Stumbling into the Den

An anxious day awaited the team after the meet and greet. It would still be a week before they got the first week sales on the book to know how well things went. Judging from the turnout at the Aoi Kame it wouldn’t have been a lot of sales, but there were a lot of readers in Japan.

Shigeki looked around nervously from his desk. He hadn’t been there with Yumi and Kasusue and only heard second hand information from them about how it went. She sent him a message on her phone since he seemed to respond better there. “Everything okay?”

“The book’s going to fail.”

That was more direct and pessimistic than she expected from them. Though perhaps it was progress as another way to look at it. “We don’t know that. It’s only been a day and we haven’t even seen the numbers.”

“Debuts hardly go well and he didn’t have a lot of time for a good campaign.”

“All fair points, but let’s see how it goes before assuming.”

“It’s going to be bad.” Yumi glanced over the desk at him. He didn’t notice her looking and there was hardly a good view of his face with everything in the way. She could understand his feelings, but he just needed to wait.

Chapter 564 - Stumbling into the Den

Even with them waiting on the turn out from the Soseki job, it was technically considered done. The only thing that lingered with them from it was going to be if they got a bonus from the success and it would have to be pretty huge for them to get a bonus from what Yumi understood.

Which meant that they were already onto their next client. The team split back up into two as there were three new rush jobs that came in. Yumi looked over it with the others and she could already see what was going to work. “Ogura and Shigeki, I think you should take the Ishiguro job and the Asahara job falls on us.”

“There’s still the Shirokawa job,” reminded Kasuse.

“Yeah, I was thinking about that one and I had a wild idea.”

Ogura laughed a little having not worked with the ‘new’ Yumi as much as Kasuse. He leaned over his desk partition curious. “And what’s that?”

“Bouncing it around.” It was a short answer that required more explanation, but she wanted the initial reaction to gauge what they picked up.

Kasuse muttered a little to himself before speaking up, likely in thought figuring out what she meant. “So like taking turns on it?”

“Huh, that’s what you got from that?”

“Yeah, Kasuse’s got the idea. This one’s a bigger one, but we can’t just all focus on it. So I figured we all hit it with our expertise at the different stages. Communication and coordination will be key for it.”

“No doubt, not being part of the process the whole way is risky.”

“Though her idea would keep us free to focus on the other clients in the meantime.”

“True, if it works it would mean we could give our all to all the clients. But you’re going to have to take point on this Mizuno.”

Yumi smiled a little seeing that he already picked on things. That was her plan all along. “Right. I put in the groundwork for you guys and then you drop in.”

As things started to form in his mind, Kasuse rubbed his chin a little more confidently now seeing the whole thing. “Yeah, I think this will work. You did great on the Soseki. I filled in the blanks with the blueprint you gave me. Let’s do this!”

“Certainly unconventional, but I like the boldness. You good with this Shigeki?” He nodded back to Ogura politely. Of the group, Yumi expected this to favor him the most since it let him shine where he could without the stress of looking weak in areas that didn’t suit him. The success of this would give everyone the confidence that they carried their part.

With a game plan, the team headed off into their work. The nature of her plan also meant that she would have a lot of work ahead of her. She was used to bearing the load, as she had to do with Aya, but these were very different time tables that she was working with and things were still rather new. Even if she started to get her head around it, she relied on the team to make up for whatever she might have brought before. Thankfully, she had planning and leadership experience that saved things for her.

As the time passed, Yumi had so much of her time focused on work that she ended up forgetting about her main task for most of the week. She never had a chance to do any investigating with Miki. Though when she arrived the following week in the morning, Yumi felt an annoying pang in the back of her head that she got sidetracked.

Though she was surprised to see her out on the floor. Normally she stayed away, likely busy with management and high level work, things they were unaware of. Which made Yumi a little curious if she had a schedule change to report or something to be showing up in person rather than sending an email to the team. “Miss Tomori, something wrong?”

“Oh not for me.”

‘Alright, that’s a very odd way to phrase it.’ There was a glint in her eye that told Yumi she had something that she was up to, which became apparent very soon.

Miki handed over a paper that listed a lot of words and numbers, something that Yumi didn’t recognize at first glance, though perhaps should have. “The first week sales came in. Soseki’s book is number fifteen.”

‘That’s where I predicted it to hit roughly, though I thought it’d probably fall in around nineteen or twenty, so fifteen is better than I calculated, not that we put that on the projections. We did monthly projections rather than weekly.’ It was a far cry from what they had promised in the strategy. So Yumi had an idea what Miki was standing before her now.

She nodded, accepting the paper and looking over it with greater intent. The other books that she researched roughly went about how Kasuse and she guessed. Seeing the actual numbers helped her re-evaluated her personal tracking.

