DISCLAIMER: SKIP BEAT! and its associated characters are the work of Yoshiki Nakamura. This author claims no ownership of Skip Beat or any of its characters. All other rights reserved.

Author's Notes at bottom of the page.

Chapter VIII: Madness Most Discreet

A Scene in Three Parts

Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.

Part III: Yayoi

Yayoi stared up at the ceiling in her futon, her husband snoring softly next to her. The digital clock next to them was mocking her as 3:29 turned into 3:30.

Why couldn't things ever be easy? she asked the clock.

The clock didn't answer, mercilessly moving forward to 3:31.

She turned to face away from it, watching her husband's back as he slept. Twenty years ago, it all seemed so simple. She and Etsuro had met via an omiai, and she'd agreed to marry him to please her family. In doing so, she'd chosen a life of tradition, duty, and safety. She never questioned what her parents wanted for her, never thought that perhaps she, too, could choose to go to university to become a lawyer like her brother. She knew that other girls her age made different choices, but to Yayoi, the most straightforward path was also the most desirable one. The Fuwas were an old and established clan, and marrying Etsuro meant a stable and relatively luxurious life for her. She and Etsuro barely knew each other, and she knew that he was marrying her to cement the Fuwas to her family of lawyers and diplomats. She had thought him reasonably handsome and reasonably good natured, but she hadn't been in love with him, and he hadn't been in love with her. She knew that he, too, had chosen to adopt his family's traditions over whatever his desires may have been. And they both knew that Yayoi's choice to marry him was also a choice to become the ryokan's okami-san. They simply had assumed it would be so. It had been an old-fashioned arrangement, and Yayoi was not a particularly ambitious woman. The prospect of contented stability appealed to her rather than discouraged, and she and Etsuro eventually learned to rub along together. In the intervening lifetime between her wedding and this evening, she had convinced herself that "falling in love" was nonsense people fed young girls in shoujo manga.

She had looked forward to bearing and raising a son for the ryokan's next generation. That son had turned out to be Shotaro, and of course she'd loved him. Loved him and spoiled him, as a mother should. When her brother asked them to foster Kyoko, who'd seemed to have formed an early attachment to Sho, Yayoi and Etsuro quickly blocked out a future: They would raise and train Sho as the ryokan's new master, and Kyoko as the Okami-san, marry them to each other when they were ready, and then pass on the ryokan to them as she and Etsuro grew old and doted on grandchildren. Simple.

Men plan, and God laughs, she thought. She'd heard the old adage from a guest once, as she served him tea. The gods had indeed laughed at the plan she and Etsuro had concocted. The son that she thought she had carefully raised had run off to Tokyo with the girl they had fostered. Run off to a career in music and showbizness-something that wouldn't have been so bad, despite Etsuro's initial rage. Sho's first release had been well-received, and even she could see the appeal of his songs when they made it on her radio. Back then, reconciliation would have been possible. As angry as she and Etsuro had been, what sense would it have made to disinherit a son whose only sin was being a successful musician? If that had been all, then perhaps Kyoko would have been welcomed back to the ryokan as a ward and employee, and not as its new heir.

But the son she thought she knew soon turned out to have a rotten core. It had started when another band had started competing with Sho shortly after his first album was released-a band called "Vie Ghoul," she recalled, and soon people were saying that Sho was copying their music and their style. There was some legal trouble between the labels. The result was a slump in sales for his sophomore album, and, apparently, a downward spiral for Sho himself. The son she had so carefully reared was now tabloid fodder-a gambler, a womanizer, and, if rumors were to be believed, a drug user. Rumors of him gambling away his royalties on illegal bets were rife. There were even rumors that he owed money to the yakuza.

The loss of Sho hit her hard. She was a mother, after all, and what mother did not dote on her only son? Sho was to be her contribution to the world, a responsible and good man who would continue on the legacy of his family into the new century. When he rebelled, it shocked them, but Yayoi had assumed Etsuro's rage would cool and Sho would come back after he ran aground in Tokyo.

He hadn't.

