Aqua led the way as Cobalt dutifully followed him into the wide rehearsal room, its walls filled with ceiling high mirrors surrounding the wooden floor.

It was one of a handful of Strawberry Production's studio spaces where talents could freely rehearse for upcoming projects. Ruby also did much of her dance practices with Ai here. A part of Aqua had been paranoid that the room he'd be able to reserve would be the same one where he and Cobalt had auditioned for Game of Solidarity, when Aqua first realized Cobalt's ability to act by emulating his family. Aqua wasn't sure if that would be a good omen or not given what he wanted to accomplish in today's session with Cobie. In any case, it wasn't the same room as before which the brothers entered today, so Aqua tossed away his paranoia to focus on accomplishing his primary objective and be done with this entire scheme.

At least Cobalt was in a good mood, a far cry from the low spirits when he had first presented his impression of the stalker. Cobalt was always excited to practice acting with the ever busy Aqua.

"I didn't know you were so interested in creative writing, Aqua!" Cobalt said as his brother locked the door. "Directing, sure, but not typing up a whole original script!"

"It'd be hard not to get interested eventually," Aqua said nonchalantly as he pulled up two chairs to the middle of the room, "between my work under Gotanda and seeing you flourish as a creative."

Flipping through the stapled, slim stack of papers which Aqua had printed out only the night before, Cobalt hopped onto one of the chairs. "Thanks again for agreeing to help me flesh out my Ryosuke impression, too!"

Ryosuke Kaihara was an irredeemable piece of garbage, as was the brothers' father whose identity still eluded Aqua, but hopefully, today's exercise will bring Aqua one step closer to finally putting an end to both their stories.

The stalker was still needed to play out the scenarios in the half-baked script to paint a probable picture of the father. Afterward, once Aqua gathered all the information he could out of Cobie's performance, then he can focus on making Cobalt realize exactly how disgusting the personality he sought to emulate in Ryosuke was. Being Ryosuke in the same vein as Cobalt being other members of his family was an offense which couldn't be overlooked. Cobie can find other individuals and do research in other areas if he needed inspiration for villainous Elemental Orel antagonists.

Sitting across from Cobalt, Aqua reviewed his own copy of the script. "Now, keep in mind I only finished the first draft with minimal editing last night. I have a few lines and plot points I want us to explore, but otherwise, feel free to improvise as you see fit. Like how you were able to come up with quick in-character monologues as the Stalker during the family dinner."

"You got it, Aqua!" Bless Cobie's pure heart. Yes, the eerie resemblance to the monster in Ryosuke had its uses, and Cobalt wasn't half-bad an actor, but his true self as Ai's son was always preferable to any acting he could ever do. "So, I'm playing Ryosuke, and you're playing… the Stranger and the Narrator?"

The creative mind in Cobalt obviously did not approve of the boring titles. "I'll come up with better names later," Aqua said with a slither of weariness before Cobie could voice his complaints. "What I want to get a better idea of first is the flow of the story and the realistic motivations and reactions of the characters."

The Stranger was supposed to be the Hoshino triplets' father, the Father, but Cobalt didn't need to know that. It would be too much of a hint of Aqua's ultimate goal which he sought to further through this acting roleplay. Cobalt didn't need to be filled with too many radical ideas for him to misunderstand and run wild with.

"Since the Stranger's still a work-in-progress," Aqua elaborated, "I'll also be breaking the fourth wall at times. I want you to respond to what I'm saying as the Narrator, like how a character in prose might take a page or so to self-reflect in the text. Or how in a live-action piece, an actor interacts with a figment of their imagination portrayed by another actor to convey an internal dilemma they're critically thinking about."

Cobalt was excited, the subtle hints in his current smile saying as much. "Okay, I think I understand."

Aqua sure hoped so. "Let's try it out and see where it takes us…"

As Cobalt pulled out one of his notebooks to better get into the mindset of the stalker, Aqua turned the first page of his hastily completed script.

"Ryosuke Kaihara," he read aloud. "An underperforming student throughout his schooling, just barely scraping by and entering university by the skin of his teeth. He didn't know what to major in–"

"Actually," interjected Cobalt (and it was still Cobalt, not yet the stalker), "I remember his mom saying that he wanted to get into business management. His dad said it was because he was so into idols in middle school. Ryosuke wanted to become the boss of a whole bunch of them."

This was good. More context on the stalker was useful, as it would in turn reveal the vulnerabilities which Aqua's father found useful to take advantage on. "Alright… Ryosuke dreamt of a career which would hopefully place him at the center of the exhilarating world he fell in love with; that of Japanese pop idols, which had already ensured his heart at a young age. Most especially…"

Cobalt saw his cue, and he acted accordingly.

Banishing the light, and back from the dark, the Stalker made his return.

"Ai is the best idol in the entire business, no question!" the Stalker happily affirmed, his grin showing off too much teeth, his back too hunched over with bad posture unlike the poise Miyako and Ai had drilled into Cobie over the years.

