There Are More Secrets In Heaven And Earth...

"I need proof that I'm still real," he told her. He was standing just past her, parallel but beyond, close enough that she could feel his body heat, but too far away to see what he was feeling.

But then she figured it out.

After shooting for the last scenes of Dark Moon had wrapped – and that horrible fiasco with the car accident, and the soul-bearing session on the floor of Ren's living room – the focus of both Kyoko's and Ren's lives had shifted heavily to the business of being Cain and Setsuka Heel. And to BJ. Kyoko found it easier and easier to slip under Setsuka. She'd had Setsuka's tastes down from the very beginning, but now she could walk like her, cop her gestures, orbit her big brother, all with practically no effort at all. She was even getting to be more comfortable around Ren. He's just a man, she had realized that night. He's a god-like actor, my eternally respected senpai, a creature of universally acknowledged power and grace, a tortured soul haunted by the evil ghost of his former self, but he's also just a man. It was almost disappointing – like finding out that Santa Claus isn't real – but even more than that, it was intoxicating. Like finding out that "Santa Claus" isn't real, but there is a kindly old white-bearded man who loves children and the color red and runs a toy design-manufacture-delivery company out of his home in the icy Nordic north and wants you to come work for him. (Potentially while wearing an elf outfit and driving reindeer. Gotta keep up the image.) She loved acting with him, and as long as she kept reminding herself that she was still many tectonic ages behind him in terms of acting skill, she allowed herself a small pinch of pride in the thought that she was actually helping him somehow. She walked around most days with a sort of fuzzy little warmness in her tummy. She figured it was happiness.

This all meant, of course, that another problem had to crop up.

Kyoko was having a hard time breaking out of Setsuka. That day on the set of Box R, when she had delivered Natsu's lines as if Setsu were saying them, had been just the beginning. Though, for the most part, she did a thorough job of keeping it from interfering with her work, and after that first time she only made two or three really minor slip-ups while playing Natsu (like a slightly bored expression where Natsu should have shown contempt, or sitting quite still when Natsu would have been examining her finger nails or something). The real problem was everyday life. Tokyo was home to an abnormally large population of people who thought that walking around in elaborate costumes was perfectly acceptable, and sometimes Kyoko would catch sight of a particularly well-dressed goth or goth-loli traipsing about in intricate layers of plain black, usually with ridiculous heels. She would see these people and instead of thinking something normal like, "Gyah!" or "Wha-?" she would think "Uwaaa, I bet Setchan would love that leathery web-looking shawl thing!" And she would be triggered. Ten minutes later she would walk out of some dark-windowed specialty boutique holding a fresh bag and the curious attention of both shop owner and passersby, and then suddenly snap back out of character.

It was even worse when Ren was around. Just catching a glimpse of him from the other end of a long LME hallway was sometimes enough to set Setsuka off. It made Kyoko uncomfortable. It wasn't that she didn't love Setsuka, or didn't like portraying her, but the fact that she couldn't always be confident of who was living in her own skin was not something she enjoyed. This should just make more empathetic toward Tsuruga-san, she reasoned. Tsuruga-san is living like this every day, having to worry if he'll suddenly look up and realize that somebody else has taken over. But in a way it also reminded her of her days at the Fuwa's ryoukan, when she was so deeply subsumed beneath the person they wanted her to be that she didn't even know that that person wasn't her. And it made her avoid him a little.

That was why, when he asked her, one night when the light had long since faded from the studio lobby, and they were coincidentally alone together in a windowless hallway near the acting section, and he pinned her with his stare and asked outright,

"Are you avoiding me?" she didn't have a ready answer for him. She straightened her posture, brought her hands together in front of her chest, looked down.

But she could feel his eyes on her like a searchlight, and she knew she had to say something.