When it was clear that his brilliant debut had tarnished, she and Etsuro had traveled to Tokyo and attempted to confront him. She recalled his bedraggled state when he finally answered his door, the smell of liquor on his breath and his eyes bloodshot and dilated. He wasn't even old enough to drink legally-and he certainly knew the price he would pay if caught using illicit drugs. She closed her eyes as she remembered the scene: his luxury apartment in disarray, weeks' worth of empty beer and liquor bottles on the floor, dishes in the sink growing mold. He refused to come back to Kyoto. He had screamed at them, telling them that he disowned them and that he never wanted to see them again, and then had called security to take them out of his sight. She and Etsuro were thrown out of his apartment building like common criminals with passersby on the street staring, and the shame of it mortified Yayoi to this day.

Still, as a mother she kept trying to reach him, trying to tell him that he still had a home, even as the prospects of his label retaining him after his contractually-required third album grew dimmer. Etsuro paid lip service to discouraging her, but she knew him too well to think that he truly wanted to abandon their only son to his life of dissolution. And so they persisted, even going so far as to contact the head of his agency. They believed that he would come back until the day they saw the news report about The Girl. That was how Yayoi thought of her: "The Girl." Etsuro's rage at Sho's departure paled compared to their shared horror as they read about Sho's treatment of a young model named Mimori. The news had breathlessly covered the scandal-starting with Sho stalking the girl, and then culminating in his forcing a kiss on her, slapping her, and then chaining her to her school's fence, all in the public's eye. The media was relentless, eventually uncovering Sho's alleged harassment of his former manager, Shoko, who had quit Akatoki rather than continue working with him.

In response, his label sent him to tour the States with another band to wait for the crisis to blow over.

They really were quite unfair to the girl, Yayoi thought. Sho's agency had spun the incident to put Mimori in the wrong, making it look as if the girl had somehow "deserved" whatever abuse Sho had perpetrated upon her. But she could read between the lines of the polished press releases put out by his publicist. Between the pictures of The Girl's injuries and the brutishness she'd witnessed herself, she had no choice but to believe it. She supposed his label still thought they could make money off of him as a marketable "bad boy," and his pre-existing contract with them had been for no less than three albums.

But she'd stopped trying to reach him after that.

Seeing Sho like this made her question everything. Her choices in indulging him as a child, making sure he never had to work a day in his life-it had seemed logical at the time, because Sho was her darling son and the ryokan's little princeling. She and Etsuro simply assumed that Sho understood what his path in life would be, the way they had known their own. They thought that he'd have the time to learn how to be an adequate Taisho. But now she could see that the choices she had made had been too free on one hand and too strict on the other. They should have talked to him long before he'd left for Tokyo. Acknowledged earlier, perhaps, that he truly was a gifted musician and songwriter. Acknowledged that he had not been born on this earth just to take his father's place like a new spare part to be plopped into a machinery that had been in movement since before he was born. Acknowledged him as a person, with desires and ambitions separate from their own. Perhaps then his fall wouldn't have been such a shock. Perhaps then he wouldn't have fallen at all.

Is this the price we pay for forcing our children to bear our dreams? Yayoi thought. Even if refused to return, would things have been different if we'd supported his ambitions instead of trying to forbid him from pursuing them? She turned again, restless turning back to the clock. It was 4:00 am, and her thoughts turned to the reason why she was sleepless.

When Kyoko had come back to them with her smileless face and her thousand-yard stare, she and Etsuro thought adopting her and making her their heir would make everyone whole. Yayoi had never asked for details of what Sho had done to change her so much, but she knew he had refused to tell them anything about where she had gone. She was afraid of learning exactly how he'd abused Kyoko, and, in truth, before she'd come back to Kyoto, she and Etsuro feared the worst. By then, she and Etsuro had started coming to terms that the family business would not do well in Sho's hands. Kyoko's return merely accelerated the process of his displacement. Kyoko was smart, capable, trained, and, what was more, in need of a place to call home and a profession. By disowning Sho, Kyoko would have a future, and they would right the wrongs done to her by their family. In return, the ryokan would have an heir to care for it. Sho had been duly removed as the heir to the ryokan, though a small inheritance from his Katagiri grandparents had been placed into a small trust for him to be distributed no earlier than his thirtieth birthday.

