AN: Half for my own sanity and half so I can update more fics. I'm trying to go for an update a month depending on the number of unique hits a story has. If a story gets a really high amount of hits I might come out with two chapters for each month. I hope you continue to enjoy my work 😊

Act 104 – The Right Answer

104.1

Kyoko sighed as she sat outside of the filming location thinking to herself. Ren had seemed to sure in her abilities, so confident that she would get this answer correct, but now it felt almost hopeless. She couldn't quite understand it. From the acting school, she had learned that relying on her own abilities and her own background was good for creating roles but she didn't actually hate anyone apart from Shotaro and that wasn't Misaki.

She looked up at Yashiro who she had explained the whole situation to and then sighed as she looked down at the ground once again. There had to be some way of crafting her role correctly, some possibility that she just hadn't thought of yet.

"So, all of these things happened while I was away? But at least you won't be fired, correct?" Yashiro asked and Kyoko sighed. The surprise was evident in his voice since he had been taking a phone call when this happened but still, it wasn't reassuring to Kyoko at all. Yashiro was surprised so therefore he couldn't quite predict whether she would be fired in a normal situation or not - except this wasn't a normal situation was it.

"Yes," she sighed as she thought about how Ren had stood up for her whilst also guarding their secret friendship. He had helped her without people becoming alert to the special way in which he was helping her. He was good at doing that. Still, Ren had asked for one more chance and a little time. These were scraps that she had to pick at and decide how she wanted to use them. He wouldn't even give her a direction to how to use them.

"It's true," Kyoko finally said as her attention returned to Yashiro, "Tsuruga-san helped me but it will all be for nothing if I can't do what she says." Kyoko thought of how confident Ren had been when expressing that she would be able to play a Mio that the former-Mio would like. How could he speak so highly of her unless he was blinded by their friendship? She had only been studying acting for a short time but he had praised her as someone with infinite possibilities, it was just a shame she couldn't see them.

Yashiro waited patiently before responding, "Ah,"

"What makes him so sure," Kyoko voiced aloud. She felt that he was being blinded by his liking of her and in that he was giving empty promises that she would have to fulfill. "What does he mean, don't worry, you're definitely like the new Mio. What evidence does he have? I hope he isn't making fun of me."

Kyoko picked up a stick and kept poking it into the ground. No, it wasn't as if he was tricking her to torture her or something like that. No matter how it seemed, she trusted in her friendship with Kuon but she also knew how important acting in this drama was to him. He needed to surpass his father and though she didn't think that he'd be someone who would want to 'weed weak people out' he was effectively doing that without thinking about how his words sounded.

"No," Yashiro said weakly and Kyoko stared at him, "He's trying to help you."

Kyoko bit her tongue as she tried not to say that by attempting to help her, Ren may have made the situation worse. Yes, she was treading on his territory by even pursuing acting but he was using tough love in the wrong way. Yes, he shouldn't be giving her special treatment but wasn't his help now hurting her whether he meant to do so or not.

"But…" Kyoko replied as she met Yashiro's eyes again, "Tsuruga-san, if he's trying to help me , he should do it al the way. He knows very well why Mio hates Misaki, but he wouldn't tell me." She saw Yashiro hold back a little bit and sighed. Okay. If Ren had publicly done that then people might be asking why he was giving her such aid and especially since she was being watched by an older actor with more years of experience than himself but friends should help one another out. Still, helping one another and unfairly aiding someone were different.

Kyoko sighed, bowing her head once again. "It's like walking in a maze, Tsuruga-san's cryptic hints. It feels like he's making fun of me," she said as her mind seemed to spin in circles. He had given her a task to do that right now was feeling next to impossible.

Yashiro sighed, "It's not like that. I believe he wants you to discover the answer on your own. It's not a joke to him. If he just tells you the answer, you won't understand how to solve these problems on your own so it'll just happen again next time. Ren didn't tell you the answer for your own good. This is Ren's way of expressing love. Ren loves you."

