98. Romantic Dreams and Romance
98. Romantic Dreams and Romance
After Jace was chosen as our protagonist, we got down to the serious work of distributing the remaining roles.
First, Jason Danielson would play the protagonist.
As it happened, the protagonist he would be playing this time had a backstory so identical to his own that there was no dissent.
A commoner born on a farm, ostracized by nobles, who ultimately became a hero—the classic protagonist.
Of course, in reality no one was ostracizing him, but it was true that his circumstances resembled the character's.
As if Fate had decreed it, Jace became the protagonist.
*
Now that the protagonist was set, next came his friends.
The protagonist would travel as part of a trio.
For gender balance, the friends would be one man and one woman.
First, the woman.
The sole female of the protagonist trio was to be played by Anna Charlotte.
The character's name was Hannah Johansson.
Within the trio, she was the honor student, all-purpose wizard, brains, and combat specialist.
Still, the fact that she would receive this role was something neither I nor Nikolai had predicted.
"Hey, Nikolai."
"Yes, Boss."
"Why is this person's name on the role list?"
"Because she was the runner-up in the audition?"
"That's why I'm asking. You said she's a regressor, right? Then what's she lacking that would make her apply here?"
"Ah... I suppose that is the question."
If she did not participate, was the world going to end or something?
Curious, I called her in personally for a pre-interview.
"What is the matter?"
Probably delighted to have been cast as one of the three leads, she entered the room with a beaming face.
The moment she stepped into the office, I deployed a soundproof barrier and asked directly.
"What is your objective, Miss Regressor?"
The instant she heard those words, the look in her eyes changed.
Her gaze filled with killing intent, and she threw a fist at me that looked genuinely dangerous.
But her attack was easily neutralized.
So what if she was a regressor?
According to Nikolai, her world had originally been a conventional romance. Because she solved problems through intelligence and connections, her fighting ability was only sufficient for self-defense.
Even without getting remotely serious, I could neutralize her without injuring her.
Since she was going to be my future sister-in-law, I carefully flipped her once through the air, gave her a single flick to the forehead, and told her I wasn't an enemy.
According to Nikolai, nine out of ten regressors were paranoid, so I would have to repeat this several times before she lowered her guard.
As expected, unaware that I was going easy on her, she charged at me again.
Only after I beat her about ten times did she finally withdraw her hostility.
"Hngh... I'm a talentless piece of trash..."
I might have added a little to her inferiority complex, but so what?
Once she had calmed down, I brought Nikolai before her.
First, Nikolai told her the small lie that he was also a regressor—not entirely false—then we asked what her goal was in this loop.
"In this life, I wanted to succeed as an actress."
I found that claim so hard to believe that we questioned her several times, but it proved sincere.
The reason was that she had achieved nothing in any of her loops and wanted to succeed as an actress in this life.
Hearing that, I called a brief timeout and conferred with him in the corner.
"What's the condition for her loop ending?"
"Getting together with His Highness and having children."
"Then what about the worldlines where they don't get together?"
"That's the ending where His Highness dies single, leaving no heir, and a civil war breaks out."
"...Is there no happy ending?"
"If there were a happy ending, would the heroine have been looping?"
"Now that you mention it, that's true."
Why the hell was Leon such a romantic?
We therefore treated Anna being Leon's destined partner as an established fact.
Then, for the sake of the Empress, there was only one thing for us to do.
"Let's cast her."
"Huh? Can we really make the Empress do this sort of thing?"
"Seeing how stubborn she is, if we don't cast her in this, I feel like she'll end up appearing in something even weirder."
This was far better, actually.
I'd learned one lesson by observing myself: to control a variable, I first had to keep it within sight.
It was much better to have her here than to cut her and have her end up appearing in some bizarre Magical Girl spin-off.
So, to ensure she could not run away halfway through, we placed her in the protagonist trio, which she could not escape until the series ended.
