As usual, thank you for you readers who read, faved, followed, and reviewed the previous chapter! This chapter is shorter than usual, but please do enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Skip-Beat!
Chapter 21: Crisis ~Confrontation~
Kyoko, clad in all elegance of 'Atelier Utahime', was frozen on her seat in front of the vanity mirror while her golden orbs transfixed on Saena. Her brain, at that moment was working furiously.
The first thing being offered by her conscience – her demon, to be exact – was to call for help, either to Kazuha or Yoshimoto. However, the tall beautician probably was still ransacking the boot of her car for the hairspray can, and the manager was definitely somewhere around the studio, waiting for her.
Who in his or her right mind would expect a male, married manager with two children, waiting patiently at the door of his female charge while she was changing outfits, anyway?
The second thought was to, of course, give Yoshimoto an urgent call – which would be possible if the said man did not hold her cell phone in case there is an important call from LME or Kuon or anybody else.
Running out of option, she decided to do the only she could do at the moment: staying quiet and observant of Saena's behavior while waiting for Kazuha to come back with the spray. They were on tight schedule after all, and if the two did not come back to the studio on time, someone was surely bound to look for the model.
"Still remember me?" the older woman broke the silence with a murderous glare.
Kyoko decided right at that time that it might be best to let Setsu or Sayaka – not Natsu and Mio, of course, or the dressing room would quickly turn into a bloodbath. "Of course, Mom," she said with Setsu's nonchalance. The seething woman in front of her was not Cain, after all, and Setsu could not care more. "Do you need something from me?"
Hairspray in hand, Kazuha strode back towards the dressing room, aware of the pressing time. Her mother-in-law could have her neck if she did not manage to bring Kyoko back to the studio, already dressed and ready for the next round of photo shoot.
In her mind, she really wanted to strangle Maki, her husband, for misplacing the hairspray in the wrong drawer of the special compartment located in the boot of the car. Years of being a professional had taught her to be efficient, and that in turn had taught her to be very organized.
Well, she knew that Maki sometimes could be careless. It was his nature, and she accepted it. But not when she was pressed to be super quick. And he misplacing the hairspray did not help matters.
Or was it Hina, her 2-year-old daughter? The little girl had ransacked the boot for her doll the day before, after all.
Kazuha decided that when she got home, she would start her little investigation. And if Maki was proven guilty, she would surely give him a good smack on the back of his head for messing with her work.
If it had been Hina – well, could she actually do something about it? She was only a 2-year-old!
"Stop acting, Kyoko," Saena said harshly.
"Who said I was acting?" Setsu had taken over completely – and Kyoko let her.
"I never taught you to be disrespectful of me."
Kyoko instantly wanted to do a dogeza for being disrespectful towards someone older than her – Saena had a point, in any case – but Setsu knew better than stooping that low. "Of course you didn't; you never taught me anything, that's why."
Saena clenched her jaws in brutal rage.
The actress then spoke again, "Now, if you don't have any business here, I'd advise you to leave. This is an area of strict access, and no one other than the staff and the ones that have special permit can be allowed in. How did you get in, by the way?"
"None of your business," the older woman spat.
Kyoko – or rather, Setsu – stayed silent, expecting a concrete answer other than being told to shut up. Scanning her mother's figure, she questioned herself why she had used to see Saena as something big, something with great presence. Now being almost at the same height as her mother, the chestnut-haired girl could see that the dark-haired woman was just as fragile as she was.
Her thoughts, apparently, was shown on her face, because Saena immediately shouted, "Stop looking at me like that!"
"Like what?" Kyoko asked, taken aback and confused.
"Like you're pitying me!" her mother snapped. "I spent 8 years looking after you, not able to rise higher in my career just because I had to stay at home to take care of my child, molding you into a perfect person, and yet you're looking at me like I'm a desperate woman!"
What? "Mom, I didn't–"
A knock on the door startled both of them.
When Kazuha reached the dressing room, she found it bizarre that the door was locked.
She did not remember having locked the door when she had left. And she did not have the key.
A shout was heard from inside the dressing room, and it made her riled up. She quickly knocked the door. "KYOKO-chan, are you okay? Can you open the door? We have to be back there in 5 minutes."
"Kazuha-san!" the girl answered, followed by a sharp cry. "Call Yoshimoto-san! Kyaaa!"
Kazuha took a quick few seconds to process everything before taking her cell phone from her pocket. She ran back towards the studio while dialing some numbers. "Security! We need help!"
