A/N: Feedback is very much appreciated.
Disclaimer: Don't own Prince of Tennis.
--
Somehow, Momoshiro was shameless enough to actually return to the studio to wait for Ryoma. He whistled his way in, taking not a care to the uniformed men and women of the company who stared at him and wondered who he was.
"Uh, here for Echizen Ryoma," he asked the girl at the front desk. "He's supposed to be here for some, uh, audition thing." He waved his hand elaborately as if this further proved his point.
"For Romeo and Julio, I presume?" the girl said.
"Yeah, that one."
"I was just informed of it by the director himself," she said, "but your friend is currently in the infirmary. I can have someone bring you there momentarily."
"Infirmary?" Momoshiro asked, thoroughly confused. "Why's he there? Don't tell me that wussy fainted. . ."
"As a matter of fact," she replied, "that seems to have been the case. It is nothing serious. He was able to tell the doctor to shut up and let him go before he sued him for invading one's privacy. And then he went to the bathroom."
"So he's okay then," he sighed. Turning to the girl, he added, "Thank you." He began to head inside, until he heard a voice call after him, "Wait! You're going the wrong direction!"
Ryoma was nursing an ice pack and a somewhat sore ego when Momoshiro finally found the infirmary. He was sitting on one of its many unoccupied beds, facing away from the doorway, but he could see his friend through the reflection of a bedside mirror.
"About time you got here," was all he said.
"I got lost, okay?" Momoshiro huffed. "This place is huge. It's like miles and miles long."
"Let's leave now," Ryoma said suddenly, jumping off the bed and throwing the ice pack in the sink.
"Sure," he said.
Together, they managed to weave in and out through the studio until they found the exit, which, as it turned out, was next to the infirmary. Ryoma was already beginning to place the blame on Momoshiro's utter stupidity when he decided to interrupt with a matter of much importance.
"So," he began, "did you get a part or something? You haven't said anything about it."
"What of it?" Ryoma shot back; he stuck his hands in his pockets against the blowing wind. "I got a stupid movie part. So what?"
"What did you get?" Momoshiro asked, excited. "You earned it, didn't you?"
"Sure," Ryoma said. "Anyhow, it's pretty pointless. My part's just a guy who falls in love with the most arrogant monkey king in the world."
"Arrogant monkey king?"
"His name . . . what's his name again?" Ryoma kicked a rock on the ground. "I can't remember."
"Mukahi Gakuto?"
"No."
"Shishido Ryou?"
"No. It -- it started with an . . . an A. I think."
"Oh. Atobe Keigo?" Momoshiro looked exicited. "Echizen, you landed a part opposite Atobe Keigo? How can you turn that down? That's, like, beyond amazing."
"That was the name." Ryoma snapped his fingers. "Funny. Monkey King has a nicer ring to it though; Atobe Keigo sounds conceited. Or rather, either way, it sounds conceited."
"You're missing the point, Echizen!" Momoshiro now resorted to shaking Ryoma's shoulders back and forth in a flurry. "This is a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"
Ryoma stared. "I'd rather play tennis." Then he paused and added, "Why do you know so much about movie stars anyhow?"
Momoshiro looked away and coughed uncomfortably, but he quickly turned back and said, "You don't know who Atobe Keigo is?"
"No," he deadpanned. "Strangely enough, he got pretty mad when I told him that."
"You told him that you didn't know who he was?" Momoshiro looked as if he could faint any second. "And you're still alive?"
"What of it?" Ryoma asked.
"Echizen, Echizen, Echizen. Let me tell you something." He was thinking: be strong, like an uncle. "Atobe Keigo . . . How do I say this in a direct manner to someone so dense? Ah! -- okay. See. Atobe Keigo is the type of man that, if I were a woman and I was you, and I wasn't around, I would be in love with him."
If Ryoma stared any further, his eyes might have dropped out. "What?"
"Uh," he hastily said, "ignore that. But the point is this: you will not back out of that part. I won't let you do that. Think: I'll be such a horrible friend if I let you pass up something like this. Years from now, we'll be growing old in our rocking chairs together, and you'll say to me, 'Damn! I wish you'd have encouraged me to go for that part with Atobe Keigo! I could've been a contender. I could've been a star!'"
Ryoma decided that Momoshiro had gone insane, and he would be doing a good deed if he called up the asylum this instant and asked about a free space.