Wait, no. Aqua shook his head to clear out those petty thoughts. He was trying to find deplorable faults in the imitation of the Stalker to insult for the sake of it. Aqua needed to be more impartial if he was to gain anything useful from interacting with this hideous guise Cobalt draped.

"Just look at her growth in less than half a decade!" Cobalt as the Stalker went on. "The others in B-Komachi are fine, but can they sing as well as her? Dance with the same energy? Make you weak in the knees and hopelessly devoted just from the way she looks at you? Ai doesn't even have to smile to get my heart pumping. Man, those handshakes we shared…"

The Stalker shivered in ecstasy. Aqua squashed the chill that went through him.

"They were so short, and the lines were so long, but they were always worth the trouble."

Aqua steeled his nerves and committed himself to braving through these troubled waters to the best of his ability.

"I'm hardly any older than her," mused the Stalker, grasping his wrist as he looked vaguely above Aqua. He was getting lost in his own perverted imagination. "If she were still in school, I could've been a good senpai to her. She'd rely on me to show her the ropes at school, and she could treat me as… as if she were my girlfriend, you know? Her special someone who she'd shower with love, every single day for the rest of their lives."

The Stalker released his grip and slapped his palms against his face, shaking wildly before relaxing somewhat. "No, I'm being too careless. She's an idol! And I'm her fan. I have to share her, and as long as I do, she'll never leave me."

With Cobalt fully immersed in the shoes of the Stalker, Aqua decided to pour more direction. "What does the Stalker think of a potential scenario in which Ai enters a relationship with a boy and subsequently becomes pregnant?"

Ryosuke Kaihara pulled back. "Oh, he'd hate that, of course."

"I'm not asking you, Cobalt. The Narrator is asking the Stalker a question to mull over aloud."

"Oh, right! Hmm…"

The Stalker bit his lip with a worried frown. "No, that can't ever happen. Sure, there's a long, long list of guys much better than me who could probably make her happy, but she chose not to live like that. Her love is for everyone, for her fans. Throwing a boyfriend and children into the mix? She'll have to retire, no doubt about it. The graduation concert would… would be the last with her…"

Sighing, the Stalker shimmied in his seat as he pulled at his hair. "I don't… I wouldn't be able to find someone else if she broke her promise as an idol. No one could replace her, replace the way her eyes made you feel like the most important person in the world. If she… If she gave her heart to a single selfish lover instead of to me –" With a gasp, the Stalker defensively waved his hands. "To her fans, I mean. To her fans…"

Was this pitiful scene what Gorou Amamiya's old friends like Kumada Hoshigami thought they saw when Gorou had shared his admiration and devotion to Ai? He hoped not.

"Ai neglecting her fans would be the greatest betrayal. Ai would never have gotten as big and soaring high in the industry if not for people like me, so she knows better than to not ruin her image with something as silly as her getting a boyfriend. She'll take care of us, just like how we take care of her."

Aqua as the Narrator asked more questions, adding more details to the canvas. "And what of university? Do you really think you'll get into the behind-the-scenes parts of the idol industry and meet Ai that way?"

"I don't actually think that, no. But saying so helps get my parents off my back. They're still sending me money, too, so I can still feed myself and buy plenty of Ai's merch."

"Your aspirations for the future aren't simply to dive into the idol sphere. You want to follow Ai the idol specifically, all the way to the end of the world."

The Stalker enthusiastically nodded, a dog showing his appreciation to the scent of his honored master. "Ai deserves it. Only ignorant and uncultured idiots would hesitate to follow her. All her harshest critics don't know what they're missing."

The loyalty to Ai filling every fiber of the Stalker's very being now on full display, Aqua brought down the hammer to begin shattering his faith. "A particularly disturbing piece of information comes to your attention: Ai is pregnant, due to give birth at the young age of sixteen. How do you respond?"

Cobalt – The Stalker snorted dismissively. "I'll roast the trolls and move on. I've been around the block long enough to know when to not listen to nonsense. That's time I could be spending with Ai, cheering her on at her concerts and living the experience."

"Yet you believe this information," the Narrator insisted. "You believe that Ai is now bearing children. How do you come to know this as true?"

"… The Stranger told the Stalker about the pregnancy."

The Stalker's voice was off as he said that. The truth became clear as the light returned in Cobie's eyes. "Aqua," said the innocent boy who wanted to understand this interesting plot his older brother had weaved, "you think this Stranger character really told Ryosuke about us when we were kids? Or, even before we were born?"

"No, the Stranger is an original creation of mine," Aqua flawlessly lied. "It's more likely Ryosuke directly stalked mom to find our apartment. My script is inspired by things from our lives, yes, but I'm taking creative liberties in the same way you do for Elemental Orel. In my fictionalized adaptation, the Stalker has an accomplice in the Stranger, who I hope to more clearly define with your help."

