Ever since their house’s signboard idol Hoshino Ai was pierced in the chest with a sharp knife by an angry fan two years ago.
How on earth had she spent the days after that?
Saitou Miyako had already forgotten.
Or rather, she didn’t want to recall those bitter days at all.
It’s just that the disbandment of B-Komachi was actually a relatively good result.
After that.
Producers and large production companies that originally cooperated with Hoshino Ai came knocking one after another, talking about contract terminations with a hardline attitude.
Bowing and apologizing, agreeing to terminate contracts.
The once scorching-hot idol girl group vanished into thin air in an instant.
The curses and resentment of fans on the internet were still somewhat okay.
There were even extreme fans of Hoshino Ai who used various methods to find the physical location of [Strawberry Pro].
Not only did they splash paint, feces, and other filth onto the agency’s front door, but they also specially left death threats.
After all, in the eyes of fans, [Strawberry Pro] as an agency failed to fulfill its duty to protect its artists, and this point alone was enough for them to be pointed at and cursed behind their backs.
Yet for Saitou Miyako, what she found most unacceptable was not these abuses and accusations, but her husband.
After Hoshino Ai passed away, her husband Saito Ichigo was deeply traumatized by it, evaporating from the world and completely disappearing.
In other words, over the past two years, the massive [Strawberry Pro] had relied entirely on her single-handedly supporting it to avoid bankruptcy.
Yet even so, Saitou Miyako had never forgotten the dream she shared with her husband Saito Ichigo.
——To support [Strawberry Pro] in continuing operations, while simultaneously…
stepping onto the stage of the Tokyo Dome once again.
For this, she really suffered a lot.
But how could someone like Hoshino Ai be easily discovered by people, just like “Wah, found you” or “Oh my, you found me”?
But just today.
She genuinely felt it!
And genuinely found it!
A freak of talent like Ai…
No…
purely in terms of Acting, perhaps even Ai could not compare to him!
Recalling what she saw at the audition, that Acting was enough to completely eclipse all auditioning child actors.
Saitou Miyako’s mood became agitated.
She gripped the car’s steering wheel, her flaxen eyes quietly looking towards the rearview mirror.
Right in the back seat of her vehicle.
At this moment, a little boy was sitting in the back seat of the car.
His pitch-black short hair was as dense as a jungle, and amidst the falling strands of short hair hid a delicate and handsome face as fair and pure as a bright moon.
Among all this, what perhaps caught Saitou Miyako’s attention the most was the other party’s pair of eyes.
If Hoshino Ai was a white hole capable of radiating her brilliance to the extreme.
Then the calm and deep black-bright color in this child’s eyes was a black hole, capable of involuntarily drawing everyone’s gaze toward it.
Needless to say about the other party’s appearance, it was truly too good-looking.
Saitou Miyako sighed from the bottom of her heart.
She had also spent a long time mixing in the entertainment industry.
And she had seen many children with handsome appearances.
But when it came to looks, the person she knew who could probably match him evenly was only Hoshino Ai’s son Hoshino Aqua.
And…
what on earth is going on with this child?
Putting her attention back onto the road conditions, Saitou Miyako couldn’t help but twitch the corners of her mouth just thinking about what happened earlier.
Time rewinds back to earlier—
“Hello, I am Saitou Miyako of [Strawberry Pro].”
Saitou Miyako, who proactively offered her business card, showed a gentle smile, lowered her body, and deliberately kept it parallel to the other person’s line of sight.
After all, the other person was just a child, and this action could close the distance a little bit, preventing him from feeling flustered or alert.
What Saitou Miyako didn’t expect, however, was the other person’s reaction.
On that handsome and cute face, there was not the slightest trace of panic; instead, he even blinked and spoke very bluntly.
“Poaching?”
“Cough, cough, cough, cough!!!”
Because the other person’s words were so blunt, it was practically like being poked straight down the throat.
This caused even Saitou Miyako, who had long prepared a set of persuasive talking points, to cough continuously from choking.
“No…
um…”
She opened her mouth slightly and waved her hands, wanting to explain a little or two.
After all, ‘poaching’ was a true taboo in the industry, and calling it a purely provocative act would be no exaggeration.
If the Northern Child Actor Agency found out about this, they would probably fly into a rage over it—the small agency [Berry Pro] didn’t have the means to bear such wrath.
However, before she could speak, Yuji in front of her seemed to see right through her true intentions, accepting the business card before speaking.
“It’s fine, Auntie.
I’m just an insignificant child actor.
Even if you really poached me away, the agency wouldn’t care particularly much.”
