion of the comments quickly shifted toward Sumire.
A lot of viewers were seeing her properly for the first time, and her elegant, icy beauty was so different from the rough, messy image most people associated with animation professionals that speculation started almost immediately. Some asked whether she might be Sora's girlfriend. Others shot the idea down just as fast, reminding everyone that he was infamous for living buried under work. After all, someone handling the first season of Re:Zero, the second season, and the production of Five Centimeters Per Second at the same time barely had enough hours to sleep, let alone enough energy for an office romance.
Elsewhere in the comment feed, people were also discussing Touga Kuze. Even after losing to Re:Zero that season, he still carried the same cool, defiant air as always, like someone who would never accept defeat as anything permanent.
The awards began, one by one.
At first came the smaller categories, the ones that rarely decided the true direction of the night. That year's Best New Kantoku award went to a thirty-two-year-old man who had spent ten years working as a key animator before climbing step by step until he finally reached the Kantoku's chair.
When he accepted the trophy, he was so overwhelmed that he broke into tears onstage. His acceptance speech stretched on for nearly five minutes.
Time passed, and once more than an hour and a half of the ceremony had gone by, the atmosphere in the hall changed.
At last, the most important part was beginning.
"The winner of Best Art Background Direction is the art Kantoku of Dragon's Breath Blaze."
The moment the announcement was made, several industry professionals let out quiet, involuntary sighs.
Anyone familiar with the Tokyo Animation Festival understood how this ceremony usually worked. They rarely allowed a single work to take absolutely everything. The major prizes and the technical awards were almost always distributed with deliberate balance.
If Dragon's Breath Blaze had taken Best Art Background Direction, then that meant the committee had already allotted its share of the night to that production.
In the Seiun TV seating section, the executive's face turned pale at once.
After that, Best Anime Music and Best Seiyuu also went to Dragon's Breath Blaze.
With each announcement, Natsuyuki Shirasawa took a deeper breath, and almost without meaning to, looked toward Sora again.
He was still sitting there with his eyes closed, calm and unreadable, without showing the slightest ripple of emotion.
Instead of discouraging her, that sight reignited something inside her.
The urge to fight.
That was simply the kind of person she was. Someone who refused to accept defeat as the final word.
When she turned to look at Touga Kuze, she realized he had changed as well. A faint smile had appeared at the corner of his lips, and the distant calm that usually ruled his eyes had been replaced by a silent, unmistakable competitive fire.
Both of them knew it perfectly well.
That season, they had been completely crushed by Sora.
Then the presenter's voice rang across the stage.
"The winner of Best Anime Screenplay is Sora, for Re:Zero."
At once, the entire hall seemed to wake up.
The audience, the guests, the people from the industry, even the viewers at home - everyone understood that Re:Zero's moment had finally arrived.
After more than an hour of waiting, the first major trophy for the series had at last gone onstage.
Sora rose, walked to the front, accepted the award, and opened the speech he had prepared beforehand.
He thanked the cast, the staff, the production partners, the networks, and the audience with the composure of someone who already knew exactly what he intended to say. Then he finished, gave a brief bow, and returned to his seat.
But he barely had time to settle back down.
"The award for Best Anime goes to… Re:Zero."
The presenter's voice had barely faded before Sora was on his feet again.
He stepped onto the stage for the second time, accepted the trophy from the presenter, and once again delivered the speech he had prepared, this time under even louder applause.
When he returned, the warmth of the seat had not even had time to change.
Then came the next announcement.
"The winners of Best Animation Direction are Sora and Sumire."
The presenter's voice was soft and clear, but to Sumire, in that moment, it sounded strangely far away.
"Let's go," Sora said, standing up for the third time. Before moving, he placed the trophy on his chair and turned toward her.
But Sumire did not react.
She kept staring fixedly at the stage, as though her mind needed a few more seconds to accept that her name had truly been called.
Sora studied her face more carefully and, at last, realized this was more than simple nervousness.
"Come on," he said again, more gently now.
Only then did Sumire turn her head toward him in a strangely mechanical way.
"Ah… right. Yes. Let's go. Let's go up."
Sora fell silent for a brief second.
She was far too tense.
Maybe it was not only because of the award itself. Maybe it was the shock of suddenly facing hundreds of people in the hall and countless viewers in front of their televisions.
Without saying anything else, he extended his hand toward her.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter, softer.
"Let's go. Together."
Sumire looked at the hand held out in front of her.
And almost on instinct, she took it.
The exact moment her fingers touched his and he pulled her to her feet with quiet firmness, the hall exploded into the fiercest applause of the entire ceremony.
Almost everyone present was clapping for them, some already on their feet, welcoming the two of them with a wave of thunderous warmth.
For one brief moment, Sumire looked at Sora's profile.
The hand holding hers seemed to carry a strange calming power. As if all the pressure, all the trembling hidden in her chest, all the insecurity she had been trying to suppress since the moment she entered the auditorium, was slowly beginning to melt away.
Dressed in black, with the tips of her ears faintly flushed, Sumire walked beside him to the stage.
There, the two of them received the trophy together.
It was the highest honor in Japan's anime industry that night.
As they raised the award side by side, Sora swept his gaze across the people below - the executive from Seiun TV, Touga Kuze, Natsuyuki Shirasawa, and the many others who were both rivals and peers - before finally looking straight into the camera with a calm smile.
Sumire, however, did not look at the audience.
Her gaze shifted almost unconsciously to Sora, standing right beside her.
She did not know whether the rest of her life would ever hold another moment more unforgettable than this one.
She could not be sure.
But there was one thing she knew with absolute clarity.
In all her twenty-five years of life, she had never once felt a joy as intense as the one filling her heart at that very moment.
That night, the Tokyo Animation Festival passed without a single last-minute surprise.
The first season of Re:Zero became the great victor of the ceremony.
And by the time the awards ended, the calendar had already turned to January 1st.
The New Year holiday had begun in Japan.
The fall cour had come to an end.
And the winter cour was finally about to begin.
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