DIS: Hey, guys! I've been having writer's block on all of my stories because of some side effects of this pill I've been taking. I haven't been keeping myself hydrated and so I've been sleeping almost as soon as I get home. However, I've learned from my mistakes and I'm finally able to sit up at my desk and type. So, here's the next chapter and sorry for all the cliffhangers! Enjoy! ;D
X
Chapter Eighteen, To be a professional
Anzu was not in a good mood. She was over an hour late in meeting Yami because Miho and Honda had decided to extend their lunch without even calling her. She was happy for her friends, though, especially when Miho practically skipped into the café, glowing. It was clear that their date had gone better than expected. She told Miho she would call her and get all the juicy details later and was still wearing her barista apron as she dashed out of the café. She said a rather foul word that generally would never even come to her mind when she realized she was still wearing it, but did not bother to turn back.
Her bad mood gave way to confusion and an uneasy feeling in her belly when she dashed into the auditorium, panting slightly. Four men were on the stage, three that she recognized, one that she did not, and they all turned when she entered. The uneasy feeling increased; none of them were smiling. She hastened onto the stage and hesitantly approached, moving between Yami and Otogi as she breathlessly said, "Sorry for being late..."
"It's fine," Ryou said, smiling at her. "I was a bit late myself, to be honest, so we didn't wait too long." She returned the smile, thankful that at least someone was willing to calm her crazed nerves. Her eyes moved to the male beside Ryou. He was eyeing her thoughtfully. He must have come to some conclusion about her, one that remained unknown to her and any of the others. She noticed that he was more slender than Ryou and incredibly handsome. He had the same feminine attractiveness that Ryou held. That, however, was where the femininity ended. The way he stood and how his eyes pierced her were quite masculine. His smirk when he noticed her stare was too inviting for her tastes and she inched towards Yami, who put a comforting hand on her back.
"This is Malik Ishtar," Yami said in his usual calm, quiet voice. "He's judging the auditions for Swan Lake."
"Oh...Hello," she murmured, uncertainly holding out her hand. The male in speaking flashed a suave smile and stepped forward, clasping her hand. He had a warm, dry palm compared to her cooler, somewhat damp hand from running. She grimaced afterward. "I had to run all the way here, so, er, sorry about that."
He chuckled. "It's fine. At least you actually offered your hand to shake or else I would have thought you were a rude snob." He paused, running his bright eyes over her once more. "I would be more than welcome to help you practice for the auditions. I consider myself a fine teacher when it comes to training pupils." Anzu opened her mouth, stopping herself when she saw the dark looks both Ryou and Yami sent him. Slowly, she closed her mouth, puzzling over the behavior of her two companions. She felt Yami's hand tense on her back, pulling her closer as if he feared Malik might lunge towards her and defile her. "But of course you have Ryou and neither he nor Yami trust me to keep my hands from less proper places." His smile turned mischievous and he raised an eyebrow, a subtle hint that he would not mind that in the least if she didn't. She felt her stomach churn unpleasantly and she huddled next to Yami with Otogi moving closer protectively.
"I think Ryou is a wonderful dancer," she told him firmly. Malik shrugged, continuing to smile.
"I would want to be paid anyway." He placed a hand on his hip and looked to Yami, snapping his fingers towards him. "Let's get this over with, Yami. I realize you may have all day to fuck around, being a manic depressed pianist and everything, but I have things to deal with as you are aware. Ask her so I can figure out what my next step is going to be."
"Couldn't you be a little more discreet, Malik?" Ryou sighed.
"I'm done with subtleties," Malik flippantly dismissed, waving his hand.
Yami scowled at Malik, aggravated with his lack of tact and then turned to Anzu. She looked completely - and reasonably - lost as to what they were speaking of. He was supposed to be helping the Mazaki family reunite, not drive them further apart. Bringing up the man that had torn Sakura from Anzu and her father was the last thing he ought to do. Nonetheless, Malik was as stubborn and persistent as Kaiba when getting what he wanted. Seeing as how his own finances and career - and possibly, his life - was on the line, he would do virtually anything to get the information he needed. That included seducing or harassing Anzu to an inexcusable limit, which could cause some ugly events to occur.
"What is it?" Anzu asked him when he said nothing, staring at her with a troubled expression. "Yami?"
