Kyoko opens her eyes. She takes a minute to adjust her eyes to unfamiliar surroundings. Then she smiles. It's her victory. The hardest part of orchestrating the events of the previous day had been trying to correctly predict what Ren would do once she became unconscious. She would be unable to influence his actions the entire time. While planning the entire act with Shin, she had settled on the fact that the most incontrovertible proof of successfully breaking Rain's character and bring out Tsuruga Ren would be if she woke up not in a hospital, not still in the alley, but in Ren's home.
"Do you really think that would happen?", Shin had asked.
"We will see, won't we." She had replied.
Now in Ren's apartment filled with the euphoria of having succeeded she sits up from the bed a little too quickly and immediately feels dizzy.
"Oh!" she exclaims clutching her head and notices the bandages. That triggers the rest of the memories of the day before. The second she had been hurt, Ren had leaped, as expected, to her defense but instead of trying to save her, he had lost his temper and attacked "Carl". That had always been a risk and Kyoko had explained to Carl to be ready. Thankfully she had been conscious enough to moan "Ren" in a low voice. That had been enough to pry Ren off him. But neither Carl nor Kyoko had expected Ren to be so ferocious in attacking him.
Kyoko groans. She would have to pay extra on the extra she had promised Carl. 'Oh well. The act itself was a success and that is what counts.', she thinks.
She gingerly tests getting off the bed and putting weight on her leg. Slowly bringing herself to a standing position, she sways slightly. But, the apartment is small enough that one has to make an extra effort to be more than a step away from the wall. She places a hand on the wall to steady herself and walks into the kitchen area.
Ren is sitting on a chair, his elbow resting on the table looking out the window. Kyoko stops and debates whether to call out to him or try by herself to get something to drink. Even though she had successfully broken through to Tsuruga Ren the previous day, the person sitting there didn't need to be Tsuruga Ren. 'Would he once again become Rain, pretending to have some explanation for his behavior the previous day?' Kyoko wonders. A shrill whistle catches her attention and looking in the direction of its source, she sees the tea kettle whistling merrily on the stove.. 'How did he know, I would wake up exactly at this moment?' she thinks. 'No. He must have put the kettle to boil thinking to come and wake me up with some tea.' For there is a tea bag - oolong tea, her favorite, placed in a mug next to the stove.
Ren still doesn't show any signs of having noticed the whistle or her presence. So she walks slowly to the kettle, switches off the stove, and pours the steaming water into the mug. ' Why do Americans drink tea in mugs?' she wonders as she always did when drinking tea in America. Having grown up in an inn where the tea ceremony was so elaborate, Kyoko was conditioned to believing taste lies not just in the tongue but everything that leads up to the first sip or bite - the scenery, the environment, the history of the occasion, the company, the smell, the sight of steam escaping the cup - she lost herself in such thoughts while the tea steeped that she didn't had finally turned in his chair to watch her.
She sighs and picks up the cup and throws away the teabag. Turning around with the mug in her hand she finally sees Ren looking at her. The look on his face is one of consideration, as though he is thinking of how best to act or what to say. She can't make out if it is "Rain" or Ren. So she simply sips her tea in silence. It is not bad - he probably bought something especially for her since he had never been a big tea drinker. Then she freezes. Ren had picked her favorite tea and a good quality one at that. Rain didn't know, couldn't have known her favorite tea, since she had never revealed that in any public forum. Which meant that the person sitting in front of her now is-
"Ren," she says forcing calm in her voice, while all she wants to do is run to him and hug him weeping with joy.
"Why?" he asks.
"Why what?"
"Why did you have to hurt yourself? Why go to such lengths?"
His tone is neutral- no trace of any emotion.
"It is customary for a person who had just gotten up after being hurt in the head to be asked how she is feeling as the first question."
Ren clenches his fists and tightens his jaw, all minute movements but Kyoko notices. His eyes flash, and Kyoko gets a glimpse of the raging seas beneath his calm demeanor. Before he can respond she continues speaking.
"That was the only way to bring out Tsuruga Ren. I tried making you love me - and it was still Rain, I tried making you jealous but then it was Cain Heel that came out. I figured the only way to bring out Tsuruga Ren was if I got hurt."
A look of bitter pain passes over Ren's face. But he controls himself and asks, "Why do you wish to bring out Tsuruga Ren? What do you want with him?"
Having been fortified with the tea, Kyoko feels a little less weak.
"I have some questions to ask you."
Ren doesn't miss the use of the pronoun. But he feels deflated, as though all traces of Rain have left him. He doesn't have the energy to recreate him anymore. 'Might as well accept the inevitable.', he thinks.
"What questions?"
"Why did you leave?" Kyoko asks, but before Ren could respond she continues, "That is what I wanted to ask you. But I feel like coming here and seeing you and having learned what I have in the past three years, I have an idea of the answer. May I tell you what I think?" she asks.
Ren indicates with a nod for her to proceed.
Kyoko takes a deep breath and speaks, "When I lost our baby, I was sad and disappointed. But then I thought, many, many women lose their babies. Some aren't even able to get pregnant. I could still have another baby and I still had you. I should really not be depressed, I thought. Besides, something as horrible as that, if it had to happen to someone, I'm glad it happened to me. Because I could deal with it. At least much better than other women. Once I thought that, it was easy to get over it.
