"Uh…" Sora Kamakawa turned his head and caught Sumire lowering her headphones, her curiosity plain in the way she tilted her chin as if trying to fit a missing piece into place.
"So that's what you've been doing…"
His throat tightened for a second. The answer came out too fast, almost reflexive.
"I… told you, didn't I? The music for Voices of a Distant Star is on me."
And, as if he needed to convince himself as much as her, he added with a confidence that didn't match the restless glint in his eyes:
"I'm… composing the main theme."
It was a half-truth. And somehow that made him even more uneasy.
In reality, he'd been flickering between the real world and the system's space, memorizing chunks of the original anime's score, then rushing to copy them down here - like speed alone could erase the weight of what he was doing.
Sumire's gaze sharpened with open skepticism. The setup in front of her didn't help: a pair of headphones, a bargain arranger keyboard, and a computer running music software. That was it. One eighteen-year-old in a quiet office, claiming he was creating the song that would carry the entire series.
At the very least, there should've been a studio. A team. Proper support.
"Are you sure you can make something that actually sounds good like this?" she asked, blunt as ever.
Sora cleared his throat, trying to find steadiness where there wasn't any.
"It'll be fine. I mean… I think it sounds good."
Before her doubt could harden into a verdict, he hurried on.
"This is just to finalize the score and the arrangement. Later I'll bring in a professional performance team and record it properly in a studio."
"I see…"
She went quiet for a moment, measuring her next words.
"You know how to compose?" she asked at last. "I've never heard your father mention it."
If she only knew.
Sora felt his stomach twist. The truth was, the original owner of this body had studied music theory since childhood - and the score itself came from the system. But he kept his expression steady.
"A little. Just enough."
Sumire looked from the keyboard to his hands, as if deciding whether to press or let it go. In the end, she asked something simple that still sent a spike of panic through him.
"Can you play a bit? Just a sample. The theme you're making for Voices of a Distant Star… I want to hear what kind of… what kind of mood it has."
Then, as if anticipating his pride flaring, she added quickly in a tone that was almost professionally neutral:
"Don't misunderstand. I'm not doubting your skill or worried it'll be the weak link. I just need to understand the theme's style so the directing and staging can match it. That's part of my job."
The justification was too neat not to feel like a jab.
Sora gave a crooked smile, unable to hide his embarrassment. "Right. Part of the job."
Still, there was no point hiding it. Sooner or later, everything would have to come out during dubbing sessions and final editing anyway. He took off his headphones, turned on the keyboard's speakers, and set his fingers on the keys.
The first notes were timid, like the instrument was testing his nerve.
Then the melody settled.
A slow tune, threaded with a quiet sorrow, drifted through the empty office. It wasn't the kind of sadness that screams. It was the kind that seeps in, takes space without asking, and lingers under the skin.
The kind of music that makes you think of someone… far away.
Sora kept his gaze down, feigning casual control while recognizing every note: a memorable insert from the original, used when Asei received a message from Mikako. In Voices of a Distant Star, the main theme and the inserts all carried that same weight - melancholic, but sharp enough to cut.
At first, Sumire listened with the detached air of someone simply "checking." Ten seconds in, her expression changed.
What he was playing wasn't just "nice." It was solid - far above what she'd expected from an inexperienced director hunched over a cheap keyboard.
Sora finished the first piece and, without waiting for her reaction, switched to another.
The next melody opened wider, broader, like sound trying to describe a landscape too vast for the chest to hold. It carried the feeling of discovery - stepping onto an unknown world and, somehow, sensing it had been waiting for you. In the anime, it played when the heroine first saw the alien homeworld's magnificent surface. And it was one of the cuts Sora cared about most in his key animation.
Because it was beautiful. And because it was overwhelming.
After that came what would serve as the opening.
A song of parting - slow, heavy, with a grief that dragged along the floor even without lyrics. When he finished, Sora finally let out the breath he'd been holding, as if he'd only just remembered how.
"Uh… that's basically it."
Sumire stayed still. For the first time, Sora saw clear shock on her face.
Not because the music was some impossible masterpiece, but because its quality was so much higher than she'd assumed - better than most of the insert tracks from the productions she'd worked on.
And Sora was only eighteen.
He'd already absorbed an absurd amount about production under Hiroshi Kamakawa. He'd already shown real creative strength as a director. And now this - music, too - appearing as if it were effortless.
It felt unfair.
Sumire felt a brief, human flicker of envy… then genuine happiness. For him. For Hiroshi, too.
She blinked, smoothed her expression back into place, and spoke with calm she forced into being.
"It's really good. Your music… it's really good."
"Thanks." A small warmth spread in Sora's chest. Even with the guilt tangled underneath, praise still reached him.
Sumire returned to her desk, but something in her seemed less guarded - like the sound had cracked an invisible distance.
"You… know a lot," she murmured, almost to herself.
Sora laughed, trying to lighten it.
"I know a little of everything and none of it properly. I still have a lot to learn from you."
"With talent like yours, you'll pass me quickly," she said, and there was something tucked behind the words - an edge of shadow. "Maybe you'll become a director people remember for decades."
