Chapter 1
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Macbeth Killed Sleep!
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"Macbeth killed sleep! The innocent sleep!"
A raspy, cracked voice burst forth.
"Sleep that knits up the tangled threads of worry."
One step, then another.
"The death we suffer every day, the balm that washes away sore labor... the comfort for wounded hearts."
He extended his trembling arm toward the audience before him, then drew it back.
"The great second course provided by nature, the finest nourishment in the feast of life."
Bloodshot eyes.
A resentment directed at no one in particular overflowed.
"Do you understand my anguish, not knowing when I might finally sleep?"
From here on, it was no longer in the script.
The playwright he loved more than life itself.
England's once-in-a-century genius, who would not appear again for hundreds of years.
He added to William Shakespeare's script for Macbeth.
He recalled the moment Shakespeare had first handed him this play.
The tragedy he had wept over countless times since that day.
What if he adapted it like this?
He wanted to tell Shakespeare himself.
Shakespeare would have lit up with excitement and said, "Let's prowl the stage all night together."
They would have locked the doors of the Oscar Grand Theater and spent the night revising the script, speaking the lines aloud.
"I lie down, yet sleep will not come. Day after day of torment, begging forgiveness from the void... Kkh."
He got that far before a violent cough seized him.
Only he, already living the tragedy, could utter such lines.
"Cough, cough...! Hack."
Unable to withstand the fever engulfing his body, he collapsed onto the bed.
This damned turret had no heating to speak of.
The fever was far from ordinary.
In his burning thirst, he drained every drop of water in the room, but his parched mouth showed no sign of improvement.
"Wa water"
He had decided yesterday that he couldn't practice lines like this and needed to rest.
He wrapped himself in thick blankets and fell into a dead faint.
Compared to his usual sleepless nights, it was a remarkably long slumber.
When he awoke, he realized this was no ordinary fever.
But confined to the highest room in the remotest tower of the annex, his options were few.
'Meal time should be... coming up soon.'
The servants, growing ever lazier, had cut back from three visits a day.
Ten years into his imprisonment.
Now they came only once, leaving a day's worth of food and water.
Judging by the sunlight streaming through the window, it was still morning.
If a servant had already come and gone while he slept, that would be trouble.
Clunk.
At that moment, he heard footsteps outside.
The small door at the base of the heavy wooden one swung open.
"H-Hey...!"
A tray piled high with bread was shoved inside.
Despite his call, the small door slammed shut without mercy.
"Uh."
He froze in shock.
Was that his voice?
It wasn't the fabricated tone he used for acting.
It was the pitiful rasp of a sick man.
"Kkh, cough! Cough, cough."
Even that short utterance was a trial.
A single word, and his body convulsed in tearing coughs.
...Young Master?
Fortunately, his coughing drew someone back.
A thin voice called to him from beyond the thick wooden door.
"Cough, cough."
But he couldn't speak.
Y-Young Master...! Are you unwell? W-Wait just a moment. I'll fetch the physician!
Light footsteps hurried away.
'No... that's not what I wanted to ask for.'
That was his last thought before blackness claimed him.
Creeeak.
For the first time in ten years, the thick wooden door to the top room swung open.
There stood a pale-faced maid and a physician clutching his medical bag.
The climb up this tall tower had clearly exhausted him; he dabbed sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.
"Young Master, are you awake? I've brought the physician."
The girl on meal duty for the turret that day trembled so violently she couldn't bring herself to touch the figure on the bed.
She was terrified.
No matter that this young master was the discarded child of the Battenberg familyif anything happened to him, she would face severe punishment.
"It's all right. Let me take a look."
The physician dismissed the maid and approached the bed.
"...!"
Confirming the patient's body burned like a furnace, he swiftly undid the front of his shirt.
"Good lord..."
Red rash blooms covered the patient's chest.
Gasp.
The maid, watching from the side, went white as a sheet.
She had seen such fever-blossoms on her young sibling once before.
"Ph-Physician! Our young master will live, won't he? Right?"
"How long has it been like this?"
"W-Well... actually, his meals have gone untouched for days. The maids on duty just took the trays back down..."
"How many days?!"
"Th-Three days, I think. But we thought the young master was on another hunger strike..."
The terrified maid shed thick tears.
The physician sighed and quickly requested cold water and towels.
"It's measles. Highly contagioustell everyone to stay away from this tower."
To think this is a noble's chamber.
With a grim face, he surveyed the frigid room.
Piles of scribbled papers everywhere, ink stains.
No sign of a fire ever lit, and the meals left behind were pathetically meager.
Everyone in the territory knew the Battenbergs' youngest son had fallen from the duke's favor and been confined for ten years.
But no one imagined conditions this dire.
"H-Here! Physician."
The physician soaked a towel in the cold water the maid brought and wiped down Noah Battenberg, the Battenbergs' youngest young master.
Still, the fever refused to break.
Ten years locked in this remote castle tower had left his body severely weakened.
