Chapter Text
"Fufu, indeed, indeed. Thank you, chat." Rui couldn't help but chuckle as his eyes skimmed through the quick messages on the screen.
Tonight was a surprise stream. He didn't announce it beforehand, but his viewer count was still rather similar to what he usually gets.
Rui isn't a small streamer, nor is he a big streamer. He's mediocre in terms of numbers, but he genuinely couldn't care less about that. He started only streaming around the time when he started going to college.
He never really went to school like others his age, Rui applied for the distance schooling program at a prestigious Tokyo university. Unsurprisingly, he got in. There's a reason he has been called a genius all his life after all.
That was around the time his mental health started getting better after high school and middle school.
That was a difficult time for him. Middle school and junior high were filled with constant bullying and mocking from his peers. At some point, Rui's mother grew tired of her son constantly coming home with bruises and fake smiles, so she contacted the school. The response they got back was that the administration can't do anything about it, however, they did propose distance learning. Rui's mother wasn't too keen on the idea, but when she saw her son's hopeful expression, she didn't really have a choice.
And since then Rui started not leaving his room at all. Why should he, after all? All he needed was in his room. His computer, his tools, his sketchbooks, his scripts, and other books, the only thing he might leave his room for is to either use the bathroom or to get some food, but that was also optional.
But even away from school, people found ways to tell Rui what they think about him. In one particularly bad instance, Rui’s window was smashed through after a bunch of his ex-classmates threw a rock through it.
Meanwhile, his mother, seeing as her son now scarcely left his room and when he did, he exclusively wore long sleeves, decided to try and find a good therapist for Rui.
Unsurprisingly, Rui quickly grew bored. After he started therapy, his mental state got decidedly better, however, with that, he also became restless. He even bought some computer games to pass the loneliness, but Rui still wanted to go out. He wanted to go watch live shows and maybe, if he’s lucky enough, even help direct one.
However, given he has no friends and no connections, trying to direct a show on his own is rather difficult. But Rui’s resourceful and creative, so something like this posed no threat to his goal. So he made his own little performers! You can make a show with a cast of small robots, no?
Day after day Rui started going out and putting out smaller children’s shows using his robot cast. Sometimes a mother and her kid stopped by to watch for a moment, sometimes they threw him a coin, but no money could equal the occasional laugh from the passing children.
Well, one day a decidedly not a kid stopped by. One that Rui recognized very well.
The day he reunited with Nene wasn’t overly happy or sad. Sure, Nene was disappointed and made sure Rui knew that too, but she was mostly just glad to see her dear childhood friend finally doing better. After that day, Rui and Nene started meeting up more often.
Rui’s mother was ecstatic the day he decided to bring Nene over to their apartment. She thought maybe her son and Nene had some big fight which caused them to split ways because Rui refused to tell her what really happened (nothing. He just started avoiding Nene in hopes of making her happier that way), however, seeing the green-haired girl pass through their door once more, she couldn’t be happier. Therapy was pricey, but her son was getting better and that’s worth all the money in the world.
As Nene and Rui got talking, they found out they now shared an interest other than theatre, that being video games.
During his self-inflicted isolation, Rui became rather fond of video games. His days only consisted of either working on his robots or playing games. Honestly, it felt great to have more to talk to Nene about. As they grew apart, Rui didn’t know what shows Nene watched, hell, he didn’t even know if Nene still was into theatre.
They started playing more and more multiplayer games together. Nene would come over with her own consoles and new games she bought only so they two can play together. Well, saying that Rui played a lot of games during distance schooling was a half-lie. He did play games, but only those where he didn’t need to sign up for much. Especially older games. Plus he didn’t use Steam, meaning Nene had to teach him everything herself. And with a Steam account, came the talk of what username Rui would be using.
Honestly, Rui himself couldn’t care less. It’s not like he needs it, right? Nene knew better. Anyone who’s ever created an account while leaving the pre-generated username knew better. So she made Rui come up with five possible nicks and then she judged them all and picked whatever she thought was catchy enough and appropriate for Rui to use.
