People have been asking when I would upload the next chapter. Here it is! School has been hectic, work has been hectic, other commitments have been hectic, but finally, here it is! Praise the Lord for an occasion called mid-semester break!

Disclaimer: I still do not own anything except my plot.

Chapter 22: Post-Climax ~Talks~

It had been a week since then, and Saena was still in her coma-induced state of sleep, contrary to the doctor's statement that she should have been awake earlier than this.

Meanwhile, Kyoko had been busy. Director Anna Kazutoyo, who she worked with in 'Box-R', had informed her and the other casts that the series would be extended to another season and would rather start shooting right away to please the producer, who had been aiming for the vacant prime time slot.

There had also been the delayed photo shoot for 'Atelier Utahime', thanks to Saena's rash decision to cause a ruckus.

Not to mention that Lory had decided on the newest work that would serve as Kyoko's grand debut as an actress. It was a tragic romance drama titled 'Redeeming Love', based on an American novel with the same title. He had to admit that the overall story was of strong Christian values, but he was so smittened with the extremely strong romance in it he shed an ocean-worth of tears.

Ren — or Kuon — however, had had a different idea of the film once he had found out who had been the primary choice for the male lead...

"No," Kuon adamantly said, surprising not only Kyoko, but Kuu as well.

"Why the hell not?" Kuu asked. "This book is a major best-seller in the States! Participating in this movie is a good stepping stone for Kyoko's career!"

The girl nodded. "And I've even created Angel's character already!"

"Kyoko," Kuon sighed exasperatedly. "Have you read the entire script?"

"No, but I've finished the novel," Kyoko said.

"So you know that there'll definitely be intimate scenes here and there?"

This time, she blushed a brilliant red, contrasting the forest of her chestnut tresses. "I know, but I've talked to the producer already, and he said that he wanted to respect the wishes of the author to keep it as modest as possible."

Kuon snorted. "Define their standard of 'modest' to me. Trust me, Kyoko, it'll be worse than you imagine."

"So you're telling me to back out of the film?" she asked, golden eyes narrowed at him in irritation. "I thought you were more professional than this, Ren."

His eyes widened. "Kyoko, that's not—"

"You know what, son?" Kuu interrupted. "I'm with Kyoko on this one."

Kuon groaned. "I'm certainly not letting my woman act in intimate scenes with scumbags like Kijima and Murasame!"

"Excuse me!" Kyoko shot up from her seat, scowling. "I'm still my own person, thank you very much! And you have no right to tell me which job I should take and whicb I should not!"

"But, Kyoko—"

"No matter what you say, I'm still playing Angel!"

Kuon groaned again.

The next day, Kyoko met up with Ren with a very evident displeased scowl on her face only to find him smiling when he told her that he got casted as Michael, the male lead, instead of Murasame.

She really wanted to call him a control-freak, possessive jerk, but a passionate kiss from him erased all of her annoyance in an instant.

Several days later, they realized that it had been their first serious lovers' quarrel, and they decided to laugh over it, knowing how silly they had looked.

The couple had also appeared together in ' Yappa Kimagure Rock' New Year's Eve special – well, somewhat together, with Kyoko not appearing as herself, but as Bo. The producer had (a bit grudgingly) offered to find a replacement for the actor playing Bo so that Kyoko could appear as a guest alongside Ren.

She had wanted to accept the offer, but had stopped herself when she had taken a look at the guest list.

One of the many topics to be talked about in the New Year's Eve special had been the very popular 'True Reflection', and that had been the main reason she and Ren had been asked to appear as guests.

But of course, what was 'True Reflection' without the singer himself?

Kyoko, already in Bo's suit, cringed when she opened Ren and Sho's joint dressing room – why it was decided to be a joint, she had no idea – only to find the two males death-glaring at each other.

Err, correction, it was Sho death-glaring at Ren and Ren having his sweet gentleman smile on full force.

Overall, Kyoko found the scene before her very creepy.

She then knocked the door again, snapping the two guests out of their glaring contest. Acting perfectly as Bo, she lifted her board with 'Hi! I'm Bo, and I'm acting as your escort to the stage today!' written on it.