"But, and here's where I made a mistake, I thought since I, to whom it actually physically happened, got over it, it should be easier for you to do the same. But you didn't. I know now that you didn't leave in a fit of rage. It was a calculated orchestrated move. Seeing you act like Rain these past few days and knowing what I now know about the kind of life you led here, I think you convinced yourself that you had to leave, for me to be happy."
"I hated you." Ren says and Kyoko who had moved closer to Ren and sat on the window sill felt a stab in her heart. 'No. Kyoko, he said, "hated". Past tense. He doesn't hate you now... Probably.'
"Those hours that I waited in the hospital with you, I hated you the entire time. You made me a murderer again, I thought. But when you woke up and cried, I hated myself. For hating you. For not being able to protect you. For getting you hurt. That was the beginning of the end of Tsuruga Ren. The personality called Tsuruga Ren was defined by two things. The first was acting. I created Tsuruga Ren specifically to become an exceptional actor in his own right- unencumbered by a famous family surname. But after what happened to you, I realized I hated acting. The more exceptional I was, the more popular I would be and the more you would have to be protected from that. I was and am still convinced that acting would continue to erode at our relationship till nothing is left."
Kyoko makes as if to speak but Ren holds up his hand.
"It is fine for you to say that you losing a child was a fluke or an accident. But if it had not been that, it would have been something else. You cannot tell me your life has been free of any kind of unfortunate incidents since you started acting. What about you breaking your leg just the first week of joining at LME? What about that trash, Reino? What about that actress and her manager who almost threw you off a building?"
Kyoko is silent, thinking, considering.
"It would keep going on Kyoko. On and on like a series of unfortunate events, till we both lose sight of what it is that we love so much about acting. Or about each other."
Kyoko looks up at that.
"That brings me to the second meaning of Tsuruga Ren. Not originally intended of course, in fact, quite to the contrary. Tsuruga Ren was not supposed to fall in love. But I did with you. And being your husband has brought the greatest joy in my life. But after what happened to you, failing to protect you from that terrible tragedy, I did not have any right to be called your husband anymore. And here you are within a month of meeting me with a bandage on your head."
Ren looks so sad and hurt that Kyoko is compelled to say, "It is not that bad. I do think you are the one who overdid the bandages a bit."
"You asked me why I left- I had to. You're also right that I had to do it in a way to give you the best chance at being happy. For that, I had to remove the two things in your life that will always give you grief. Tsuruga Ren and acting. But I failed because here you are - still an actress, talking to Tsuruga Ren and still getting hurt."
Ren hangs his head unable to meet her eyes. He sees a drop on his hands. 'Strange,' he thinks. 'Is it raining? No. It should be snow this time of year. But wait, it can't rain inside the house anyway. There is a roof. Is the roof leaking? Somehow my eyes are getting blurry too. And stinging.'
It is then that he realizes that he is crying. Tsuruga Ren, who had never cried in his life, sitting in a one-room apartment in the middle of nowhere, crying. 'Pathetic. But you deserve that Ren.', he thinks. But suddenly, he feels a cool and magical touch on his cheek. A kind of healing warm glow emanating from that touch envelops his whole body. He looks up and sees Kyoko silhouetted by the sunlight from the window, she is like an angel.
"Ren, I love you," she says and Ren's tears stop.
"And I love acting." Kyoko continues, "You were incredibly stupid if you thought that taking away the two things in my life I love the most would actually make me happy."
It's Ren's turn to be silent.
"You say Tsuruga Ren to be defined by two things - being an actor and being my husband. I agree. But, while you claim that you hate acting, I don't think that is true at all. When I first came here and you saw me, all you had to do was to ask me to leave you alone and go back to Tokyo. You didn't have to create an elaborate acting game again. But you did. You still love acting. The thought of creating a role, acting it out, and may I dare say, acting opposite me still fills you with as much excitement as it did three years ago. Care to disagree?"
Ren doesn't.
"And I think you got the definition of a husband rather wrong. It's not 'protect your spouse till death do us part'. It is to love and to cherish, to have and to hold etc. etc. The only thing you have to do as my husband is to love me. So," Kyoko now stands up and reaches over to Ren and asks, "Huband dearest, do you love me?" She colors beet red as she says it. She had hoped making it elaborately dramatic would save her from the embarrassment of saying those words. But no such luck. Ren notices it and smiles. He had missed this Kyoko - the shy girlish Kyoko, head full of dreams and fantasies and generous of spirit who wholeheartedly loved Ren.
Kyoko peeks from under her blush and sees Ren smile. This smile, Kyoko classifies as I-just-cried-for-the-first-time-in-my-life-Ren's loving-and-tender-smile. Her blush deepens. Some things even a top-level actress cannot control.
Ren closes his eyes. It feels to him like he had been in a dark room for a long time and then suddenly the light is switched on. The brightness of it is blinding. Hope, love, happiness, all feelings he had locked away suddenly broken free of their prison flooding his heart with warmth and light. He is powerless to fight it.
"Yes." he whispers. At his words, Kyoko's happy spirits come out from her heart and are drawn towards their Ren counterparts that are flying out from his heart.
"Hi friend, long time no see" "Welcome back" "Welcome home" "Nice to see you again" They chatter noisily with each other mingling happily. They seem to tug their owners towards each other.
Ren opens his eyes and reaches his long hands out and pulls Kyoko close in a rough embrace. But the kiss that follows is both sweet and gentle.