Author: Anita
Fandom: Takarazuka RPF
Characters: Tsukishiro Kanato / Akatsuki Chisei
Genre: yuri, romance
Rating: PG
Status: complete
Summary: One night, Reiko finds a diary with the inner thoughts of someone in her troupe, and she wants to return it, but Ari stops her from leaving it in the lost-and-found and they decide to look for the owner together.
Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 (end)
Notes:
This is fully my imagination, completely unrelated to any real person it may seem to portray.
It’s 2021 and we’re still in the middle of the pandemic, but I didn’t like using it in a previous story, so I thought it was better to just ignore it. But if you’re not one of my characters and your writer hasn’t expressly authorized you, wear a mask, stay home!
I’ll be making many assumptions about life in the Takarazuka and adapting everything else for my convenience. You have other fics to read if you don’t like it.
The story takes time during the rehearsals of Ouranki/Dream Chaser. That’s more timeline than I usually give in notes but since I remembered, why not mention?
I get no profit form this aside from the happiness of finishing something for one in my life, but I do go through a lot of trouble to write, comments are always appreciated, please???
Thank you for sticking until the end of these notes, I’m writing them as I procrast revising, sorry.
Now onto the read!
Not Her Best
But Her Truest
Chapter 1
It was another late night for Reiko rehearsing in the theater. Their show was to open soon and there was just too much to really get any kind of sleep. Thus, she’d go on until she couldn’t feel her body anymore, even after most had already gone home. Having alone time in some lost room of the theater helped a lot too. Being around people could make something take forever that alone she could solve in ten minutes of intense focus. She couldn’t deny it was a little lonely, so she’d been doing it less and less, accepting the company from some other troupe mates or just going home when the building got too quiet. Yet, with the show so close, and having still so many lines she couldn’t properly remember, so many steps she’d lose the cue to, staying behind was inevitable.
As it was also inevitable to leave stuff behind in the main rehearsal room. As well as realizing it when she was about to finally step outside and go home. She wanted to go home so much, she could simply leave without it and get it back the following morning. If only it wasn’t her wallet, with her cell phone and keys… She could manage without her phone, but she didn’t think she could pick her apartment’s lock—or any lock—to save her life.
That was how Reiko ended up in the room everyone had abandoned hours before. At times, Tamaki Ryou could be found there, also doing her best not to leave any rocks standing before the opening day, but it was ridiculously late even for the top star of her troupe.
She scanned the room, trying to figure out the last time she’d had the wallet. First, she remembered playing some game with Ari, but Ari soon retreated to play a round with her juniors from the 99th and the 100th classes. Leaving Reiko to make conversation with Houzuki An, when she had already run empty of topics with her in the first week of rehearsals. She probably sweated more there than jumping around the room for choreography rehearsal.
Reiko walked around the chairs, stretching her neck to see the darker corners. The youngest girls were methodical about not forgetting their belongings, which was a habit they acquired later in the Takarazuka life, meaning she found hair pieces, a jacket and even a manga partially hidden from sight. She’d almost completed the circle of chairs when a notebook caught her eyes.
It wasn’t a computer, but a genuine stack of paper, one of the millions you could buy from Daiso or any other one-coin store of your preference. The navy-blue standard cover, however, had been smothered with star stickers and glitter and all silly things that would have worked like kryptonite to Reiko—and she’d just stepped out of the bathtub! —but they screamed “I’m precious to someone”.
“I hope your person isn’t missing you,” she said, remembering when she’d entered the theater, how important it was for her to take notes of every breath she was supposed to take. Instinctively, she recovered the notebook, curious to read her own rehearsals from a junior’s perspective but leafing through it led her to a different content. “A diary?” She frowned at the words written in a barely readable penmanship.
“…keep falling behind… no lines… look like a girl…”
She closed it before she got used to the handwriting and learned something too private. As she’d imagined, the owner was probably not one of the newbies, but someone who’d already been there for two, maybe three years, watching her generation mates get the spotlight while they were stuck with being extras. Even though she now made it to nibante and would become a top star before summer ended, she had had days like those, just like this girl’s. Sometimes, she still had. She wished she could transmit it all to this person in words she’d understand. The best course, nevertheless, would be to return the notebook to where it had been for the owner to recover it on her own.
Reiko wrinkled her nose, already seeing one of the meaner troupe members arriving early and getting their hands on this girl’s secrets just like she had.
Perhaps she’d better take it to the lost-and-found the next morning when office hours started where the box was. Satisfied with the plan, she got the notebook one more time and held it with both hands. No names had magically appeared, and the glitter now covered her as well, but at least she wouldn’t enable bullying.
A few minutes later, she also found her wallet with everything safely inside. Maybe fate had intervened through it for her to become the keeper of the anonymous junior’s thoughts.