Eager to please, Cobalt easily accepted Aqua's explanation. "Alright! I'm always happy to help! So…" He was brainstorming now, crossing his arms and closing his eyes as he worked out the details of the Stalker's reaction. "Mom gave birth to us when she was sixteen. Ryosuke should have been around eighteen or nineteen at the time. In a world where he learned about her pregnancy four years before he cut my face…"

Cobalt's next spoken words were even more surreal for Aqua. It was still a mimicry of Ryosuke's voice, but gone was the unhinged nature and sense of delusion filling every word out of his mouth. He was being more… objective, similar to the voiced narration of an audiobook done by a single performer. The characterization of the dialogue and internal monologues became secondary so that necessary exposition could be concisely conveyed.

"I'm meeting the Stranger in person when he pitches me this wild idea," he said, "of Ai planning on having kids at her age. It isn't our first meeting. The only 'friends' I have are fellow fans of Ai, but the Stranger is different. Not a friend, not a fan… but a snot-nosed brat."

He's already attributing an age to the Stranger? "A brat," Aqua repeated. "How old?"

Cobalt thought on it further. "No, I'm exaggerating. If he was older than me or at least my age, I'd probably blow him off as just messing with me, making fun of the stupid idol-obsessed otaku loser. Ai has countless fans, but somehow I'm the one crossing the line…"

The Stalker was getting sidetracked by his own pettiness. Aqua put him back on the right train of thought. "You said this wouldn't be your first meeting. If you're not friends and he's supposed to be younger than you, how do you know him?"

"I have to know the Stranger if I'm going to believe what he says about Ai. We don't have to be very close. I'm not the type to tutor kids, or to have actually been a good senpai to underclassmen… But I know he's a smart kid. He wouldn't joke or lie to me about this. I call him snot-nosed because that's an easy insult, but he wouldn't be some frivolous person who taunts people for the fun of it. The Stranger must know how I feel about Ai, so convincing me that Ai is pregnant would hurt me."

So Cobalt's version of Ryosuke most likely knew the Father by his name and face, regardless of how close they may have been. Of course, any name or facial characteristics Cobalt came up with would be wholly unreliable, but the Father's age being on the younger side may hold credence. An intelligent teenager closer to Ai's age was certainly a viable subject to have impregnated Ai and later planned her demise. Aqua still needed more details, however. "The Stranger is using his forbidden knowledge to make you emotional and worked up. Why?"

The Stalker's shoulders tensed as he clutched his knees. "No, I can't stop thinking about Ai. I don't care about the Stranger's motivations, so long as he tells me how the hell he's so convinced that Ai is breaking her oath to her loyal fans."

Cobalt's version of Ryosuke cannot have known that the Stranger was the triplets' Father. Otherwise, Ryosuke would have tried murdering him, which would mean the Father wouldn't have been able to leak Ai's address four years after the birth. Aqua proceeded forward with this in mind.

"The Stranger has seen it himself," said the Narrator. "Ai with child, her pregnant belly."

Ah, those dark, desperate, deranged eyes from that night of the family dinner were back again as the Stalker glared at Aqua. "Where? Ai's on a break, and absolutely no one online has seen any sign of her in the wild."

Aqua scanned through his script to find the words he had written for this part. "There's a town in the countryside, Takachiho, in the Miyazaki prefecture. It's a long drive from Tokyo, out-of-the-way, and an unlikely place for any of her fans to run into her while she has a professional doctor appraise her condition."

The Stalker couldn't sit still, dragging the legs of his chair across the floor back-and-forth. "Then – Then I have to go there," said the unstable Staker. "I need to confirm it myself. The Stranger must just be mistaking Ai getting a little liberal at the buffet. That must be how she got sick and decided to go on a break in the first place! There's no way she would ever…" He ceased moving as a fraction of his misguided resolve lost its luster. "But Takachiho's still an entire town, right? Where the hell would I even start? Its hospitals, I guess. How many hospitals have they got there?"

"The Stranger knows the hospital where she is staying at. Under a pseudonym, but he can still provide you the address."

"Okay, I'll stake the place out. I'm like… like a private detective, putting in the work preemptively to make sure Ai's safe."

This next part was more expressly related to Gorou Amamiya's hometown and his demise, but Aqua could only provide conjecture around the real events for Cobalt to play along with. The precise details on all of Ryosuke's activities in Takachiho were still unknown to him and Cobie both.

"You put in the work, watch from a distance," Aqua summarized, "and you see Ai in a hardly sufficient disguise, walking happily near the hospital."

The look of horror and devastation on the Stalker's would have been delicious in its own way, if not for Aqua's private reminders to steady himself that he was looking at Cobie's scarred face.

"The Stranger was right," muttered the Stalker. "Ai… How could Ai commit this unforgivable crime? She's an idol, for god's sake… the best one Japan will ever have…"

"It's the middle of the day," Aqua as the Narrator said. "Ai's manager, Ichigo Saitou, is accompanying her, as is her doctor, Gorou Amamiya. How do you proceed?"

Cobie should be able to recognize Gorou's name, but he thankfully didn't break character to get into a diversion about Aqua's inclusion of him. "I don't know. I don't know yet. I can see that she's pregnant, which means she slept with some unworthy guy, and now she's unworthy. She wants us fans to love her, but she tossed it away to whore herself out…"

"Do you confront Ai?"

