They all pushed me!

After taking down the apron that he only used once a year from the hanger in the kitchen and tying it on, Kitagawa Ryoichi looked up and saw Arima Kana also tying her apron very professionally. She put her hands behind her back and skillfully tied the laces into a beautiful bow. It seemed that she had indeed learned a lot from Kurokawa Akane in the past year and a half.

Because she was originally wearing short-sleeved clothes, Arimakana didn't have to roll up her sleeves. After washing her hands carefully at the sink, she raised her hands in front of Kitagawa Ryo as a display. Her white arms and wrists were a little shiny.

However, Beichuan Liang didn't think much about the white arms. After washing his hands carefully, he quickly started cooking. He handed the eggs in the basket to Arima Kana and said concisely:

"Take four, and take out the egg yolks and egg whites separately and set them aside."

"I see."

Arima Gana nodded, but his hands' movements were obviously not as easy as he promised. Although he didn't do the stupid operation of throwing the egg shell into the bowl and the egg yolk into the trash can in a panic like a beginner, he still failed miserably. Soon his hands were covered with sticky egg white, and he could only run to wash his hands again in embarrassment.

Kitagawa Ryo actually liked to see the cute look of his talented junior being frustrated, so he casually took appropriate amounts of ingredients such as low-gluten flour, corn starch, white sugar, milk, corn oil and black sesame paste and put them aside, watching Arima Kana's actions with a smile on his face. After a while, he restrained his mischievous smile under the threat of the other party's angry eyes, took the bowl of egg yolks that he had separated with great difficulty, added sugar to it and beat until it was evenly mixed, then poured in milk, black sesame paste and other ingredients in turn, mixed them, and then sifted in low-gluten flour and corn starch.

After making a rough assessment of Arima Kana's current cooking level based on just this one detail, Kitagawa Ryo began to consciously assign some low-difficulty but highly participatory tasks to her, such as asking her to stir the raw materials that had just been mixed for making the cake.

Anyway, Kitagawa Rumi has always liked this step. It feels like playing a game, stirring non-stop. Arima Kana seems to be the same. She liked this feeling right after she started. After Kitagawa Ryo repeatedly beat the egg whites until the foam was rich, she added a few drops of lemon juice and sugar respectively, and processed it into white and delicate foam. When she looked up again, Arima Kana was still stirring left and right with great pleasure. She didn't even notice that a few drops of paste had splashed on her face, which made Kitagawa Ryo a little amused and reached out to gently scrape her chin and mouth corners:

"It's all over my face."

As he spoke, he poured the egg whites that had been mixed evenly in his hand into the egg yolk paste in the other person's hand, and signaled Magana to continue mixing them.

"…I felt a little relieved, so I didn't notice it."

With a slightly blushing face, Arima Kana let Kitagawa Ryo's fingertips brush the corners of her mouth. After a somewhat stubborn excuse, she began to stir again, but she was no longer as focused as before. She paid more attention to Kitagawa Ryo, who was using his fingers and tongue to grasp and confirm the sweetness. Suddenly, a wonderful atmosphere of two people cooking together emerged in her heart.

Cooking together, in a sense, is a more intimate act than eating together.

After the raw materials were thoroughly mixed, Kitagawa Ryo took it from Arima Kana, and after confirming again that there was no problem, he put it into the oven preheated to 135 degrees for 30 minutes. While waiting for the cake base to be baked, Kitagawa Ryo finally freed up his hands to start processing the top layer of the cake.

"Hmm...Kana, what do you think about making a mousse?"

After thinking for a while, Kitagawa Ryo asked Arima Kana.

"it is good."

Arima Kana nodded in agreement without hesitation. She never cared about the style and taste of the cake. She just enjoyed the current atmosphere. No matter what proposal Kitagawa Ryo had just made, she would probably agree to it without hesitation.

"Then make a chocolate one."

After checking the ingredients in the kitchen, Kitagawa Ryo quickly came up with a plan. He continued to cook on full power, mixing the cream and cheese, adding a little sugar and chocolate sauce, and finally pouring in an appropriate amount of milk. He asked Kana Arima to bring the mousse mold while remixing the whipped cream that had been beaten to 70%. After doing all this, there was a ding sound from the oven. Kitagawa Ryo put on heat-insulating gloves, took out the baked cake base from the oven, tore off the greaseproof paper to dissipate heat, and put it in the refrigerator.

