Production on the anime continued moving along steadily.
With December just around the corner, Yuta set himself a modest goal as president of Starfall: to surpass The Girl Called God in both popularity and ratings before it finished airing.
It was a genuine challenge, but that was exactly why it was worth having as a goal.
Of course, having a goal was one thing. From Starfall's perspective, the most they could do was pour that ambition into making the anime itself as polished as possible. Everything else was outside their hands.
On the whole, life remained exactly what it had been for a while now: ordinary and overwhelming, though more overwhelming than ever.
Yuta had assumed this pattern of grinding normalcy would just keep going indefinitely. Then, without warning, something entirely unexpected happened.
The last day of November.
It was a little past ten in the morning.
Yuta had just finished a production meeting and was walking out of the conference room, about to head back to his office, when a loud thud rang out followed by a chorus of voices calling out "Amane-san."
"Hm?"
Yuta turned and saw that someone had collapsed. To his shock, that someone was Yuzuki.
"What the hell!"
Yuta's heart jumped into his throat. He hurried over and, upon realizing she had fainted rather than dropped dead, quietly let out a breath of relief.
He immediately called Rika over, helped get Yuzuki downstairs, then got behind the wheel himself and drove her to the hospital.
...
At the anime production planning company known as White Dove.
Aoi was in the middle of handling some work when her assistant, Sumire, suddenly said, "It sounds like someone collapsed at Starfall."
"What!"
Aoi was on her feet in an instant, not even sparing a thought for the work in front of her. She was already heading for the door at a near-run, heels clicking against the floor.
"Ah!" Sumire let out a startled yelp and called out "President!" before rushing after her.
The rest of the office exchanged bewildered looks.
...
At the hospital.
The results of Yuzuki's examination came back.
It was nothing more than severe overwork.
Everything else checked out fine.
Once Yuta heard that, he finally relaxed.
What he could not wrap his head around, though, was how this had happened to her at all.
He himself was juggling more roles than anyone at the studio, probably busier than Yuzuki by several times over, and he had not collapsed from overwork. So how had she? On top of that, Yuzuki had been the one responsible for drawing all of the layouts for Clannad, handling the entire anime by herself.
Her current role was limited to first key animation, which was objectively less work than before.
She had been fine back then, so why was she collapsing now?
It genuinely baffled him.
Regardless, the first order of business was to get her admitted and set up properly.
Beyond that, he also needed to find someone to stay with her. He himself obviously could not stay at the hospital, and everyone else at Starfall was far too swamped to spare the time.
As for Yuzuki's family, he had asked Rika to call her home on the way over, but nobody had picked up, so that was not going to help in the short term.
Turning it over in his mind, he said to Rika, "I'm going outside to make a call."
"Leave this to me, president," Rika replied.
Yuta nodded, then stepped outside the hospital and took out his phone.
The moment he turned the screen on, he found several missed calls, all of them from Aoi.
"Hm?"
He was puzzled, but since he had been planning to reach out to her anyway, he called her back directly.
The call connected after just a few seconds.
"Shido, is the key animator at your studio okay?"
"She's fine, just overworked. But... why do you already know someone from our studio was taken to the hospital?"
"Because I just got to your office."
"Oh."
"..."
"Aoi, you called me several times just now. Did something happen?"
"No, nothing. I just thought at first that it was you who had collapsed."
"???"
Yuta found that a little strange.
Something about it felt off, though he could not quite put his finger on what.
He shook his head slightly and let it go, then shifted topics. "I'm fine. But there's something I wanted to talk to you about."
"What is it?" Aoi asked.
"Could I borrow your assistant?" Yuta said, and then explained, "Everyone at Starfall is slammed right now, so nobody can look after her, and we can't get in touch with her family."
"Sure. Tell me which hospital and I'll send Sumire over right away," Aoi agreed without hesitation.
Yuta gave her the name of the hospital, then ended the call.
His reason for asking to borrow Sumire was to have her stay with Yuzuki and look after her.
It was not strictly necessary, but leaving someone entirely alone in a hospital ward never sat right with him.
Putting himself in Yuzuki's shoes for a moment, if he had been the one to collapse and woke up alone in a hospital bed with no one around, he would probably start letting his thoughts spiral in all sorts of unpleasant directions.
Sumire was not a Starfall employee, but she was a familiar face to everyone there. Given how tied up the entire Starfall staff was, having her come over was the most sensible option.
Once Sumire arrived at the hospital, Yuta thanked her, went over what he needed her to know, confirmed that she had it all down, and then headed back to Starfall with Rika.
Aoi was still there.
Yuta had barely stepped into his office when Aoi said to him, "Shido, Code Geass is pulling in extraordinary numbers right now, and the people making it are the kind who got into this industry because they genuinely care about it. Seeing things go this well naturally makes them want to give everything they have. But you're the president. You need to make sure the people under you know when to pull back. Nobody should actually be killing themselves over this."
"Yeah," Yuta said with a nod, not offering any defense of himself.
Technically, Yuzuki collapsing from overwork was not something he had directly caused, but she had gone down in the workplace, and that made it his responsibility.
It was a lesson he needed to take seriously.
Aoi was not entirely sure whether her words were getting through to him. She let out a quiet sigh and added, "There are so many eyes on this right now. You have to be careful."
"I know," Yuta said, nodding again.
"Alright. Since you're not hurt, I'll head back. Get your work done, and take care of yourself," Aoi said before leaving.
"You too, Aoi. Work is work, but please look after yourself as well," Yuta replied sincerely.
After seeing her out, Yuta gathered Todo and a few of the production assistants and called a meeting in the conference room.
Part of it was to remind everyone to get proper rest and to keep an eye out for anyone else showing signs of pushing too hard, so there would not be another incident like Yuzuki suddenly going down.
The other part was practical. Yuzuki was out of commission for the time being, but the workload was not going to shrink on her account.
Someone needed to take over her tasks and keep production on schedule.
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