Yep. Throw the tomatoes. Fling the rotting cabbages. I deserve them all for not updating.

If I owned skip beat, why the crap would I be writing fanfiction? =(

[basic overview of this fic - mainly for everyone who's forgotten what it's about =( ]: Kyoko and Ren are married with 3 kids, the youngest being a daughter named Etsuko. She's been hidden from the public eye in America for the past 16 years (with Kuu, our resident oyabaka) and has recently moved back to Japan. Living with superstars ain't easy, and other than having to deal with personal demons of insecurity, Etsuko's future in life, and more importantly, love, are intricately intertwined with the past of her parents'. Secrets will be revealed, and boundaries will be broken – or maybe I'm just toying with your mind.

(basically in chapt 20 – Yuuichi's drunk and spills a lot of secrets (please read it! They're juicy secrets!) to Etsuko, and she ends up sleeping on his couch, after which…hee. Just read on…)

Chapter 21!

I awoke the next morning in a bed that wasn't mine. This caused me to sit up rather abruptly, and the smell of freshly made pancakes and maple syrup greeted me in an instant. I almost let it distract me from the current predicament I was in, but I had to get to the bottom of this. I tried to recall the night before, and how I had ended up here. Was that bacon sizzling? Wow. Whatever it is, it smells so good... Glancing around, I spotted a familiar black guitar case resting against a cream coloured wall. And then it hit me.

I was in Yuuichi's bed, tangled in his sheets.

For a while this thought was rather disturbing, because though I remembered falling asleep on Yuuichi's couch, I didn't recall consciously climbing into his bed. (Which, for the record, felt really comfortable.) I blushed slightly as the thought of the couch reminded me of the chaste kiss Yuuichi had blatantly given me on my cheek. It led me to wonder whether this was going to become regular behaviour of his, or if it was just due to his drunken stupor. Swinging my legs to the other side of the bed, I scratched my head a little and heaved myself off the comfy mattress. Following my nose out into the hallway and to the kitchen, I was greeted by Yuuichi, wearing a bright blue apron and expertly handling a skillet.

"Morning Etsu, I figured you haven't had much American cuisine since you stepped onto Japanese shores, so this is the least I could do," he gave me a warm smile before turning his attention back to the stove.

My gaze trailed from the pancakes and fresh strawberries, then to the sunny-side-ups and sausages, right before I spotted a good number of ham and cheese sandwiches. Was he trying to feed an army? Oh right, it was me he was cooking for.

"Yuuichi, how?"

"It's already eleven. I took the chance you wouldn't be up anytime soon and headed to the supermarket nearby."

I noticed he had thrown on a comfortable pair of frayed jeans and a simple cotton t-shirt, and was much more energetic than he was the night before. Or, for further clarification, the part of the night where he had spilled his heart out, after being a loose giraffe on crack. His un-combed, untamed hair stuck out in strategic places with the sole intention of humiliating him, and I winced at the thought that Japan's newest talent had gone out to the hypermart without bothering to lift the tragic curse of bed head.

"Your hair looks like a patch of grass that the gardener forgot all about. I can't believe you went out in public with that," I gently reproached him.

"Speak for yourself. Have you looked in the mirror recently?" He replied, deadpanned.

"Of course I did. It tells me that I'm the fairest in the land!"

"You ought to sue the manufacturers for giving you faulty merchandise," Yuuichi took one look at the sparkles in my eyes and scoffed.

"Well, for a guy who can't comb his own hair, I'm impressed you can cook," I laughed, completely meaning to compliment him for knowing his way around the kitchen.

"Surprising eh?" Yuuichi's eyes twinkled as he grinned at me. "I bet I'm a better chef than you are as well. How do you think I survived by myself all those years?"

I was about to grab a sandwich when my hand was briskly swiped away by a black-haired boy with a devious smirk.

"Go wash up first, you ugly duckling."

...

"You were dead beat when I carried you to the bed at around 4. Yes, I took the couch so I didn't invade your privacy," Yuuichi stood and began to clear the empty dishes which I had practically polished within the past half-hour.

