Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 11 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Attention and Praise

A certain theater show had gained popularity in a city I’d visited by chance.

THE TWELFTH PUBLIC PERFORMANCE BY THE CREN THEATRICAL COMPANY

Posters bearing these words were plastered all over the city’s weathered brick buildings.

The small sheets of paper showed a lone man standing up on a platform, with several women dancing behind him. It looked like an opera.

The performers seemed to be quite spirited in their publicity efforts. I even caught sight of some of them handing out flyers in the town plaza.

“We’re holding our twelfth public performance as planned tomorrow and the next day!” one of them said as we passed each other.

I accepted the flyer that was pressed into my hand.

“…………”

The line for the ticket cost had been scratched out and revised in handwriting to show a price three times the original. It looked like they had planned four nights of performances, beginning the previous evening and continuing on until the day after next. The word CANCELED was written over the line for that day. And for some strange reason, the price of the two remaining performances had tripled in price. What’s more, the words THANK YOU FOR MAKING US SO POPULAR! were also written on the flyer.

Oh-hoh, seems this show has attracted quite a bit of attention. Probably because they’re advertising it everywhere. This Cren Theatrical Company is the talk of the town.

The name of the company was fluttering about all over the place.

“Hey, get this, it sounds like they’re doing a public performance tomorrow.”

“But you can’t get tickets anymore with how the price has gone up, can you? Must be nice for those who bought them ahead of time.”

“I saw the show yesterday, you know…”

“I heard a rumor that tickets for tomorrow’s performance are nearly sold out.”

“And today’s show got canceled…”

More and more people continued to gather. I guessed this was how the show’s popularity had spread throughout town. They say it’s human nature for people to congregate together.

Similarly, I was one of those people, so before I knew it, I was speaking to the townsfolk.

“Um, excuse me—is that performance really all that interesting?” I asked.

The responses from the townspeople were all identical. Each of them said basically the same thing. There was a good reason for the large crowd.

The people of that town could not stop talking about the Cren Theatrical Company.

Incredibly, I even saw the topic of the Cren Theatrical Company mentioned in the newspaper.

LEADER OF CREN THEATRICAL COMPANY FORCES THROUGH REMAINING TWO DAYS OF SCHEDULED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE, EVADING EXPLANATION OF AFFAIR WITH LEAD ACTRESS, it said.

No doubt that was the actual reason drawing people to the Cren Theatrical Company.

After strolling around town for a little while, I made my way to see the leader of the Cren Theatrical Company.

Of course, I had arranged a meeting ahead of time. There was no way I would have been able to just drop in on the leader of the theater troupe. He was the one I had come to the city to see.

“Here is the article the merchant entrusted me with the other day.”

His house was a fairly extravagant one and sat on the broad main avenue of the city. When I had knocked on the door and called out simply, “Delivery!” he had ushered me inside.

“Great, I’ve been waiting for you! I’m sorry for forcing you to hurry.”

As a traveling mage, I am sometimes commissioned to carry packages with me on my journeys. In this case, the delivery was the whole reason I had come to this city. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that I had come from afar just to hand over this package.

“Don’t mention it.”

And just a moment earlier, that job had come to an end.

I had handed over the package in exchange for a small sum of money.

As he cracked the lid on the wooden box and checked the contents, the man told me in good humor, “Right now, keeping these is quite popular around here, among those in the know.”

I looked at the wooden box.

“…These are popular?”

“Apparently, they’re slick and smooth and pleasant to the touch. They’re especially popular with young girls, I hear.”

Inside the box, a curious gelatinous creature was jiggling around.

“…This is a slime. You know that, right?”

“They’re all the rage around here.”

I’m not all that knowledgeable about the creatures known as slimes, but in neighboring countries, these creatures were considered pests, and I’d heard that many places worked actively to exterminate them. In particular, many people found the slimes’ astonishing fecundity and gelatinous jiggling nature viscerally disgusting, and I’d heard that they were despised elsewhere, especially by young women.

