Chapter 6: Search
The Master issued orders to everyone, and we all split up to search our assigned areas. The mansion was too large and we too short on time to search all together, so it was divided up among the seven. The divisions were made to overlook as little of the mansion’s roughly thirty rooms, halls, stairs, and hallways as possible. The Master, Lady, and Doll Boy took the second floor, while the Mistress, Butler, Maid, and Doll Girl took floor one. And the Villager, who was not a resident and knew nothing of the mansion, was told to accompany and help any one of the seven.
The Master’s assignment was the area to the right after going up the stairs, the south side of the second floor. The southeast storeroom, the forbidden room beside it, the Master and Mistress’s room, the southwest study, the antique collection room, and guest room #8 - a total of six rooms, and their surrounding hallways.
On the north wall of the forbidden room on the second floor was a large painting of a girl dancing alone in a forest, large enough to cover the entire wall. The sheer size of it made me stop in awe. The girl in the center was painted life-size, almost exactly as large as me. The Master told me that there was a similar painting and forbidden room in the same place downstairs as well.
As for what the “forbidden rooms” were, they had apparently been locked for many years and were never used. They were already locked when the Master inherited the mansion from his grandfather; since even his grandfather didn’t have the keys, entering would require busting down the door. Yet that had never seemed necessary, so those rooms were never opened. We checked just to be sure, but there was no sign of the door having been forced open, so we deemed it impossible for anyone to intrude and focused on thoroughly searching the other five rooms.
First, we went to the storeroom in the southeast corner. The moment the door opened, the Master’s eyes widened with surprise. Trying to keep in my hasty feeling that we might have found the page so soon, I entered the room behind the briskly-walking Master. He picked up a broom lying on the floor and held it in silent thought for a while.
“Um… Is there something about that broom?”
“…Well. No one typically comes in this storeroom. I was just curious why this one broom had fallen over, rather than leaning with the others.”
“Fell over? Maybe someone used it and didn’t put it back properly…”
“Despite appearances, the maid is an absolute stickler for orderliness. There’s simply no chance she would handle a cleaning implement so roughly. But if someone entered this room, then perhaps…”
“…Oh! So you think the person who stole the page might have hidden it somewhere no one usually went? Right?”
“…Yes.”
I searched the room, my chest bursting with hope that we’d find it right away. The room was full of unused furniture and fixtures, as well as cleaning implements, and everything had collected a lot of dust. We gave a full search of every nook and cranny, but found nothing small like a piece of paper. The Master, just in case, moved around all the large furniture to carefully check the gaps between the furniture and the floor. But this was also in vain.
The once-orderly storeroom became a mess, and most everything came to be assembled near the entrance to the large room. Next time someone opened up the storeroom, the pile of things would topple over and block entry… No, not likely. But when I tried to put the furniture back where it was, the Master stopped me. There was too much else to search, he said, and no time to be putting things back.
Not even taking a moment to be despondent, we hurried to the nearby bedroom used by the Master and Mistress. I felt a bit tense stepping into the room, decorated in a uniform refreshing blue. It didn’t matter that it was just scripted character backstory; it was still a high-class married couple’s bedroom.
A gorgeous chandelier with crystals liberally embedded in it, a huge canopy bed like a king might sleep in, a closet containing an astounding number of dresses and tuxedos - and beautiful display shelves, tables, and chairs that one could tell at a glance were all finely-crafted to the smallest details. We searched everywhere in the room with eyes like saucers, but found nothing here either.
Drawing a close to our exploration of the master bedroom, we went to the Master’s study, which could have the highest possibility of hiding the page. But the luxurious aged desk there had only an unworking fountain pen on its surface, and nothing showed up after much opening and closing of drawers. The Master searched the bookshelves, taking each and every book with an elegant motion, flipping through the pages with his slender fingers as if toying with them, and putting it back… again and again, until the last book was checked, and he let out a quiet sigh.
We’d already searched half the rooms and still hadn’t even found a clue. My shoulders slumped a little. Either the Master wasn’t as concerned as I was… or it was literally in his character to always be a calm, composed, and rigid gentleman. Either way, I sensed no disappointment in him.
