Ok, ok. So…last chapter wasn't really decorations. It was meant to be…I was all prepared for it to be a boring filler chapter but noooo…it turned into this weird Kanae x Yashiro thing.

This chapter is going to be decorations.

Hopefully.

Unedited version up for now - edited version will be up later.

Edited version is now up.

Advent '08

December 7th - 18 days to go

The day dawned…eventually. Kyoko and Kanae were already at L.M.E. and hard at work. They had managed to get quite a lot of work done yesterday, despite having had half of Friday's list left to complete.

All they really had left to do was to finish putting up the decorations in the main entrance and that was it. Unfortunately, the main entrance was the biggest room in the whole building with twenty five foot ceilings and a massive square foot of floor, which added up to even more wall space.

In short, it was going to take nearly all day for the two of them to decorate it.

Fortunately it was a Sunday and there was only the cleaning crew and workaholics in the building, so decorating the room wasn't going to be that much of a problem. It was certainly going to make the job go faster and Kanae could see the logic behind the president asking them to come in over the weekend.

At that very moment Kyoko was perched twenty feet up in the air on the top of a tall step ladder decorating the large Christmas tree that Lory had got in for the entrance hall.

Kanae was standing at the bottom, holding it steady. Boxes of decorations stood piled around her feet over spilling onto the floor.

Sighing, Kanae peered upwards at her friend who was busy decorating the very top section of the giant tree. Leaning back she 'hmm-ed' and narrowed her eyes in thought.

Now that she knew what was going on and was in on the plan she felt a bit more comfortable but something about Kyoko was still bugging her and she was going to find out.

One: Kyoko thought she was in on Yashiro's plan. She would be happy about that, so that wasn't it.

Kanae crossed the possibility off her mental checklist.

Two: Kyoko was seemingly acting happy and not betrayed so she hadn't found out about the larger scale plan involving herself.

Three: She had only seen Ren once in the past week and not even Kanae was sure that she could manage to upset him in the brief amount of time that they had spent together.

At least she hoped so. A sulky Ren was not one that she was looking forward to dealing with if something had happened.

Luckily, if that was the case then it would be up to Yashiro to try and coax Ren out of his hissy fit and not her.

All she would be having to deal with was Kyoko. Which was stress in itself sometimes if she was going to be honest. Sometimes she just thought about leaving Kyoko to tire herself out before she tore her own hair out.

She thanked God for being able to find relief in comics.

Though it had been a surprise to make that little discovery yesterday. Kanae wasn't sure that she had ever seen Yashiro looking so flustered.

She smirked to herself as she remembered.

But back to the topic at hand. As far as Kanae could work out, nothing had happened at L.M.E. to warrant Kyoko's current behaviour. This meant that is was something outside of L.M.E.

Kanae cursed in annoyance.

Outside meant that she had to guess as she had no idea what went on in Kyoko's life outside of these walls and what Kyoko imposed upon her. Luckily she was able to guess pretty accurately when needed.

Squaring her shoulders, she focused all her attention on her friend and tried to work out the problem.

---/---

Kyoko shivered as cold chills ran down her spine. She peered around herself, looking for some sort of clue before risking a glance downwards. She shivered again when she saw the look Kanae was giving her and almost fell off the ladder.

Catching herself at the last moment she clung to the step and berated herself at her clumsiness as her eyes followed the bit of tinsel that was falling to the floor from where it had slipped out of her hands.

Gritting her teeth together, she exhaled sharply through her nose. She had been out of it all morning and this wasn't the first accident that she had managed to save herself from.

She was distracted and it was all Sho's fault.

Ever since the announcement and her subsequent roping in to the part she had managed to push the thought of what she was going to have to do to the back of her mind.

On Friday she had been too excited about helping Yashiro with his plan and seeing Ren again to pay much attention to the details.

Sure, she had mentioned working with Sho to Ren but she had changed the topic as soon as she could and trying to get Ren to the awards had pushed any thoughts from the forefront of her mind.

Focusing so entirely on Ren and her mission had distracted her completely so that, even when she went home that night she didn't think about it.

Yesterday she had been too busy to think at all. She and Kanae had rushed around the building the entire day finishing off the jobs that they hadn't been able to complete on the Friday, cleaning and setting up as many of the decorations on the offices as possible.

She had had barely enough time to breath, let along worry about anything that wasn't to do with finishing off the lists and wondering what decorations to put where.

