Chapter 183 - Rookie Actor (1)

1

[Mud and Dust] was a goblin theater troupe with a long and storied history.

More precisely, all it had left was a suicide note. It had once been successful, but those days were long gone. After the previous troupe director, overwhelmed by financial difficulties, left a suicide note and disappeared, calling it “a troupe with a legacy” had become an insult rather than a compliment.

“Come inside.”

“Um, did I pass?”

“Of course you passed, ugor. You may be a wet-behind-the-ears fairy, but if I rejected you after a performance like that, I wouldn't deserve to run a theater.”

The Hobgoblin troupe director led me into the theater, his nostrils flaring.

CREEEAK

As the front door opened, the theater with its 130 years of tradition revealed itself.

There stood a building that had spent those 130 years falling to pieces.

“Wow.”

The interior was gloomy. They had lit torches for what passed as lighting, but they would have been better off without them. Soot covered patches of the ceiling and walls. Worse, since the Earth Spiritfolk liked damp places, stagnant water—groundwater or whatever it was—had pooled on the floor.

An assault on the eyes and the nose.

“This is a bit...”

That wasn't all.

Spiders, centipedes, assorted bugs...

Every insect under the sun had gathered to prove just how much they loved damp places. Thanks to them, this tiny theater overflowed with love, with life, and, above all, with spiderwebs.

“What on earth...”

“You seem moved. I understand. I was delighted, too, when I first visited a theater as a child.”

The Hobgoblin looked proud.

He seemed to have completely fucking misunderstood my reaction.

“My heart raced. It was like falling in love for the first time. Looking back, that pounding in my heart led me all the way here.”

My heart was racing, too. The imposing spiderwebs stretching out like the Great Wall had my left atrium and right ventricle pounding away.

“Director, how long has it been since this place was cleaned?”

“Cleaned?”

“...”

At the Hobgoblin's expression of “What's that?” I abandoned all hope.

Right. These children had loved muddy water from birth. Nagging them to clean up now would go in one ear and out the other.

“I-I really passed the audition, even without muscles! I can't believe it! You're amazing! That's Lord Kekereukker for you!”

For reference, this body's original owner, the aspiring actor Sonia, was circling me in spirit form. Like the attendant spirit, she floated through the air like a ghost.

However, she and the attendant spirit couldn't communicate with each other. Only I could hear both their voices. I had suddenly become a guy who hauled around two ghosts.

'It's like having two mosquitoes buzzing around at once in summer... '

“Pardon?”

'No, nothing. More importantly, Sonia. Why did you stake your life on such a shabby troupe? If you'd decided to become an actor anyway, you might as well have gone somewhere good.'

“At first, I wanted to join a famous troupe like [Blaze] or [Inferno], too...”

Sonia grew dejected.

“But the successful troupes won't even give me an interview. They say a scrawny fairy is useless... This was the only place that would so much as hear me out.”

'Good grief.'

Sonia was a victim of racial discrimination—no, muscle discrimination. How on earth had my children become a race that cared about nothing but muscles...?

“Follow me. I'll introduce you to our troupe's family.”

I followed the director deeper into the building, where we found a dressing room. Worn-out stage props were piled in heaps, and two Hobgoblins were sleeping soundly in their midst.

“Get up, you freeloaders!”

The director smacked the Hobgoblins' heads with hands as big as pot lids.

“Do you know what time it is? Why the hell are you still asleep?”

“Ugo... Ugoo...”

The Hobgoblins struggled to open their eyes. One had only one arm, and the other only one eye. They rubbed their green faces with their green hands, then glanced at me.

“Whoa. What's a fairy doing here, Director?”

“Did you hire a new ticket seller?”

“You useless mouths. Not a ticket seller—a rookie actor! Didn't I tell you about a fairy who kept following me around, begging to be hired as an actor?”

“Oh, that incredibly annoying fairy...?”

Only then did the Hobgoblin actors fully wake up.

“Wait. You didn't actually hire her as an actor, did you?”

“Why wouldn't I? I just gave her the final audition and passed her.”

“Have you lost your mind, Director? How's she supposed to get onstage with that garbage physique?”

That was awfully harsh.

“Don't worry. I knew that when I hired her. Her body may be unimpressive, but her acting...”

“My name is Sonia, Director.”

“Yes, Sonia. Sonia's acting had more genuine beauty than any actor I've ever seen. Audiences these days care only about muscles, but seeing Sonia might change their minds.”

The director spoke with conviction.

Interest began to show on the actors' faces.

“Oh?”

“If the director's willing to go that far...”

“Anyway, we've finally got a new junior. You veterans should set an example. How long are you going to keep sleeping in the dressing room? Hurry up, wash, and gather onstage.”

