"Thank you, Director Alex. I'll head back home now."
Two days later, Kakyoin's scenes officially came to an end. Mark wrapped his part and said goodbye to Alex before leaving. Alex merely nodded, lifted a hand in farewell, and almost in the same breath turned his attention to the next battlefield. Before the actor had even fully left the set, Alex was already contacting the visual effects team. In a sense, the real work was only just beginning.
During the earlier shoots in the United States, some ridiculous rumor had always found its way into the press. One day people claimed Alex was getting involved with this actress, the next they swore he was flirting with another, vanishing between parties, trailers, and whatever other gossip the public loved to chew on. This time, however, the situation was completely different.
The cast of Stardust Crusaders was practically all men.
So where exactly was he supposed to sneak off to?
The only woman regularly at his side was his petite assistant, Nazha. Even so, Alex had never crossed that line with her.
It was not because he was some kind of saint. Far from it.
In truth, Alex had a very peculiar sense of commitment. He knew exactly what kind of man he was, which meant he also knew exactly what he could not offer. If he could not give a girl normal, stable, legitimate love, then he would rather compensate with something tangible instead. Resources. Opportunities. A real role. Some kind of return that carried actual weight.
He could see it clearly enough: if he ever looked at Nazha and said, in the right tone and at the right moment, "Let's date," she would probably throw herself into his arms without the slightest hesitation. In less than a week, everything would be over and done with.
But to him, that would be too low.
Not just morally ugly. Worse than that. Cowardly.
If he was going to touch someone's life in that way, then the least he could do was give something of equal substance in return. A meaningful reward. A solid role. A genuine chance. Some proof that it had not all been cheap exploitation.
Because of that, the crowd that lived on gossip had spent those months in a boredom so complete it was almost painful. No fresh scandal. No secret romance. No particularly juicy headline to keep the circus fed.
But that dead stretch was about to end.
Because Death Note was finally going online.
If the film had followed only the official path, it would have had almost nothing to do with moviegoers back home. There was no local release, no conventional screening circuit, no simple access for fans there. In theory, it was a distant film, sealed off on the other side of the ocean.
But reality rarely cared much for theory.
There were search engines. There were file-sharing sites. There were always ways to make things work.
And instead of pretending otherwise, Alex simply picked up his phone and, after a long stretch of silence on his official account, posted a message so short it was almost shameless.
Three words.
"See you online."
Attached to it was the poster for Death Note.
That was all it took.
In an instant, the crowd that had spent recent weeks cursing Alex for filming anything other than Season Three of Bleach changed its tone completely. The anger flipped into excitement. The insults vanished like smoke. In their place remained something almost touching in its enthusiasm.
The boss was generous.
The boss had vision.
The boss was, in practice, telling everyone to go watch the pirated version without even bothering to hide it.
To a lot of people, that was not just boldness.
That was magnanimity.
Alex set his phone down without having the slightest idea how much chaos that one post would cause. To him, it was just a practical provocation before returning to the final stretch of Stardust Crusaders.
What he did not know was that, on the other side, his eccentric fans were already preparing something equally eccentric.
Inside a girls' dorm at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, the sound of a completed download notification rang through the room.
The second it did, the other three girls practically threw themselves at Melissa, who had only recently returned to the dorm after being away for work.
"Is it done? We already got the snacks ready, hurry up and open it!"
The three of them sat down beside her in a row, arms full of junk food like they were about to take part in some sacred ritual. Melissa, however, did not start the movie right away. Instead, she kept swiping through her phone with intense concentration.
"Wait. I'm subscribing first."
"Subscribing to what?"
"I'm using a VPN, getting onto the platform, and paying for a subscription. I want to support the boss's movie properly."
The moment they heard that, the other three exchanged a glance and immediately accepted the logic. It made sense. If they were going to watch it, then they were going to do it right. One after another, they used apps to reach the foreign streaming platform and bought paid memberships just so they could leave behind clear proof of support.
