The second and final special episode of Coming Closer to You: Love Line School ended with an unprecedented average viewership rating of 20%.
Of course, there was no praise for the six lead actors. Instead, all the acclaim and compliments were directed one-sidedly at Kaoru, who played Kiriyama Ryota.
Even in the second special episode, which mainly told the story of the student council president after entering university, viewers complained bitterly that it had deliberately stuffed in scenes about the six leads no one had wanted, stealing screen time from the student council president.
Of course, PD Sojiro had intentionally laid the whole thing out as part of a bigger plan, but Kaoru’s acting, which stood in stark contrast to that setup, was more than enough to carry the drama.
After the drama ended, Kaoru returned to focusing on school and the troupe, and became a celebrity at school.
Thanks to Kaoru alone, Kaisei High School Academy became the first in its 100-year history to newly pass the regulations on excused absences for students’ entertainment activities.
Even some board members who had been wary of students’ entertainment careers, worried they would distract from academics, had no choice but to acknowledge Kaoru after seeing his performance.
The school’s own elite mindset also played a part: if a student had enough academic ability to get in through the entrance exam, then there shouldn’t be a major problem.
That too was thanks to Kaoru’s unprecedented rise, maintaining a top-five rank in the entire school despite his busy acting schedule. When the press reported the bold decision made by the most prestigious high school in the Kanto region, reporters once again loitered around the school, but there was no commotion like there had been at the entrance ceremony.
“The Kamiki Kaoru Student Council President Cultivation Club.”
“...You want me to join this?”
“Yeah! We’re going to change the world!”
“Are you sick?”
In the middle of all this, Kaoru could only stare at the friends handing him a membership application for this bizarre club and ask if they were out of their minds.
Even for a school with all sorts of strange clubs, the thought flashed through Kaoru’s head that this was a bit much.
Besides, the student council president had already been elected. And since he was already busy with school and the troupe, he had no intention of joining anyway, so when he refused, the club automatically disbanded within 48 hours of being created.
“Hoho! Thank you for agreeing to the interview!”
“Not at all.”
After the drama ended, Kaoru readily accepted Hasegawa Yuno’s request for a solo interview with lon-lo.
Interview requests from other magazines poured in by the dozens, but Kaoru instead firmly accepted only lon-lo’s request.
Setting aside every other reason, he simply didn’t have time to handle all those interviews with a troupe performance right in front of him.
Hasegawa Yuno, who had successfully secured the solo interview, inwardly cheered and rushed to the troupe to conduct it, treating Kaoru with utmost(?) care.
Hasegawa Yuno already knew that the magazine featuring Kaoru’s interview before his retirement had become nearly impossible to find online, and she couldn’t pass up a chance to make the editor-in-chief eat his words.
The interview she had prepared with renewed determination ended successfully, and after taking a few photos for the magazine, it was over.
“...”
Advertisement offers also flooded in.
Clothing, food, education, cosmetics—along with them came ads on a level far beyond anything before.
In particular, thanks to Kaoru’s outstanding visuals and the advantage of still being a student, he even received an offer to model for a famous foreign shoe brand that was especially popular with teenagers.
Kaoru, who still hadn’t signed with an agency, met and communicated with advertising staff one by one, and carried his father’s seal around to sign contracts.
Even with his packed ad-shoot schedule, Kaoru’s ability to fully understand and memorize the concept and storyboard of each commercial made even the proud directors acknowledge the boy, who still wasn’t yet an adult.
As Kaoru grew even busier than the six lead actors, it became increasingly difficult for him to meet Ai, let alone the twins.
“Waaah! I miss Kaoru so much!”
“What do you want him to do? Just show up at the set out of nowhere?”
“But...”
Ai’s own schedule kept growing too, and she became so busy that she couldn’t make time to see her husband, eventually coming down with what she called Kaoru Syndrome.
According to her, if she didn’t receive Kaoru’s energy for a certain amount of time, her anxiety, restlessness, and lethargy would increase, and there was a similar syndrome called Aqua-Ruby Syndrome. Ichigo’s temples started throbbing at that nonsense.
He knew she was just talking out of longing, but she talked about Kaoru and the twins nonstop, at every opportunity, until he was sick of hearing it.
