Kyoko finds herself in a challenging situation when a certain someone makes a guest appearance on Box "R" and forces her to deal with unwelcome and overwhelming feelings.
(Takes place shortly after the Guam arc)
NO! She'd thought each time Shotaro invaded her dreams, and it was all she could do to stop herself screaming just that in the middle of the taping. As it was, she was absolutely drenched in sweat and had been told rather pointedly to take the costume to be cleaned.
Kyoko sighed as she trundled down the hallway with the deconstructed chicken suit in a cart. She found herself wishing for the return of the original dreams—at least those weren't nightmares. And at least they didn't keep bringing her mind back to that same question that looped in her mind over and over.
What did I do?
She wouldn't feel the slightest bit of shame about hitting Shotaro. Or about strangling him. Or about siccing her inner demons on him and watching him writhe in fear and pain. But this...this was shameful. I should have known better than to let Nacchan take over, she thought. Thegirl has no sense of propriety. And the things she thinks of...
But of course, Natsu only had those thoughts because of Kyoko. That was the problem, really. Kyoko felt as if her purity was being slowly leached away, turning her into somebody else. The kind of girl who thinks about kissing her sempai all day, who knows exactly how to toy with an annoying flirt, and who has inappropriate dreams at the drop of a hat... I'm becoming a pervert, she realized.
And it's all Shotaro's fault! She wailed inside her head.
If he hadn't forced his way onto her show, she'd never have had to ask Tsuruga-san for kissing lessons, and that man wouldn't be occupying her thoughts at every moment, waking or sleeping. And if he'd just recognized her off the bat, she wouldn't have to go such lengths to keep her identity hidden! With all the stress of preserving her anonymity, she'd had half a mind to just tell him and get it over with, but after that encounter...it would be humiliating.
She turned down that familiar hallway where she'd met Ren in her guise as Bou twice in the past and had to do a double-take. There was her sempai, in all his long-limbed glory, sitting in that very same spot. Luckily for her, he had his head in his hands, and she was able to back the cart around the corner before he had a chance to see her.
Kyoko was contemplating alternate routes to get to the laundry room—she really should delete this hallway from her repertoire, she knew—when the image of Ren, head bowed in despair, assaulted her mind's eye. She couldn't just leave him like that! He could need her help! Or, rather, the chicken's help.
Pulling the cart back to a safe distance from the hallway in case he came around the corner, she changed back into the sweat-scented costume as speedily as possible. It was a lengthy process, and she half-expected him to be gone by the time she got back. But no, there he was, just sitting there, a dark cloud hanging over him.
"Hell—" she started to say, then coughed, and this time pitched her voice lower to sound more masculine. "Hello, Tsuruga-kun," she said jovially.
Ren looked up at her, and two things registered: one, even with the less-than-perfect vision of a person in a giant mascot costume, she could see that he had concealer under his eyes—the skin was whiter even than it usually was—and two, she really wanted to kiss him. It was this weird, overwhelming desire that struck her all of a sudden, made even more ridiculous by the fact that, in her current form, she was both male and lipless.
And that, in a nutshell, was what bothered Kyoko so much in the aftermath of the kissing lessons. She'd enjoyed kissing Tsuruga Ren. She hadn't wanted to stop, and when they did, it had been completely without warning. There was no closure. She'd had the last kiss she'd probably ever get from the man she loved, and she hadn't known that it was her last. Maybe, she thought, if I just had one more...
But what was she thinking? The actress realized. If she loved him half as much as she thought she did, the last thing she should be thinking about when he looked exhausted is what she wanted. She shoved her selfish thoughts away and turned her attention back to the beleaguered actor.
To her rather unpleasant surprise, he was beaming at her.
"I hoped I'd run into you today," he said, smile devastatingly sparkly. "Please, sit with me."
Dubious, she obeyed. What was going on?
"I'm not keeping you from anything, am I?" Ren asked, the picture of consideration.
"Uh, no," she said. "I'm done for the day."
"Then, if you don't mind, could we talk for a bit?" He asked. "For some reason, I can speak openly with you, and I need some advice."
"Advice?" She echoed. "About what?"
"Love," he said simply.
Ups! Tento obrázek porušuje naše pokyny k obsahu. Před publikováním ho, prosím, buď odstraň, nebo nahraď jiným.
