After the audition ended, Yuji carried his small backpack and walked toward the parking lot alone.
He looked up.
The sunlight was a bit glaring today.
He raised his hand.
In the summer sky,
white contrails dragged long vapor trails across the air.
Yuji sighed.
Reality really isn’t like a drama or anime; things don’t always go smoothly.
But…
oh well, it’s fine.
He took a step forward.
The meeting spot with his manager to get picked up was right around here.
Going by the time, they should have arrived already.
“Yuji!!!”
A voice suddenly called out from behind him.
Hm?
Yuji instinctively turned his head.
Without him noticing, a figure was standing not far behind him.
It was Kana.
She must have jogged all the way here.
She was panting slightly.
Yuji was a bit surprised.
“Why are you here?”
“I…” Kana opened her mouth, mumbling awkwardly as if embarrassed.
“I came to find you…”
“That’s what I’m asking,” Yuji blinked.
“Why do you care so much about my business?”
If Kana had initiated conversation earlier to thank him for his advice days ago,
she had already expressed her thanks just now.
Wasn’t that enough?
Did she have any reason to keep interacting with him?
After all, he wasn’t some wildly famous child actor.
He voiced his reasoning aloud.
However, to his surprise, Kana widened her burgundy eyes instead, looking at him strangely.
“What does that have to do with whether you’re a wildly famous child actor or not?
I came to find you because I want to talk to you!”
It was a very simple answer.
Yet it made Yuji suddenly realize something.
He seemed to have been viewing things through an adult mindset all along.
Adults were very narrow-minded creatures.
Always calculating success and failure, gains and losses.
But for a child like Kana…
where were there so many calculations of gain and loss in this world?
If you want to talk to someone, you just go up and talk to them—no reason needed, and no need to weigh benefits or losses.
He suddenly felt a sense of sudden enlightenment.
It seemed anime heroines weren’t entirely filled with trouble like he had imagined.
So he smiled and pointed to the steps nearby.
“Want to sit and chat for a bit?”
“…Okay.”
Taking out a handkerchief she carried with her, Kana spread it on the step and sat down.
After a moment of silence, Kana’s voice beside him suddenly sounded.
“Yu— Yuji, don’t you feel unwilling to accept this?” Her voice took an awkward, unnatural turn.
“Ah—that?
If I had to say, yeah, I do feel a bit frustrated.”
Yuji considered himself quite open-minded.
But after all, he had worked hard.
In the end, achieving nothing really made him feel frustrated.
“Right?!”
Her hat bobbed cheerfully before his eyes.
Kana clearly got excited, bringing her childish face closer.
“You definitely want to teach that guy Kobayashi Ryuki a hard lesson too, right?
Hmph!
Just wait!
When I co-star with him, I’ll definitely teach him a good lesson and get revenge for you—Ouch!!!”
Kana clutched her forehead, tearfully looking at Yuji as he pulled his flicked finger away from her forehead.
“What was that for…?”
“Don’t do stupid stuff like that.” Somewhat speechless, he pulled his hand back.
“What do you mean stupid?!
That guy who got in through the back door treated you like that!
Can you really just stomach it?!”
Kana spoke with a heavy, intense tone.
She was full of confusion as to why Yuji was stopping her.
When clearly that guy was practically—
“Connections are connections, but Kobayashi Ryuki is Kobayashi Ryuki.”
Yuji waved his hand.
Kobayashi Ryuki was just an eight-year-old boy.
What would an eight-year-old child know about ‘pulling strings’?
The ones truly pulling the strings were the backing investors behind him.
Venting frustration on an eight-year-old boy because he couldn’t defeat the backing investors behind him?
*Hss…*
Having lived two lives, he really couldn’t bring himself to do something like that.
More importantly—
“Isn’t work very important to you, Arima?”
Yuji’s voice sounded.
Sitting by the step, Kana froze, then looked up to see Yuji’s face.
He still wore that same calm expression.
His dignified, clear eyes stared at her without blinking.
Yes.
