Zenith of Desire: The Hollywood Incubus

Selected Confirmad Candidates:

78. Jessica Chastain

81. Billie Eilish

82. Margaret Qualley

83. Lana Del Rey

84. Song Hye-Kyo

85. Angela Yeung (Angelababy)

86. Karlie Kloss

87. Barbara Palvin

88. Melissa Benoist

89. Hadid Sisters (Bella & Gigi)

91. Dakota Johnson

92. Hailey Baldwin

93. Enami Asa

94. Remu Suzumori

95. Minami Hamabe

96. MISAMO (Minatozaki Sana, Momo Hirai, and Mina Myoi)

99. Kazuha Nakamura

Now that’s leaves us with 6-9 Rings. So vote quickly if someone from your team wasn’t included at CH : 201. Harem: The 108 Rings: The First 80 Confirmed Bearers.

*****

Survival in 1998 Tokyo proved rare; securing a stable, high-paying job with a well-capitalized firm felt akin to winning a lottery ticket.

Because of that grim, undeniable reality, the employees inside Meyers Media Japan didn’t just casually clock in for a shift—they went to war. Every single new hire, and every converted veteran executive, poured one hundred and twenty percent of their waking souls into their roles. The sheer will to prove their worth to the young Chairman drove them, knowing intimately that the corporate graveyard waited outside for anyone failing to keep up the pace.

The operational tempo escalated from frantic to a total, coordinated blitz the exact moment the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi capital flooded the company’s accounts. The grand, impossible blueprints Marvin laid out on the table finally ignited into physical reality.

New, eager faces appeared in the hallways every single morning, clutching polished resumes and desperate hope. And the old faces, the legacy people working there before Meyers, started to look at Marvin differently when he walked past their desks.

They didn’t look at him with loyalty. Not yet. True loyalty required time and shared blood or time. But they looked at him with something closely resembling awe, carrying a terrifying, dawning belief.

The six-story structure in Minato never structurally supported this level of output. Built in the late eighties, during the opulent fever dream of Japan’s asset price bubble, it originally housed a bloated trading company that went spectacularly bust in ’92. A logistics firm that couldn’t make payroll occupied it next.

Then, nothing—just empty, carpeted floors and dust motes dancing in thin shafts of afternoon light for years.

Now, the building vibrated.

Crews gutted the first floor and converted it into a proper, high-end reception area rivaling the lobbies of Sony or Nintendo. A young, impeccably dressed woman named Sato—a former international airline customer service manager poached two weeks ago—sat behind a sleek, curved desk. Her smile appeared flawlessly professional but genuinely warm.

Directly behind her, a flat-panel plasma screen displayed the sleek *Meyers Media Japan* logo in brushed silver against a deep, oceanic blue.

The plasma screen cost vastly more than Sato’s entire annual salary, but Marvin insisted on the expenditure.

*”Perception is the foundation of reality,”* he told Gregg Araki when the invoice arrived. *”If we visually look like we’ve already won the war, the industry will unconsciously treat us as if we have.”*

The second and third floors belonged to Scarlet Capital Japan. Here, the energy felt distinctly different from the creative floors—sharper, colder, and vastly more frantic. Dozens of financial analysts in crisp white shirts and loosened ties hunched over glowing Dell monitors running Windows NT 4.0. Complex, sprawling spreadsheets glowed in stark green and black across the screens. The multiline phones never stopped ringing.

These ruthless people legally structured the Mitsubishi loan, negotiated the *Crypton* buyout and other studio acquisitions, and now fueled themselves with espresso, working grueling eighteen-hour days to identify the next vulnerable targets in the market. They were young, incredibly hungry, and terrified of making a mistake catching the Chairman’s eye.

Marvin cultivated that specific fear. He paid them exceptionally well—significantly above the Tokyo market rate, even in these post-crash years—but he demanded precision in return. A single decimal point in the wrong place on a valuation model, a single missed signature on a transfer deed, ended careers before lunch. It wasn’t born of malice or cruelty. It served as a structural necessity. In the billion-dollar game he played, zero margin for error existed.

The fourth and fifth floors housed Meyers Media proper. Here, the ambient chaos felt loud and highly creative, rather than silent and financial.

Dozens of storyboard artists and assistants sat at long, drafting tables. The rhythmic scratching of their mechanical pencils against Bristol paper created a white noise filling the room.

Senior editors reviewed freshly inked manga pages under bright magnifying lamps, debating dialogue flow. Voice actors used a small, soundproofed recording booth, assembled in haste in a converted corner office, to dub promotional radio materials for the upcoming magazine launch.

