AN: Before anyone asks
Reader 1: Fae, why are you starting yet another new fanfic for Skip Beat when you have so many others left to finish
Me: Because, Reader 1, my head is full of ideas, so full in fact that the only way I can get them down is to write them. I would prefer to write a new fic rather than completely changing direction on one which I already have. Also, I am planning to continue writing after the series ends but hey it's been 30 years, how much longer does it have left? Three, Five? Anyway I'm still writing for series like As Told By Ginger, Special A, Sailor Moon, Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends, and others that ended a long time ago so I will continue writing these.
Reader 2: But Fae, you don't update very much, how will I know this will continue
Me: Actually, although I am attending two academic programs, I am attempting to streamline my schedule and update more frequently. I also have an Excel document that takes into account number of reviews on the latest chapter, number of unique hits on the latest chapter, and number of unique visitors in a month. I have also started picking my favorites of these rather than just the top which gives me more motivation to write.
Reader 3: You are so annoying, nobody wants your stories, update don't create
Me: Sorry you feel that way. Oh it looks like this is the first time you have reviewed one of my fanfics and it looks like you have never posted a fanfic on this site. Your opinion is pretty much moot to me. Sorry, if you were a writer too or you frequently had pleasantly or neutrally reviewed my fics in the past I would actually give a damn about your opinion.
AN: Okay, with all that cleared up I'll start writing. This fic is also inspired by an old RP I did once upon a time and a fanfic I loved writing: More Like a Phoenix.
At Least His Voice Works
Chapter One
1,1
"I'm really surprised that you're going in this direction," Lory said as he faced the twenty nine year old actor. Kuon had just won the Academy Award for best actor and he was at the height of his career. The film had also won Best Motion Picture and had been about someone who had infiltrated the criminal world in order to get revenge for the death of his son. Kuon had really captured the part and had found himself with countless offers for American dramas and that was the reason why Lory was surprised. Kuon, the international superstar was requesting to come back to LME full time.
Kuon nodded as he thought about the real reason. First off, he would be taking a few months off from acting but secondly, his family was here. He looked down at his wedding ring which he only took off if filming demanded it. He and Kyoko had gotten married when she was twenty and one of Japan's most celebrated actresses. She had told him that she was pregnant with twins around their first anniversary and now those twins were four years old. He wanted to be more present in their life but Kyoko had motivated him to go for his dream of getting that award.
Now that he had completed that goal, it was time to return home.
"Should you be?" Kuon asked with a raise of his eyebrow. "I thought that you were someone who prioritized love above everything else," he stated. "Working through LME will give me more time to be with my family and I've spent far too much time away from them."
"You do know most of the year you spend in Japan even as a working Hollywood actor," Lory told him and Kuon sighed.
"It's still far too long away from my children. It doesn't matter the scale of the movie. I love acting and I can act here despite only being one quarter Japanese. Acting is what I know I've been born to do but being a father and a present father is more important to me," Kuon said with a resolute nod,
"Any chance of seeing the children today?" Lory asked and Kuon smiled.
"Kyoko is downstairs in the lobby. I think that she managed to contact Amaya-san and wants to catch up with her. I think that she gets lonely since Kotonami-san moved permanently to America." Kuon saw Lory's fingers go towards the phone and sighed before he looked away. "Since the contracts are signed, do you want me to go and bring them up?" he asked and Lory gave a playful smile.
Kuon looked away and stood up. "I'll be back in a moment then." He chuckled and shook his head, "I know how much I owe you, Boss, and there's really no way of me ever paying you back for it -"
"Let's go down and find them together," Lory stated and Kuon gave a weak smile and nod. He went with Lory in the elevator and then to the main floor where he saw Kyoko with the children. Rikuu was his son with medium brown hair which always seemed to be messy with how active he was and Kaguya had black hair like Kyoko's naturally was but it curled up at the bottom.
"President," Kyoko said as she stood up. She now had long auburn hair that fit the role she had been working on most recently and looked more like how she had appeared at the Dark Moon after party but more casual. As everyone said, she had grown up to be one of the most beautiful women in Japan. "How are you today?"
"President-san" Rikuu bowed politely.
"Boss-san," Kaguya said excitedly as she bowed a few times herself.
"You too really are adorable more and more so," Lory said before putting a hand on Kuon's shoulder. "So, he's all signed up again for the agency and I just know that there will be offers coming i-"
There was a loud crash as about five or six large men with heavy set frames entered the agency and Kuon's eyes widened as he realized that they were actually holding guns and not just any guns but extremely dangerous weapons. He looked at Kyoko who was shaking her head and he looked to the kids and then to her.
"Take the kids," he mouthed to her. "Take the kids and get away whilst you can."
"You better not do anything," Kyoko warned him. She knew about his hero complex and also his triggers. He may have been able to come to terms with what happened to Rick but he still thought too highly of his athletic and fighting abilities. Sure, he was beyond skilled but he wasn't actually superman.
"Take the kids," Kuon mouthed again.
"Hey! You clowns! You talentless hacks!" The man who looked Caucasian yelled out in a messy Japanese accent that only led towards the conclusion that he wasn't Japanese. "You think you're so great!" he yelled before seeing a woman move and pointed her out to another member of his gang who fired towards her and she fell causing some people to scream but for everyone to turn their attention to the gang. "You think that you elite assholes rule the world1? Well you don't rule shit! Me and my boys here are taking over this agency!"
Kuon moved slowly so that he could step in front of his family with his arms spread out like a shield in front of them. His eyes widened as he saw a security guard run forward and one of the gang members shot him in the forehead causing him to drop down to the ground. Kuon could see that a couple of people had pressed emergency buttons and somehow hadn't been seen.
