Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to

Problems that upset you oh don't you know

Everything's alright, yes, everything's fine

And we want you to sleep well tonight

Let the world turn without you tonight

Sleeping most of the day felt good and all, but there was only so much energy one could recharge before it stopped working. This is why Ai didn't particularly enjoy slow days: once or twice is fine, but three or more days in a row made her realize that she had nothing to do. Her children still went to school, so she was alone with her thoughts, and exercise only worked as long as she was disciplined and she had the energy. Which might sound like a good combination with her habit of resting whenever she didn't have anything important to do but… Well, repeating this cycle over and over made it a chore, and chores are boring.

That's why, when the director suggested that the Ichigo-san should bring the twins to appear in a commercial, Ai jumped at the opportunity to tag along and leave the apartment. It also didn't hurt that she'd get to see one of her children in action, which might just be the thing her life was missing since she unraveled her feelings for them. It painted a brighter picture of the days she spent with them, of the time and preparation she put herself through for the delivery. And yet… Maybe this would be different? Maybe knowing that she loved them would make this experience better. Who knows? Not Ai, but she was more than excited to figure it out.

At least this learning process involved no pain whatsoever.

"Ah, you're here too. This day is full of surprises." Director Gotanda approached Ai while she stood in one of the corners of the room, sort of letting the adults talk around her. Busy trying to spot her kid among the children running around and being herded by the staff. "Miyako-san couldn't come?"

Ai chuckled at the odd greeting, but she didn't particularly mind. Any interaction kept her distracted, and at least the director knew her enough to not feel the need to go through the usual pleasantries.

"She's taking some free time for herself; these past weeks have been tough for her." Ai shrugged, moving away a step to make a bit of room for the director in her empty corner of the room. "What are you doing here? I thought this was a commercial."

"I'm friends with the guy in charge. I recommended Aqua, just in case the kid would like to grow his credentials." The director imitated her, shrugging while placing his back against the wall with his arms crossed. "I didn't expect the girl to join in."

Ai took a moment before answering, reviewing the words that would come out of her mouth as simple precaution in case her instinct was to say something about her children.

"Aqua doesn't strike me as the kind of kid that would dance and cry out in happiness." Ai used an awkward chuckle here, narrowing her eyes like she was talking about something complicated. "In that regard…"

"Ruby's far too eager." The director concluded. "Her hair alone stands out a bit too much. It might be the same problem you know about."

Ai's eyes narrowed a bit, fully understanding what the problem was with standing out too much. Ruby indeed shared her blood, huh. Except, Ai wouldn't let anyone push her little girl down just because she was special. She wouldn't let the world try to make her fit a ridiculous mold like the rest. Ruby would be Ruby, be whoever she chose to be. And she'd grow her talent to its maximum potential. Whether people liked it or not.

"Maybe a hat would help?" Ai tilted her head toward the director, still screening the hall for Ruby. Trying to ignore the people setting up the set even though they sometimes blocked her sight with wood and furniture. "Or a cap?"

"The people in charge will sort it out." The director shrugged again. "It's a commercial with a lot of people on screen. Unless she's a meddlesome kid like some I've worked with, there should be no problem at all."

"I see, I see…" Ai smiled a bit more at the reassurance. But that expression fell off when the director moved his arm into the pocket of his hoodie and retrieved a think box from it. "This is…?"

"You know, 'that'." The director pushed it onto Ai's hands, confusing her for a moment until the weight and sound coming from within made it click in her mind.

She looked around, seeing only adults adulating themselves by bragging about their children, or ordering the staff around like they were in charge. No one had paid attention to Ai, no one bothered look at her even when she couldn't fully hide the recoil.

"Why are you giving me this?" Ai asked breathlessly, momentarily thinking about her outfit. Neither the hat nor the dress had any place to carry the box.

What to do? Ai hadn't expected to be confronted like this. It felt as though her actions had a nasty habit of coming back to her nowadays.

"It feels right." The director sighed. "I haven't looked at what you recorded, of course. But, given the circumstances, I thought you might want some stuff added to it… Or deleted."

Ai looked at the cardboard box like she was holding a ticking timebomb.

She really, really hadn't expected to have to think about these things during Ruby's first time appearing on television. It felt like a long time ago since she could simply look forward and continue, sure in the path that she'd traced.

She didn't like the new dynamic of having to second guess her choices. To have to look back to figure out what had gone wrong. And specially not about this. Because it mixed up several topics that Ai had been turning her back to for quite a while now.

"Can you hold onto it for a bit longer?" Ai turned to the director, not giving the box back. But only asking first.

"Is that right? If it was important enough to entrust it to me…"

"I just don't have anywhere to hide it." Ai chuckled, now holding the box with both hands. "I can only destroy it right now."

