Chapter 144: The War of Public Opinion

By the next morning, the words Akiwara Yuto had spoken at the press conference were quickly presented to the public through newspapers across the country.

Aside from a few media outlets that chose to report on the matter lightly out of concern for their business ties with Mantan Publishing, these outlets only accounted for a fraction of the total.

After all, for the vast majority of media, Mantan Publishing was merely one of many clients, but the public's attention was where the real profit lay!

Furthermore, the law does not punish the masses; since their peers had all reported on it, Mantan Publishing could not possibly blame just one of them!

With this intention, a large number of sensationalist headlines appeared in these newspapers, with content that was as varied as it was diverse.

Some read "Talented Author Nearly Commits Suicide Due to Mantan Publishing's Persecution," others "Talented Author Speaks Out, Denouncing Mantan Awards Scandal," and still others titled "Mystery Writers Association Publicly Criticizes Mantan Publishing?"

But regardless of the report, the content within was coincidentally very similar; besides elaborating on Akiwara Yuto's words, they also interviewed industry insiders to explain the cause and effect of the incident.

This allowed many people to suddenly learn the name Akiwara Yuto, and they could not help but feel sympathy in their hearts.

After all, from these reports, Akiwara Yuto had been crafted into the image of a perfect victim.

A so-called perfect victim is someone who basically has no points that can be criticized or attacked, and who has committed no unreasonable acts that violate social norms.

And Akiwara Yuto himself was an orphan from an orphanage in Hokkaido who, through his own talent and hard work, became a debut author.

It could be said that he was a textbook case of a successful class reversal in Japanese society.

Beyond that, others proved that Akiwara Yuto had been busy working all along.

After all, in less than half a year since his debut, he had successively created four works: "Zoo," "The Devotion of Suspect X," "Negligent Homicide," and "Death of a Mystery Writer."

Such speed already qualified him as a very prolific author.

A talented author from a poor background who changed his fate through struggle and had few moral flaws had actually ended up being blacklisted because of Mantan Publishing's selfishness.

This proved how vulnerable an individual was in the face of capital and conglomerates!

And this, inevitably, gave many people a sense of "grieving for the death of a fellow creature"! They even began to gnash their teeth at Mantan Publishing!

Many people wrote letters of complaint and sent them to the Mantan Publishing headquarters, demanding a public apology from the relevant personnel. One afternoon, the complaint lines at Mantan Publishing were even jammed by dissatisfied members of the public.

Facing the public opinion attacks from the outside, Mantan Publishing did not sit idly by.

After Deputy President Kikuchi Tai returned to the headquarters by taxi overnight, the Public Relations Bureau quickly took action and carried out a series of reactive measures over the following few days.

As a major publisher, if they were to immediately admit their mistakes and hold a press conference to apologize, it would be no different from publicly admitting to the outside world that they had indeed committed these acts and had engaged in fraud regarding the Mantan Publishing Literary Award.

If that were to happen, the image and public relations that Mantan Publishing had spent a large amount of money to build in recent years would undoubtedly be declared a failure. It would also cause a major setback to Mantan Publishing's literary business.

Once the charge of persecuting a debut author was confirmed, not only would other authors refuse to submit their work to Mantan Publishing in the future, but current authors would also choose to jump ship.

After multiple considerations, the Mantan Publishing Public Relations Bureau contacted some media outlets with deep upstream and downstream cooperation, attempting to "fish in troubled waters."

First, they had Kikuchi Tai, who was stationed in the Shikoku region, rush back to Tokyo to quickly arrange interviews with some media, deliberately emphasizing Akiwara Yuto's arrogance and various "diva-like" behaviors during their collaboration.

After these reports were published, they did indeed have some effect, causing a small number of people to become "skeptical."

But overall, due to the late publication time and the small number of reports, most of the public did not buy it.

After all, from any angle, Akiwara Yuto, as a newly debuted author, had no reason or motive to take the initiative to provoke a behemoth like Mantan Publishing.

After discovering the limited effect, the Mantan Publishing Public Relations Bureau found Asano Aiko, attempting to have her come forward to accept an interview on a Tokyo television program with Kikuchi Tai, and to prove Akiwara Yuto's "character issues" during the interview.