"Malik is...close to destitute right now, Anzu," Yami slowly replied, redirecting his gaze elsewhere. He did not want to see her expression when he gave his request. "The reason for that is because a man, Jiiro Hanazawa, redirected some of his debts to Malik, who had some dealings with him. Hanazawa is...was the pianist your mother ran off with. Malik wants to see Sakura to get the debts taken care of." He rushed the last sentence so as to try and avert her attention from the information he had presented to her. There was a long silence and none of the other males said a word. Hesitantly, he raised his gaze to Anzu's face to see a frosty, foreign expression as she gazed down at her feet fixedly.
"What kind of a guy was he?" she queried, raising her head and looking not at Yami, but Malik.
"A sleaze," Malik admitted with a shrug, his arms folded over his chest. "Not the kind of guy I particularly like. Smart, though. Too smart in the darker matters of the world." He paused, frowning as his eyes narrowed on her shuttered expression. "I'm going to be blunt with you, girl, because I hate people that talk circles around things that happen in the world. I don't really care who knows what I've done now that my reputation is literally nothing. Hanazawa was one of the best drug lords I ever knew. Oh, he made a lot of enemies, knew how to rip people off so that they didn't realize it until later – "
"Malik!" Yami snapped angrily.
Ignoring him, Malik continued, "And he knew how to evade the suspicion of police when it came to needing to get rid of something. He was a good pianist, too, but in the circle of artists, a person is susceptible to any kind of shit, especially if you're famous. If you're just a small town musician or dancer, you don't get exposed to such things. Hanazawa was one of the best pianists. Yami knows what kind of people often have both musical talent and talent in that sort of environment. Some people – " he shot a look to Yami and Ryou " – might say I am like those kinds of people. I depend on my dancing abilities, not my abilities in the drug world."
"But that's horrifying!" Otogi exclaimed. "I always knew pop idols and actors had done this. I never expected to hear that distinguished pianists and dancers would, though."
"It's kept very hush-hush," Malik replied flippantly. "Most people don't want others to know." The smile that appeared on his lips was grim. "Seeing as how I'm just seconds away from financial ruin, I couldn't care less who knows. This seems like her business, anyway." He tilted his chin towards Anzu. "It's her mother's past-lover. Wouldn't you want to know what trash your mother has been with?"
"Shut your mouth already," Yami growled, noticeably controlling himself from strangling the blonde. "There's a reason nobody says anything about that. It could only cause harm for people who know nothing about that world and those kinds of people. You need to realize that and learn how to control your idiotic urges!"
"I see I touched a nerve." Yami's mouth thinned to a straight, white line of fury. Anzu reached out and touched his shoulder, diverting him from the smirking dancer.
"It's okay, Yami. Thank you for your concern, but he's right; this is something that I needed to know." Anzu dropped her hand and sighed, pushing a hand through her hair, her brows knitting together as she turned her eyes back to her feet musingly. She was unsettled by what Malik told her, yet not so much that she might run away screaming or start having nightmares. No, she was more confused than anything because she could not understand why her mother would have turned away from a loving husband and child for this man that was involved in business dealings of drugs.
Then again, she knew now that her mother was not what she had assumed when she was a child. She still did not know who her mother really was or what drove her. At that moment in her life, she did not want to know anything about her mother anymore after the betrayal Sakura had delivered to Anzu and her father. Vacantly, she wondered if her mother ever knew about Jiiro Hanazawa and what he was involved in. The question battered at her brain and she sighed again, harder and more irritably as she raised her head.
"You can't even be sure that she knows about these debts, Malik," she warned him.
"I just want her to take care of it with the filthy money Hanazawa passed to her," he answered. "Maybe then I can focus on fixing my reputation." Malik's eyes shifted to Ryou as he suggested, "Perhaps I should get married. Do you think that would help me any? It's not like she needs to stay around for very long. We'll get divorced in, oh, say a year? And I'll have her stay somewhere else." Ryou sent him a look of disgust. "You act as though I'm performing some heinous act, Ryou!"
"You want to use a woman just so that you can get roles in ballets again!" Ryou said, scowling. "Do you really think that I would approve of that?"
Malik's expression clearly stated that he did.