Conveniently, the role of the sole female was a fixer position who solved all manner of problems for the protagonist from the early stages before he had grown strong all the way into the late game, so it suited a Regressor like her.
Though her process was likely more physical than cerebral, as long as she solved things, that was what mattered, wasn't it?
In any case, two of our trio were thus decided.
*
With the sole female decided, we urgently sought an actor to fill the last slot of the trio.
The character's name was Sean.
A fool of a friend who had hung around the protagonist since their days as a failing student and was prone to spouting nonsense.
The sort of friend who would keep following beside him even after the protagonist became the school's superstar, serving as both rival and best friend.
Nikolai and I didn't ask an actor candidate for the role of Sean, but someone else.
"Me? You want me to do it?"
It was Leon.
Having burst in on him out of the blue and asked him to take the role of Sean, Leon stared at us as if we were lunatics.
"Have you people collectively lost your minds? No, wait. Allen's always been like that. Nikolai. Why are you suddenly acting like this?"
What the hell.
Why did it feel as though he was insulting me?
I directed a gaze full of protest at Leon, but he cleanly ignored my complaint and expressed genuine concern for Nicol.
But this time, Nicol was on my side too.
"Your Highness. I implore you. You're the only person who can do this role."
Nikolai knelt and begged.
The reason was, well, to set him up with Anna.
The original first event where he was supposed to meet Anna as a magic department prodigy had been broken because of Mari, so what were we supposed to do if we didn't take proactive measures?
So we decided to script a movie.
We already had a precedent of having paired up Nikolai and Ash, so this operation had sufficient grounds.
But Leon coldly rejected our request.
"I'm busy. And how can the Imperial Prince of the empire become an actor."
Of course I had anticipated he would say this and argued right back.
"The late 14th-generation Emperor was also an actor. His blood runs in your veins."
"He was he. And I have no talent for acting."
"Says who? You've never even tried it."
Isn't something you don't know until you've tried it, however briefly.
Who knew.
He might have possessed an unexpected talent for acting.
And if, by some one-in-ten-thousand chance, he had no talent, I fully intended to make him fit the screen one way or another.
We had already elevated Pia to final boss status, so would Leon be impossible?
We grabbed onto his trouser legs and groveled with all the grace of frantic beggars.
"Hey, you crazy bastards! My pants are coming down!"
Be that as it may, we desperately begged him.
Come on, please just accept.
If you did not marry that woman, the Empire was doomed...!
Even as Leon clubbed me with a shining mace, I refused to let go of him.
"Please! This is all for your own good, brother!"
"You lunatic! Who's calling who brother?! And what does this have to do with anything good?!"
And so, after approximately one hour of struggle between Leon and us.
Leon finally threw in the towel and agreed to take the role of Sean.
The Marry Off Leon Project... Phase 1, success!
*
Once Sean and every other role had been cast, filming began in earnest.
Naturally, the filming proceeded smoothly...
It did not.
"I cannot accept this! Why on earth is he playing the role of Sean?!"
Several students were dissatisfied that Leon had taken the part of Sean.
I understood.
Unlike the others, he had not gone through the audition. He had appeared out of nowhere and taken one of the three lead positions, so their resentment was understandable.
But since I couldn't tell them this was all for the future of the empire, I had no words to justify it to them.
Fortunately, no justification was necessary.
Because Leon instantly dispelled those complaints with his overwhelming acting ability.
I only realized it then myself, but Leon really was a damn good actor.
His acting was superb, as if he had taken all the talent Pia should have received while they were still in the womb.
(For reference, Pia and Leon are half-siblings.)
His gaze control, vocal technique, emotional expression.
All of it was the caliber of a polished actor.
When I asked him his secret.
"If acting means hiding your real self in front of a camera, that's something I do every day."
Come to think of it, that was true.
He was a man whose every move was chased by cameras and whose every gesture appeared in the newspapers.
Naturally, he had become accustomed to that sort of thing.