Director Gotanda narrowed his eyes while studying Ai's crestfallen expression.

"It's yours. There's nothing wrong with something obsolete being disposed of." He stretched his back, lifting his arms and earning a few looks because of it. Although no adult approached him all the same. They just… Looked. Like they were weighing their options.

Ai did not like the way he worded his point. And it didn't help very much to have something negative so clear in her mind. She couldn't quite toughen up like before the incident with Ryosuke, not so easily at least.

"Talking from experience?" Ai gave him the best smile she could provide. But that only served to start an awkward silence between them. With the man giving Ai a bit of a disappointed look, but without shaking his head or expressing anything else.

He just… Stared at her.

"Sorry. Shouldn't have joked like that with an old man."

"You're a piece of work, you know that?" The director clicked his tongue. Annoyed enough that even Ai could tell at a glance.

"Of course. I am a star, after all~"

"I suppose." The director replied in a calmer tone. "Still, it's your choice. If you want me to keep it, I'll comply."

Ai handed it back to him, earning herself a weird look.

"What? You just said you'd do it."

"It's not that." He took the thing and pocked it away. Not tearing his gaze away from Ai for a single moment. "I'm just thinking that this works for me too."

Ai's smile became more like her usual one.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I'm getting some real experience with dealing with how you are." He returned his gaze to the set, now having Ai being the one looking at him. "It makes things easier."

"For the documentary?" She suggested, trying to move the topic away from herself.

"Ah, Ichigo-san thinks that's a bad idea." The director frowned.

Ai's smile fell.

"What do you mean?"

"He wants to cancel it now." He gave Ai a knowing look. "Y'know. The reason is kind of obvious."

"Well… Wouldn't it just make it a longer movie?" Ai didn't want that. She'd been the one to suggest the idea, she wanted it like she wanted to see Ruby and Aqua succeed in their own paths. She didn't want to drop this part of the dream she shared with Ichigo-san.

"That's… Not the case, no." The director looked around them. Just a quick glance that Ai could've missed if she didn't have her attention on him. "Speaking strictly from a professional point of view, it'd be a shift in tone and themes too big to handle the way you want the movie handled. To be expected, given the topic at hand, but I'd rather scrape the whole thing and start anew."

Ai didn't quite understand. The man was being a bit too vague for her, so she reflected it in the way she was looking at him.

"There are things that are unresolved too, problems being dragged to the light if I understood Ichigo-san's vague wording right. The average viewer would look at the finished product and feel cheated on the ending, if you get me."

"I really don't." Ai responded.

The director looked like he expected it, but he still looked disappointed.

"If you compared your group now, and maybe three months back… Would you still recognize them as the same thing?"

Ai took a moment to digest his words.

"Yes."

"Oh." The man opened his eyes a bit more. "Oh, that's a problem."

"It is?" Ai pursed her lips. "I don't think so. I've spent a lot of time with these girls, after all."

"You sound way less pleased with the fact now, compared to three months back." The director pointed out.

Ai didn't have a reply ready for that.

"And that's not what the camera wants to see." She looked away, now no longer looking for Ruby with that much intensity.

"Weren't you the one that asked me to record the real you?" The director hummed. "Sounds to me like you had a change of heart."

"I…" Could she say yes or no and know where in the scale of things her answer laid? Could she pinpoint the answer as either a truth or a lie? Or would it be a half-truth, like Hikigaya mentioned?

She had thought that going with the flow was alright, that not knowing whether she meant half of the things she said or not didn't matter. As long as things carried on in the way they were meant to, everything was fine.

Unsightly things should be tucked away, hidden from view. Let the beautiful lies get the spotlight for the fans, so that they would not be disappointed from the ugliness that their perfect, undefeatable beloved carried.

"I did." That much was obvious. The past would not change just because Ai didn't know if she regretted it or not. It would remain even as she left this world, whether people knew or not. Whether her story was told or not.

She eyed the director's pocket now.

"See, that's where the problem lies: Whether Ichigo-san understands it or not, it'd be easy to come to some undesirable conclusions if we carry on. Because no matter what me mean to convey, or how hard we try, most people will simply interpret our actions to their own convenience. Shape them into something that fits their worldviews. Which is why it is so difficult to make deep and thoughtful movies." The director chuckled. Shaking his head like he'd remembered a joke from the past.

Ai thought back about the way the girls had behaved since Ai came back from almost getting stabbed. The way they pushed, pulled, and just made things a lot more difficult overall without actually crossing Ai directly.

Like they were scared.

"You think that I'd be painted as the villain." Ai summarized with a sigh. Unable to call for her idol glow entirely.

That was also happening a lot nowadays.

