The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 363 The Ghost, Sirius (3) - The Script The method Stella used was the process of elimination. Since neither the entry log nor the guard's testimony could be trusted, she decided to examine, one by one, every single candidate who could physically have been there that day. Guard the entrance. And analyze, one by one, every person who came and went through it. Body frame, hand shape, vocal habits. What could be altered with makeup, and what couldn't. She narrowed down the candidates, weighing every one of those factors one by one. In the end, three candidates remained. She still hadn't narrowed it down to a single person, but compared to picking from over a hundred candidates, this was as simple as eating cold soup. Thinking so, Stella met and questioned each of the three candidates one by one, only to end up frustrated. "You want me to act out Romeo? Ahem, very well." Minor actor Elliot. He confidently showed off his skill as if trying to make a good impression before the theater's leading actress, but failed. To Stella's eyes, it was a wretched performance, hardly different from a plank of wood standing upright. She wondered for a moment if he was deliberately faking incompetence as a decoy, but judging by how desperately he was struggling to catch her eye, it was clear that if he'd had that kind of skill, he would have flaunted it long ago. "L-Lady Stella? Why are you grabbing my wrist, ah! Ah! Argh!" Second. The middle-aged technician who worked in the props room, Jerome. This one was a bit more certain. When she physically bent his wrist to match the gesture the Ghost had made, it was so stiff it wouldn't budge at all. "Hu, huhuh, huh!? Wh-what!? Who's there!?" Third. The pervert. No — the facilities handyman, Milton. He was caught red-handed peering through a hole he'd drilled into the actresses' dressing room to spy on them. There was no room left for doubt; he was handed straight over to the Guard Squad and thrown in jail. Stella felt bewildered. "Then who on earth is it?" Her search targeting insiders had failed. Just in case, she grabbed Elliot and had him perform the same act about a hundred times, very, very lightly; she went all the way to the jail to make Milton act through the iron bars; and with Jerome, she simply paid his medical bills while running him through a re-check — but the result was the same: out. Two possibilities remained. One: to begin with, someone who wasn't an insider at all had simply happened to be acting alone, that day of all days, in a theater he had no particular connection to. Two: Stella, tormented by obsession, had unwittingly seen an illusion of "someone giving an ideal performance." Common sense said it was the latter, but Stella believed that couldn't possibly be it. Whether its foundation was magic or miracle, it made no difference to her. At the very least, so long as it was "acting," there was no way Stella could fail to tell the real thing from the fake. The problem was that, even if it were the former, Stella had no proper method left to use. A dark night. In a theater with no artificial lighting whatsoever, lit only by moonlight, Stella sat in the audience seats and stared blankly at the stage. It was a routine she had repeated every single day since that night. She had even stayed up through the night before, hoping that the "Ghost" might appear again, but so far it had gained her nothing. Physical fatigue from her reckless life as a guard, compounded by the mental fatigue of having every candidate she'd thought was the answer turn out to be a bust. Just as Stella, on the verge of collapse, was barely managing to hold onto her hazy consciousness. Click. The clock hands of a clock placed in one corner of the theater pointed to midnight, letting out a dull sound. Immediately after. "Father. Oh, my foolish father." A chilling voice burst out, cutting through the air in the darkness. Stella's upper body, buried in her seat, sprang up like a coiled spring. Her eyes flew wide open, awash with tremendous shock. There had been no footsteps, not even the faintest rustle of clothing. And yet, standing motionless at the center of the stage was that weighty black figure she had spent countless sleepless nights searching for. A gray-haired man standing with his back to the moonlight — the Ghost. His face was still covered by that eerily intricate black eye mask. Every one of his gestures and movements brimmed with overwhelming vitality, and even a voice that didn't seem to be raised very loudly filled the entire theater. "You ask what I am doing? It is an act that has been repeated, again and again without end, ever since this throne was made." The Ghost's voice was completely different from the last time, as "Romeo." The romantic, devoted knight who would cast away even his own life for his beloved was nowhere to be found. "I am inheriting the throne." Uncontainable greed. Ambition for the throne. A corruption made all the sweeter for having once been noble. There was only a prince who would run through even his own flesh and blood without hesitation. Stella's body trembled. Her languid fatigue had already flown off to who knew where. It really wasn't some illusion after all. The plane she was standing on now was by no means some "final destination." Because right