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Asta was waiting in front of the station, excited and restless. He did it. He made it into a theater troupe. Needless to say: he hadn’t slept, spending the night imagining how it could be, barely realizing how he was living his dream… or no. He wasn’t there yet. He had made the first step towards his objective. But for now, he was just an actor from the Black Bulls. An actor… he was an actor…
Asta recognized the man that was accompanying Yami the day before and waved to him, signaling his presence. The man skittered towards him and flashed an encouraging smile.
“Sorry. The station is quite far from our, um…” Finral hesitated, then said, “...rehearsal place.”
“It’s fine! What’s your name, by the way?”
“Finral.”
“I’m Asta.”
“Let’s go?”
“Sure!”
Asta followed Finral in the streets and remarked that the farther they got from the station, the darker and emptier the streets got. When they finally reached the place after a good thirty-minute walk, Asta thought that he was about to live through some initiation. Because this didn’t look like a theater at all. It looked like a very big house. Asta would say it looked like a manor. And the manor was very out of place in the neighborhood. In all honesty, it looked haunted.
“So, this is our hom– I mean, this is where the Black Bulls rehearse. I know it might look a bit shabby but it’s actually quite cozy. We rehearse in the basement. The rooms are on the second and third floor, the kitchen and living room are on the first floor. Most of us live here now.”
Asta stared at the place. At least, Asta would be living at the rehearsal place. He wouldn’t have to find another place to stay, and he wouldn’t have to commute!
Finral continued, “Um… so… I know, you’re not expecting that.”
“Expecting what?”
“Other troupes get to rehearse in a theater… We don’t.”
“Why?” Asta asked.
Finral looked away before chuckling nervously, “Um… The problem is: we’ve been banned from playing in most theaters in town… and funds are… rare. So now we’re rehearsing here… in the basement.”
“You’ve been banned?” Asta asked.
“Kinda,” Finral said.
Asta had no idea how they could ‘kinda’ be banned. Either they were or they weren’t.
Finral showed Asta in, “We’ll go directly to the basement, that’s where the others are.”
Asta nodded and followed Finral down the stairs. Asta discovered that climbing down the stairs wasn’t all he had to do to find his new fellow actors. The basement was seemingly as big as the house, if not bigger. Finral turned right and Asta thought he would never remember the way.
Finral continued explaining, “We’re doing improv on the streets or short plays at festivals that haven’t banned us yet. We mostly live off tips and from various benefactors since we don’t get commissionned often.”
“Why?” Asta asked. “What happened?”
“We happened,” Finral shrugged. “I’m surprised you don’t know, the drama edition of the Petit Clover loves to write about us. You know Augustus Kira, the media mogul?”
Asta didn’t know Augustus Kira. He didn’t know what a media mogul was either. But he nodded along.
Finral continued, “He owns the Petit Clover paper and, well, he only cares about the Crimson Lions and Silver Eagles… Oh, recently, he’s taken a liking to the Golden Dawn. He doesn’t care about the rest of the troupes, but for the Black Bulls… despite us being an official troupe, he kinda wants us gone. The problem is that he’s also very close to the royal family, so they listen to him when he says that the only troupes worth keeping are these three. He doesn’t especially have a problem with the others troupes, but he basically hates us.”
Asta couldn’t really keep up with everything he was saying, there were too many words he didn’t know, so he brought the conversation back to a subject he knew.
“And um… so… Black Bulls, you– we mostly do improv?”
“Yes.”
Asta almost sighed in relief. He liked improvisation. It didn’t require learning lines, it was much more spontaneous, and even if he didn’t know the rules of improvisation, it felt infinitely better than reeling out lines.
“We haven’t worked on a play in a while because we don’t really have the best conditions to play several scenes, less alone acts,” Finral continued. “More often than not, our actors have to spring off stage and bolt out when they’re recognized. We live off the 25% of money we get from before we go onstage; sometimes we’re lucky and it’s 50% before. Sometimes we’re not lucky and we have to reimburse everything because the audience didn’t find it funny to see us run around in panic as we try to escape.”
Asta blinked.
