𝒩ᴼᵂ 𝒫ᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : ❝ 𝒮ᴬʸ 𝒴ᴱˢ 𝓉ᴼ 𝐻ᴱᴬⱽᴱᴺ ❞ 𝒷ᵞ 𝐿ᴬᴺᴬ 𝒹ᴱᴸ 𝑅ᴬʸ
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
ɪ'ᴠᴇ ɢᴏᴛ ᴍʏ ᴇʏᴇ ᴏɴ ʏᴏᴜ
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ʀᴜʙʏ ᴅᴇᴄɪᴅᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ best place to talk to Melt would be at a café with a private room. She got there first and waited for Melt, who came soon after. He looked a little nervous about being there, and she couldn't say she blamed him. If it was her, she'd be nervous too. She hadn't been the friendliest to him, but she had to change that now.
"You made it!" she said with the warmest smile she could. "I was starting to worry you wouldn't show up."
Melt didn't reply as he sat in the chair across from her. Again, she couldn't really blame him.
"Did you want something?" he eventually asked.
"Oh, right, yeah." She looked around the room, hoping it might make him feel a little more comfortable that she wasn't focusing on him. "You know how we're who the fans want to see, right?"
"Yes..."
"But we can't really say we talked for five seconds on the set of Sweet Today and hated each other from then on."
"It's more like you hate me..."
"I don't hate you."
He blinked several times, his eyebrows furrowing. "You act like it."
"When you have an actor for a brother," she said, smug, "then you get some acting skills rubbed off on you. "Anyway, saying the truth will disappoint the fans. That means we have to come up with a backstory for us. I would've tried to come up with it myself, but I thought it'd be best for you to know, too."
He nodded. "What do you have in mind?"
Ruby bit her lip. "Childhood friends? People think we might've known each other when we were kids thanks to my music video. Also, Mem-Cho thinks 'Rusa' is your nickname for me, so maybe we can go on that. I don't know where it would've come from, though..."
Melt pointed to her. "Your eyes. They're ruby, aren't they? It's a mix of your stage name and your eye-colour. If you don't want your real name to be public...you can say you always liked the name Sarina or something."
She completely forgot about her eyes. Thank God, Ai named her after her eyes, just like Aqua! "Okay! But does that mean I need a nickname for you?"
He shrugged. "If you want."
If Ruby got her nickname because of her eyes...then maybe the same could be said for Melt. She squinted at his dark yellow eyes, trying to think of a way to combine yellow with Melt. "How about...Mellow?"
The look on his face was enough of an answer.
"Yelt? Yelmel? Melyel? Eltow? That sounds like 'elbow.' Elbow?"
"Why would I want to be called Elbow?"
"I don't know!"
"No offence...but you're horrible at this."
"I'm trying...!" How come Melt got the chance to give her a nickname like Rusa? Did she need a chance like that?
Melt held his hands up before she could continue. "You know what, you can think of a nickname later. Right now, how about we think of our 'childhood' together?"
"Okay! Umm..." This was harder than she thought...
After a few minutes of silent thinking, Melt ducked his head, looking at his hands. His voice was lower when he said, "How about you started hating me after I started getting an ego?"
"Like how you acted during Sweet Today?" She meant it to be a genuine question, but she quickly added, "No offence."
He nodded and didn't add anything.
Something told Ruby she shouldn't question any further, but she still asked, "Why did you get an ego?"
"Because I look pretty. Didn't have to work hard. Got scouted. The usual stuff..." Despite how quiet he was, she was, she could hear the shame in his voice.
She told herself she should probably stop, but her mouth moved on its own. "When did that start happening?"
His voice got even quieter. "Back in middle school. I guess I already knew I was good-looking...," something flashed in his eyes as he paused, and he quickly shook his head and said, "The point is, I got an ego in middle school and started bullying people. That's reason enough for you to hate me."
Ruby wanted to keep asking questions but decided that was enough of it. Something in his eyes begged her to accept it and move on, and who was she to keep asking?
"Okay," she said instead. "We can pretend like we went to different schools growing up. I heard about the bullying, confronted you about it, but your ego got in the way. We got into a big fight, everything went crazy, and our friendship broke apart. But, after all these years" —she smiled— "I can start to see you've changed. I'm still thinking of our past friendship, but I'm also hesitant to start a friendship with you again."
Melt's eyes lit up. "We can say you feel like there's no fixing our friendship at this point, but I still feel like we can."
"Good idea! So, after the recent baking video, how about I start acting a little friendlier to you? And then I become more as the episodes go on!"
"And then by the end, we're almost back to where we were!" His smile showed the same enthusiasm she was feeling. "Maybe we can convince Director Kaburagi to make us finally becoming friends again one of the last scenes of our season?"
"We won't need to convince him, because the fans already want that scene for the very last one! We just have to do our part, and boom! We're still the face of our season even after it ended!" She held up her hand for a high five, and he returned it.
Her smile grew wider. "You're actually fun to be around, Melt! I didn't think I'd ever want to be your friend after how mean I saw you act during Sweet Today!"
"You're fun to be around, too." His smile dimmed. "Just to be sure... You don't actually hate me, right?"