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Despite how exhausted her body felt, Reiko could barely sleep that night. Keeping someone’s diary hung heavy in her chest and surfaced memories. They were exaggerated for the most part, when not phony, but still turned up as bad dreams in the middle of her shallow sleep.
The dream she remembered best when waking up was of all her troupe mates ganged together in front of the board to find out what part they had gotten in the upcoming shinjin kouen. She must have been in her third year, but Ari stood right by her side, on her tiptoes. Regardless of troupes—nonsensically Reiko was in the Tsukigumi—, Ari would still be a sophomore in the Music School then, not a full-fledged Takarasienne. Reiko couldn’t point out which shinjin kouen cast list this memory was supposed to be from, but it was familiar in a way she was sure some of it must have happened, she’d been in that scenario at a point in her life. In the dream, her name was cast as one of those roles that come up in a flashback for a boring line and make no difference. At first, she thought that was a step up from being no one in the last shinjin kouen—according to the information in the dream. Next thing, though, Ari starts jumping around and celebrating with her generation mates, because she had gotten the leading role.
Although Reiko was on the dawn of becoming a top star, Ari was one of those super successful Takarasiennes who people know will become top stars since the first year of Music School. The funny thing was that Reiko had never had problems with that. Even less now she’d met some of them. They were just so good she couldn’t see why they’d settled for Takarazuka in place of auditioning to be in some famous idol group. Her class was the paragon of this, and she felt the opposite of envious. She was perplexed to be one of the few top stars. Among the otokoyaku, one would usually think only two could make it, and she had actually become the third one not that much later. She didn’t doubt someone else in her class could be the fourth. After all, she hadn’t been the number three in the class back when they had had our periodical tests; they still had more capable ones with less luck than her. Hence, that dream had had no reason to exist except for how bad she felt for the notebook’s owner. The person she wanted to get to know better. But no. That could mean to embarrass the girl for self-satisfaction.
Her solution was to take the diary hidden inside an her attaché case and put it in the lost-and-found box first thing in the morning and never think of it again.
Or had been. She’d arrived too close to the time rehearsals were supposed to start, and so, she’d go there during the first break.
She’d planned to slip through the door and go there quickly, but it felt like she was in the rehearsal room center the whole time that day. She watched longingly her juniors come and go. Once she debated mouthing to Ari for her to open the case and do it on her instead, but the previous night’s dream returned to her mind, like some premonition or just a hint not to ask her. She had to do it in person.
After what had felt like years, the first morning’s session was over. Avoiding invitations to sit together for lunch, Reiko rushed out with her belongings and found the office finally open. Relieved, she opened the case while still walking and almost hit someone leaving the same office room she was about to enter.
“Reiko…san?” Ari’s eyes grew in the direction of the notebook.
Which wasn’t in her hands. Reiko had dropped it on the moment of the impact and now it lay open on the floor.
As though they were part of a sitcom, the two launched for the object and their heads met midway.
“Ouch…” Ari flinched with her hand on her forehead, eyes slightly closed.
Recovering faster than her, Reiko returned to the task and was an inch from the notebook when a sentence made her freeze: “I love her too much.” She’d also spotted her own name a few lines above, but it couldn’t be. How much of a coincidence had to happen for her to be the person this girl “loved too much” and the one to find the notes? No, it couldn’t be. And she couldn’t read any further. Even though her brain now collected each random ideogram and syllable in an attempt to predict the full content, she wasn’t going to allow more transgressions of this person’s privacy. Especially now.
“Reiko-san?”
She stared back at Ari, whom she’d forgotten about. That hurried her to close the notebook and pick it up at last. “Did you read anything, Ari-chan?” she asked but regretted doing it. The urgency in her tone denounced there was something worth reading.
“I…” Ari stammered, looking both pale and flushed.
“You did, didn’t you?” She hated herself because she’d sounded like a mother trying to corner her child into admitting she’d eaten the whole pot of sweets before dinner. “Sorry, I… Well, you can imagine why I didn’t want anyone reading it.” It was Reiko’s turn to blush. “Or maybe not, why would I write that about myself?” She forced a laughter. “It’s that it’s not mine, so…”
Ari remained silent, just waiting for her friend’s breakdown to be over.
“Sorry again,” Reiko said, feeling suddenly drained. “I found this last night and was on my way to put it in the lost-and-found. I just read that page with my name, I swear. I didn’t dare to read more yesterday when I noticed it was someone’s diary.”
At this, Ari’s expression cleared up with a bright smile. “You don’t know whose it is?”
“No idea, probably a ken-4 or 3? I don’t know the handwriting but, from the little I read, she sounded young.” She hugged the notebook when she noticed Ari’s hand move toward it. “Hey, you can’t read it,” she chastised Ari. “Don’t even joke about it.”