"Tsu-tsurga-san, do you… do you ever have a problem with… with breaking character?" She examined closely the lace of her left shoe as she spoke. He didn't respond and all she could feel was his aura getting icier. Her hate antenna rose leisurely, stretched a bit, then went berserk. It had been a while since she had made him this angry, but she quickly reverted to her old, terrified habits – winding herself up in a noose of self-loathing, then mentally handing the hangman's end of the rope to Ren. Of course he doesn't, stupid. An amazing actor like Tsuruga-san couldn't possibly have the same kind of newbie problem as you. It was insulting even to ask. You have insulted Tsuruga-san, and he's furious, and he's going to flay you with his steel-tipped tongue then roast you like a toad over the hellacious flames of his righteous indignation (she writhed in imagination). Oh no! It's worse! Not only have you presumptuously dared to suggest a fault in your highly esteemed senpai, you have revealed to him your own hopeless failings! Oh noooooooooooo! (more imagined flailing) What if he never forgives me? What if he gives up on me completely? (Cue imaginary volcanic explosions followed by imaginarily plummeting into the craters created thereby.)

She was so absorbed in her own nervousness, so intimidated by his displeasure, that she didn't spare even the slimmest thought for what he was feeling. She fastened her eyes to a rivet of her sneaker and would not look up, which was a small tragedy, because had she seen his face at that moment she would have known exactly what he was feeling, and that would have changed everything.

"Uh… um, I mean, it's not all the time, I mean, it's, ah, it's just sometimes, you know, maybe, every once in a while that, um, I, um I have a little bit of trouble breaking out of, ah, what I mean to say is, sometimes without meaning to I maybe a little bit… become… Setsuka?" She glanced up hesitantly, praying that she hadn't just ruined everything.

But now Ren's face was impossible for her to read – something like relief in the eyes, but a grimness to the mouth.

"Ummm…" she began again, looking down again.

"Not often," he said.

She brought her head up to respond but he had already taken two long strides, was already past her field of view.

"Were you afraid that I did?" he asked, and his voice was icy.

"No, no! Not at all! Definitely not!" She shook her head vigorously. "It's just that…"

"Then why have you been avoiding me?"

Kyoko cringed. It was the coldest voice she had ever heard out of him. I really have ruined everything, the thought. I'm such a fool. Just because you got a little closer to him, you got carried away and did something totally unforgiveable...

"Why" – his voice cracked – "have you been avoiding me?"

She started. His voice… cracked? No way… I couldn't possibly have… The audacity of what she was thinking was so great that she couldn't bear to finish thinking it. "I couldn't have hurt his feelings, could I?" But that was totally, utterly, cosmically impossible. How could some plain, boring, no-sex-appeal –

Ren drew in a loud breath, and Kyoko realized she was pausing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was avoiding you because it's harder to avoid Setsuka when you're around. I'm sorry if that – if that bothered you."

Kyoko was struck by the sudden, strange sensation that a wall was crumbling silently right behind her.

Ren expelled a breath he had been holding. "I see," he said. "Ok." Then, "Don't avoid me anymore. I'll warn you if you turn into Setsuka. You have to learn how to fight character bleed anyway. Just, please. Please don't avoid me."

And that was when he said it, with soft voice and trembling emotion: "I need proof that I'm still real."

It took her a moment, but when she understood it was with the single slide-click of a deadbolt. She really had hurt his feelings. He had divulged to her that he was afraid of himself and the character he was playing, and the next thing she did was start avoiding him. She put first her own selfish desire to be comfortable when what she should have done, when what he desperately needed her to do, was stay by his side and tell him not to be scared. Kyoko was disgusted with herself. She knew that was what he needed from her; he had told her as much; she had believed him; it was why she had called herself his protective charm. But her selfishness and insecurities won out again and she had hurt the most amazing, god-like, inimitable, admirable man she had ever met.

"Of course you're real," she said to him, and her voice was firm and bright. "Tsuruga-san, the person you are right now is very real. I know it. Don't worry, I won't avoid you anymore". She paused, considering. Then, "Ne, Tsuruga-san, have you eaten dinner yet? You were going to skip again, weren't you?" She sighed. "How many times do I have to remind you of the importance of caring properly for your body? An actor's body is his capital, you know." It was a lecture she was accustomed to giving with fervor and much shaking of index fingers, but this time she delivered it with calm authority, like an adult speaking to a dear child. "If you're done working, how about I make you something? I'd feel much more comfortable if I knew you'd eaten a nutritious home-cooked meal."

He was silent behind her. She could feel nothing of his aura, only his body heat, and for a moment she was terrified she had missed the mark.

But then, "I'd love that," he said quietly. "Why don't you meet me at my car in a few minutes?"

Her whole face relaxed into a smile. "Alright!" she chirped, and continued down the hall.

Edited 1.10.11