When she had gotten home last night she had been so tired that she had immediately crashed, sinking into a dreamless sleep.

Today was a different story.

Because of all the hard work that they had done yesterday, all they had to do today was decorate this hall. And they could afford to take it a little easier.

Unfortunately, this meant that Kyoko found that all her repressed thoughts were hitting her all at once and she found herself worrying over what was going to happen tomorrow. It was too late to back out now and she had already made a professional decision to not back down to anything that Sho tried to dish out to her.

Despite this she still had misgivings and doubts about herself.

Could she do this?

She had asked Ren on Friday for his help and advice but at the time she had been trying to wheel the conversation around to the awards and she hadn't paid much attention to what he had said.

What she really needed was a friend. Someone she could talk to about what she was going to do and understand from her point of view.

She started violently and nearly fell back off the ladder again when Kanae suddenly appeared before her.

"Kyoko-chan?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are you ok?"

"Moko-chan? What are you doing up here?"

Kanae held out the piece of tinsel in answer and Kyoko flushed, taking it from her.

Keeping her eyes downcast, she picked nervously at the tinsel in her hands, trying to build up the courage to ask for Kanae's advice.

"Um…Kanae-chan?"

"Yes?"

"Could I ask you for your opinion on something?"

Kanae looked down to the ground from where they were both balanced precariously on the top of the ladder.

"Can it wait until we're not twenty feet in the air?"

---/---

Back on the ground, Kyoko and Kanae sat side by side in silence. Kanae waiting and Kyoko still picking at what was left of the tinsel.

After a few minutes Kanae was getting a little impatient at the time it was taking for Kyoko to organise herself. She cleared her throat pointedly.

Kyoko started before grinning bashfully.

"Ah, sorry. I was thinking."

Kanae nodded. She was curious but she was also getting a little worried. Kyoko never acted this morose and she was starting to wonder just what Kyoko's problem was.

"It's just…I'm confused."

"About what?"

"On Thursday I was asked to star as the lead female role in a short video being shot at our school."

Kanae narrowed her eyes.

"Right…?"

"It's a music video."

"I…don't see what the problem is…"

"It's Fuwa's music video."

"Oh."

Kanae frowned to herself. Sho was back in the picture? This was bad, he could easily ruin any plans that Yashiro had made. He had a bad habit of turning up at the most awkward of times and messing with Kyoko.

It also didn't help that Kyoko let him wind her up until all her focus was on him.

Kanae hadn't believed it herself until she had seen it with her very own eyes. It had been a long time since she had first believed her friend a fan of Sho.

And whilst she didn't know the exact history between them she did know that Kyoko would tell her if she thought it important. Besides, this was one thing that Kanae was going to reign in her curiosity about.

She could only hope that Ren hadn't found out about this yet. That would have made things so much worse.

"I asked Ren-san his advice as well."

There went that thought.

"So the problem you have…? Exactly?"

"I'm just…it's a romance. I don't know if I can do that with him. But…I can't back out now as I don't want to seem unprofessional."

Kanae stayed silent to let Kyoko vent all her pent up feelings and worries.

"I wasn't even supposed to be there! It was just because I thought…"

Kyoko trailed off and blushed. Kanae shot her a teasing glance.

"You thought what?"

"…nothing."

Kanae snorted.

"So, let me get this straight. You're worried because you have to act opposite Fuwa-san in a romantic video and you don't really want to. But you can't back out because you don't want to be unprofessional?"

"Yeah."

"Well…it's good that you don't want to be unprofessional…"

"That's what Ren said."

"Well, he was right. You may be doing something that you don't really want to but gossip spreads fast. If you act unprofessionally towards one person then it gets around the industry pretty fast."

"Yeah."

"Look, just…try. You never know, he might just be himself and ignore you?"

"Really? You think so?"

"Yeah! Besides. You can always ignore him, or pretend he's someone else if you have to."

"Hmm…that's actually a good idea!"

Kanae smiled in return to the grin Kyoko gave her and watched as her friend bounced up, seemingly happier and more at peace and went back to work. She waited until Kyoko had turned around before letting her own smile drop from her face.

This was bad.

She needed to talk to Yashiro as soon as possible.

Short chapter.

I hate this one so much. Please ignore the quality please. Tomorrow's update should be better.

Again, I'm sorry.

Urgh.

DS