The Worst Stage of My Life
Laios let out a pained groan.
Drip. Drip.
Hot droplets of blood slid down the blade and drew circles on the pristine marble.
Arthur spoke, his face heavy with grief. "...Don't take too much of it upon yourself. Arendt von Eckhart was a criminal of the highest treason—he betrayed the Order and His Majesty the Emperor."
"Yes. I know that. And yet..."
Only then did Laios slowly tear his eyes away from Arendt's lifeless body.
"So this post... the post of guarding His Majesty the Emperor—so it can weigh upon a man this heavily."
After a long silence, he uttered those words, and in them the turmoil of his heart lay completely bare.
Laios knew full well that a knight ought never to show such weakness. But not one of the other commanders reproached him for it, not today. They could all too easily imagine what he must be feeling.
Lee Su-hyeon listlessly tapped his phone screen.
His eyes ran ceaselessly over the black letters floating on the white display. It was a passage he had read more times than he could count. At this point, it wouldn't have been strange if he'd memorized every line of dialogue by heart.
"All this moping, just to kill one traitor."
A small grumble slipped out of his mouth. He stayed hunched over the palm-sized screen for a long while, absorbed in the text—until, at some point, he clicked his tongue and dropped the phone flat onto his knee.
Where the next chapter should have been, an unwelcome notice stared back at him instead.
[NOTICE]
This series is on hiatus due to the author's personal circumstances.
How many months had it been since that notice went up? The author, presumably beset by those circumstances, showed no sign whatsoever of coming back.
And yet not even a single angry comment hung beneath the announcement. That was how unpopular the novel was.
Truthfully, he could understand it. There was nothing satisfying about the story—no punch, no catharsis—and the protagonist driving the plot was hopelessly straight-laced. The man went off on pointless detours constantly, too. Even as a generous stretch, no one could call it the kind of story people would love these days.
Su-hyeon himself wouldn't have reread it so many times if it hadn't been free. And since the author wasn't being paid a cent for it, there was nothing odd about the serialization drying up the moment he grew sick of it or got buried in making a living.
Which was why Su-hyeon had more or less given up on ever seeing the next chapter.
He lifted his head.
Apart from the bare minimum of lights left on for cleaning, the theater had gone completely dark. His gaze landed on the empty stage, and a distinct chill crept over him—that particular coldness a stage gave off once the lights were out.
He was sitting on the small set of steps that had been used as a prop in tonight's play. Su-hyeon shot a sidelong glance beside him. A mop leaned at an angle against the steps, silently keeping its post.
Resigned, he hauled himself to his feet with a stagger.
"Just my luck, I suppose."
The short sigh echoed faintly through the empty stage. And with that, Su-hyeon resumed the mopping he'd paused.
"Bastards. How the hell am I supposed to do all this by myself?"
The decrepit lights flickered precariously a few more times. It had already been hours since tonight's performance ended. The audience who'd filled the modest seats had all long since poured out, and his troupe members had clocked out ages ago. The only thing left behind was Lee Su-hyeon, who'd lost at rock-paper-scissors and been saddled with the cleanup alone.
Screeeech.
From somewhere came a metal-on-metal sound he did not want to hear. Su-hyeon clicked his tongue.
There was not a single corner of this shabby little stage that wasn't falling apart. They'd taken over a theater that had been abandoned for years, and the members had swept and scrubbed and polished it into shape ever since—but even that had its limits. Money was the reason proper maintenance never happened.
"Like I was ever going to live in luxury anyway..."
His mouth complained, but his hands kept moving without complaint of their own. The damp mop scrubbed over the same spot again and again, yet the faded stage showed no sign of recovering its old color.
Su-hyeon glanced up and looked back toward the seats—and a faint flicker of something unusual crossed his eyes.
He happened to be standing at the very center of the stage. Because of it, the entire empty auditorium spread out before him at a glance. The chairs, arranged in a gentle curve so that everyone could watch the stage in comfort, all faced him and him alone. The hazy glow of the lights looked down on him as he stood there, like moonlight at midnight.