Otogi chuckled amusedly while a corner of Anzu's mouth tilted upward in a dry smile. Yami simply groaned and put his face in his hands, shaking his head as he muttered, "Why did this idiot have to come to torture me?" Anzu smiled at him and pulled his hands away, holding them briefly in hers. He simply sighed, looking at her with a reluctant smile. "I'm sorry...I know that you don't want to see her." Anzu did not say anything for a moment, looking at him thoughtfully. He wondered what it was that she saw in his face that appeared to trouble her.
"No," she said at last, "it isn't that. I just...I guess I didn't think I would have to face her so soon after discovering she was in Domino." He nodded and patted her cheek softly.
"We'll deal with it. In the meantime, I'd like for us to practice. Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake is a mixture of many instruments and although I'll be playing for the auditions and the piano parts in the actual ballet, I want you to get used to other instruments playing. Thankfully, Otogi is a master at the violin and has agreed to play with me from now on until the auditions." He paused, eyeing Malik and Ryou, who had gone silent and were listening. Although he loathed to admit it, Malik was a good dancer and better than Ryou. "Malik...If you help until the auditions, I will pay you." The blonde's face lit up immediately. "Ryou has declined any money that I have offered him, so I won't have to worry about that." He hesitated, looking at his friend, not wanting to offend him. "I'd like you both to dance with Anzu, actually. There are going to be other dancers during the ballet, so..."
"Ah." Malik comprehended what he was saying immediately and Ryou did a moment later, looking completely unbothered. "You want me to play the prince?"
"Yes, if Ryou doesn't mind abandoning that part."
"Not at all," Ryou smoothly answered, smiling at Anzu's anxious face. "Don't worry, Anzu. Malik wouldn't dare try anything in front of us. We'd be on him faster than he could say, 'Fish.'"
"Fish?" Malik repeated blankly. "Why would I be saying fish?"
"I'm in the mood for seafood," Ryou said with a shrug.
"Malik has danced in Swan Lake before," Yami said, ignoring their bizarre exchange entirely, "and had the part as the prince, so you don't have to worry. I don't like saying it, but he is a good dancer and will be able to ease you into your part as Odette more easily than Ryou or I could. Just so long as he doesn't try to enact some unscripted parts of the ballet in a closet with you, you should be fine." Malik scowled irritably.
"Just go sit at your piano!" He snarled moodily. As Otogi situated himself a few feet from the piano, a safe distance from the dancers, Malik followed Anzu to the center of the stage. Yami called out a scene and they positioned themselves accordingly as Ryou did as well. Anzu, frankly, was not entirely comfortable dancing with Malik after the taunts Ryou and Yami had thrown at him. She kept having a horrible vision of him in a cape and a curled mustache, dragging her away and ravaging her. She almost shuddered.
But, as the music began and she was swept away into the dance, she found that she had nothing to worry about. Malik's movements were smoother than Ryou's, making him seem less like a practiced dancer and more of a natural at it. He controlled her own movements, gently setting her right, helping her in fixing her dancing without needing to stop the entire procession. As she swept herself along the stage, lifting her arms in an arc, she could hear Otogi playing the violin somewhere behind her before Malik's hands clasped her waist and lifted her up. He corrected the position of her leg without a word and she felt ashamed that she liked him as a dancer better than Ryou. Even as she danced with Malik, Ryou flitted around the stage. She knew that there would be several other dancers in the ballet and perhaps Malik saw that it disoriented her a bit, for he narrowed his eyes and called out for Yami to go to another scene.
Then things got difficult.
In this scene, Ryou moved around more and it distracted her. Malik called a stop to the music and the other males looked baffled as to why he had stopped. "In the auditions," he said to her in a none-too-kind voice, "you won't have to deal with anyone else but yourself. There are two parts to the auditions, one of which will be by yourself. The second part, for those auditioning for Odette, will be after they have decided on a man for the prince. You will have to dance with him and prove that you are adequate for the part. You won't have to worry about other people dancing onstage with you until the actual practice for the ballet, but if they think you're not good enough, that you can't dance well with others, they'll shunt you away and call the next best girl to be Odette."
"I'm trying the hardest I can!" She snapped, angered by his snooty tone.
"Your hardest won't be shit when you get up there and make a fool of yourself by not focusing on you and you partner!" He returned in just as irritable of a tone. "Now, dance and ignore what Ryou is doing or I'm not wasting my time on you." She blinked, shocked. Ryou was frowning in disapproval, but neither he nor Yami said a word against him, which only surprised Anzu further.