"I think many people would be confused by your actions, and wouldn't get the intent and context behind them. This is a documentary about B-Komachi, after all. The whole group, even without counting the girls that changed, is still made out of seven members with their own story to tell." The director scratched his head. "And the recurring theme seems to be…"

"That there's only Ai-chan." Ai closed her eyes. "That it has always been my show."

"…Ummm, yeah. Of course." The director coughed on his fist. "Just don't say it like that. Even if it's the truth, it just paints you in a negative light from the get-go."

Ai simply chuckled, denying him a reply.

"It's okay to brag from time to time. But no one likes a vainglorious person succeeding." The director lifted a finger like he was giving her a lesson. "Because success is weighed in relation to the overwhelming majority that do not get it, it's a delicate topic. And thus, the 'loser' side is often the one that the public roots for. If you're not a hack and give both sides good characterization, screen time, and…"

"You're losing me." Ai interrupted him.

The director chose to face the ceiling.

"These sorts of movies are still movies. Sure, they follow events from the real world. But the way they're pieced together is still narratively satisfying. Or they aim to be, because otherwise they'll just flop. You need to tell the story of someone important, or someone that lived things that resonate with the viewers. And in either of those cases, the story still needs to feel like a proper one." The director scratched his head, deep in thought. "The 'lenses' can't be objective. Not only because of this limiting factor, but because everyone involved would naturally see things in different ways. And depending on who recorded, narrated, or otherwise picked up the story and weaved it…"

"…They're cut in a certain way. And then, it gets cut again for the viewer's consumption." Ai licked her lips, not knowing whether her chest felt warm or hurt when the words came to her as naturally as her own lies. "It has to be cut into half-truths, it has to be cut into an effective, convenient, and therefore deliberate form to trick them into thinking a certain way."

The director looked a little surprised.

"That's a rather bleak way to see things. I'd rather think of it as helping people see the truth by twisting it a little. Make the details more obvious so the bigger picture stays the same."

"But would that be the truth?" Ai scoffed. "What if I really am the problem?"

"By your own willing action?" The director lifted an eyebrow when he looked back at her.

Ai fell silent for a moment.

"Because that's a completely different message from the success story that your idea was meant to be. It's one thing if a group of people work together in spite of their difference to succeed, and it's an entirely different if this success belongs to no one at all. That'd be unsatisfying."

"Making it to the Tokyo dome is a success no matter how you look at it." Ai protested.

The director smiled bitterly.

"If I made up a country, gave you an important landmark, and I told you that the Emperor is crowned there… Would you find a scene of a child being crowned emotional?"

Ai furrowed her brows.

"Crowning people is still a thing?"

The director tilted his head.

"…Not the reaction I wanted, but it still gets my point across."

"I don't get it." Ai complained.

"It's nothing." The director shrugged. "It means nothing to the audience. It's just a name. Some of them might even have gone there… As expectations. There's no possible way to convey how hard it is to get to the goal in a reasonable timeframe, not even in a series with multiple episodes."

That… Made her stomach feel empty.

"It means nothing…?"

Then why even bother with anything?

"We can't shoot a B-Komachi movie telling the story of how Ai came to success… And I get the feeling that we can't shoot a film narrating the way Ai came to success and spin it as covering B-Komachi as a group." The director shook his head. "Not as things stand anyway."

There are just… Too many secrets, huh.

"I've always stood out from my peers." Ai chuckled, but the sound came a lot more nervous than she intended. "Always too much. Always… For reasons I don't understand."

"You drag people's attention to yourself. Never mind that some might resent the fact, it means that 'you' are more easily defined." The director patted her shoulder twice. "Not because of who you are, but how the majority perceives you."

And the majority of people can't know who the real Hoshino Ai is.

"And most people will never care about who you really are. Just what you bring to the table."

Her voice disappeared altogether. So, even if she could put up her best smile, she'd be unable to use her charisma to move away from this conversation.

It doesn't help that her mind went back to things she didn't want to think about. The way people around her behaved. Not those that'd harm her, although there had never been a shortage of those, but of those that had something to gain from her. Starting from the newest B-Komachi recruits every time a girl left, the staff, the people that ran the programs she'd been to, Hikaru…

Her own 'adoptive father'. Both of the first and the real one.

"I still want the real me filmed." Ai stated after a moment. Her voice filled with too little warm to be called Ai-chan's voice. "Even if I'm the villain, surely, I can…"

"For what is worth…" The director interrupted her, giving his voice a warmth that she hadn't heard from him before. "…Villains are cool. And sometimes easier to root for than heroes. But I don't want to give you strange ideas."

