A spring can only coil so tightly before it snaps back and hits you in the face. Unspoken words, a wounded male ego, a fragile female heart, and an abundance of misunderstandings no one is willing to clarify. Let's mix them all up and find out what we can create.
Snapped
Chapter 1
What he'd implied hurt. It hurt both her and him. A look of utter pain flitted across her beautiful face and instantly receded, but he had seen it from the corner of his eye and he'd probably would have felt less pain if he'd sheathed that knife of jealousy into his own heart instead of hers. She looked as if he'd slapped her.
"I see..." She turned away from him and picked up her purse. "That's how you've always seen me. Isn't it? There's no way I'll ever be able to convince you otherwise." She reached into her bag and handed him the envelope that contained his gift to her. "You should share that with Morizumi-san. I'm sure she'd appreciate it. It would go nicely with the lovely promise ring you gave her." She placed her hand to open the door, and paused with her back to the pair. "As for Sho, I would never be able to give someone my heart that mistreats me in the ways that he has, and..." She sighed tiredly. "Never mind, if you don't know me by now, you never will. I'm sorry for the inconvenience of being a senpai to someone like me, has caused you. You don't need to take on that burden any longer."
She turned to Yashiro with that fake empty façade that Kuon was intimately familiar with. The one that only her own mother had been able to induce, as far as he knew. "Thank you for the lift, Yashiro-san. I'll find my own ride from now on, and you don't need to bother yourself with arranging my schedule. You're probably far too busy with Tsuruga-san's. Thank you for taking care of me. I'll call Sawara-san later to let him know not to bother you with my schedule." She told him in that cool, even tone of the professional Okami she'd been trained as her entire life, and left the car.
Both men were stunned speechless. One with the remorse that came with hurting her, and the other with confusion over what she'd just said. The ambient atmosphere of a crypt would have been more cheery.
His shoulders slumped as he raked his fingers through his hair. "Not going to say anything?" He murmured to his friend and manager, after hearing the car door quietly shut.
Oh, there was plenty Yashiro wanted to say to him at that moment, but he'd decided that nothing would be productive in the situation, especially with the look Ren now had on his face and the tone of his voice. "No... I think enough has been said." He told him in a calm, disapproving tone and continued their deathly quiet drive to Ren's first appointment of the day.
There were many things that needed to be discussed. Like the not so small, glaring facts Kyoko-chan had brought up about that little snake Kimiko Morizumi and a promise ring, the harshness of how he'd treated her while not once ever giving voice to anyone that he saw her as anything more than just a co-worker on the lowest end of the echelon. If one were to go by his words alone, as he'd often insisted, one would be so inclined to believe that Ren had no interest or right to act all butt-hurt about her even talking to Fuwa. She wasn't his girlfriend, and from his tone only moments ago, he didn't even see her as a friend.
The door closed behind her, and her mask held fast. She was determined, once again, to never allow anyone to see her in such a shamefully weakened state. It was moments like this that she could kind of understand why her mother was the way she was. People can only hurt you if you let them, and she was tired of letting people hurt her. One too many knives in the hands of the wrong people, one too many lashes from the whip of life, and one too many muddy feet scraped across the back of a human doormat.
This hurt like hell-fire, and she'd suspected long ago that what she felt for Ren wasn't even remotely close to her childish feelings for Sho. She'd suspected that something like this would hurt. It was precisely the reason she'd never told him how she felt about him. She didn't wish to give him knowledge of that power over her. The power to hurt her in such a profound way, yet he already did without even realizing it.
She needed to shove all of this to the back of her mind and deal with it later. No one needed to know or see what was going on with her. She would not allow her personal life affect her professional life unless it was used to improve it, as Kuu and Takarada-san had told her to. She had told Takarada-san that she would act, so if it called for her to do so, she would even act when she wasn't in front of the camera. She would play the part of a woman that didn't need the approval or love of anyone. It's not like they would give her that anyway. No one ever had, so why bother now? She realized, once again, that she wasn't good enough the way she was. No matter what she'd done to change, it was never enough. Others would always think that she was some stupid girl with nothing, but love on her mind.
She needed to find a balance. A balance that would make Takarada-san satisfied enough to allow her out of the LoveME Section, but not make others think she was a stupid, love-sick little girl. Perhaps it was for the best that this happened. The mishandled situation had pointed out to her that she'd allowed herself to slip. She'd promised herself not to ever let him see how much she loved him, and that night that had been one of her lowest points, she'd let it slip. She'd let it slip and he'd obviously been disgusted with what he'd seen.
By the time she'd reached the entrance to the studio, she had calmed herself, and a nice little protective coating of frost had hardened around her heart. It wasn't fully encased or formed, but it was enough to dull the pain of what she thought was her stupidity. When she finally reached the conference room, a bit early, her hand rested on the small trinket that Corn had given her. It was only just inside the little pocket in her purse, and her fingers just grazed it. Briefly her thoughts told her that this action was also childish, to rely on something like this to ease the pain from her own choices. She removed her hand from her bag quickly, in a small jerking motion, almost as if she'd been burned by the revelation. She realized that in order to stop being a naive little girl, she needed to wake up and stop believing in fairy tales like a child. She needed to rid herself of everything child-like, everything that was the old Kyoko-chan. She hadn't done it the first time around. She had told herself that she'd fully changed, yet here she was, always relying on her old ways, allowing herself to fall back into that old routine. Still she was clinging to her past, and her childish delusions.
Somewhat proud of herself, she'd made it through the table-read. In a last effort to rid herself of Kyoko-chan, she pulled out the small blue gemstone, took a deep breath, and placed it on the table of the conference room, where she'd been seated. If it contained any magic, like she'd believed as a child, it would find its way to someone that was more in need of it. Leaving the small purse, with the stone contained inside, she nodded inwardly on her final decision. She stood from her seat, bade her goodbyes for the day, and left the small package behind, silently wishing the next owner better luck than she had.