They all pushed me!

Mrs. Kurokawa walked straight to the children's book section as usual, picked up a few of the latest picture books on the shelf and flipped through them, while asking her daughter.

At this time, Mrs. Kurokawa noticed that her daughter did not follow her at all, but walked to the other side by herself.

Kurokawa Akane reached out and touched the spines of the books lined up on the bookshelf. Their names were marked on them:

"Childhood Psychology", "Easy-to-understand Behavioral Psychology", "A Book That Helps You Understand Others' Minds", "Introduction to Child Psychology"...

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Arimakana didn't know that she had smashed the first audition of another child her age today, but even if she knew, she probably wouldn't have any other thoughts.

She was still immersed in the afterglow of the performance and the heartfelt joy.

Although she was brought into the entertainment industry by her mother in a confused manner at the beginning, just like how she answered Kitagawa Ryo's question, actress Kana Arima truly loves and enjoys acting.

Thinking of this, Arima Kana involuntarily put her hand on her chest and held the pendant in her palm through her clothes.

She didn't know which one was better, the "Shoplifters" she was currently acting in or the "Green Pepper Gymnastics" that her mother praised so highly, but Arimaka knew very clearly that the latter was definitely not the one she really liked.

If it weren't for Kitagawa Ryo, she would be in another set now, wearing a green pepper-style outfit, pretending to be cheerful and generous while putting food that she didn't like into her mouth.

Her mother pushed her onto this stage, but it was Ryo Kitagawa who placed her at the center, put the spotlight on her, and allowed her to simply perform as she pleased.

“I can act with my seniors again.”

As she gently used her fingers to rub the Sphinx pendant into a round and flat shape, Arima Kana felt an emotion of joy unconsciously well up in her heart.

Director Hirokazu Kore-eda's style is to only tell child actors like her the general storyline and not force them to read the script, hoping to produce a more realistic performance.

So Arima Kana is still not clear about the story of "Shoplifters" so far. She only vaguely knows that it is a story about a family of six unrelated people and their daily lives.

Just as Arima Kana was imagining what kind of roles she and Kitagawa Ryo would play in such a story, she suddenly heard someone in the shade of a tree not far away, seemingly practicing the lines of the role she was about to audition for over and over again:

"Children need their mothers."

"That's just my mother's wishful thinking."

"If you give birth to a child, does that mean you are definitely a mother?"

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"I passed the audition, Ryo."

After Kurokawa Akane's back completely disappeared from sight, Hoshino Ai, who had been accumulating strength for a long time, took a step forward, as if she had just come over and could not suppress her excitement, and jumped directly onto Kitagawa Ryo's back and put her arms around his neck.

"Although it's just a small role, it's really worth congratulating. This should be Ai's first movie."

Beichuan Liang was knocked back a little, but he quickly regained his balance and gently patted Xingye Ai's arm:

"Alright, alright, it will be troublesome if someone sees us."

"Know it."

Hoshino Ai was also aware that there was a risk of other people passing by, so she let go of his hand briefly and stood back on the ground lightly.

She put her hands behind her back, leaned forward a little closer to Beichuan Liang, stuck out her tongue, and licked her lips seductively:

"Host, please remember to serve me well when the time comes, or I won't give you a good review."

"You were still My Lord just an hour ago. Your attitude has changed so quickly."

Kitagawa Ryo rolled his eyes at Hoshino Ai in annoyance.

"If you want to blame someone, you should blame Liang for insisting on teaching me some kind of experiential acting. I am also trying to experience the role I am playing."

In the face of Kitagawa Ryo's accusations, Hoshino Ai blinked her eyes innocently, with an aggrieved expression as if it was all her fault.

"The total amount of time that Ai plays this character is not as long as the time you 'experience' him."

Beichuan Liang deliberately emphasized the word "experience".

"One minute on stage takes ten years of hard work off stage."

"Even though I'm just a minor actor, I still want to leave a deep impression on the audience!"

Like the protagonist of a hot-blooded comic, Hoshino Ai made her declaration with full momentum.

"Then why don't you audition for roles with more screen time?"

"There's no main role that suits me."

Hoshino Ai pitifully counted on her fingers in front of Kitagawa Ryo:

"There are a total of six characters in the family, a grandmother in her seventies or eighties, a father in his forties and a mother in her thirties, and then all underage children, except for Ryo and Kana, the remaining one is a twelve-year-old boy."

“There is no place for me in the family.”