A year after the decision to cut Sho off had been made, Yayoi had no complaints with how thoroughly and completely Kyoko had taken on her duties. The girl was smart, and the girl was hard-working. Now, it was evident that they would never have wanted to give the ryokan to someone like Sho, who was, for all intents and purposes, a shameless wastrel who would have run it into the ground-or worse, ceded it and its three-hundred-year legacy to the yakuza. In contrast, Kyoko had always been trustworthy and mature to a fault, even as a child, and she had no qualms leaving a guest, any guest-even if that guest were a king-in her care. And if her smiles never reached her eyes, the guests never noticed. Kyoko was never rude, never inappropriate, and...she never flirted.

So when Hizuri-san and Kyoko had walked into the ryokan holding hands that night, Yayoi had looked on in shock.

She'd known they'd be late, so she hadn't meant to stay up to wait for them, but had been in the office finishing some paperwork when they came in. What she'd stumbled upon had stopped her "Okaeri!" in its tracks, and neither one of them had even noticed her presence.

It was like a scene from a drama. Kyoko stood in her yukata, more alive than Yayoi had seen her since her return, flushed and hopeful and surprised as Hizuri-san stared at her with his heart in his eyes. The way the boy had placed the kanzashi in her hair and then caressed her face had made Yayoi's heart ache in a way she hadn't thought possible. She knew Kyoko too well to believe that she had been taken in by a pretty face. It was true that Hizuri-san was particularly attractive, particularly eccentric, and, apparently, obscenely rich. But nothing in Kyoko's past behavior had ever indicated she would be swayed by such things. Other patrons who had been attractive, eccentric, and rich had all made passes at her, and none had ever succeeded in getting her to so much as look at them. In the past year or so, she'd simply ignored too many guests of note who sought to engage her thusly and instead applied herself to a single-minded and slightly terrifying mission to perfect her Okami-san skills.

The scene had made her feel like an intruder on a moment that should've been sacred to the two people experiencing it. It made her feel that perhaps wheels were turning. Great, big wheels, the kind one never stood in front of lest the gods strike one down. The look on Kyoko's face had made Yayoi realize how much she'd missed the naive, smiling girl that had left with her son. She'd known, before, that Kyoko wasn't happy at the ryokan. But that night, Yayoi realized just how devoid of joy Kyoko's face had been the entire time she'd been back. Yayoi felt like a gardener waiting for winter to end. Kyoko-chan was coming back, she was sure of it...the real Kyoko, the one who had a heart too generous to wither away, even if it was hiding beneath a steely surface. She bit back a frisson of excitement as she realized that the tranquil half-life of routine work at the ryokan had not fulfilled the girl who they'd named heir. Kyoko had been transfigured as she stood across from Hizuri-san, becoming alive in a way that illuminated her entire self. And as she lay sleepless in bed, Yayoi realized she wanted to keep seeing the smile that was in Kyoko's eyes.

She realized that in accepting their legacy, they'd deprived Kyoko of her own choice. Because what choice did she have, except to accept? Saena certainly wouldn't have wanted Kyoko to move in with her. If she'd refused, what life of drudgery would she have condemned herself to? A girl living independently without any means of support would have to work instead of going to school. Without a high school diploma, she wouldn't have been able to apply for jobs that paid her better. The idea of smart, capable Kyoko trapped in an endless cycle of poverty and drudgery made Yayoi shudder. What a waste that Sho had never seen it as she slaved away for him in her time in Tokyo.

But she and Etsuro had been acting as if naming Kyoko their heir meant they had purchased her and her entire future. Even if the compact had made economic sense to both parties at the time, Yayoi could no longer hold her conscience clear if she insisted Kyoko follow the path they'd envisioned when a path to happiness was to be found elsewhere. It occurred to Yayoi that the right thing might not be the expected thing. The expected thing would have been to remind Kyoko of her responsibilities to the ryokan, to remind her that she was bound, legally, to be its caretaker. To remind her that the expense of her education, from high school and onwards to her planned attendance at the university, was to be for its benefit. That any marriage she made would have to be with the legacy in mind, that her children would continue on as the ryokan's caretakers as she passed on. She and Etsuro had even discussed Kyoko's marriage to one of Sho's cousins, eventually, and Yayoi was certain that such a marriage would be, at its best, one very much like her own. And Yayoi was certain that Kyoko being Kyoko would have bowed her head gracefully and acceded, mortifying her own desires to comply with their demand.

But now...well.