“I’m… sorry.” Ari hung her head down. “But if you just drop it out, won’t someone else end up reading?”
“I don’t think our troupe makes it a hobby to come to the lost-and-found for misplaced diaries. Also, you’re the only one who’s seen it but me, and you wouldn’t just wait for me to turn around and claim it, would you?”
Ari opened her mouth but said nothing, though her lips quivered.
“You wouldn’t!” Reiko answered for her adamantly. She caught herself shaking Ari by the shoulder with the hand not holding the book while stating, “You won’t go behind my back to get it.”
“Okay, okay! Just chill a little. I may have thought of it while you were talking, just as a prank, but I promise I wouldn’t invade someone else’s privacy. I admire how fervent you are about it, especially after what we just read. You swear you didn’t know that bit?”
“I really didn’t. Didn’t you see how shocked I was?” Reiko felt giddy from the absurdness of that scene. “I had no idea, but it remains that I also don’t know who she is.” She scratched her head. “I trust you, so why would it be bad to leave it in there?” Reiko nodded toward the office.
“Because… maybe…” She bit lower lip. “Her douki know about the diary and could use it against her. They might even know it’s lost because she must be looking for it everywhere, right?”
Reiko was sure not much could be worse than her crush read her confession, even misguided generation mates. “Or she could just have it back, how else would she recover it?”
“And what will you do, anyway?”
“I just told you, put it in the lost—”
“Would you give someone who like you a chance, maybe try going on a date?”
Reiko guffawed at the sudden change of focus, throwing her head back so briskly it almost hurt her neck. “A date with an unknown kid?”
Not looking a bit amused, Ari pursed her lips. “Even if she’s in love with you?”
“I don’t mean to disrespect her feelings, but it’s not like she’s declared her feelings. Even if I were willing to try anything, I have no idea who this person is. She could even be from another troupe and someone I’ve never heard of.” It was the first time the idea had come up, but the stars on the cover could mean just that.
“Say that she finds out you know her secret.”
“I didn’t mean to read it!”
“But you still found out,” she said frantically. “You now know it. Would you go out with that person?”
Reiko felt a headache coming. Talks with Ari were usually the highlight of her day, they were uplifting and made her feel brighter, more relaxed. It was true it could get intense if they hit any topic Ari was passionate about, but seeing her friend defend her points of view aggressively always made Reiko’s heart warmer. That was, perhaps, the first time butting heads with her had been a cause of stress. Was there anything about the diary that threw Reiko off to that point? Only that could explain the difference from how she’d dealt with previous arguments with Ari.
“Would you?” Ari insisted when Reiko just stood there, lost in her own head.
“I didn’t read everything there, neither did I try to understand, so she could have meant differently when she wrote that, or this could be outdated and...” Even before she finished, she knew that wouldn’t stick, when Ari had confirmed her suspicions about whom the girl loved. “Okay, you know me. I’m too old for trying to go out.”
Ari raised her eyebrows although that shouldn’t have been news. They’d been friends for years and Reiko hadn’t dated anyone in that period. She had to know how picky Reiko was with how she spent her time.
Reiko breathed in. “Ari-chan, if I already had feelings, the real thing and not just feeling the hots for her, it would be terrific. But some junior?” She scrunched her face. “We don’t have time get to know people just to see where it goes, maybe in some years.”
“Isn’t the beginning supposed to be the best part, finding out stuff about your partner, falling in love. Why would you skip it to when you’re fed up with the little mistakes?”
“That’s for when you haven’t found the right person.”
Furrowing her brows, Ari shook her head in abandon. “It’s like you’re so down to earth, you’ve already crossed to the other side of the planet and launched yourself up the stratosphere. Earth to Reiko-san.” With a final sigh, she turned on her heels and left the hallway.
Reiko stared at the notebook with a grimace. With how that had gone, she’d have to talk to Ari once more before surrendering it to the lost and found. Hopefully, the two heads could form a plan of how to return it to its owner.
To be continued.
Anita
Author Notes:
This came to be as a bet with a friend of who’d finish a Takarazuka fanfic first. I really hope this means I won because as much as I love Takarazuka, I don’t want to write another fic after having this one finished forever but procrastinating revising and publishing.
The idea came directly from a book I read some time ago and made me think, this would give a good fic, and almost forgot that until I actually needed an idea ASAP. The book is Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry, by Joya Goffney, and while it isn’t the best, it’s certainly better than anything I’ll ever write, and it’s about a girl who loses her diary, which contained various lists about her. Losing diaries or finding them is an old cliché, but I don’t think I’ve ever written them, so it was fun to try.
I hope you’re enjoying this story. Do go on and later check my other fics! I also publish everything on my site Olho Azul Fanfiction, pay me a visit!
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