Ch.160Act 2: Ch.10 – Long Live the King (12)

People pointed at the sky. The white planet. The second moon. The eerie moon. That indescribable thing that appeared suddenly. It floated silently as if it had been there from the beginning, as if it had been hidden all along.

But I felt something else too. The wound on the back of my hand began to sting again. A place that hadn’t hurt since Emma treated it. The spot where I had cut myself with a page from the Necronomicon.

The earth and sky flip upside down.

Blackout.

* * * * *

[How theatrical]

I heard a voice.

I stood up. Everything around me had frozen. People remained fixed in their positions, pointing at the second moon. The fog no longer writhed. The blood flowing from the dead driver had stopped. Even Crayfield didn’t move a finger.

I was the only one who could move.

[Strange, isn’t it? Many people call a play realistic. Many call reality theatrical. But no one calls a play theatrical or reality realistic.]

I saw it. Among the people raising their hands to the sky, someone wearing a silver mask was looking straight at me. Fog continuously flowed from those empty eye sockets.

[Theater and reality endlessly desire, crave, extort, and devour each other because they are congenitally infertile—they can mate but cannot bear children. They can grow to resemble each other, but they cannot become one another. Just like you, Usurper.]

I saw it. The one wearing the silver mask removing it. I blinked, and suddenly people were wearing silver masks, making a fuss and pointing at the sky.

I saw that the face of the one who removed the mask was a blank white sheet. Suddenly my left hand itched. I felt an urge to scribble on that blank sheet, a compulsion that it shouldn’t be left in such a pristine white state.

[Even knowing it’s fake, people watch plays. Even while living in reality, people want to deny it. They want to escape while wanting to stay, and want to stay while wanting to escape.

Usurper. You know the answer. Why do people mix the fake and the real? Even beasts don’t do such things. Can you give me an answer?]

The people disappeared. The street is quiet. A wrecked car billowing smoke. Thick fog. The King in the Silver Mask and me.

No… I’m mistaken. It’s just the writhing of the fog. It dissipates futilely. Strange. Not a hint of wind.

I walk. I walk on the concrete floor as if it were a soft carpet. I step on the back of the recently deceased like stepping stones. The rebound of the firmly set but no longer functional spine, the back that is stiffening and cooling, which can no longer move even a finger joint with effort.

The fog writhes. It takes human form. It transforms into the King in the Silver Mask. In unison, they whisper.

[You. Are you alive?]

“I am alive.”

[You. How do you prove your life?]

“Because I am here.”

[There is no one who can tell you that you are there.]

“Aren’t you here?”

The fog gathers densely.

Ha. I’m not here? That’s insane. Even if there’s no one else on this street, I know I’m here. Is a traveler walking alone a being that disappears from the world? No, that’s not true.

The fog gathers densely. I run through the fog. Don’t be ridiculous, I am here. I am here!

But I can’t see anything. I can’t hear anything. There’s only fog. Fog creeping into my nostrils, fog spewing from my mouth every time I open and close it, gasping, slimy fog flowing from the dead instead of blood.

“Crayfield?”

Gone.

“Abassina! Aurora!”

Gone.

[Usurper. I am curious.]

Something chilling places a hand on my shoulder. I shook it off. Though shaking off fog is meaningless, I did it anyway. Clumpy fingers stop in front of my eyes. They poke my cheek, stab my waist, block my knees, and press on my neck.

[Reality and theater devour each other. And they wear each other’s shells. So theater becomes realistic, and reality becomes theatrical. But what is reality and what is theater? Is it the presence or absence of a curtain? The presence or absence of a dramatic voice?]

The fog licks my eyes. With a white, cool, and damp tongue, it licks my eyes.

[Isn’t it just a figment of your imagination?]

I close my eyes. I closed my eyelids. Lowered the curtain. Under tightly closed eyelids, I roll my eyes back and forth. Like actors moving behind the stage curtain, like workers moving behind the black curtain.

Theater has a definite curtain. Opening. Closing.

Reality’s curtain is also definite. Lifting the eyelids, lowering the eyelids.

Curtains and eyelids. To prepare for the next stage, to prepare for the next reality, to look at the reality beyond.

“Theater has no tomorrow.”

I answered. The King in the Silver Mask stares at me blankly. That’s how I felt.

“People’s daily lives have tomorrow. Theater doesn’t have that. It just endlessly recites and repeats a predetermined script as prescribed. Theater only changes, but people can create tomorrow. Theater circles around yesterday and today, while people move forward to tomorrow. That’s the difference.”

[Tomorrow could be more terrible, couldn’t it?]

“That’s why theater is necessary. It pretends that even though life is terrible and unbearable, it can be otherwise. Because it really can become that way. People can make falsehoods into truth just as they create falsehoods. That’s what people are.”

The King in the Silver Mask nodded. He adjusted his clothes, fluttering the hem of the fog.

[I understand, but that alone is ambiguous.]

[You are not ready. I’m not ready either. I will prepare a performance just for you. I hope you will be ready too. Please wait and watch the plays of my agency’s people.]

[But you, are you really human?]

I fall.

* * * * *

“Hey! Assistant!”

