Showbiz is a hard way to earn your money. You are in a constant competition with lots of people who would sell their souls to the devil to get one real chance. Everybody tries to show that they are special, that they are something new and exciting. You have to fight and better yourself all the time. And hell you really don't want to do this alone. That is why you search for an agency to help you, with pretty much everything. Negotiating the contract for a project, looking for promising castings, and making sure you won't be taken advantage of.

Good agencies protect you while you make your way, great agencies show you how you can develop.

LME is one of the biggest and the best. If you get into LME you have already taken a big step towards your dream. They are very good at seeing potential and helping you shine. LME is an agency with an open hierarchy where even the president takes personal interest in the development of his talents, whether it is the big star that already made it or the fresh newbie who is still at the beginning. With this mindset...

The tv turned black.

"Um... President? The video hasn't ended yet." A soft voice remarked.

"Boring.", was the answer to that. The president turned with his chair around with a trow away gesture to the tv.

"Em... What?" It was not more than a stutter by now.

"It's boring as hell. We are one of the biggest entertainment agencies in Japan, what am I saying, in Asia and powerful enough that even Hollywood would think twice before they messed with us. We have some of the most creative people in this county. And this is the best we can come up with? I won't allow that on my homepage." The president banged his fist down on his table, his eyes and voice filled with steel, fixating on the two employees in front of him. You see, the eccentric president is not only a man who enjoys strange costumes, medling with his talents' love lives, and batshit crazy ideas like the LoveMe section. He is also a man who build an entertainment empire out of nothing.

"Where are the colours, the music, the fun, the dancing, the fire? Where is the LOVE?" All seriousness from just a moment before was gone. Replaced with big, silly hand gestures and sparkles in his eyes, and was there firework behind him or was that just a trick of mind.

Well, he still is a guy, around 50 years old, who loves to play dating Sims games and loves it even more to play it with real people. BUT he can only do that because he worked very hard in the past and still overlooks everything and steps in if he sees the necessity for it. And he has a hell of an instinct for this business. That and he is very good at taking on employees who are good at their job and loyal to LME.

But his quite special ways are a bit strange and sometimes overwhelming to people not used to it, like Hirotaka Honda, a young man 26 years old, fresh from the art and design university in Kyoto. Still with the giddy feeling in the stomach of getting this great job so soon, he had worked on the promoting video, with his head filled with theories about management, marketing and advertisement. The problem here is just that sometimes, knowledge stands in the way of creativity. A bit like actually knowing how physics works kills the joy of watching a good action movie with the nagging voice in the back of your head saying, this would never work in real life. And now imagine how the guy who has to think up these action scenes has to feel. He has to know the physics and then has to purposely ignore them. And then think up a way of breaking it down to something that actually works and at last find a way to fool the viewers into seeing something that isn't there.

This describes Hirotaka's dilemma in a way. He still has to learn how to use his knowledge as a powerful tool and ignore it at the same time. He has heard something like this from his new co-workers. But he still hasn't the slightest idea what it means. He wondered what exactly everybody is going to expect from him, while he watched his tall boss giving a quite heated speech about love, while being in an original samurai costume throwing heart shaped confetti.

/Where did that even come from?/, he silently wondered.

"Of course. We will redo it right now." His co-worker and mentor next to him replied, effectively stopping the president from making them listen further for an hour or more to him. They backed out of the room very fast and both took a relieved breath once they were back in the elevator.

"Is he always like this?", Hirotaka asked in a shaking voice, still extremely confused, staring at his mentor.

"I fear the answer to that is: most the time. Takarada-sama is very eccentric and loves to be dramatic.", he answered with a heavy sigh.

"Is it bad that we have to redo everything?" Hirotaka felt panic strike him suddenly. He was still on probation. Was he going to lose his job over this?

