Chapter 191 - Prima Donna (3)

3

The Black Dragon leader and the Paladin joined forces as though they had never argued.

"Death King, let us take part in this performance too."

"I stopped composing long ago, but I still have countless scores in my head. I'll incorporate music from our world. Just imagining it is wonderful..."

Why were these two so enthusiastic? Why were their eyes sparkling so much?

Um, you're starting to feel like strangers to me.

"The music you've made is quite excellent, but appoint me as the music specialist... No, as assistant director, and it will be much better."

"Then I'll handle the script. Since it's a dance drama, should I call myself a director rather than a scriptwriter? Chief director? Hmm, since it's a new art form, we'll need new names for the positions too."

"Whew."

I slowly steadied my breathing. Somehow, I managed to calm down, though my head was still burning.

"All right. If your help improves the performance, I'm happy. It'll all become a cultural legacy that nourishes the Earth Spiritfolk children..."

"Yes."

The Black Dragon leader smiled faintly. Her smile was like sunset-colored paint in a watercolor.

"That's what I like about you."

"What?"

Was she going to bombard me with praise again? I gave her a deeply wary look, and she chuckled.

"You decide on the right answer first, then reap the benefits. Always."

"What do you mean?"

"You plant the flag first, then gather the sand around it. Watching from the sidelines, it does look like a rather precarious balancing act, but, well. I'm sure your soulmate knows what she's doing."

It was a cryptic remark. Looking at my expression, the Black Dragon leader smiled again.

"Never mind. Let's decide on a name for your guild."

"Good idea," the Paladin agreed. "Names are important."

"Hmm, as I recall, there are only a handful of arts guilds registered in the City of Heavenly Ascent... Were there about thirty jazz performance guilds?"

"Twenty-six. One chamber orchestra. Eleven quartets. Even counting the guilds that have ceased operations, the total doesn't exceed fifty. And even those are mostly made up of members who belong to several guilds at once."

"It really is a sorry state of affairs..."

The Black Dragon leader sighed.

"Can you think of any good names?"

"Well..."

Ah.

"How about Theater Troupe [Raviel]? I think it would be perfect."

"Hmm, nothing comes to mind..."

"Choosing a name is always quite difficult."

"How about Black Dragon?"

"Not very good. What about Order Watch?"

Wait, hadn't they just brushed my suggestion aside far too smoothly? So smoothly that I almost failed to notice I'd been ignored.

"Raviel sounds really nice, though..."

"Keep that up, and I might just name it Theater Troupe [Kim Gongja]."

"Now, let's give this name some serious thought."

The three of us put our heads together. Various suggestions came up: Tomorrow, Ink Music, Babel, Aura...

"This won't do."

As the naming meeting dragged on endlessly, the Black Dragon leader finally made a decision.

"At times like this, the standard approach is to take it from the founding members' names. Let's combine Black Dragon leader, Paladin, and Death King into something that sounds decent."

"Can that be done?"

"Yes. We can use the Death King's language as our basis. He's the founder, so we should at least do him that courtesy."

The Black Dragon leader asked me various questions about my native language. We were speaking Ukrainian, Venezuelan, and Korean respectively. The Tower's power was merely interpreting for us automatically. To find out how our epithets actually sounded, we had to ask one another and check.

"Good."

After hearing my explanation, the Black Dragon leader nodded.

"We can simply take [heuk] from Black Dragon leader, [gi] from Paladin, and [sa] from Death King, and call it [Black Knight]."

"Wow."

My knees went weak.

"Black Dragon leader. Excuse me, Black Dragon leader."

Feeling a shudder shoot through my spine, I tapped the shoulder of my comrade and close friend.

"Can you see my hand?"

"... I can see it just fine. Why?"

"It's all curled up from cringing. Please straighten it out for me."

"All right. That's easy enough."

The Black Dragon leader grabbed my fingers and sharply bent them backward.

"Aaaaaagh!"

"Better?"

"It's fucking awful!"

I sprang to my feet.