"But I wanted to act with Liang, so I chose this role. Although the part is small, I can--"

Hoshino Ai took the initiative to step forward, and the distance between them was suddenly shortened to within a few inches. She stretched out her arms and embraced Kitagawa Ryo from behind.

"Hold Ryo like this."

However, this intimate action only lasted for a while, and Hoshino Ai quickly let go of her hand. As if she had replenished some energy, she looked at Kitagawa Ryo's face with a bright smile:

"But speaking of which, if Liang were to become a gigolo with this face, he would probably be quite popular."

"The cowherd doesn't just look at the face."

Kitagawa Ryo shook his head. Before playing this role, he specially asked Mr. Izaki to collect some relevant information.

"The gigolos with the highest sales are not so much about entertaining people with their sex appeal as they are about knowing how to provide emotional value to their customers in a stable manner."

"Isn't it just to make them happy?"

"If love is really understood this way... it's about right."

Kitagawa Ryo nodded, and then told Hoshino Ai some of his understanding of the profession of gigolo and the character he was about to play named "Yusuke".

Unlike other marginalized people at the bottom of society in the family, Yusuke's original family was considered wealthy, but after his father remarried and his stepmother soon gave birth to a new child [Shunsuke], his situation in the whole family became awkward.

After all, before Junsuke was born, he had fully enjoyed the meticulous love from his family and parents, so he could not tolerate the process of this love being taken away and transferred from him bit by bit after Junsuke was born, like peeling off a cocoon.

Increasingly isolated and ignored, Yusuke, who was alienated from his family, began to engage in self-harming behavior, and finally chose to escape on the day of his high school graduation, and went to live with his grandmother (grandfather's ex-wife), who had no blood relationship with him.

Perhaps for revenge, or perhaps for survival, he chose to join a brothel and became a gigolo.

He gave himself a pseudonym in the store:

【Junjie】.

Customer No. 4, played by Hoshino Ai, is the only customer that the disheartened Yusuke meets in the brothel who can resonate with him emotionally.

There is only one frontal shot between her and him.

Amid the seductive music and dreamy purple lights, she and Yusuke lay neatly dressed on the big bed in a separate room, hugging each other in tears like two animals licking each other's wounds, or like a real family.

Hoshino Ai quietly looked at Kitagawa Ryo's profile.

She was still a little worried that she wouldn't perform well.

Because it was enough for Beichuan Liang to just stand in front of her.

All--

No need to coax.

Chapter 5: Are you happy? (5k)

The cast of "Shoplifters" was quickly confirmed, and the main actors met each other twice before the filming officially started.

Except for Arimaka Kanae who plays the youngest sister of the family [Yuri] and the almost newcomer child actor Shiro Kairi who plays [Shota], the other four people including Kitagawa Ryo are all veteran actors in the entertainment industry. They have even worked together in other TV dramas or movies before, so their relationships quickly became warm.

Among them, the one who got along best with Kitagawa Ryo was Masaya Nakayama, who played [Ji], the father of the family.

Masaya Nakayama, who is over 50 years old this year, is actually not just an actor. He has had more than ten professional identities, including but not limited to novelist, columnist, picture book writer, illustrator, art director, lyricist and composer, planning and performing artist, radio navigator, and photographer, and has achieved considerable achievements.

For example, his semi-autobiographical novel "Tokyo Tower - Mom and Me, Sometimes Dad", which was published under the pen name Lily Franky, won the bookstore award that year and was voted as the most wanted book by bookstore clerks across Japan. While it was a best-seller at home and abroad, it also helped to increase the popularity of the Tokyo Tower.

Due to some psychological reasons of his own, Kitagawa Ryo had been obsessed with this novel for a long time. He even took the opportunity to bring his copy of "Tokyo Tower" to the set of the film, hoping that Nakayama Masayuki would sign on the title page.

[To Kitagawa-kun, who has great acting skills and looks as handsome as I did when I was young——Lily Franky. 】

Nakayama Masaya did not refuse this request. He casually picked up a pen and wrote a signature on the title page of the book. He raised his eyebrows and smiled at Beichuan Liang:

"I didn't expect Kitagawa-kun would like this book too. I guess I'll have to show off on my social media accounts when I get home today."

"Because I think this novel by Nakayama-san is really well written, especially the description of family and kinship. There are many sentences that left a deep impression on me."

Beichuan Liang carefully put the book back into the bag he was carrying and answered seriously.

"That's really rare."

