The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 365 Ghost Sirius (5) - A Fortunate Thing Because It's a Play To Pantalone, the troupe director of the Astraea Troupe, the name Stella Rosenberg was an object of both love and hate. Pantalone himself, a veteran among veterans who had knocked about the theater world for decades, could tell as much. It wasn't that there had never been an actress as beautiful as Stella. It wasn't that there had never been an actress who sang as well as Stella. Nor was it that there had never been an actress whose acting skill was as excellent as Stella's. But an actress who possessed all three perfectly, at the industry's very highest level, had never appeared — at least not within the Empire. The epithets 'a woman born to stand upon the stage' and 'a single flower blooming from the soil of the Empire's theater world' hadn't come about for nothing. The problem was that this flower had thorns. "Her ego is too strong. She doesn't know how to compromise." Of course, that was an outstanding strength for an actress. Being strong meant being intense, and not knowing compromise meant being that much more resolute. Audiences, by nature, remembered and loved such people. But as a member of a group, it was, frankly speaking, a shortcoming. It was something one could tell just by looking at what the troupe members complained about to Pantalone, the troupe director, every single day. ─Stella is far too self-centered. She acts like she's the only one who's ever right about anything. ─Please, tell Stella to tone it down a little. Tell her to stop ruining the good mood every single time. ─I honestly don't know what she's so dissatisfied about. If everyone else is fine with it and only she's making a fuss, isn't that a sign something's wrong with her? "Ngh... This is giving me one hell of a headache." The audience loved Stella and grew wild with enthusiasm for her. The troupe members hated Stella and kept her at arm's length. In the end, it was a structure in which only the troupe director, caught between the two, suffered for it. On top of that, lately, for whatever reason had gotten into her, she had suddenly taken to eating and sleeping in the security room to keep watch on people, interrogating several troupe members, and even getting into physical altercations — literally engaging in bizarre behavior — so both the troupe members' complaints and Pantalone's stress were skyrocketing. "Hah. There's no helping it. I'll have to bring in the theater owner." Ordinary citizens of the Empire probably neither knew nor cared much about this, but a troupe director and a theater owner were different things. The former was a position representing the Astraea Troupe, responsible for managing its people and drawing in box-office success, while the latter was the owner of the theater itself. One shouldn't treat them as a mere landlord. That was because the Imperial Arts Association, which held ownership of the Astraea Theater, was a power bloc entangled with many of the Empire's elders and financiers. No matter how outstanding an actress Stella was, they were not people she could dare defy or win a fight against. Of course, he might well hear harsh words for failing to manage even a single actress under him and having to ask for help, and might even be branded incompetent — but if he just kept being pushed around by Stella like this and lost the troupe members' trust, he'd be called incompetent all the same. Having made up his mind, Pantalone set out to find Stella. And in his head, he organized the words he would say to her. 'Stella, if you keep on like this, I'll have no choice but to ask the Association for help. The Imperial Arts Association is a body that oversees countless arts of the Empire, including architecture, fine art, and music.' 'Among them, theater is nothing more than a relatively young, up-and-coming industry with a short history, and no matter how high your fame is within theater, in their eyes its importance isn't all that great.' 'If you're not careful, you might not even be able to stand on a theater stage anymore. So please, stop clashing with the troupe members and rein in that temperament of yours a little. Even without going that far, the fact that you're the best in the Empire's theater world won't change... All right, something along those lines should do it.' This was, so to speak, a final ultimatum and a plea both. If Stella bent for this, all the better. But if she still didn't understand even after being told this much, then he would have no choice but to make a cold-blooded decision as the organization's leader. Steeling himself, Pantalone stepped into the theater where he could sense Stella's presence. Thinking back on it, this was the moment he should have felt a doubt rise in him. A doubt like: why was Stella alone in the theater, in the middle of the night, with no one else around? But Pantalone, who had poured all his effort into polishing the ultimatum in his head, failed to raise such a detailed doubt, and so he ended up facing it with no preparation at all. That very thing. *** (E/N: Blanca => Bianca; Bern => Bernard. Hey, you demon. Did you really try to change the names???) 『I am Bianca. An adventurer of decent, passable skill. A debtor with dreadfully bad luck. And a child trapped in the nightmare of her childhood.』 It's often said that acting comes in two forms. One is becoming one with the role itself. The other is analyzing the role and directing it into being. Neither is superior to the other. But if one were to speak of preference, Stella was an actress who made better use of the latter. And so she thoroughly analyzed and dissected Girl B's inner self, and wrapped it around herself like an outer coat. 『Please, I'm begging you. Please help my mother. I'll pay back whatever money is short, somehow. So please.』 『You're all adventurers, aren't you! People who sing of dreams and romance, or so they say! So then, why on earth…!』 『…Fine. I won't rely on anyone else anymore. I'll do it myself.』 The story opens the curtain with Girl B's recollection. A modest but happy life together with her mother. Despair that comes as if to snatch that life away. She asks for help and is refused, and so resolves that she will stand and fight for herself instead. That resolve is a noble thing. That emotion is something anyone can empathize with. That effort is the kind that makes those watching want to cheer her on. 『I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I won't make the mistake again.』 『Wait a moment! The distribution ratio is different from what we agreed on at first!』 『What? T-this grimoire... is a fake?』 