"…"

"For now, things are 'on hold'. Right? I'd say, if you can spin this story around, give it a satisfying ending…" The director shrugged again. "You'd make me eat my words."

Ai grinned. It was an expression only people like her, Hikaru, or that woman that Hikigaya seemed to hate could make.

"That's more like it. Love the idea."

The director now looked worried.

"Please don't do anything you'll regret later. Not alone, at least."

Alone? Right. Safety in numbers, in having a different opinion. That had been sort of the point with trying to get closer to Hikigaya, right? Try to see things from his perspective, understand how to twist her truth into something that resembled his own more closely.

Changing the lenses of her life, so to speak. Make the picture focus on love properly.

"Hey, will you be around when we make the auditions for 'those people'? Ah, Ichigo-san might not have told you, but…"

"He did." The director interrupted her. "I understand the situation, sort of. And it has nothing to do with me."

This time, Ai was able to hold her expression firmly. Not letting it break.

"With that said, if you ask me directly… I guess I can't refuse." The director nodded to himself. "At the very least, I want to see for myself what kind of person made someone like you ask someone like me to scry your compatibility."

Ai chuckled.

"I just asked for some direction, see if you could help me understand his personality."

The director scoffed while shaking his head.

"Sure. Let's call it that."

The two of them returned their attention to the kids. They were more orderly now, so things were probably about to start.

Come to think of it, where was Aqua? Was he convinced by the double effort of Ruby and Ichigo-san to give this commercial a go? Ai would have to celebrate even more if that was the case. Because that'd make her immensely happy.

This much love wasn't enough, but that couldn't be a reason to not be thankful for it. She just… Wished she could share it so there was more of it.

Ah… Not good. She needed to focus, give her children her attention like they deserved. They were wholly hers, after all. She'd let nothing get in the way…

Not even…

"Gotanda-san." The darkness crept its way back into her eyes. It had been so easy; she hadn't even managed to put up any resistance. Hadn't even realized where her thoughts were heading until she physically needed to act on them.

"Yeah?"

"Give me back the thing."

The director scoffed while reaching out to hand the box back.

"It's nothing of my business, but I'm glad there's still things you want to—"

Ai took one corner with each hand and twisted with all her might, breaking the contents within before tossing it aside.

"…" The director looked like he'd seen her murder someone.

Ai closed her eyes, re-focusing her attention on her children.

Nothing happened there. She had no thoughts at all about the box, about whatever was inside, about whatever she thought she knew.

Ai smiled again.

"Thanks for agreeing to tag along. It makes me feel at ease." Ai continued the conversation from the point they left it off, as nothing had happened while the silence stretched. And was therefore appropriate to continue talking.

"…Sure." The director looked away from Ai's bottomless darkness.

Later. Everyone told her to deal with one thing at a time nowadays, so they couldn't judge her in this. Couldn't tell her not to deal with the elephant in the room at her own convenience.

Later. For now… Just gather your strength, center yourself. Prepare.

Ai looked at the place where the box had landed, unable to maintain that lie.

"I'll go dispose of it properly before the filming starts." Ai murmured.

The director watched while Ai moved to pick it up.

"It's your call."

"Yeah… Thanks." Ai gave him a bright smile. "I'm just… Not ready to face this yet."

The director looked a little surprised, although he schooled his features quickly enough.

"That's how life goes."

That was oddly reassuring, if only because it made Ai feel like she might not be the most miserable person in the room for once.

On her way to find a bin, she broke the DVD even more by pressing her thumbs against the box.

What if he was the one responsible in the end? Could she actually fault him? Would she be able to forgive him?

Did it not feel like she'd do the same in his spot?

"Man, what a pickle~" Ai murmured once she'd thrown the box away, slowly slipping back into the most reliable habits she had. Brightening up with the slowness, but certainty, of a consummate lair. Even she'd been weakened in this regard… Ai wouldn't have made it half as far as she did if a bit of emotional damage could hurt her persona for long.

One thing at a time. Children, meeting Hikigaya again, and…

Hmmm.

Oh, right. The B-Komachi auditions. How could she ever forget?

Protecting Nino-chan was super important, after all. It's simply the right thing to do. She had to sort out the "house" first, deal with what is "outside" later.

She just had to avoid falling behind, being distracted from the goal.

She just had to…

"…!" Ai's world brightened again when she came back, spotting her twins with the same ease that she could spot herself in the mirror. Ruby's eagerness, Aqua's held back reluctance…

Problems? What problems? Her children were the absolute cutest. Nothing else mattered in that moment.

She'd lie for them as long as she needed, as much as it was required…

Ah… Is that how it was? Was that what he meant when he said he couldn't bring himself to be the reason for harm coming her way…?

It might not be what she had pictured before but… Is that not also "love"?