“How do we get commissioned to play somewhere with our reputation?” Finral said. “Well. If you’ve heard of the Black Sheep, it’s our cover. But it’s starting to spread that the Black Bulls are also the Black Sheeps, so… chances are we won’t have any show in a while. Basically, we’re always running.”
Finral paused, then turned towards Asta.
“You look like you work out, so you should be fine. But there are some of us we don’t take with us most of the time because they can’t really run… you can run?”
“I can run...” Asta said, unsure.
“Good, you’ll be fine then.”
Finral sighed and opened the door to the rehearsal room.
Asta stopped short. There was a lot happening.
Finral pointed at all othe people in turn as he introduced them, “So, you’ve already met Yami, our stage director. He has a bit of anger issues. Um, you could say the same about Gauche, right here. They’re both a handful, and they’re both responsible for about half of our bans. Then you have Luck and Magna who are responsible for the other half. They can’t help getting into fights. Luck would also want to fight with… spectators. He just… seems to think that this is the best way to make friends. Um, there, lying on the floor and visibly already wasted at…” Finral checked his watch, “...9 in the morning, you have Vanessa. She’s great when she’s not too drunk to act. She’s responsible for the bar bans, we also have a few of these. She helps with the costumes sometimes. Sitting in the corner you have Gordon. He’s good at silent roles. Other than that… he’s responsible for props too and he handles decor changes. He handles our budget and helps me with the administrative stuff. Oh yeah, he also knows everything there is to know about theater. Who else is here today… oh, if you look very carefully, at the other end of the room, hiding behind the curtain is Grey. Grey is the best out of all of us for impersonating and generally getting into characters… but she’s too shy to perform in front of a public– or in front of any of us, really. We know she’s good because we caught her off guard once or twice. Oh and Charmy right here is our manager. Yami said she just showed up one day and demanded to join the troupe as a ‘manager’. He thought she was funny and let her. We’re not too sure what ‘manager’ means when it comes to a troupe but Charmy is also a good understudy and she’s basically our cook. She’s tough too, that’s why we let her get us contracts.”
Asta nodded.
“Who did I forget… Oh, yes, our landlord. M. Henry is the only reason why we still have a place to rehearse and to sleep, we owe him everything. You won’t see him much. He’s old and tired and he stays in his room most of the time. He always says he’s grateful for the noise, even that one time we accidentally dug a hole in the ceiling– his floor. He lives in the attic. I know how it sounds but he chose! Yami didn’t threaten him… I think.”
“Do you act?” Asta asked.
Finral hesitated, then flashed a strained smile, “No, I can’t really. I’m just helping out and hanging around for lack of anything else better to do… this is just my home now.”
Asta frowned, unsure about the impression he got from that answer, but didn’t pry.
“I’ll introduce you,” Finral said.
And so, Asta got introduced, and every member introduced themselves (except Grey, Grey hid behind Gauche).
“Where’re you crashing right now, kid?” Yami asked.
“I have a room by the central station.”
A room that Asta still had only for one night.
“‘kay. There’s still room in our dorms if you want.”
“I can?”
“Sure,” Magna said. “We're all staying in the dorms.”
“Why do you have dorms if you’re just a troupe?”
“Yeah that can sound weird,” Yami said. “Long story short, most of these guys are homeless so I took them in and then asked them to work at least a little in exchange. But I was kinda homeless too so we’re lucky old Henry likes noise. He took us in and said we had to pay him with ‘liveliness and life’. That’s his words.”
“So, what’s your deal?” Magna asked Asta.
Asta frowned, “What?”
“You wouldn’t join the Black Bulls if you were a normal kid,” Magna said.
“Oh,” Asta said. That was true. The only person who hadn’t told Asta to beat it when auditionning was Yami. Everyone else seemed to think that Asta’s perfomance had been a major offense. “I can’t remember my lines, so I can’t play with a text. And I also can’t remember most of the rules when I act.”
Magna blinked.
Yami chuckled, “He’s a funny kid.” He slapped Asta’s back. “Welcome to the Black Bulls, the worst theatrical troupe in town. You’ll fit right in.”