“All right, all right.”

The actors stood up.

CRASH!

The props stacked like a pile of Lego collapsed. Amazingly, there weren't two Hobgoblins living in the dressing room, but three. The last one had been buried deep among the props. A Hobgoblin missing one ear was sleeping soundly, hugging a stuffed lion.

“I said get up already!”

“Ah? Aagh!”

The director pinched his remaining ear and dragged him away. Even as he was dragged along, the actor refused to let go of the stuffed lion. How cute.

“As you know, the Cavefire play we're staging the week after next is Wild Dance of Flaming Swords.”

A little later, the actors assembled.

The director paced in front of the stage, hands clasped behind his back.

“Kekereukker, who has been living an ordinary life, one day meets the Flame Emperor, whom he has long admired. Their meeting begins an entirely new life for one of them and ends the other's. Recently, many reinterpretations claim that the Flame Emperor was actually a good person, too... But we're sticking to the classic.”

“Director.”

The one-armed actor raised his hand.

“It's just too old-fashioned. Shouldn't we keep up with the latest trends?”

“That's right. Audiences want something new.”

The one-eyed actor chimed in.

“Even if it's a little childish, they should exchange some loving words while pretending they don't mean them. The latest craze is called push-pull, push-pull. Apparently, that back-and-forth of drawing close and pushing away makes it fun to watch.”

“Ha! Nonsense! A true flame doesn't discriminate between kinds of firewood!”

The director glared.

“Once you start chasing sensationalism, there's no end to it. You lose your foundation. The theme of [Wild Dance of Flaming Swords] is how one person becomes disillusioned with another, and how drastically that disillusionment affects a person's life. Everything else is a deviation and heresy!”

Hmm.

The actors grumbled.

“He'll never get over being an old stick-in-the-mud.”

“At this rate, we really might go under...”

“Quiet! I added a few lines because you complained so much, didn't I? No more concessions. Take twenty minutes to warm up your bodies and voices. Then we start rehearsing!”

“That isn't enough... But all right, Director...”

As the newcomer, I quietly sat in the audience and observed my seniors' rehearsal.

Thirty minutes passed.

'Wow.'

I reached a conclusion.

'This is a complete shitshow, isn't it?'

In a word, it was terrible.

A Cavefire play is [a play that uses aura]. When acting out a scene of anger, an actor doesn't merely deliver lines, but raises flamelike aura from their entire body. That is how they express their rage.

Proficiency in aura inevitably leads to skill in acting, and skill in acting inevitably leads to proficiency in aura. Thus, Cavefire actors naturally become excellent warriors and accomplished aura users.

Or they should...

“Why is it so stiff?”

I muttered without realizing it. The words slipped out unthinkingly. Apparently hearing them, the director stopped coaching the actors and turned toward me.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. It just seems like you're using aura only in rigidly prescribed ways...”

It was the scene where Kekereukker realizes the Flame Emperor's atrocities and becomes enraged.

The actors before me focused too much on [anger]. No, they missed the point entirely. When expressing a character's [anger], they invariably blasted their aura outward like a forest fire. When expressing [sadness], they merely let it droop.

As though aura followed a fixed formula.

'It's flashy, sure.'

Right before my eyes, their auras repeatedly swelled and abruptly died down. There was a dazzling quality to it.

But that was all.

'There's no point doing it like that. Seriously.'

I spoke.

“Cavefire is the art of aura. And aura is a power manifested by establishing its foundation in a particular will, emotion, or mental landscape. Emotion comes first. If you prioritize mere arm movements or lines, the aura loses its life. How should I put it? It doesn't pulse. Ah, that's it. It has no vigor. It's limp.”

The director furrowed his brows. He looked like he'd beaten up his share of thugs in his day.

“What is this Kekereukker-barking nonsense?”

“Is that an Earth Spiritfolk proverb, by any chance? ... No, anyway.”

I stepped onto a corner of the stage.

By now, the actors had stopped rehearsing and were watching me, too.

“Look. You assign one movement to anger and another to sadness. You can't do that. Do people always cry when they're sad? No. It depends on the situation. Aura only has meaning when you can respond immediately to completely different situations.”

The senior actors chuckled, amused.

“Turns out the director brought us a teacher, not a junior.”

“Teacher! Show us how it's done!”

“Hmmm.”

How could I make this easy to understand?

I looked around.

“For starters, these torches are no good. Let's put them all out.”

I bent down and scooped up a handful of grains of earth from the floor. Then I infused them with aura and flicked them out, one after another. Struck by the pebble arrows, the torches lost their flames and went out.

