THE STALKER'S RETURN.
"And that's a wrap! Nice work everybody!" The Director announced, and the crew broke into an appluad. "The shoot is over, so we'll be on our way back to Tokyo first thing in the morning!"
The cheer that followed was even louder than before. A little while later, the bus arrived and they all jumped inside to get back to the hotel for their last night in Karuizawa. When Yashiro didn't see Ren boarding the bus, he looked around for his client and found him seated on a nearby bench.
Ren was sitting cross-legged with his elbow digging into his knee and his chin resting on the heel of his hand. He was looking at the sky, his eyes lost and dreamy, his cheeks slightly red, and his lips a little upturned into a small, secretive smile.
"Hey Ren," Yashiro sat down beside him, his mischievous grin slowly creeping up. "What are you smiling about? Come on now, spill! What happened during lunch?" With the excited smirk of a teenage gossip girl, Yashiro cupped his cheeks expectantly.
Ren immediately put back on the cool facade of his poker face. "Something did happen," he replied. "I got to skip lunch today."
"You know as well as I do, that's not what was making you blush!" The manager rolled his eyes. "I can tell something happened with Kyoko. But judging from how normal she's acting, it couldn't have been anything major." He sighed. "You were probably worked up about some small and trivial progress."
"Well excuse me for making only small and trivial progresses," Ren muttered unintelligibly under his breath with a snort.
The area outside the bus was cleared since everyone else was already seated inside. At last, both of them got up as well and made their way towards the vehicle.
"Say Ren," Yashiro asked, "isn't it frustrating?"
"What?"
"That almost every woman you've met had practically thrown herself at your feet, yet the one you want doesn't even realize how you feel. And you end up getting so excited over such small things."
"I'm not frustrated!" Ren snapped, his tone contrary to his words.
"I was wondering," Yashiro smirked his smug grin again, "if you get worried about someone else making place in Kyoko's heart."
Before Ren could even think, Sho Fuwa's cocky smirk flashed in has inner eye and his face hardened.
"Luckily I have a solution for that," the manager went on. "Don't you think it's about time you made a move on Kyoko to let her know your true intentions? I say, since Kyoko is such a pure hearted and innocent girl, if you used your playboy charm on her and put those experienced lips of yours to good use to strike her with even a single kiss, she'd be a goner!" he grinned, his eyes glinting evilly.
Ren stopped walking. He swivelled his head to face Yashiro before he shared his views on the manager's brilliant idea, "if I did that, the one who would be a goner would be me. Especially because Kyoko is so pure-hearted and inexperienced when men. If I rush things and went for her before she is ready, she would end all ties with me."
The next morning at the hotel suite, Kyoko was almost done with her packing when Itsumi entered her room.
"Wow, you're already done!" She exclaimed with an impressed smile.
"Yeah," Kyoko smiled back. "Do you want me to help with yours?"
"Nah, I've got this!"
"Alright," Kyoko having packed her bags, switched off the lights of her room and stepped outside. "Anyway, do you know where the Director is?"
"He is probably in the VIP Lounge."
"Okay. I'm off to see him." Kyon exited their suite and used the elevator to go down to the Lounge. Once the elevator stopped with a click, it's doors slid open and she found a familiar person waiting outside.
"Kyoko!" Shouko smiled.
"Good morning!" Kyoko greeted the manager in a polite tone. "Getting breakfast?"
"No, I just came in here to pick up a change of clothes for Sho."
Kyoko rolled her eyes. Just how lazy is he going to be? She thought disdainfully.
"Sho's busy with recording right now and he doesn't want to be disturbed." As if she had read her thoughts, Shouko offered. "Anyway, it's great that I bumped into you here. There is something I wanted to say. Thank you."
Kyoko frowned. "Why? What did I do?" She asked, her face genuinely confused.
"You have no idea how much you've helped Sho."
"I don't remember helping him."
"I guess you didn't even realize it," the manager chuckled. "But the only reason Sho was able to deal with the whole Vie Ghouls situation is because you encouraged him. Infact, I've never seen him being this serious about his work before."
"You're overdoing it," Kyoko forced a chuckle. "I didn't do anything. Besides, I bet he'll be back to slacking off again in no time."
"No, it's different." The confidence with which Shouko had said it faltered Kyoko's smile in an instant. "That boy, something has changed about him." She went on, "from now on, he's gonna get a lot more supporters, both in public and behind the scenes. Just wait and see! He's going places!"
Kyoko opened her mouth to respond but her throat suddenly went dry and no words came out.
With a polite not, the manager took her leave and went on her separate way leaving Kyonko utterly frustrated.
"No thanks," Kyoko spat through clenched teeth a long time after Shouko had left, "is what I should have said! Why should I watch him succeed? I'm not his mother!"