"Thanks. And your bed's a lot more comfortable than mine, by the way."

"Oh?" Yuuichi seemed rather amused, "would you rather share it with me?"

I threw him a withering look and proceeded to stack the greasy plates that had once held some of the best grilled sausages I had ever eaten. I still couldn't wrap my head around the fact that the same boy who had a voice that could make angels tear had cooking skills that would put Jamie Oliver to shame. Perfect guys like that just didn't exist. Then I was reminded that Yuuichi was far from perfect, and that he had been bravely facing his demons as well.

Watching silently as he threw me a knowing smirk, he began to run the water and lathered the porcelain in the sink with a clean minty soap sponge. I decided there and then that real men do the dishes. Joining him at the sink, I placed the dirty plates into the basin, as he acknowledged it by looking at me with his crystal clear, sky blue eyes. Without breaking the contact, he suddenly stopped scrubbing the plate he had in his wide palms and inched his face so much closer to mine.

My once resolute mental barrier to bar myself from feeling any attraction immediately came crashing down like a Border's stock market share. All that I could think of was his warmth, the faint but crisp scent of mint on him, and how mesmerizingly close his electric blue eyes were. His eyes reminded me of cool, refreshing depths that cleansed my soul, or even of freedom in the never ending sky above. I wanted to explore the never-ending sea of emotions that his irises reflected. He seemed to be staring straight at me, biting his lip ever so slightly, and the blood rushed to my face as I squeezed my eyes shut. I wasn't sure what would come next, and what scared me was that I wasn't sure what I WANTED to come next.

I shouldn't have worried though, because Yuuichi's next move was to smother my nose with soap suds.

My eyelids flew open to see a hysterical Yuuichi bending over the kitchen counter in peals of laughter, his same blue eyes reflecting a kiddie pool of mischievousness and immaturity.

"AHHAHA- ET-HAHA-SU, if you could see your face now!"

I stood flabbergasted for a moment. What was this ailment that had been plaguing me for so long? If we were best friends these playful banters and bouts of teasing would be common, and I would expect them to come. What had I been expecting back there and then? Whenever I was in close proximity of Yuuichi, I never really could concentrate on anything else. His eyes, it must have been his eyes, the depth, the clarity and honesty they reflected whenever I looked into them.

I realised there and then that I had the most beautiful best friend in the universe.

Who was not going to get away with getting my face soapy.

Smirking right back at him, my left hand groped around the bottom of the sink for the soapy sponge. Yuuichi's eyes widened with realisation and horror. It reminded me vaguely of those demented plastic clowns at the mobile carnivals which had their mouths carved out so you could throw bacteria-infested plastic balls at them in hopes of winning a soft toy.

"No, Etsu, NO, I'm sorry; SORRY! ETSU! NO-"

If I really were at a carnival, they wouldn't have found a prize large enough to acknowledge my expertise at getting back at Yuuichi for his earlier bout of insolence.

…

"Damn, Etsuko, we got stains on my couch," Yuuichi muttered, referring to our recent water fight rather suggestively, "you were way too eager."

"Well, dearest, it's your fault for not using any protection," I shot back in annoyance.

Yuuichi laughed aloud and crossed his overgrown legs on his sofa, before hugging a cushion to his chest and watching the music video we had filmed the week before for the thousandth time. The Soap Incident earlier had progressed into full fledged war as I had chased him around his apartment with a soapy sponge, after which he led me to his bathroom and poured a bucket of water on me, then made a beeline for the roof. When I finally reached the top of the stairwell, he had the fire hose aimed right at me, drenching me in the liquid. Being winter, I had been utterly stunned at the freezing cold assault, before recovering and tackling Yuuichi to the ground, making sure he got soaked as well. We had spent a good hour on the rooftop, and I didn't regret a single minute of it.

After showering in my own apartment, I had taken the liberty to bring my laptop to his apartment to finally discuss which scenes should be kept in the remake of Yuuichi's music video, and which scenes should be flung out like last week's meatloaf. As I watched him gingerly sip his hot beverage, I shivered slightly and wrapped my hands around my mug a little tighter. My shower had mysteriously run out of hot water earlier, and I had been reduced to washing out the cold hose water with more cold water. It wasn't very effective, but at least I knew I was relatively clean.

