disclaimer: Skip Beat! is the exclusive creative property of Yoshiki Nakamura.
AN: This (and likely chapter 5, out soon) might be the angsty-est this story gets, but don't be fooled, this is still very much a sex show on clown-car wheels. Nothing too overblown, but let's just say our two resident idiots are about to be on the rocks for a little bit.
This is a fairly short one (short for me, anyway), but that's because I had to trim this one down and bump more of the action to the next chapter. So that does mean chapter 5 is also almost ready to roll!
Enjoy!
Chapter Four
Ren arrived to the set of Unsafe Passage and wondered for the millionth time why Director Kiryuu had chosen to name his horror movie such a thing. He couldn't quite nail down what exactly bothered him about the title, though the nearest he could think was that it sounded too much like a detour sign one might find on a bad road. Was that what the writer was going for?
He had asked Yashiro about this and gotten a stern "Aren't you supposed to be taking it easy?" for his troubles.
"I am taking it easy," he had replied defensively.
"By critiquing a film you're not even in?"
He was right, of course. It wasn't usually in Ren's nature to worry much about film productions he wasn't personally a part of, but since he practically haunted the set these days, it was kind of inevitable that he would absorb aspects of it via osmosis. Having come off of three back-to-back projects and a rigorous ad campaign for athletic wear, he had been strongly advised (well, ordered) by Yashiro to take a brief hiatus.
In the past a brief hiatus for him would have still involved hanging around LME looking for something to do, but the main reason now was being near Kyoko. Yashiro didn't approve of Ren not taking it as easy as he would have liked, but he never had a harsh word to say about the way he had essentially shackled himself to Kyoko's side.
The thought of his girlfriend immediately brought the image of a leatherbound journal floating back up from the depths of where he had submerged it to the surface of his mind's eye.
Speaking of Kyoko ...
For God's sake, why not show up to her doorstep in scrubs and a lab coat? his conscience laid into him. Maybe that'll jumpstart the conversation! Since you want to be a doctor all of a sudden, you moron.
He frowned as he entered the area outside of the emptying soundstage, nodding absentmindedly to a couple of the stagehands packing things away. He had wracked his brain half the night as to how he would handle this, to no avail. There had to be a way to broach this subject without bringing up the damn diary!
Kyoko hadn't seemed to have made the connection between his sudden change in career aspirations and her revealing journal entry. For that he was eternally grateful, but that also meant that there was no way to steer any discussion towards that subject without just blurting it out. And if the other morning was any indication, she was clearly picking up on his agitation and fearing the worst.
He spotted her near the craft services table, chatting with the Bridge Rock trio. She was laughing at something Hikaru was saying, even going so far as to lift her hand to cover her mouth when he started flailing his arms at something his two taller bandmates were saying.
Ren wondered if he would ever be able to look at, approach or talk to his own girlfriend with anything less than the excitement of a dog anticipating a pocketful of treats. He played it cool enough when he greeted all four of them as a group, resting his hand on around Kyoko's shoulder and conversing with the three young musicians casually for all of thirty-five seconds before he turned his attention back to Kyoko.
"You have everything you need?"
There was no answer. He looked down to see she wasn't looking him in the face, but rather staring at the juncture where their bodies met ever so slightly.
Staring with a fixed expression that made it clear she did not want to be touched.
This was further reinforced when she raised her eyes up to his face and proceeded to stare him down as though the lowest order of pond scum had somehow gained sentience, form and the utter audacity to lay its hands on her. A strand of ice slid up Ren's back, the feeling akin to a piano wire being dug into his spine. He slowly lifted his arm off of her and put a few inches between them.
"Is ... everything okay?"
Her gaze didn't budge from his once. The searing contempt had mellowed to a cordial, or at least neutral, mask. But those eyes may as well have been those of a cobra.
"Yes. Of course," she stated airily in a way that made it clear that nothing, in fact, was okay.
All the warmth from her conversation with the Bridge Rock trio was nowhere to be found. The trio, in fact, had also picked up on the frigid aura suddenly swirling around and subtly retreated to give the couple a modicum of privacy. They busied themselves with idle tasks and feeble side chatter nearby, trying their hardest to look like they weren't eavesdropping.