Mop in one hand, Su-hyeon planted one foot, straightened his back, and faced the empty seats.
"......"
This little theater survived, barely, on the hands of the people who belonged to its troupe. A proper sponsor was out of the question—filling the seats, frankly, was struggle enough. The members flailed and scraped together every trick they had, and still the audience shrank year after year.
Perhaps that was only natural. This was an age where every form of entertainment fit inside a single phone. Nobody was going to seek out a theater run by a no-name troupe.
Keeping the place running at all was the best they could manage now. And it was obvious even that would hit its wall before long.
Su-hyeon leaned on the mop and let out a long, deep sigh.
"Haah."
Given their circumstances, counting on a living from performances was a fool's dream. So the members each scrambled after day jobs on the side, and Su-hyeon was no exception. The moment he finished cleaning this place, he had to sprint straight to his part-time gig.
Everyone who knew his situation had, at one time or another, told him to wake up and find himself a proper job. Until now, he'd stuck his fingers in his ears and pretended not to hear...
"Ugh."
Su-hyeon let out a short groan and scratched at the back of his head. Honestly, even as a joke, he couldn't call this troupe's future bright. If they abandoned this crumbling theater and each focused on making actual money, everyone's circumstances would no doubt improve considerably. Right now, they were each plugging the troupe's deficits out of their own pockets, after all.
"To be, or not to be. That is the question... or so they say."
His circumstances were a little different, but death in the real world was far more casual than that. You didn't need to perish as pitifully as a tragic hero—you could keel over anytime, anywhere. Without money, you were as good as socially dead.
"Tch."
It wasn't as if he had some sworn enemy. His enemy was the bank balance draining a little more every day, and this theater—tormenting people while steadily bleeding red in the middle of it all. And yet somehow, everyone was hanging on, cobbling things together as they went. Why couldn't they leave a place like this? What on earth were they expecting from this dilapidated old stage?
"Expecting..."
Even that grandiose a word didn't suit this shabby little place. Maybe it should be called something more like lingering attachment. If he said goodbye to this place he resented, he could probably eat a decent meal or two without worrying about the cost. And still, grumbling all the while, Lee Su-hyeon was one of those fools who couldn't bring himself to leave.
Right—attachment. Maybe the reason he couldn't abandon this stage that didn't even pay was nothing more than the attachment he could never quite give up... and a single handful of hope.
Su-hyeon's feet slid forward across the stage—walking a little differently now than the lifeless shuffle of a man absorbed in cleaning.
"To die is only to sleep. And is death not the very end we long for above all else?"
A surprisingly clear voice filled the empty stage. Su-hyeon started mopping again, but his mouth did not stop.
"The dread of that unknown world is why we endure. Why we bear these pains and carry on."
His swelling voice circled the auditorium and came flooding back into his own ears. Before he knew it, he stood with his chest thrown open and his arms spread wide, facing the empty seats. The wavering light of the flickering lamps poured down over his shoulders.
A beat of silence—and then Su-hyeon, feeling inexplicably awkward, lowered his arms. If even a handful of people had been in the audience, courtesy would have earned him a few obligatory claps. Instead, the world offered only stillness.
And yet he felt a little lighter.
Su-hyeon resumed cleaning with movements easier than before.
No—he tried to resume cleaning.
Krak.
An ominous sound came from directly above his head. Su-hyeon instinctively looked up.
"Huh?"
The light that had kept flickering all this time was swaying, dangerously. By the time the word danger finally fired, one beat too late, in the back of his mind—it was already over.
Crack.
The steel mount snapped directly above his head. Su-hyeon's eyes flew wide open. There was no time to dodge. The great lamp, severed from its tether to the ceiling, surrendered helplessly to gravity and fell—straight onto Lee Su-hyeon's head.
"Uh...?"
Even as it closed in on his face, the hazy lamp had yet to lose its glow. It was like a falling moon, was the absurd thought that crossed his mind for one pointless instant.