Gnashing her teeth together, she turned her back on Malik and moved to the center of the stage again. Malik followed her and waved a hand at Yami once Ryou had taken place. "Dance," he ordered, his face unreadable.
X
Jounouchi sighed to himself as he approached the front door of Mai's house, Rena in his arms. The few precious moments he could get with his daughter was all that he needed to keep living his life, no matter how monotonous it may be. All he wanted was to spend as much time with her as possible, to see her smile at him. It was the retrieving her and returning her that he dreaded. Lately, though, he noticed that Mai had slowly mellowed down and was trying to be civil, just as he was. Neither of them did a fair job of it, but at least they were trying. That was enough for Jounouchi.
He wasn't blind to how Mai watched him, how she watched Rena whenever Jounouchi was around. He saw the sudden flash of pain that entered her eyes, that made the corners of her mouth tighten and her brow wrinkle. He had spent most of his adult life watching Mai's expressions, enjoying the play of emotions on her face. He still watched her face, out of habit more than anything else and he was beginning to realize that he had never seen her smile since they were divorced. There would be a half smile on her face when she watched Rena leave with him, but there was not even that when he returned Rena. He sometimes wondered if she was unhappy. He made sure never to dwell too long on that thought.
Knocking briskly, Jounouchi waited for a response. When none came, he knocked once again and this time, the door opened. Mai blinked blearily, clearing having just woken up. At one time in his life, Jounouchi had loved to see her as soon as she woke, looking tired and confused as to what had happened to her pleasant dreaming. Now, he could feel nothing when it came to her beauty. If she had ever shown her true inner beauty, he might have felt something; the inner beauty that he once was able to see: the joking, carefree wife he had been married to, the lazy woman that would lay with him on the couch and simply watch movies, the wife that had cried in joy in the delivery room when Rena was born. But he never saw any of that. Now, he only saw the depleted husk of a woman he had loved.
"Oh," she said, looking down at Rena slumbering in his arms. She sighed and he noticed the shadows beneath her eyes. How long had they been there? Were they always there or did she just now have them? He forced himself not to care. "Could you carry her upstairs? I don't want to wake her." He nodded and she ushered him inside. As he passed her, he smelled alcohol. Inside, it was silent and there had been no other cars outside. If she had been entertaining a man, she wouldn't have insisted he carry Rena upstairs.
She led him to Rena's room and pulled the covers back so that he could set her there. After removing her shoes, he pulled the covers up while Mai went to stand at the door. When he rose to his feet and looked back, Mai was standing with her arms folded beneath her breasts, a shuttered expression on her face. "Sometimes," she quietly said, "I really..." She trailed off and blinked, seeming to realize what she was saying and to whom she was speaking. Jounouchi stared at her blankly as she turned and left him standing in the middle of his daughter's room.
After a moment, he left the room and went downstairs. He heard sounds in the kitchen, of a cupboard being open and a shut, a glass being set on the table. He went to leave, his hand on the knob, turning, but halted, hesitating. He couldn't get the image of her face out of his head, her unfinished sentence that had sounded so weak and morose. Releasing the knob, he moved to the kitchen and stood lingering in the doorway, watching Mai pour herself some coffee. "You've been drinking," he said and winced at the tone of his voice, which was not at all pleasant. "I thought you quit that."
"It was just wine, Jounouchi," she responded coolly. "It's not as if I got drunk. It made me tired and I went to sleep." As if needing to prove him wrong, she jerked the refrigerator open and pointed at the Arbor wine bottle standing upright on the topmost shelf. It was mostly full. But then, Mai had always been a bit of a lush. "Alright?" She shut the fridge. "Why are you still here?" She asked after mixing sugar and creamer in her coffee.
"Listen...You don't look like you're in any condition to be looking after Rena right now." She sent him an evil, outraged look. "You look exhausted, Mai. Maybe Rena should stay with me and Shizuka for awhile. Shizuka would look after her when I'm gone." Mai seemed to have trouble controlling the urge to throw her coffee in his face, so she set her cup down carefully and drew in a deep breath.
"Jounouchi, I am perfectly capable of being a mother to Rena," she told him curtly.
"I'm not saying you're not," he said, frustrated with her lack of understanding. "You look like you've got a lot to deal with, so – " She released a bitter laugh at that. "Don't turn this into a fight, okay? I'm trying to be nice here."