Ren smiled casually at her. "Hi, Bo!" he said, completely out of his 'Demon Lord' mode. "It's been quite a long time, hasn't it? How've you been?"

From his peripheral vision, he could see Sho looking at him as if he was crazy. He must be thinking that I'm crazy, talking to a chicken mascot.

Bo scribbled furiously. 'Hi, Tsuruga-kun! I've been well, thank you. Now, we have to go or else the guests will get impatient.'

"Of course," Ren chuckled, getting up from his seat. He then gave Sho a level gaze. "Fuwa-kun, come on, they're waiting for us."

With a huge scowl, the bottle-blonde got up and followed the chicken along with Ren. "I wonder why Kyoko can't be here."

He noticed the chicken stiffening a little. Huh? Strange…

"She has a job to do," Ren said without a smile.

"What? A job, seriously?" Sho scoffed. "You have to be joking. There's no way a plain and boring girl like her can get a job to do in a prime time such as New Year's Eve."

Kyoko really wanted to smack the singer on his face bad. Her hand – wing – started to swing up, but Ren's hand discreetly stopped her.

"Fuwa-kun, I beg to differ," the tall actor said. "She's rising up pretty fast and the public loves her; I won't be sure whether you can call her plain and boring anymore very soon."

With a smug smirk, he left with Bo, leaving a gob-smacked Sho behind. Kyoko, in Bo's costume, laughed loudly in her head together with her demons.

To conclude it all, Yoshimoto had been very busy, and Kyoko had had a worthily long time to see Saena in the hospital.

Contrasting his daughter's situation, Kento had been absolutely refusing to leave Saena's side even for work, and not even Minatsuki's plea and foul threats worked on him.

As far as Kyoko and anyone else knew, the artist always stayed beside Saena's bed, either sketching on his sketch pad — which relieved Minatsuki to no end — or staring at Saena with a look that everyone at least hoped as undying love for the unconscious woman.

The next hearing for Saena and Marina's violence case, on the other hand, was smooth-sailing for both Kisaki and Kitami.

Once he had heard of his client's admittance into the hospital due to her kind-of threatining abduction of Kyoko, Kitami ruled out that the one at fault was indeed Saena. He was more than happy to put the case down and agreed to the terms of Saena having to be announced as the guilty party, thus serving in prison.

Kisaki, however, had another idea. Instead of agreeing to the Mogami woman imprisoned, the attorney at law suggested for Saena to be put in a mental institution once she recovered from her ailment in the hospital.

Once again, the court submitted to the order of its Queen.

"How is she?" Marina asked once she got into Saena's room together with a man in his 70s behind her.

Kento sighed wearily. "Same as before," he said, putting down his sketch pad and pencil onto the side table. He then noticed the other man. "Who's this?"

"Of course," she said. "Let me introduce you to Takegawa Yuu-san, Saena's father."

"You're too kind, Akatoki-san," Yuu said. "Saena-kun never considers me as her father, after all. For her, I'm only a man that married her mother, not more, not less."

Ignoring Yuu, Marina continued. "Takegawa-san, this is Uehara Kento, my cousin."

"And your connection to Saena-kun is…?" the older man asked enquiringly.

Kento took a deep breath. "We were lovers. Or, that's what I thought of us."

"Alright, all done," a pediatrician said kindly to a whimpering Natsuno. Near the boy, Yoshimoto sat on guard of his son's discomfort — Kyoko next to him.

Although the silver-eyed manager had assured her that the unfortunate incident involving her many birthday presents had not been her fault, the actress still felt responsible and obliged to help her manager's two-year-old son to recover as soon as possible.

Natsuno's burnt hands were wrapped up securely in new gauzes. The whimpering boy looked at them, and all tears were gone instantly. "Daddy, Kyoko-oneetan, look!" he cheered. "I look like that Onii-tan!"

"What Onii-chan?" Yoshimoto asked, completely clueless.

"That Onii-tan with biiiig body and white clothes from TV!"

The doctor laughed. "Yes, and now you can play as much as you want, but just be careful to not let the gauze get in contact with water," he said the last part to the father.