A few seconds that felt like an eternity slipped past.
And then—
BOOOOM!
Lamp and stage collided. A shattering roar thundered through the little theater. Crackle, clatter. The wires and shards that had come down with the light poured after it, a cascade of small noises that went on for a long while.
But that was all.
Sometime later, even the dust rising thick in the air had settled. What remained in the small theater was nothing but silence.
"Unexcused absence from training. Unauthorized departure from the Imperial Palace. And on top of that, every manner of disgrace imaginable, heaped upon the honor of this Order, which serves His Majesty the Emperor."
Into his dazed fog of a mind, a sharp, lucid voice suddenly bored its way in. Before he'd grasped even the first thing about his situation, Lee Su-hyeon blinked stupidly.
"You're young, so I've let it pass, time and time again, telling myself such things could still be forgiven. But not this time. If you have excuses, then speak them here and now!"
"Huh? Wha—? Excuses? Me?"
The moment he blurted that out in a daze, a blade cold as death came flying at his face. His body threw itself backward on pure reflex—crash—he went down in a tangle of noise, and a distinctly undignified shriek burst out of him.
"Hyiiiik! No, wait, why! What did I even do!"
"On your feet. If you have a mouth, then answer me. What were you doing in the city at this hour? Meeting, no less, in secret, with a subject His Majesty ordered kept under covert surveillance?"
The frigid edge of the blade drew close enough to brush his throat. Lee Su-hyeon could only gape.
What in the world is going on?
A man he'd never seen before was gripping a sword hilt and glaring down at him. And it wasn't a face one could pass anywhere without a second look. The deep blue Western-style uniform, the crisply squared shoulders, and the absurdly handsome face perched above them—no one would call any of it ordinary.
Su-hyeon reflexively glanced around. And he had no choice but to have a second heart attack. Every one of the knights ringing him in had a sword pointed straight at his body. One wrong twitch, and he'd be riddled with holes on the spot.
The next instant, the man before him barked again.
"Arendt von Eckhart! Can you still call yourself a knight after this!"
"...Arendt?"
It was in that very moment that a spark went off inside his skull. Arendt von Eckhart. Not an unfamiliar name. Quite the opposite—it was, without question, a character from the novel.
Which meant that man over there was—
Lee Su-hyeon muttered without meaning to.
"...Commander Laios?"
Even the voice that slipped out of his mouth sounded strange to his own ears. What is happening. His mind went white.
"Uh...?"
Wait. Wait, hold on. Cold sweat began streaming down his back. Laios glared at him with eyes that held not a shred of warmth.
And then, quite suddenly, an intense sense of déjà vu washed over him. Think—this was not an unfamiliar situation. Lee Su-hyeon knew this scene. He had, without a doubt, read this somewhere before.
Struggling to suppress his tangled emotions, Laios quietly studied Arendt. Arendt merely glared back at him with the eyes of a cornered wild beast, his mouth clamped shut.
In that boyishly young face, Laios recognized the twisted hatred aimed at him. That hatred, he knew, would be the greatest of all the causes that had driven Arendt to this point.
Su-hyeon looked around once more. He could see it now: the Martial Training Grounds, Laios and Arendt facing each other, and the murmur of knights closing in a ring around them. There was no mistake about it.
This was the scene immediately after Arendt von Eckhart's betrayal was discovered. Here, he would be arrested—and not long after, executed.
Laios's icy voice rang out once more.
"Your fate will be decided in three days. Lock this man in the underground prison."
Without giving him even a sliver of a chance to protest, Laios spun on his heel and strode out of the ring. The other knights, as if they'd only been waiting for it, rushed in and seized him by both arms, hauling him roughly upright.
Su-hyeon simply let himself be dragged along wherever they pulled.
This was a miscarriage of justice. Not that he could say so out loud at the moment.
I'm going insane...
He had no idea what was happening or how. But of one thing, at least, there could be no doubt.
Right now, he was screwed.