Now, the light cast by the scene in the lobby threw everything into sharp relief. Everything seemed so shallow, now. Yayoi had always done the expected thing. But seeing Kyoko with Hizuri-san threw her own marriage and her own choices under an uncomfortable spotlight, and for the first time in her quiet, content life, it occurred to Yayoi that there might be more than stability. That perhaps she could have made the choice to refuse Etsuro and hold out for someone else that might have made her happier, if less stable. Someone that might have looked at her the way Hizuri-san was looking at Kyoko.

What was clear was the fact that the expected thing would deny Kyoko her chance at life. It occurred to her that Kyoko should have the chance to pursue her happiness, even if that happiness would take her away from the daily tasks of the ryokan. Yayoi had thought it before, but was more certain now: there was no reason why Kyoko needed to stay when her tasks could just as easily be carried out by one of the nakai on staff. She deserved a bit of childhood. And if her happiness was Hizuri-san, and Hizuri-san would take her far away, then so be it. Families had employed general managers before. Yayoi was certain a way could be salvaged for Kyoko to remain the ryokan's overall executive, even if she ceded daily operations to a second-in-command. Regardless, Yayoi wanted to make sure the girl had a choice. Yayoi could not bear the thought of Kyoko choosing the same life she had, not when it was so clear that a different path had appeared for her. She wanted to make sure that Kyoko would have the opportunity to study if she wanted to, leave if she wanted to, live beyond the ryokan if she wanted to.

Yayoi was determined to help the girl. Matchmake, even. Because there was no doubt in Yayoi's mind that Kyoko would deny her feelings in order to honor the commitment she'd made with Yaoi and Etsuro, even if she broke her own heart again to do so.

Beside her, the clock blinked 5:00am. The sky was lightening to a dove-gray. The dawn bird chorus was in full crescendo.

Etsuro's alarm went off.

Her husband grunted, turned, and rose, blinking sleep from his eyes.

"Etsuro," she said.

"What is it?" he mumbled. Somewhere in his sleepy mind he could tell something was bothering her. Yayoi was rarely up before her husband, who usually woke at dawn to begin preparations for the breakfast service in the kitchen. "Wait, have you been up all night?"

Yayoi told him about what she'd seen in the hallway.

"So? Men have flirted with her before, she's never responded. Or done anything."

"No. It's different this time, Etsuro. She was different."

"You're worrying too much. You and I both know that she's too responsible. She knows her duty to us. She won't just leave it for a pretty face. Not after she ran away the first time with Sho. Things didn't end well. I'm sure she'll think twice this time."

Yayoi was silent.

"That's the problem. I don't think she'd leave. I think she'd do her duty to us even if she was desperately unhappy. I think we need to stand back and let her make decisions about her life, even if she leaves Kyoto, Etsuro."

Etsuro sat dumbfounded. He and Yayoi generally agreed on most things. It was why their marriage worked. To hear Yayoi dismiss the very reason why Kyoko had been adopted was bizarre to him. "She's the heir. You know she can't just leave."

"I didn't say she'd abandon the ryokan. But lots of businesses have heirs who don't manage their day-to-day."

"She knew what she was signing onto when she accepted our offer. Just like you did when you got married to me."

"But she isn't marrying into the family, Etsuro. I was an adult. I had a loving family who took care of me and who supported my decision. I knew the choice I was making, and if I had said no, I would still have lived a comfortable life. But Kyoko? She was a child who needed a safe harbor. I think she'd let this chance at love go just because she feels like it's her duty to stay here."

"It IS her duty to stay here. Do you think I'd disown my own son for less?"

"You know I love Sho as much as you do, but you know he'd never be able to run this place. He never could. Disinheriting him was the best thing we could do for him and for the ryokan. And his trust fund is being invested wisely. Even if he never gets another royalty check again, he'll be fine."

"This is ridiculous. You saw a customer flirt with Kyoko-chan, and now you're convinced this is some TV drama. You're acting like this Hizuri is some kind of destined lover. How do you know he's not just trifling with her? You don't think I've seen the way guests look at her sometimes? She's seventeen. As far as I'm concerned, she's still a child, and she'll make the wrong decision if we let her."

