Curtain Call (3)
Distinguish what must be cut.
There was no need to carve through the entire stage called La Mancha. What needed cutting was the Revelry Emperor’s paint that smothered it. As if sweeping that paint away, Najin brought his sword down.
First Horn. Triumph.
A single line of sword aura sliced across the stage. It split the paint staining the sky. It swept the paint coloring the earth. It severed the waves of paint surging in like a tide. Amplified through Excalibur, the aura smashed everything that stood in its path.
Long ago, the Star of Contempt had fallen to the Triumphant Sword.
Alderan Basaglia had shattered the Star of Contempt’s stage in a single stroke and taken one of its eyes. A hundred years later, today, through his disciple’s blade, the secret art of the Triumphant Sword shone once more.
But it was not the same as before.
Unlike Alderan’s Triumphant Sword, which had demolished the stage itself, Najin’s cut only the paint that covered it. Perhaps “swept away” suited the act better than “cut.”
The paint. The threads draped over Don Quixote. The Revelry Emperor’s gaze, her touch, her breath. The third-rate playwright’s script that sought to meddle with this stage…
Crack.
All of it shattered in a single blow. It had no choice. The stage’s true protagonist, Don Quixote, wished for it—and in the “script” he himself had chosen, the free knight already carried the record of having swept the Revelry Emperor’s paint away once before.
Repeating what had already happened was not difficult.
The aura that had cut what needed cutting scattered into starlight. Where the platinum blade-light had passed, starlight bloomed in profusion. That starlight reached Full Bloom, scattering like flower petals on the wind.
Through the drifting starlight—
“…….”
Don Quixote looked up at the sky.
“Ah.”
He sighed.
For the past several hundred years the sky he had gazed upon had been either pitch-black night or a canvas smeared with paint. The sky he raised his head to now was blue.
A blue sky. Warm sunlight.
Of course it was not the real sky. This was the interior of the stage he had unfolded—La Mancha. Outside, the heavens would still be black and fractured. But to Don Quixote that did not matter.
La Mancha.
The utopia he had discovered in the Outer Land, and the place where his story had met its end. With the Revelry Emperor’s interference gone, La Mancha had returned to its true form. Don Quixote looked around.
A blue sky. Green fields stretching to the horizon. A stream that babbled as it flowed…
And beneath the paint that had buried them, the knights of La Mancha were rising one by one, brushing the stains from their bodies. They smiled as they looked up at the sky, then turned their eyes to Don Quixote.
“Master.”
Standing at the front was Sancho.
The squire who had always followed him with a helpless, fond smile whenever Don Quixote embarked on some impossible venture now smiled again.
“Have you come to your senses a little?”
2.
The end of a story.
That brief interval before the curtain falls—a postscript, or an epilogue. Only after more than three hundred years could the play called La Mancha finally reach that moment.
“Master? We ought to settle accounts first.”
It was Rocinante who announced the beginning of the epilogue.
“This one’s for me.”
Rocinante swung his staff. It cracked across Don Quixote’s jaw. As the old knight’s head snapped back with a strangled cry, the staff—now accelerated—came down again.
Thwack!
A cheerful impact, and Don Quixote howled.
“And this one’s Sancho’s share, Master. Tch. Why must you always make such a nuisance of yourself?”
Arms folded, Rocinante clucked his tongue as if he had quite a few grievances stored up. He swung the staff a few more times at the man who had even used his corpse, but the restraint itself made clear that he was willing to let the rest go at that.
Knowing this, Don Quixote simply endured the beating. The occasional crack of bone was a minor detail.
“Come, gather round. I’ve got a jar of wine I’ve been saving for this very day. Now where did I bury it… somewhere about here, I think…”
The drunken constellation began wandering La Mancha at once, digging. He claimed he had buried a wine jar before he slept. Of course this was only the stage, not the true earth of La Mancha where they had been interred, so no jar should have existed.
“Ah, here it is.”
If the cast believes, the stage gladly provides the props. The constellation lifted a wine jar from the soil, rapped it with his palm, and waved the others over.
“An epilogue without wine? Unthinkable. Drink while we talk.”
“For once the old soak is talking sense.”