In the end, at Ichigo’s complaints, Kaoru had no choice but to make more effort to soothe her, sending text messages to Ai’s private phone more often than before.
The New Year came and time passed. Even after finding Goro’s remains, Kaoru’s fame continued to rise, and he began to be careful even about going to the Saito family home.
- I’ve got a few reporters tailing me. I don’t think I’ll be able to see you for a while. I told the president too, but you should be careful as well. As always, delete this message as soon as you read it.
- Okay. Got it. I’ll text Kaoru if anything happens. Love you ♥
During a break in the booth for her radio assistant schedule, Ai saw the text Kaoru had sent, immediately replied, and then deleted it.
Worry and unease rose again in her star-bright eyes.
Two years ago, how much trouble had they gone through because of a reporter secretly following them and taking pictures?
Ai was so frightened of reporters stalking them and invading their privacy that just hearing the word “reporter” made her tense up on instinct.
But if it was Kaoru... he would do well. Ai decided to trust Kaoru’s extraordinary ability. He might even end up making the reporters miserable right in front of them.
And Ai’s hunch was exactly right.
“Ha, I’ve never seen him go in or out of the house.”
“He’s not a ninja, but this is the first time I’ve seen someone this elusive. Seriously. Is he teleporting?”
“Going to school. Going out to exercise. Going out for schedules. I’ve been waiting in front of his house for two weeks now, and that’s all I’ve managed to catch.”
Kaoru, who kindly gave the stakeout reporters a taste of their own medicine, moved so mysteriously and unpredictably that it felt like he was humiliating them on purpose.
He would ride in a sedan with the windows heavily tinted so no one could see inside, only to shake off the reporters tailing him by blending into a crowd in an instant, slipping into an alley he had memorized in advance and vaulting over a wall, or even climbing onto the back of a truck carrying trash and hiding there to throw off their line of sight. He gave them a spicy taste of CIA-style surveillance.
The reporters even saw Kaoru not enter the house for three days straight while the lights inside kept turning on as usual—
“What the hell is that? Didn’t they say he went to a commercial shoot today?”
“...”
They were so terrified by this unprecedented fear that goosebumps rose all over them. Their hands, gripping telephoto cameras, shook uncontrollably.
Only belatedly did the thought occur to them that he might already know they were staking him out, but by then it was too late. Kaoru already had them in the palm of his hand.
In the end, the reporters, who had gained nothing by the time spring arrived, raised both hands and both feet in surrender and abandoned their coverage of Kaoru altogether.
Once the reporters disappeared, Kaoru spent another week carefully observing the Saito family residence, and after confirming there was nothing suspicious, he was finally able to see the twins’ faces again for the first time in about two months.
“Papa! Papa! Hehe!”
“...Papa.”
“Aqua! Ruby!”
The twins, who had somehow recognized the sound of Kaoru’s footsteps and come out to the entrance to greet him, toddled over and clung to him.
At the long-awaited reunion, Kaoru bent his knees, soothed the sting in his nose, and smiled brightly as he lifted the twins into his arms and stood up.
With Ruby in his left arm and Aqua in his right, Kaoru kept kissing the babies’ cheeks as if trying to make up for all the kisses he hadn’t been able to give them.
When would he be able to meet Ai and the twins in peace, and build a complete family?
To do that, he would first have to become an adult... and even if he had to reveal all his secrets and be pointed at by the public, he desperately needed an agency that would protect, guard, and manage the safety of himself and his family.
With work piling up and his schedule getting busier, it was becoming too much for Kaoru to handle alone.
“...”
Like a hunter targeting prey, Kaoru decided to go find a friendly(?) agency that would become his prey instead.
-
< Astronier Promotion signs Murata Jun, one of the “10 actors leading the next generation”... >
【 ...Accordingly, due to a contract dispute with the existing agency, Astronier Promotion paid the penalty fee on their behalf and signed Murata Jun.... 】
- I’m sorry, sir. Something personal has come up, so I don’t think I can keep coming to work. Thank you for everything. Please, my salary until next month...
Murakami Rentaro, the president, team leader, manager... and now even accountant of the actor agency Stani-On, felt the emptiness of life.
He knew. This was how life was. The biology of existence, the system of this industry, even the obvious rules about people’s perceptions of the world.
He knew all of it, and he knew perfectly well that things always worked this way.