In the end, she was left with two favorites. ‘backstageAlchemist’ and ‘ShowtimeRuler’. Neither was really to her tastes, but out of what Rui presented to her, these were the best. Her own username was just an amalgamation of her name, ‘kusanene’. After listening to Rui whine each time she told him what she honestly thought about his potential usernames, Nene finally settled on a single favorite. Usernames are not something to take lightly, after all. So they went with ‘BackstageAlchemist’. Initially, that’s what they wanted to use for Rui’s Steam account, however turns out that username was already picked, so Rui just shortened it to ‘bckstgAlchemist’. Honestly, he didn’t understand what the big deal was at all, but he didn’t want to risk Nene’s wrath if he were to voice his thoughts.
After that grueling matter was settled, the two finally got to play together. Nene was always better at any shooting games they played, but Rui had the upper hand in logical puzzles and strategy-based games. Eventually, they developed a rather nice system. Nene would go forward and initiate any combat needed for game progression, while Rui would take care of the technical parts. It was fun. More fun than Rui’s had in years. Not that he did much though, given that his middle school years and high school years were spent either in isolation in his room or running around various therapists and other doctors.
Around that time he also stopped his one-man shows with his robots. He simply didn’t find it as fulfilling as before.
But he is an entertainer first and foremost, so when Nene introduced him to a website called Twitch, he was hooked.
Rui started college with plans on making his own channel. He found streaming rather similar to shows, in and off itself, each stream was its own little performance. So while his robots lay abandoned in the corner of his garage, he’s managed to build a rather nice computer from scratch, as well as get a camera.
He knew that Nene started streaming too, in fact, she’s been streaming for a while. Rui sometimes played with her on stream too, but he never showed his face. Nene isn’t a small nor a big streamer, her average viewer count sitting at comfortable 1k viewers.
Rui decided to try to go to college in person. He’s outgrown that scared little kid who he used to be, plus he’s gotten some professional help now, which only encouraged him to try something new (though coming to school wasn’t that new, it has been a while since he’s studied using anything other than distance learning programs).
So, at 18, Rui made his Twitch streaming account. He wanted to figure out a way in which he’d be able to connect both his love for theater and games together. He went the length to make sure he had an on-screen persona, it helped him in all kinds of ways to pretend as if he was just playing a character in one big improv show. He enlisted Nene’s help once more. The dive wasn’t too happy when Rui came up to her, telling her he’d like to start a Twitch channel as well, but Nene knew Rui was just desperate to put on any kind of show. So she hesitantly agreed to help the boy out.
Fast Forward two years. Rui’s 20 now, his Twitch channel took off thanks to his hard work and Nene’s support. The diva’s own channel took off too, in fact, she was even more popular than Rui, not that he cared about that at all. He’s been not only playing games on his channel, but he’s also been incorporating some theater elements in as well.
He'd play mostly interactive games, ones that allowed him to engage with his viewers as much as he could. As his channel grew, the information that many of his viewers were watching his streams because they found him attractive got brought to Rui's attention by none other than Nene. At first, he thought she was just joking, although it'd be out of character for her to joke about something like that, knowing Rui is insecure about his appearance. But when he started paying closer attention to his chat, he realized that yes, Nene was indeed right.
One thing Rui noticed was that people would often compare him to cats. So he did what any other rational teen boy would do, he bought cat ears for his headphones.
It's safe to say the first time he wore it on stream, the chat exploded.
Since then he's been wearing it on every stream, if only to get a rise out of his chat. At some point, he thought I'd be funny if he meowed and upon following up with that idea he realized that yes, it was indeed hilarious.
So tormenting his chat was another thing Rui enjoyed greatly.
He started collaborating with other streamers, mostly Nene. Sometimes Nene invited her friends from school, most notably a boy with split-dyed hair called Aoyagi Toya. After chatting with him for a moment, Rui found out that Aoyagi was Nene's high school classmate and the two became friends due to their shared interest in arcades and other games.
Nene and Rui became a fan-favorite duo due to their dynamic. In fact, their collab streams usually gained more attention than their solo streams, which Nene was admittedly slightly bitter about.