"So, I don't think that this world needs to be told what to see and to have you assholes pretend," the man laughed before gesturing to another one of his men to grab one of Japan's most popular singers and he brought her forwards before another member of the gang took a knife and tore it through the front of her outfit, exposing her.
Kuon took a slow breath as he saw how scared he was and his eyes met onto Yashiro at one side and Kijima in another direction. He hadn't known that either of them were there that day. He saw another woman get dragged up and attacked in the same way and Kyoko tightly held onto her children, staring at Kuon's neck and pleading that he wouldn't get involved.
"Hey," Lory said as he moved forwards in a non-hostile manner. He had his hands raised and showed no defense. "We can talk about this. I'm the president of this agency. Can't we discuss what all of this is about calmly and rationally," he said and the front man took his gun out and pointed it at Lory's head.
Kuon took a deep breath before running forwards and Kyoko crouched, pulling both of her kids towards her. She saw Kuon kick the gun out of the man's hands before he could shoot Lory with it and saw a few security guards trying to protect him. Kuon looked at the men and tried to fight with them. He was managing to get the upper hand on them at the most point and he knew that the police weren't far behind him.
However, as he fought, he heard the sound of a gun and realized that someone had shot him once…now another shot…twice in the back and he fell to his knees. Was he going to die now? Was this death?
"So you give us your best and brightest as a sacrifice," he heard as he struggled to stay awake. He could barely keep conscious but he knew he was being held up against a window and he tried to move but felt a needle being punctured into his neck and some liquid or something be injected.
He couldn't move his body but he could hear them in his stupor.
Kyoko felt her heart beat pound quicker as she brought both of her children to cover their eyes as she felt frozen watching them do this to her husband. She struggled to remain frozen as she saw two of the guys come out with bottles of lighter fluid and then the first man brought a match to Kuon's doused body and lit it, throwing it on him and burning him in front of everyone. She struggled to breathe, struggled not to move towards him, struggled to see him burning alive and not screaming.
It was as if everything was frozen before she could see about fifteen police officers in ten cars pull up and the rest was a blur. She saw people running towards Kuon, checking his breathing, making sure that the burns were put out, but she didn't know what to do. His body was so badly burned and he had both been shot and injected. He was dead. There was nothing else that made sense.
Lory ran towards the young actor and saw the dark black and red on his skin but he also felt his slow pulse and heard him struggling to breathe. He was unconscious but alive. "Kuon," he whispered to him. "We're going to get you the best help possible. Just continue breathing, okay? Fight, okay? Fight for Kyoko and your children. They need you to fight."
1.2
For seventy two hours the press hadn't stopped reporting on what happened. They hadn't stopped talking about the security guard dying, about what happened to those women, about the terrorist gang, and mostly about Kuon's unstable and uncertain condition. Kyoko had spent the lost seventy two hours in the hospital and right now, it was Kuu and Julie who were taking care of the twins whilst Kyoko nervously waited outside the emergency room, not being able to go on to be with her husband. At least he had managed to hang on for these seventy two hours, hopefully he could hang on for longer.
As Kyoko found herself drifting off to sleep, a nurser gently placed a hand on her shoulder. "We're going to move him since he's stabilizing," the nurse told her and Kyoko looked up at her and blinked, not sure what she had heard.
"He's moving?" she asked as she tried hard not to fall asleep, she had already done so maybe a dozen times and she felt angry with herself for doing so when Kuon was fighting for his life. The nurse nodded and Kyoko sat up. "Is that…a good thing?" she asked and the nurse nodded again.
"You can go and sit with him now but his injuries are particularly raw right now so I don't think that you should try to move him around," she said and Kyoko stood. Whenever she closed her eyes she could see his burning body as some kind of sacrificial offering and that scared her and the nightmares were even worse.
She followed the nurse through the hospital and to where Kuon's body was. As she saw Kuon, she felt tears in her eyes and leaned forwards, putting one arm around her body and her fist over her mouth to mute her sobs.
He looked like a mummy aside from his eyes which didn't have bandages around them and a small opening where his mouth was so that they could place the breathing respirator there. He was hooked to all kinds of machines and it felt as if she were walking into the set of a horror movie.
"He's in the worst shape that I have ever seen anyone, the doctors said that to them he was unrecognizable and that was a shock with someone so famous," the nurse said and Kyoko nodded slowly as she fell to her knees at the doorway of her husband's hospital room. "The doctor will give you a full run down of his condition."
Kyoko nodded before her eyes caught hold of a file at the side of the room. Was that his patient file?
"I'll give you some time but I wouldn't touch him, it'll be a nightmare recovery for him. I hope he's strong enough," the nurse said. "I'll have the doctor check in as soon as he can."
Kyoko thanked her before forcing herself to stand and walk over to the file. It must have been left here accidentally. Kyoko stumbled as she looked through all of the medicines he needed and her eyes glanced on the X-ray of where the bullet had hit his spine and read the note Suspected Paraplegic, Possible Quadriplegic. She then looked through all of the pictures that had been taken of his extremely burned skin. Even to her, someone who knew his physical body perfectly, she couldn't quite see him through these pictures.
Still, this didn't change how much she loved him. She put her hand over her mouth as she started to cry and as she heard the doctor knock on the door, she quickly closed the file before sobbing harder. She didn't know what to do. Hopefully skin grafts would help him. Hopefully there wasn't any damage which they weren't seeing.
End of Chapter One
Thank you for reading
