Chapter 41: The One Who Wanted Him Gone

Chapter 41: Chapter 41: The One Who Wanted Him Gone

Hayato Kanzaki did not hate Haruki Amamiya. That would have been childish — hatred required intimacy, history, injury. Haruki was a stranger with a rising mystery series, a loud group of defenders, and an annoying habit of making people discuss emotions as if they were structural achievements worth arguing over. Hayato disliked the trend around him. That was different, and the distinction mattered to him more than most people would have credited.

Inside his apartment, three monitors lit the room with pale morning light. One displayed his manuscript. One displayed ranking charts. One displayed the creator forum, where the argument around Threadless Gate had somehow survived another night without burning itself out. His own name appeared in several threads. So did Haruki’s. That much was expected.

What irritated him wasn’t the argument itself — arguments created traffic, traffic created readers, readers created money, and everyone in the industry pretended otherwise because pretending made the whole business look nobler than it actually was. Hayato knew better than that by now.

The irritation came from a comment sitting near the top of the discussion. Threadless Gate proves slower emotional mystery can compete with action-driven series. He read it twice, closed the tab, then opened it again — a bad habit, an old one. He’d spent five years building his audience. Five years learning exactly where readers dropped off, where they clicked next, where they commented, where they actually paid. He understood momentum. He understood hunger. He understood that most new creators died quietly because they fell in love with their own scenes and forgot the reader was still there, waiting for something to happen.

Now an eighteen-year-old amateur had written ten Chapters, and people were talking like he represented some new direction for the whole medium. Absurd. Premature. Dangerous, in the specific way that unearned confidence in an industry was always dangerous, for everyone downstream of it.

His editor had warned him not to keep fighting. Naturally, Hayato agreed. Then made tea. Then began planning anyway.

Not a direct attack — direct attacks were crude, and crude attacks created sympathy for the target. Better to create doubt instead. Doubt worked longer, and it didn’t leave fingerprints.

By noon, a new post appeared on the creator forum. Not under Hayato’s account; that would have been stupid. A small review blog published it first, a discussion account reposted it, and the creator forum picked it up from there, the way these things always spread once the first few dominoes fell.

Is Threadless Gate’s Rising Reputation Built on Controversy Instead of Quality?

He smiled faintly. Much better. The article didn’t insult Haruki — it praised him in places, which made it sharper, not softer. It argued that Threadless Gate had benefited from drama: the Bureau controversy, the creator war, the public arguments trailing behind it. It questioned whether the numbers reflected genuine reader loyalty or just temporary noise. It suggested, gently, that the platform might be inflating attention around inexperienced creators too early in their careers. Nothing illegal. Nothing technically false.

Just poisonous enough to do its job.

Haruki saw it at 2:08 PM. He’d been working on Chapter Eleven, the one following the Bureau revelation, and for once the manga had his full attention. Ren, Miyu, and Shiori stood trapped beneath the facility while the Bureau sealed the exits above them. Ren had finally learned the truth — the Bureau created anomalies by severing human destiny threads on purpose. The reveal changed everything. Readers wanted the aftermath, and Haruki wanted to give it to them.

Then the article appeared.

At first he didn’t understand why his stomach tightened. The tone was polite, almost reasonable, and that was exactly what made it worse. A rude attack could be dismissed outright. A calm accusation invited readers to actually think it over.

The comments started spreading within the hour.

Honestly, the drama did help Threadless Gate grow.

Still a good story though.

Maybe the platform likes controversy more than quality.

Is the author actually that good, or just lucky with timing?

He closed the browser. Opened it again five minutes later. Closed it. Opened it. The loop felt familiar — unpleasantly familiar, a groove he’d carved into himself over the last several weeks that his hands seemed to fall into without asking permission first.

A message arrived from Mizuno. Do not respond. This one is different. Call later.

This one is different. Those four words bothered him more than the article itself had. Different how? Worse? More dangerous? More professional, somehow, in a way that made it harder to just delete and move on the way he had with Hayato’s private messages?

Another message came in — Takeda. This article is garbage. Want me to fight people? Haruki almost smiled. Almost.

Then another notification appeared — a private message from an unknown creator. Careful who you anger. Some people don’t like amateurs getting praised too quickly. The sender deleted the message before he could even reply to it. That was new. Very new, and colder than anything Hayato had sent him directly.

By evening, the damage became measurable. Not huge, not catastrophic, but visible in a way he hadn’t seen before. Chapter Ten’s engagement stayed high, but new reader conversion slowed noticeably, and the forum’s recommendation thread shifted tone entirely — the story was no longer being discussed as a promising discovery. It was being discussed as a question mark, something to be suspicious of rather than excited about.

That difference hurt more than he expected it to. For the first time, Haruki felt someone else’s actual hand pressing on his career. Not criticism, not debate. Pressure. Directed pressure, aimed with intent by someone who understood exactly how to apply it without ever putting their own name on it.

The system appeared at eight. No reward window this time, no cheerful progress notice. Just a black-edged mission panel, unlike anything he’d seen it use before.

[Hidden Quest Triggered: The First Knife]

Condition Met: A hostile industry actor has begun attempting reputational damage. Objective: Identify the source and survive the first coordinated attack without self-destructive response. Success Condition: Maintain reader trust through story performance and professional conduct for 10 Chapters. Failure Condition: Public credibility decline, editorial trust reduction, or schedule collapse. Reward: Industry Threat Analysis unlocked Penalty: Unknown

Haruki stared at the word hostile. His mouth went dry. This wasn’t a forum argument. This wasn’t Hayato’s public philosophy dressed up as principle. This was something else entirely, and the system clearly knew it, which meant the situation had crossed some invisible line he hadn’t even seen coming.

His phone rang. Yui. He answered, and for a moment neither of them spoke. Then she said, "I read it."

"Yeah."

"It’s not fair."

"No." That was all — no advice, no solution, no polished speech to make it feel smaller than it was. Just anger on his behalf, plain and unfiltered, and strangely that helped more than any comfort would have.

He looked at Chapter Eleven still waiting on his screen — Ren and Miyu trapped beneath a collapsing facility, surrounded by enemies created by a system that had lied for decades to everyone around it. For the first time, the manga and his own life rhymed in a way he genuinely disliked. Someone was changing the battlefield underneath him. Someone wanted him shaken. Someone wanted a bad reaction they could point to afterward as proof of everything the article had implied.

Haruki set the phone down after the call ended, then closed every forum tab, this time without reopening them. Not because he felt calm — he didn’t, his hands were cold, his chest felt tight in a way it hadn’t during the Hayato argument. But Chapter Eleven needed to exist regardless of any of it. Readers would hear the arguments, see the posts, watch creators fight it out in public one more time. In the end, they’d stay or leave because of the story, not because of whatever got said about it on the way there.

He picked up the stylus.

The first true enemy had finally appeared. He didn’t know the name yet. He didn’t know the plan behind it. He only knew one thing for certain.

If he let fear write the next Chapter, that enemy would have already won.