But Rui couldn’t be happier. He’s able to perform shows, or something like that, in front of hundreds of people, and he’s able to get his creative work out there, all while remaining friends with Nene and even meeting new people.
But sometimes he just can’t help but wonder… What would have happened if he never agreed to distance schooling? Would the bullying stop eventually just as others said? Would he just have to get used to it, or would his mother make him eventually transfer schools? Would he make up with Nene, or would their relationship stay strained? Maybe he would have been able to make more friends, join a theater troupe and put on live shows like he always wished. Well, there’s nothing he can do about it now.
He’s happy and content with the life he’s created for himself, no matter the ‘what if’s.
On the other side of Honshu on the outskirts of a city called Imabetsu, a young actor prepares for another round of full-day filming. He’s been on his feet for three days straight because the director just won’t give them a break. Tsukasa is a perfectionist too, however, this is just about crossing the line.
The star is often called a little slow, but even he can read the atmosphere between the staff and fellow actors. No one is happy with the decisions and last-minute changes their director is making.
He isn’t playing a big role this time, he was hired only as a smaller one-off character. The casting director of this series and their PR team were hoping that adding his name to their cast would boost their teenage audience numbers.
Tsukasa is still getting used to his sudden rise to fame. It was pretty unexpected, although he’s always dreamt of being a star actor, someone to bring smiles to as many faces as possible, he grew out of that childhood fantasy that he’d achieve his dream so quickly.
Tsukasa shivered as the cold wind picked up once more. They were filming by the shore, however, the scene they just filmed included Tsukasa’s character drowning, before being miraculously saved by the heroic male lead. It was really cold though. It’s Autumn, no one in their right mind goes swimming in this weather. But it didn’t seem like the director cared, despite the numerous staff complaints. So he just sat there, shivering with a towel on his shoulders. Another extra was sitting next to him, sometimes shooting him concerned looks when Tsukasa got another round of shivers.
This isn’t what he was envisioning his stardom to be like.
Tsukasa joined his first theater troupe in his third year of high school. Admittedly, it took him some time to actually get accepted into one, but at the numerous auditions he’s gone to, he met many influential figures. One of those influential figures seems to have taken a liking to the blonde and invited him to watch a rehearsal. What Tsukasa at that time didn’t realize, was that getting invited to watch the rehearsals of a well-known acting troupe isn’t exactly a normal thing that just happens.
But Past Tsukasa was admittedly more on the naive side, so even when Asahi asked him to help out with some acting, he didn’t think much of it. That was until Asahi finally asked Tsukasa straightforwardly to join Arkland.
He was ecstatic, understandably so. Arkland is one of the most famous troupes in Japan, even overseas they made quite the name for themselves. The actors from that troupe often ended up playing major roles in many well-known movies or TV series. And now, one of the said actors, Genbu Asahi, was asking Tsukasa to join them. It felt like a dream come true, it was a dream come true.
Since then, Tsukasa has been attending Arkland’s practices not as an observer, but as a fellow actor. It took him some time to get into the swing of things, and he’d be lying if he said there were no problems at the beginning, but in the end, it all turned out well.
He even made a few friends in the troupe, other than Asahi that is. One of those friends is a girl with bright pink hair and a cheerfully childish personality, Ootori Emu. Emu is a bright girl, always trying to be positive. Everyone in Arkland knows that something bad happened to Emu recently, but seeing how sad and dejected Emu got every time someone tried to talk to her about it, they agreed to not bother the girl about her past.
Another thing Tsukasa learned was that Emu’s parents were loaded. Evidently, her family owns the Phoenix Wonderland chain. At first, Tsukasa just didn’t believe her, until Emu finally invited him into her home. And god damn, their house was big.
Emu had to sneak Tsukasa in, because, according to her, her brothers wouldn’t find uninvited guests ‘wonderhoy’. And that’s another thing about Emu, she seems keen on using onomatopoeia and the word ‘Wonderhoy’ in almost every sentence. It’s not like Tsukasa minds though, everyone has their quirks.
Tsukasa’s first months as a member of Arkland were filled with, well, there’s no other way to say it, insecurity. Looking at his fellow actors and realizing just how far ahead of him they were, made Tsukasa question if his dream is even achievable.