"What kind of theater troupe name is Black Knight?! It's embarrassing! It's humiliating!"

"Death King, your epithet is Death King. [King of Death]. I'm terribly sorry to say this, but do you even have any dignity left to lose?"

"Hey, you don't get to say that to me, Ms. [Black Dragon Master]!"

"Don't spell it out in English!"

The Black Dragon leader grabbed me by the collar.

"Do you want to die?!"

"You're the one who started it!"

"When I tell you to stop, stop! And to British people, my epithet is translated as Queen, not Master!"

"Ohhh, so you're Black Dragon Queen, not Black Dragon Master. That must be sooo nice. Is the abbreviation BDQ? Wow, it sounds like a place that'll deliver chicken within thirty minutes of ordering."

"Fine. All right. Theater Troupe [Kim Gongja] it is."

"Black Knight is wonderful."

I marveled.

"Just hearing it gives you a sense of refinement, doesn't it? It rolls right off the tongue. I don't think there's a better candidate for a theater troupe's name. As expected of the Black Dragon leader. Not only is your guild the best, but your naming sense is unbeatable too. Black Knight. Excellent. Let's go with Black Knight."

"Yes, you should have surrendered sooner."

Watching our dogfight, the Paladin gave a peculiar, rueful smile. Her mermaid tail swayed at the surface of the bathwater, scattering little ripples.

"You really do get along well... How strange."

Theater Troupe Black Knight—black, knight, death.

I would be Guild Leader, with the Black Dragon leader and the Paladin serving as Deputy Guild Leaders. A guild jointly founded by the second-, third-, and seventh-ranked hunters. It was an unprecedentedly lavish lineup.

'And it's an arts guild, no less. With this lineup.'

The corners of my mouth rose. Once the guild officially launched, the world would probably go wild. I was starting to have fun too.

"I'm curious how people will react."

"Right? Aren't you?"

The Black Dragon leader grinned like a mischievous child. Even on the face of an elderly bloodsucking aristocrat, the playful smile suited her.

"I guarantee it'll knock quite a few people flat. Oh, naturally, we're keeping it secret from the others too. Let's invite that old Sword Star to our first performance. Really, what kind of face will he make?"

Suddenly, I wanted to see that same smile on the Black Dragon leader's own face. For some reason, I thought it would be an absolutely wonderful smile.

"I like it."

I smiled too.

"I really do."

We talked about our next performance all night. We settled on [Raviel and Kekereukker]. At the Black Dragon leader's insistence that Kekereukker sounded too out of place, we changed the title to [Heart of Silver].

"The protagonist absolutely has to be the Duchess of Ivansia. There's no room for debate. Instead of assigning characters for the actors to play, let's express the duchess's psychological changes through choreography."

"We'll need a dramatic depiction of the moment she falls in love. I'll make a [ballroom] the setting. We'll cover the stage with countless fresh white flowers and have the actors dance on them."

"Oh, that would be beautiful!"

Everyone was excited. Several completely empty wine bottles were already lying around us. We had been drinking as we held our meeting.

"Hmm. At the moment she falls in love, the flowers beneath the Duchess of Ivansia's toes will begin turning from white to red. One flower, two, three... A path of red stepping-stones will form across a pure white sea. The Death King will step only on the flowers that have turned red, crossing over to the duchess."

The Black Dragon leader stood up.

"I can't take it. This is too good. Let's try it right now!"

"There's no flower shop here. Is that all right?"

"We can just pick some using Instant Teleportation. Let's go!"

The Black Dragon leader and I climbed into the Paladin's bathtub and joined hands. The three of us teleported somewhere. We didn't know what names the places we traveled between had. It didn't matter that we didn't know.

Somewhere white flowers seemed likely to bloom.

We gauged the slopes of the mountains and followed the scent of flowers as we teleported. It was night. Beneath the night sky, the flowers' fragrance hung thick. There was a valley of yellow flowers and a ridge covered in purple blossoms. Sending inexplicable laughter into the night air, we searched only for white flowers.

'This is nice.'