With a tired sigh, Kyoko started walking towards her earlier destination, the dining hall. As she made her way through the maze of people crowding the hotel lobby, she spotted someone from the corner of her eyes, more specifically, the familiar mane of his silver hair. Immediately, she snapped her head in that direction but the person she was expecting to see wasn't there as if he had vanished into thin air without a trace.
Kyoko cocked her head to all sides as she slowly swivelled on her spot, looking for the lead singer of the Vie Ghouls, but he was nowhere to be found, as if he hadn't been there in the first place. Did I only imagine that? No! I'm sure he was there! Kyoko stood on the balls of her feet, ready to spring away at any moment if necessary.
All of a sudden someone standing behind her leaned close to her neck and blew hard into her left ear, almost giving her a heart attack. Feeling the cool breath tickling her skin, Kyoko frantically jumped away from him with a loud, startled gasp.
She turned around only to find the culprit dressed up in a dark jacket and jeans. The smooth mane of his silver hair was softly falling around his shoulders.
"What the hell was that?" Kyoko demanded, as she gently stroked her left ear through her pinky.
"I was just trying to get your attention," Reino answered with his usual smirk.
"Ha! I knew it!" She snapped. "I knew you would come again. I'm glad I didn't trust that idiot and decided to be prepared."
"Whatever preparation," he used his fingers to put double-coats around the word, "you've made, it wouldn't be enough to stop me."
"Ooh, I am scared!" Kyoko shot back sarcastically. "What are you gonna do?"
Reino inched close to her. "I'm gonna take you with me." He smiled confidently, almost as if he was proud of his kidnapping skills.
"Let's see you try!" Raising her skirt a little, she reached into her leg holster which had been secured around one of her knees. There were two things strapped into it, a hammer and a little pouch with a shiny blue rock inside. Kyoko took out the latter. She held out Corn like a weapon and pointed it at Reino with an evil smirk. "I'm warning you, I've changed a lot since the last four days!" She used her free hand to point her index finger at him and motioned him to come at her.
"You wanna start right here?" Well, aren't you in a hurry?" Reino chuckled. "But we've got a lot of onlookers." He nodded towards the small crowd that had gathered around them without Kyoko even realizing.
The door to the suite was opened by Itsumi a minute after Ren had knocked on it.
"Good morning," he flashed a smile. "I hope I didn't disturb you."
"Good morning." Itsumi smiled back. "Of course not! You didn't. Are you looking for Kyoko?"
"Um, yeah. Can you call her out?"
"Actually, no. Kyoko's not here right now. She went to the the dining hall to see Director Ogata."
Ren's smile faltered. "By herself?"
"Yeah, why?" Itsumi blinked cluelessly.
"Um... it's nothing." Ren hesitated, before he remembered how the others were not told that Kyoko's stalker was a celebrity and was staying in the same hotel. He plastered another convincing smile. "I've got some business with the Director as well, I'll just go see her there."
He turned back, and strode off. As he stormed ahead, his smile vanished again and was replaced by an angry frown.
Seriously? What is that girl thinking wandering around in the hotel like that? He minced his teeth, his nostrils flared. That stalker is still here. And from what she had told me, that guy is a psychopath who doesn't care about anything as long as he can get what he wants. Does she actually think she could face that guy alone?
"Let's get things restarted!" In the empty hallway beneath the stairs, Kyoko once again pointed the blue stone at Reino in the pose of a weapon. "Let's see you try!" After she had noticed the small herd of fangirls staring at Reino with starstruck eyes, surrounding them back at the hotel lobby, she marched off to the empty staircase knowing full well that the Beagle would follow. And now that they were alone, she was ready to settle the score with him once and for all.
Reino narrowed his eyes as he scratched the back of his head, his features perplexed. "Have you already forgotten the last time? What's up with the overconfidence?"
"Now that I have this, nothing can scare me anymore!" Kyoko's grip tightened around Corn. She reached into her skirt using her free hand and touched the handle of the hammer to make sure it was still strapped to her knee. Not that she didn't trust the magic of Corn's stone, but now that they were alone she actually had the chance to put the hammer to good use.
"What is that thing?" Reino wondered aloud curiously before his clutched the blue rock from her hands and examined it carefully. "What's up with the stone? It's nothing special." He remarked in a bored voice.
He examined it more closely once again, and then the images came. The memories of the past owner of that stone flashed in his inner eye like someone was pulling a real in his mind. Those unwanted pictures were blinking way too fast for him to actually see what the owner - a little boy with golden hair - was going through but he could still feel his pain, his sorrow, and his loneliness as if it was his own. They could be seen through one glance at those empty emerald eyes of his and that forced smile on his lips which the boy used to fool everyone.