"No," he simply said. "What makes you think I'd want to . . . go for that part with that monkey king in the first place?" He mustered up as disgusted a face as he could.
"Who wouldn't?" Momoshiro said, and began to whistle and walk away. Then he said, "Man, I'm starving! Let's go get some burgers or something."
And Ryoma had no choice but to follow him, but even as they eat greasy burgers and drank thousand-calorie sodas, even as he was dropped off at his house, Ryoma couldn't help but think, and wonder, what exactly he was supposed to be doing.
He lay on his bed, thinking of tennis, of acting, of crazy people. At eleven o' clock, he turned over, still restless. The curtains hadn't yet been drawn; he could still see the glorious moon and her associates, the stars. Together, they graced the sky like an open stage, as if they were actors for the world to see, free of charge. Together, they danced, they sang, they laughed, they cried.
He blinked. That wasn't true at all. The stars and the moon were up in space, and they didn't act; they were lifeless, they had no soul.
It was approaching midnight when he heaved and sat up, finally beginning to the effects of a day that he did not particularly want to remember. He trudged over to his backpack, unzipped it, and searched for something. He finally found it: a rough draft of the script the director had provided him with.
"There'll be plenty of changes and revisions on the set," he had said, "but the bulk of it should be the same. Hopefully."
He thumbed through it for a few seconds, sat back down on his bed, and began to read.
His father looked oddly at him the next morning. "Yo," he said, "brat. I see you're in the paper this morning."
"Yeah?" Ryoma said, eating his own breakfast and trying not to pay any attention to the lecher in front of him.
"It says you've landed a part in some movie." Now his father stood up and moved in front of Ryoma. He set one hand on the table and gave his son one long look. He read, "'. . . after a month-long talent search, the elusive part for Julio of Romeo and Julio has been found. Echizen Ryoma is reportedly signed to the role.'" Now he set his copy of the newspaper down and said, in an entirely serious voice, "Brat, who'd you do to get this part?"
"I didn't," Ryoma replied, still eating his own breakfast and trying not to pay any attention to the lecher who was now standing way to close to him, "do anyone. I went to an audition. I happened to land a part." He stood up and did not look away from his father.
He looked shocked. "Since when were you an actor, brat?"
"Starting now, I suppose," Ryoma said, gathering up his dishes and turning towards the sink. "What of it?"
His father gave him an amused look, still unsure of what to make of it. "My son, the movie star. He's not only a star tennis player -- he's moving into Hollywood too! Oh, I can see it already. He'll buy me a huge house in West L.A., and I can get all the lovely young starlets there. Blond or brunette, it won't matter." He nodded and grinned to himself. "Oh yes, I can see it now. Being an actor's better than it sounds. Hey, brat! When you get rich and all, don't forget about your old man, right?"
But Ryoma had already returned to his room. His mother now entered the kitchen and said, "Were you saying something, dear? I thought I could hear your loud voice this fine morning."
"It was nothing, Mother," he replied. "Nothing at all."
Momoshiro was waiting for him outside. "Late," was his comment, and Ryoma wordlessly got on the back of his bike as they sped off for school.
Fifteen minutes into the ride, the conversation turned back to the movie part. "How're you going to handle it?" Momoshiro asked. "I mean, juggling school, tennis, and acting sounds pretty tough."
"Eh," said Ryoma. "I'll manage."
"But this means you really are doing it, aren't you? I can see it in your eyes: you have that determination again. You know what you want to do. And when you succeed, you won't forget about one Momoshiro Takeshi, right?" He laughed.
"Dream on," said Ryoma.
They came into the school twenty minutes before the first bell. After Momoshiro locked the chain to his bike, they headed up the stairs for the first morning class. "When do you begin shooting?" he asked his friend before they split ways in the halls.
"Next weekend, I think," he answered. "I guess I'll have to look over the script some more."
"Have you memorized anything yet?"
"Some," Ryoma said. "The lines are almost taken word for word from the actual play anyway."
"You actually remember how Romeo and Juliet went?" Momoshiro was impressed.
"Hardly, but it's enough."
"You'll have to say it to me sometime. At lunch maybe. I can be your first audience. I can be your first fan."
"Mada mada dane," Ryoma shook his head, as the bell rang, and they hurried towards their respective classrooms.