As time went on, Tsukasa's insecurities began to subside as he became more immersed in the world of Arkland. He found himself learning from his fellow actors, absorbing their techniques and insights, and gradually improving his skills. Asahi, his initial mentor, continued to guide and encourage him, helping Tsukasa gain confidence in his abilities.
The hours spent rehearsing, performing, and bonding with his troupe members forged deep connections. Tsukasa's interactions with Emu, in particular, grew stronger. Despite her playful demeanor, he sensed there was more to her than met the eye. He admired her strength in dealing with whatever had happened in her past, even if it remained a topic they carefully avoided discussing.
Another bump in the road came when Tsukasa’s carrier finally started taking off.
He started getting auditions left and right, which required him to be away from home sometimes even for days at a time. That’s one thing Tsukasa hated. He wanted to stay home, he wanted to make sure his parents were doing alright, and that his sister, Saki, wasn’t overworking herself.
The last straw came when Tsukasa was off in Sendai for some publicity filming. He made sure to have a talk with Saki before he left, urging her to take care of herself and to never hesitate to text him if anything, even the smallest thing, went wrong. Well, maybe the fact that he said that every time before taking a trip is what made Saki desensitized to Tsukasa’s constant worries.
That day, Tsukasa got a call from his parents in the middle of filming. They sounded rather panicked over the phone, which immediately made Tsukasa realize what happened. Saki relapsed.
It’s safe to say that no one was happy when Tsukasa suddenly announced that he needed to leave the set and get home as soon as possible. The director kept on going on and on about how he was ungrateful for the amazing opportunity they gave him, but Tsukasa couldn’t care less. All that was on his mind at that point was Saki’s well-being. He managed to get a quick ride on the Shinkansen and he made it home just a few hours after the call. His parents weren’t really surprised at his sudden arrival, knowing how protective Tsukasa always was over Saki, but they did scold him for leaving the filming, something that could potentially become an amazing carrier for him, so recklessly. Well, if they truly didn’t want him to leave, they shouldn’t have called.
Following that event, Tsukasa started rejecting most role offers which required him to leave home for too long. Saki made a full recovery, it turned out that she just overworked herself, but Tsukasa’s worries were still re-kindled. Saki tried to talk him out of it. She didn’t want her brother to throw away his passion because she got ill a few times.
What finally made her brother relent, was when the band Saki is a part of alongside her childhood friends started getting serious recognition. Watching their lives, Tsukasa was forced to admit that Saki is going well, there was no need for him to worry about her all the time now. Admitting that felt kind of like a big weight off his shoulders.
And so he started accepting more role offers. It took some time to get back into the swing of things, but Asahi and Emu were there to help him out, as always. Honestly, he doesn’t know where he’d be now without their and the others’ continuous support.
Sometimes they even came to watch him during filming. At first, it felt slightly embarrassing, but eventually, he just started to find it heartwarming. Especially when Saki showed up too. She always made jokes and teased Tsukasa, saying that she’ll start screaming his name just like he does at Leo/Need’s concerts, but he didn’t really mind. Sometimes even his high school underclassmen came to watch. More often than not, it was Toya and his friend group, though Akito always looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, Tsukasa did sometimes catch a proud smile on his face as well.
Tsukasa's career continued to flourish. He found ways to make the most of his time on set, learning from the experiences of seasoned actors and forming connections within the industry. The support from his troupe members, especially Asahi and Emu, remained unwavering, giving him the strength to overcome challenges and improve his craft.
As time went on, Tsukasa's hard work paid off. He began landing roles with more substantial screen time, showcasing his versatility as an actor. His performances managed to do just what he wanted them to, earning him a growing fan base and critical acclaim. Yet, amidst the spotlight, Tsukasa never lost sight of his roots and the people who mattered most to him.
Back at home, his sister Saki's band, Leo/Need, was gaining popularity in the music scene. Their dedication and talent propelled them forward, and Tsukasa couldn't have been prouder of her achievements. He attended their concerts whenever he could, cheering them on just as loudly as he did in the past.