Vibrant character sketches, environmental color palettes, and massive, tangled production timelines stretched across whiteboards like military battle plans, covering the hallway walls.

And everywhere, permeating the air conditioning, lingered the distinct smell of strong black coffee, cheap instant ramen, and the exhausted musk of driven people entirely forgetting what natural sunlight felt like.

Marvin loved it.

There was something strangely admirable about the relentless intensity of Japanese work culture—the quiet discipline, the unspoken endurance, the almost frightening ability of people to keep moving forward no matter how exhausted they were. Entire offices survived on black coffee, vending machine energy drinks, convenience store meals, and cheap instant noodles while employees worked eighteen-hour days beneath harsh fluorescent lights without openly complaining. To many outsiders it looked miserable, even unhealthy, but Marvin saw something else hidden beneath it: commitment. A society built on responsibility, routine, and silent perseverance. People pushed themselves beyond ordinary limits not because they were forced every second, but because somewhere deep in the culture existed a powerful belief that effort itself carried dignity.

What fascinated Marvin even more was the atmosphere it created. The packed late-night trains filled with exhausted salarymen loosening their ties, the glow of ramen shops serving workers at two in the morning, the endless sea of neon reflecting against tired eyes that still showed up again the next day—it all carried a melancholic beauty he genuinely appreciated. There was no loud romanticism about it. No dramatic speeches. Just millions of people quietly sacrificing comfort in pursuit of stability, success, and purpose. To someone like Marvin, who understood obsession and ambition better than most humans ever could, there was something deeply attractive about a society capable of functioning at that level of collective dedication.

On the top floor, in the corner executive office, wooden blinds remained drawn tightly shut against the blazing August afternoon.

Tokyo in the dead of summer offered a physical punishment—a thick, wet humidity clinging to the skin like a damp towel, baking heat visibly shimmering off the asphalt streets below, and millions of cicadas screaming endlessly from every park tree protesting their brief existence.

Marvin preferred the sterile, artificial chill of the central air conditioning and the focused, controlled light of his brass desk lamps.

He sat alone in his office. Not because he needed the physical space to spread out, but because he was working. The private elevator opened directly into a small anteroom where the new assistant—a nervous, brilliant young man named Tanaka (the son of the head editor), explicitly hired for his discretion and his ability to anticipate logistical needs before they arose—sat at a desk guarding the door.

Beyond that anteroom lay the inner sanctum itself.

The office remained dark. Soft fluorescent ceiling panels cast a clean white glow over a sprawling landscape of legal papers, half-finished storyboards, acquisition documents, and half-empty porcelain cups.

A professional-grade drafting table stood angled against one wall, completely covered with Marvin’s detailed illustrations.

He relentlessly worked through the remaining backlog volumes of the ten flagship manga series he committed to complete before the September launch. The intricate, physical work of drawing offered meditation for his soul. It kept his vast mind grounded when the sheer volume of financial numbers and corporate strategies started blurring his vision.

Marvin occupied the expensive, high-backed executive leather chair included with the leased office.

He rolled his dress shirt sleeves up to his elbows, revealing lean but sharply defined forearms, the clear product of physical strength.

Marvin did not take a single, wasted moment to breathe. The young president operated as a continuous blur of calculated motion. His days ran as a punishing, relentless gauntlet of high-level operations. He sat at the head of endless, grueling production meetings, signed his father’s signature off on towering stacks of vendor contracts, cut high-value corporate cheques, and hunted down prime, vulnerable acquisition targets in the trade papers. He scoured endless lists of struggling, legacy animation houses, desperate tech startups, and independent publishers. His eyes scanned bleeding ledgers for hidden, mismanaged talent or recognized brand names available for pennies on the dollar.

When he wasn’t touring newly acquired facilities or studying the unspoken nuances of Tokyo’s corporate etiquette to use against his rivals, he locked himself in this dark office. His pencil and colors flew across the paper as he single-handedly illustrated the remaining volumes of his ten flagship manga series, ensuring the art quality never dipped for a single panel while also designing and drawing the art for the trade cards.

The bank’s money finally sat in his accounts, and he spent it like water flowing through a breached dam.

He wasn’t conservatively hoarding the wealth to ensure a safe balance sheet; he weaponized it.

His strategy appeared crystal clear to anyone paying attention: burn through millions today to forge an unassailable empire worth billions tomorrow. He built the ultimate, vertically integrated monopoly, laying the heavy concrete groundwork to hold the cultural heartbeat and the international soft power of an entire nation firmly in the palm of his hand.