Laughter kept slipping out of me. As though I were drunk.

"Do you realize we're flying through the sky in a bathtub right now?"

"A bathtub is what a carpet upgrades into. People are born in water, after all."

"You've lost your minds..."

"We're completely drunk. This is bad. If the people in the Tower saw this..."

We landed in a field of flowers. Bowing our heads, we saw white in full bloom across the ground.

As soon as we landed, the Black Dragon leader hurried out of the fish tank and kicked off her shoes.

"This place should do! Death King!"

"Haha."

"You've turned into an idiot. Paladin!"

"All right."

With a resigned little smile, the Paladin raised both hands. Her fleshy fingers descended. Slowly. A little more slowly...

By the time her fingertips touched empty air, her face had become expressionless.

━━━━.

A note stirred the night sky coquettishly.

━━, ━━━.

The Paladin's fingertips tapped the air, as though invisible piano keys lay spread out before her. Flower petals trembled. Each time her long fingers touched a transparent white key, aura vibrated in the night sky.

"See? You haven't gotten rusty at all!"

"Quiet."

"Honestly, your lover's possessiveness is something else."

"Even noisier."

The melody grew fierce. The sound of the piano buried their voices. Their chatter subsided, and only the bloodsucking aristocrat's bursts of laughter rose above the melody.

"You fool! It's been ages since Libertango!"

The Black Dragon leader stepped barefoot on the white flowers. Beneath her feet, their petals turned black.

━━, ━━, ━━━━.

The Paladin's hands stirred the night. The Black Dragon leader's feet wounded the flowers. From petals scratched by her little toenails, black paint—colored aura—flowed like blood.

A dance movement for each melody. A movement of the foot for each gesture of the hand. Black footprints spread, dot by dot, through the white flower field.

"Death King!"

"So pretty..."

"You silly fool!"

"I like white..."

"Ah, you idiot. Too fast!"

"Quiet."

Seeming to join and then drift apart, our laughter, our music, and our footsteps melted together. We were three children dotting a white canvas with the night sky. The Paladin hummed.

"I love the Tower so much!"

The Black Dragon leader laughed, intoxicated by her dance.

"I wish it had appeared just a little sooner. Then my father could have lived with me too..."

"I love it too. The Tower."

"You mustn't be late, Death King."

The fragrance of black flowers was dizzying.

"You must never be late."

"You're right."

"We'll be able to live well, won't we?"

"Yes."

"I want to be happy. Forever..."

"We're friends, after all."

"That's right!"

"Everything will turn out well."

"Yes."

The bloodsucking aristocrat's aged hand took my fingers.

"Let's dance, Kim Gongja."

If life was a single game, perhaps we had only been trying to find someone to play with.

We spun, dancing in a circle.

The white beneath the Black Dragon leader's feet was painted black. The petals crushed beneath mine turned red, deeply red. Black ripples and red ripples washed over the path we danced along, until the white garden was drenched in black and red.

"━━━."

Playing the piano, the Paladin quietly opened her mouth.

Lascia ch'io pianga

mia cruda sorte,

e che sospiri

la libertà…….

e che sospiri

la libertà…….

The Tower swallowed the Paladin's song once, but did not pour it back out. It simply left it in the night air. We became three people abandoned to the night, wickedly enchanting the white flowers, and fell down enchanted ourselves.

-...

I didn't open my eyes until broad daylight.

Dazzling sunlight.

The Paladin lay in the fish tank, her gills fluttering, while the Black Dragon leader slept motionless with her nose buried in the flowers. They were the very picture of what became of utterly plastered drunks.

"Ugh..."

Clutching my throbbing head, I stood up. Sonia was standing quietly before me.

"Hm?"

"Lord Kekereukker."

Her voice was serious.

"What... Why...? Wow, my head really hurts. Was there something wrong with that wine...?"

"I want to perform in the next show myself."

I looked up at Sonia. Some nameless desire lurked in her blue eyes.

"I want to live like you too... No."

Sonia said,

"I want to live like all of you."