MMB Chapter 230 The Consortium's Second Move
Chapter 230 The Consortium's Second Move
Chapter 230 The Consortium's Second Move (3/71)
The red alert for the [Commercial Vulnerability Sniffer] was triggered at 3:17 AM.
Kitahara Shin sat up in bed, glanced at the warning messages flashing on the system interface, and without taking any immediate action, sat in the darkness and read through the contents from beginning to end.
Two lines. One points inward, the other towards the film crew.
He mentally went through the whole story, and after he finished, he found himself with a strange feeling—not anger, nor tension, but a kind of weary calm.
He knew this day would come sooner or later.
Last time they tried to disrupt the supply chain, but he blocked it beforehand. This time, they changed their approach, focusing on people. The people in the conglomerate who made this judgment weren't fools. But they still made the same mistake—they thought that what Kitahara Shin possessed could be poached, bought, and gradually dismantled.
He picked up the phone and dialed two numbers.
When Secretary Aida answered the phone, her voice was very clear, as if she hadn't slept at all.
When Ota Shoichi answered the phone, he yawned, but after listening to what Kitahara Shin said, the yawn stopped abruptly.
"Get to the company within twenty minutes," Kitahara Shin said, then hung up the phone.
He sat in the darkness for a while longer, thinking about Koji Nishimura.
There are many people in the firm, and he doesn't usually bother to remember anyone's name, but Nishimura is an exception—not because he's particularly outstanding, but because during a certain licensing negotiation, he spent nearly two months trying to lower the bottom price of a completely unimportant peripheral product category, to the point that the other party's negotiator complained to Ota on the phone that he had never seen such a stingy manager.
When Kitahara Shin heard Ota recount this story, he smiled and thought to himself that this person was quite interesting.
The result is this person.
He wasn't particularly surprised, nor was he particularly disappointed. Having been in this industry for so many years, he had seen far too many people change their stance in the face of a sufficiently large number, and there was nothing inherently wrong with that.
There's just a little bit of something, something I can't quite put my finger on.
He suppressed the substance, stood up, and changed his clothes.
Secretary Aida arrived before Ota, a full seven minutes earlier than Kitahara Nobu had requested.
When she entered, Kitahara Shin was already sitting in the conference room. There were three cups of hot tea on the table and a simple summary he had handwritten in front of him.
Aida sat down, picked up the paper, looked at it once, put it down, and didn't speak immediately.
-
When Ota Shoichi pushed open the door and came in, his hair was still a little messy. He saw the tea on the table, picked it up and took a sip, then sat down, picked up the summary, glanced at it, and frowned, saying, "Nishimura? The one who's been negotiating the licensing for two months?"
"right."
"How much did he take?"
"We haven't received it yet," Kitahara Shin said. "It's still in the initial stages of negotiations; the contract hasn't been signed."
Ota breathed a sigh of relief, then frowned again: "What about the actors?"
"We were contacted, but no contract was signed."
Da Tian put down the summary, leaned back in his chair, and said with a hint of helplessness, "They've learned their lesson this time."
"Half-smarter." Kitahara Shin said calmly, holding his teacup. "They changed their approach, but the logic is still the same: they think everyone has a price."
Secretary Aida made annotations on the paper, asking without looking up, "What are your plans regarding Nishimura?"
"Call him in for a talk, follow the formal procedures. Deal with it as it should be, without being lenient or making a fuss."
Aida nodded and wrote it down in his memo.
"What about the actors?" Da Tian asked, a hint of uncertainty in his voice. "Should I go talk to them?"
"I'll do it," Kitahara Shin said.
Da Tian glanced at him: "You made the call yourself?"
"Is there a problem?"
Da Tian thought for a moment, then shook his head, but there was something in his expression that he hadn't completely let go of.
Kitahara Shin noticed, and put down his teacup: "Do you think I should offer better terms than that agency?"
Ota paused for a moment, then said, "I think—at least we should let them know what the benefits are of staying, right?"
"They already know," Kitahara Shin said calmly, but with a certainty that left Ota speechless for a moment. "Having filmed in this production for the past few months, they know better than anyone else what this place is. I just need to let them know one thing: I understand their value, and I haven't exhausted that value yet."
He paused.
"Let them figure out the rest themselves."
Secretary Aida wrote down the meaning of this passage in his memo, paused for a second, and then continued writing.
Ota sat there, looking at Kitahara Shin's face, but ultimately said nothing. He lowered his head and folded the summary in his hand again.
Having followed Kitahara Shin for so many years, he always had the same feeling at times like this: this man's judgment of people's hearts was so accurate it was almost unsettling. He truly knew where everyone was, which was why he could so subtly and precisely target the point where each person needed to be touched most.
It was still dark outside the window, almost four hours before seven in the morning.
"Take care of Nishimura's matter first." Kitahara Shin stood up, picked up the summary, and said, "I'll make those calls when it's light."
"6
No one left.
But the outcome of this matter was far more complicated than the simple statement "no one left".
