Heishi was intimidated by Sasaki.
His hands were shaking when he called back.
He'd braced himself for a tongue-lashing, but Sasaki's voice came through warm and bright.
"Heishi, you've done well."
"Huh?"
"Discovering Kanzaki must be the proudest moment of your career."
Heishi glanced at Kai, who was hunched over his desk looking gloomy, and asked curiously, "What milestone has Kanzaki-sensei hit now?"
He was almost getting used to it.
Ever since Death Note began serialization, all he'd heard was good news.
And each piece was better than the last. This manga was a rocket, and nothing was slowing it down.
"Death Note has sold a million copies!"
"A million? That's it? Wasn't that bound to happen sooner or later?" Heishi nodded sagely. "Anything else, Sasaki-san?"
"..." Sasaki was speechless. "I'm hanging up."
Heishi pocketed his phone.
He looked at Yuta and asked casually, "What's today's date? It's almost October, right?"
A question mark appeared over Yuta's head. "Isn't it only September 10th? Heishi-san, has someone made you stupid?"
"September 10th..." Heishi looked at the wall calendar. "It is September 10th."
"Wait. September 10th. Wait!"
His eyes went wide, and he nearly passed out from the rush.
"It's only September 10th! It's only been forty days since the volume went on sale!"
"This is a genuine miracle, and also..."
His gaze dropped. The pencil in Kai's hand was moving at speed.
The strokes were rapid, but the drawings weren't sloppy. Every character had life in it.
"You're a monster, Fujin!"
...
The news that Death Note's collected volume had surpassed one million copies quickly appeared in Weekly Shonen Jump.
Right in the most prominent spot on the cover.
It was hard not to notice. So hard, in fact, that readers almost missed the image of Monkey D. Luffy setting sail right beside it.
Kaga clicked his tongue. His old classmate had rocketed to the top. The guy was barely human anymore.
A few desks over, he glanced at Kitagawa.
The experienced, well-traveled journalist was trembling.
Kaga couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy.
The man had written a timely article mourning Jump's golden age and predicting its decline, only to get slapped across the face so hard there was nothing left to argue.
Death Note was all gimmick and no substance?
The facts had proven that Kitagawa simply lacked the eye. For someone in his profession, that was a fatal flaw.
'Too bad. Death Note just keeps getting better. Its future is wide open.'
Kaga opened the magazine and started reading.
...
L suspected that Kira might be in the Yagami household, so he installed surveillance cameras throughout the home. The bathroom and the toilet weren't spared.
This put Light Yagami in a difficult position.
If a criminal appeared on the news while he was under surveillance and went unpunished by Kira, it would be as good as exposing himself.
He had to find a way to kill criminals using real-time news without L noticing a thing.
Kaga furrowed his brow. What could Light possibly do?
He couldn't think of an answer, so he kept reading.
Light bought a brand of potato chips that neither his mother nor his sister liked and hid a palm-sized television inside the bag.
Then, using the blind spot information Ryuk provided, he positioned the opening of the bag just outside the cameras' field of vision.
Like that, glancing down occasionally at the tiny screen, he committed the perfect crime right under L's nose.
Afterward, the chip bag was crumpled into a ball and tossed in the trash. The next morning, the garbage truck carried it away.
Light stood on the second-floor balcony, watching the evidence disappear. His expression was perfectly blank.
"You cunning bastard, Light!" Kaga blurted out.
...
The criminal collapsed from a heart attack, and a wave of relief washed over the long-anxious Soichiro Yagami.
He had sacrificed his wife and daughter's privacy just to prove that his family members were not Kira.
But L saw it differently.
"The surveillance cameras were installed only yesterday, and the Yagami family has already been cleared."
A few days later, L removed the cameras. But in his mind, the suspicion of Light Yagami remained.
Because Light's performance had been too perfect. And L trusted his own reasoning.
"Even under surveillance, Kira continued to kill."
"I don't know his method. But even if someone could kill with their mind alone, a normal person's expression and behavior should change when they take a life."
Kaga had a sudden realization. At some point, Light Yagami had become truly cold-blooded.
When he first used the Death Note, he'd been racked with guilt. He couldn't sleep for days. He lost weight rapidly.
Now, Light had practically stepped into the realm of a god. Human life meant nothing to him anymore.
But Light had selfish motives.
He wasn't a god. He was a child playing pretend.
...
On TV Tokyo, a news program was running a segment on Death Note.
The anime adaptation hadn't been announced yet, but early promotion was already underway.
The topic, of course, was the bestselling collected volume.
The record Death Note had set was on everyone's lips.
A camera crew arrived at the entrance of a major bookstore to interview customers who had just purchased the volume.
"Forty days after release, sales surpassed one million copies. Now, fifty days later, customers are still lining up. Let's hear what they have to say."
The reporter approached someone at random.
"Chapter seventeen of the manga was just so good that I wanted a second copy of the volume to keep as a collector's item." A heavyset young man with a backpack explained.
Two sisters, giggling and nudging each other in front of the camera, said, "Light Yagami is way too handsome. We just had to buy the nicer-looking collected edition."
"It's a phenomenal manga. How could you not buy the volume?"
"I'm recommending it to everyone. Buy it together with me."
"I don't usually buy collected volumes, but the plot Kanzaki designed is on another level. It must have cost him a lot of brain cells. So I figured the least I could do was buy the volume to repay his effort."
Every customer gave it a perfect score.
The studio host summed it up.
"It seems one million is not the ceiling for Death Note. Beloved by readers, this manga still has limitless potential."
"I'd like to recommend it to everyone watching. Pick it up and read it. Death Note!"
In the detention center, Ichiro Fujima watched the television. His expression twisted into something between a laugh and a grimace.
"One million? How is that possible? Just Death Note? My novel only sold..."
He counted on his fingers. "Only five thousand copies!"
"This has to be fake news. Haha. You're kidding me. Haha."
______________________
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