There must be a lot of strange girls around here…

But bringing it back to Cren.

“Seems like you’ve been having all sorts of trouble, huh?” I couldn’t help but bring up the subject. “People are gossiping about your affair in town, you know?”

“Oh, you know about that, Miss Witch?” He was a hot topic throughout the town, but he didn’t look like he was especially worried about it. “I guess they are talking. I’m not all that worried about what the masses have to say, but today’s performance did get canceled because of an issue with the affair.”

“I saw that.”

It had been easy to guess what was going on from the townspeople and the newspaper headlines.

Apparently, Cren had had a wife before forming his theater troupe, but recently it had come to light that he was having a secret affair with a young actress who had just joined his troupe. As soon as the affair had been discovered, his wife had moved out and served him with divorce papers. The speed with which everything had happened—and the fact that even under such circumstances, Cren had forced through performances starring an actress with basically no credentials because she was his lover—had attracted people’s attention, in a bad way.

“But tomorrow and the next day, the performances are going ahead as planned, aren’t they?”

“Mm-hmm. We finally have eyes on us, so we can’t not perform.”

I think the people involved in the production are attracting more attention than the play itself, though…

“Oh, that’s right!” Then Cren clapped his hands and pulled a small slip of paper out of his pocket.

“A ticket for tomorrow. If you’re interested, please come watch the show.”

Well, now.

“Can I really have this?”

I’m probably just gonna scalp it, y’know…

Cren nodded.

“You got me what I needed in order to seduce actresses. It’s only right to give you this as thanks,” he said.

…………

Um…?

“What are you talking about?”

Aren’t you already lovers with your lead actress? What is this? Are you planning to make a pass at another new actress at this point? Are you trying to get with every woman in your company?

In an instant, suspicious thoughts were swirling around in my head.

But his answer was completely different from anything I was imagining.

“Ha-ha-ha! Don’t tell anyone, but as a matter of fact, I hired that actress from abroad. I brought her here specifically for this performance!” he told me.

According to Cren, the theater company he managed had been in a slump for a long time. In recent years, they had hardly drawn any customers. Though they had put on twelve public performances, the people in that city had stopped coming to see them entirely.

When they had held their first performance, a long waiting list to join the theater troupe had formed, and other troupes had even started up in imitation. But now they were a mere shadow of their former glory. Popularity and trends were like living creatures, always moving on to the next thing.

The Cren Theatrical Company was entirely a thing of the past.

And so after their twelfth performance, the Cren Theatrical Company was going to leave.

“This will be our last show. We want to start over fresh in a new place,” Cren said. “But since we’re going to the trouble of putting on a final performance, it would be a waste not to make as much money as we can off it, right?”

That was why they had to pull in a lot of customers.

But…

“We figured we probably wouldn’t get our former customer traffic back just by honest advertising. I’m convinced that the people of this city are already tired of watching the same old theater troupe and that they’re unlikely to show up, no matter how innovative or new the production.”

What the troupe members had come up with was the unusual method of hiring an actress from abroad. But…

“What’s the point of working with an actress you hired from somewhere else?”

It was a naive question. I wasn’t sure how popular the actress they hired was where she came from, but it seemed like she would be unknown, at least around there.

How is that supposed to create publicity?

“She’s perfect precisely because she’s unknown. We’re not using her to draw in customers, we’re using her to attract attention.”

“……?”

He explained it to me a little bit too politely, since I was slow to understand.

According to Cren…

“To be honest, the rumor that I’m having an affair with that actress is nothing more than a baseless rumor. I should know. I spread it myself. The truth is that I have no relationship whatsoever with her. In truth, she’s a woman of absolute integrity—I’m simply having her perform, both on stage and as part of the publicity stunt.”

“…………”

Hmm?

“And I’m not leaving my wife. Though we did have to get legally divorced in this country.”

Hmmm?