"Etsuro." Yayoi shook her head sadly. "She might have been a child when she left with Sho. But you know as well as I do that she's as capable of running the ryokan now as you and I ever were. She's been through more in her seventeen years than most young women ten years older. I'm not asking you to do anything except to let her be. I'm asking you to not stand in her way if she wants to be with Hizuri-kun. I'm asking you not to stand in her way if she wants a career outside the ryokan. I'm asking you to stop clinging to tradition, for once. We failed Sho. The least we can do is make sure Kyoko can be happy. And you know as well as I do that she hasn't been happy here."

"She's fed, clothed, educated. She has a future and more prosperity than she could have ever had without us. Why wouldn't she be happy?"

"Have you been blind? She's been wandering around like a ghost!"

"She's more serious than before she left with Sho, but it befits her training."

"We didn't buy her, Etsuro. You act like we adopted her, so now we own all of her future decisions. But she's a girl. The same way Sho was just a boy. We made her our legal heir, but we did little to really adopt her."

"Well, what do you want from me, then?"

"Etsuro, do you love me?"

"Of cou-" Etsuro looked at his wife of twenty years and the words died in his throat. They stared at each other for a brief moment, the clock keeping watch as the minute passed.

She smiled sadly and ruffled his hair. "I am very fond of you, Etsuro, and I do love you in my own way. And in your own way, I know that you love me too. But when Kyoko marries, I want the person she marries to be able to answer that question without any hesitation."

Yayoi inwardly grinned at the shocked expression on Etsuro's face. She got up, leaving the thin summer coverlet behind. "All I'm asking is that you don't hold her back. If she chooses to stay here, then so be it. But I'm not going to insist on her punishing herself."

She dressed quickly...far quicker than Etsuro did that morning. She wanted to give Kyoko a chance to choose something other than security, but to that end, she also had to ensure her charge had more time to spend with Hizuri-san. Kyoko had a habit of overworking herself, and Yayoi knew that she would have to give Kyoko a push if anything was going to happen. The matsuri had been a start, but Kyoko on her own wouldn't make any plans to spend any more time with the boy. Perhaps she would ask Hizuri-san if he wanted to see the temples and more of the old city with her. Kyoko had never really had the chance to even do that, busy as she'd always been with her work and her school. She would have to call Takarada-san, too. Might as well do some due diligence while she was at it, make sure that the boy wasn't secretly married, or a criminal, or...something. Figure out what was up with that whole pretending to be an ojii-san ruse. She was all for Kyoko blossoming, of course, but not at the expense of safety.

Yayoi was in the full throes of uncharacteristic matchmaking, a spring in her step and a small smile on her face, when she came upon Kyoko, eyes red and hands raw, hanging up the last big stock pot to dry in a kitchen that was more spotless than it had been in a decade. She noted the prepped vegetables in plastic-wrapped containers on the counter, the straightened ingredients, the scrubbed corners, and then watched as Kyoko's shoulders slumped once she'd finished with the pot. The girl had obviously been up all night.

But why? Yayoi thought.

Yayoi's heart melted as a tear forced its way out of Kyoko's eye and ran down her cheek.

"Kyoko!" she cried. "What happened?"

For the second time since she arrived at the ryokan, Yayoi gathered the girl into her arms.

"I've been an idiot, Yayoi-san," said Kyoko.

Yayoi held the girl close as she sobbed. Both Hizuri and Takarada had things to answer for.

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Author's notes:

1. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch. I know that Germaine is somewhat problematic these days, but I thought the quote fit.

2. I really, honestly truly had a hard time with this chapter. I still don't really like it. There may be revisions to it in the future, some of them substantive. There's some retcon here. Part of the problem when one drafts in episodic bursts is that one doesn't get the chance to see the entire story as a whole, and therefore one can't fix things upstream. I have a pretty good idea of where this story is going and where it will end now but didn't necessarily have as complete a picture as I did back in August when I started. Making the Fuwas disinherit Sho never quite sat right with me, at least with Sho's behavior in the manga. Parents can be mad about a child's choice to pursue his or her own career, but even though Sho is a narcissist and a brat, his in-canon behavior didn't warrant disinheritance, particularly if his parents were the spoiling, doting kind. So I messed him up a little bit more to make their disinheritance make a little more sense.

3. I hope you guys don't hate it. Thoughts?