now, there he was — someone roaming a higher place, existing as though it were only natural! While she was overcome with emotion, the performance was drawing toward its final act. All that remained was the curtain closing and the actor departing. But this time, Stella did not let the chance slip away. She leapt onto the stage without hesitation and seized the Ghost's wrist. There was so much Stella wanted to say to him. But the first thing to burst from her mouth was one utterly simple line. "Who are you?" The Ghost did not answer. Or rather, he answered in a way entirely different from what Stella had expected. He pointed a finger up at the sky. Stella's brow furrowed. Did it mean he'd come from the sky? Was he pointing at the glass in the ceiling? Or did it mean something else entirely? Unable to tell, Stella reflexively followed the line of his fingertip with her gaze. There was a star there. Stella spoke the star's name. "...Sirius?" The Ghost neither nodded nor shook his head. He merely drew something out from behind his back and held it out to Stella. It was something so familiar to Stella that it felt almost like a part of her own body. After all, it was a stage script. A script handed over by such a magnificent actor. If it came down to whether it bothered her or not, of course it did, but Stella didn't read the script right away. Because there was so much she needed to say, right then, to the Ghost before her — no, to Sirius. Who was he really, why was he acting alone at night in a place like this with no one around, how had he reached such a remarkable plane — her questions were endless. But before Stella could press him for answers, her hand suddenly felt light. The grip with which she'd been holding the Ghost's wrist had, all at once, gone empty. "What?" Stella was flustered, but that was all she could manage. Because once again, before she knew it, Sirius had vanished. "……." By the sensibilities of an ordinary person, this was a situation that could only inspire shock. She had definitely been holding him, and yet he had vanished. There had been no process of him leaving, no sound of a door opening or closing. Wouldn't that mean she had been bewitched by something, or had actually seen a real ghost? Or else, a demon. Unfortunately for anyone expecting a sensible reaction, though, Stella was a woman far removed from that sort of sensibility. She silently examined the script left behind in her hand. "Read it first. The right to ask questions comes after? Something like that, is it?" The corner of Stella's mouth curled upward. It was something far too fierce to be called a smile. In any case, she had found a trace. Then all that was left was to chase that trace down, Stella resolved. *** The next morning. Stella woke up after, truly for the first time in a long while, getting a proper night's sleep. Unlike the troupe's usual scripts, which she'd memorized so thoroughly she could recite them word for word without a single slip, reading a new script required giving her mind a proper rest first. After shoving calories and sugar into her mouth as though replenishing her nutrients, Stella turned the pages of the script. It was the story of a man and a woman. A veteran woman who had lost her mother to a wicked mage in childhood and dreamed of revenge, yet lacked both the strength and the talent for it. Before such a woman appeared a talented, unconventional young newcomer. 'An adventure story? A tale of chivalry? A redemption drama? A rather predictable one, if predictable is the word.' Thanks to the man, the woman gains a chance to achieve her revenge, but in the process she falls into danger, and the man is fatally wounded trying to save her. 'The man dies here? Having both of them wiped out together by the mage like this would be far too grim for a drama. So then, does the man rise again through the woman's devotion or encouragement?' Turning the page while imagining what would come next, Stella soon found herself at a loss. Because the page had only this written on it. [From here on, let the actor develop the story as they wish] Stella blinked. Well, sure, it wasn't as if the concept of improvisation didn't exist in theater. But throwing out a script only halfway through and telling her to do whatever she wanted with the ending — that kind of departure, at least among everything Stella had experienced, was without precedent. It was bewildering. To begin with, Stella was a pure actor. Depending on the kind of production, there were often roles that demanded both singing and acting from an actor, so she was versatile enough — but even so, she had never once been asked to construct the scenario herself. And yet. "...This is interesting. I was starting to get a little tired of playing the same sort of role over and over again anyway." Watching others and thinking, "I could do that much too," or "I'd do better than that if it were me" — that much, at least, is not an uncommon sentiment for a person to have. Most people try it themselves and realize the truth — ah, this was harder than I thought — but every so often, there are those who genuinely end up doing it better than the other person. Stella did not know which kind she was. Precisely because she didn't know, she wanted all the more to try. And so, Stella began to work on [The Story of Adventurer B].