DISCLAIMER: SKIP BEAT! and its associated characters are the creations of Yoshiki Nakamura. This author claims no ownership of Skip Beat or any of its characters. All other rights reserved.

Author's Note: The word for this one is "Gauge."

An Objective Measure

Ren Tsuruga was trying to develop some kind of standardized gauge for Kyoko Mogami's reactions. He'd been thinking about it all morning, ever since she'd left his condo, and now he was sitting in Lory Takarada's anteroom, absentmindedly scribbling attempts to describe those reactions on a piece of scrap paper while killing time before he saw the Boss. It was a difficult undertaking—certainly more doable now than it had been when she'd come back into his life, sure, but still difficult. He didn't even know why he was doing it—though it seemed like his brain just wanted an excuse to think about her no matter how absurd the reason. Watching her react to his admission that he 'just wanted to spend a little more time with her' was so adorable that he had a hard time keeping a straight face as she ate her eggs benedict. It was just the latest in a long line of reactions that made Kyoko so…interesting.

Before he knew her better, her reactions had appeared somewhat bizarre. The girl had spent three days and nights caterwauling outside Sawara's house for god's sake, and had the oddest way of making people run in fear when she went on a raging rant about Sho Fuwa. She would fall into a dogeza over the smallest perceived slight, but a single smile from her best friend Kanae would launch her into raptures.

He thought he would never understand her. But that was all before. Now? Well, now they were in a weird place. Ren was fighting a shadow war within himself. He'd told her he didn't want to change their relationship, but he was guilty of doing exactly that. What was their relationship, anyway? Before he'd confessed, Kyoko would likely have called him a senpai, not even a 'friend.' But the truth was far more complicated. A senpai did not sleep on his kouhai's lap. Nor did a senpai ask a kouhai to give him a hickey, or give them extravagantly priced pink sapphires for their birthday. And whether or not she admitted it to herself, she hadn't acted like a normal kouhai, either. What kind of kouhai wandered into her (male) senpai's shower? Or stalked him outside his condo in the wee hours of the morning? Not that he minded—each time she'd sought his company, he'd jumped at it eagerly. Now that he knew how she felt, he wondered how much of it had been intentional and how much of it had been Kyoko being dense about her own feelings. He suspected it was the latter.

Maybe it was time he admitted to himself that he'd been pushing their relationship out of the friend zone almost from the start. Even as far back as her time as his substitute manager, he'd been different. More protective of her. More tolerant of her. More willing to let her into spaces not even Yashiro had access to. Yashiro had certainly never spent the night at his condo, for example, and yet Kyoko had done that just days into her substitute manager assignment. Even before his confession, their relationship was so far beyond normal that only a girl as especially dense as Kyoko could fail to recognize it for what it was.

"Intensity Level 100," he wrote, "Elevator Meltdown." Yes, he thought. That's been the most interesting reaction yet. Kyoko had just…shut down. He could pinpoint the exact moment when she realized that the girl he loved was none other than herself. It was adorable and heartbreaking and infuriating for him.

On the other end of the spectrum, perhaps, were her reactions to poor Hikaru Ishibashi's invitation to dinner. He'd overheard the poor dude asking Kyoko out back at TBM one day. Kyoko was meeting Yashiro for a ride and Ren had simply tagged along, and when he overheard Hikaru's question, he felt his heart race out of control. He had been afraid—so afraid—that someone would snatch his Kyoko out from underneath him. But he shouldn't have been worried. The thing that made Kyoko such a formidable Love Me member kept her apart not just from Ren but also from everyone else, apparently. "Oh, I'm sorry, Hikaru-kun," she'd said, "But my manager is giving me a ride home now." Ren didn't know whether or not he should be jealous of the guy or sorry for him. Kyoko simply…didn't register his intentions at all. "Intensity Level 0," he wrote, "Hikaru Dinner Invite."

He began doodling and writing down a list of her other reactions, each memory part of a little treasure trove he kept in his mind for when he simply wanted to Think About Kyoko. How could one assign an objective numerical value or rank to each of these reactions? There was the reaction to his Valentine's kiss, for example. And then her reaction to his Dark Moon Party offer to 'to everything to her.' There was her reaction to Manaka getting handsy with her Nii-san…the way she narrowed her eyes when she thought he was just trying to get out of eating something…the way she squirmed under him in his kitchen during the night they'd 'played' Katsuki and Mizuki…and the way she squirmed under him when he'd flipped her over during that night in the hotel…the way she would squirm under him someday when…

"You know, you probably should leave room at the top of that scale for when you tell her about Kuon," a bored voice said behind him.

Ren jumped. He'd gotten so lost in his daydreams that he'd forgotten where he was. He looked down at the piece of scrap paper—now a thoroughly incriminating piece of evidence. It looked ridiculous. There was a crooked little gauge he'd labeled from 0 to 100 like a timeline, innumerable scrawls about Kyoko, little hearts, and, in the corner mocking him, the words "Mrs. Kyoko Hizuri."

Lory snatched at the paper and laughed. "Are you sure you're not secretly a middle-school girl, Ren? Hearts? Really?"

Ren just blushed, which made Lory laugh even harder.

"Well, I'm glad you've confessed your love to her, my boy, but you're going to have to tell her about yourself someday."

Ren sighed. Lory was right. And that would be the most frightening reaction of all.