Nakayama Masaya was somewhat surprised and said:

"I thought that kids of Kitagawa's age wouldn't like this book very much. I remember the data the bookstore gave me showed that the main group of book buyers were working professionals around 30 years old."

After all, "Tokyo Tower" only writes about the decades-long bond between my mother and I from a first-person perspective, from the time I was born and got to know the world to watching my mother leave this world. There are no ups and downs or twists and turns, and the writing style is also very smooth and elegant. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing that teenagers would like.

However, Nakayama Masaya patted Kitagawa Ryo on the shoulder again, grinned, and said with a bit of self-praise:

"After reading my book, maybe it will be helpful for acting in this play. After all, it is a family story."

"Although I wrote about the story of a blood family, and this play tells the story of a non-blood family, maybe family and kinship are sometimes not defined only by blood ties."

Beichuan Liang nodded in agreement, and he recited a passage from Tokyo Tower with ease:

"Even if my father and mother's names are separate in my household registration book, or my household registration book says that I was born to someone else, the things on the household registration book are not what I want first. What's so important about things on paper?"

"Even though my mother and I are not related by blood, we are closer than any biological mother and child. The opposite is also true. If my mother and father were not a real couple, I would probably hate the word 'husband and wife' written on my household registration book."

"It seems that Kitagawa-kun is really a die-hard fan of my books."

After a moment of hesitation, Nakayama Masaya stepped forward and hugged Kitagawa Ryo's shoulders affectionately, and said jokingly:

"How about you become the male lead here? The movie and TV drama projects of Tokyo Tower are both in progress. Your age is very suitable, and you can just play the fifteen-year-old me."

"The 'I' in Tokyo Tower came to Tokyo alone at the age of fifteen and lived in a daze for fifteen years. If you had come to Tokyo with this face, you wouldn't have been able to write such a sentence."

On the other hand, veteran actress Kirin Kiki, who plays the role of the grandmother in the film, also raised her head and made a joke. She deliberately read out the original sentence in an exaggerated low tone:

"Tokyo in spring is like a vacuum cleaner that sucks up garbage, drawing young people from all over Japan. The dark little hose is like a tunnel leading to dreams and the future. But if you go through the tunnel, you'll find only garbage."

Nakayama Masaya couldn't help laughing. He patted Kitagawa Ryo on the shoulder and said self-deprecatingly:

"Indeed, then what I write about is not vacuum cleaners and sewers, but women's vagina..."

"Hey, there are two kids here, don't get too excited."

The actress Sakura Ando, ​​who played the role of the mother, pointed at the two children next to them and quickly spoke out to stop them.

"It's true that I said it a little too much."

Masaya Nakayama scratched the back of his head a little embarrassedly, and turned the topic back to the upcoming filming of "Shoplifters".

While several senior actors were enthusiastically discussing some plot details, Kana Arima suddenly walked up to Kitagawa Ryo and asked if he could lend her the book "Tokyo Tower" he brought with him.

When Masaya Nakayama joked, "It looks like I'm going to have a five-year-old kid who's a fan of my book soon," Kitagawa Ryo asked curiously:

"Why do you suddenly want to watch this?"

"Because just now Mr. Nakayama said that it would be helpful for acting in this play after reading it."

Arima Kanae replied in a serious tone.

"...Okay, if you come across a word you don't know, you can ask the neighboring city for help."

Kitagawa Ryo nodded, took the book out of the bag behind him and handed it to Arima Kana.

"I see."

Arima Kana quickly agreed and returned to her seat with the book in both hands.

She knew that Beichuan Ryo had the habit of highlighting key points and writing his thoughts on the script, but she didn't expect that he also kept this in mind when reading the book.

As soon as she opened the book, Arima Kana saw sentences painted in various colors, and next to them were written in tiny handwriting, long or short thoughts from Kitagawa Ryo.

The castle hinari at the side looked over with interest at first, and it seemed that he was planning to use this to kill time with Arima Kana, but the dull story soon made him feel a little bored, and he turned back to look at his phone.

She skipped the parts she didn't understand and only picked out the paragraphs that she could understand. Then she saw a very simple sentence that was heavily colored red by Beichuan Liang:

"My mother told me that I can go home anytime I want. No matter what I become, I am her child."

Seeing this, Arima Kana unconsciously looked up at Kitagawa Ryo who was calmly discussing the performance with several other adults.

She probably understood a little bit and knew why Beichuan Liang put on such a show in front of her at that time.

Then, Arimakana felt that she had gotten to know Kitagawa Ryo a little better.