After the audition was over, Minami Yuji slung his small backpack onto his shoulders and headed alone in the direction of the parking lot.
He looked up.
Today’s sunlight was a touch harsh on the eyes.
He raised a hand.
In the summer sky above—
—white contrails trailed long streaks across the open air.
Minami Yuji let out a small sigh.
Reality really wasn’t a TV drama or an anime, after all — you couldn’t have every single thing go your way.
But…
it was fine, he supposed.
He set his feet moving again.
The pickup spot he’d agreed on with his agent was right around here.
By the time of day, the other party ought to have already arrived.
“Minami Yuji!!!”
A voice suddenly rang out from behind him.
Hm?
Minami Yuji turned his head reflexively.
At some point he hadn’t noticed, a figure had come to stand not far behind him.
It was Arima Kana.
She had probably jogged the whole way over.
She was panting just a little.
Minami Yuji was somewhat surprised.
“What are you doing here?”
“I…” Arima Kana opened her mouth, mumbling, seeming a touch self-conscious: “I came looking for you…”
“That’s exactly what I’m asking about.” Minami Yuji blinked his eyes.
“Why are you so invested in what’s going on with me?”
If Arima Kana approaching him earlier had been her wanting to thank him for the heads-up he’d given her some days back—
—well, she’d already finished expressing that thanks to him.
Wasn’t that enough?
Did she and he have any reason left to keep up an association going forward?
At the end of the day, he wasn’t exactly some red-hot popular koyaku.
He spoke his reasoning out loud.
What he hadn’t expected, however, was that Arima Kana would instead widen those wine-red eyes of hers and look at him as though he were the strange one.
“What does that have to do with whether you’re a red-hot koyaku or not?
I came looking for you because I wanted to talk to you.”
A very simple answer.
But it abruptly made Minami Yuji realize something.
He’d seemingly been looking at every problem through an adult’s mindset this whole time.
Adults were a rather narrow-minded sort of creature.
Always weighing success against failure, always tallying gains against losses.
But for a child like Arima Kana…
where in this world were there really all that many successes and failures, gains and losses?
If you wanted to talk to someone, then you just went ahead and talked to them — no reason needed, and no need to weigh out any kind of profit or loss.
A sudden sense of clarity opened up inside him.
It would seem an anime heroine wasn’t, in fact, quite as universally troublesome as he’d imagined.
So he gave a smile and spoke up, pointing at the steps beside them: “Sit down and chat for a bit?”
“…Okay.”
Taking out the handkerchief she carried with her, Arima Kana laid it down on the step and sat herself down.
After a silent stretch, Arima Kana’s voice beside him suddenly piped up again.
“Yu…
Minami Yuji, don’t you feel sore about it?” Her voice took a very unnatural little detour midway through.
“Ahh — that, huh.
If you really pressed me on it, yeah, I am a bit sore about it.”
Minami Yuji considered himself a fairly broad-minded sort of person.
But he had, after all, put in the work.
And in the end, not getting any kind of payoff for it — that really did leave him feeling a bit sore.
“Right?!”
A hat bobbed cheerfully in front of his eyes.
Arima Kana had clearly gotten interested too, her babyish little face leaning in of its own accord.
Hmph!
Just you wait!
The next time I co-star with him, I’m going to teach him a serious lesson, and get you a little payback while I’m at it — OWWW!!!”
Arima Kana clutched her forehead, looking up with tear-brimmed eyes at Minami Yuji, who had just pulled his flicking finger away from her brow.
“What did you do that for…?”
“Don’t go doing something stupid like that.” He felt a bit speechless and drew his hand back.
“What do you mean, ‘stupid’?!
That backdoor-dealing guy did all that to you!
Are you really able to just put up with it?!”
Arima Kana’s tone was rather heavy.
She couldn’t begin to understand why Minami Yuji would even stop her.
Clearly, that guy was basically—
“Backdoor dealings are backdoor dealings; Kobayashi Takaki is Kobayashi Takaki.”
Minami Yuji waved his hand.
Kobayashi Takaki was just a little boy of around eight years old.
What did an eight-year-old kid even know about ‘backdoor dealings’?
The ones actually running things were the capital backing him from behind the scenes.
Can’t go up against the capital backing the other side, so as a result you take it out on an eight-year-old boy?
Tch…
After all, he had lived through two lifetimes — he really couldn’t bring himself to do something like that.
And more importantly than that—
“Isn’t work pretty important to you, Arima?”
Minami Yuji’s voice rose.
Sitting at the edge of the steps, Arima Kana froze, then lifted her head — and caught sight of Minami Yuji’s face just in time.
It was still that same calm expression.
Those dignified, crystal-clear eyes were fixed on her without so much as a blink.
Yes.
