The sound of footsteps echoed softly across the studio lot as Mercury followed Miyako and Celine. Just up ahead, Mr. Daichi was already waiting—smiling that easy, polished smile of his. A professional one, it was definitely good for selling lies and propaganda make them feel like reassurance.
He waved. "Hey, kids! Took you long enough!" He ran his coarse hands through Mercury and Celine's hair. "First time on set, right? Having fun?"
Miyako sighed like she'd been expecting that line. "We just got here, Daichi. Maybe give them five minutes before you start with your PR voice." Still, a faint smile tugged at her lips as she crossed her arms. "I've already told them to behave. They won't bring trouble."
Daichi chuckled, looking off to the side. "Good to know. Wouldn't want to annoy the crew, especially since they're being kind enough to give our Lina another chance."
Mercury followed his gaze. Across the lot, Mercury saw his mother standing. She was surrounded by a small circle of actors, all of them chatting and laughing with one another. The silver haired woman's smile was radiant, energy as magnetic as ever.
Her professionalism? ...questionable.
"Guess that much hasn't changed," Mercury muttered under his breath, watching her wave her arms mid-story like she was narrating an epic saga instead of preparing for a shoot.
From the other side of the set, a staff member shouted, "Mrs. Nisho, you're up in five!"
Lina turned with a snap, grin still plastered on her face. "Coming!" She quickly said goodbye to the other actors and jogged toward the set, disappearing ingot the shadows of the dimly lit set.
Mercury tilted his head. "She's... really going in there? Alone?" For some reason, he felt worried about leaving that woman to her own devices.
"She'll be fine," Miyako assured, voice softer now. "Your mother might act like an airhead, but she knows her way around a camera." Then, after a pause—an awkward, honest one—she added, "Well... most of the time."
That didn't exactly sound entirely reassuring to the four year old boy. It seemed that, despite how Miyako may have felt about the actress, she had more faith in her skills than even Lina's own child did.
"Guess I'll just have to see for myself."
While he was waiting for Lina's scene in the film to finally start, Mercury decided to grab himself something to drink. The "refreshment area" turned out to be a small tent filled with bottled water, lukewarm coffee, and juice boxes that looked like they'd been ordered by accident.
Mercury grabbed one of the said packets of juice, straw between his lips, taste of apples sweet against his tongue. He smiled as the cool liquid ran down his throat.
"This is better. I was starting to dry out from all that... thinking." he said to himself.
He leaned back, looking up at the makeshift ceiling of the tent. So, this was supposed to be what a film said was. It was definitely quite the magical place, but also more chaotic than he ever could have imagined. A part of Mercury wondered how someone as childish as Lina could have ever survived in a place such as this.
Mercury sighed, narrowing his eyes. There were a lot of things that didn't make sense about the woman these days. Despite the fact that she was indeed his mother, there was so much about Lina that the boy still didn't understand.
"Quite the character indeed."
As he was thinking to himself and pacing back towards the viewing area, juice box still in mouth, Mercury caught the sight of someone out of the corner of his eye. He "accidentally" bumped into said person, knocking the small body back a few steps.
The person who he had run into also stopped, watching Mercury regress backwards. "Woah! Easy there, kid!" As he spoke, the male narrowed his eyes. "Oh. You're... that managers kid, right?"
It was the director, Taichi Ado.
Of course the person who Mercury ran into was the director of the film! It seemed like real bad luck that this tired-eyed man kept turning up. He was so strange and yet so scary that the small boy honestly didn't always know what the best way to interact with him was.
"C-crap!"
"You ain't causing any trouble now, are you?" Ado asked the boy.
As those words reverberated through Mercury's ears, he straightened up and waved his arms in defiance. "Of course not! I would never inconvenience such a hardworking professional as yourself!l" He bowed, trying to make himself less suspicious. "I merely—uh—seek to observe and appreciate the brilliance of your craft!"
"W-woah, kid! Slow it down!" Ado looked at Mercury with a face of concern. "What kind of kid talks so much?! Seriously!"
Mercury looked back up at the director's face, tilting his head. It seemed that he had accidentally let his former adult self slip out for a moment there... It was probably weird to hear a kid talking with so much vocabulary.
He laughed nervously, standing back up. He scratched his cheek, looking off to the side. Now what was he supposed to do? This director probably thought he seemed pretty weird.
"Say..." The man looked at Mercury and grinned. "… how would you feel about being an actor?"
"...Pardon?"
The director handed him a card. "My number. You've got something interesting about you. I think you'd do well on camera."
Mercury looked at the card in surprise. "O-oh, I couldn't possibly!" He looked back at the set that Lina had walked behind. "Please, offer more opportunities to Miss Lina instead!"
The man blinked. "You mean the actress?" He looked over at the set as well and sighed. "Listen kid, it's just not that simple..."
"What do you mean? She has talent."
Ado narrowed his eyes as Mercury stated that. "Talent, sure. Talent doesn't get you everywhere though, kid." He started walking back towards the viewing area. "Come with me and I'll try to explain it."
Mercury did as he was instructed.
"This had ought to be interesting... What's he trying to do here." Mercury asked himself as he followed the man.
"Kid, how many types of actors do you think there are?" the director first asked him.