"Yes!" The passionate scream actually made Aqua jump in his chair. "I fucking shove her manager and doctor away, and then I grab her! I make her look me in the eye and demand she explain herself!"

Well, that never happened, and Cobalt using such inappropriate language without his good intentions or innocence surrounding it was another thing to add to the list of disturbances from this performance. In any case, Aqua needed to provide more context to steer Ryosuke toward what really happened.

"You ultimately don't confront her at this time. You let her walk away. Why?"

"… The Stranger is with me," the Stalker concluded. "He holds me back, or… or I decide to confront him first. Demand answers from him… He's closer in age to Ai than me! Not by a lot, but that might mean he violated Ai!"

For a fleeting second, Aqua thought he would be unable to dissuade Cobalt from thinking the Stranger was their Father, but the Stalker was already correcting himself.

"No, that doesn't make sense," he said with a groan. "The Stranger wouldn't just out himself to me like this… Still, he knows that Ai is a filthy liar now. He must love her, too, but that prick doesn't know how to express it. That's why he came to me. For all of his smarts, the Stranger saw how Ai was pregnant and didn't know what to do. Now it's up to me… to make Ai pay for her betrayal."

They were getting closer to the point of no return. This part of the script had little of the Stranger, but it was a necessary excerpt for Ryosuke's character to experience if he was going to go on to invade Ai's apartment and scar their family forever.

"Ai and her party elude you," said the Narrator, "returning to the hospital where you have no hope of freely searching and isolating Ai. So, you wait outside the hospital, into the night, until you spot Gorou exiting the front entrance."

The Stalker's eyes were as empty as Gorou's faded and distorted memories pictured when, willingly or unwillingly, recalling that night in Aqua's dreams. "I follow him," said the Stalker, his voice stressed and gruff, a second away from outright hyperventilating, "until we're alone. When there's no one around us…"

The second act was reaching its conclusion. "You ask him about AI Hoshino, by name. She is using an alias, and is supposed to be incognito, so Gorou reacts to you with suspicion and hostility."

A partial sign of Cobie could be seen as he considered Ryosuke's next actions, but the subtle hints disappeared the more Aqua stared at the Stalker. Even Cobalt's hair was hanging over his face in a strikingly similar way Ryosuke's hoodie had partially shrouded him. "He's a doctor," he said, "a professional who must've promised not to give away Ai's secret. We're alone in the dark, but he's older than me and unafraid. I can't… I can't make him take me to Ai, so… I panic. I run away."

And Gorou had foolishly pursued him. "Gorou follows you. The chase brings you to a mountain trail, away from the main roads of Takachiho. With the night sky draped over the forest, there is no passerby to witness the chase…"

Aqua took a deep breath.

"And in this fictional scenario… there is the character Ryosuke, who feels so much anger toward everything that has happened to Ai, and fear from being caught by the doctor, by an older man who has to have seen Ai's most intimate parts of herself…"

Cobalt understood the implications, and he chose to end this part of the story exactly how the real Ryosuke had done it. "This might be the doctor's neighborhood, but it's dark. I hide away, I sneak, I come up behind him… and I kill him."

Aqua clenched his fists hard, stabbing his skin with his fingernails to anchor himself in the present. Even hearing a fake version of the Stalker speak about these events was enough for Aqua to once again find himself lying on the ground, forced to vaguely watch his murderer's shadowy silhouette observe the last remnants of life drift out of Gorou Amamiya.

It took Aqua longer to clear his head than he liked. The Stalker was already entering the next act of the script.

"Then I keep running," he was saying, the panic really climbing and becoming a permanent fixture. "I get the hell away from all this. I go the fuck home, back in Tokyo! They'll say… They'll say the doctor died of a bad fall or something! Police won't have anything on me! I'm not… I'm not a murderer! That's not who I am! I'm Ai's biggest fan! That's all I ever wanted to be!"

The Narrator spoke, but this time with Aqua's conviction. "But you are a killer, Ryosuke. You killed an innocent man, because you couldn't handle your favorite idol deciding to–"

"Don't talk about Ai like that!" the Stalker screeched, lunging at the first thing that would make him happy: showing his support of Ai, no matter how irrational it was. "You're diminishing her importance by calling her my 'favorite' idol. She's the only idol in the world for me." He was crying now, the sorry sack of skin. "How could she do this to us? What happened to our love? If she never got pregnant in the first place, I wouldn't have had to… to kill someone…"

"… While you leave Takachiho on the night of your first murder, Ai gives birth to triplets."

The Stalker used his sleeve to wipe his nose. "I… I wouldn't know how many kids she has, but I know she's well into the pregnancy. Just one kid is too much…"

"And later, when Ai finally returns to idol work, leading B-Komachi's continued unprecedented growth as an idol group…"

"… I'm still a fan," asserted the Stalker, some of his tears drying. "I still follow her… no matter how my heart wrenches at the truth. I mean, Ai was supposed to be the one thing in my life that always goes right! That never disappoints! Never lets me down! Why…" He let out a pained cry devoid of intelligible words. "Why did you do this to me, Ai?! I killed someone for you, and now you're shoving your fans a bunch of fake smiles and songs! You aren't a real idol at all, you damn liar! You fucking fraud!"