The real Kaito was big-hearted, mild, had a weakness for women, and smiled often. But I’d still yet to see the Master here soften his expression at all. His personality was the complete opposite of Kaito’s real nature. Yet I did happen to know that Kaito really was the son of a wealthy family, and watching his practiced actions acquired from that noble upbringing did allow me the nostalgic sensation that this man was Kaito.
I certainly found it strange to think “nostalgically” of people who I’d seen just a few hours ago, but for whatever reason, that was the way I felt. Perhaps while searching for the page, I could obtain some clue by simultaneously observing these “people in the play.” I wasn’t suspicious of any particular person. But if the page thief was among them, I had to at least gather some clues.
Leaving the study, we then tried the Master’s collection room. Before the door was even open all the way, a “Wow…” of awe fell out of my mouth. Just one step into the room brought me to a dead end, and my eyes were drawn to the collection sprawling before me. A packed arrangement of bronze statues, sculptures, weapons, ornaments, jewelry - all gorgeous, certainly very old, wondrous, and somewhat odd things I’d never seen the likes of before.
“Surprised? It’s a collection of curios that have been passed down in my family. Most of this, I inherited from my grandfather, but I’ve gathered some of these things myself.”
The Master proceeded into the room with a light gait. One wall was decorated with artifacts from all times, places, and cultures, and it seemed no two things had the same shape. One looked something like a vampire, one like a king of beasts, and yet another like a goddess of ancient mythology.
“Wow… What a long nose this mask has…”
“Ah, that’s known as a tengu. A god spoken of in a small country to the east.”
“It’s God? …He’s kind of scary.”
“The eastern lands have a variety of religious customs somewhat different from ours. In particular, one country still has a unique long-held tradition of polytheism. This mask, for instance, would be called a god in some places, but in others feared as a "youkai,” a kind of monster.“
"Huh… You sure know a lot.”
“…It is my only hobby, yes.”
Come to think of it, while the Master and the real Kaito’s personalities were totally different, both had a hobby of collecting things. And Meg’s love of classical mysteries overlapped with the bothersome Maid’s love of incidents. I again thought, in a new light, how there were these similarities between the characters of Crazy ∞ nighT and their actors.
In reality, I’d broken the clock that Kaito went through so much effort to get his hands on during the show, and had been on my way to ask him how to fix it… So as I watched the Master search this collection room being very careful with everything, the fact that I’d left the clock broken started to make me feel really guilty.
“That reminds me… Kai… er, I know someone who has a hobby of collecting things too. He seems to collect a lot of stuff… but I broke an important clock of his once. I’m still sort of in the middle of fixing it, and I don’t even know if it can be fixed yet. And I haven’t even gotten to apologize, either… I hope I can do both soon…”
Why did I have to come to this world? But no, that was all my fault too.
“All things with form… will rot away with time. It’s an unavoidable fact so long as time exists. You need not worry about breaking it.”
“…”
“Even the most fantastic creations will decay when left alone. Is that not why people feel a desire to protect them?”
“…I suppose.”
“Do you want to protect the relics of your great ancestors?”
“Huh…?”
Relics of my ancestors? I turned to look around at all the antiques. These were relics he had inherited from his ancestors, protected over generations. But my “relics” could be none other than Burlet’s works and company. Of course I wanted to protect them. I even joined the troupe out of a desire to carry them on to future generations.
“Yes! I want to carry the treasures of the past into the future… Even if times change, and even if their form changes, I want them to remain, adopting the qualities of those times.”
“Even if their form changes, hm…? But things will change greatly from their past form over long ages… Some may say it’s something entirely different by then.”
The Master, with a face indeterminately happy or sad, gazed at a doll which had surely once been adorned with beautiful jewelry, with a vividly-colored dress. But the deep crimsons of the dress had faded to a yellowish brown, and most of the gold leaf had peeled off her crown.
Would you actually call this something “entirely different” from the once-beautiful doll, claim that it wasn’t that doll anymore? Even if a long time ago, it had been called the world’s most beautiful doll, made by the most skilled dollmaker, could you still think of this dreadful, half-rotten figure as beautiful? What if repairing her with modern technology made you unable to say it was still her…?