"How dare you? Give that back!" Kyoko screamed from somewhere in the background. Her voice sounded distant as if the sound was muffled by the whirlpool of overwhelming emotions clouding his thoughts. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach slowly grew and his chest felt heavy as it was being consumed by the immense grief of that little boy with golden hair. Those feelings were such a torment that they could have evoked sympathy from the devil himself.
Using all the willpower he could muster, Reino threw the stone back at Kyoko who caught it almost instantaneously. Her face was a little surprised because of the fact that Reino returned it to her so easily.
His mind adjusted to the present once again after he blinked his ghoulish eyes a few times and inhaled deeply. "That stone" he mumbled. "It wasn't yours, right?"
"How do you know that?" Kyoko frowned.
He rubbed his face and ran all ten fingers through his silver hair before he slowly looked up at Kyoko through his brows, his eyes glinting with a cold warning. "You should throw that thing away."
"Say what?" She scowled.
"Just trust me on this!" His face turned paler than usual and his tone became deadly serious. "If only you could see what I had seen! That blond boy this stone belonged to, he had too many negative feelings and they have been ingrained into it."
"How do you know about Corn?" Kyoko took an uneasy step back. At first, Reino was just a creepy stalker but now she realized that what he was sprouting wasn't nonsense at all. In fact the opposite. He seemed to know about things which he had no way of finding out on his own. He was not only evil and sick but also... unique.
"Listen to me," Reino tried again. "You should really throw that thing away. It's filled with negative emotions."
"Of course it is!" Kyoko gave him a duh look. "It absorbs people's sadness through magic. I've been using it for years that's why-"
"I'm not talking about you!" He seemed to be losing his patience. "The boy it belonged to, he is the one I'm talking about. It's been a while since I've held something so painful. Your feeble feelings are nothing compared to what he had been through. If that boy still hadn't freed himself, he would have already broken and left this world by now."
"You're lying!" Kyoko clutched Corn tightly to her chest. Her voice sounded desperate, as if deep down contrary to what she was saying, she actually believed him.
"If you're not going to throw it away, then at least let me see it again!"
"No! Stay away!" Kyoko crouched down, curling into a ball. "I'll never hand over Corn to you! "
"Give it to me!" When Kyoko didn't oblige, Reino grabbed her wrist and tried to pull her up, but she remained stubbornly glued to her spot.
Then, Reino tried pushing her down until her back was pressed against the ground. He caged her in between his knees clutching her wrists while he struggled to unlock her tightly-shut fists.
"For once I'm trying to do something right!" He shouted. "Just give it up already!"
"Nobody asked you, get lost!" Kyoko bit out.
As Reino struggled with Kyoko, all of a sudden, fingers closed around his pale wrist and he was roughly pulled up from her. When he turned sharply to face this new intruder, he froze with shock. Not because he had seen this dark haired man more than a dozen times on TV, but because of the fiery anger burning in his deep, dark eyes. It was intense enough to eviscerate anyone.
Reino parted his lips to speak but before any words could come out, his vision went blank. Ren's grip tightened as he squeezed Reino's wrist and once again a torrent of unwanted images from the past flashed inside Reino's head, blinking faster than the speed of light. Not this again, he sighed.
Most of the faces Reino saw in the memories of Ren Tsuruga were unrecognisable to him. The images were flashing way too fast for him to figure out what was going on for any of it to actually make sense. But there was one little girl who stood out. Her dark hair tied into tiny pigtails that bounced off her shoulders, and the big, cheery smile spread across her face were not the only reasons Reino recognised her. It was because of her big, hazel eyes whose lustrous glimmer was the same as now.
There was one more person that Reino recognised in the midst of those swirling memories constantly knocking into his mind. It was a teenage boy with golden hair and emerald eyes. What surprised Reino was that he was the older version of the same boy from before, whose stone Kyoko was holding on to. Unlike his younger self whose eyes were filled with pain and sorrow, this boy's eyes were deadly cold, colder than any iceberg.
At first, Reino failed to note who this blond boy was, but soon after his emotions slowly crept up inside him did he realize that this boy was Ren Tsuruga himself. His appearance was uncanny. By only changing his eyes and hair, he had transformed into a completely different person. No one could see this blond boy with those ice-cold eyes, and the current Ren Tsuruga with his playboy attitude, and believe that those two are actually the same. Because not only their appearances were changed but their whole vibe and the aura emanating from them was the polar opposite. It was hard to believe a person could change this much only in the short span of a few years.
More images with flashes of gold and red blinked inside Reino's mind. The gold was for the colour of that boy's hair and as for the red, it was for the blood. Those images were so disturbing that even Reino paralysed when he experienced only a fraction of that darkness that was residing in that boy. For the first time, Reino wanted it to stop. He was afraid to see more.
Using all the adrenaline that had gathered up through his fear, he jerked away from Ren in one final swoosh. When their contact broke, the images stopped as well.
