85. Mari Episode
85. Mari Episode
Allen didn't know why anyone would go see a movie like that, but thanks to the fact that a relief priest was in the same theater, he barely managed to survive.
In his own words, he realized what it felt like for blood to flow backward.
"If I were a wizard, I'd have awakened some kind of reversal spell by now."
"Is there such a thing?"
"Do you think there is?"
Spouting such nonsense, Allen administered mental therapy to himself with the original collector's edition of Magical Mari.
He cleansed the eyes that had been scorched by the beam parade's glare with the action scenes, grinning foolishly at the screen.
"Mari is so pretty. Hee hee..."
"Hey! What are you saying, have you no shame?!"
...As a bonus, Ceres smacked the back of Allen's head while he was a little unhinged and babbling nonsense.
Pia, meanwhile, was watching the video with her head pillowed on Allen's lap.
Nikolai, who had been watching the three-person sitcom, sighed and turned his gaze out the window.
Nikolai, who had suffered just as much psychological damage as Allen, chose a different form of healing.
As he did every day without fail, he healed his mind by observing the fan clubs holding their not-quite-protests in front of the club room and drafting his next scenario.
- Why not just pour yourself a bowl of depravity to relieve the stress?
"Shut up. Dark me."
Suppressing the sadistic Nikolai that was rearing its head after a long absence, he prepared a beautiful ending.
He had been watching the fan clubs' protests and drafting his scenario for a few minutes.
He spotted a group cutting across the fan clubs toward the club room.
The group, made up of one woman and three burly men, all had noticeably long ears.
But that wasn't what was important to Nikolai.
His innate observational skills identified that the woman leading the group was the elf who had played the role of Jasmine in the movie he'd just watched.
An ordinary person would have asked how on earth he could recognize Jasmine in that face without makeup. Nikolai would have answered like this:
- Elf, sharp eyes, long brown hair, gait, stride, and build—put them together and it's obvious.
The closer the group drew to the club room, the darker Nikolai's expression grew.
And when they stopped in front of the club building and pressed the doorbell, Nikolai could only press a hand to his forehead.
With a wretched heart, he informed Allen, who was still giggling and cooing over Magical Mari.
After hearing what Nikolai said, Allen turned off the screen and asked again as though he had misheard.
"Who did you say came?"
"Miss Pamela is here. The Hero who played Jasmine."
Allen shut his mouth and massaged the bridge of his nose.
The veins bulging on his neck spoke for his feelings.
After an eternity of silence, Allen opened his mouth.
"Tell her to come in. And call a medic beforehand."
"...Yes."
*
The club room door opened, and an elf with an oddly overbearing attitude walked inside.
She had kicked the door open and entered in a show of magnificence to seize the initiative. Yet the sight that unfolded the moment she opened the door made her shrink back instead.
Kuuuh— Kuuuh—
Allen, laden with an oxygen mask and IV lines, with a relief priest by his side, greeted her with bloodshot eyes.
"What brings you here?"
It was almost impressive that he was still managing to remain polite.
The elf, who had been struck speechless by Allen's appearance, barely collected herself and introduced herself.
"My name is Pamela Barrios. Of the Barrios family...."
The woman who introduced herself as Pamela Barrios began to list her qualifications unprompted.
Her family this, her father that, her career so far including the places she'd worked and which magic tower she'd graduated from.
She proudly reeled off her résumé, but Allen was utterly uninterested.
He was too busy keeping his boiling urge to kill in check to spare the attention to listen.
This tactless elf, embellishing her words with useless flourishes, dragged the long-winded explanation on for ten minutes before she finally got to the point.
"Did you enjoy my movie?"
"I enjoyed it very much."
- It was so fucking entertaining.
"Then how was my acting?"
"Sure. Well... it was fine."
Allen glanced at Ceres, then forcefully suppressed his rage and paid Pamela some lip service.
His colleagues, who knew his personality, were astonished by his patience even as they worried he might collapse again at this rate.
Fortunately, Allen was managing to keep the conversation going.
Until Pamela snapped that thread-thin reason of his.
"So, what would you think of me for the role of Magical Mari? I believe I am the one truly suited to be the Warrior of the Sun."
At her words, Ceres sharply inhaled.
She, too, believed that Allen would never accept that proposal.
Yet even so, Pamela's proposal was, from a rational standpoint, perfectly reasonable.
Objectively speaking, Pamela's abilities were a superior alternative to Ceres's.
Pamela could reproduce almost everything Ceres could do through magic.
The only difference was that Ceres had to move her body herself.
And so Ceres looked at Allen with anxious eyes.
After hearing Pamela's proposal, Allen had suddenly grown calm and was dispassionately checking her résumé.
While Ceres nervously waited for the words that would come out of his mouth, Pamela, in contrast, looked down at the seated Allen with a poised attitude.
After Allen finished reading the résumé, he spoke.
"Ah... two hundred fifty years. Useless even as leaf mold..."
Allen's contextless answer brought silence to the club room.
"?"
Pamela, too, wore a puzzled expression after hearing the answer.