Kyoko sighed, she knew how much they cared about one another but Ren didn't love her quite like that, not in a way that he could act on at least. Maybe it was only Kuon who had feelings for her though and Ren didn't so as Ren he would have to pretend. It wasn't until he finally beat his father and became Kuon that he could seek out love so thinking that this advice was love wasn't good.

However, Yashiro's analysis did seem truthful to her. Ren wouldn't want for her to just rely on other people. He valued both her independence and her intelligence but this was too big a burden for her to hold onto given that this was her first major acting role. Didn't he understand that he could have given her more help than setting her a puzzle that felt more like a riddle to solve. She would have to think of this difficult task which Ren had set before her.

Okay, thinking about Mio and the clues that might exist. First of all, Mio was a really gloomy person who avoided people, dressed in black, and had cruel thoughts. She and Mio had both lived in a loveless family where their parents had more care in their own appearances than acting out the role of loving parents. However, Kyoko hadn't grown up tied up in that gloominess. That had created the huge shift between herself and Mio. Yes, she had Corn but that was only for a short period of time in which they had met. Who she really had was that idiot Shotaro who had turned her into one of those idiotic, stupid girls whose head was filled with foolish ideas of love. Okay. So Shotaro's 'love' was far worse than Kuon's.

As more images crammed into her mind of her time with Shotaro, Kyoko stood up and stomped on the ground and ignored Yashiro pulling himself back. She had to kill them. Any trace of her love for Shotaro. If she could kill them and discover the inner Mio it would be as if she was killing two cockroaches with one boot.

As she finally calmed down enough to stop stomping the ground, Kyoko heard the nervous man speak again and folded her arms over her chest to try to calm herself down. "Eh? What were you doing?" Yashiro asked as he watched her. "Are you all right? Why are you angry?"

Kyoko sighed, she was too lost in her own thoughts to form a response to him. She had heard him but she wanted to concentrate on the task that Ren had forced upon her. She had to figure out who Mio was before she lost the part in the drama.

Mio was a gloomy girl. That was the first established fact that she needed to remember. Second, Mizuki's parents had died when she had been young. Following the death of her parents Mizuki started living with her uncle in his home where Mio and her sister had often bullied her. Third, Mizuki's personally was the opposite of Mio's personality but to an extreme. Even though Mitsuki's past was more pitiful than Mio's, she didn't allow the tragedy to cast a shadow in her life and she grew up to be a bright, kind, and beautiful girl. In other words, Mizuki had rich lady vibes and would be the character which Kyoko would most want to be cast as. The two roles were so different, one in shadow and one in light. Kyoko froze. One in shadow and one in light. But good things existed in the light? Wouldn't the shadow want to come into the light, did that mean that the shadow was jealous of the attention given by the light. No, Mio didn't want attention…but…

Kyoko tried to figure it out as she looked ahead of her. The dots were slowly starting to connect themselves. Not thinking about the fact that she was in public, Kyoko traced the dots as if they were on a board in front of her. Yes, she could figure this out. The script had more depth on it than what was written on the page and that's something that Ren had attempted to tell her. Just as Ren was a part of the light, wasn't that who Kuon wanted to be and one day would be, he would be standing in the same spotlight, the same glow which Ren bathed in.

The reason for the difference between Mitsuki and Mio was that Mizuki was very bright. She didn't lose to her past and instead smiled though it, she was like the bright lights that always shone around Ren instead of the way that he talked about his past as if it were corrupted by the shadows. However, Kuon might be jealous of the success that Ren had, just as Mio saw Mizuki as so different from herself when she was always smiling. There must have at least been some admiration in the ability to battle like that. Inside Kuon was struggling with the differences between himself and Ren but if they were two different people, Kuon would compare himself to Ren. Mio was the same. Mio was born in a rich family and would always want to win but when she compared herself to Mizuki it felt like a loss.

Still, the problem was that Mio was said to be a shy person and usually that type of shyness and drawing away from others didn't feel like a challenge, it felt like a surrender and why should Mio who had access to everything feel that she could surrender so easily to Mizuki. Kyoko sighed as she looked into the fountain she was leaning on.

She had figured out one point but now another point had cropped up that needed her to solve it.

End of Act 104

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