"Trying to be nice...," she repeated, not even looking at him, staring at her coffee cup as if it held the answers to the universe. Jounouchi pushed his hands through his unruly blonde mop, frowning across at her. She looked even wearier than she had a moment ago. "I don't want to fight today, either, Jounouchi. I don't have the energy. I'm not in a fit state to so much as talk to you, so please...Just leave me at peace for once. I can't stand fighting with you anymore." She took a drink of her coffee, closing her eyes briefly to savor the taste. Jounouchi watched her, wondering if she believed herself to be dreaming or if she was still drunk from the wine. But it did not seem that either of those things were very likely.
"Can you deal with Rena? If not, I'm taking her home."
"Yes," she answered. "I've just had a rough night."
Without thinking, he asked, "Nightmares?" and then cursed himself a moment later. He wasn't here to be her husband. She had made it clear that she did not want him as her husband when she went off into another man's arms. But the question made her look from her coffee to him, her violet eyes softening.
"You know me too well," she commented and then raised her cup to her lips again. "Nightmares...Yes, but I was awake. The house is so cold with Rena gone. Sometimes I forget how lonely I get without her. But you don't care, of course." She took another drink of her coffee. "Please leave, Jounouchi. I want to be alone."
He obliged her, feeling unsettled by her behavior. Clearly the nightmares had been bad enough to exhaust her to a point where she was willing to open herself up a bit. He had a feeling, as he opened his car door and slid in, that she was crying inside right then. The old part of him, the part that loved her, wanted to step back inside and pull her into his arms as he used to when she was upset by something. But his heart was still deeply bruised by her treatment of him when she turned from him to sleep with another man. He could never forgive her for that and would never, ever, take her back.
X
Anzu was, generally, a Type B personality but at that moment, she was pissed. She wasn't just pissed. She was hurt and wanted to sit down and scream and cry at the same time. Malik, contrary to his flirtatious and flippant attitude before they began to dance, was harsh and brutally honest when it came to dancing. He didn't yell. She could handle yelling. Her own dance instructor had screamed when someone wasn't doing something right. No, Malik's voice was steady, his tone cold, and his eyes unfeeling. She felt the need to impress him, to wipe that look from his face, to see him smile and ease her wounded ego. His touch never changed when he guided her through the ballet and she did everything that he demanded because she did not want to hear him reprimand her in that cold, cold voice of his.
By the time they were done, he was satisfied and she was relieved. "We still have time to go to Sakura's," Otogi said, glancing at his phone for the time after he encased his violin. "Did you want to do that now, Anzu, or later?" He looked at her curiously. Anzu was watching Malik warily, as one would a viper.
"Anzu?" Yami's soothing voice broke through the fog in her mind and she looked up to see that he was standing above her where she was slumped on the stage. She smiled a bit and he held out a hand that she took gratefully. "Did you want to go today or wait until tomorrow?"
"I need to shower first. Umm...Were Otogi and Ryou coming?"
"Not me," Ryou replied. "I'm not interested in Malik's business affairs."
"Well, I don't know how you can't be!" Otogi remarked, raising his eyebrows. "I wouldn't mind seeing that bitch taken down a few steps. No offense," he added hastily after realizing he had just called Anzu's mother a bitch. She shook her head. She hardly cared what anyone called her mother. She had a few names for Sakura, as well, none of which she was comfortable enough to say aloud in front of people who had never heard her curse before.
"Let's head to Anzu's first, then," Malik suggested, stretching his arms above him lazily. "We'll wait for her to shower and then head to Sakura's." He paused, frowning. "Wait. Do we even know exactly where she lives?"
"Not at the moment," Anzu said, "but I know who sold her the house. I'll call her after I get out of the shower, but can we please go now?" The males followed her out of the opera house after gathering their things and Ryou waved at them as he went one way and they went another.
Once they arrived at Anzu's apartment, the sun was beginning to lower in the sky, nearly touching the horizon. Anzu assured them that she would drive, something that made Yami pale significantly after being in the car with her once. She glared at him, daring him to say anything about how she drove. He wisely remained quiet. She left to the bathroom, gathering clothes to change into while they remained in her living room. It was clear by the sparse furniture that she practiced her dancing there.