After waiting for a while, he instructed Arima Kana to pour the prepared mousse liquid into the mousse mold, placed it on the cake base himself and put it into the refrigerator to switch to freezing mode.

"You can eat it in about half an hour."

After the two chatted for a while about their daily lives and some things happening on the set, Kitagawa Ryo estimated that it was about time, so he took out the solidified cake from the refrigerator, brought it to the table, placed it in front of Arima Kana, gently removed the mousse mold, and handed the knife and fork to her.

“I always feel like celebrating my birthday in the morning is a bit novel.”

Beichuan Liang turned off all the lights in the living room and lit the candles one by one.

"Kana, you can make a wish now."

After saying this, Kitagawa Ryo began to hum the birthday song as accompaniment.

Then, he heard the wish that Arima Kana had not silently said in her heart, but had spoken out loud and let him hear it:

"I have never thought of asking Senior Liang to pick a star from the sky for me."

The girl's pupils flickered in the flickering candle flame.

She was looking at him and talking.

She was talking to him.

"...I just want to pick this star, Liang-senpai."

Chapter 68: The Stars Are Here

In the past few years, Arima Kana has seen Kitagawa Rumi break down and even run away from home because of the rapid development of the relationship between her brother and Hoshino Ai, and Kurokawa Akane, who had a mental breakdown because of online comments and avoided performances and the troupe and ran to the Kitagawa family to lie down and make a mess. Sometimes even Arima Kana herself has thought about trying to dress up as a pitiful puppy drenched in the rain, or a princess in a fairy tale who sheds tears and murmurs "Come and save me", but in the end it didn't turn out like that.

Kurokawa Akane's father had an accident and she became a child from a single-parent family. When Kitagawa Ryo told her that she could come to her for help with anything in the future, and modified the profit-sharing ratio in the contract specifically for her, the mother of Arima Kana, who was the same age as her, had almost severed all ties with her except for financial support. Sixteen-year-old Kitagawa Rumi moved out of the house and lived alone. When Kitagawa Ryo went to visit her secretly every few days out of worry about his sister, Arima Kana, who was three years younger than her, had lived alone in this empty big house for a long time.

Because this is the kind of character she has shown in front of Kitagawa Ryo since a long time ago: competitive, strong-willed, precocious, sensible, with an excellent sense and ability of independence and self-care, and she treats people properly and politely. All of these underlying characteristics are given by Arima Kana's childhood experiences and original family. They have been precious assets in her life until now, but for a long time they have been more like shackles.

In a sense, the time when she could act coquettishly and cry freely as a child has been forcefully compressed and erased by her mother. Before she was given the title of "the next Kitagawa Ryo", what accompanied her was actually the "child genius who could cry in ten seconds".

When a child starts crying after just a few seconds, the mother and others' first reactions are joy and amazement that she can do it, then the sad meaning represented by the tears has been almost completely eliminated, but this is obviously one of the two emotions that children use most often and are best at expressing.

A crying child will get candy, and adults will be willing to coax her. A sensible child will be praised, but correspondingly, the number of times she will be coaxed will decrease, because everyone tacitly accepts the fact that she does not need to be coaxed.

In fact, until a few weeks in Miyazaki, Arima Kana was still stuck in this vicious circle. She was still struggling with whether she had acted too reassuringly because of some speculation about Kurokawa Akane and Kitagawa Ryo, otherwise why Ryo had no intention of whispering to her.

But after returning to Tokyo and living alone again, Arima Kana gradually learned to reconcile with herself.

Perhaps she was not suitable to put on the appearance of a tragic heroine to comfort herself. She was self-pitying and fawning in front of Beichuan Liang, pretending to want to be saved and helped. She had to show all her growth, physical and psychological maturity in front of him, so that he could see that she was becoming a girl with independent thoughts and personality.

Then, speak to him like you are doing now.

She wants to be the active one.

She was the one who took the initiative.

Arimakana raised her head slightly stubbornly and looked at Kitagawa Ryo who was sitting opposite her, looking at him without any retreat or fear, just like what she had said just now.

She doesn't expect the stars to come to her, she wants to pick them herself.