Damn it.
The precious talent he had personally fed and raised, handing out business cards until he got athlete’s foot, entertaining clients, and even being mocked by a PD for not being able to play golf—someone he had gritted his teeth and nurtured with all his heart.
He had even handled the aftermath himself and barely managed to contain the situation when a problem nearly exploded over a woman he had met through a secret account while already having a girlfriend.
And now, after a single sharp warning, that same person had taken offense, repaid kindness with betrayal in an instant, and walked away after throwing him some petty penalty fee.
What was he supposed to do about this goddamn situation?
He knew. This was how life was. He had already known it when the law team—the bastard lawyers they had brought along—kept throwing around difficult legal jargon and trying to talk him out of going to court.
He knew perfectly well that this was a filthy, goddamn world where the rich screwed over the less rich and the wealthy stabbed the poor in the back.
To him, who still held close to his heart the childish dream of raising a “great actor,” the kind of pure dream only fools who wet their pants could nurture, this world was still far too harsh and cruel.
At 33, still unmarried, without even a proper home, he had been barely hanging on by pouring the company’s deficit into his own savings, sweat and blood, and now he was about to come up short even on this month’s office rent.
- I’ve read the presentation you sent. I’d like to meet you. When would be a good time?
“T-thhff?! T-thaah?! Taaaarrrgh!”
Kamiki Kaoru.
Anyone in the entertainment industry would agree he was a rising star in the acting world.
Among the dozens to hundreds of actors who poured out every year—and when you included the small, hard-to-track theater world, the thousands—only a handful of true geniuses survived.
A boy already known in the theater world as a “must-watch actor,” despite his young age, with the backstory that PD Matsushige Sojiro had personally cast him off the street because he was such an oddball.
The unprecedented monster who had retired after the noisy false dating rumor incident, then returned following the death of his twin sibling and single-handedly drove Coming Closer to You: Love Line School up to a 20% rating.
Major agencies had rushed at him one after another to snatch him up, but the result was total defeat.
Even though he was still underage, he read contracts carefully like the honor student from a prestigious high school he was, rejected them if he found toxic clauses inserted by industry custom, or refused the contract outright if the company’s internal customs, atmosphere, or actor-management system didn’t suit him.
The rumor that top-five agencies in the industry, such as Astronier Promotion and On-Kind, had all been turned down after taking away their blood, sweat, and tears in the form of actors was already old news.
He remembered conversations he had heard at nearby restaurants, where industry people sneered that “the kid thinks the world is too easy,” but that only made Rentaro more determined.
That monster, who had been working alone without even an entertainment agency, had sent him a message directly after seeing the dozens of pages of company introduction PPT he had spent several sleepless nights making and emailing in the faint hope of reaching him.
Let’s meet and talk.
To Rentaro, that message felt like a rope lowered from heaven.
He had to succeed. If he succeeded, he would live, and the company would live.
From what he had heard, this was the first time the actor had ever requested a meeting himself, so perhaps there was hope.
Stay calm. If he stayed calm, he could survive!
Murakami Rentaro frowned hard at the dark phone screen, trying to force strength into his naturally weak-looking face and make himself appear more imposing.
Remembering the proverb from the neighboring country that said you could survive even if you entered a tiger’s den as long as you kept your wits about you, Rentaro confirmed the beautiful, powerfully built boy entering the café and sprang up from his chair.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Kamiki Kaoru.”
“Ah, yes. Y-yes! I’m, uh, M-Murakami Rentaro—kweh!”
His resolve exploded in glorious fashion with a tongue-bite brought on by excessive nerves.
He was screwed.
Rentaro, who had ruined his first impression from the start, went completely blank.
It was a disaster caused by excessive stress and pressure from meeting the actor who was heating up the Japanese entertainment world, someone he had only ever seen in the media.
“Yes. You’re the president of Stani-On, right?”
“Y-yes. Please, sit, sit. Your drink should be coming soon.”
Rentaro took a business card from his wallet and handed it respectfully to Kaoru.
“Thank you.”
Blue, transparent eyes that seemed like jewels made from seawater, carrying a detached coolness. Neatly arranged blond hair shining like the brilliant sun. A sharply cut nose bridge and a sleek jawline.