"Don't worry about it, Honda-kun. Nobody ever managed to meet his expectations the first time. I knew, we would have to redo it. But I thought, it would be good for you to get this meeting past you as soon as possible. Sorry." He looked at his mentor, a middle-aged, short man with a soft belly and salt and pepper hair. The man looked truly sorry for putting him through this. And he started to see, why his mentor would think this way.

"That's fine, I think." And it was. Some lessons you probably have to experience for yourself... Even if it will take him a day or two to get over this... whatever this was.

Together they left the elevator, both lost in their own thoughts.

What's the point of this, you may ask. And is this new character important to the story? He is from Kyoto, does that mean he knows Kyoko and is a long forgotten friend and possible love interest?

The answer to these interesting questions are so unspectacular, that they are given right here.

No, he is no love interest for Kyoko, nor did they ever meet before, it's a big city. But he met Sho one time, when Sho with 13 years old and played at an open stage event in a bar. A bar in which Hirotaka met with some friends. Not that he can tell you, because at that time he was quite drunk and tried to pick a girl up with some truly ridiculous pick-up lines. Well, what you you say, the world is a village.

But is he important?

No. He might be later used to show events in the story from an unrelated point of view.

So what's the point of all this and this new character if he is unimportant?

There is none apart from the fact that the author realized that her story opening sounded like a badly made promoting video.

Now that you lost some minutes that you will never get back, let's start with the real story.

A floor lower, Takarada's three unwilling messengers of love got into the elevator and animatedly discussed today's workload and Sawara's message to come to his office.

"Why do you think Sawara-san wants to see all of us?" Kyoko looked at the other two in a way, as if she hoped that they have some deeper insight into her department head's mind, "I mean his message didn't have any hints in it."

The others, unsurprisingly, didn't have any hidden knowledge and messages like this ones were highly suspicious. "Hopefully it's not a stupid LoveMe mission again." Kanae announced and added some more mumbling about stupid presidents, loud children and other stuff.

"Then at least it's with Sawara-san and not Takarada-sama. He is more reasonable and the really crazy stuff the president would want to give out himself, right?", Chiori chipped in. All three pink cursed ones looked somewhat relieved about this lack of self-engagement on the President's part.

"Oh yeah. Let's be thankful for the small miracles in life.", Kanae agreed with little euphony.

"Hmm, you are probably right, Moko-san."

Once they arrived at their destination, they carefully opened the door, after they took a moment in front of it to take a deep breath and to give and to seek for moral support from the others. Kanae and Chiori let Kyoko take the lead for two main reasons. One is that Sawara was most afraid of her and because of that was a bit more cautious to throw extremely strange stuff their way, and two, paradoxically he was most fond of her as well and would be more likely to take pity on her than on the other two.

By the way the not-main reason for her going in first is that this is LME and you never know what exactly awaits you on the other side of that door or any door at all, when you are in the LoveMe section, so it never hurts to have a living shield that you can feed to the wolves while running away. Please don't think badly about those two, they would feel guilty about it, just not enough to not do it again. The reason why Kyoko let them do that is she has too big a heart and couldn't refuse her friends anything. The other thing is that she, irrelevant to the fact the she is the longest in the ... (Please dear reader insert a fitting word of your choice here) LoveMe section, still desperately held onto her optimistic view on life.

But even she couldn't completely banish the uncomfortable feeling in her guts, while she spoke to her department head. "You wanted to see us, Sawara-san?"

"Ah yes. Come in, come in." He didn't look or sounded uncomfortable. Which is generally taken as a good sign by the girls, because they are unpleasant, mostly to him as the nearest person, when given unpleasant work, which in consideration of the Pavlovian reflex makes him start to feel uncomfortable when faced with the task of giving them unpleasant tasks. He actually looked quite relaxed and kind of happy. Normally a good indicator that he believed something good for their careers was heading their way. They may not let their guard down easily, but they relaxed slightly.

Still Kanae couldn't keep the hostile tone out of her voice, as she asked, "Do you have new offers for us?"