But despite all that success, Tsukasa still felt like something was off. He knew what that something was, of course. He wanted to share the joy and the achievements with someone. But, wasn’t he already doing that? He has Saki, Toya, Emu, and the rest, doesn’t he? So why does he still feel like it’s not enough?
Thoughts like that drew Tsukasa to take his first bigger break from acting.
Which is where he is right now. Well, one could argue that whatever he's doing now doesn't exactly count as taking a break, but he really was taking it easier on himself. He just didn’t anticipate getting thrown into freezing water. Well, whatever. At least now he’ll have more reason to just stay home and relax.
He looks to his side only to see the extra who gave him a towel furiously frowning at the director. Tsukasa sniffles a chuckle and finally looks back to whatever is going on the set. It looks like they’re in the middle of a scene. The male lead and the female lead are arguing very dramatically about something. Glancing to the side, Tsukasa sees the director hypnotizing the poor female lead. He’s honestly glad he’s just having a short cameo here. Well, this was his last day of filming anyway. He’s probably not even going to stick by for whatever small goodbye party the rest of the cast prepared. He knows it’s a bit of an asshole thing to do, but really, all he wants to do now is get home, talk with Saki and his parents, maybe even catch up with Toya, and then just sleep. He’s so exhausted, not only physically, but mentally too.
Finally, Tsukasa hears the actors around him let out a chorus of relieved groans and sighs. Sounds like the director finally got what he wanted and now it’s time for everyone to pack up and head to their hotels. Tsukasa is not going to a hotel, he’s only going to take a quick and warm shower there, and then he’ll be on his way back to Tokyo.
Just the thought of the warm water on his skin is enough to make him wish he was back at the hotel as soon as humanly possible.
He didn’t forget to shoot a few words to his fellow cast members, telling them all a quick ‘good job’ and some goodbyes, and then he’s immediately off to find his driver.
Not even fifteen minutes later, Tsukasa is already back in his hotel room. He takes a short shower just as he wanted and then he’s off to pack. He plans to get home preferably around noon today. It’s currently around 8 am, so it should be doable. If he were to ask his driver to get him there, it would probably take over 9 hours to get home, but Tsukasa already bought some tickets for the Shinkansen, which should take something around 4 hours.
He sighs and puts his hands on his hips as he looks around the hotel room, making sure he’s finally packed everything. He often forgets things on set or in hotel rooms, although he swears he always makes sure to have everything. Thankfully, it looked like he got everything packed in his small suitcase.
Tsukasa checks the clock on his way out of the room. Great, he’s just on time according to his perfect schedule. Now he just needs to get to the station, make sure to put on a cap and a mask to cover his face at least a little bit, and then he’s off to go home.
The ride to the station doesn’t take long at all, and Tsukasa soon finds himself sitting alone in his private cabin. The perks of being a famous actor.
He watches the landscape change as he leans his chin on his hand. In a few hours, he’ll be back home with his family. He’ll tell them all that he experienced this time on set, they’ll laugh along and someone will most likely comment something about his dream coming true again. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate it, it’s just getting a bit repetitive.
Tsukasa sighs and opts to take out his laptop. He’ll get some work done at least, and maaaaybe, just maybe, he’ll do some ego searching. He knows it’s not good for his mental health and whatnot, but who cares? It’s not like anyone can stop him, really.
He’s done with work in record time. He doesn’t get many emails anyway, most go through Arkland managers or his personal managers first. He’s also done with ego searching quickly. It doesn’t seem like anymore spotted him boarding the train, and all the other articles he’s read already or they’re just the standard dating gossip, more often than not featuring either Shizuku, Emu, or even some of Saki’s friends.
The blonde turns off the laptop and leans back in his seat. Maybe he can get some quick shut-eye in. Soon enough, Tsukasa’s lulled to sleep by the train’s steady rhythm.
He dreams of a different world. He dreams of a group of friends, who despite all their differences and fights always managed to pull through. He dreams of a small theater troupe and a tall, eccentric director. If anyone would look through the small window on the private compartment’s door in those moments, they’d see a small but happy smile on the star’s lips.