Blaming Ai for the murder he did by his own hand. Of course. Aqua wished he got to Ryosuke before the hypocritical craven living in denial had offed himself.

Aqua set up the stage for the final act's most dramatic moments. "It's four years later, after you learned about Ai's betrayal. After you killed Gorou Amamiya."

The Stalker's misty eyes glanced vaguely to the side. "Ai's going to take the stage at the Tokyo Dome. She's going to be brilliant… but she doesn't deserve it!" The Stalker stomped his feet as he stood up, knocking his chair back. Aqua made sure he remained outwardly unphased. "Her worshippers deserve a better idol to cheer for! I should – I should let it leak that she was pregnant, that she had kids, that she's a slut who emotionally manipulates people like me for her own ego!"

Aqua could fully believe this had been the mindset fully encompassing the Stalker's poor mental state during this time. According to Aqua's script, a devil in disguise presented himself to the lost soul. "You've drowned in this endless cycle of loving Ai and hating her throughout all this time," said the Narrator. "Then, the Stranger returns with new information."

"Stranger?" The Stalker's eyes refocused entirely on Aqua, or on the Stranger, rather. "It's been years. I hardly recognize you. You're all grown up, and I'm… I'm still…" With another deafening shriek, the Stalker pointed an accusing finger at him. "The hell do you want with me? You ruined my life! Get the fuck out of my apartment!"

The Father's true personality traits and more in-depth characteristics still little more than speculation on Aqua's part, Aqua tried to play him anyway to let Cobalt help fill in some of the gaps. "I have the address for Ai's current home," he said as the Stranger, "here in Tokyo."

The Stalker began rapidly blinking, his entire body shuddering. This knowledge was an opportunity, and it was driving the Stalker even more mad of what he could do if Ai was within his reach again. "Why… Why are you doing this to me? Telling me shit I never wanted to know. You're ruining me!"

"I don't care about you, personally," said the Stalker, not intentionally in a mocking tone. It was simply the truth he spoke. "I want to ruin Ai, and I have no qualms with using you to accomplish my goals."

"Who gives a flying fuck about you?!" The Stalker started crying again. Aqua wanted to slap him. He held himself back. "Why… Why do you hate Ai? You're smart. You have talent I don't have. You could obsess over any other pretty girl in the world, and they'd beg you to accept them. You'd hardly have to try to get their attention, so why… Why aren't you ruining Ai yourself? Why did you bring me into this?"

More speculation lay in the Stranger's answer, more theories and guesswork, so Aqua used the Stranger to divert the conversation. "The wrongs which I feel I am owed retribution, and punishment for Ai, are my own business. You don't truly care about any of that. You only care about Ai, how she was the one who destroyed you. If it wasn't me who led you to the truth, the devoted fan in Ryosuke Kaihara would have found a way. This was always the path you were going to take."

The confused, meandering defiance of the Stalker struggled to come up with a response. He spoke more nonsense, more denials, more excuses on how he was the innocent injured party, until he went back to the obvious answer to unload his fervor on.

"… You said you know where Ai lives?" he asked, hope in his dark eyes. "Tell me. I need to talk with her directly. Face-to-face."

Aqua allowed the Stranger a slice of sarcasm. "It's not going to be a simple chat, is it?"

"She has to pay… I'm the only one who can make her pay."

The urge to strike the Stalker was growing too powerful. The audacity of the fool to think he was justified in wanting to hurt Ai was getting to be too much, so Aqua channeled the voice of the Narrator. "And the rest of the story plays out as you remember it. The Stalker confronts his idol and her youngest. The Stalker scars them before running away yet again. Then, like the coward he is, the Stalker ends his own life."

The flurry of different expressions went through the Stalker's face, reliving that day which would fill up his entire world for the last few hours of his sad, pathetic life.

"Now," Aqua continued, internally preparing to step back into the Stranger's shoes, "let's imagine a world in which, after the Stalker runs off, he and the Stranger – you and I – have one last conversation."

A determination took over the Stalker, carrying a sense of absolute assurance unlike his earlier haphazard, erratic behavior. "You," he said. "This is all your fault."

"It was your prerogative to do as you wished with the information I gave you," the Stranger said, matter-of-fact. "Knowingly following my desires by attempting to slay Ai is your own fault."

Aqua expected denial again.

Instead, the self-assurance did not waver. The Stalker's words were vile, horrendous, but they were spoken with such confidence that Aqua was almost compelled to think he was speaking the truth. At the very least, the Stalker believed he told the truth without any of his prior telltale signs of denial.

"No, you don't understand," the Stalker said. "Ai… Ai is a liar, and a monster. I knew that when she went and slept with some man-whore and got pregnant, but I didn't know she was a monster."

Aqua unintentionally let his own voice overpower the Stranger's. "What do you mean?"