Watching smoothly from Ishtar was still difficult, and sometimes the playback lagged, but commenting and rating the film was more than enough.
And just like that, the page for DEATH NOTE on the platform was flooded with a sudden tidal wave of comments in Ishtarian. A loud, affectionate, utterly uncontrolled invasion.
Melissa and her friends quickly realized they were far from an isolated case.
In fact, there were absurd numbers of fans tunneling through digital walls, paying for international memberships, and leaving words of support for Alex overseas. And afterward, many of them even returned to his social media to post screenshots as proof, almost with childlike pride, declaring that they had paid for it properly and were not watching for free.
Meanwhile, back at the platform's headquarters in the United States, the numbers began climbing in a way that was too strange to ignore.
"Boss, according to the backend data, we've gained over four hundred thousand new subscribers."
The assistant delivered the report carefully, but the sentence itself carried enough weight to seize the entire room's attention.
Sitting in his chair, Reagan leaned back with the satisfied expression of a man watching one of his own predictions come true.
"It must be because of Death Note's release. Just as I expected. Investing in that film was the right choice."
There was even a trace of personal pride in it. After all, he had been one of the first to read the script. He had placed his bet before almost everyone else. He liked to think he knew how to recognize a goldmine when he saw one.
Then the assistant added,
"One-third of those new users came from Ishtar."
The calm in Reagan's face cracked at once.
For a moment, he genuinely did not understand.
How was that even possible? In large parts of that country, access to the platform was difficult. In many places, the site barely worked normally at all. And yet people were still creating paid accounts?
The confusion was severe enough that he ordered an immediate investigation.
It did not take long for the explanation to emerge. And when it did, it brought with it an uncomfortable kind of admiration.
Alex's influence in his own country was far more terrifying than Reagan had estimated.
This was not just fame.
It was mobilization.
It was loyalty.
It was the kind of force that made people spend real money, push through technical obstacles, and organize themselves just to show support.
After several minutes of silence, Reagan made his decision without hesitation.
"Get in touch with Alex. Tell him that if he's short on funding for Bleach Season Three or the second half of Death Note, all he has to do is ask. Increase the investment without even discussing it."
He had thought he was already overestimating Alex.
In the end, he had done the opposite.
From that moment on, maintaining a long-term partnership stopped being a smart business move and became a strategic necessity. Even if his company could not directly enter that enormous Ishtarian market, there was still one thing that had to be protected at all costs: the broadcasting rights to Alex's future works could not, under any circumstances, fall into a competitor's hands.
When Alex received the news sometime later, even he fell silent for a few seconds.
For someone as shameless and emotionally armored as he usually was, that was rare.
Very rare.
That mass of fans who spent half their time calling him a scoundrel, criticizing his choices, and complaining about the direction of his projects… had crossed all that distance just to support him. More than that, they had paid real money to do it.
The cheapest subscription on the platform still cost around fifty-five reais. That was more than what many people would spend for a movie ticket. It was not some symbolic gesture. It was real money, felt in the wallet.
For a very long time, Alex had looked down on the phenomenon of blindly devoted fans. In his eyes, most artists treated that kind of audience like a field waiting to be harvested. They cut, exploited, squeezed every last drop, while the fans themselves rarely realized how thoroughly they were being used.
But at that moment, he found himself thinking something else.
Maybe those people were… kind of adorable.
At least, for the one they were devoted to, it was hard not to think so.
Without wasting time, he posted again, this time more directly:
"Stop subscribing already. Just watch it. No matter how much you pay, the platform isn't giving me extra money for it."
He also added a sincere note of thanks.
That was enough to slow the wave of impulsive generosity, at least somewhat.
Meanwhile, all across Ishtar, people were finally finishing their downloads and pressing play.
And the first thing they felt was strange.
Uncomfortable, even.
The screen was too clean.
