rubestie

Season: Winter

Writer: Akira

Characters: Kohaku, Madara

<Two weeks later. At the TV-station near ES, inside the dressing room for the main actors in the newly released, top-selling parenting program “[MaM]’s Chronicle of Parenting Struggles”.>

Kohaku: Double Face’s ~♪

Madara: Take number four! “[MaM]’s Chronicle of Parenting Struggles”~!

kohaku+madara

Kohaku: …Sigh~. I still can’t get used ta this introduction. Let’s practice some more.

Madara: Rather, I’m surprised that we’ve already gotten to the fourth episode of this stupid show. I was convinced it would get cancelled due to some accident after the first episode, but it just refuses to die, huh?

Kohaku: We shoot two episodes a week, after all. We’ve done one, two, three, and today’s the fourth. Time sure flies by, doesn’t it?

Seems like the agency would like fer us ta shoot even more often, preferably every day of the week.

Madara: This ended up becoming weirdly popular, after all.

Kohaku: Fer better an’ fer worse, that is.

Madara: It’s been going a bit too well for my taste. We expected the show to be absolutely flamed, but it ended up becoming a topic of debate with people both praising and criticizing us.

Kohaku: We didn’t get much response after the first episode aired, but once the second episode aired with our first guest appearance, we went viral online and became trending.

If Ibara-han, as our producer, was able to predict that far ahead it would be impressing.

Madara: I think not even that one could have predicted this development.

No one could have predicted that our guest for the second episode would end up getting cancelled online right before he was scheduled to appear on our show.

Kohaku: Seems like he was the kinda person who often got involved in scandals and controversies, though.

Bet that’s exactly why he was chosen as our first sacrifice-- ahem, guest for the program.

Madara: Yup. Our guest was boasting of a cult-like following online, he was an influencer who proclaimed himself to be a parenting researcher.

However, it seems that some parts of the online childcare community were fiercely opposed to this person, whom they saw as being too idealistic about parenting. They thought he only said whatever he thought would sound nice, without representing the whole picture.

Such a disputed person ended up as a guest on our show immediately after his own statements caused a huge uproar online.

And due to those circumstances, both his fans who wanted to defend him and antis who wanted to criticize him flocked to watch our show as it aired.

Kohaku: Ya could say we were real lucky to get such an influx of attention even though we barely spent a dime on marketin’.

Attractin’ attention to ourselves was part of our goal in the first place, after all.

Madara: Indeed. Our interests were aligned. If this was a normal show, they likely wouldn’t have aired the episode once the guest caused such a controversy, but to us that was actually a good thing.

Additionally, since our guest was being turned away by all other shows and his work was drying up, he was extremely enthusiastic to appear on our show.

He thought it would be a good opportunity to demonstrate his innocence to the public, while also conveying his true ideals.

He even proclaimed enthusiastically to us how he would “Teach you youngsters what parenting is all about.”

Kohaku: That guest’s theories and methods for parentin’ are all pretty strange, but they're also weirdly popular online, aren’t they?

Madara: It’s gotten so far that I can’t even tell if he is doing it for real or as a joke at this point.

Kohaku: He claimed that “Enka is the best way to teach children about emotions!”, and so he kept wearin’ that weird glove that would play Enka music out loud whenever J tried ta touch somethin’.

Madara: Yes. At first, J thought it was funny, but after a while it seemed he got tired of hearing it, so he started bawling every time the Enka started playing.

Kohaku: Seein’ that reaction, the guest looked all smug ‘n said somethin’ like “Look! He is already getting better at showing his emotions!”.

Madara: At that point it was turning into an old-fashioned stand-up comedy skit.

Kohaku: He was extremely good at reactin’ to his surroundings and timin’ his comments. And it was all done naturally without a script, so I can understand why he’s so popular online.

Madara: He is some kind of genius, that’s for sure. Maybe he would be better suited to become a comedian rather than a parenting researcher?

Though I guess the things you’re good at don’t always line up with what you want to do.

Kohaku: Tell me about it. As for our guest, it really didn’t seem as if he was doin’ all that just as a joke.

He really believed that his parenting theories were correct.

Seems he was really thinkin’ hard about the children’s futures. He went as far as to feed J bananas with the skin still on because “it’s good for your health”.

Madara: That had to be the best joke in the entire episode. I couldn’t stop laughing.

Up until then, he had never set foot in the real world, simply surrounding himself with idealistic theories and being praised and adored by his cult-like following online.

That is exactly why that person never realized that he was in the wrong.

kohaku+madara