The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 362 Ghost Sirius (2) - The Masked Ghost A shadow with mass. That was the sentence that came to Stella's mind the first time she saw him. A black frilled shirt with rich ruffles at the sleeves and collar. The shoes, the trousers, even the Domino Mask covering half his face — all black. The only thing not black was his gray hair, more or less. ...No matter how much part of the theater's ceiling had been made of glass to let light in well, there was a limit. The glass windows in the ceiling were originally a structure designed to draw in the abundant sunlight of daytime. At dead of night, the moonlight falling faintly through the clouds was nowhere near enough to fill the entire vast hall. A figure dressed so entirely in black as that should, by rights, have been so dim that not even its outline could be properly seen. But the being standing still on the stage looked like a lump formed by forcibly scraping together and compressing the surrounding dimness. A presence that seemed to press the surrounding air down heavily just by standing still. 『It's a pleasure to meet you, my lady.』 Startled, Stella's body trembled. It was because she thought the shadow on the stage had spoken to her. What should she say back? What if she said the wrong thing and evil spirits latched onto her, or her soul got taken away? For a moment Stella agonized over many things, but soon that worry became pointless. Because the shadow had not been speaking to Stella at all. 『I am Romeo. The knight who shall protect you from this day forth.』 The shadow's gaze was not directed at Stella. What he was looking at was the stage — the imaginary young lady who should originally have been standing there, Julieta. As though the lovely noble lady Julieta were truly standing there in that empty space, the shadow went on delivering his lines. '...A one-man play?' No, could that really be called a mere one-man play? It was fundamentally different in nature from a monodrama, where a single performer plays every role and recites the narrative alone. The fingertips of the black glove, extended out into empty air, came to a stop having calculated precisely the shoulder width and eye level at which the imaginary woman would be standing. The weight carried in every single knuckle trembled as though wringing at an invisible hem of clothing in the empty air. Between one line and the next there was exactly enough of a pause for the other party to speak their line, and each small gesture seemed to reveal, whole and entire, what words he had just heard from her. There was, without question, only the shadow on the stage. And yet, to Stella's eyes, the figure of the other actress the shadow faced — Julieta — seemed to be visible in full. Not through any special effect or magic, but for the sole reason that the shadow had acted as though his partner were truly there. 『You mean to say I should call you by name rather than "my lady"? That's a little…』 ─『Are you not my knight? If so, then follow my wishes.』 『Haa, very well. Then from now on, I shall call you Lady Julieta.』 ─『Hehe, good. That's much more to my liking.』 No one had actually spoken the latter lines aloud. And yet, to Stella's eyes and ears, the figure and the very lines of the bold noble lady Julieta, now facing the shadow, appeared vividly clear. In the empty darkness, with no lighting, no music, no fellow actor, an entire world was being built on the skill of that single performer, the shadow, alone. 'What is this.' Stella felt goosebumps rise on her skin. She had first set foot on a stage at the young age of eight, and it had now been a full fifteen years that she had been active in this industry. She had grown up watching the performances of the industry's most celebrated seniors, and had even spent enormous sums of money to watch footage of stages from Cardian, said to be theater's true homeland. But none of it, not a single one, had given her a thrill of this magnitude. Her fingertips trembled. Her breathing grew ragged, and she had to desperately suppress that ragged breath. For even if all the world would forgive her for disrupting the play before her eyes with something as trivial as the sound of her own breath, Stella herself could never forgive it. The play soon reached its climax. 『This is absurd!! Where in this world is there a knight who would harm the very one he serves!!』 ─『Foolish talk. Do you mean to say your petty game of chivalry matters more than our family?』 Romeo's family ordered him to cooperate in a plot to assassinate Julieta and forge her will. Julieta's uncle, who had lost the position of head of the family to her father, sought to dispose of Julieta, the heir, and take the position of head himself — and for that, he had drawn in Romeo's family. If it succeeded, Romeo's family could leap to great heights in a single stroke, and Romeo's own path forward would open up bright and clear — that was the plan. But Romeo turned his back on his family to save Julieta, and after a desperate flight, the two of them arrived at an ending both tragic and heartrending. 『…You are, truly, far too foolish a person.』 ─『And it was you who fell in love with such a foolish woman, Romeo.』 Curtain fall. Only once the play had come to a complete end did Stella finally let out the breath she had been suppressing to its very limit. Her head was spinning. Even now, her rational mind still could not properly make sense of just what she had witnessed. Amid the thick dizziness, Stella kept her eyes closed and steadied her breathing. Only after that did she look over the stage again. "Huh?" And then she was struck dumb. There was no one on the stage. As though a real ghost had truly come and gone. *** The first place Stella went once she came to her senses was the security office that managed access to the theater. When Stella burst in, throwing open the security office door with a force nearly enough to kick it down, the middle-aged guard who had been dozing off jolted awake in shock. "Wha— what, …Actress Stella? Ah, n-no! I absolutely was not dozing off, I was just briefly closing my eyes to meditate─" "People." "Pardon?" "Was there anyone besides me who left the theater just now? No, never mind — just hand me the entry log." "Yes, ah, yes!! Here it is!!" At the sight of Stella's finely wrought brow furrowed