Without scrolling comments flying across the image, without the instant reactions of thousands of strangers, without the collective chaos that usually accompanied any Alex production, many viewers felt like something was missing. His work had that peculiar effect: it seemed to demand company. It demanded jokes, side comments, synchronized breakdowns, and shared disbelief. Watching it in total silence almost felt wrong.
In college dorms, many students resisted the urge to watch immediately. They waited for their roommates to come back with food, set up their improvised dinner, and only then began the movie, eating and reacting together. In cramped apartments, office workers dragged over siblings, partners, or anyone remotely available to sit on the couch with them. And those who lived alone had few options other than watching curled up with their cats, their dogs… or, failing that, with nothing but their own solitude.
Since Alex had practically authorized piracy himself, streamers naturally did not miss the chance to ride the wave of attention. They turned on their cameras, opened the file live, and decided to experience the film with their chat.
Yet the story had barely passed the ten-minute mark when the collective reaction had already changed.
Shock.
The home audience was hit head-on by the almost savage imagination behind the premise.
Write someone's name in a notebook, and that person dies?
The idea was simple, direct, cruel, and brilliant.
It did not need a thousand complicated rules to grab attention. The concept alone was enough. And the concept by itself was already strong enough to hook anyone.
Then came Alex as Light.
When he looked at Ryuk and said, "I will become the god of the new world," a massive portion of the audience felt an immediate chill. The sensation was familiar. In some strange way, it echoed the pressure Sosuke Aizen had radiated when he declared that he would stand above the heavens. It was not exactly the same, of course. Aizen, when he decided to act like a supreme being, operated on a level of imposing presence that very few characters in fiction could ever rival.
But the weight was still there.
The story moved forward, and the murders carried out with the Death Note naturally drew the police's attention. When the mysterious detective L appeared and declared that he would capture Kira, most viewers reacted with complete disbelief. It seemed impossible. Light killed from a distance, without touching anyone, without appearing, without leaving clear traces. How could anyone possibly crack an ability like that?
Less than ten minutes later, the film answered.
And it answered mercilessly.
By using a stand-in, L first confirmed the crucial fact that Kira could not kill someone whose real face he had never truly seen. Then he exploited regional broadcast timing to narrow down Kira's location. It was such a cold, precise, razor-sharp display of intelligence that many people felt their spines go cold.
My God.
Barely twenty minutes had passed, and the film had already delivered a cerebral move sharp enough to make your scalp tingle.
At that moment, a lot of people finally understood why international audiences had praised the film so highly months earlier.
In one livestream, the streamer known as Sister Zhou opened her eyes so wide that, for a second, she seemed to forget how to breathe.
"What the hell is this?! This L is way too smart!"
She shouted so wildly that a large chunk of the audience, already uneasy about watching without on-screen comments, migrated straight into her stream just to experience the story in a group and share the shock in real time.
Messages immediately began flooding the chat.
Some warned that anyone who had not gone to the bathroom yet needed to do it before continuing, because the film did not let up for even a minute. Others admitted they had never imagined a suspense thriller could produce that kind of physical tension, that creeping cold running up their backs. Some confessed that when certain actors had praised the movie so heavily months earlier, they had assumed it was just a favor or some paid promotion. Now, after only twenty minutes, the conclusion was very different: if anything, those people had not praised it enough.
There were also viewers proudly reminding everyone that the film had reached staggering box office numbers. And then came the inevitable correction: despite being written, directed, and starred in by Alex, it could not really be called a domestic film. There had been no local theatrical release. The language was English. The whole structure had been built within another system.
But in the end, that distinction mattered less than the impact itself.
Because regardless of the label, what stood in front of them was real.
Alex had done it again.
And as the film continued, more and more people began to understand why a work like this would never have slipped cleanly through stricter regulatory filters. All they had to do was keep watching. All they had to do was let the story run for a few more minutes.
The answer was all there, right in front of their eyes.
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