"Of course," Yoshimoto nodded before picking Natsuno up and rose from his seat along with Kyoko. "Thank you very much. Now please excuse us."

"Wait!" the doctor exclaimed, taking them aback. He then looked at Kyoko intently. "You're Mio, right? From 'Dark Moon'?"

Not knowing what exactly to say, Kyoko mumbled, "Err... Yes?"

"I'm a fan of your Mio," he said with a grin. "And I just can't wait to brag to everyone else that I've just had Mio sitting in my examination room! Can you sign an autograph for me?"

She exchanged a glance with Yoshimoto before looking back at the pediatrician. "Sure."

Once the door to the examination door was closed and the two of them — plus Natsuno — were back at the corridor of the hospital, Kyoko and Yoshimoto laughed.

"That was surprising!" she exclaimed softly. "That have been the first time someone has asked me for an autograph!"

"Surprising, indeed," her manager replied. "But in a good way. See? You're way more famous than you think. Now you definitely need someone to act as your bodyguard — for a good reason."

Natsuno, not understanding anything, gingerly grasped his father's collar — due to his hands a bit hurting because of the burn — and tilted his head up in confusion to look at his father's face. "Daddy, why you and Kyoko-oneetan laugh?"

Yoshimoto smiled at the little boy. "We laughed because there was something good, Natsu-kun."

"Do Kyoko-oneetan have more presents?" Natsuno brightened up.

"No, I don't," Kyoko said, pulling out a box wrapped in blue wrapping paper out of her handbag. "But you do for being a very good boy with the doctor."

Natsuno squealed in delight.

"Kyoko-san, seriously, you don't have to," Yoshimoto said with a reprimanding tone. "You don't even have to come with us."

"But I want to," she replied stubbornly with a smile.

Her manager sighed. He then looked at his wristwatch. "Well, we finished earlier, and since we're already at the hospital and you don't have more work after this, why don't you visit her?"

She stiffened a bit before looking back at him with a nervous smile. "Yes, perhaps I should."

"So it's like that," Takegawa mumbled sadly. "But to think that I've never known that Saena-kun already has a daughter that big…"

"I know I'm still at the wrong for abandoning her and our daughter like that," Kento said. "But of course, I'm willing to take responsibility and right all of my wrongs–"

"I don't blame you, Uehara-kun," the older man said. "Instead, I'm sorry for you and Saena-kun as well. I've never tried to stop Saeko-san from abusing her mentally like what she did, even when I knew it was wrong. To think that Saena-kun has become like this… I'm a failure as a father figure."

The room was filled with silence.

"I married Saeko-san a few years after her divorce with Eiji-san, Saena-kun's father," Takegawa spoke, breaking the awkward silence. "I've loved her even before she fell in love with him, but she loves him hard, and she seemed so happy with him that I had no other choice but to give up.

"But it turned out that their marriage didn't work, and Eiji-san had a child with another woman. I honestly don't know who was at fault in that failed marriage: the infidel husband or the wife who loved her husband so much it was abnormal.

"And it affected Saena-kun very much. Eiji-san's other child was pretty smart, so Saeko-san shaped her to be smarter, getting extremely competitive with the other woman all of a sudden. She believes that if Saena-kun proved herself to be more superior, Eiji-san would see her as better than the other woman. Pretty silly, I should say.

"In the end, Eiji-san divorced her. But Saeko-san can never get over it. She still can't see that may be there is a possibility that she was the one at fault – that she was the reason why Eiji-san couldn't cope. She instead blames it all on Saena-kun, deeming her useless.

"I've been close friends with Eiji-san, so once I heard from him that they were divorced, I quickly went to look for her. When I found both of them, Saeko-san was so broken, and Saena-kun kept mumbling that she was the cause of the divorce and her father leaving them.

"Impulsively, right there and then, I proposed a marriage to Saeko-san, trying to help her get over her failed marriage. But it got worse by time. She still drilled that extremely competitive spirit into Saena-kun's head, believing that if Saena-kun managed to accomplish something wonderful, Eiji-san would come back to her.

"I knew it was wrong–" he chocked in his sobs. "And yet I didn't do anything to save the poor girl! I'm such a failure!"