A sharp, rhythmic rap echoed at the door.

”Come in.” Marvin didn’t look up from the intricate shading he applied to a *Cyberpunk* cityscape.

The door slid open. Amy entered first. Her slender arms balanced a precarious stack of color-coded manila folders reaching just below her chin. Gregg followed directly behind her, his hands full with three stacked bento boxes and a plastic bag bearing the logo of a local convenience store.

”Incoming delivery.” Amy dropped the folders onto the pristine corner of Marvin’s desk with a loud *thump*, sending loose sketch papers fluttering to the table. ”Late lunch, courtesy of Gregg’s ongoing, futile campaign against your toxic work habits.”

Gregg set the bento boxes down carefully, pushing aside a stack of legal briefs. He crossed his arms, looking critically at the boy.

”You’ve lost weight again, Marvin. I can tell. Your collar fits looser than it did last week during the bank meeting.”

”I’ve been busy this week.” Marvin set down his graphite pencil and looked up. He pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a second. The automatic gesture served as a small, physical reset button for eyes intensely staring at fine lines and spreadsheets for eight unbroken hours. ”What time is it?”

”One-thirty in the afternoon.” Amy pulled up a chair. ”You missed the morning operations meeting, by the way. Watanabe-san did not appreciate your absence.”

”Watanabe-san can remain as displeased as he wants to be.” Marvin’s voice stayed flat, entirely unconcerned with the feelings of a middle manager. ”I reviewed his bloated budget projections at three o’clock this morning and sent them back covered in red ink revisions. He should send me a gift basket for saving him from presenting that garbage math to the board and embarrassing himself and then getting kicked out.”

Gregg sighed, opening the largest bento box—a lacquered wooden container meticulously divided into neat, geometric compartments. Inside rested perfectly grilled salmon, sweet tamagoyaki, vibrant pickled vegetables, white rice sprinkled with savory furikake, and a small, steaming dish of miso soup in a separate, lidded cup.

The presentation of the food appeared almost artistic in its precision. ”Eat it, boss,” Gregg ordered softly, pushing the box toward Marvin with the quiet, stubborn authority of someone politely ignored too many times regarding the boy’s health.

Gregg pulled up a second chair and sat opposite the desk. Amy settled comfortably into the wide window ledge, her long legs crossed, her posture relaxed but her blue eyes sharp and observant. ”You’ve been running on adrenaline and spite for three solid weeks, Marvin. The editorial staff whispers about your hours.”

”Let them whisper. It builds the mythos.” Marvin picked up his wooden chopsticks, broke them apart with a practiced, sharp snap, and took a small bite of the grilled salmon. His facial expression didn’t change, but something tight and coiled in his broad shoulders slightly relaxed—a subtle, physical release of deep tension only someone intimately knowing his body language would ever notice. ”Fine. This is excellent. Who made it?”

”The older woman running the small sushi bar downstairs,” Amy said, a fond smile touching her lips. ”The one who always slips you the extra portion of tamagoyaki every single time because she genuinely thinks you’re quote, ’too young and handsome to be such a stressed businessman.’ Her exact words, not mine.”

Marvin smiled faintly as he ate. He chewed each bite with deliberate slowness, treating the act of consuming food like a frustrating, necessary distraction from more important matters occupying his mind.

Gregg and Amy exchanged a silent glance across the room—a small, hard-won nutritional victory.

Amy reached into the crinkling convenience store bag and pulled out a small, chilled bottle of premium sake. ”And before you say a single word about drinking on the job, this remains exclusively for us, not you. You get the green tea.”

*****

Selected Confirmad Candidates:

78. Jessica Chastain

81. Billie Eilish

82. Margaret Qualley

83. Lana Del Rey

84. Song Hye-Kyo

85. Angela Yeung (Angelababy)

86. Karlie Kloss

87. Barbara Palvin

88. Melissa Benoist

89. Hadid Sisters (Bella & Gigi)

91. Dakota Johnson

92. Hailey Baldwin

93. Enami Asa

94. Remu Suzumori

95. Minami Hamabe

96. MISAMO (Minatozaki Sana, Momo Hirai, and Mina Myoi)

99. Kazuha Nakamura

Now that’s leaves us with 6-9 Rings. So vote quickly if someone from your team wasn’t included at CH : 201. Harem: The 108 Rings: The First 80 Confirmed Bearers.