And so. The sight of Girl B being worn down after that makes people feel a pang of sorrow for her. Her once-bright smiling face gradually turns expressionless. The heart that once believed in goodwill, dreams, and romance grows steadily more cynical. In eyes that once held light and sparkled, defiance, obsession, and something close to resignation rise up and fill them like sticky oil. Because Girl B's motive is something people can easily relate to. Because the trials that wear Girl B down are ones people could experience in their own daily lives. The sight of Girl B growing smaller and smaller stirs an endlessly uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling in the audience's hearts. And, precisely because of that. 『My name is Bernard. I've come because I want to become an adventurer.』 The young man B's appearance becomes an intense turning point, and a symbol of hope. *** Good god. What in the world am I looking at right now. That he kept those words inside instead of voicing them aloud was because Pantalone, too, was a man who had once carried the title of actor himself. Two people continuing their passionate performance up on the stage. One was, needless to say, the familiar Stella, and the other was an unfamiliar young man with gray hair, dressed in black. Because he wore an eye mask, his whole face couldn't be made out, but judging by his features alone, he was surely a young man of quite fine looks. But Pantalone had no interest in the young man's looks or anything of the sort. No, rather, he simply had no capacity to spare for that. 『W-wait a moment! Are you out of your mind right now? You want the two of us to fight? We could just go back and report it, and that'd be the end of it. There's no need to push ourselves this far!』 『There is a reason. In the time it takes us to go back, make our report, and gather new forces, more victims will be made.』 The stage is silent. A night without even proper lighting. A stage without so much as a single prop, let alone a proper backdrop — so of course it would be. No background music produced by an orchestra played beneath it, and no narration cut in here and there to explain the situation. And yet all of that was trivial. Because, to Pantalone, it felt as though the adventure of these two, man and woman, was unfolding in real time before him. Yes. It was felt. Over the figures of the two, who wore nothing but their everyday clothes with not a single costume suited to their roles, he could see adventurer's gear; he could hear the sound of the swords they swung and the magic they unleashed; he could smell the fishy, musty stench of monsters; he could taste the food eaten while camping out, and feel the pain of the wounds on their skin. Truly high-level acting bewitches the eyes and ears. It was a maxim taught to him by the senior who had first shown Pantalone the path of theater. If that was so, then what on earth kind of acting was this, that bewitched not merely sight and hearing but all five senses themselves? Two questions suddenly occurred to Pantalone. One was the question of just who on earth that young man really was. And the other was this. 『Please help me. Please, I'll do anything, so please help me.』 '...Stella was this good?' He'd known she was an outstanding actress. But he had also thought she made too much of a fuss over things. Wasn't that so? The Astraea Troupe was already a troupe whose name never went unmentioned whenever first place in the Empire's theater world was discussed. The troupe members held pride in being the best, and so, precisely because of that, they grew all the more resentful whenever Stella pointed out this and that. And that was something Pantalone, too, secretly sympathized with. They were already number one. Even if the score was 99 points, even if it fell one point short of a perfect 100, how much of a difference could that possibly look like in the audience's eyes? Even most self-proclaimed experts probably wouldn't notice the difference — so was it really worth ruining the troupe's harmony and mood, and dishing out harsh words, all for the sake of a mere handful of people? If asked whether such a thought had never crossed Pantalone's mind, he would have found it hard to answer easily. But. …What if it hadn't been a mere one-point difference at all? No — what if, from the very start, that standard of 99 out of 100 had itself been nothing but a misconception? At the very least, Pantalone couldn't draw a line between the Stella before him now and the usual Stella with a difference of a mere one point. Then why was the difference so great? Because Stella usually half-assed it? Surely not. Because Stella's skill had suddenly grown in a short span of time? This had at least some possibility. But the most decisive factor was this. '…She never had a partner who could match her. That's why it was hard for her even to properly give it her all.' Hadn't Pantalone himself said as much? Theater wasn't something done alone. That no matter how outstanding Stella was, that alone wasn't enough. He had gone on and on spouting that as a way to criticize Stella — so why had it never occurred to him that, by that very same logic, the troupe members and Pantalone himself, as troupe director, ought to reflect as well? 'Now I finally understand just how frustrated Stella must have been. To think we let an actress capable of acting like this reveal nothing more than that middling result.' To someone who could run out on two legs as far as she pleased, people crawling slowly along on all fours had said, 'You're already fast enough, why make such a fuss' — of course her chest would feel ready to burst. Pantalone reflected deeply. And reflection aside, he decided to focus on the play for now. For it was, after all, a play that thrilling, that immersive. 『Bernard!! Why, why on earth, for someone like me…!!』 『Ha, haha... It's all right. This death of mine is nothing but a fake, after all.』 Pantalone let out a sigh. A man who had held out salvation to her from despair like a swamp. A situation in which that very man had sacrificed himself to save her. Just how immense must the sorrow and despair Girl B felt be? And to comfort a Girl B like that, treating his own death as nothing but a lie and forcing out a clumsy falsehood — how noble was the character of Adventurer B? Now Girl B could no longer carelessly neglect her own life, or waste it away. Because her life was something left to her at the cost of the very life of the one she most admired and loved. It was a blessing, and also a curse. What irony it was, that the very consideration left behind so Girl B wouldn't fall into despair or be buried in guilt over his death should become the surest wedge driven into her heart. Neither Girl B nor Adventurer B was in the wrong. If one had to go looking for something to blame, it would surely have to be that fellow called fate. (E/N: Demon King of Fate, Alondre!) 'It's such a relief this is just a play. If I imagined it were real, I wouldn't even want to picture it.' In any case, it seemed the subject for the next play cycle was already decided.