The actor who played the head of the criminal investigation department, on the afternoon he received Kitahara Shin's call, sent a message back to the agency saying that he had considered it and had no plans to switch agencies for the time being. But that night, he was lost in thought for a long time, repeatedly thinking about Kitahara Shin's tone on the phone. It wasn't like a boss reassuring a subordinate, nor a senior giving advice to a junior; it was more like a chess player confirming with another chess player that he knew the other's position, and that he had a use for that position.
This feeling made him somewhat uncomfortable, but there was something else about it as well.
When the veteran actor who was to play the bureau chief received the offer, he was already seriously considering it. The agency's terms were quite tempting, and his resources at Kitahara Agency weren't top-tier, so to be honest, he had some reservations.
-
But after receiving a call from Kitahara Shin, he sat at home drinking tea for half an hour, and then sent a message back to his agency: he wouldn't be going.
He couldn't explain why.
Having worked in this industry for over thirty years, he had met countless directors and producers. This was the first time he had met someone who, before you even defected, clearly knew you were wavering. But he didn't confront you or try to persuade you; he simply let you know he understood and then returned the choice to you completely.
He had never seen this kind of handling before in the industry.
On the contrary, the youngest few, the new actors who had just begun to make their mark in the drama, hardly hesitated after receiving the call.
One of them hung up the phone, stood in the room for a while, and then said to his roommate, "I'm not going."
His roommate asked him why.
He thought for a moment and said, "Because he knows what I can do, but he didn't say it."
His roommate didn't understand, and he didn't explain.
But he knew what he was saying.
During the months he spent filming "The Great Search Line," he did something he thought would go unnoticed. In a group scene where he had very little screen time, he made a subtle gesture that was completely outside the script during the two seconds the camera panned across him: he made a quick exchange of glances with Aoshima Jun in the distance, and then looked away.
There are no lines, no close-ups, just a fleeting glimpse of a background character's eyes.
But after the scene was edited out, those two seconds were kept in their entirety, and the duration of that shot was a full second longer than indicated in the script.
No one told him about it; he discovered it himself while watching the sample footage.
Kitahara Shin knew what he had done.
Moreover, Kitahara Shin felt that thing was worth keeping for even a second longer.
This one thing made it clearer to him than any contractual clause that he should stay.
After learning that no one had left, the conglomerate remained silent for a considerable period of time.
The key figures involved in this operation held an unpleasant internal meeting. During the meeting, someone criticized the agency that had poached the talent, accusing them of incompetence. The agency's manager, sitting there with a grim expression, didn't offer much explanation, but instead uttered a statement that stung everyone present: "It's not that our offer wasn't high enough. It's that those people weren't even weighing the price."
The meeting room was quiet for a moment.
No one knew how to respond to that statement, because it was so accurate that it made people feel somewhat uncomfortable.
Sometimes, a person stays in a place not because they are paid enough, but because they have seen something there that cannot be found elsewhere. And this is something that money cannot buy.
The group's bigwigs exchanged glances but remained silent.
They've been involved in capital operations for many years, and they're used to converting everyone and everything into numbers. They're used to the fact that when the numbers are large enough, there's nothing they can't acquire.
But this time, they encountered an opponent they couldn't quite understand.
It wasn't because Kitahara Shin was particularly difficult to deal with, but because the behavioral logic of the people around him was completely out of sync with the rules they were familiar with.
Following that incident, Kitahara Shin made no public statement or had his public relations department respond.
He did only one thing: at the crew meeting that week, he formally presented the initial plans for the "Bayside Shakedown" special and theatrical version to everyone for the first time.
It's not a notification, it's a discussion.
-
He printed out more than a dozen copies of the script outline and distributed them to everyone present, then said, "Take a look first, and share your thoughts."
The sound of papers being turned over lingered in the conference room for a long time.
Then someone brought up a question about the character arc of Shinji Muroi in the movie, and Shin Kitahara took over and started discussing it.
The discussion continued in this manner.
Sitting in the corner of the conference room, watching this scene, Ota Shoichi suddenly remembered something someone from the conglomerate had said: Kitahara Shin would be isolated sooner or later because in this industry, no one can fight against everyone on their own forever.
He felt there was some truth to that statement at the time.
But at this moment, looking at the dozen or so people in the conference room, he suddenly realized that he had made a mistake from the very beginning.
Kitahara Shin was never alone.
Of course, Kitahara Shin himself saw all of this most clearly.
He was well aware of how far the "Bayside Shakedown" IP could go, and he was also well aware of the limitations of the role he could play in this series.
-
The character of Aoshima Shunsaku needs to be someone who is always on the road and never finds an answer. If he continues to play the role, the character will gradually be overshadowed by his own aura, and he will eventually become "the policeman played by Kitahara Shin" instead of "Aoshima Shunsaku himself".
These two things are fundamentally different.
Therefore, he will act in the special episodes and the first theatrical film. This is a crucial moment in establishing the foundation of this series, and he must be present in person.
But going forward, this series needs a new face.
In the last few pages of the script outline, he reserved a space specifically for a new character, young, inexperienced, and still with the rough edges that haven't been smoothed out by the system.
He already knew who would play this role.
He wrote a name in pencil on the blank space of that page, then closed the notebook.
>