"Types of actors?" Mercury echoed. He crossed his arms, thinking about the questioned. "I'm not exactly sure. I'd imagine that there can be tons though, right?"
Shaking his head, Ado smiled. "Not exactly." He pointed his head to a group of actors that they were passing. "I'd say there's about three."
"Alright..."
"First you have your lead actors: the main cast who usually act as the face of a film." Ado looked at Mercury. "They're the ones who become famous and get the most casting."
"And they're the ones who most people want to hire." Mercury concluded.
"Exactly." Ado yawned. "Second... is your newbies and less talented people." He frowned. "They usually fill in the background and extra roles, maybe having one or two lines in a film." He smiled. "And finally are those with real talent—the people who, although you might not think it, are responsible for making the product so successful."
Mercury listened, nodding slowly. "So which is my mom?"
The man hesitated, then sighed. "None. She's not a lead, not a support, not quite brilliant. She shines too bright to blend in, but too inconsistently to carry a film. She's... wild light. Beautiful, but hard to handle."
Great choice of words to tell a four year old kid.
Mercury looked down. "Then how's she supposed to change that?"
"She'll have to figure that out herself," the man said, already walking away. "Oh—and think about my offer, baby-kid."
Mercury watched him go, blinking in some confusion. The card felt heavier than mere plastic should. "Shine too bright, huh..." He frowned, turning to walk back to his family. "Also, what the heck is a 'baby-kid' anyways?"
Sometime later, when Mercury finally made it back to his group, he found a furious Miyako waiting for him. She had crossed arms and a clearly unhappy expression plastered across her face—one that Mercury knew stemmed from his longtime absence.
"You were gone a while, mister. What were you doing?" she questioned.
Mercury pointed back towards some of the crew members. "That director guy from earlier approached me." He held up the plastic card in his hand. "He said that I should become an actor. A weird incident if you ask me."
Miyako's eye twitched. "He what?" Miyako walked up to the boy and knelt down, putting her hands on his shoulders. "The heck did you do?"
Shrugging his shoulders, Mercury looked away from the woman. "Nothing special. Old guys seem to enjoy it when younger people have a casual attitude with them."
Back in his life as an office worker, Mercury had been forced to deal with clients and fellow workers who were much older than him. He had developed the skill of interacting with them during some of these encounters, although he didn't exactly think he was "stellar" with the craft or anything.
Who knew that skill would come in handy now.
"'Casual,' huh..." She sighed, standing back up. "You really are one strange kid."
Mercury frowned. "Didn't seem that strange to me."
Seconds later, Mercury watched as Celine came over to him. She started to tug on his sleeve, complaining about something related to her mother as she often did. "Mercury! I wanna see Lina! Why can't we see her yet?" She seemed dissatisfied with the whole visit up until now.
"Good grief! And I'm the insufferable one?!"
"Because," Miyako explained, "acting takes time. Sometimes they shoot the same scene ten, even twenty times."
Celine pouted. "That's dumb."
Mercury smirked. "You've been saying that since she learned to talk."
"Hey!"
It took a while, but Daichi did eventually return from some conversation he had been having with the directing crew. A bright smile lay on his face when he saw the three people waiting for him.
"Alright, kids! Good news—Lina's next scene is about to start!" he exclaimed.
Celine jumped up from her seat and ran up to Daichi. She was grinning from ear to ear, practically a second sun. "Yay! I want to see mommy—I mean Lina!"
And of course she still had to say that.
Mercury sighed, shaking his head. "Let's just hope she doesn't blurt that out in front of the crew..." He looked back over at the set and smiled.
"Well, here we go..."
In a matter of seconds, lights started to dim and everyone's eyes turned towards the set. The two children sat down and watched as special effects and other props filled the stage. After all of this time, it was happening.
The grey haired boy held his breath as he watched the scene—grand gestures that flew by his eyes. This was what he had been waiting for, to see his mom's acting first hand!
And then he saw her.
Lina stepped out onto the set, the dim lights catching in her hair like the world had decided she was the sun. The moon that barely creeped out from behind the clouds shown down on her silver hair, making her sparkle like the very stars that were up in space.
Majesty and beauty were the only words Mercury could have used to describe the young actress in that moment. It didn't matter what Ado didn't see in that woman, because Mercury knew...
"She's just so amazing." he thought to himself.
"Alright, page fifty-four!" someone from the directing crew called.
Lina smiled, nodding her head. "Kay!"
And then she changed.
The chatter around them faded. Her body moved differently now—every gesture deliberate, every look holding weight. Her words didn't sound like acting. They were real. It wasn't her usual spacey energy or her smiley mom-face. It was something else.
Mercury felt it, the quiet and electric pull that makes people believe in someone they shouldn't. It was so mesmerizing, something that he always longed to feel more and more of.
"I don't care what category she fits into..." he whispered, eyes wide. "This acting... it's magic."
Beside him, Celine whispered, "So cool..."
Miyako laughed softly. "You haven't even seen her best part yet."
Daichi crossed his arms, pride flickering behind his usual composure. "That's Lina for you. Always unforgettable."
And on the set, Lina Nisho smiled through the glow of the studio lights. She was a woman too bright for the room, and a mother her son could never quite stop watching.
"Lina really is..."
"… a star!"