"Are you ready to go?" he asked, searching her face for any signs of life he might have missed.
"I'm afraid I won't be going with you tonight."
The words were clipped and polite, and she now had a slight smile on her face that didn't come close to reaching her eyes. Her eyes which were remarkably arctic as they looked into his. He felt that icy garrote once more, wrapping around his neck this time.
What is going on here?
"I'm sorry to hear that," he said by way of nominal acceptance as he hazarded a step closer to her. "Are you busy or ... ?"
She didn't even blink. She continued to look straight through him with all the affection of a lab technician peering through a microscope.
But she didn't blink.
"No, I'm not. Good night."
His ears rang as though he'd just been struck in the head. Before he could recover from this blow, she turned, bid a much warmer goodbye to the boys of Bridge Rock over her shoulder and then strode away. He noticed Kotonami-san glancing back at him before falling into step with Kyoko as they left the backlot. That unreadable glance didn't inspire so much as a shred of hope.
He watched them leave, his eyes glued to the back of Kyoko's head in the hopes that she might at least look back, but she didn't. Considering the expression on her face just then, perhaps that was a good thing.
Ren could swear he'd seen that look before, but he couldn't pin down where. Box-R? Dark Moon, perhaps?
No. There was none of the imperious Natsu in her expression nor was there the palpable hatred of Mio. It had faint echoes of both, but never before had he seen her direct this specific kind of look at him or anyone else, for that matter. It was too specific. As though she were wordlessly saying, You are lower than dirt, and I need you to know that about yourself, but I'm too polite say it out loud.
His mind chose that moment to flash back to a vivid recollection of the way she had looked in his bed the other night with three of his fingers buried inside of her. That woman seemed so many worlds away from the one who had just left him for dead without so much as a backwards glance.
Yes, there was no denying it: Something was very wrong here. This sentiment was immediately echoed by the musicians who suddenly flanked him in a cloud of sympathy and Axe body spray.
Yuusei was clearly at a loss for words. "Dude. Oh my God, dude," was all he could muster.
Hikaru swallowed, staring at Kyoko's retreating back. "I know Kyoko-san can be intense, but that was almost ... scary."
Shinichi clapped Ren on the back in a gesture of manly solidarity.
"Almost? Almost?!" he howled. "You saw how she massacred my boy*!"
"Bro," Yuusei asked, shaking his head, "what did you do?"
Ren let out the breath he'd been holding without realizing it.
"I wonder," he said with a feeble chuckle.
This was a lie, of course, yet another among a growing mound of them. He didn't have to wonder.
She knows about the journal.
Inhale, snow. Exhale, ice.
Inhale, snow. Exhale, ice.
Kyoko kept her back straight with a considerable effort as she and Kanae departed, all the while maintaining the meditative state she had lapsed into with Ren's arrival. She felt his gaze as viscerally as she always did, though where it was once like a phantom caress, it was now the equivalent of Superman's heat vision. The weight of his unseen scrutiny bored into her back, but all she could see and feel were the towering shelves of ice she visualized around herself, too hard and multilayered for him to pierce. On and on, the mantra droned in her head:
Inhale, snow. Exhale, ice.
Moko-san noted her friend's chilly aura with an odd sense of pride.
"I'd say you pulled it off."
"He's not following us, is he?" Kyoko asked stiffly. It was very much a toss-up as to what she wanted the answer to be, glaciers be damned.
"No. You can put the shield down now, I think."
She exhaled slowly, softening her stance as she and Kanae walked off into the Tokyo evening. "You don't think I overdid it?"
Kanae shook her head, allowing herself a rare smirk. "Not at all. He's clearly thinking about what he's done ... whatever it is. With another man, I'd say it was a risky move to do that in front of other men, but he's not the type to posture."
"Isn't this ... gaslighting?"
Kanae lifted one shoulder in a delicate shrug, tapping out a text message to Amamiya as they waited at a crosswalk. "Probably. I wouldn't get too hung up on that if I were you."