It was no exaggeration to say that he had been acting twenty-four hours a day since birth, so a performance like this posed no difficulty.
"Tch. If you were going to be this good, why did you make such a fuss before?"
"Being good at something and hating doing it are separate matters, you idiot."
In any event, all the students who witnessed Leon's acting firsthand shut their mouths.
Because the gap in acting ability was far too overwhelming.
Even Jace, the audition winner, had to acknowledge that Leon was the better actor.
His understanding of Sean was also so deep that he had the instinct to improvise throughout the scene.
"Want some?"
He had pulled a snack from somewhere in the studio and casually offered it to the protagonist in the middle of their conversation.
Jace responded to the ad-lib without showing any surprise, but it astonished me.
Because that shameless demeanor was Sean personified.
After shooting ended, I had no choice but to ask when he had found the time to study the character of Sean.
Leon stared at me and answered.
"I've been watching a guy for over twenty years who's dumb and a few cards short of a full deck, but is good-hearted and fiercely loyal."
Hearing that, even Pia and Carlos, who were standing behind me, nodded.
As I was agonizing over whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult, filming resumed and Leon switched back to Sean mode.
And during the shoot, he launched a new ad-lib.
The original scene called for him to slam the head of the delinquent ostracizing the protagonist against a desk and snap, 'If you want to play kingpin, go back to the children's class.'
But the line that came out of his mouth was completely different.
"Taran~!"
"..."
Looking at that, I had no choice but to seriously ponder.
Had I really been that frivolous?
*
Once we had put an end to the complaints aimed at Leon, another problem awaited us.
"NG!"
Filming halted at Nikolai's signal.
One of the supporting actors had visibly become conscious of the camera.
And that was another problem.
Because we were working with students, some performances were awkward and NGs were frequent.
Filming progressed much more slowly than it had on Magical Mari.
Not that it was worth comparing, but the facts were what they were.
Still, none of us blamed the students.
We had started filming knowing they were unpolished, so if we openly gave them grief for it, we'd be the trash.
Besides, we had predicted exactly this sort of thing and chosen a film format instead of a drama.
We could take our time instead of racing a weekly deadline.
Still, films in this world normally took a little over a month to shoot, so after entering our second month, we had no defense against comparisons to a slug.
Nevertheless, as filming progressed, the students were growing and the pace was picking up.
The mere fact that everyone was growing made this project worthwhile.
After a little over three months of filming and editing, our movie was finally completed as the semester drew to a close.
========================
Once we secured a theater and everyone awaited the fruit of a semester's labor, the film's opening reel began to roll.
Unlike Magical Mari's bright, hopeful Japanese-style opening, this was the kind of short title sequence found in a Hollywood film.
But within that brief span, all the effort to imprint the film's atmosphere upon the audience had been concentrated.
An orchestral piece led by the violins accompanied a rapid succession of images.
The piece, which initially felt majestic, took on a slightly chilling tone as brass instruments and a harp joined in.
Just as the music grew chilling, hinting that the film would not be filled solely with dreams and hope, it stopped and the scene shifted to a storm-lashed forest.
Dark clouds that blotted out even the moonlight drove fierce wind and rain, spawning dense darkness within the forest.
The occasional flash of lightning served as the sole illumination, revealing glimpses of the scenery within the forest.
Just as the flashes of lightning barely revealed a cabin at the center of the forest, a shadow cut across the woods.
Another flash of lightning revealed the figure who had cast the shadow.
Anyone could tell that the robed figure was suspicious.
He quietly observed the cabin, then drew a pistol and immediately headed toward it.
CRACKA-BOOM!
Along with the thunderclap, a flash of crimson erupted from within the house.
The robed man moved away from the cabin, leaving a baby's belated cries behind him.
Amid the chilling atmosphere, the orchestral performance resumed.
And as the performance reached its climax, the film's title rose onto the screen.
<Liam Walker: The Great Legacy>
It was the world's very first academy film.