The Hobgoblins were flustered.

“What?”

“What the...”

In an instant, our surroundings grew dark.

“Okay.”

Every Cavefire theater resembled a Mountain Snailfolk city. The Great Cavern. A cave surrounded by walls on every side, with a hole in its ceiling. The Earth Spiritfolk had now forgotten the days when they groaned in slavery. Yet time had left its traces, casting shadows over their architectural style.

“Please be quiet for a moment, everyone.”

With the torches extinguished, light streamed down only through the small hole in the ceiling. Dawn light. Blue still steeped in shadow settled onto the shabby stage.

“You don't have to deliver some unusual line.”

Dawn's quiet carpet.

“You don't even need lines at all. Aura isn't magic or anything... Never mind. I'll just show you. Let's say we're expressing anger.”

I got into a push-up position onstage.

“The more familiar the posture, the better. A movement anyone can recognize. You don't need exaggerated facial expressions, either. Hup!”

Slowly, I lowered my chest and waist. Raised them. I maintained a particular rhythm as I lowered and raised myself.

“Now, normally, you do push-ups at this speed. Nothing unusual. But if you...”

I drew up my aura in a single surge.

Red flames rippled from my entire body. Within them, I repeated the push-ups far faster than before, at a speed that seemed unnatural.

Quickly.

Mechanically.

Expressionlessly.

“...”

Silence surrounded me.

I stared straight ahead. Without making a sound as I breathed, I simply continued the rapid push-ups. I moved my whole body. Above me, bloodred aura blazed fiercely.

“... Whew.”

Thirty seconds later, I dusted off my hands and stood.

“See? They're just push-ups. A familiar position. But how does it look? It's the same movement, yet merely changing the speed gives it a completely different feeling.”

“...”

“What if I were sweating buckets, doing push-ups frantically with unstable form? That would feel different again, wouldn't it? If what I just did was controlled anger, this would be frantic anger. That's how it works. You don't need special lines and unusual movements to express emotion.”

The Hobgoblins seemed to understand something, yet not understand at all. It was a little frustrating. Only then did I realize that, for the first time, I had met [children with no talent for aura].

“You there, my senior.”

I pointed at the one-eyed actor.

He was the one playing the Flame Emperor.

“M-me?”

“Yes. The Flame Emperor is a man with tremendous self-love, isn't he? How would you express that self-love?”

“Uh...”

“What kind of aura would you use to express self-love?”

Though flustered, the one-eyed actor thought it over as I asked. Then he picked up a mirror from the props scattered nearby.

“Probably something like this...”

He gazed into the hand mirror. Faint aura rose from his body, writhing sinuously like a snake.

I see.

“It's not the absolute worst. But it's strange. It doesn't fit.”

“Strange how...?”

“Look. The Flame Emperor's the kind of bastard who calls himself a real man. Would someone like that prettily gaze into a hand mirror? Do you think he'd carry one around? What for? Why?”

“Uh...”

“You're trapped in the idea that [people with strong self-love look in mirrors often]. And because self-love somehow seems sinister and wriggly to you, you shaped your aura that way. You can't do that. It's all just imitation. You have to build the foundation on your own emotions, remember?”

“H-how would you do it, then?”

“The same way.”

With a sharp breath, I circulated my aura.

Like Uburka, I cloaked myself in it. Imaginary muscles. I disguised myself with aura to make my entire body appear bulging with muscle.

“Hhup... Whew, hhup...”

Then I repeated the push-ups slowly, very slowly, as though inviting everyone to admire my muscles. I deliberately added exaggerated breathing.

I wasn't [moving to build a good body], but [performing to show off a good body].

“See? Simple, isn't it?”

“... No, I've been meaning to point this out, but manipulating aura like you do is itself...”

“What if we wanted to emphasize the self-love even more? This is where props help. Scatter wooden chairs around him. But the Flame Emperor, this crazy bastard, doesn't sit, even though there are chairs. He never sits down. He just keeps doing push-ups. Without resting.”

“...”

“Then people will get it without a single line, won't they? Oh, that bastard's insane. He's a lunatic so fucking besotted with himself that he doesn't spare a glance for anything around him. Are you starting to get the idea? Since we're talking about it, I should show you.”

I easily lifted the log chairs and brought them onto the stage, arranging them haphazardly.

Then, amid the chairs, I did slow push-ups as before, breathing heavily with each one. Of course, I used aura to create the illusion of bulging muscles.

“How's that? Easy, isn't it?”

“...”

The one-eyed Hobgoblin's mouth hung open.

“Who are you?”

“A rookie actor?”

The Hobgoblins stared at me like I was crazy. Seriously, why?