-------------------------------------

Frankly speaking, Kitagawa Ryo was a little surprised by Arima Kana's straightforward and bold remarks, but when he saw that the other party's right index finger stretched out towards him had begun to tremble slightly, and his originally firm and resolute expression began to gradually collapse with his silence, and a layer of blush slowly appeared on his cheeks and ears, he shook his head helplessly.

This was the familiar Arima Kana, who would sometimes suddenly have high attacks but mostly always had low defense. Kitagawa Ryo even suspected that if it were the current Kurokawa Akane, the other party would be able to say even bolder sentences without blushing or feeling nervous.

It's true that Arimakana is precocious, but this is also her first time in terms of feelings, and she can't hide her girlish shyness.

But Kitagawa Ryo also understood another fact, that is, his relationship with Kitagawa Rumi should have been known to Arima Kana a long time ago, otherwise, with the other party's character of planning before acting, it would be impossible for her to say such words so bluntly to him who was already married.

Seeing that Arima Kana was about to collapse, Beichuan Ryo took a deep breath, but did not give a formal answer. Instead, he asked the other party:

"Kana, do you remember the 'sociality' we talked about last time on the set? Since you can say these words to me now, it means you should have thought about this issue."

In a sense, this was almost half an agreement with her, just like asking her "Have you thought about our future development?"

Arima Kanae also realized this, and said with a relaxed smile:

"Ahhh——topics like pillow business, bitch, using hidden rules to get promoted, etc. will definitely be talked about endlessly."

She placed her hands on the table, leaned forward a little, and moved closer to Beichuan Liang, and her voice unconsciously rose a little:

"If they want to say anything, then let them say it. Besides, rumors like this have been around before, and I'm not at the stage where I'll be affected by this... As an actor, I always give my fans my best performances, so why should I be afraid of what they say? Am I some kind of idol who can't date?"

"What do you mean by pure and innocent? Just be whoever you want to be—"

As Arima Kana was talking, he felt his eyes suddenly begin to heat up and his vision became blurry, but they were immediately wiped away by a pair of warm hands that reached out from the seat opposite him.

"Indeed, after all, Kana has always been a powerful person."

Kitagawa Ryo brushed his fingers across the corners of Arima Kana's eyes and felt the warmth and wetness on his fingertips.

"I am also very happy to be liked and confessed to by a cute girl like Kana."

If he and Kurokawa Akane made the promise to each other two years later because they could not confirm whether the feelings the other person had for him were love, then when facing Arima Kana, what Kitagawa Ryo could not be sure of was actually his own feelings for her.

Kana's feelings for Arima were indeed conveyed to him, but this straightforward approach made Kitagawa Ryo himself hesitate, because after asking himself honestly, he couldn't really say "I like Kana too."

Beichuan Liang did not deny that he had a deep affection for Arima Kana, and he always placed her in a very important position in his heart, but just like what the male protagonist in a martial arts novel he had read in his previous life said: "Zhiruo, I have always respected you; I am grateful to the sister of the Yin family; I have pity for Xiaozhao." Respect, gratitude, pity, these feelings are actually the so-called affection, but they are not necessarily love.

He felt sorry for Arima Kana's past and experiences, admired Arima Kana's acting skills and hard work, was grateful that Arima Kana was willing to follow him to join the new agency, and also liked to see Arima Kana sometimes cunning, sometimes scheming, and sometimes clumsy in front of him.

For Kitagawa Ryo, responding to this feeling means dating, but Arimakana and he are not elementary school students, and the scope of dating is not simply defined as holding hands and walking home together after school and occasionally kissing the forehead cautiously.

"…I am very grateful to Kana for saying these words to me today, but at this moment, I cannot give my answer with the same awareness and mood as Kana."

Kitagawa Ryo told Arima Kana his thoughts very frankly.

But he was also very clear that Magana's confession today was not meant to get a positive response from him. What the other party wanted was actually a statement from him.

So, Kitagawa Ryo continued:

"The stars are here—they won't go away."

-------------------------------------

"Now that I think about it, it's all Liang-senpai's fault."

Another day of filming ended. In the "Pest" crew that had just disbanded, Arimaka naturally walked with Kurokawa Akane and whispered to her friend:

"It was clearly him who pushed me to the center of the stage, under the spotlight, and let me shine as the heroine. In that case, does Chi Yin think that I won't have any feelings for the hero? It's normal to have such thoughts, right?"

"Indeed - so has Kana already talked to Ryo-senpai properly?"