I carefully took the doll and checked to be sure the page wasn’t hidden inside it. But there was nothing there but frayed cotton stuffing.
I took a look at each mask, statue, and sculpture along the wall. The statues and sculptures were up on pedestals, ominously staring down from up high. My eyes fell on a large statue enshrined above my head. It was a woman riding a horse, holding two long swords up toward the sky, with mouth open wide in a war cry. She looked like she could attack at any second, yet that moment was frozen in time. The swords she was holding appeared to be real.
“Fond of it? She’s a valkyrie, a goddess from Norse mythology. The sword in her left hand is one my grandfather used as a retainer to the king, on the battlefield and in protection of His Majesty. Centuries since, it’s now a family heirloom. Under her protection, you see.”
“Valkyrie…?”
“Yes. She’s one of the goddesses of war. The name comes from old Norse, a mixture of words meaning "those slain in battle” and “choice” - thus, it means “chooser of the slain.”“
"One of…? Are there other goddesses?”
“Yes. There are… nine valkyries, it’s usually said.”
“Nine…”
“Well, the number can vary depending on the tradition.”
“So, does that mean she has friends?”
As I turned around to look for other goddesses like her, I bumped into a suit of armor nearby. In that instant -
“Watch out!”
The Master standing in front of me forcefully pulled my hands, and a loud clatter echoed around me. I looked back in surprise.
“Huh…?”
A longsword lay on the ground where I had been standing. I slowly moved my gaze upward, timidly looking at her.
“Ah…”
There I saw the goddess, holding empty space in her left hand. When I knocked over the armor positioned near her, the impact shook the statue and made one of the swords slip out of her hand.
“That was close… It’s good it was nothing serious. Are you hurt?”
“Thank you… I’m fine. But anyway… I’m so sorry! Is the sword… okay…? Don’t tell me I broke it…”
“You need not worry. However, I must heed my grandfather’s advice not to anger the goddess. Wait there a moment; I’ll bring a stepladder.”
The Master picked up the sword fallen to his feet and left to get a stepladder from the storeroom. No doubt he needed to put the sword back in the goddess’s hand.
The moment I was alone, I slumped to the floor with relief. If the timing had been just a little off, things could have gone very terribly. The sword was real… imagining it falling from at least a meter’s height and plunging into me made me shiver.
The well-polished wood floor was cool and comforting. My head could slowly cool down after blood had rushed up to it in fear. This might have been the most dangerous experience in my life. My heart was still pounding a little… I had to quickly calm down and get a hold of myself. I put my hands and feet down on the cold floor to let off the body heat.
As my hand ran along the floor, it felt something rough. What was that? I lowered my gaze, and saw a scratch in the floor that had likely been made by the sword.
“I… scratched it…”
Even if it was inside a play, it still made my heart ache to damage such a beautiful and harmonious mansion. I stood up to inspect the severity of the cut.
“Huh? Is this blood…?”
When I checked the scratch on the floor again, I noticed something red seeped in. Slowly looking around, I noticed several other scratches. I hadn’t seen the moment the sword fell. Did the blade hit the floor and scratch it once, then bounce and scratch elsewhere…? No, no. Straining my eyes and looking closely, all the scattered scratches were the same size, a few centimeters. The scratch from the first impact and a scratch after bouncing off couldn’t possibly be the same size. That meant these other scratches couldn’t have been made just now.
And what was this red stain on one of them? I ran my finger on it. I felt a chill all over my body. Maybe it was someone’s blood. It was completely dried by now, such that I had no idea what had caused this or when. I don’t suppose someone else had that sword fall down on them from above, like I just had…?
I timidly looked up again as if to make sure she was still there. The goddess of war, though holding nothing in her left hand, was still galloping on air in a heroic pose. I heard footsteps from the door; the Master finally returned with a footstool.
“I’ll handle the rest of this myself. Would you go help out on the first floor? The rooms there are larger and contain more items, so I think they could use the help. No one’s come to contact us yet, so I doubt anyone’s found it. We must hurry… while there’s still time to perform.”