deep in anger, the guard flinched his shoulders in without even realizing it and hurriedly handed over the log. Stella looked over the log. There were three entrances leading into the theater from outside — two for the audience and one for staff — but at night, every entrance besides the staff one was kept locked. And in order to use the staff entrance, one had to pass through this very security office without fail. Normally, that meant a name could not help but be left in the entry log. But there was none. No matter how she looked it over, according to the records, there should have been no one inside the theater right now besides Stella. "Didn't someone slip inside while you were dozing off?" "T-that couldn't have happened! The key is right here, and you saw for yourself that the door was completely locked before you went in, didn't you!" Stella spent a moment mapping out the route in her head. Before Stella had arrived, all three entrances had been locked, and only the staff entrance had been opened, at the moment Stella herself came. In other words, unless this guard was lying, it would have been impossible for anyone to have entered the theater before that. There was also the possibility that, once the door was opened thanks to Stella, someone had slipped in while the guard was dozing — but in that case, Stella would have seen the door leading from the staff corridor into the wings open. So that wasn't it either. Perhaps there was some outlandish method Stella simply didn't know of, but that wasn't the important part. Because, in any case, as long as it wasn't written in the log, it meant Stella had no way of tracking the person down. "……." That was not good. Very much not good. She had finally found a guide who could show her the way to that plane she had so desperately longed for, a way to climb somewhere better — and yet she didn't even know who it was? She couldn't even exchange words about acting with him, couldn't even ask to learn from him? "Don't make me laugh." At the grinding sound of her teeth gnashing, the guard was struck with fright. They said there were plenty of crazy people in the arts to begin with, but the great actress before him seemed to be on an entirely different level. Whatever the case, Stella did not care. She was someone who could do anything, so long as it was for the sake of her acting. As a result. The members of the Astraea Troupe, regarded as the most venerable within the Empire, found themselves doubting their own eyes the very next day. "……." "……." "Um, that… Lady Stella? Might I dare ask whether it would be alright to ask what you're doing sitting there right now?" "I'm the guard. I'll be managing everyone who comes and goes from the theater for the entire day today, so consider yourselves informed." What is this. Why was it that even after hearing her answer, he couldn't understand it in the slightest? The junior staff of each department, who by rank had to come in a little earlier than everyone else, were the first to be shocked by the sight; the mid-level staff who arrived after them rubbed their eyes; and by the time the Troupe Director arrived, he went so far as to pinch the back of his own hand. "S-Stella! What are you doing right now? Why are you sitting there!" "There's something I need to find, so I'm looking for it. I don't have a role today anyway, do I? What's the problem?" There was nothing but problems. If a troupe's headline actress squeezing her body into a cramped security office to sit there writing up an entry log wasn't a problem, then what on earth was one supposed to call it? The unfortunate truth for the Troupe Director was that Stella's stubbornness was damnably strong, and, incidentally, so was her power. In an ordinary troupe, the Troupe Director would hold the upper hand while an actor was just one of many subordinates, but Stella was the very face of the troupe itself. It meant her standing was such that it wasn't so much that the Troupe Director had hired Stella, as that Stella was "gracing" the theater with her presence. To put it very simply, even if the Troupe Director were replaced this very day, the Astraea Troupe would go on running without any trouble at all — but the moment Stella left the troupe, Astraea would fall apart. That was the reason the Troupe Director, sighing deeply again and again, ultimately had no choice but to throw up both his hands and feet in surrender to Stella. "Hoo, fine. Actors are known for having all sorts of eccentrics among them, after all. If word got out that the Empire's finest actress had holed herself up in the security office all day for the sake of getting into character, it might even make for decent publicity." "I never said I'd only do this for one day." "What? What are you talking about!? What about your role starting tomorrow!!" "Of course I'll act. Not showing up for a scheduled performance isn't befitting an actor. It's just that, while I'm on stage, I'll be keeping the staff back door locked. And I'll compensate, out of my own pocket, anyone who has to put up with the inconvenience." However one looked at it, it sounded like madness — and yet Stella truly went through with it. On days she had no role, she shut herself up in the security office and watched every single person who came and went with intense scrutiny; on days she did have a role, the moment she finished acting she went straight back to shutting herself up in the security office. She even downed wakefulness potions and nutrient potions like water, holding herself up on sheer medication, on the grounds that someone might come and go during the hours she would otherwise be sleeping. Even granting that the security office itself was built to allow for a certain degree of lodging, and that finding a place to wash wasn't hard given that the theater's nature required frequent makeup application, it was still, for the daily life of an actress, conduct bordering on outright madness. Thanks to the Troupe Director's desperate efforts, word was kept from spreading outside, but there was nothing to be done about the strange looks and gossip that circulated among the staff. And then, a week later. Stella, the skin beneath her eyes now so darkened that she could barely even stand on stage without makeup to cover it, closed the list and notes she had been compiling all this while. "─Found you. Ghost."