“Even his drunkenness feels nostalgic now and then.”
The knights of La Mancha gathered one by one around the jar. Don Quixote’s lips moved soundlessly; he could not quite bring himself to approach—
“What are you doing, Master?”
—until Rocinante’s smirking glance and Sancho’s firm hand drew him toward his companions.
“Najin.”
And the free knight who had been standing with his hands behind his back as well.
“Yes?”
Sancho, Rocinante, and every knight seated by the jar beckoned to the puzzled youth. They had left a place for him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“What are you doing over there? Come join us.”
“Yes, don’t just stand there. Come over.”
“You’ll have to tell us your adventures, I think. Otherwise this drunkard will start repeating every story he’s already told until our ears bleed.”
So the protagonists took their seats, and talk began at once. How each of them had first met Don Quixote, what adventures they had shared, how joyful those days had been—they chattered without pause.
“A toast!”
Cups clinked.
“Heh, my hand keeps reaching for the wine.”
“When has your hand ever not reached for wine?”
“Seems like only yesterday you were drunk and whining to Master, ‘What’s the point of living? Why shouldn’t I just die here?’”
“Ancient history! We’re laughing and talking now, aren’t we?”
Hearty guffaws. Bright peals of laughter. The soft chuckle of a princess hiding her mouth behind her hand. Every kind of laughter filled the space.
Perhaps this, too, was an extension of the curtain call.
Actors briefly introducing their own stories, boasting how splendid those stories had been, bowing to the audience—exactly that.
And once the bows are finished, the actors exit.
“It was a joy to travel with you, Master.”
One by one those who had finished speaking dissolved into starlight and scattered. Where the drunken constellation had sat, only an empty cup remained.
“My life was dull beyond measure, but thanks to you I had one last splendid adventure. I never showed it, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. Memory enough to take with me on the road beyond.”
One by one.
“My knight… I still cannot forget the day you pounded on the sealed door of the tower. Thank you for saving me as I rotted there. And… yes, it truly was joyful!”
One by one.
“I always lived thinking only of the shortest path. This is efficient, that is faster, this way is more rational—until I found I had nothing left. In the end I was only racing toward death. To the one who taught me the joy of the road home, my thanks.”
One by one.
The barber. The gardener. The princess locked in the tower. The transcendent who had pursued only efficiency.
“I never wanted to be a knight, yet because of you, sir, I came to like the idea a little. Knights are rather splendid, aren’t they?”
The knight who had never wanted to be a knight.
“Come—one last drink!”
They clinked cups with Najin and Don Quixote—both protagonists and audience—and scattered into starlight.
With every bright chime of cups meeting, the number of actors seated around the wine jar dwindled. Before long only four remained: those who had been present from the very beginning of the tale.
Najin. Don Quixote. Rocinante. Sancho.
As if it were his turn, Rocinante shrugged.
“A long adventure it was, Master.”
“All thanks to you. You taught me the road and gave me the legs to run it. Because of you I could race anywhere.”
“Hahaha! You put me to the blush. So… how was our story?”
“Need you ask?”
It was the best. At Don Quixote’s words Rocinante laughed aloud, raised his cup, and spoke with gusto.
“At the end of the hard road I found my god. And that god says, ‘The wine is so fine—how can you keep from laughing?’”
He drained the cup, turned a final crooked smile on Najin, and, with a magnificent bow, dissolved into starlight.
“…….”
“…….”
Sancho wordlessly turned his cup in his hands.
“Master.”
“I’m listening, Sancho.”
“I was never an apprentice, you know. I was a knight—and a rather well-known one belonging to a ducal house.”
Sancho smiled bitterly.
“I had talent. I thought I could achieve anything. But the moment I actually became a knight, fear seized me. The title was nothing like I had imagined. When the day came that I had to kill a man, I hesitated.”
Disobedience. Mission failure. For that he was stripped of knighthood and cast out of the house. He returned to his village and tilled the fields—once more the boy of a poor farm.
He had dreamed, then discovered the dream was less beautiful than he had hoped, and so he folded the dream away early.
