Entourage
Disclaimer: Skip Beat belongs to Nakamura Yoshiki and I am merely borrowing the characters and world for my own amusement.
It was well known throughout the entertainment industry that the President of LME was an eccentric man that loved to cosplay. He went to such lengths in his cosplay as to have a whole entourage following him dressed in whatever the current day's theme was. What was not as well known was where the people in his entourage came from. Of course what is not well known outside of the company is unfortunately for LME employees well known to them.
On any given day, President Takarada will have at least thirty people following him around, though on days he wishes to put on a bigger show that number could easily double. Twenty of the people in his entourage are made up of his security detail, after all the President is a powerful and wealthy man. Five of the number is made of Takarada Lory's mysterious personal assistant and various secretaries and executive assistants. The remainder of the entourage consists of those unfortunate souls that happened to be randomly drawn from LME's employee raffle.
The employee raffle was held once every week and every employee name no matter how important or how unimportant went into the drawing- section heads, talents, managers, executives, secretaries, and janitors. If you were not a part of the President's entourage normally, your name went into the raffle of one hundred employees that would accompany Lory for some day the week following the raffle. It was required. Lory had it written in every single one of his employees' contracts and once you were drawn nothing short of death got you out of being part of the retinue. If you got sick or had an emergency you just had to make it up another day. Some of the LME staff enjoyed it, others put up with it, while others dreaded the incursion on their dignity and time.
On a cool February morning the weekly raffle had just been drawn and the lucky (or not so lucky) participants had been announced.
"Yashiro-san, is there any way for you to fill up my schedule next Wednesday?" Tsuruga Ren, the man voted as Japan's sexiest man several years running asked his amused manager.
"I'm sorry Ren but there is no getting out of it. It's part of your contract. Honestly, I don't know how you've managed to not get drawn in the weekly lottery up until now. Even I've been drawn three times now and you've been with LME longer than I have. It's really not so bad." Yashiro Yukihito answered his charge watching the slightly pained look on Ren's face with amusement. It was the first time Yukihito had ever seen Ren display so much emotion off-set.
"I should have never signed the contract here. Who in their right mind adds such a stupid clause to their employee's contracts." Ren groused.
"Well you know the President."
With a resigned but depressed air Ren rubbed his temples as he tried to prepare himself for a day of humiliation. Truth was Tsuruga Ren knew Takarada Lory better than most people knew. Lory was a close friend of Ren's family and Ren felt he owed a lot to the eccentric man who gave him a new life and a chance to remake himself. Despite his debts to the man Ren refused to take part in his ridiculous cosplay.
The gentleman, Tsuruga Ren, may have been scrupulously honest and would have never even considered the idea of cheating to get his name out of the raffle, but the man under the facade, Hizuri Kuon, was not as shy about doing whatever it took to maintain his pride. So every week Ren made his way to the Human Resource department to charm the ladies of that department into forgetting to add his name to the raffle. For three years his ploy had worked, but this morning Ren had woken up a little later than usual.
It was his twentieth birthday and this year looked to be as adoration filled and empty as every other year since he came to Japan. No celebrations with friends and family in Ren's admirable but solitary life. The reason Ren was running late though was he overslept slightly while dreaming of a sun-filled clearing with a pretty little stream running through it and a cute little girl with tear-filled golden eyes. He hadn't thought of that little girl in years and the dream of her almost seemed like a premonition. He briefly wondered how little Kyoko-chan was doing, if she ever lived up to her mother's expectations and if she was finally together with her prince, Sho-chan, though the latter thought left an inexplicable bitter taste in his mouth. They were two broken children taking joy and comfort in each others presence and acceptance. For one week the boy that felt like he was never good enough to be his father's son was able to fly high enough to be a fairy prince to a little girl that was always told she wasn't good enough to be her mother's daughter and received her adoration and love in return.
He got to his office in the LME headquarters that he shared with his manager to find it covered over with gifts a per usual for his birthday and quickly checked his schedule for the day before he headed to the HR department. Getting there was more difficult than usual as people kept stopping him to wish him a "Happy Birthday." His gentlemanly persona demanded he had to reply to all of them politely. By the time he got the HR department, all the names had already gone into the raffle and he was there just in time to hear the results of the drawing and his name being called as per Murphy's Law.
After he left the HR department, met up with Yashiro and tried to schedule his way out of being a part of the ridiculous President's cosplay to no avail, he started heading to his morning appointments. Thus he was in a bad mood as he walked towards LME's lobby to hear a loud argument taking place. Walking up he found Sawara Takenori, the head of the talent division of LME, trying to drag a teenage girl out of the building. Normally Ren didn't like seeing any female being man-handled but considering Ren knew Sawara wasn't the type to normally mistreat women he approached and asked "What's with this uproar, Sawara-san?"
The weird girl started to drift off into her own world it seemed as Sawara explained the situation to Ren. Maybe it was his already bad mood or this morning's dream and Kuon was closer to the surface than normal, but Ren felt Kuon's anger at the girl's attitude towards his passion surface and overflow causing his mask to drop briefly as he helped the talent manager pick the girl up and tossed her out as she was off in her thoughts and making amusing facial expressions. He figured a girl with such a nonchalant attitude towards show business would give up soon as he met his manager for a magazine interview.
Later that afternoon, Ren was gazing out the windows at LME and he saw the girl still sitting there and heard several office ladies remarking how she had been sitting out there all this time. He perseverance confused him and he examined her more closely. Her determined golden eyes caught his attention and his mind briefly flashed-back to another set of golden eyes but he shook the thought off as Yashiro called him to head to his next appointment. He doubted he would be seeing the girl again. He had other things to worry about now, such as how to get out of being part of Lory's entourage next week.
A.N. My first Skip Beat story and it was written to honor Ren's birthday. It's not very good but my writting skills are rusty and it amused me thinking of who made up Lory's entourage and how he got them following him around so loyally.