“Time to perform…?”
I’d heard them using that phrase earlier when everyone was gathered together.
“There’s limited time in which to perform the play. We still have a good deal, but we need to find the page quickly and move on to the next scene. Already…”
The Master paused and closed his eyes to focus on something.
“…About a third of that time has passed.”
He reopened his eyes and re-established his neutral expression of strictness with a hint of grief.
“Um, this "time to perform”… How can you know how much is left? Is there a clock anywhere?“
"The only clock in the mansion is the one in the hall. And it’s stopped at the moment.”
“Well then, how…?”
“We have a sense of the play in our bodies. If you too want to know how much time we have, just ask your body directly.”
I imitated what he just did, closing my eyes and focusing. Then, oddly enough, I could feel how much time was left in the play, a sense of its progression.
Indeed, there was no denying now that I really had become part of this play… As I recognized that, the dread of being an actor performing in it budded in me. If the next page was never found, and time ran out… would everyone, this world, and even myself just vanish into thin air…?
I left the Master and went down the hallway, feeling my hand along the wall. He told me the kitchen and living room downstairs had the most things in them, so he wanted me to help the Maid and Mistress in searching them.
While searching for the page, there were essential tasks that only I could do… To look into a way to return to reality, and to investigate the mysteries of this world. At the moment, I couldn’t know whether finding the next page and following the script to reach the play’s finale would truly bring us back to the real world.
Everyone seemed to be more scared of than their world vanishing as a result of the damage to the script than anything else. But what if, by some chance, this world disappearing would automatically send us back to reality…? If that were the case, then sorry, but my choice would have to be destroying this world as quickly as possible to bring back the real actors. Because I was the only one with memories of the real world.
I also had to think about who would have stolen the page. What objective could someone have to do such a thing? Was it as the Lady said, and the next scene was an unwanted one, one which they absolutely didn’t want to act out? But then,could they even harbor the feeling of “not wanting to act” in this play world where the script was law? If they could only act as the script dictated, then wouldn’t it be impossible for them to tear out a page from it?
But potentially, the order of the script wasn’t that strongly upheld. What if it were like real life, and scripts were only “enforced” as much as the stage managers and playwrights could manage…? It could be possible, in such an unnaturally realistic play as this. Real people had simply been brought into a fictional world and adapted to it.
Reality has “scenes” which can’t be omitted. Yet, my real body and mind had been directly transplanted into this world. Which meant that even here, scenes like me just walking around, going to wash my hands, ignoring other people’s conversations, things that would absolutely be omitted in a play, would still take place.
As humans, there are things we don’t like and don’t want to do. And there are quite a few actors who are… to be blunt, selfishly fickle. If having to follow the script didn’t mean your body moving on its own, saying lines word for word out of an absolute compulsion, then the people here must have been doing it as a raison d'etre - out of a sense of duty to themselves and their world.
So, if they moved with their own free will, they would in fact be capable of stealing the page. After all, hadn’t they just been quarreling and doubting each other about who stole it? Yet wouldn’t that mean the culprit not only wanted to erase this world, but also themselves? Or maybe the destruction of this world wasn’t their aim. Maybe even if the play didn’t reach the correct ending, nothing would actually disappear…
It was all unclear conjecture; I knew absolutely nothing for certain. I had too little information to go on. If only there were Rin or Len with their genius intellect, Meg proficient at logical reasoning regardless of her outrageous thoughts, sensible Kaito with plenty of experience, Gack with his kind advice that always hit the mark, sharp-eyed Meiko who saw all, or Luka with her one-of-a-kind intuition that always brought success.
How reassuring it would be if I could talk with them… I knew I needed to stay strong and focused so I could save them, yet instantly, I was overcome with unbearable loneliness, and as always, found myself dependent on them.
“Why did this have to happen? Why did…”
…we get trapped in this world? It was my fault, wasn’t it? For sacrilege against him, against Burlet… I gripped the memento of my grandmother, still on my left hand.
“Why…? Well, isn’t it because the page was stolen?”
I turned around mid-walk in surprise and found the Lady standing right behind me. When in the world had she…?