"I fear not. But I managed to secure some training spots for you guys. It is always good to list a variation of skills on your applications. It shows you are able to adapt to new skills and boost your chances with specialized roles a lot." Looking from Sawara's uneasy smile to each other, they decide it's not so bad. They could give it a chance and hear the man out.

"What kind of training are we talking about?", Kyoko asked further, adopting a more open body language.

"Oh I have three different kinds here. You can decide for yourselves who does which." He sounded more sure of himself now, more professional and least like somebody, who could at ever second, hid under this desk, crying for help.

He took out a couple of paper and started to read them to the girls. The idea to do this came to him, when he had done something similar for one of his other talents. One who hadn't been in LME for nearly as long as them. With a start this made him realize, that he had neglected his manager job towards Kyoko and ones the president noticed him doing it, he thought that it was a wonderful and lovely gesture, that he should do this for the other two members, too, so they don't feel left out.

"First we have a traditional training. You will learn how to wear a kimono correctly, to prepare a tea ceremony, how to walk and talk, flower arranging and some historical lessons." Each took one of the offered papers and glanced at it, or in the case of Kanae, memorized it.

"Next we have motorcycle lessons. The people you will learn from are stuntmen. So you will learn how to drive for the camera and maybe even some easy stunts. Furthermore they have a little repair shop and will teach you..." he made a short pause here and looked a bit unsure, "how to use some tools." The second paper they got had a lot less written on it and the wording showed that Sawara didn't write these papers, but asked those who offered the training to write a summary.

The top of the paper said Motorcycle lessons and below it under the point Main Skills they wrote: learning how to drive a motorcycle. The next point should have given information about how those skills will be taught and the answer simply said: let them drive a motorcycle. There was an unwritten "dude" obviously implied. By Side Skills they listed: how to use tools, so you won't look stupid when you have to do it for the camera. So all together not the most informant piece of paper.

"Well last but not least voice training and musical education." This paper was once again very detailed about what will be taught and how. "You will learn how to sing different styles of music, be it modern pop, hip-hop or classic. You will learn how to read notes and how to recognize them when you hear them. If you are interested you can learn how to play an instrument too." The paper held a list with lots of different instruments to choose from. "There is one spot for each option. I will let you girls choose what you want to do."

/Please God, don't let them fight about this. I wouldn't be able to break up a catfight between them!/ This fear didn't exactly result from dealing with specifically these three girls, but from many years in an industry that put everyone in competition with everybody else. This results in an atmosphere of back stabbing and mistrust.

The LoveMe girls looked at each others, seemingly communicating telepathically and turned back to Sawara completely synchronous. "Can we discuss this for a moment?" Kyoko took up the position of spokeswoman for the thee.

"Sure, take your time. How about you take this to your LoveMe room and give me an answer at, let's say 3 o'clock. All of the options will take a lot of time to learn and we will expect a lot of engaged learning from you." He offered them with an eager smile. This only had advantages for Sawara. One, they would leave his office. Two, for some strange reasons he could breath a lot easier without them being there. Three, he wouldn't need to be in the same room as them. Four, should they fight about the offers, he wouldn't be anywhere close to it. Five, any unexplainable thing, that trend to happen around those thee especially Kyoko, would destroy the LoveME lounge and not his workplace. Now if that sound all like the same reason, that he wants them out of his office, you are completely right, but Sawara didn't give a damn.

After they left his office Sawara sank into his chair with a relieved sigh. Dealing with those three always felt a bit like a lottery to him. They often reacted in ways that are unpredictable and strange. Not that he can really hold this against them. If he was a plaything to all of the president's whims, he probably would have trust issues too.

A.N.

First things first. I have no rights on Skip Beat or any non original characters. I don't make any profit with this and only to it to improve my writing skills and my English.

Secondly, Matelia-legwll has agreed to be my beta reader. And thus this chapter has been edited by her now.

Last thing, what do you guys think about it so far? Leave a review and help me to improve. Thank you.