"Well, although I feel that the answer we get in the end is probably similar to what Akane got."

At this point, the two of them smiled at each other knowingly, without mentioning the other's suspected sneaking behavior that clearly betrayed the alliance.

Anyway, in the end they are back to the same starting line, because they are the same age, so the waiting time is also the same.

"Speaking of which, Ruby has been learning acting in our troupe recently. Kana seemed to have said last time at Tokyo Dome that she was interested in drama and wanted to give it a try. Do you want to go and see it together today?"

As if remembering something, Kurokawa Akane took the initiative to invite her. It was already early July and her school was on summer vacation, so she naturally had more time to go to the troupe on weekdays. Otherwise, Kindaichi Toshiro would not have entrusted her with the task of teaching Kitagawa Rumi. After all, the other top star in the troupe, Himekawa Daiki, had just taken on the leading role in a monthly 9-second TV series with the introduction of Kitagawa Ryo and his own efforts. He really didn't have much free time to train newcomers at this time.

"That's fine. No wonder I haven't seen Ruby for a long time. I remember when the Tokyo Dome performance just ended, Ruby seemed to come to the set every day to visit us. It turns out that she is now studying with your LALALAI Theater Company."

Arima Kana thought about it for a while and then agreed.

"By the way, how is Ruby doing? I don't think I've ever seen her in any official TV series or movies, not counting variety shows."

In response to Arima Kana's question, Kurokawa Akane smiled awkwardly and answered hesitantly:

"How should I put it... Anyway, it's not like he has no acting skills at all."

"You'll know after Kana gets there."

After the two of them were driven to the LALALAI Theater building by their manager Mr. Izaki and officially walked into a practice room on the second floor, Arima Kana finally understood Kurokawa Akane's somewhat strange answer just now. After watching Kitagawa Rumi's immersive practice, she finally couldn't help but poke her friend's arm:

"…Are you sure this is a bit of acting?"

"Well - at least he memorized his lines pretty fast."

"Idols who can't memorize the board can't even appear on variety shows."

Looking at the new actress Kitagawa Rumi not far away, Arima Kana covered her eyes and forehead with her hands as if she couldn't bear to watch:

"I understand. The reason why Chi Yin pulled me here is to teach Ruby together, right?"

"...After all, we are all good friends, right?"

As if she had finally found an ally who could suffer with her, Kurokawa Akane clapped her hands with a smile on her face, and shouted to Kitagawa Rumi, who was muttering something with her back to them not far away:

"Ruby--Kana is here today too."

"Ah, Kana, long time no see. Even though it's past, I still wish you a happy birthday. After all, I always feel that sending a message to congratulate you is too perfunctory."

After hearing the shout, Kitagawa Rumi turned around with a smile, took two quick steps to come in front of the two people, and the single ponytail behind her head swayed with her movements.

"Thank you, Ruby."

After a brief greeting, Arima Kana took the initiative to ask:

"I heard from Chiyin that Ruby has been studying acting in the troupe recently. How is she doing now?"

“Even now, I feel like there’s no problem performing on stage.”

To Arima Kana's surprise, Kitagawa Rumi waved her hand confidently and gave an affirmative answer with her tail raised.

Just when Arima Kana and Kurokawa Akane didn't know how to respond, Kindaichi Toshiro's helpless voice came from the door of the practice room:

"If I hadn't just seen Ruby's rehearsal, I would have believed it."

Kindaichi Toshiro unceremoniously curled his lips at Kitagawa Rumi, who was a little too proud of herself, and shook his head and commented:

"Ruby is still a long way from being able to go on stage. If you want to become an actress, you should take your practice more seriously."

When it comes to topics related to performance and stage performance, Kindaichi Toshiro's expression suddenly becomes serious, and he takes out the intimidating aura that he usually has as the head of the troupe and stage director:

"Liang won't say anything to you, but that doesn't mean I will follow suit."

"I know that Ruby's purpose of coming here is for the stage play of Tokyo BLADE, but when the time comes, the cast will also be auditioned from the LALALAI Theater and Liang's personal agency, including producers, sponsors and the like."

As he said this, he pointed to Arima Kana and Kurokawa Akane standing on the side and spoke in a dull voice:

"In other words, the two people over there will be Ruby's competitors by then."

"If they also want to play the role of Shaoji."

Chapter 69: Let’s move forward (End of Volume 3)