Flor de Loto (English Version) Chapter 1 - You are mine, a skip beat! fanfic

Hello everyone! Since I get easily bored while waiting for the new chapters of Skip Beat to be published, I decided to translate in English one of my favorite ongoing fictions: Flor de Loto, written by Astral Aurea. This fanfic started already two years ago, so of course it diverts from the most recent chapters. Actually, it started after chapter 193, which is if you recall part of the Heel siblings act, during the confrontation between Kuon and Kyoko, after Sho called her in the middle of the night...

By the way, I'm not a native English speaker, so if any choice of vocabulary sounds strange to those of you who are, or if any sentence is not clear enough, please, please let me know.

And now, enjoy :)

Chapter 1 - You are mine

She stood motionless, her mouth open in a soundless cry, as her phone already shut flew through the room and shattered on the floor.

A few seconds passed, and she didn't know what to do. She could feel, through her clenched fists, her heart pounding in her chest, she could hear the deep and strong breathing of Tsuruga-san next to her. He was incensed, she knew it; he had seen the caller's ID displayed as "unknown" and had guessed who it was, his furious look was enough of a proof, his look that made her blood freeze, that sucked her soul and had her hair standing on en…

Wait. What was she thinking? Who was she? Who was he? This was her beloved nii-san she was just coming back to, after a long separation (of three days). She was Setsuka Heel, a punk-gothic girl with a serious case of brother-complex, a girl whose only reason to live was the man standing in front of her at that very moment. She should not be shuddering of fright, she should not have this rigid stance, nor be so pale or so surprised; the Heel siblings are never surprised!

Kyoko fought to regain control of her body. She loosened her shoulders and back, spread her legs a bit, and narrowed her eyes in the purest Setsuka style, soon relaxing back to the countenance she had lost when this dumb, stupid Sho – calm down, Kyoko – had called her. Putting her hand on her hip, she sighed out of boredom and raised her eyes to look at her brother.

– "Nii-san, what am I going to do now, without a phone?" She said with her brow slightly furrowed, trying to look angry.

– "I don't care", Cain replied in a tone even more abrupt than usual.

– "Well, you should", she hissed, "since I mainly speak with you."

– "Doesn't seem so." Kyoko couldn't really say who that was, as his eyes were not Cain at all, but not her sempai either.

– "What…"

Ren could feel his blood run thick and fast in his veins, feel his racing heartbeats, his ragged breathing, his muscles so tense that they hurt, but he didn't care. His self-control was long gone.

– "Why is he calling you at this hour? Have you two become such great friends recently?" That was Ren, she realized, demanding her, with a terrifying and deadly look in his eyes, to explain what the hell she was doing so gleefully earlier with Fuwa Sho, in his car, and she had better provide some satisfying answers.

"Noooooooooooooooo! Why? Everything was going well until noooow" Kyoko shrieked internally. "I had just managed to focus on my acting! Shotaro I curse you for the next century! And the one after that! And…"

Ren was looking at her, a vein throbbing on his temple, in wonder at how such a tiny and rude kohai dared to ignore him. He was trying to order this wild chaos that only she could create, to calm his emotions without affecting the acting, and she went and dared to…

"May your toenails rot and…" Kyoko's demon mask shattered immediately when she felt the darkness radiating from Ren, enshrouding her, demanding her to come back to reality and give her attention back to him and the explanation he had required. Stiff as a board, she focused on him again.

– "What are you saying, Nii-san?" Setsu asked in a slightly outraged tone, while Kyoko was still covered in goose bumps like a plucked chicken. "You know that's not true."

He just kept staring at her.

– "You know how he is, he likes to bother me. I stumbled across him – or actually he came to find me – and made me lose my time, so much that I was about to be late for work, so I just forced him to drive me, since unfortunately we were going to the same place." Kyoko deliberately omitted the part when she forced him to take her for lunch; she didn't want Tsuruga-san to get the wrong idea.

– "Did you two talk about something?" Ren asked, still not satisfied.

– "No-nothing important!" Kyoko cursed herself for not being able to control the tremor in her voice. "Nothing interesting, actually he just managed to make me mad at him" Kyoko confessed, since Setsuka would never get mad – except if someone was bothering her nii-san.

– "Don't let him get to you too" Setsu whispered, walking closer to her brother and raising her loving imouto (little sister) look into his dark eyes. "He isn't worth it".

After a few seconds, Cain extended his hand and stroked her cheek, first with the tip of his long and cold fingers. He then glided the palm of his hand on all her face, from the tip of her nose to her eyelashes, focusing on her. He let time flow by and take away the darkness in his eyes, until they carried a more usual tone. But they were still dull and his expression was still strained as he kept brushing her face.

He was angry, still very angry, and sad. He was losing her, she was drifting away from him and, what was worse, he was losing himself. He could feel how, with every day going by, Kuon was taking up more and more space in himself. He had naively believed that he could control him, that he was fine, that he could still do it, but he realized five minutes ago that it was not the case, that even with Kyoko at his side he could not confine him anymore, especially with her involved. He had lost control and frightened her, and was not even sure that he would be able to pull himself together, not when he knew that Kyoko was telling half-truths and hiding behind Setsuka Heel's costume. And that was the real reason of his woe.

Jealousy, anguish, pain. It was really killing him; he couldn't stand it anymore; she didn't or wouldn't understand his feelings, and he was too much of a coward, or she was worth too much. He couldn't risk losing her.

It was fine, he would continue with his plan. The Heel siblings job was supposed to bring them closer, but if Kyoko could use acting as Setsuka to avoid her own emotions, then he would use his acting too. Cain could manage to bring her closer, to unsuspected extents; after all his little sister was in love with him, and that was not the sort of things an overly dependent brother would ignore, was it? How sure could Cain be of his own feelings towards his sister?

"Seems like a great moment to develop a new side of Cain" he smiled.

He slowly moved his fingers from his little sister's cheeks, down to her shoulders, and lowered his right hand to her hip, pulling her closer until they were standing in a close embrace.

– "You are mine" he said in a possessive tone, while tightening his hold on a very surprised Kyoko.