I don't own skip beat
No Country for Half-Breed Men
He watched with awe as she ran around the empty conference room, giving voices to everything she found. The chair was an old Duke and a glass of water, a kind maid. She twirled and curtsied, and he couldn't help himself. He laughed. Not a cruel laugh. Not an 'I can't believe you still think that this could come true' kind of laugh. Just a 'my God she is adorable when she thinks no one is watching' sort of laugh. That distinction was not made however by the now angry teenager.
"Mr. Tsuruga!" Oh, noooo! How much of that did he seeee? "How long were you standing there?"
He walked toward her. "Long enough to learn that; 'the dowager empress will not be pleased, by such a lack of formality with servants and guests'." After having made a rather good impression of the young girl, he laughed, just a little.
Kyoko glowered at the older man. "Is it such a crime, to wish you were born in a time where adventure and knights in shining armor were waiting right outside your door? In a place where country bumpkins could become princesses of the realm? Where star-crossed loves meet, are torn apart, and then thrown back together to find their Happily Ever After?"
Now Ren couldn't answer that one. Well, if you look at everything that has happened over the last year alone, she has now or has had all of those experiences.
"Ms. Mogami, it is not a crime to wish for those things. Tell me, though, how would you achieve that?"
Without hesitation Kyoko puffed out her chest and declared proudly, "With Corn."
Ren stared dumbfounded for a moment, until a purple-blue stone was thrust in his face.
"Oh, you mean the little stone."
Kyoko looks offended, "This is not just a 'little stone', Corn has magical powers!"
Ren smiles at the gullible girl. "Oh it does, really?"
Kyoko thought about throwing Corn at his head, but realized that would be a terrible thing to do to her teacher. She just took a calming breath. "Mr. Tsuruga?"
He looked at her suspiciously. Angry Kyoko, he could deal with that, but sweet Kyoko, when she had been ready to stone him, judging by the gleam in her eye a few brief moments ago, he didn't know if he could face that. He swallowed past a lump he hadn't known was in his throat. "Yes, Ms. Mogami?"
"Give me your hand." She looked at him with such sincerity, that it was difficult for him to think she was tricking him, but then, maybe he wasn't awake, so, sincere or not, would it matter?
He gave her his hand and she placed Corn in it, and then clasped her little hand over his. "Now Mr. Tsuruga, just think of a place you have always wanted to go." Ren looked down at her. She really was adorable. He closed his eyes and thought of the model guns in his parents house, of the old Westerns that used to play every Sunday on his father's den television, and finally, of the way Kyoko might look in one of the saloon girl outfits.
He heard someone come in through the door, but he didn't want to open his eyes, for fear that his manager would be standing there with hearts in his eyes. He did, however, snap his eyes open the moment he heard Kyoko gasp.
Instead of her LoveMe uniform, she was wearing a long bell shaped dress of gingham and a white bonnet. She wasn't looking at herself, she was looking behind Ren.
Ren looked back and saw a young American closing the door to a jail cell and hanging up the keys on the wall. When the young man saw Ren looking at him, he turned and raised his hat to him, then tipped his hat to Kyoko, "Evenin' Ma'm."
Kyoko stammered a moment, pulled her hand from Ren's, and said, thanking god she knew English, "Evening sir."
The blonde youth motioned to the prisoner behind the bars. "We caught 'im Sheriff, but I'm afraid the rest of the Gang got away. Maybe he can help us find 'em."
The prisoner sneered at Ren, "I ain't telling nothing to no damn Chinaman." He finished with a nicotine stained ball of phlegm aimed right at Ren.
Ren looked at the stain on the jail floor; he looked at the shocked faces of the youth and Kyoko, he looked at himself in the mirror and saw the Stetson and star shaped badge as proof. He walked up to the bars, the clink of spurs sounding with every step, and smiled a Demon Lord smile that caused the temperature to drop below freezing and Kyoko to shiver and shriek in fear. With venom and a promise of malice in every syllable, Ren uttered two words to the man he somehow was now holding by the collar through the bars. "I'm Japanese."