Looking back at Miki, she could tell that she was expecting to see worry from Yumi. There was an unusual predatory look in her eyes like she was just waiting for that moment of weakness to strike. It was weird and unsettling seeing it from Miki. She didn’t count on that from her, but she had so little information built around the woman still.

Contrary to what Miki expected, Yumi looked straight at her and smiled. “That’s great, he did better than I projected. He’s still got the rest of the month left to go, this is a great start.”

A flicker in her brow betrayed Miki’s reaction. It made Yumi internally grin. Miki was no Aya and she was very easy to read when provoked. “First week sales where the most will happen especially for a debuting author.”

“That’s conventional thinking and in most cases that’d be corrected. However, I’m forecasting for this a long tail and word of mouth to carry the book. Plus he couldn’t have come out at a better time.” Yumi pointed to several of the other books listed. “The top three are popular, but only amongst their dedicated fan bases and fall off really hard. These here have already been on sale and their numbers are on the decline. On top of that, the only other book in his genre competing with him is back at number thirty. He’s got the wind at his back.”

The woman ground her teeth seeing that Yumi didn’t back down or even shake in confidence. What made it worse was that she had valid points that Miki couldn’t rightly contest. They were still playing a statistics game to predict sales so the proof would be at the end of the month. But she looked like she was vibrating with frustration. If she shook anymore her heel might snap off. “I guess we’ll see which one of us wins our bet.”

Miki then stormed off as though she had victory, despite everyone at the table seeing only defeat for her. Once she was far enough out of sight, Kasuse rolled up behind her. “What bet did you make with her?”

That was something that confused her as well. She tried to recall when she bet anything with the woman. “I didn’t if I recall. Unless she’s saying my statement that he’ll be the best seller this month.”

“Damn, don’t go saying that to her. She’s going to hold you over the coals for saying that.”

“What? It’s going to happen,” she said point blank to him.

Kasuse looked over at Ogura who was staring now. “What the hell did you drink to give you that blind confidence?”

“And share it with the rest of us.”

When she said to Miki it was more of a bluff as she hadn’t looked at all of the facts yet, she just needed Miki to get the approval. So she just said what she needed to show how confident Yumi was about this being the right course. If he didn’t make it to number one, she didn’t see it as a loss. Though that didn’t seem to be the same mindset the rest had. Not that she felt anymore that was unlikely to happen. “I looked at the facts and did the research. Anyone would reach the same conclusion.”

“Mizuno, we didn’t even say that on the projections. We said he’d get like fifth at best.”

“Because I could tell you weren’t feeling good about saying we’d do better.”

“Because we won’t. It’s a good book and all, but he’s a debut author and we’re not exactly the larger publisher in the business. If he went with someone else, maybe he’d get number one.”

“If it had been another month, I’d agree, but we got lucky. This is a good month for him.”

He shook his head seeing that there was no talking Yumi down. “I don’t know where you’re getting all of this confidence. You’re a crazy woman, you know that.”

Ogura walked around the partition to Yumi’s desk noticing that the little incident got some attention from others on the floor. “You don’t just do that in front of Tomori. She can make your life actual hell! Anyone that she doesn’t like she burns.”

‘Finally the truth is starting to come out.’ Hearing this finally started to make Yumi happy. Though there were a lot of pieces still missing from the puzzle.

“Ogura’s right. You better hope that she doesn’t take that as an attack. Otherwise you’re going to find yourself getting nothing but shit jobs.”

“I understand you’re worried, but wait until the end of the month. If she tries anything before then I can make enough of a case for the high uppers to stall.”

The two men looked at each other confused how Yumi still didn’t seem to understand what they were telling her. “How can you be calm and certain about this? You really aren’t the same woman that joined the team.”

Yumi smiled and appreciated their concern even if it was unwarranted. “Just trust me. I’m a tough girl.”

“Apparently…”

They went back to their desk to work and Yumi noticed her phone buzzing with a message. She looked down to see that it had come from Shigeki. “That was cool.” A short message, but gave her a little bit of pride to see him being more open with his thoughts.

In Yumi’s mind a month would pass quickly and there wouldn’t be any troubles. She knew how things would play out and they would show proof in the end that she had been correct. However, she didn’t count on the irrational nature of human beings when threatened. It was something that she was used to seeing and had taken advantage of many times, but she didn’t think it would manifest in this world and that was a misstep.

It was during an early presentation that Kasuse and her were giving to the Asahara clients. Things were still in the primary stages, but they wanted to see what was already put together. And to Yumi’s surprise Miki decided to sit in on the meeting. It didn’t take long for her to read the look on the woman’s face and know what she aimed to do. There was little that she was going to be able to do about a spiteful person and Yumi hadn’t prepared to be battling her manager in the middle of a meeting. “Miss Mizuno, do you have the advertising strategy outline for the Nara prefecture where they’re based?”