Ryoma found himself trapped in a labyrinth of office cubicles and restrooms for a good twenty minutes before he managed his way to the correct studio. Today was the first day of shooting; he wasn't sure what to expect.
There wasn't much. Just a few chairs that were laid out, and a blank screen that took up most of the wall at the far-end of the studio. It seemed eerily empty: he had imagined a cornucopia of costumes, of workers, of actors.
"Not on the first day," the director said. "Everyone's too lazy. Those assholes. This is like one of those 'Get to Know Your Co-stars' days. Development and pre-production took us five years to get to this point. We deserve a day of rest, those lazy bums."
"God," groaned Atobe, who, upon entering, immediately strutted to his own custom-made chair. "We are not going through this again. We already know each other. Why keep us here?"
"I said so, Atobe, so you're going to listen to me."
Atobe looked surprised at the director's standing up for himself. "Well, well, well, this is a first."
The director promptly ignored him. "And if you're so sure of knowing everyone, Atobe, then who's that?" He pointed to one rather unfortunate fellow.
"Uh," he eloquently said, "okay, whatever. You start then, why don't you?"
So the man stood up, took a bow, and said, "I am the director, in case you're too dimwitted to notice, or too dumb to know who you're working for. Any problems with me, and I'll send you to Sanada. And he's the no-nonsense type of producer, I'll tell you." He sat back down and glared at the actor.
"Atobe Keigo." He rose one hand lazily to acknowledge the presence of everyone else. He found the whole introduction absurd, especially since everyone knew who he was in the first place.
Gradually, everyone muttered their name, some more loudly than others. When it came to Ryoma's turn, he did the same. When everyone had introduced themselves, the chairs were put away, and everyone began to leave.
"That's it?" Ryoma said, thinking that this was definitely a waste of time, and he wouldn't be bothered to coming to these so-called shootings when he could be doing something more productive, like playing tennis.
"Atobe's a lazy ass," the director said to him in a noticeably low whisper. He took up his own chair to bring it to the pile where all the other chairs were.
"I was born with blessed ears, Mr. Directer," came his voice on the other side of the studio, "I can hear whatever scandal you're spreading about me."
"Damn!" he whispered. "Look kid," he said to Ryoma, "I actually feel kind of sorry for you 'cause you're the one that's gonna have to do the dirty with him. But I'll offer you my friendship: we can look out for each other. I help you, you help me, that sort of thing. Mano a Mano, y'know?"
Ryoma frowned. For some reason, everyone always seemed to like to point out that inevitable climax he would have to do. Maybe it was because he was an amateur. Maybe because it was Atobe. He decided not to think about it. "What makes you think I would want your help?" he finally said.
"You're new, kid," he said, "I can tell. You need a friend, and I've been in the business for long enough to know who's new and who's not. Who belongs here, and who should be working the counter at the local liquor store."
"And I don't belong, that's what you're saying." Ryoma couldn't help but feel annoyed.
"I'm saying that you haven't been corrupted yet," he replied. "Atobe corrupts people. Shishido Ryou was my favorite actor to work with -- and he drove him away to the rival studio. Why? Only Atobe knows. Even though he denies everything, I know that for sure he had something to do with it."
"I don't quite understand why you're telling me this."
"You can stand up to him. Nobody ever does, not to Atobe. Everyone's too goddamned scared of him," he said, shifting around. "But you're not. When I saw you arguing with him the other day . . . that's when I knew I'd found Julio."
"I thought they were supposed to be in love, not constantly fighting," he said.
Helooked at him thoughtfully. "Sexual tension," he said, "always does lead up to a meaningful climax. But let's not think of that, shall we?" He swung an arm around Ryoma's shoulder, not unlike what Momoshiro always had a bad habit of doing. Ryoma automatically cringed, but the director did not seem to notice.
"Anyway, say that you'll be my friend, and I'll make sure things go smoothly for you through Sanada. He's actually a pretty fair guy, just strict. Anyway, the media, the gossip columns, the people of Japan, they all want to know who the hell Echizen Ryoma is. I can make sure that you're safe."
"Safe?"
And the man only shook his head. "See? They'll take complete advantage of you. Not just Atobe, and that's already bad enough. You need friendship, and I can give you that." He held out his hand for Ryoma to shake, which he reluctantly did. His hand was firm and the director gave him a curt nod.
"Welcome aboard," was all he said.
