Chapter 256

Akiwara Yuto was unaware of Toei Film's thought that he was a "sucker."

In fact, no matter how the box office of "Memories of Murder" does, he does not intend to hand over the copyright to Toei Film again.

Because he hates some of their "big company diseases" from the bottom of his heart.

And even if he doesn't look for them, he can find other big film companies to cooperate with, even if the conditions are a bit worse, it doesn't matter.

After all, if there is no box office share, the difference in the signing fee is about the same as having none.

June 30, the luxury apartment where Akiwara Yuto lives.

Akiwara Yuto sat in the study, looked at the stack of traditional literary journals that Satake Maki had bought, and asked, "Satake, tell me the results of your investigation."

Satake Maki nodded and then reported the results of her investigation into publications in the field of traditional literature.

"Currently, the publishers that are still operating traditional literary journals, excluding some small journals and school journals with a circulation of only a thousand copies, are only the three major publishers: Toei, Keihan, and Keikokan. As for Mantansha, they already abandoned the relevant journals in the past two years."

"Toei's traditional literary journal is called *Jewel*, with a circulation of about 20,000 copies; Keihan's traditional literary journal is called *Yuno*, with a circulation of about 30,000 copies; and Keikokan's literary journal is called *Wenlv*, with a circulation of about 10,000."

After hearing this set of data, Akiwara Yuto's expression became strange.

He knew that traditional literature was not favored by the public, but he didn't expect the sales to be this low.

Combined, the sales of these magazines are not even one-fifth of the current sales of *April Youth*?!

It's no wonder that Mantansha gave up on this field early on; after all, they don't even look at journals like *New* with a circulation of less than 30,000 copies.

After Satake Maki finished her report, she asked puzzledly, "Akiwara, are you planning to write traditional literary works?"

Akiwara Yuto did not deny it, but opened the drawer, took out a stack of manuscripts, and handed them over.

Satake Maki was also used to his style and didn't say anything more, taking the manuscript paper to read.

And as she read, she became immersed in the story.

"The story is about a servant who was kicked out by his master during a war era, struggling in his mind between becoming a robber and starving to death.

At this moment, he happened to walk to a place piled with dead bodies everywhere, which is the place called Luo Shengmen. He gathered his courage and wanted to go in to find some property, but he unexpectedly discovered an old woman in rags pulling hair from the head of a young woman's corpse.

He rushed up and said, 'You heartless person, you don't even spare a corpse.'

The old woman explained that she just wanted to use this hair to make a wig to make a living.

She said, 'Once, this woman used snake meat dried as dried fish to sell. People who ate the dried fish thought it was delicious, and the woman was able to maintain her livelihood. I don't think this woman did anything wrong; she is just like me, doing it for survival!'

Thus, the servant realized: since it is for survival, what is there that cannot be done?

So he robbed the old woman of her clothes and fled, and since then, no one has ever seen him again."

This story is very short, totaling less than 3,000 words, and Satake Maki finished reading it in about 10 minutes.

Seeing that she had finished reading, Akiwara Yuto asked, "Satake, what do you think of the writing?"

Satake Maki felt that this story was very thought-provoking, but she couldn't figure out the connotation inside.

After hesitating for a while, she decided to tell the truth: "Sorry, I don't know much about pure literary works, so I can't evaluate it."

Akiwara Yuto didn't expect that even an industry insider like Satake Maki, who came from an editorial background, would say this.

He thought for a while and found that it was actually not strange.

Compared with the intuitiveness of detective fiction, traditional literature or pure literature is more difficult to analyze.

Many core ideas and connotations often require the interpretation of others to be recognized by the public and judged as good or bad.

Like this famous "Luo Shengmen," it was actually a work from Ryunosuke Akutagawa's university days, and it sank very quickly after being published.

And what really made him show his talent in the literary world was another work he published in the following years, "The Nose."

After Natsume Soseki saw this work, he thought he was very talented and took him as a student.

But after Ryunosuke Akutagawa passed away, the status of the two works was the exact opposite.