“Then I met you, Master. A man who dreamed of becoming a knight utterly unlike the one I had imagined—and who shone all the brighter for it.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Looking back it is laughable. You could barely stay on a horse, yet you went about declaring you would be a knight. At first I followed only to see when you would give up. I thought you would meet reality and break, just as I had.”
“And then?”
“Well, as you know.”
Sancho shrugged.
“You never gave up and you never broke. Traveling with you, I felt I had become the knight I once dreamed of being. It was joyful.”
He looked at Don Quixote.
“You knew, didn’t you? That I had been a knight.”
“I had a fair idea. You knew a knight’s practicalities far too well—and it was you who taught me how to don armor, mount a horse, handle a lance, and salute.”
“Yet you never asked.”
“The past is unimportant. What matters is how joyful the adventure we are having right now, is it not?”
Don Quixote tipped his cup. Sancho lifted his own with a smile. Exactly that quality. The past could be anything; what mattered was whether one could adventure joyfully in the present. Drawn by those words, countless stars had journeyed with Don Quixote.
“Thanks to you I was happy, Master.”
“Thank you for always following me, Sancho.”
With a smile Sancho glanced at Najin.
Three cups met with a clear ring.
“Najin, the adventure with you was the best as well. The knight I wanted to become… perhaps he was someone like you. It is easy to speak of ideals; to pursue them without yielding in any circumstance is hard.”
Sancho smiled.
“You walk the hardest road, so you will win the most precious ending—just as La Mancha has now.”
I will cheer for the path ahead of you.
With those words Sancho scattered. In the place he left behind, a single spear stood planted in the earth.
“…….”
“…….”
Only one remained.
Don Quixote.
The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha alone was left.
3.
Najin looked around in silence.
The props left by the departing actors lay everywhere. Turning their stories over in his mind, he shifted his gaze. Don Quixote sat with his head slightly bowed, turning his cup.
“Much has happened.”
“It has.”
“I committed many sins and walked roads I should never have taken. To dance to a demon’s whisper… shameful for a knight.”
He smiled bitterly.
“I can neither undo those sins nor make amends to those I wronged. Yet even for someone like me, one thing remains that I can still do.”
Don Quixote crumbled every star he possessed. His already faint body grew fainter still. Najin understood what he intended and said nothing.
That would have been graceless.
“The story you told me.”
Don Quixote looked at Najin.
“The ending you rewrote for us.”
He smiled.
“It was a good story. So good that merely recalling it makes me laugh—a joyful story.”
Don Quixote rose. Najin rose with him.
“Is this farewell?”
Najin asked. Don Quixote threw back his head and laughed, shaking his head.
“Not farewell.”
From the stars he had shattered he fashioned a single new star—the star that had always been the heart of his tale—and placed it in Najin’s hand.
The Star of Chatter.
It was the same star Najin already carried. The moment the twin stars met, Najin’s shone fiercely. The number of stars did not increase, yet he felt the authority of the original star grow stronger.
“So long as you remember our play, so long as you speak of our adventures with a smile, we will always be with you.”
Don Quixote’s smile turned mischievous.
“How was La Mancha?”
How was the play called La Mancha?
Faced with the request for a review, Najin could only laugh in disbelief.
“It was hard. Filthy hard. I dragged in everything I had just to cancel things out, and even then you were still too strong. It was close. Really.”
“Hahahaha! And?”
“Still…”
Najin raised his cup.
“In the end it was a story we could laugh at.”
Cups met with a clear ring.
Don Quixote drained his wine in one swallow, let out a long breath, and saluted Najin—the sole audience who would remember this tale, the playwright and actor who had led them to a happy ending.
The curtain call was finished.
The epilogue was complete.
After three hundred years of searching for a happy ending, their story had at last reached its close. The play called La Mancha would lower its curtain here. Standing at the center of the stage as the curtain fell, Don Quixote left his parting words.
The story is over. Applaud.
With the sound of applause the curtain descended.
A fine actor’s exit is always accompanied by applause. Don Quixote stepped down from the stage of his life—La Mancha. To the very last moment he never lost his smile.
If life itself is a stage, there is no reason not to smile at the final curtain.
The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha, Don Quixote.
His long story had reached its end.