Kyoko reached Saena's room only to hear a man crying pretty loudly from behind the door. Knocking first, she opened the door with a raised eyebrow. "Papa, are you crying?"

"Uh, no," Kento mumbled. "It's not me, although in all honesty, I'm also feeling like crying. Come in, Kyoko."

She got in and saw an older man with wet eyes looking at her, Marina and Kento around him.

"So this is Kyoko-chan?" Takegawa asked. "She looks exactly like you, Uehara-kun."

"Thank you," the artist replied. "Kyoko, this is Takegawa Yuu-san, your grandfather."

The chestnut-haired girl's golden eyes widened. "Grandfather? As in your father?"

"Nice to meet you, Kyoko-chan," Takegawa said and drew her into an awkward hug. "I'm your mother's stepfather, and I'm glad that we can finally meet. And–" he sobbed again. "–I'm sorry that I couldn't be there with you all this time."

She awkwardly hugged him back, throwing a puzzled glance at Kento and Marina. She was so not used to an older man crying in front of her – not to mention, hugging her as well.

"Kyoko-san, I have been meaning to ask you before, but the circumstances stopped me from doing so," Marina said once the girl was released from Takegawa's hug and the older man had calmed down. "She threatened you with a knife on your throat; why did you plead us to save her life?"

"It's just that," Kyoko said, "nobody deserves death to atone for their wrongdoings. And she's still my mother, someone who desperately needs help to lift her up from her misery. Is that something wrong?"

The ghostwriter smiled softly, shaking her head. "No, it's admirable of you, Kyoko-san. I am just ashamed of myself that is all. If only I had thought of it the same way, I would not have become a bitter woman I am now."

Several days later, while Kento was admiring the nice weather outside the window when a quiet groan startled him. He spun around on his feet to find Saena slowly – and painfully – opening her eyes.

"Saena," he called her worriedly. "Are you okay? Does anything hurt?"

"Where...?" she croaked, trying to focus.

"You've been in the hospital for more than a week now," Kento said gently. "Do you remember what happened?"

She was quite for a while. "I went to ensure that damn girl never show those eyes to me again, and then I got stabbed with the knife."

"Yes," he sighed. "And you were admitted to the ER, and fell into a coma for a week or so. I thought you were going to just... Never mind."

"That I'm going to die anytime soon?" she continued in all seriousness.

Kento let out dry, short chuckles. "Yeah, that's about it. Now, does anything hurt?"

"My throat."

He carefully set the bed up to sitting position and carefully lifted Saena up, re-positioning her so that she was comfortable and being mindful of her wound. After that, he took a glass of water and helped her sip the clear liquid.

Saena looked flustered in embarrassment at first for letting a stranger help her like helping a helpless child. She cursed her blurry and wavering eyesight, for she was still not able to focus. When she thought about it, his voice sounded familiar, and she could not help having comforting nostalgia. It was like the voice of someone very dear for her, and her state of post-coma – plus the anesthetic still running in her blood system – would not let her remember the painful things around the good memories.

Once she was able to focus, however, she looked around the room and saw the man she despised the most – aside from Mogami Eiji.

"Kento," she snarled with all her hate. "What are you doing here?"

"Hello to you too, Saena," he replied with an easy smile. "It's good to have us looking at each other again, at last. How long has it been? 19 years?"

She would not have anything of his beating around the bushes. "What are you doing here?" she repeated venomously.

Kento could sense it clearly from her tone, but he realized that it was not the time to back down like what he had done years ago. "I was informed with some unsettling news a week ago," he began, frowning a little at her to show his displeasure over the matter, "that my daughter was abducted in her dressing room during her work by none other than her mother. Can you imagine how worried I was? You might be her mother, and I understand if you want to see her after so long, but to press a knife against our child–"

"She was never your daughter!" Saena spat in contempt.

"The court said otherwise," he solemnly replied. "Kyoko's custody is now in my hands, Saena. And she can continue working as an actress if she wants to. No one has the right to tell her otherwise and rob her of her entire life."

"I am her mother!" she shrieked, completely enraged. "And I have every right to do so!"