"Oh, Etsu, I received a text from LME. I'm going in tomorrow to do a studio recording of the song," he smiled brightly at me, "will you come and give me moral support?"

Nodding, I beamed back at him before pouring steaming hot chocolate into two separate mugs. I still couldn't get over the shock that the President had hired both of us to be in showbiz, and was utterly ecstatic for Yuuichi. I wasn't sure if it was such a blessing to me, but I decided that I would cherish the chance that I had been given, and enjoy myself in the process. After all, not everyone gets to boast about seeing a close friend scale the ladder of musical stardom one rung at a time.

The past four hours had been spent editing and jotting down more notes before brainstorming further, and we had made significant progress. Given that the President had set the deadline for the storyboard as Friday (today was Wednesday), I was certain that we would finish in time.

"Okay, we'll cut this out," Yuuichi pointed to the scene where he had walked aimlessly out on the streets at night and pouted uncharacteristically, "my hair looks retarded."

"You might want to find a better reason."

"It's too dreary, and it makes the viewer lose attention fast," he explained seriously.

"True, but we need to show your detachment and preoccupation with your dilemma though," I furrowed my eyebrows in thought, "how about a few flashback scenes?"

I explained to him how we could film him walking down a street alone, seeing a perfect, complete family, and then contrast it with a child version of Yuuichi brimming with jealousy as he watched a separate family doing the exact same thing, bringing about the sense of continuation and inability to let go of his lacking past. Yuuichi nodded his head as he listened attentively, and then turned back to the screen to offer a few more suggestions on how the camera should pan out into a continuous shot during that, and also during the electric solo, the intensity of the camera movements or snippets should be shown at a much accelerated rate.

It was around this instant that I started sneezing. Accepting the box of tissues that he handed me, I sniffled that I was okay, and urged him to continue. After another fifteen minutes or so though, I couldn't concentrate well, and the irrational part of my mind concluded that I was just tired, whilst the realistic part sighed and told me I had probably caught a cold.

"Etsu, you okay?" Yuuichi asked worriedly, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder.

"Yeah, I think I'm just tired from editing," I sighed and rubbed my neck, feeling chilly all of a sudden, and covered my legs with a cushion.

"You're the same girl who enthusiastically burned the midnight oil for three consecutive nights when you filmed last week. Are you sure you're just tired?" Yuuichi eyed me suspiciously, and I immediately noticed his wide hand looming closer to my forehead.

"I think I'll just sleep early," I mumbled and heaved myself off the couch.

I knew that it would be impossible to fool Yuuichi, but I remembered that he still had his studio recording to go for the next morning. If he just thought that I was tired, he'd leave me alone and would be able to concentrate on the recording tomorrow without worrying about his sick director. If he had bothered to cook breakfast for me this morning even though he was the one that was allegedly the one that should have suffered from a serious hangover, then I wouldn't want to know what he might do if I was really the one who was sick.

The world swirled a little around me, and suddenly there seemed to be two, no, three laptops on the coffee table. Before I could speculate on whether the world had transformed into a giant hall of mirrors, I realised I couldn't feel my legs, and a piercing chill had overcome my senses. Stumbling toward Yuuichi's front door, everything suddenly turned an awful shade of black.

…

And when somebody's sick, we know a nice session of caretaking will follow! =)

Okay, first and foremost I really REALLY want to apologize to everyone. Whether you've been reading or not, it's an author's responsibility and ultimate goal to finish a story, and NEVER leave it hanging. I can tell you guys though, that this year has been rough for me (first relationship and breakup) and a new school and all. Doesn't change the fact that I should have continued writing. In fact, writing keeps me sane. XD

Thus, I am completely sorry, and I do hope you continue to read and review this. I'm sorry if the summary enough isn't adequate. (I think most of you would have forgotten most of it) I miss writing, and I'm thoroughly glad to return to my first love – fanfiction. =)