"Luo Shengmen" is almost known to everyone in Japan, while "The Nose" has been heard by few people.

In short, the fame of traditional literary or pure literary works often requires a lot of luck.

Thinking of this, Akiwara Yuto's confidence in this work also dropped a lot.

However, since it didn't take much effort, he wasn't too disappointed.

After handing the work to Satake Maki, he said again, "Please help me hand this manuscript to Keihan's *Yuno* journal."

According to the relationship, he should actually hand this work to Keikokan, but the circulation of that journal from Keikokan is really too low.

So after considering it, he decided to hand it to Keihan and let their journal publish this work.

Satake Maki took the manuscript and indicated that she understood.

And after she left, Akiwara Yuto received a call from Takuto Utsumi, "Akiwara-sensei, is it convenient for you to have time to participate in the audition?"

Upon hearing this request, Akiwara Yuto was a bit surprised.

In his expectation, after Takuto Utsumi signed the contract with him, he still needed to deal with a lot of corresponding preparation work before he could start selecting roles.

But he didn't know if it was because his efficiency was too high or if he had misunderstood the film production process, but he had actually entered this step so quickly.

To tell the truth, he was really quite interested.

After all, he had voluntarily declined the audition for "Furuhata Ninzaburo" before for the sake of avoiding suspicion.

But now, for this "Memories of Murder," as the story creator and main investor, he naturally couldn't let it go.

July 2, which was the day of the audition, Akiwara Yuto took a private car to the place Takuto Utsumi rented.

After getting off the car, he began to look at the office space that Takuto Utsumi had temporarily rented—a dilapidated logistics warehouse in Akiba County.

Although it was dilapidated, the equipment inside was already fully equipped, and it looked quite decent.

And after discovering Akiwara Yuto's arrival, a staff member in a blue uniform quickly called Takuto Utsumi.

After seeing Akiwara Yuto, Takuto Utsumi immediately said with a full face of smiles, "Please come with me."

Akiwara Yuto nodded and followed him into a room on the upper right of the warehouse, finding that it was already full of people.

They were all male actors, ranging in age from 20 to over 40, with different body types—tall, short, fat, and thin, all were there.

These actors waiting to be selected were all sitting quietly on plastic chairs, reading the audition script that had been distributed in advance. After seeing Takuto Utsumi bring Akiwara Yuto in, many people also noticed.

Some actors who had seen Akiwara Yuto's photos in the newspaper immediately stood up, bowed, and said sincerely, "Akiwara-sensei, hello!"

After these people shouted, the others also saw that the situation was not right and all stood up together to bow and say hello.

Akiwara Yuto turned around to look and found that everyone was maintaining a bowing posture, and his footsteps paused for a moment.

He thought about it, said "Thank you for your hard work," and left.

These actors waiting to be selected did not speak but continued to lower their heads and maintain a respectful posture, and Akiwara Yuto just walked past like that.

In terms of status, he is a famous writer, and most of them are just ordinary third or fourth-tier actors; they are not people of the same class.

Besides this point, he is the one who can decide whether to hire the other party with just one word.

So their bowing performance also had the intention of leaving a good impression on him in advance.

Akiwara Yuto walked to the front row of seats and sat in the position between Takuto Utsumi and Yongshan Yiren, and two middle-aged men were also sitting on his left and right.

Through the introduction, Akiwara Yuto learned that these two people were the executive director and the producer, who were invited by Takuto Utsumi from two different film companies.

Upon seeing Akiwara Yuto, the big investor, these two people also showed great "enthusiasm" and handed over their business cards.

After some polite exchanges, Takuto Utsumi asked with a smile, "Akiwara-sensei, shall we start then?"

"Okay," Akiwara Yuto said.

Then Takuto Utsumi let an assistant standing on the side call people one by one according to the actor list.

Akiwara Yuto settled his mind, preparing to perform his role as a judge well.

After all, whether a film can succeed, the actor factor accounts for a very large proportion.

What he needs to do here is to find the actor candidate who best fits the original work!