1x22 - Skip Beat!

Kyoko was given some time to think about her character, Mio, thanks to Ren. Ren also gives Kyoko a hint of why Mio would hate Mizuki but she still has a hard time understanding the cruel rich lady that she's playing. While talking with Ren's manager and thinking about the role, she finally discovers her Mio and runs off. (Yashiro tells Kyoko that Ren is in love with her, but Kyoko did not hear as she was busy thinking about the role). When Yashiro tells everyone that she's gone, Ms. Iizuka thinks that Kyoko run away from work and demands that Director Ogata fire Kyoko, but Ren persists in believing in her and persuades the director to wait. When Kyoko comes back she arrived with her own short hair colored black. When Ren calls her, she seems to be reading the Dark Moon script and ignores him. When he tries touching her face, she stops his hand with the script away and showing a look of intense hatred in her eyes. The director and Ren conclude that it's not Kyoko sitting before them but Mio. Initially the director thinks that he can't use this kind of Mio, since the original character was a shy, introverted girl, while Kyoko's Mio is prideful; but Ren convinces him to try out this new Mio. And so they ask Ms. Iizuka (who played Mio in Tsukigomori - 20 years ago, but playing Mio's mother in Dark Moon) to test Mio, to see how Kyoko would present her character. While they test Kyoko's Mio the director discovers that her Mio, while being unlike the original Mio, is much more intense and more credible. Instead of finding faults in this Mio, the director catches himself finding faults in the original Mio. The director finally decides he needs to make a whole new world for the Kyoko's Mio and she passes the test.