In the original story, Kana’s popularity would start declining from now on, work offers would become fewer and fewer, and her mother—hoping she’d become a star—would grow more sensitive day by day, until ultimately her father, unable to stand her mother’s neurotic behavior, would cheat, causing their once-complete family to fall apart.
Therefore, work offers should be extremely important to the current Kana.
Causing trouble on set and bullying fellow child actors would only further lower the industry’s opinion of the ‘Kana’ brand.
As a reliable adult, he could not—and would not—allow his own affairs to drag down Kana.
That would be extremely irresponsible.
Just as Yuji was about to say something more,
a voice suddenly piped up.
“Wait!
Turn your head to that side first!”
“Huh?” The sudden request caught Yuji off guard.
Nevertheless, he turned his face away as Kana requested.
Meanwhile, Kana tucked a strand of hair behind her ear while covering her mouth.
The reason was very simple.
Because if she didn’t do this,
she was afraid she would literally burst to her feet and spin around in joy.
What is this?
What is this!
This guy—
Was this guy actually this cute?!!!
Even though he looked full of disgust on the surface earlier and acted like he didn’t want to talk to her at all!
As it turned out…
turned out his mind was completely filled with thoughts for her sake?!
Not wanting to drag her down, thinking of her…
wasn’t this basically a confession?!
Eight-year-old Kana didn’t truly understand what ‘confession’ or ‘liking someone’ meant.
All she knew was:
She really, really wanted to smile right now.
But—
Can’t smile!
Can’t smile!
Kana!
The more it’s like this, the more you have to keep your composure!
She tried hard to calm her emotions.
And then—
She turned her head back and spoke in a tone pretending not to care at all.
“Ah…
so that’s how it is…”
“Yeah…
Huh?
What’s with that face of yours?”
Yuji, who was about to respond, was a bit surprised.
Because the expression on Kana’s face in front of him was truly too strange.
Even though the corners of her mouth were twitching wildly, her eyebrows were pressed down hard, making her cute baby-fat face look like she was straining incredibly hard.
But…
Oh well.
Yuji looked up.
At this moment, a black advertising vehicle with the word ‘Northern’ printed on it was parked outside the parking lot.
It was the vehicle from the Northern Child Actor Agency that had come to pick him up.
He stood up while brushing the dust off his pants.
After all, he didn’t have the Japanese habit of carrying a handkerchief with him—that thing was basically just a tissue you could reuse a few times; once it got dirty, you had to wash it, which was a massive pain.
It had to be said that Kana was indeed a qualified child actor.
Although she was a bit reluctant, she still stood up, tapping her index fingers together.
“Um…
Yuji.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s…
well…”
She spoke up bashfully.
After this brief interaction, she had more or less figured out a bit of Yuji’s personality, knowing that he might not be able to say certain things.
So she would be the one to—
“In the future…
can we still chat like this?”
She took a deep breath and spoke.
Then, her wine-red eyes sparkled with bright light as she looked at Yuji.
Come on~ Come on~ Hurry up and agree!
This is an invitation from your beloved Kana, you know!
Agree with a heart full of gratitude!
She thought to herself, feeling smug.
And then—
“That might be a bit difficult.
I might stop being a child actor.”
Yuji rubbed his chin and replied.
To him, this was probably a fairly normal answer.
But immediately after, a voice suddenly exploded in his ears.
“Eh—?!!!”
“…You’re so loud, Arima.” Yuji hissed, sucking in a breath of cold air.
At that moment, he really felt like his eardrums were about to burst.
“Why?!”
But Kana didn’t care at all about his look of disgust.
She just used both hands to shake Yuji back and forth.
Yeah.
Why?
What do you mean by “stop being a child actor”?
This…
if translated into a novel plot, isn’t this like suddenly rushing to the ending right after writing an introductory story about the cover heroine?
And weren’t you thinking about her the whole time?!
Didn’t you say you didn’t want to drag her down?
How did it suddenly take such a wild turn?!
Speaking of which, she seemed to have terrible luck lately.
Who on earth was tormenting her?