Title: Show Business, Love Business
Fandom: Skip Beat!
Pairing: Ren Tsuruga/Kyoko Mogami, speculated Reino/Kyoko and Sho Fuwa/Kyoko
Categories/Genres: Romance, Humor, Drama
Length: Short (1998 words)
Warnings: N/A

Author on LJ: anenko
Author Website: anenko

Summary:

The media speculates about the men in Kyoko's life. Yashiro despairs.

Review:

(For those of you unfamiliar with Skip Beat!, (which is probably... all of you), it's a manga about Kyoko Mogami, a teenage girl who learns acting to recreate herself in the aftermath of an abusive relationship and virulently despises all things love-related. Ren Tsuruga is a famous actor and the unlucky chump who falls in love with her.)

I gotta say, there's nothing quite like a well-crafted story of one-sided romantic pining. Show Business, Love Business hits all the right notes with characterization that is so amazingly accurate it's downright eerie. Ren is just the right flavor of fool-in-hopeless-love, carefully reserved but occasionally revealing. His manager, Yashiro, is ever the ardent shipper and foiled matchmaker, but he's just the right balance of pity and teasing. And Kyoko, well. Kyoko's the perfect degree of manic, her unique blend of self-deprecation and utter hatred toward love striking Ren's already battered heart with the precision of a laser guided missile.

I don't think I've ever read anything with such perfect characterization, managing to capture not only the characters but the tone of the canon as well. Nor do I think I'll ever read a scene so subtly heart-wrenching as the one where Kyoko vehemently lists the worst aspects of love right to Ren's face, who has experienced all those aspects and worse.

But hey, I can always hope. And being a fan of the pining trope, I'd damn well better be good at clinging to hope.

Show Business, Love Business