Meanwhile, Marina was effectively irritated at Kento, who was pacing around in front of her in her office at Akatoki Agency.
The ghostwriter had been looking for some tranquil place where she could work on her new work, and apparently she had decided that her usually-abandoned vice-president office would be the perfect place.
She had been proven right, until her cousin had come for afternoon tea.
Seeing that the artist would not stop pacing for a while, Marina finally snapped. "Can you stop your pacing around?!" she yelled angrily. "I have a manuscript to be worked on here!"
"Marina," Kento mumbled, completely ignoring her angry screeching. "I have a bad feeling about Kyoko-san today."
"How so? You have won the custody over her, Kento, there should be no other reason to worry. Saena has no right of her," she said, frowning.
"I know!" Kento hollered. "It's just that I have this bad feeling that refuses to leave! Like, something bad's going to happen to my daughter!"
Maria sighed while massaging her temple. "If you are so worried about her, why do you not call her? You are her father; you have every right to do so."
Yoshimoto's attention was suddenly focused on Kyoko's ringing cell phone. Thinking that it might be Ren – calling at the usual time just to talk to her – the manager casually picked the call up without looking at the caller ID. "Hello?"
"Who's this?" a voice he was not familiar with spoke. "Isn't this Kyoko-san's number?"
The silver-eyed man gaped for a second. Oh no, I got the wrong person. "Oh, yes, this is Kyoko-san's number, but she's at work at the moment. Who's speaking?"
"It's Uehara. Yoshimoto-kun, can I speak to my daughter?"
"She's in the dressing room, Uehara-san. Perhaps I can pass her your message?"
"Then can you do me a favor and check on her, just to assure me that she's doing fine?"
Frowning in confusion over the a little weird request, Yoshimoto was about to reply when Kazuha came barging in, panting.
"We need help," the beautician said between her huffs and puffs of shallow breath. "KYOKO-chan's locked in the dressing room and I think she was having an argument with someone."
When Kento and Marina arrived at the site of 'Atelier Utahime' photo shoot site, a rather large crowd had gathered at the door of Kyoko's dressing room, including some people from the security and two people from the police force. And of course, Yoshimoto, Karen, Kazuha, and Fujisawa Eiko – the designer and owner of 'Atelier Utahime' – were standing closest to the door with extremely worried faces.
"Why is there police here?" Marina quickly asked Yoshimoto without missing a beat.
The manager gulped. "When we arrived here with the security, we tried to speak rationally and asked whoever is inside to open the door and bring Kyoko-san out. But then she threatened us that if we tried to go inside or do anything, she would harm Kyoko-san."
"Any idea who she is?" Kento asked.
"I'm not really sure, but I think Kyoko-san called her 'Mom' once."
Color left Kento's and Marina's faces, leaving them pale with dread.
"You know it's useless, even if you threaten them, right?" Kyoko asked hesitantly, being mindful of the little sharp blade that was being pressed lightly onto her neck. Both of her hands were locked behind her back, and she was put in a position in which she would get hurt if she tried to kick her captor on the shin.
"They should mind their own business first," Saena hissed. "I can't understand why those people give that much damn over such a useless girl as you. I bet you appealed them with your tears. What a crybaby, always thinking that you deserve to be a princess."
Before Kyoko could utter a Setsu-like snarky retort, her mother hollered hysterically, a bit scaring her. "That's right! You're no princess! You're just a useless nobody! You're not even beautiful!"
Sayaka harrumphed furiously over being called ugly. However, much to her disappointment, Setsu was still in control.
In results, Kyoko only deadpanned, causing Saena to grow angrier.
"And I've spent all of my efforts to make sure that I don't have to have you in my life and see your eyes, for what? Nothing, thanks to that idiot of Kotoko's son!"
See my eyes? The girl frowned in bewilderment. "If you don't want me from the start, why bother giving birth to me then?"
A second later, Kyoko almost wanted to curse Setsu's bluntness, as Saena screamed louder in pure hysteric. "So now you're saying it's all my fault for giving birth to you?!"
"I'm not saying it like that-"
A gentle knock was heard against the locked door, and both females looked at it silently – Kyoko holding her breath.
"Saena?" Kento's voice was heard. "It's me, and I want to talk to you. Can you open the door?"
Marina and Yoshimoto gaped at Kento as if he had lost his mind.
However, the artist calmly stood in front of the door, waiting for Saena's respond–
–which came rather instantly, as only a second later, the woman screamed bloody murder.
To everyone's dreadful astonishment, he only chuckled. "Yup, it's definitely Saena."