In the original story, Arima Kana’s popularity would begin sliding downhill from this point forward, her work offers would dwindle further and further, the mother who hoped to see her become a star would grow more and more on edge with each passing day, and in the end, her father — unable to take any more of his wife’s neuroticism — would have an affair, and the once-intact family would fall apart because of it.
So work offers, for the Arima Kana of right now, ought to be enormously important.
Making a scene on a filming site, bullying a fellow koyaku working the same set — that would only further drag down the industry’s evaluation of the ‘Arima Kana’ brand name.
As a reliable adult, he couldn’t — and wouldn’t ever — let his own affairs drag Arima Kana down with him.
That would be an extremely irresponsible thing to do.
Just as Minami Yuji was about to say something more—
—a voice abruptly rang out.
“Hold on a sec!
First, turn your face that way over there!”
“Hm?” The out-of-nowhere demand left Minami Yuji blanking for a moment.
Still, he did as Arima Kana asked and turned his face toward the other direction.
Meanwhile, Arima Kana brushed the strands of hair by her ear upward while simultaneously clamping a hand over her own mouth.
The reason was simple.
Because if she didn’t do this—
—she was afraid she really might suddenly leap to her feet and start spinning around in circles out of sheer delight.
What was this?
What was this?!
This guy—
This guy was actually this cute?!!!
On the surface earlier he’d looked all reluctant, his whole face like he didn’t want to talk to her at all!!
But it turns out…
it turns out his whole head was full of nothing but thinking about me?!
Not wanting to drag me down, thinking things through for my sake — this basically counts as a love confession already, doesn’t it?
The mere-eight-year-old Arima Kana did not actually understand what ‘love confessions’ or ‘liking someone’ really meant.
The only thing she did understand was this.
Right now, she really, really wanted to laugh.
But—
Can’t laugh!
Can’t laugh! Follow the newest chapters on novelping.com.
Arima Kana!
The more it’s a moment like this, the more you have to keep your usual composure!
She made an effort to settle her own feelings down.
And then—
—she turned her head and spoke in a tone of carefully feigned indifference.
“Eh…
so that’s how it is…”
“Yeah…
hm?
What’s with that expression on your face?”
Minami Yuji, who had been about to answer her, was somewhat taken aback.
Because the Arima Kana in front of him had an expression that was just way too weird.
The corners of her mouth were twitching wildly while her eyebrows were jammed down hard, which left that adorable baby-fat little face of hers looking especially ‘strained.’
Still…
Whatever.
Minami Yuji raised his head and looked over.
At this moment, a black advertising vehicle emblazoned with the lettering ‘Northern’ was parked just outside the lot — that was exactly the car the Northern Koyaku Agency had sent to pick him up.
Brushing the dust off his pants, he stood up.
After all, he didn’t have that Japanese habit of carrying a handkerchief around with him — that thing was purely a tissue you could get a few extra uses out of, and once it got dirty you still had to wash it.
A massive pain.
It had to be said — Arima Kana really was a proper, qualified koyaku.
Although she felt a bit reluctant to part, she still stood up, the index fingers of both hands poking against each other bit by bit: “Um…
Minami Yuji.”
“Hm?”
“It’s, um…
that…”
She fidgeted as she spoke.
Through the course of this exchange, she had more or less worked out a little bit of Minami Yuji’s personality, and figured out there were certain things he probably couldn’t bring himself to say.
So this time, she’d be the one to—
“Later on…
can we chat like this again?”
She drew in a deep breath and let the words out.
Then, those wine-red eyes shining with sparkling light, she looked toward Minami Yuji.
Come on~ come on~ hurry up and say yes!
After all, this is an invitation from your beloved Arima Kana, you know!
Accept it with gratitude in your heart!
She thought to herself, blissfully pleased.
And then—
“That’s probably gonna be a bit tough, actually.
I might not stay a koyaku.”
Minami Yuji rubbed his chin as he gave the reply.
For him, this ought to count as a fairly ordinary answer.
But the very next moment, a voice came exploding right next to his ear.
“Ehhh—?!!!”
“…Your voice is way too loud, Arima.” Minami Yuji sucked in a sharp ‘hiss’ of a breath — for that one instant just now, he had genuinely felt as if his eardrums were about to blow out.
“Why?!”
But Arima Kana paid not the slightest mind to his thoroughly fed-up expression.
She just gripped him with both hands and shook Minami Yuji back and forth with all her strength.
Right.
Why?
What was this about not staying a koyaku?
This…
if you converted it into a novel plot, wouldn’t it be like only just writing out an opening story tied to the cover heroine and then suddenly jumping straight to the ending?!
And besides — wasn’t your entire head supposed to be full of thinking about me?!
Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to drag me down?
How did this suddenly turn into a wild plot-twist development?!
Come to think of it, hasn’t pretty much everything been going wrong for her lately?
Just who in the world is persecuting her, anyway?!