Measles at a time like this was fatal, and the foolish servants had delayed proper care.
"It's too late. The medicines won't work nowit's far past the point."
"..."
"...What in the world."
The Battenbergs, arriving late with the news, fell silent at the sight of Noah's wretched state.
"Tch, it's too hard to get in and out of here. Move him to the end room in the annex for now."
At the words of Noah's mother, Duchess Jane Battenberg, the servants carried Noah bed and all.
As the physician had declared no hope, Noah lay motionless on the bed, his face deathly pale.
The people gathered in Noah's frigid room emptied out into the hall.
The now-empty chamber lay desolate.
Papers of unknown purpose littered the floor.
Noah's desk was piled with scribbled drafts.
And stacks of scripts, worn ragged and finger-marked from endless readings.
Creeeak.
With a heavy groan, the thick wooden door sealed away Noah Battenberg's traces forever.
Is this... a dream?
No strength filled his body.
He felt adrift, floating somewhere, unable to think clearly.
Is anyone... there?
He wanted to call out, but his mouth wouldn't move.
I need to ask Oliver to deliver it for me...
His one true ally, Oliver.
"Young Master, you'll be the death of me at this rate."
Grumbling like that, yet every day he aided my secret double life.
By day, the youngest son of Duke Battenberg.
By night, the Golden Mask, nameless star of the Oscar Theater Troupe.
As dusk fell, we two slipped out of the grand Battenberg castle.
With over two hundred servants, the place was riddled with hidden exits.
My siblings would never dream of using such filthy rat holes, of course.
But I was blind to all but my hunger for the stage.
That dreamlike life lasted three years.
Perhaps because of Oliver's constant refrain.
In the end, Oliver really was chased from the Battenberg estate because of me.
Beaten mercilessly, left lame.
One day, by sheer ill luck, my father, Duke Hugo Battenberg, learned of my double life.
The son of Battenberg, reduced to a lowly actor?
Furious, he summoned Oliver in my absence and ordered him harshly punished.
Poor Oliver.
To protect the family honor, Duke Battenberg valued a servant's life less than a fly's.
Fortunately, my father spared Oliver's life.
Because I intervened upon hearing the news.
I blocked Oliver's path and begged my father.
I would give up acting.
In exchange for exiling Oliver alive beyond the territory, I was confined to the top room of the remotest turret in the castle annex.
Ten yearsa truly nightmarish eternity.
What sustained me through it was the memory of those radiant three years.
The moment he first saw Richard Burbage perform with the famed Chamberlain's Men, London's pride.
That was when he resolved to act.
When he met Oscar and formally joined his troupe.
When Shakespeare, who adored his acting, talked with him all night.
When countless crowds roared for him on stage.
One day, he stayed up reciting lines from a one-act he'd rehearsed endlessly.
Another, he spent a week replaying conversations with Shakespeare.
The day Richard Burbage first watched his performance.
The day Oliver first wept seeing his acting.
Each memory filled his days, becoming his ten years.
Not a single scene faded.
To never forget that era, he spoke those moments aloud time and again.
In the chill turret room, he recited lines endlessly, wrote them, adapted them.
Thus, he lived a lifetime on three years' memories.
If only he could see their acting once more with his own eyes.
Exchange lines and emotions with them.
Stand before the throngs gazing at him.
He clung to life for that alone.
But Oliver... it seems this is the end.
No matter how he blinked, only deep darkness met him.
No sounds reached his water-submerged ears, no breath stirred as he exhaled.
It felt like sinking into warm water.
As his eyes slowly closed, he thought:
He wanted to wander his dreams once more.
In 1623, Noah Battenberg fell into eternal sleep in the Battenberg estate where he was born and raised.
"Wah! Wah!"
A piercing noise.
The grating din by his ear forced his sticky eyelids open.
"Uh..."
To his astonishment, the shrill cries circling his ears stopped dead.
Huh?
Where am I?
"Oh my, is our Siu awake?"
"Looks like Siu stopped crying because he saw us."
"He stopped because of me."
The young man and woman in his vision chattered in a language he couldn't comprehend.
What is this?
Where's the physician?
Bewildered, he scowled and demanded harshly.
Who are you?
"Huh?"
...What?
It was an odd sound.
He clamped his mouth shut.
Not the honeyed tenor that set audiences ablaze on stage.
This was the mewl of a beast's whelp.
He, Noah Battenbergyoungest son of England's great Duke Battenberg, known to all.
"Waaah!"
"S-Siu! It's Daddy!"
"Why's our baby crying again? Did Daddy's face scare you? Huh?!"
He had thought some vile disease had pinned him down to die.
Yet...
Pat, pat.
Someone's gentle hand stroked his back rhythmically.
A soothing scent wafted from the warm embrace, caressing his heart.
He knew the perfumes of noble houses inside out, yet this was new.
Before he could gather his thoughts, he lost consciousness in that cozy hold.