“Ahh, hold on! Ahead! Stop!”
“Ahead…? Waaahhh!”
“…!!”
The Lady grabbed my hood and forcefully pulled me back, and I landed bottom-first on the floor. Counting this morning, that was the second time today. As I rubbed my bottom, insults rained down on me from above.
“Ahem?! Don’t you know anything of danger?! Where were you even looking?! …You were about to fall down the stairs before I grabbed you! You nearly died!”
“Ahaha…”
“…It’s no laughing matter. And… You shouldn’t be so frightened by my voice! How overdramatic! I merely deigned to answer when you asked a question. You make it seem like I’m to blame for you nearly slipping and falling!”
I really hadn’t expected someone to be up so close. From her point of view, she probably just happened to be passing through and suddenly heard me ask a question. I guess I accidentally started thinking out loud. I was just slowly walking down the hallway in thought, but apparently I’d made to the stairs without noticing. Even in a play, I’d done it again.
It was a bad habit of mine to get so deeply focused that I went into my own world, and lost sight of everything else. I just kept walking, looking straight ahead, probably at nothing in particular, and nearly tumbled down the stairs. I looked down at them - long and steep. Certainly, if I had tripped, I would have fallen all the way to the bottom. It was truly a good thing the Lady was nearby. If not, I’d be… well, I didn’t want to think about that.
For an instant, I remembered my eerie dream from this morning of someone falling down stairs to their death and shivered. I took a sidelong glance at the Lady; she was still complaining at me.
My question… Obviously, I hadn’t been asking the Lady specifically, but in my mind, her reply completely missed the mark. “Reality” for her and I was different, and the very thought of there being a real world separate from this one was something that wouldn’t get through to these people. So it was all up to me. I didn’t have much confidence, but just like when musing over the fictional world while watching a play, I had to consider every idea I thought of as a possibility, and find a thread to follow toward the truth. Yet…
“I wonder, maybe my imagination is going wild, and I’m having a really realistic dream…? Or maybe I’m already in the afterlife… Hmm, no, that’s too much of a leap. But it’s…”
“Ehh?!”
My half-monologue thoughts were interrupted by a hysteric shout from the Lady. She stared at me with face warped in terror, like she’d seen a monster.
“Uh… U-Um…?”
“T-This isn’t the afterlife! What are you saying?! Wrong or not, please don’t say such ill-omened things! U-Understood?!”
The Lady’s vigor made me take a step back on impulse.
“Ah, I-I’m sorry…! I was just having some wild ideas… I didn’t really mean anything of it. Did I upset you…?”
“Eh?! …I-I see. It’s nothing. I just, ah…”
Her gaze timidly wavered left and right, the words seeming to be caught in her throat. This was a habit of Luka’s when she was deeply worried; I’d seen it only once before. The Lady’s current behavior reminded me of Luka’s flustered face when she forgot about an agreement with an important sponsor, and my heart ached again.
“…I just thought I saw something… shining behind you. It scared me, slightly. Perhaps it was just me…”
I turned around and saw a large portrait on the wall. But nothing else. Was it the ghost the Master claimed haunted the mansion? Surely not… I carefully inspected my surroundings and found nothing. So maybe she’d thought the portrait was a ghost… I took a careful look at the person in it. I felt like I’d seen this person before, but…
“The man in this portrait…”
He had bangs that went down to his eyes, wore a black hood, and posed with a slightly-lowered head, a finger to his lips, and a fearless grin.
“Hmm… Father tells me it’s been here since he inherited the mansion from his grandfather. I believe he calls it a "portrait of the Silk-Hat Baron”? But what a strange name for someone wearing no such thing…“
”…!“
The Silk-Hat Baron - was this the writer of Crazy ∞ nighT, Mr. Burlet himself?! Even the local Burlet museum only had a few remaining artifacts related to his largely-enigmatic life. Among them were a few portraits, and one of them depicted him with a woman thought to be his daughter. The pose in the one I was seeing here was different, but those portraits would always have him with bangs covering his eyes, wearing a low silk hat, so people at the theater affectionately called him the Silk-Hat Baron… or, well, close enough.
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