"Did you see how she acted? Did you see her kid? You didn't. I saw them. The kid wasn't even phased when I sliced up his face. He was fucking giggling. Ai fucking laughed like a psycho after I stabbed her, after her own blood splattered on her kid's face. Psychopathic, sociopathic – whatever the right word is, Ai was sick in the head. I loved her smile, but now…" The Stalker gulped. "It's the smile of a monster. I gave my heart to fucking monster."

No, this was more deflection. He was deflecting again. Ryosuke was the true monster. He was only blaming Ai for everything again.

"Ai must have learned it from you," accused the Stalker, "didn't she?"

"Excuse me?"

"Don't play dumb! You watched me and my suffering, saw how much my heart burns in pain, had a front row seat to me falling apart as my faith in Ai faltered… and you watched it all with your own fucking smile. A messed-up smile just like Ai's!"

What on earth was he talking about?

Wait… There actually was truth in those words, from a particular point of view. An immutable kernel of truth, that Aqua was relishing in the turmoil the Stalker kept subjecting himself to. It was thrilling, seeing his killer twist and turn in agony in ways Aqua hoped to also see the Father suffer under. Perhaps Aqua had allowed his true feelings to slip out as he tried to embody the hidden but undoubtedly bloodthirsty nature of the Father.

But… the Stalker wasn't… He was dead, yet the more Aqua looked at the broken man before him, he only saw the same pile of dirt who needed to stay dead.

Yet the crazed loon was living and breathing in the here and now. He grabbed Aqua's shirt and dragged him up off his seat. "You loved her and hated how she couldn't return your love!" The Stalker spat in his face. "Is that how it happened, you degenerate piece of shit?"

"You're projecting," Aqua barked back. "You're the lunatic who couldn't accept that Ai didn't follow your unhinged definition of love!"

"Admit it! You loved her like I did, and you felt betrayed, like me, and then you used me to hurt her! Only you made me see the demented creep Ai turned into!"

"She's no creep. Ai never lost her beauty! She's still as beautiful as the day I met her. You couldn't kill her, and you could never break her." Because she still had her children, her family, to never let her forget that she would be loved for the rest of her natural life.

The Stalker threw a punch, right across Aqua's cheekbone. "Shut up! Don't say anything. You're a damn liar like her!"

"You think you know everything?" Aqua spat back ignoring the sudden pain from the punch. "The only things you know are the lies you've told yourself for years: Ai is the one in the wrong. It wasn't your fault you became a killer. Ai and Cobalt were the creepy ones when you came at them with a knife!"

With Aqua standing squarely on his own feet, the two of them were wrestling for control over one another now. "You're the one who gave me the flowers to hide my knife in, asshole. You knew Ai was going crazy, so you made me into your triggerman! Let me have all the blame for – for extinguishing her light when it was already dead and gone!"

"You're still blaming everyone except yourself! Even as a tool being manipulated by your betters, it was by your hands that people bled!"

The Stalker gained the upper hand and punched Aqua in the face again. "I'll make you bleed!"

A poor counter befitting a brute like the Stalker. Ryosuke Kaihara deserved all the misery he wallowed in.

Aqua was happy to deliver some of the punishment himself.

However, though Aqua put his self-defense training to good use, the fact was that Ryosuke was stronger than him. They each threw more punches, exchanged kicks, scratched each other, and even at one point traded a headbutt which certainly left Ryosuke's nose bleeding and prompted a searing migraine in Aqua, but by the end of this flurry of attacks, it was Ryosuke who pinned Aqua to the ground. Their legs kept shifting positions over which one was on top while Ryosuke tightened his grip on Aqua's hair and Aqua's shoulder. He was trying to bash the back of Aqua's head against the wooden floor.

Fortunately for Aqua, he was able to raise his arms between Ryosuke's and secured a hold on his neck. Aqua pressed his thumbs along his throat, hoping to apply enough pressure fueled by adrenaline and his lust for revenge to create an opening through the skin. Then Aqua could literally tear out his–

Ryosuke was pushed off Aqua. There was a third party that was helping him eliminate the mad man. Wonderful. Seizing the opportunity for what it was, Aqua scrambled to his chair and picked it up, raising it over his head to smash down on Ryosuke .

Except the third party pushed Aqua, too, making him drop the chair harmlessly away from the… away from Ryosuke but… This wasn't Ryosuke. Ryosuke was already dead…

"What the hell are you two doing?!"

The third party was Ichigo. Faintly, Aqua saw the door to the rehearsal room was open. Ichigo had the master key…

But Aqua forgot about Ichigo as he let his sight fall onto Cobalt, leaning against his own fallen chair as he caressed his bruised neck and struggled to breathe.

He was crying again. Cobalt was crying, not the Stalker. It was so much like when Ruby cried, as well, since Cobalt hardly ever cried. It didn't even look like how Aqua appeared when he cried for his acting.

God, Aqua was the crazy one. He just tried to murder his brother.

He had been right. This was stupid idea. This was a dangerous plan. How certifiably insane had Aqua been to let himself mistake Cobie acting as Ryosuke to actually be the dead man brought back to life?

