((GUYS, you know what? I did it. I finished Chapter 6. I am quite proud of myself. I need to go study now. :) Chapter 7 is in the works now. Love you guys, again, because you are all fantabulous and the sweetest readers ever.))

CHAPTER 6 ‒ MAKOTO & REIKA

Ren checked his watch. Yashiro, sitting in the folding chair next to him, noticed and grinned. "I'm sure Kyoko will be here soon. Go to makeup and costume, I think they're ready for you."

At Ren's questioning look, Yashiro shrugged. "If they like Kyoko, some of these takes might make it to the final cut. They're treating it as actual filming, for now."

Ren rose. "All right. They're filming the first meeting between Makoto and Reika, correct?"

Ren played Itami Makoto, a charismatic newcomer to the town that the film took place in, and Kyoko was being considered for Sato Reika, an abused, shy girl who loved gardening.

Reika was orphaned in the beginning of the film, and her cruel uncle and his wife took her in. She lived life miserably, only truly enjoying herself when she was tending to her mother's old garden.

When Reika's aunt died and they moved, the only reprieve she could get from her uncle's increasing violence was when she went to her new school, where she hid from others and kept her head down for three long years until Makoto moved into town, instantly winning everyone's hearts with his charm and kindness.

Finally the two met when Reika secretly started a rooftop garden, sneaking off at lunchtimes to care for it.

When some girls discovered her while she was watering, they started bullying her, ripping out the plants and beating Reika up. Makoto found them partway through and took Reika to the nurse's office, leaving after being touched by hearing much of her story.

They were filming when Makoto walked in on the girls attacking Reika, and then in the nurse's office. Ren supposed they were testing Kyoko by giving her one of the hardest scenes on her first day, the scene when Reika broke down and confided in Makoto her life story.

He eyed the text in his script now as the hairdresser started running a brush through the messy, unbrushed curls that they had requested her come with.

The actual story itself wasn't bad, but the dialogue was terrible and stilted.

Ren had only really accepted the job because he'd owed a friend of the director's a favor. The director had been too proud to act desperate, but his friend had confessed to Ren that almost no one had auditioned until Ren had announced he'd take the job.

Now he was going to be filming alongside Kyoko again. He took a deep breath.

She was probably going to show up with that idiotically smug, infuriating manager, she all smiles, and her manager sneering at him the whole time…

"Tsuruga-san?! Are…are you all right?" The hairdresser's young assistant ‒ who had been sneaking blushing glances at him all the time she'd been in the room ‒ was trembling behind him.

"Yes, of course, why…?" Ren caught sight of his face and covered it. Damn Kuon! Why did his darkest side always have to show up?

"I'm sorry, I'm fine." He dropped his hands and examined his expression in the mirror. Good, back to normal.

"Ren?" Yashiro poked his head into the room. "Kyoko-chan is here."

The assistant looked from Yashiro to Ren, silently taking in the heavy atmosphere between them. The hairdresser dutifully ignored it, combing gel into the work of art that Ren's hair was quickly becoming.

"Why do you sound so worried?" Ren could feel sickening butterflies fluttering to life in his stomach.

"Oh, I just…she looks a little down today. That's all." Yashiro glanced at the two women in the room, shook his head, and closed the door.

Ren could barely make it the last ten minutes of makeup, he was so impatient to ask exactly why Kyoko seemed so "down." Finally the older woman stood back, and he practically shot from his chair.

"Yashiro-san, I…" Ren stopped short. The very man he least wanted to see stood in the hall, arms folded. Ren could feel himself shifting into Kuon, ready for a verbal or physical war. Anything this guy could throw at him, he would counter.

But Takaki only stared him down as he walked by, raising a disdainful eyebrow.

Ren clenched his fists as he glared at the man's receding back.

As Ren stepped onto the set, he blinked. They stood at the top of a building, with an eclectic mishmash of plants lining the edges of the roof and littered across the place in all sizes and shapes of pots. The three girls playing bullies sat in chairs brought up for them, cooing over pictures on a phone.

Kyoko sat in the corner, picking at a stray thread on her school skirt. She was covered in blood and just-forming bruises.

Makeup, of course. Still, he didn't like seeing anything like that on her.

"Mogami-san?" She started and looked up at him, a quick glance, but almost instantaneously, her gaze dropped back down.

Ren blinked. "Um, how are you feeling today? Thank you for making it."

"Takaki-san doesn't think this would be a good project for me to take." Her words came out in a rush. She was still staring at the ground, not looking him in the eyes like she usually did.

He was suddenly desperate. Not to have her do the project. If she felt it wasn't a smart move to take this job, so be it. It might not be a very smart move, really. The whole Blue Dreams project was an unknown. If the actors couldn't make up for its flaws, it would be a flop.

He couldn't, he wouldn't, blame her at all for refusing it. But he had to know that turning it down was her own action, not because her stupid manager had whined and moaned about it. He was desperate to look into her hazel eyes and see truth there when she told him she wouldn't take the role even if they offered it.

"Mogami-san, please. Please look at me."