I, Hiroshi Nohara, the star of Japanese cinema

Chapter 19 Late Night Canteen
Nohara Hiroshi's words were like a shot of adrenaline, piercing the hearts of everyone in Suzuki's classroom. The despair that threatened to crush them was ripped open by the overwhelming confidence he exuded, allowing light to filter through.

Yes, not lost yet.

In their hands, they hold an unprecedentedly sharp blade called "Anzhiju." Its edge requires time to ferment and word of mouth to sharpen.

"I...I'll go get some coffee!" Beichuan Yao stood up abruptly, wiping the red corners of her eyes with the back of her hand. A strong smile reappeared on her face: "Everyone, cheer up! We still have work to prepare for the second episode today!"

"That's right! We can't let Nohara-kun charge ahead alone!" Hase Jisou slammed the table, as if he wanted to shatter all his previous dejection.

The depressing atmosphere in the office was swept away and replaced by a desperate excitement.

Suzuki Seito looked at this group of revitalized young people, then glanced at Nohara Hiroshi, who stood in the center of the crowd with a calm expression. He felt a mixture of emotions. He knew that this young man had become the true soul and pillar of the entire classroom.

Nohara Hiroshi nodded to everyone, turned around and left the office without saying anything else.

What he needed to do, he had done.

Next, it’s up to time and the 1.75% of the audience.

He believed that those who were seized by the terror of Dark Zhiju in the middle of the night would never remain silent.

After all, this is a result that has been verified in the previous life!

……

One o'clock in the morning, Shinjuku.

The hustle and bustle of the bright lights and feasting gradually faded away, leaving only pedestrians returning late and late-night shops still open, retaining the last bit of warmth in this city that never sleeps.

Shui Shangxiang’s late-night restaurant is the warmest place in this warmth.

The shop is not big, and the L-shaped bar can barely seat about ten people.

Shui Shangxiang stood behind the bar, silently wiping a freshly washed white porcelain bowl.

He was a man of few words, in his early thirties, with delicate features, and he always wore a starched apron. He moved slowly and calmly, with a soothing calmness.

At this moment, there were still six or seven customers left in the store.

"Boss, another big glass of draft beer." A middle-aged man in a suit with a crooked tie was lying on the bar and waved with a drunken face.

He is an employee of a nearby advertising company, his name is Tanaka, and he comes here three or four times a week.

"Mr. Tanaka, drink less. You have to go to work tomorrow." Sitting next to him was a young woman with delicate makeup named Mingmei. She worked in a bar not far away and had just got off work.

She picked up a piece of tamagoyaki and ate it in small bites with an elegant posture, which seemed somewhat out of place with the surrounding environment, yet strangely integrated.

"Go to work? What work!" Tanaka suddenly raised his head, his bloodshot eyes filled with resentment: "That damn guy revised my proposal seventeen times! Seventeen times! And in the end, he actually used the first draft! I really want to throw that stack of scrap paper in his face!"

While cursing, he took a big sip of the beer handed to him by Shui Shangxiang, and then slammed the glass heavily on the table, making a dull "bang" sound.

No one found it strange, as such complaints were heard every day in late-night restaurants.

To ease the oppressive atmosphere, Mingmei cast her gaze towards the old TV hanging in the corner and smiled, changing the subject: "Come to think of it, Mr. Tanaka, didn't you complain about that horrible TV Tokyo show last week? You said it was uglier than your client's face."

"Ha! Forget it!" Tanaka seemed to have found a new outlet for his anger when he mentioned this. He immediately became energetic. "That reality show called 'Panic Room'? It's utter garbage! They just find a few third-rate actors, splash some ketchup on them, have them hide in a closet and scream a few times, and they think they're going to scare people? I'm telling you, that thing is even scarier than the minister's life-threatening face I saw this morning!"

His words drew a burst of laughter. At the other end of the bar, a young man wearing glasses, who looked like a college student, pushed up his glasses and chimed in, "It really is awful, completely unoriginal. I stayed up all night two weeks ago to finish my thesis and watched an episode about an abandoned hospital, but the 'Bound Spirit' had the laundry label still on his white coat. It was so jarring."

"That's right, it's not scary at all. It would be better to just watch cartoons earlier." Mingmei also complained with a sweet smile.

Shui Shangxiang listened quietly, with a slight smile on his face.

He was open until four in the morning, and this TV was his silent companion. He watched almost every episode of Tokyo TV's late-night program. The customers were right, that "Panic Room" was indeed shoddy to the point of being outrageous.

At this moment, the TV screen suddenly flickered and the picture turned into a noisy snowflake.

"Oh? Is it broken?" Tanaka pointed at the TV with drunken eyes.

Shui Shangxiang walked over, tapped the top of the old TV twice, and then turned the knob that had poor contact.

The snowflakes disappeared and the picture became clear again.

It is TV Tokyo's channel.

"Tsk, it's that crappy show again." Tanaka couldn't help but curl his lips in disdain when he saw the Tokyo TV logo and was about to continue drinking.

But the sound coming from the TV made everyone stunned.

That was not the exaggerated and cheap sound effect in "Panic Room", but a distant and eerie children's singing, accompanied by the "bang, bang, bang" sound of a small drum.

A man wearing a yellow mask with a strange smile on it appeared next to an old bicycle. On the back seat of the bicycle was a small wooden stage.

"Don't miss it if you pass by, the time for Anzhiju has come..."

The voice coming from behind the mask was hoarse, flat, and without a trace of emotion, but it was like a cold hand, silently caressing the back of everyone's neck.

"Huh?" Mingmei exclaimed in surprise, "Did they change the program?"

"Ha! It must be that Panic Room was so rubbish that its ratings plummeted and it got canceled!" Tanaka smirked, "Serves you right! It's because you guys can't make a good show!"

Young people who looked like college students also looked at the screen curiously: "What is this? A paper puppet show? The style is so weird..."

Mizukami Xiang also stopped what he was doing and looked at the TV.

As professional film and television producers, people like Masao Iwata see "roughness", "crudeness" and "a mess of color filling".

But as ordinary audiences, Shui Shangxiang and his guests saw something completely different.

The deliberately aged, water-stained and scratched paper's yellowed hue resembles a long-forgotten photograph, exuding a stale air. The figures in the painting, with their simple lines and flat colors, lack light and shadow, and lack gradients, appear particularly stiff and eerie.

Especially the masked man, he was clearly smiling, but people could not feel a trace of warmth, only the coldness from the bone marrow.

The late-night restaurant, which was originally full of conversation and laughter, suddenly became quiet.

Everyone's attention was drawn to the small screen.

The masked man drew back the curtain of the wooden stage, revealing the first picture.

【Anzhiju·Fu Nu】

(End of this chapter)