Unlike his face, which was beautiful without a single blemish despite being that of an adolescent boy, his body was solid and well-built.
Even while sweating coldly from nerves, Rentaro observed Kaoru’s visuals and aura with the sharp eye of an industry veteran.
Seeing him in person, Rentaro could feel a power that bound people’s hearts, even though the boy was more than ten years younger than him.
Wiping the cold sweat from his forehead with his right hand, Rentaro gave an awkward smile and tried to ease the mood.
“Th-the weather is... a little hot, isn’t it? Haha!”
He didn’t know that the only person who looked hot in this café was Rentaro himself. Kaoru simply answered with a faint smile on his expressionless face.
“Did you come by train?”
“Yes.”
“I heard you have a motorcycle license...”
“Yes.”
“...”
Fortunately, the coffee they had ordered arrived right then, and Rentaro sipped his iced Americano while watching Kaoru carefully.
Already, his shattered self-esteem from one bad break after another kept making him shrink inward.
There was a rope in front of him that could save his life, and he absolutely could not let it go. Rentaro bit his lip, steadied his trembling breathing so Kaoru wouldn’t notice, and took several pages of the company introduction he had personally made from his briefcase to show him.
“Th-this is our company Stani-On’s vision and history. We’re still small, but we had actors with solid acting ability and careers, and our reputation in the industry kept growing year by year...”
“I saw the news.”
Kaoru set down the coffee cup he had been holding and spoke in a cold voice. He neatly placed the introduction materials Rentaro had handed him on the table, then looked directly at Rentaro with a cold, corporate-hunter stare.
“...Pardon?”
Under that piercing gaze, Rentaro felt his heart drop. He fell silent, then barely managed to ask back in a strained voice. Cold sweat poured from every pore in his body, and he could hardly think straight.
The balance of power had reversed, and the atmosphere had suddenly become like a pressure interview.
Kaoru continued without caring.
“The news that Astronier Promotion signed one of your company’s most promising actors. I already know about it. If you were in my position, would you trust the vision written in this introduction?”
“I... well...”
“What I’m curious about isn’t the vision. You already know how this industry works, don’t you, sir?”
He knew. He knew it all too well.
Rentaro could say nothing in response to Kaoru’s words and could only bite his lip.
Money, connections, the quality of the actors you had under you. It was exactly like the sports market.
With more capital, you could run the company however you wanted, bring in actors, and aggressively market them. With the connections built on top of that, you could win jobs and send your actors out to put faces in front of the media.
The actors you raised that way would, through the cycle of evaporated water gathering to form rain clouds, become the company’s cash cow all over again.
Just as one huge player nurtured from their prospect days, or a few well-acquired ones, could lead an entire team and directly affect its win rate, one successful actor raised by an agency—or a few well-signed ones—became the company’s face and brought in enormous profits.
There were enough agencies closing down because they didn’t have even one such actor.
And soon, Stani-On was very likely to meet the same fate.
Unable to give a separate explanation, Rentaro’s panic was obvious, so Kaoru lifted his coffee again, took a sip, and went on.
“After reading the introduction you sent by email, I didn’t think you were the kind of person who would let an actor like Murata Jun be taken away helplessly for a few penalty fees if you truly struggled with managing your roster.”
“...”
“I’d like a more detailed explanation so I can trust you a little more.”
Rentaro swallowed dryly. The logical way the boy spoke, the atmosphere he carried, the reversed relationship between superior and subordinate, and the lingering old attachment from being stabbed in the back all made it hard to open his mouth.
“A detailed explanation is...”
“If that’s all you can explain, then I can only form that same level of prejudice about you. I invested my time to come here too. If you’re wronged, then complain that you’re wronged.”
Kaoru’s merciless prodding made emotion surge up in Rentaro. He clenched both fists hard under the table.
Holding back the boiling rage in his chest with all his strength, Rentaro said in a trembling voice, “It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to say that I barely managed to cover up a problem caused by a woman I met through a secret account while hiding it from my girlfriend, like I was wiping up shit. This business is full of all kinds of things. I can’t explain every little thing one by one with my own mouth, can I?”
Looking at the anger and frustration in Rentaro’s eyes, Kaoru still kept his detached, cold expression and took another sip from his coffee cup before speaking.