A few seconds passed before his mind adjusted to the present again. Kyoko and Ren were looking at him strangely since he failed to hide the disturbed and aghast look on his face.
"Who are you?" Reino demanded, pointing an accusing finger at Ren. "Ren Tsuruga, it's not your real name, is it?"
"It's my stage name, so what of it?" The cold fury returned to Ren's eyes, and Reino became the victim of his chilling gaze. "Enough about me. So how about we go back to the main subject, eh?" His tone was dangerously hushed as he slowly inched closer to him.
Reino backed away even further. When Ren still didn't stop, he tried to hide the fear that was evidently visible on his face, and put on a confident smile. "If you're planning on hitting me, you must be insane!" He forced a chuckle. "I'm warning you, it won't end well for your career..."
"Nobody's gonna get hit," Ren stopped and raised his arms right in front of Reino. The vocalist flinched, squeezing his eyes tight shut, embracing himself for the punch that never came.
Instead, Ren grabbed the collar of Reino's jacket and tugged it hard enough to almost choke him in the process.
He only let go of the collar when Reino was on the verge of dying from the lack of oxygen. Leaning close to his ear, Ren whispered softly, "if you ever come near her again, I swear I'll not stop the next time..."
As soon as Ren let go of the collar, Reino scurried away as fast as he could manage. Judging from the way his feet limped ahead, it seemed the injuries inflicted by Sho four days ago weren't fully healed.
When he finally left, Kyoko heaved a sigh of relief but it was cut off midway as she became the next victim of Ren's chilling gaze when he fixated his frosty eyes upon her.
Kyoko knew she should probably try saying something, but being with Ren while he was literally shaking from anger made her lips go numb. She parted them to speak but no words came out. After a long moment, she managed, "um...er... t-t-t-thanks?" It sounded more like a question.
"What's that thing you're holding?" Ren demanded, his voice still dangerously low. "He was trying to snatch it from you, wasn't he? What is it?"
"Um..." Kyoko would have told him everything, but explaining to Ren how she was trying to fight Reino off using the power of Corn's stone didn't seem like the best idea, specially now that he was mad enough to burn himself to a crisp.
"What were you thanking me about?" Ren went on, when Kyoko didn't answer his question. "I only sent that guy away because I assumed him to be your stalker. But considering how you shared with him whatever you're hiding from me, he must be pretty close to you."
"I did not share anything with him!" Kyoko protested. "He seemed to just guess things out of the blue. And he was right! He was right about Corn, he was right about your stage name and..." Her voice trailed off. Only when she said those words out loud did the pieces fit together in her mind and the truth clicked.
If that boy still hadn't freed himself, he would have already broken and left this world by now.
Reino's words rang in her mind loud and clear. If he was right about the other things, why wouldn't he be right about what he said about Corn? Was it actually true? Could Corn really be dead?
Before Kyoko knew, there was a heavy lump in her throat that prevented her to speak, and her heart somehow started weighing a ton. Her head felt dizzy, her face frozen as big, fat drops of tears continuously poured out of her expressionless eyes.
The raging anger in Ren's eyes finally diminished when he noticed the drizzle of shimmering tears rolling down Kyoko's cheeks. In its place, concern welled up inside him. He gently grabbed her shoulders gazing deep down into her eyes, trying to decipher the situation as if he could get all the answers in the world from just looking at those precious golden orbs.
"If he was right about everything, then he must be right about Corn..." Kyoko's heart sank as she mumbled those words, using the last bit of courage left inside her. A sob escaped her lips. "He said that if Corn didn't break free from his painful life, he would be gone from this world." The little drizzle of tears turned into a fountain as she squeezed her eyes tight shut. "Corn could be dead by now... and I... had no idea." She choked out.
Ren gently wiped the tears from her face and whispered softly, "hey, listen to me. Corn is just okay."
"How do you know that?" Kyoko cried even harder. "Corn was always smiling but it never reached his eyes. They were always filled with sadness! How did I not see that before? And instead of listening to him, I only ranted on about my own problems whenever I saw him!" She wiped her tears from the cuff of her sleeve, but new ones emerged just as soon. "I'm so sorry, Corn!"
"You asked how I know that Corn is okay? It's because he is a fairy prince. You told me yourself, didn't you? Of course he's gone from this world because he has already returned to his own world." Ren whispered in his warm, kind voice as he wrapped his arms around her small back and pressed her into a tight hug. Her small body quivered violently as she sobbed. "Shh. Hush now! Corn is fine. He has grown up to become an adult. His wings have fully grown and he can fly properly now."
As those comforting words in Ren's soothing voice reached her ears, Kyoko's sobs slowly subsided and she sniffed. Burying her wet face into his hard chest, she wrapped her arms around his torso to hug him back.
To be continued.