Then, once she realized it was an insult, she reddened and shouted.
"You. What did you just say?!"
"Huh? Didn't you hear me? Want me to say it again? Even leaf mold passes its expiration date after two hundred fifty years."
At Allen's dispassionate pronouncement, the burly elves who had been standing silently behind her grew indignant.
"speldpo deoldep codpelspeus!"
Perhaps thinking of the political repercussions even in that moment, they cussed Allen out in the elven tongue, which humans could never understand.
Though Allen's party weren't fools, and from Ceres's expression, they could at least guess those weren't kind words.
Allen frowned and warned the burly elves.
"Hey, you can speak Imperial. Either use translation magic or speak Imperial—pick one."
"ddoemg weodic doeples duelsu!"
"Do you need an automatic translator?"
"podel dicle dwam quemdeddd!!!"
"I do have a translator. A Model 47."
Allen set a rifle on the desk and pulled the bolt back once; at the metallic clack, the burly one's language was immediately interpreted.
"The elves will not forget your insolence!"
"Oh, that was polite speech? Couldn't tell."
Allen sneered, stroking the rifle's body with his finger half-resting on the trigger.
The sight of the elves clustering together to dodge the muzzle whenever it occasionally drifted toward them was quite pleasant to watch.
Allen's attitude, which could certainly be called insolent, was more than enough to offend the elves' feelings.
Yet, so desperately did Pamela desire the role of Mari that she still did not give up and asked:
"What exactly am I lacking, compared to that woman?"
Pamela's pointing finger aimed at Ceres.
Noting the flinch that ran through Ceres's body at being suddenly singled out, Allen spoke in a calm voice.
"Should I be honest?"
Now having abandoned even formal speech, Allen's attitude made Pamela's eyebrows twitch, but she acted unbothered and pressed him for his answer.
Allen took one long pull from the oxygen mask and began his reply.
"One, your acting is good, but I can see you hate moving your body. It was all over the movie. Why do you run like that when both your legs are perfectly fine? You don't even try to attempt close-quarters combat. And you genuinely think someone like you is suited for the role of Mari?"
"But I'm stronger!"
"Who cares about strong. The audience isn't having fun."
"That's because the audience's standards can't keep up with me."
"Nice one, bringing that up yourself. Fix your attitude too. Whether you're acting or right now, why do you keep tilting your chin up? Did you fracture the back of your neck? Is your head too heavy to support? Did you think using formal speech would make you look polite?"
"You, who know nothing of manners..."
"You've got a lot of nerve talking about manners. When have you ever been polite? You've been subtly lording your age over me ever since you walked in. Cut it out before I sand every last one of those wrinkles off."
With his mouth now fully unleashed, Allen spat criticism as naturally as breathing.
Then, as if suddenly unable to control his blood pressure, he clutched the back of his neck and collapsed back into his chair again.
Fortunately, Allen's barrage of abuse toward Pamela had achieved some results.
Having been raised gently as the daughter of an upper-house senator, she was apparently unaccustomed to such cursing; her face flushed red, her lips quivered, and she fanned herself with her hand as if to cool the heat from her face.
With a repeated "Hah!" sound, she turned around on the spot and left the club room.
The burly elves followed behind her.
A storm had passed, and silence hung over the club room for a moment.
Craaack!
Then the rifle, unable to withstand Allen's grip, folded in half.
"Ah, sorry. I wasn't trying to take it out on you guys."
"No, Boss. I understand."
Allen couldn't slam the table then and there without startling his companions, so he barely forced his emotions down, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.
Ceres, who had been watching that pitiful sight, got angry on his behalf.
"What kind of woman acts like that! You should've just planted her with a good, clean piledriver like you usually do."
Allen smiled and answered Ceres, who was getting angry for his sake.
"Then you'd be the one in trouble."
The usual Allen would have thrown Pamela right out the third-floor window.
And if he'd shouted to the fan clubs permanently stationed outside twenty-four hours a day that these were the main culprits behind the plagiarism, they would have swarmed them like piranhas.
The diplomatic problems that arose from that would still be within Allen's power to smooth over.
The problem, however, was Celestia.
Allen, as an Imperial citizen, gave not a single damn about the Hyphen Kingdom's perception, but Ceres, who was from the same region as Pamela, was not in the same position.
If Allen committed an incident before the Hyphen Kingdom's leadership had even finished drawing up plans to bury the senator, the arrows of blame could fly toward Ceres.
Ceres, who hadn't thought about her own situation, was able to recall her position only after Allen pointed it out.
"You didn't really need to worry about me..."
"How could I not. You're our leading lady. If I don't take care of you, who will?"
Allen tapped the shoulder of the dumbfounded Ceres a couple of times and walked out of the club room.
"I'm going to hit the training ground for a bit."
Leaving those words behind.
As explosions and ruptures rang out from the training ground Allen had headed toward, Ceres, who had been deep in thought, also set off with determination in her eyes.
"I'm going to visit my hometown for a moment too."
Pia watched her figure depart through a portal with those parting words, a meaningful look in her eyes.