"I'm sorry," Cobalt coughed out. Aqua wasn't one to initiate hugs in this family, but there was nothing more he wanted to do at this very moment. "I'm sorry for – for everything. I was stupid. I'm sorry for hurting you, Aqua."

Aqua tried to speak up, tell him that he had no reason to apologize. If Aqua hadn't encouraged Cobalt to–

Ichigo tried approaching Cobalt. Cobie shoved him away and ran out the door. Looking briefly at Aqua, Ichigo decided to chase Cobie's trail.

Aqua tried to follow after them, but he clumsily tripped and hit his damn face against the floor. As the truth of what had just transpired became more apparent to Aqua, so did all the injuries Cobalt had rendered on him.

Did he even get anything useful out of this idiotic exercise?

Cobalt felt horrible.

What was wrong with him? He tried to be the best Ryosuke he could be, following the beats of Aqua's scripts and his prompts for the improvising parts, and then Cobalt tried to beat up his big brother.

Grandpa Ichigo knocked on the restroom door, said things Cobie could barely make out. Cobie just whined again that he wanted to be left alone. It was one of the cramped single-toilet restrooms with just enough space for a sink, so it was quiet and small enough space for Cobalt to regain his bearings, think things over… think of ways to not hurt his family again.

This was a sign of bad things to come.

Cobalt has overheard a drunk Ichigo admit that he wasn't good at understanding him. Ai's youngest was a stupid kid, not a smart and exemplary prodigy like Aqua, or a naturally talented and focused growing star like Ruby. For all the success Cobalt's made in Elemental Orel, he was still stupid enough that people needed to look after him, or else he'd get into unnecessary trouble. At times, Cobalt was thankful for Ichigo's consideration because it meant Clay would be Ichigo's go-to option as a guardian when their family or a Strawberry employee wasn't available, but the core of the issue was that Ichigo didn't trust stupid Cobie.

Cobalt had tried to hide and intentionally mislead Miyako during his early days as the Blue Rose. He had been trying to get closer than he should have with an adult woman until Miyako stepped in, and Miyako had worked hard to ruin Miss Minagawa's career as a teacher. Even if Cobalt didn't understand all the details of Miss Minagawa's punishment, his stupidity had still dumped undue stress on Miyako. He made her think Cobalt was a horrible liar and an idiot, only adding to her already massive list of worries as the Strawberry President.

Recently, Cobalt's idiocy finally hurt Ruby in a really bad way. She never really liked Elemental Orel as a show, but she was always supportive of his career as a weaver of narratives, and his quest to become an actor as skilled as Aqua. So he tried to showcase both his acting talent and his creative genius to Ruby and everyone else during that family dinner while expressing his critiques about Sweet Today.

Only he instead scared Ruby. She hadn't been impressed. She had been afraid of him, to the point of even crying in fear of him. It was stupid of Cobalt to not take into account Ruby's limited acting experience in comparison to him, Aqua, and mom. Her tips and coaching weren't the same as actually acting, and Cobalt had pushed her too quickly into an acting scenario she hadn't been ready for.

Aqua was the best actor Cobalt knew. Yes, even better than mom in certain roles, so Cobalt thought he could handle Cobalt's Ryosuke character.

And he could. If Aqua had only dazed Cobalt for a precious few seconds, made his grip on Aqua grow lax just a little, then Aqua could have turned things around. The real Ryosuke was dead, and if Ichigo hadn't interrupted them, the story they were playing out dictated that Aqua should have won the bout against the fake Ryosuke.

But Cobalt had gotten so absorbed in the role that he had been trying to legitimately hurt Aqua, without regard or respect to Aqua himself. Acting a Ryosuke in that fight had mattered to Cobalt more than any considerations for his brother.

Aqua's sure to deny it. He'll make excuses for Cobie coupled with lectures for him on how to behave better in the future, but for all of Cobie's stupidity, he knew well enough that he crossed a line today that shouldn't have ever been crossed.

After going through everyone else in the Hoshino family, what horrible thing was Cobalt going to do to mom?

Ichigo's knocks finally stopped. Cobalt finally had actual silence to hear himself think more clearly…

… And he started to get sick of the quiet. His mind was drawing a blank now. Cobalt felt the aches and flinches from the bruises and cuts all along his body, felt his heart pounding and the strained breathing as he tried to reflect on his horrible deed today, but Cobalt couldn't think straight anymore. He couldn't think of a way to make everything stop, and to feel better again…

Cobalt couldn't help it. He thought back to Ryosuke.

Ryosuke had relied on mom to fix things for him, to make his life feel good and right again…

It hadn't worked out for him, but that didn't mean something similar wouldn't work for Cobalt!

He pulled out his phone and hit the name in his contacts list.

Unfortunately, Cobalt only got the default robotic message of the voicemail system.

With no other choice, Cobalt left a message.

"Clay," he said slowly, taking measure of how to better speak to keep the pain in his throat low, "it's… It's Orel. I really need to talk to you. I did something… I did something really bad, and I need some advice. Please call back."