Asano Aiko "hesitated" for a day, then set the condition of accepting the television interview in exchange for a salary increase and a job transfer.

After the Public Relations Bureau communicated with the higher-ups, they immediately agreed.

Although Takei Kohei raised objections to this plan, under the requirements of the Public Relations Bureau, the plan proceeded as scheduled.

Time quickly arrived at the day of the television interview. Asano Aiko followed Kikuchi Tai, was driven to Tokyo Television by a car, and took the elevator to the interview set.

This live interview was scheduled for 9: 0 PM, a time slot only slightly inferior to prime time, so the viewership data was extremely impressive.

In the Public Relations Bureau's plan, if the editor who had previously been "thanked" by Akiwara Yuto could prove his arrogance, it would surely be able to reverse the unfavorable public opinion against Mantan Publishing to a considerable extent.

Tokyo Television, interview set.

The attractive female host held the microphone, turned to Kikuchi Tai and Asano Aiko sitting on the other side, and asked gently: "Editor-in-Chief Kikuchi, could you briefly describe your opinion of Akiwara Yuto-sensei?"

Kikuchi Tai sat on the sofa on the other side, nodded, and replied: "I personally admire Akiwara-sensei's talent very much, especially in terms of commercial appeal; he is very capable of attracting readers. However..."

"However?" The female host nodded in confusion.

Kikuchi Tai continued: "However, I personally believe that Akiwara Yuto's works overemphasize commercialism, thereby neglecting the literary nature of the creation. Because of this, Mantan Publishing decided to award the Silver Prize of the Literary Award to him, hoping to use this to hone his progress as he continues to explore the path of literature."

These words of his came from a script already written by the Public Relations Bureau and handed to him; the purpose remained to salvage Mantan Publishing's public image.

A very important point in the series of reports currently unfavorable to Mantan Publishing was the belief that Akiwara Yuto had been treated unfairly regarding the Mantan Publishing Literary Award.

So now they needed to avoid the real issue and use a reason from another aspect to divert the public's attention.

Everything he was saying now was to tell the public a fact.

We did not fail to award the Gold Prize to Akiwara Yuto because of unfair reasons, but because the literary quality of his work was indeed insufficient!

Besides that, we also wanted to hone him!

But for Kikuchi Tai himself, the series of events that had occurred this time was truly somewhat unexpected.

In his view, he had originally been destined to be exiled to that dump in Shikoku, with no chance of ever rising again.

But he did not expect that because of those words Akiwara Yuto spoke at the Mystery Writers Association, Mantan Publishing suffered a not-so-small public relations crisis, which gave him a chance to turn things around.

What he had to do now was to firmly grasp this opportunity.

As for some lies, or apologizing to Akiwara Yuto, he could no longer care.

However, what surprised him somewhat was that he had originally thought Asano Aiko would never accept this interview, but she had actually accepted the Public Relations Bureau's request.

He felt a bit uneasy, but he thought about it—Asano Aiko had even "opened her mouth like a lion" to ask for a deputy editor-in-chief position, so she shouldn't be faking it in this regard.

The female host nodded and continued to ask: "Then, in the process of collaborating with 'New,' what was Akiwara Yuto-sensei's attitude like?"

Kikuchi Tai coughed, then, according to the script provided by the Public Relations Bureau, began to "recite" a series of Akiwara Yuto's shortcomings, including arrogance, greed for money, contradictions in his relationships with men and women, and even bullying other authors.

Although the Japanese public has always been tolerant of authors, if a person's moral and character issues are too prominent, it will also arouse the disgust of many people.

After speaking for a full 20 minutes, Kikuchi Tai finally finished his words.

The attractive female host nodded and turned to Asano Aiko on the other side, "Editor Asano, as the editor responsible for discovering Akiwara-sensei, do you agree with Editor-in-Chief Kikuchi's words?"

Asano Aiko took the microphone and was silent for a while.

Under the confused gazes of the other two, she stood up, bowed to the camera, and then her eyes turned red as she said in a choked voice.

"Dear viewers, everything that was just said is a lie!"