"Of course not." Ruby's face hardened. "It's obvious we're the weakest ones in the cast, Melt. Unlike everyone else, we barely have any experience to back us up. We were bound to be the ones cast aside if we didn't have something that made us interesting. I was planning to come up with some mysterious backstory for Sarina, not me, when you walked in. I guess I improvised a new plan and decided to make it so we had a mysterious past—even though we actually only talked to each other for five seconds. And now look at us. We're the faces of our season, and our 'past' is making more people into the show. Even getting people to ship us made us get more attention. This was the only way I thought of that would've made us both get the attention we otherwise wouldn't have."
"Why didn't you tell me after we filmed the first episode, though? You also kept acting like you hated me before and after we filmed an episode."
"After watching you perform on Sweet Today, I figured I might as well be the one acting. Also, someone once told me it was easier to act when you kept doing it. If you keep acting like someone, then you'll easily become that person. That's why I think of Ruby and Sarina as two different people. Ruby is who I am now, and Sarina is who I am when I have to act like an idol."
"Okay, so..." Melt held out his hand. "Friends?"
Ruby took his hand and shook it. "Friends."
. . .
ᴘᴇᴏᴘʟᴇ ꜰᴇʟʟ ɪɴ love with Sarina and Melt's growing friendship. It felt like the show was trying to get them to spend more one-on-one time while filming for more of the views, but Sarina did her best to keep them from spending too much time together. The others needed their time to shine too.
For a few more episodes, everything was going great. It wasn't until an episode where they made arts and crafts where things went wrong—and not between Sarina and Melt.
"How did you make that?" Yuki asked Melt. They had partnered up after finding out they both liked making origami, but it felt like they were in a silent competition to see who could make the better one.
Melt had made a cat origami with black paper, standing upright with its own tail. "My grandma taught me. She liked origami a lot, and she taught me how to make a lot of things like this before she passed away."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"It's okay. We weren't the closest anyway. We only got along because we both liked origami."
Sarina, on the other hand, was with Mem-Cho, and they were having fun with painting. Neither of them were artists, but no one was expecting them to be.
Mem-Cho pointed to Sarina's painting. "That doesn't look like a dog."
To be fair, it looked like a big blob of brown, but she wasn't about to let her "painting" get insulted. She pointed to Mem-Cho's painting of a flower that looked like a constipated cat. "That doesn't look like a flower."
"At least I tried!"
"I tried too, you know."
Nobuyuki and Kengo were partners too, trying to draw something together. The only one who wasn't in a group was Akane, who just did whatever she felt like. Sarina tried to invite her to join her and Mem-Cho, but she gave her a look and pushed her away.
She didn't know what that was about, but she wasn't sure if she should ask.
Just before filming was over, Melt handed Sarina the cat. "Remember that cat we saw after we met up after school?"
They were used to the other bringing up random "memories" they had. It was all improv after. "The one that got stuck in the tree?"
"That one, yeah! I remembered getting scratched by it after helping it, and you were laughing even though you tried to help me. I would've destroyed this cat origami for revenge, but I already did that a lot. You can have it if you want it. Maybe it can be good luck for when your music video finally gets posted tonight."
She accepted it, smiling. "Now I feel bad I didn't make anything for you..."
"It's fine, really. Having you as my friend again is more than enough."
Melt had definitely gotten better at acting since Sweet Today.
Filming was basically done, and Sarina felt as tired as ever. Still, she kept her act on as she talked to her other costars about how the show would be over soon. She couldn't focus on the conversations, though; not when she couldn't help but notice Akane standing by herself alone at a noticeable distance from the others.
She made her way out of a conversation with Nobuyuki to approach Akane. "Hi, Akane. I like your nails."
Akane lifted her head and smiled, but it looked force. "Thank you. Yuki did them."
"They're beautiful." They really were. They matched her eyes perfectly, and the heart charms on them stood out in the right way. "Did Yuki do them recently?"
"Why?"
Sarina shrugged. "I hope you don't mind me asking, but you were by yourself a lot during filming. Maybe you wanted to keep them the way they are now. That being said, you also seemed to be mad at me when I asked if you wanted to paint with Mem-Cho and I. Did I do something? Whatever it is, I'm sorry."
Akane looked away. She opened her mouth to say something, but it changed to, "Sarina... Do you pity me?"
She tilted her head. "Pardon me?"
Akane turned to her with flashing eyes. "Do you pity me, Sarina? Is that why you're with me when you're not around Melt?"
Sarina took a step back, her eyes widening. "What do you mean...?"
"You know what I mean..." Hurt flashed through her eyes, and she covered her mouth and looked away.
Sarina tried to think of something to say, but nothing could come out. All she could think of doing was try to comfort her, putting a hand on her shoulder and saying, "Akane—"
"Leave me alone!"
Pain was what she felt when Akane's hand pressed against her face. She stumbled back, pressing her fingers to her cheek. She felt a cut, and when she looked at her fingers, they were stained with blood.
Others were starting to crowd them, but she could only focus on Akane. Frozen Akane who looked like she committed a crime. It was clear what the Internet would think.
Sarina put on the most comforting smile she could. "Akane, it's okay. It's just a little cut. Nothing a bandage wouldn't fix. Please don't cry."
Akane stepped back when she took a step forward. Tears shined against her blue eyes, her breathing quickening. Then, she ran off.
"Akane!" Sarina started to run after her, but someone had gotten stuff to help with her cut. She pushed them off and ran after her, but Akane had already disappeared.
Sarina could only pray the Internet wouldn't be too mean to her.