"Kento," Marina said to him with a very disapproving tone. "Your daughter is in there, and most probably threatened with a knife or something else as deadly, and you just stand here laughing?!"
"Well," he said, still smiling ruefully, "Before we decide to something rash, it's better to know the identity of the captor, right? Now that we know it's Saena, I think I know what we can do-"
Before he could finish his sentence, Kyoko's scream was heard from inside the closed door.
Kyoko did not know what her father was trying to accomplish by making Saena more hysteric than before, but she was grateful of it...
... Because her mother's hold on her wrists loosened, and the knife was pulled away from her neck even just a tiny bit.
Seeing the opportunity to escape, Kyoko kicked Saena on her shin and ducked her swinging hand which had the knife. She quickly ran towards the door-
-when one of her hands was grabbed and she was yanked behind. And only seconds later, she could hear the knife clattering on the floor after her other hand made a forceful contact against something. She then could feel her hand released.
Kyoko opened her eyes to see Saena falling onto the floor, her hands grasping her abdomen-
-which was covered in blooming blood.
She did not know what else to do but scream in dread and anguish.
The police barged into the room together with the security personnel to find Kyoko kneeling beside the bleeding intruder of a woman, trying desperately in her limited capabilities to stop the blood from flowing further out from Saena's wound.
Kento, Marina, and Yoshimoto immediately rushed towards her side, followed by the medics who had arrived minutes before. Saena was quickly attended to, and the shaken Kyoko was brought out of the room by the three older people, accompanied by a very chubby police officer.
Once she was as comfortably as she could - as her dress' petticoat was rather restricting her movement - the officer spoke up. "I am Officer Chiba from Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Division Three. As formalities, let's begin with your name, age, and occupation, if you please, Miss."
It took Kyoko a while to process what the chubby man had said. "Mogami," she choked from the shock. "Mogami Kyoko, seventeen years old. I'm currently employed as a talent at LME."
"What's your relationship with the assaulter?"
"She's-" Kyoko choked again, tears began streaming down her cheeks, removing the powder Kazuha had applied before. "She's my- my mother. Please save her!"
"Fortunately, from what the evidence has told us, it can be safely concluded that it was an act of self-defence, and Mogami Saena was deemed guilty for attempted assault," Kisaki said, reading the police's report she had managed to get through some connections. "How's her condition?"
"As far as I am informed of," Marina said, sipping her tea slowly, "the surgery was a success, although she is still in a critical condition. Kento is at the hospital looking after her."
"And Kyoko-san?"
"I have asked Yoshimoto-san to bring her home, assuming that the police has no further urgent question to ask her."
It was silent for a while, before Kisaki broke the silence. "I'm going to plead for Mogami Saena to be put through psychological test."
Marina's head snapped up to look at her best friend. "You are deeming her out of her mind?"
"That's what Kitami-kun told me," the lawyer replied with a shrug. "And judging from the story you told me before... About the staircase incident... I think her 'mental illness' has been going on for way long before you two even met."
The ghostwriter mulled over the statement. "So you are saying that she has been mentally ill when she... pushed me down the stairs?"
"Probably. Did that change your image of her and make you move on from your bitterness?"
Seeing Marina's stunned expression, Kisaki sighed. "Marina-chan, you know, even though you generally think that she's always the one at fault, you've also become as bitter as she is, holding onto the fact that she was the probable cause for your lost.
"And seriously, it's destroying you inside out. It's time to move on- Naoya-san must've wished of it for you. Okay?" she smiled ruefully, patting the already sobbing Marina.
When Yoshimoto dropped Kyoko at the lobby of the now familiar condominium building, Ren had been waiting with a very worried face.
Nodding a silent gratitude towards the silver-eyed manager who then proceeded to drive off towards LME, the tall actor lifted her up and carried her bridal-style, cradling her against his chest, into the building and to his apartment.
When they were already safe inside behind closed door and Kyoko was safe and secure on his lap and in his arms did she cry.
"Shhh," he whispered soothingly, rubbing her back and letting her cry into his chest. "Kyoko, it's okay. It's all going to be all right. I promise."
Kyoko cried herself to sleep in his embrace that day, feeling safer than any before.
Everything was going to be all right.
Two more chapters!
Ever wonder why Ren has a lot of free time in 'The Next Episode'? Read 'Behind The Scene: Omiai', and you will find the answer.
Important Author's Note:
I am looking for a beta-reader for 'Behind The Scene: Omiai' and an upcoming new Skip-Beat! fic. If you are interested, please PM me.
Please review :) Thank you!