I see Crayfield. He shakes me roughly. I couldn’t understand why he was standing with his back to that eerie moon. Nor could I understand why my lower back was in excruciating pain.

“Get up! Not yet!”

I ignored the pain and stood up. People weren’t even looking at me and Crayfield. With the sudden appearance of the second moon in the sky and news of bank failures, people were pushing each other and running around randomly. In the distance came the sounds of cars crashing—bang, bang—and human screams.

My back hurt. As I straightened up with a groan, a crisp cracking sound echoed. Before Aurora’s security guards completely closed the doors, Crayfield and I entered the lobby.

Inside wasn’t much different from before. The children were watching the magic show with wonder, but occasionally flinched when they heard noises from the lobby.

“What happened?”

“You fainted. Suddenly. You looked up at that planet and fainted.”

“For how long?”

“Not more than 3 seconds. Let’s talk somewhere quieter. That supply closet over there would be good.”

Crayfield whispered quickly and moved away. I passed by the children, the priest, and the nuns. I noticed Abassina’s worried glance, but she just bit her lower lip without making any obvious sign of recognition.

As soon as I entered the closet, I checked the clock.

<Awakening 3/12 / Doom 3/12>

The count had increased by one each since earlier. Crayfield leaned against the closed door. He seemed to be listening for anyone approaching from outside.

“I’m certain. Drugstore has taken on the role of that rookie actor. I think his role is ‘Priest.’ Remember what happened at Miskatonic University and Innsmouth?”

“How could I forget? We almost died.”

“Just like that, Drugstore is now trying to summon the Outer God. As we suspected, the theatrical performance is a cover. The real intention of the performance is to conduct a ritual to summon the Outer God while pretending it’s a play.”

The final rehearsal. A demonstration on a stage without an audience… that alone was enough to raise the awakening and doom counts.

“Then couldn’t they just continue with rehearsals?”

“That’s not possible.” Crayfield shook his head. “There’s not enough time. I don’t know exactly how the Doomsday distribution works, but it’s certain that when the play finishes all three acts, it will reach 12. But rehearsals alone would overlap with the scheduled time. The problem is, that bastard won’t come out.”

Crayfield growled.

“The reason we’ve been able to win so far is because we keep creating variables. We’ve been able to create variables because time and space keep changing. Even at Miskatonic University, we moved around here and there. But that guy doesn’t plan to leave the stage. He intends to stay holed up there and see it through to the end. He’s drastically lowered the difficulty.”

“What does difficulty have to do with variables?”

“What makes a normal game difficult isn’t simply raising the numerical checks. It’s that there are many things to think about and many variables, so you always have to consider investment versus return. Some games take this to the extreme, reaching the point of unreasonableness—that’s the Call series.

But that guy, solely with the determination to defeat me, has abandoned even that identity. He’s lowered the difficulty so drastically that it’s terribly hard to create variables. I won’t be able to draw him out from the stage.”

“Then why did he do the preliminary work?”

“To torment us. I told you. He crosses the line. That guy is even messing with Abassina and Aurora. He knows that by tormenting people close to us, he can work more comfortably. He’s done a very thorough analysis. He killed Emma because she could directly block the ‘ritual’ itself.”

Pollard Island itself is in chaos right now. Excited outsiders who are losing their entire fortunes with their eyes wide open, yet unable to do anything because they’re trapped on the island. The fog piling up terribly. Hastur’s moon that suddenly appeared.

“Can’t we just shoot him?”

My teeth ground together in frustration. Crayfield seemed to sympathize completely, but shook his head.

“Then he would restart immediately. Before restarting, he would remove me or you from the game. That won’t work. We need to make him feel that the game itself is a mess.”

To make the creator who is intoxicated with his own game understand that the game is a mess. What an absurd irony. I could somewhat understand why Crayfield had said “we cannot win.” What we need to break is Drugstore’s own arrogance.

He has abandoned all other conditions that make a game a game in order to satisfy his arrogance. He has twisted the entire situation in Pollard into a mess to ensure no one interferes with his play.

We’ll lose at this rate.

Irritably, I put my hand in my pocket. Something hard was caught in my hand. It’s the blood-stained bolt that Abassina had subtly revealed the location of.

“Ah, right. Crayfield, I found this where the actors were sitting.”

I handed over the bolt.

“This, I’ve seen it somewhere before?”

Crayfield groaned.

“Look. The bolt head is hexagonal? This isn’t an ordinary bolt. This… it’s similar to the bolts that fell from those mechanical humans in that underground cave in Innsmouth?”

Something hot ran up my spine to the back of my head.

I saw Clarice Holmes in the crowd.

[[[Irene Adler is the name of an actress in the Sherlock Holmes series, and a criminal who deceived Holmes.]]]

[[[Clarice Holmes cut off Van Helsing’s mechanized head and sent it as a gift to Abassina.]]]

The criminal Clarice Holmes is pursuing is Professor Moriarty.

Moriarty knows how to modify people into machines.

“Crayfield. Those actors…”

“Hm?”

“Those actors have been modified into mechanical humans. I’m sure of it. I’m certain, Crayfield.”

“Certain… well. I’m not sure, but I’ll believe you since you say so. And if what you say is true…”

Crayfield raised one corner of his mouth.

“This. This might be worth trying.”