Cobalt ended the message.

When the silence started prickling at him again, he called a second time.

"You're not picking up, Clay. I just… I just need to hear your voice. Your real voice. Please."

Cobalt waited again. Still nothing for too long.

"Are you okay, Clay? I'm not okay, but you need to be okay. If you're having any problems, call me back and I can help you! We can handle my issues later if you're already in the middle of something. Just… Just call me back, and we can get started. Okay. Goodbye!"

The wait time this round was hardly more than ten seconds when Cobie replayed his own voice mail in his head.

"I said goodbye in the last message," Cobalt explained, speaking quicker now as his voice improved. "I don't want to imply to you or give the impression that I'm walking away from my phone or not willing to talk the second you answer back. I need to talk to you, Clay, so answer your phone. Even if – Even if you're busy, just call me and tell me that. Then I can – I can look for someone else for help, but never think that you aren't my first choice for advice when I can't ask the rest of my family."

Because Cobalt can't go to Aqua and Ichigo after what just happened, and the girls in their family were all busy with work. It's not as if Cobalt could confess to them that he tried to beat Aqua until he was a bloody black and blue, now could he? Mom especially would just get mad at him again!

Finally! On Cobalt's next call to Clay, he picked up!

"Clay!" Cobalt cheered.

"Orel?"

Oh. That wasn't Clay.

"Orel, why on earth are you spamming Shin's phone?"

"Hi Pearl!" Cobalt grimaced, gently pawing his throat, before adjusting his voice again. "Can you put Clay on the line? I need to talk to him."

"Yeah, I know." She sounded tired, and not in a good mood. "You won't shut up about him! His damn phone… "

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know how to work it! It's locked, won't mute, and keeps automatically playing every stupid message you send him."

"I'm sorry. Is Clay there?"

A sound of a snort from Pearl carried over the phone. "He's dead to the world. I can't help you there, and he can't be of any help to anyone."

"He's asleep? Then just shake him awake! I really need to talk to him."

"You don't think I haven't tried?"

Hmm, it was midday by this hour, and there hadn't been any Clayman Animations work scheduled for tonight, so… "Clay was drinking pretty hard today," Cobalt guessed, "wasn't he?"

"Yeah. Just my luck, having an actually nice time out on the town, and he's too tired to get it up with me…"

Cobalt felt for Pearl. He really did. Clay always looked so vulnerable and poor whenever he got blackout drunk and fell into a deep asleep. He was so lucky that he found a caring girlfriend in Pearl who wanted to take care of him and couldn't stand the sight of Clay being so exposed like that.

"Can Yoshi help?" Cobalt suggested. He sure knew how to get the blood pumping and how to get you wide awake during the training sessions Cobalt had participated in with him and Pieyon. "Could he wake Clay up? Maybe Yoshi being athletic and all could also help you with–"

"He's not even here. What could he even do to wake Shin up?"

If Yoshi wasn't there in-person, then he couldn't put his athletic spirit to good use. "Well, what else have you tried? Like I said, I need to speak to him."

Cobalt could hear her mutter something in annoyance before Pearl said into the speaker, "I'm not in the mood for this, Orel. Shin can't help you today, alright? Why don't you find a real girlfriend you can nag to instead of going to Shin as your first choice?"

Oh.

That was it, the answer Cobalt was looking for.

"I'll tell Shin to give you a call later. Don't call again today, you hear? Or tonight. He'll call you back whenever. Goodbye, Orel."

It was a brilliant idea!

Mom was able to have kids and eventually realize the love of her family only after finding a special brand of love with Cobalt's dad, even if the love only lasted a short while.

Ichigo and Miyako had loved each other at least a little before the divorce, and they still loved each other in a different way, overcoming their problems to work cooperatively and lead Strawberry Productions to its current golden age.

Clay recently partnered with a cool girlfriend who cared about him, even when she wasn't as in love with him as he might want, and Cobalt had faith they would be able to resolve Pearl's issues on love with class and dignity. Pearl was already giving Cobalt great advice about love!

The Blue Rose had his time and encounters with love… but that wasn't Cobalt's true name.

Alright, technically his real name was Cobalt Hoshino, but in the truest spiritual, personal sense, his real name was Orel.

And if Orel can manage to find a stable love, a true love, however long it may last, then maybe he can make sure he never harms his family so badly ever again. The escalation – of the boys and girls he unintentionally hurt as the Blue Rose, and of the torment he was bringing to his family these days – will stop, and Cobalt can better honor Ryosuke by finding a semblance of the romantic love he was never able to get from mom.

Cobalt resolutely nodded to himself.

He'll apologize to Aqua, do everything he can to make things up to him in the same way he promised Ruby, and accept any punishment they deem fit.

And then he'll ask Aqua to call up the people behind that reality dating show, and to tell them that Elemental Orel is very interested in a part.

Cobalt's and Aqua's acting exercise ran longer than I originally intended. Immediate fallout between Aqua and Ichigo will be explored in the next chapter, which should be the last one of this arc.