Kyoko sighed heavily, looking down at the pavement. Kanae swooped down upon this hint of doubt with the swiftness of a hawk spotting a mouse.
"Hey! Don't do that. No guilt, remember?"
"I know, but - !"
"We've been over this. This is a strategic retreat, nothing more. You have to give him room to stumble! The two of you were in a stalemate making doe eyes at one another. Now that you've upset the chessboard, he'll have to play by your rules."
A shiver ran through Kyoko at the very idea of laying down rules that Kuon would be compelled to obey. It troubled her that it wasn't an unpleasant shiver by any means. She pushed the thought aside, just as she had many other similar thoughts of late.
Their destination came into view as they reached the top of the stone steps leading up to a wide plaza. The space was strung with white string lights around its perimeter, lending a festive air to the immaculate square. They entered the lounge at the far end, sweeping off their coats in near-unison as they skirted the crowded tables in favor of the bar.
"You're right," she conceded, settling into one of the empty seats, grateful to the low lights for shielding them from too much scrutiny. "He won't just tell me what's going on, so I guess a fresh approach should shake something loose."
"Exactly. So definitely keep playing it cool, keep control of the dynamic. Nothing too feisty, since he might take that as a direct challenge or even flirtation. You struck the right balance, I think. He didn't know what hit him," Kanae added with an evil smirk.
Kyoko felt her face burning and knew it had nothing with the saketini she had just gulped down to blunt her nerves.
"...if you don't mind my saying, I could almost believe you're having fun with all this!"
"Maybe I am," Kanae admitted, swirling the ice cubes in her whiskey sour. "It isn't every day you get to see a man like him begging with his hands out off-screen."
"He wasn't begging!"
"No, but he will. You might not know it, but you have that guy right in the palm of your hand," Kanae said, shaking her head.
Kyoko felt that telltale shiver again and bristled at both it and Moko-san's observation.
"No, I don't!"
"Yes, you do. It's quite sickening, really. Every time you move so much as a quarter of an inch, he realigns himself. I don't even think he's aware of it. Again, sickening."
"You're imagining things!"
"Oh, am I? Have it your way. Either, there's one last thing you need to know for this whole ice queen routine to work."
Kanae fixed Kyoko with a Medusan stare over the rim of her glass, an unmistakable cue that this was of the utmost importance.
"There's going to be a moment you need to watch for," she said seriously. "He'll be ready to tip over and spill his guts. And that's when you give him the final nudge. When you ask him if he has something to tell you. He'll be ready to burst and asking him directly in that moment will be like releasing a valve. You'll find out what you need to know."
Before Kyoko could ask Moko-san how she could know something so specific with such certainty, the bartender called out a salutation to another arriving customer. The customer turned out to be Kyoko's manager, Amamiya Chiori**. Kanae spotted her over Kyoko's shoulder and waved her over to their corner.
"I got your text," Amamiya said, easing into the seat next to Kyoko, briefcase still in hand. "What exactly are we celebrating?"
"Kyoko destroying a man's spirit for displeasing her."
The actress's jaw dropped, but her manager didn't miss a beat:
"Will this interfere in any way with renewing her contract for the Tensen series spinoff?"
"No," Kanae answered before knocking back the rest of her glass.
"Excellent!" she chirped. "Then you have my blessing. Destroy to your heart's content," she added before turning to flag down the bartender.
Kyoko shook her head despairingly at her two closest friends.
"You guys are a terrible influence, you know that?"
*Who doesn't LOVE an out-of-nowhere Godfather reference, huh? HUH?!
**I'm never sure what to do with Chiori's character because she shows up so little in the manga! I had her still as a fellow actress in the last story I wrote, so I decided to change it up here. Given Chiori's experiences in showbiz and some recent conversations we've been hearing about child stars, I think she would be the type to bow out of the spotlight for her own wellbeing, but is just devoted enough to Kyoko and the industry to be her manager.
A couple of things of note: I don't know if I specified the ages, but its meant to have been a few years, so everyone is drinking age. Kyoko is meant to be about 22 or 23 at this point.
Till next time!