The couch was small, but comfortable, and Malik lounged there while Otogi moved to the sliding doors that opened out onto a balcony. Yami joined him there, leaning on the railing and releasing a sigh. "This is going to complicate your plans a bit," Otogi remarked. Yami knew without asking what it was that Otogi was speaking of. "I don't think that Anzu and her father would have been kind towards Sakura anyway, especially now that she knows just what kind of guy her mother ran off with."
Yami shook his head slightly. "Sakura might not even know about Hanazawa."
"Being with him that long?" Otogi asked doubtfully. "She had to have suspected something, at the very least. This entire situation contains too much damn drama. I never thought the world of pianists had so much dirty money passing from hand to hand. I knew something went on with dancers – most of them take drugs to stay thin and are literally anorexic." He paused. "By the way, do you think that Anzu could be denied the part of Odette because of her weight? Malik seemed to have no trouble with lifting her up, but she does seem a bit big boned and has, um..." Yami rolled his eyes, disgusted. "What? It's not like I go around staring at that! You can't tell me that you don't notice!" Yami pointedly ignored the question, his face turning a bit pink, unwilling to reply that yes, he had noticed that the dancer and her curvaceous body. He suspected he, more than Otogi.
After a long while, the two of them simply stared out at Domino City before Anzu called, "Alright, let's get going!" with Malik making a snide comment of, "The lovers are having a special moment of watching the sunset together. You shouldn't interrupt them." Otogi and Yami whipped around at Malik's words. He merely grinned back at them. Anzu hustled all of them out of the apartment, saying that she had already called Mai while she was in the bathroom. Her hair was still wet, her bangs spiking over her forehead, the rest of her hair pulled up in a bun.
Yami, as her accompanist, was given front seat, which Malik grumbled about. He once again had to enjoy her driving and clutched at his seatbelt, his eyes popping out every time she made a sharp turn. The colour was rapidly fading from his face as Malik whooped from the backseat and encouraged her to drive a Dodge Ram off the road with her tiny car. Otogi kept making thumping noises on the floor behind Yami, trying to use a brake that didn't exist. Yami decided that he would have to teach Anzu how to drive better than this or else let him drive anytime they were going somewhere.
They arrived at the house in no time and Yami fumbled at the door, shoving at it so that he could get out of the car. His stomach churned anxiously, from the car ride and the meeting that was about to unfold. Anzu pulled her purse up her shoulder more firmly, her mouth set in a straight, determined line. Trying to forget her chaotic driving, he reached over as she neared him and took her hand in his gently. She turned to him, her lips curving upward. "I'm right here for you," he quietly reassured.
"I know," she answered.
With that, they moved up the sidewalk to the door, with Yami respectfully falling behind Anzu and Malik to walk beside Otogi. Malik knocked on the door briskly and waited impatiently while the light began to fade from the sky, softening into an evening blue. As he moved to knock again, the door swung open to reveal Sakura Mazaki on the threshold, surveying her visitors mildly, her eyes lingering on Anzu for a long moment. When she spoke, she looked at Anzu, not Malik. "Can I help you?"
"You can help me," Malik stated. "I believe you owe me some money since your lover skived off and thought it would be amusing to give me his debts."
"Did he?"
"Yes, and I'm not paying them, so I suggest you pay them for me or this is going to turn into a very gloomy relationship you and I are about to have."
Sakura was completely unfazed by his threats, staring him in the face and calmly saying, "No."
"Excuse me?" Malik's lavender eyes narrowed warningly.
"I'm not giving you any money. You're a liar and a cheat."
"No, Hanazawa was the liar and cheater. As for you, you just pissed me off, lady."
Yami glanced up at the sky. It was getting dark too fast for his liking. Sakura obviously knew who Malik was and had no intention on helping them. The lover of a well-known drug dealer and pianist could have any sorts of weapons and schemes at her disposal. This could make things difficult.
"Mother," Anzu suddenly interjected, stepping in front of Malik, "if you don't give him the money, you're more of a cheater than you already are. And it's pretty high of you to call him a liar when you've lied your entire life."
Correction, Yami thought, seeing the shocked look on Sakura's face, things just now got as difficult as they could possibly be.
X
DIS: Wahh...Another cliffhanger. I couldn't help myself. Well, I pretty much pounded out this chapter the same day that I worked on another story because I just had to get it written. The auditions are looming closer! Perhaps next chapter will be longer, I haven't a clue yet. In the meantime, please leave a review, telling me if you liked it and/or if you have any suggestions. Ciao!