“…So to make a long story short, this is all an elaborate lie… Is that what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “That’s right.”

I was starting to see the whole picture.

To clearly and concisely summarize this whole sequence of events…

The leader of the Cren Theatrical Company, which was facing a real slump, in order to make as much money as possible off of their final performance before leaving the city, had gone out of his way to draw attention to something that had nothing to do with the show and win back their popularity and success. That seemed to be what I was hearing.

“Actually, everything went as planned. Even though we’ve raised the ticket prices three times now, there’s an endless line of people waiting to buy them. It makes me regret not raising the prices even more.”

“…………”

Needless to say, based on what I had seen, every person in the city was talking about the play at the moment.

Their theatrical production was the talk of the town.

But…

“Should you really be telling me all this?”

After all, how would the townspeople feel if they learned the truth about the Cren Theatrical Company, which was continuing to attract so much attention?

“I’m telling you precisely because I want you to spread the word.”

Ultimately, even if I alluded to what was going on with the theater company, that would just be like pouring oil on the fire and would probably lead to an even sharper rise in prices for tickets to his show. Admiration, curiosity, or disgust—in the end, they all brought in the same money. So long as I didn’t stay quiet about what kind of person Cren was, no matter what action I did take, ultimately the people’s money would end up in his pocket.

Ha-ha, he really thought this through.

“Every bit of controversy surrounding this public performance is fake. The actress is fake, and my relationship with her is a lie. My divorce from my wife is also a lie. But every bit of it was made up in order to get as many people as possible to come see the play. I’m really giving this production my all, and I’m quite confident in its substance. Please, by all means, you must come see it tomorrow.”

“…I’ll think about it.”

But then again, I doubt I’ll be able to concentrate on the substance of the play after hearing all this.

“I especially want you to know that the talent of the woman we hired for the main role is the real deal. I’m utterly charmed by her—so much so that I arranged for something like this,” Cren said, patting the slime he held in his hands.

“…………”

But you said you weren’t having an affair with her. The truth often comes out of a lie.

At least, it seemed to me that the man before me holding a slime was interested in the target of his affection not as an actor but as a woman.

Oh no, I wonder how that’s going to turn out?

Perhaps she has strange enough tastes to be genuinely pleased when he hands her that despicable creature?

The following evening, I was walking toward the gates to the city.

I had more or less finished sightseeing, and my errand was taken care of, and while I was at it I had even seen a play. And so you could say I had no further business there.

“The final day of our twelfth public performance is going on as planned!”

As before, members of the Cren Theatrical Company were handing out flyers along the main avenue, swarming the merchants and travelers who had just entered the city.

The streets were as noisy as always, and when I looked at a flyer, I saw that the price of a ticket had leaped up five times over. They were overcharging terribly for the last of the last shows, but perhaps because they had gathered so much attention, sure enough, there seemed to be no shortage of people looking to buy.

Voices shouting, “We’re nearly sold out!” flitted past me.

At a glance, it seemed like the theater company was extraordinarily popular.

“This thing is really popular…”

“It sure is… I wonder if it’s really that interesting?”

Just before I left the city, a pair of travelers who had just passed through the gate walked past me, looking at the scene before their eyes.

Shortly, they called out to me.

“Um, say, excuse me. Are you a traveler?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “I was just leaving.”

“I see… By the way, have you seen that play?”

Then the traveler pointed to one of the posters for the Cren Theatrical Company’s twelfth public performance.

Well, that goes without saying.

“Yes I have.”

“Is it really all that interesting?”

“…………”

At that point, I remembered something.

Come to think of it, I asked a similar question just as I entered the city. I was just as intrigued by the theater company.

I remember clearly how the townsfolk answered me then. And I suppose I could say I hold just the same impression as them, now that I’ve seen the play.

In which case…

I suppose it would be appropriate to repeat the words so many people said to me back then, just as I heard them the other day.

If I’m not mistaken, their words went something like this.

They said…

“I don’t really remember.”