Chapter Twenty-Five: Encounter with Tsuburaya

“Thank you so much!” Charliega rushed forward, gripping Xie Jing’s hand tightly and shaking it with all his might.

Then he turned around, donned his gentleman’s hat, picked up his leather suitcase, took his umbrella, and forced an awkward smile at Xie Jing.

Poof—

A cloud of gas erupted, and Charliega vanished from the small shop in an instant, leaving only a string of shrill laughter echoing in the air.

Xie Jing could clearly sense that this was merely a sleight of hand. This Mr. Charliega was not capable of true spatial teleportation; rather, he could slip through the door at the very moment the smoke billowed up.

In other words, this monster possessed the ability to walk through walls!

That was troublesome. There was still a young lady at his house—what if one day some pervert like this spied on her? Wouldn’t he suffer a great loss?

No! This monster had to be taken care of!

Clenching his fist, Xie Jing made up his mind.

According to the original series, the device in this monster’s suitcase was a time-space traversal machine, but it could only travel to automatically selected points in time and space—it couldn’t freely choose where to land. So, if Charliega wanted to go to Tsuburaya Productions in the past, he would have to stand at the current location of Tsuburaya Productions to make the jump.

Moreover, the time-space portal left after the traversal did not disappear but instead became invisible, lingering in the present space. This meant Charliega couldn’t close the portal on his own.

After leisurely finishing his tea and donning the Victory Squad windbreaker, Xie Jing left the shop, locked the door behind him, and drove to the vicinity of Tsuburaya Productions.

As a playful nod, this episode of Diga was truly filmed at Tsuburaya Productions (for those unfamiliar, Diga is produced by Tsuburaya), and this Tsuburaya Productions was located at the same address as the one in Xie Jing’s world—only the people inside had changed.

The square in front of Tsuburaya Productions was deserted; not a soul could be seen in the biting cold. Xie Jing clearly sensed a presence in the square, something towering and black-hole-like, but invisible to the naked eye of ordinary people.

That must be the spatial gate opened by Charliega!

Carefully, Xie Jing walked through. Instantly, the world before his eyes became hazy, awash with dazzling colors, and a wave of vertigo swept over him.

A powerful gravitational force pulled him downward, as though he were falling endlessly. Just as the ground seemed to draw near, Xie Jing gritted his teeth against the discomfort, steadied himself, and landed.

Looking up, he saw that the sky was a bit gray, and the air felt much clearer.

Surveying his surroundings, he realized he was in a warehouse district. Many people bustled about, their attire unmistakably of the neon-lit era decades past. On a pillar by the door hung a metal plaque, inscribed in stylized neon script: Tsuburaya Productions.

It was 1965—the most difficult period for Tsuburaya Productions. Everyone pinned their hopes on the next tokusatsu film; if they failed, there would be no Diga, no original Ultraman in the future.

But this timeline seemed to be a parallel world to Diga, because in this world, Tsuburaya had produced the original Ultraman, whereas in Diga’s world, nobody had even heard of Ultraman.

Hmm... The web of time was complicated.

Shaking his head, Xie Jing decided not to dwell on the metaphysics. Instead, he strolled calmly through this era of hardship for the tokusatsu giants.

Here, only he knew that this unassuming little company would one day create Ultraman, humanity’s champion, and swiftly become the hero of youths across the world!

But before they filmed the original Ultraman, none of these people had confidence.

Everyone hurried about with anxious faces, moving with the same urgency as people in Neon’s later generations, as if a whip were snapping at their heels.

Seeing Xie Jing in his eccentric outfit, no one paid him any mind. After all, on a tokusatsu set, it was common to see actors in all sorts of strange costumes.

Glancing about, Xie Jing couldn’t be sure where exactly in Neon he was, but he could tell it was in the mountains, and the buildings around him bore the marks of age.

A noise from a nearby warehouse caught Xie Jing’s attention.

“Nagano! Where’s Nagano?! Nagano!”

Xie Jing suddenly remembered—in the original episode, Daigu had barged into this place and was mistaken for the clapperboard boy, Nagano, who then suffered a few head thumps from the assistant.

Incidentally, Daigu’s actor’s real name was Hiroshi Nagano—a little joke on Tsuburaya’s part.

With Daigu absent, no one would step in for the tardy Nagano, who was out meeting with Charliega. But Xie Jing swaggered into the warehouse, walked up to the assistant, and greeted him with a broad smile.

“Sorry, Nagano is busy right now. He asked me to help with the clapperboard. I’m a friend of his, and I studied film.”

The assistant looked him over. Xie Jing’s scholarly air did make him look like a university student.

“All right, here you go—hurry up!” The assistant shoved the clapperboard at Xie Jing, grumbling, “The director’s waiting!”

“Got it!” Even if he’d never done it before, he’d certainly seen it enough times. Xie Jing raised the clapperboard in front of the camera, then snapped it shut with a crisp clap and quickly stepped back.

The wind machine blew artificial snowflakes across the set. Amid this snowy mountain backdrop, several men in mountaineering outfits shouted in terror, “Monster! Monster!”

This was the scene where the climbing team encountered a monster on the snowy mountain, though to Xie Jing, it looked rather fake.

“Cut! Okay!” The director behind the camera nodded, about to call it a day, when a powerful, aged voice rang out from behind.

“No, no, no!” An elderly man in a brown trench coat and glasses strode forward. The staff immediately bowed deeply in respect.

“Director Tsuburaya!”

“This won’t do! You can’t shoot it like this!” Eiji Tsuburaya, later hailed as the god of tokusatsu, frowned at the mountaineers.

“You’re facing a monster. You should be terrified! That’s a fifty-meter-tall monster suddenly appearing before you—your expressions should show utter terror! Do it again!”

“Understood!” Everyone nodded in agreement.

It was clear that all present held genuine reverence for this elderly man.

Once more, Xie Jing clapped the board; the actors took their places. This time, the performance was much improved, and everyone was satisfied.

“All right, today’s shoot is over. Everyone, you can rest now!” The assistant cheerfully announced, prompting cheers from the crew.

Xie Jing returned the clapperboard to the assistant, who patted his shoulder approvingly. “Not bad—much better than that tardy fool Nagano. You really are a film student!”

“But...” The assistant stared curiously at the emblem on Xie Jing’s windbreaker. “G, U, T, S? What’s that mean?”

“Victory Squad!” Xie Jing pointed to the badge on his chest and grinned. “It’s the symbol of the Special Operations Team under the Earth Defense Organization—the Victory Squad!”

“Nice!” The assistant beamed. “That would make a great emblem for our monster-fighting squad!”