“Why did you go that far? It’s just a contract relationship anyway. Wasn’t it a one-sided relationship, simply dealing with the only source of income at a small agency?”
“Because I raised them! Once I formed a bond with someone, I thought it was right to take responsibility all the way to the end... even if people called me a sucker for it, I thought that was the proper duty of a representative. Winning jobs matters, of course. Paying the actors and staff matters too, obviously. Being good at entertaining clients on golf courses matters too, of course.
But more than that, I thought the most important thing was caring for and managing the actors under me so they wouldn’t have a hard time, so they wouldn’t give up. That’s been my creed ever since I quit my old job and started this company, you know?
I believed that if I did well first, everything else would follow. I’ve come this far on that one belief. But... but...”
Rentaro felt deep disappointment and self-loathing at the sight of himself, a pathetic adult floundering in frustration and depression in front of a boy more than ten years younger than him.
How could he earn trust from a representative who couldn’t even persuade one actor and was showing such a pitiful side?
He knew it. He already knew. He was the fool who had no business running a company in the first place, someone who had wasted his life chasing a single dream he kept tucked away in his heart like an idiot.
No matter how well he wrote a company introduction like this, reality wouldn’t change. Once Kaoru stepped out of the café, the miserable reality that he couldn’t even pay the agency rent would once again seize his throat and not let go.
Kamiki Kaoru was not the kind of talent that belonged in a place like this. He wasn’t a boy who should be under someone with only this much ability.
“I’m sorry. You made time despite being busy... but I don’t think I’m the kind of person who can earn Kamiki’s trust. I’ll cover the expenses.”
Feeling sorry for the boy who had come all this way trusting Stani-On and its representative, Rentaro forced a smile through watery eyes and gathered the introduction materials on the table.
But Kaoru quietly took a pen from inside his jacket and spoke.
“You said you value and care for your actors more than yourself. Can you promise that?”
At Kaoru’s calm demand for a clear answer, Rentaro stared blankly at the boy for a moment, then came to his senses and asked back, “Pardon?”
“No matter what crisis comes, you’ll think of the actor first. Can you promise that, no matter what scandal or accident happens, even if an actor suddenly reveals that they had a child under their care and both the actor and the entire company are put in danger of being finished, you’ll protect them to the end?”
“...”
Rentaro stared at Kaoru’s blue eyes, still holding the introduction materials in both hands.
The emotion of trust that had appeared in the boy’s eyes for the first time. It was not a lie.
The question was whether, as an industry person, he could trust and protect an actor in any situation.
Only then did the realization strike Rentaro, sending a tingling sensation up the back of his neck.
From the beginning, the size of the agency or formal contract terms like revenue splits were not the important thing.
Those were merely smoke screens. Smoke screens meant to throw off people who mistook him for nothing more than a goose that laid golden eggs and came running with their mouths watering.
Kamiki Kaoru, more than anyone else, wanted human trust that could never be filled by the legal force of a contract.
His hands tightened around the introduction materials, crumpling the pages with a rustle.
In this merciless world, he wasn’t the only one appealing to such outdated feelings. Murakami Rentaro was not alone.
At the faint, electric surge of exhilaration rushing through him, Rentaro let out a snort of laughter.
Like a boy who did not have weak eyes, but instead carried a grand dream he would surely achieve one day.
Meeting Kaoru’s blue eyes, where a red starlight was beginning to bloom, Rentaro nodded with a firm resolve that had replaced all traces of his former weakness and said, “Yes. I promise.”
At Rentaro’s answer, Kaoru’s blue eyes, which had been full of nothing but coldness, warmed with a smile as he quietly uncapped his pen.
“The contract. May I have it?”
“Huh?!”
At the boy’s unexpected acceptance, Rentaro bit his tongue again and finally could not bear the pain any longer, bursting into tears.
-
Time passed quickly again.
A tense filming set.
Kaoru waited silently for the director’s cue.
“Good. Scene number 212. Ready! Action!”
“...Please just die, Father.”
“Ghk! Mmph?!”
Kaoru, gripping the fallen co-star’s mouth with his right hand, spoke in an indifferent voice.
“If you’ve become useless, then disappearing is only natural.”
“Hmph?!”
So chilling was Kaoru’s voice, impossible to tell whether it was sincere or false, that it drove straight into the other actor’s heart like a dagger.
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