Chapter 13: Eyes Behind the Screen
The moment the stream ended, the ripple began.
In a dim editorial room in Tokyo's Minato ward, lit only by the glow of dual monitors, Kenji Oura sat frozen in place. The headphones on his ears still buzzed with the last notes of the orchestral Blue Bird. He had replayed it three times now, and each time, it made his skin prickle.
He wasn't some wide-eyed teenager. He was thirty-four, a mid-level editor at Studio Signal, one of the dozens of mid-budget anime studios constantly pushing to get noticed. He had heard thousands of demo tracks. But this—this came out of nowhere. And it sounded… impossible.
Not because of the quality.
But because it shouldn't exist.
He clicked back through the screen recording he'd captured earlier. The source stream was gone. The URL had blinked out the moment the music ended. But his capture was clean enough. 4K. Full fidelity.
No watermark. No channel logo.
No identity.
Just a single word embedded in the metadata: Re:tro.
Kenji leaned forward, brow furrowed.
He opened his company chat, typing a message to his colleague:
Kenji: "Have you heard of Re:tro? Music stream. No label. Some kind of mystery broadcast?"
Asuka: "Nope. What is it?"
Kenji: "Just watch. I'll send a cut."
He trimmed a two-minute clip from the recording and exported it.
He didn't even realize it yet, but in the hours to come, that small clip would begin to circulate among studio insiders like a secret cigarette passed between soldiers. Editors, animators, music coordinators—some old, some new—each of them watched the stream with the same mix of awe and confusion.
And none of them could explain it.
Back in Cal's apartment, the evening air was unusually still.
He was staring at the system map, which was now glowing with new colors. Green lines snaked not just across Japan, but toward India, Europe, South America—and now, Australia.
[Stream Impact Update]
[Estimated Views (Direct + Mirror): 4,300+]
[New Response Nodes: 9]
[Industry Watch Level: Increased – "High Curiosity"]
[System Forecast: 'Snowball Effect' Phase Initiated]
[Warning: Sudden Fame Risk — Would You Like to Enable "Obfuscation Layer"? (Y/N)]
Cal paused at the prompt.
A faint worry tugged at him. The point of this project wasn't to be famous. It was to share, to preserve, to enrich. But staying completely anonymous… that was becoming harder.
He hovered over "Y" for a few seconds.
Then clicked it.
[Obfuscation Layer Enabled – Metadata Cloaking | Stream Header Scrambler | Mirror Source Redirection]
[New Stream Alias Set: "GhostFrame_JP"]
It wasn't much. But it would make direct traces harder—just enough to throw off determined tech staff.
Even so, Cal knew the time for hiding in shadows was over.
The next morning, the Re:tro name appeared in a Japanese internet culture blog: Nihon Netwave. The post was short, speculative.
"A mysterious streamer is curating impossible-quality content—some never-before-heard tracks and anime visuals that don't exist in public databases. Theories include ARGs, advanced AIs, or inside leaks. But fans are calling the broadcasts mesmerizing. One commenter wrote: 'It's like listening to the future whispering back to us.'"
By noon, two translation threads had already popped up on Reddit and Weibo.
And in a studio conference room on the outskirts of Akihabara, a junior producer at an upstart label named Hana Tokita printed screenshots of the forum posts and pinned them to a corkboard.
She didn't work in anime. She worked in music scouting. But if someone was broadcasting unreleased vocal performances at studio-grade quality, she needed to know who and how.
Cal stayed home all day, watching the numbers.
The stream wasn't viral in the traditional sense. There were no trend tags, no TikToks, no interviews. But among enthusiasts, artists, and forum dwellers—it was like a slow detonation. A puzzle wrapped in beauty.
People were asking questions.
Who was behind it?
Where was it coming from?
How were they getting access to unreleased works?
Of course, they weren't wrong to ask. But no one could imagine the truth—that the music was from a decade in the future, siphoned through a temporal broadcast system granted to a lonely man with no connections and no audience. No one suspected that Cal, who hadn't spoken aloud to another person in days, was behind the screen the whole time.
And the system stayed quiet.
No new missions.
Just a steady roll of donation point trickles. A viewer from Canada sent 30 points with a note: "Thank you. I cried."
Cal didn't reply.
But he read the message ten times.
By midnight, he was already preparing the next stream.
This time, something bolder.
His first anime-only showcase had shown him how deep the emotional resonance could go. The music stream? It amplified that effect. Now, he would bridge the two.
He selected an episode from Demon Slayer, carefully edited to include commentary segments where he explained character backstories, cultural inspirations, and music choices—like a high-production Blu-ray extra, but framed for 2010 viewers.
[Stream Mode: Enhanced Playback + Director Commentary]
[Language Track: Japanese with Sub overlays]
[Estimated Stream Length: 34 minutes]
[Audio Bitrate Lock: 320kbps+ (Musical Segments)]
[Stream Header Alias: "GhostFrame_JP"]
[Live Countdown Initiated: T-minus 6 Hours, 14 Minutes]
This wasn't just a broadcast anymore.
It was education.
It was preservation.
It was performance.
Cal made a small bowl of rice, added soy and egg, and ate in silence as the system finalized the stream render.
Somewhere, in the deep corners of the 2010 internet, another whisper was about to begin.
At 3:00 a.m. in Berlin, a programmer named Henrik scrolled through an IRC channel dedicated to rare Japanese subculture. Someone had dropped a link with the simple message:
"You ever see sound?"
He clicked.
The stream played without warning.
Henrik dropped his energy drink halfway through the third scene.
The lighting. The sound design. The pacing. The colors. All of it felt wrong for a 2010 production. Too sharp. Too modern. But the commentary was in fluent Japanese—subtitled with care, tone respectful, even reverent.
It wasn't a leak.
It was a love letter.
Henrik didn't sleep that night. He clipped the stream and sent it to an online friend who taught animation theory in Canada.
The wave moved again.
[System Update – 48 Hours Post Stream]
[Total Combined Views: 10,400+]
[Language Mirror Count: 8]
[Thread Visibility: "Growing – Targeted Industry Discussions Detected"]
[Related Names in Conversation: "Studio Trigger" | "Eve Music Team" | "Yonezu Fansub Net" | "NHK Junior Analyst"]
Cal stared at the names.
Trigger?
NHK?
Even fan circles around Eve?
It was happening.
He didn't know how far it would go.
But for the first time since this all began, he didn't feel like he was just streaming.
He was shaping the future's memory.
Carefully.
Piece by piece.
Like rebuilding something that hadn't broken yet.
End of Chapter 13