AN

I'm alive! I have come back to you lovely folks and bring with you gifts! Well, by gifts I mean this rewrite of my first and most successful story Wine Jelly. While this story will have essentially the same plot, there will be changes to some events and characters as the storyline progresses.

Also, updates will be sporadic and infrequent, but chapter lengths are likely to be about 4k, which is roughly twice the length of the chapters in Wine Jelly. This also means that this story will be shorter than Wine Jelly as well.

I'd like to dedicate this fic to zenphobiaz, who inspired me to rewrite Wine Jelly when she told me that she couldn't make it four chapters in before she skipped to the end.

Thanks for reading~

MWG

P.S. If any readers were hoping for me to update Fourth of July Fun, please see the note on my profile.

Tsuruga Ren stared at his manager, trying to remember the last time he'd had a check-up. There had to be something wrong with his hearing since it sounded like Yashiro had just said that Kyouko—his Kyouko, love of his life and virtual savior—hadn't been on the plane back from her location shoot in Paris. Which was impossible. His girlfriend was notorious about punctuality and the odds of her missing her flight were exactly zero, if not a negative probability. She wouldn't have missed the plane. Not LME's top actress and number one Love Me girl.

"I'm sorry, Yashiro, but could you repeat that? I misheard you." Ren could hear his voice, and marveled at how calm and collected it sounded.

Instead of repeating it, the bespectacled man held out an unmarked envelope with a small frown. Ren, not knowing what laid within the paper confines nor what else to do, took the letter and cautiously ripped open the top. A single, thrice-folded sheet of paper was inside. He carefully unfolded it and began to read.

Dear Ren-san
By the time you are reading this, I will have disappeared.

The actor stared, his brain giving all hope of function after the first line alone. By the time you are reading this I will have disappeared: that was how she chose to start a goodbye letter? Not I'm sorry or I'll come back someday or even I don't think our relationship will work. He craved to know more, to understand why, and forced himself to continue reading, no matter how tight his chest was. Even if it felt like the world was tumbling down around him.

Please do not worry about me. I have found another source of income
and adequate housing. Please do not look for me, because you will not find me.
I thank you for all you've done for me. I hope to meet you again one day, but even so and if not, I hope you find someone who you can love even more.

Goodbye, Ren.

Mogami Kyoko

Kyouko was insane. Really. That was the only reasonable explanation. Find someone who you can love even more—in what universe was that even possible? There was no one who could compare to his fairy-obsessed, short, odd, naïve, workaholic, forgetful, trusting, princess-loving, beautiful, loving, smart, witty girlfriend.

He refused to even think the prefix ex because, despite the fact that the letter was a goodbye, there was not a single word that said Kyoko no longer wanted to be in a relationship with him, that she'd stopped loving him. It was a tenuous conclusion, barely outside the realm of delusion, but Ren grasped onto it with both hands and refused to let go.

"Thank you, Yashiro," said the actor evenly, carefully refolding the letter and tucking it into his pocket. He ignored the way his hand trembled as it brushed against the small velvet box already there. "Since I have the next few days off, I'll be heading home. Would you like me to drop you off on the way?"

Yashiro's expression was etched with lines of worry and his eyes were narrowed suspiciously, but he declined. "I'll catch a cab or find a bus route back to my apartment, but I will be calling tomorrow," he warned. "And if you don't answer, I will be breaking down your door with the cavalry on my heels."

Ren stretched his mouth into a wide smile and chuckled. "Understood."

After a wave to Yashiro and the other cast and crew wrapping up on set, the long-legged actor slowly made his way to his car. He settled into the silver sports car, staring at his dash blankly. The only sign of passing time was the racing thumping of his heartbeat, each one more painful than the last. His lungs slowly but steadily drew air in and out through force of will alone. His mind had stalled, clicking like an engine refusing to start. Memories—hundreds, if not thousands or millions—clamored for his attention. Some euphoric, some morose and maudlin, but all centering around Kyouko, as if meant to fill the sudden gaping and gushing cavern in his heart. They were dim though, chaotic and fleeting as they warred with each other for his attention and it was too much. Too much too soon, and it would always be too soon, but Ren didn't think of that as he finally turned the key in the ignition.

No, he was thinking of the liquor store just six blocks away from his apartment.

Somewhere in Paris, Mogami Kyouko looked up into the clear blue May sky, wistful and longing to be home but also glad to be gone, away from the lively chaos of Tokyo and acting. It was hard, leaving behind everything familiar, all she had ever loved, but that was all the past, and Kyouko's mind was turned towards the future. In Tokyo, things would've been tabloids, scandals, and heartbreak. But Paris—Paris was hope. A city her image and her popularity had barely touched, and where she could live in anonymity. Maybe not the most welcoming city, or the safest, but a place where she could be, where she could live and harm no one.

Maybe one day, in the far off future when everything was said and done and set in stone, Kyouko would return to Japan, maybe even Tokyo, and maybe it would be a day or a month or a year or forever. But so far in the future, at least eighteen years off, was only a vague idea, and not one Kyouko had much hope for. It would be unbearable agony to go back and walk old streets again with the ghosts of her past walking beside her, taunting her with people she could no longer have in her life.

But Kyouko had more to think about than herself now, and she wouldn't waste time looking back on the past and wishing for things that could never have happened.