Sora caught the dip in her mood at the end. Subtle, but real. He didn't want it to take root.
"I'll improve, sure. But you will too. And right now, I still rely on you for a lot," he said gently. "I'm grateful you stayed. That you chose to make Voices of a Distant Star with me. If I'd had to learn everything alone, with no one to guide me… I wouldn't even know where to start."
He leaned forward slightly, his smile steadier.
"And if I ever do become that 'historic director'… honestly, you'll be half my teacher. If my name ends up in the history books, you deserve at least a third of the credit."
Sumire froze. Her eyes tightened as if she were holding something back.
Then she let out a long breath.
She didn't answer. She didn't need to. When she turned back to work, Sora caught the faint curve of a smile on her profile.
That was enough.
Emotions were contagious - like fever, like warmth. From that point on, the awkward tension between them was swept away, as if the last notes had carried it out the window.
…
That night, the expensive New Year's Eve meal Sora had ordered - far too costly for a small studio's reality - finally arrived. Five dishes and a soup. More than two people could finish, but New Year's had its rules: you could be exhausted, drowning in debt, short on time… but you couldn't greet the year with something shabby.
Sumire had shared ramen with him so many times - late nights spent talking backgrounds, layouts, and microscopic art details - that having a New Year's meal together in the office didn't feel strange. She hesitated briefly, then accepted without fuss.
Outside, snow fell steadily, muffling the world in white. And yet, when the time came, fireworks still blossomed over Tokushima - too beautiful for a life measured in deadlines and invoices.
"Happy New Year," Sora said, lifting a can of cola toward her.
In Sumire's eyes, the sky shimmered with reflected colors. And on that face that was usually cool, controlled, distant, there was a softness he almost never saw.
"Happy New Year."
She raised her hot tea and clinked it gently against his can.
"I hope that with our own effort, we can move the people who watch Voices of a Distant Star," Sumire said, serious and clear. "That they'll love it. That ten, twenty years from now, they'll still remember it - and we won't regret being part of it."
Our own effort…
Sora immediately remembered the morning before - him and Ren praying at a shrine, asking the gods for the anime to succeed. So that's what she'd been laughing at back then: the two of them seeking blessings instead of trusting their own work.
And her words now… they were almost exactly what he'd said a month ago, the first time they went to discuss backgrounds with Haruto.
She remembered everything.
Sora drained his cola in one go. The fizz stung his throat, and for a moment it cleared his head completely.
Outside, the fireworks were deafening.
And yet the loudest thing in the room was the quiet wish that this anime wouldn't become "just another one."
…
During the New Year holiday break, Sumire handled the storyboard tasks assigned to her - adjusting cuts, refining timing, preparing what she could. Sora, meanwhile, spent day after day organizing scores and shaping themes, turning the original's music into something that could be properly recorded.
When February 15th arrived and the staff - along with the major outsourcing partners - returned to work, Voices of a Distant Star plunged into its most brutal stage.
Every day, completed key animation cuts were delivered to Dream Animation, where Sora, Sumire, and Haruto checked them. Anything that met standards was sent onward to outsourcing studios for in-betweens.
In-betweens were the glue of movement.
In theory, one second of animation is twenty-four frames - twenty-four drawings. In reality, that was a luxury few productions could afford, in either money or time. There were legendary exceptions - films made by artists obsessed with perfection, insisting on full twenty-four-frame animation - but that was far from their world.
Most TV productions operated much lower.
And even then, not every frame was a key drawing.
Keyframes were the skeleton of motion: the foot lifting, reaching its highest point, and touching down again. Three drawings that say this is walking. But three drawings stitched together would look like a slideshow. That's where in-betweens came in - intermediate drawings, less important artistically, but essential for smoothness.
It was more mechanical, repetitive work - faster to produce. Sora worried about that step less than the others.
Once the in-betweens were done came coloring: skin tones, eyes, hair, uniforms, light and shadow - everything decided between the director and the coloring supervisor. And by late February, voice recording began as well.
From that point on, Sora stopped having "days."
He had blocks of time that collided.
Keyframes, animation, coloring, backgrounds, photography, effects, sound… every stage demanded presence. Demanded eyes. Demanded decisions. And because so much was happening across outsourcing studios scattered through the city, Sora and Sumire lived in the car, driving from one location to another around Tokushima, supervising deliveries like each visit could save - or doom - the final result. Some days, they looked even more exhausted than Ren, who was already racing around the city chasing deadlines and materials.
And still… it was moving forward.
Three days behind schedule, but moving.
Then, on March 4th, all the key animation for Voices of a Distant Star was finally complete.
Haruto wasn't fully satisfied with the quality of a few cuts, but the schedule showed no mercy. And the weaker drawings were in minor scenes. For the key cuts, there was no negotiation - even if Haruto were willing to lower the bar, Sora and Sumire wouldn't allow it.
And now, with the keyframes essentially finished…
It was time to put the preview screening on the calendar.
To face, head-on, what they had created.