“Uh—”
This crisp and neat answer left even Saitou Miyako stunned for a moment.
For no other reason.
It was simply because Yuji’s answer was far too mature…
so mature…
that he didn’t look like a child at all.
However, before her astonishment ended, the voice over there sounded again.
“So what’s the answer?
Auntie, are you here to poach me?”
The half-squatting Saitou Miyako instinctively raised her head.
Then she realized.
Before she knew it, Yuji’s face had completely closed in on hers.
Those eyes—completely different from Hoshino Ai’s, mixed with a certain demonic beauty—were unblinkingly…
Looking at her.
“Yes?
Or no?”
…
Time goes back to the present.
Saitou Miyako, gripping the steering wheel, paid attention to the road conditions while squeezing a smile onto her face.
How should she put it.
She had actually told Yuji very seriously before not to casually get into someone else’s car.
No matter what, the other party was just an 8-year-old child; the necessary sense of vigilance should still be there.
But guess what he said?
“It’s fine.” He raised his eyelids, “Auntie, you can’t beat me in a fight anyway.”
This almost choked Saitou Miyako to death.
First of all, setting aside that “Auntie” address, just this undefended attitude alone wasn’t acceptable, right?
What do you mean by ‘you can’t beat me in a fight anyway’?
For a kid like you, if I gave you a slap, I’d have to beg you not to cry!
With no other choice, she could only shake her head at this moment and make a sound.
“Um…
Yuji-kun…
perhaps I should still call your guardian and have a brief face-to-face talk?”
The procedure for a child actor wanting to transfer from one agency to another wasn’t complicated.
The first was to migrate the child actor’s file from the previous agency to the current agency.
The second was the guardian’s signature and seal.
And the most important of these was the guardian’s signature and seal.
This thing had legal effect; after all, a child actor, in a sense, was a responsible person lacking full civil capacity.
If someone abducted someone else’s child without obtaining the parents’ consent…
they would face a lawsuit if the other party pursued the matter.
Saitou Miyako, who was poaching for the first time anyway, didn’t want to carry an inexplicable lawsuit on her back.
However—
“My guardian doesn’t really manage me much.
For minor matters like this, I can handle them myself.”
Yuji continued flipping through the book in his hand and replied like this.
This answer also made the corners of Saitou Miyako’s mouth twitch uncontrollably.
Right now, she really wanted to tell the other person that transferring agencies was no ‘minor matter’, but a major event that truly concerned his life.
Furthermore, what kind of family style did Yuji even have?
She originally thought she was already very indulgent toward those two little ones at home.
But as for Yuji’s family, not to mention indulgence, it could practically be called negligence.
Letting Yuji make the call on such a big matter?
This…
is it trusting him a bit too much?
Because no matter how you look at it, he was just a child of around 8 years old…
She couldn’t help but look Yuji up and down once more.
To be honest…
although the poaching process had been smooth so far, deep down in her heart, she was still somewhat hesitant.
Because for this poaching, she had actually prepared herself mentally, deciding to trust her first intuition, tilt all her current available resources toward Yuji, and cultivate him as the signboard of [Berry Pro].
But could he really, as she imagined…
catch up to that Hoshino Ai’s back?
That was, in the true sense of the word, the strongest idol in history.
Probably noticing Saitou Miyako’s scrutinizing gaze, he raised his eyes and met her gaze dead-on.
Afterwards.
He spoke.
“I don’t know your specific thoughts, Auntie.”
But—
“Rest assured.”
“Because I will surpass that person in your imagination.”
Surpass…?
Saitou Miyako’s fingers trembled, almost scraping against the car in front, and a trace of astonishment appeared on her pretty face.
In her dreams, she only dared to fantasize that someone could catch up to Hoshino Ai’s figure.
Because that was the past dream she shared with her husband, Saito Ichigo.
But what did Yuji just say?
Surpass?
Is this too…?
She very much wanted to refute the other party.
But at that instant, Saitou Miyako unexpectedly didn’t know how to speak.
Because the tone with which Yuji spoke those words was far too natural—so natural that it even gave her the illusion that it was only right and proper.
Besides…
she was just roughly imagining in her mind the scene of Yuji surpassing Hoshino Ai, making the name [Berry Pro] circulate in the industry once again.
That already numb heart in her chest began to beat violently and spinelessly once more.
Therefore, she could only speak stammeringly.
“But…
that’s the strongest idol in history, you know.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
The small child actor closed the book.
“Because I am the strongest child actor of the modern era.”
He said so.