Disclaimer: I do not own Skip Beat or any of its characters… But you all knew that anyways.

Ren loved sunsets, second only to sunrises, the two times of the day when the entire sky lit up with hues of yellow and orange and red. Or so he was told. The only color he saw was amber.

-xoXox-

Growing up Kyoko had always been happiest when she was looking up at the sky from under the big tree in her secret clearing. The midafternoon sky, when viewed through the screen of green leaves, looked almost exactly like her soulmates eyes. And Kyoko cherished the colors he had given her.

Color wasn't something that everyone got to experience. There was only one person who could bring color to your world. And there were no guarantees you would ever meet them. But if you did meet your soulmate, the other half of your soul, you knew the moment your eyes met. Because the color of their eyes would be the first color you ever saw.

According to the adults, there was a whole world full of different colors and as you got to know your soulmate you would start to see them over time. Kyoko couldn't say if that was true or not though. She had only seen the world in blues and greens and greys. Two weeks was all the time Kyoko's soulmate had been able to spend with her. And then he had needed to leave. Called back to the fairy court by his father the king of fairies.

Kyoko had been six when they met. And she hadn't known anything about soulmates back then. All she had known was that Corn was her fairy prince. The boy who saved her from her sadness and shared the colors of the sky and the trees with her.

They had met in her secret clearing as she fled from her mother, tears dripping from her eyes once again. Another unacceptable test score, a 97%, had pushed her mother over the limit and she had been kicked out of the house.

Corn had dried her tears and shared his magic with her. And she hoped, now that she knew, that she had shared a color with him. She hoped that when he had returned to the land of the fairies he was able to see more splendor in the world, even under the shadow of his father's hands.

After he left, Kyoko had accepted that she would never see her soulmate again. So, knowing that one day he would probably leave her for his soulmate, she put everything into helping her first love Shotaro. That was how, 10 years after meeting her soulmate, Kyoko had ended up working two jobs to support Shotaro as he launched his music career in Tokyo, far from Kyoko's secret clearing and her memories. She didn't really mind though. Sho, she had to keep reminding herself to call him that, had asked her to go with him. He could have asked any other girl, but he asked her.

And maybe it was Kyoko's mistake to believe him when he said he didn't believe in soulmates, but she had let herself love him completely, expecting he would learn to love her back. That was why it felt like her heart had shattered into a million pieces the day she found out he only viewed her as a maid.

Shotaro was the scum of the earth, undeserving of every breath of air he took. And it didn't matter. Because he was Fuwa Sho, rising music star, and she was plain, boring, unattractive Kyoko. But she wouldn't be for long. She would take the entertainment business by storm and squish Sho beneath the heel of her new boots.

Kyoko smiled as she walked away from the talent department of LME with paperwork for her upcoming audition in hand. This was her chance and she wasn't going to waste it.

A/N: I had a horrible time trying to write anything Skip Beat for a long time. Then I read a soulmate AU in the other fandom I write for and this sort of wrote itself. And it only works because both Kyoko and Ren are unbelievably dense.