His frown deepened. "And for what reason, Saena?" he asked, his voice low with seriousness. "From what you told me earlier, you just want to not see her golden eyes. And, to be honest, that's not enough acceptable reason to forbid Kyoko from doing what she lives for now. Aside from her friends and us, her family, she has nothing else. And tell me, have you done anything as her mother?"

"Like you're one to talk," she snorted. "Just to remind you, Kento, you were the one who ditched on us on the first place. And now you claim yourself a good father of hers?"

Kento groaned. "That's it. We need a very long talk." He then sat down on the chair next to Saena's bed, ignoring her protests. "And I want you to listen to me until I'm finished."

Saena was taken aback. Was Kento ever this strong and adamant? Since when–

"First of all," he began, snapping her out of her thoughts, "I admit that this whole mess is caused by my irresponsibility in the first place, and I know that I don't even deserve a forgiveness from you."

"So you know, huh?" she snorted, but was stopped short by the look he gave her.

"I'm not finished," he said sharply. "I was a coward at that time, and you rejected having a family with me right before I wanted to propose to you. I realized that I wasn't good enough, so I ran away. From the way you talked about the child however, I thought that with my departure, you'd abort the baby straight away, so imagine how surprised I was when I came back to Japan months ago to have Marina telling me that I have a daughter and she's a famous actress."

She could not say anything.

Kento smiled at her. "It took me a while to convince Kyoko that I care about her, and it took her a while as well to forgive me and accept me as her father. And I hope you can do the same."

"You wish," she hissed. "Why in the world should I–"

"Saena, I still love you," he cut her off with a somber look, his love glimmering in his own golden eyes. "No matter what your past is like, I still love you with all of my heart. It would be easy for me to just marry someone else during the 19 years we didn't see each other, but I didn't, because I know that I won't have anyone else other than you as my wife. And I hope you can forgive me and have me as your companion for the rest of your life."

She was stunned. After all these years, and after all the horrible things I did to and told him, he still loves me? Tears started brimming on the corner of her eyes before flowing down her pale cheeks. He's not like my father; unlike what Mother told me about all men... And he loves me.

He brushed the tears away with his gentle fingers, still smiling lovingly at her. "The court has decided for you to be sent to a mental institution for a while–"

"I'm not crazy!" she snapped.

"I know," Kento replied calmly. "But still, your past has been horrible, and you're crushed inside out by it, Saena. Let them heal you, okay? And then..."

She raised one eyebrow. "And then...?"

Her eyes widened when she felt something being slipped around her left ring finger. She lifted her hand to see a gold ring adorned with a small piece of sapphire. She gasped. "My birth stone..."

"I was supposed to give it to you the night you told me about your pregnancy," he said before kissing the ring. He then looked at Saena again. "Let them heal you, and then let's start over. We'll finally have our family: Kyoko and us two. Of course, along with Takegawa-san, Marina, and Seijuro. And Kyoko's boyfriend," he said the last part grudgingly. "What do you say?"

It took some time for her to process what had happened, and she ended up sobbing in his chest. "I love you, Kento," she cried. "I've loved you this whole time, and I'm sorry that I was cruel to you."

He stroked her hair, trying to comfort her. "Love you too," he said, kissing the crown of her head.

"I was so sure that you only dated me because you pitied me, knowing my past. Sometimes I could see the pity in your eyes, and I hated it. And then, having Kyoko, I could see the same eyes in her, and it tortured me–"

"I know, and I never pity you. Your past just made me love you more. And Kyoko loves you too."

They spent the time in each other's embrace, trying to pay back for the time they had lost because of their stupid mistakes, until the doctor came and broke their moments with a blushing red face.

One more chapter to go!

Additional Disclaimer:
-I do not own Kisaki Eri; Aoyama Gosho does.
-I do not own 'Atelier Utahime'; Hidaka Banri does. And since I forgot to mention it in the last chapter, let me say that I do not own Sugimoto family as well.
-'Redeeming Love' is rightfully owned by Francine Rivers. It's a really good book (says the one who hasn't even finished reading its Prologue chapter); please read it if you're a romance lover.

Please review :) Thank you!