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What masque? what music? How shall we beguile
The lazy time, if not with some delight?
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
If they come in from stage left, out from the second wing then—
And with the lighting cue here and— the sound cue—
Buttons! The costumes need to have more buttons added to the sketches and—
Yonaga is shorter, so for the blocking here he should—
And the way Kai’s moving in this scene that means—
A door opens and closes, somewhere. Right. That’s a sound cue he needs to add for when Mary leaves her—
Wait.
“I was wondering why the theater was already unlocked. Of course it’s you, Kokuto.”
He’s been lying upside down, his head hanging backwards over one of the seats in Univeil’s theater. Mary Jane is a topsy-turvy sort of world, so this is the best vantage to plan it by. When he sits up too fast, the entire building does summersaults. A little too many of them. He isn’t sure when the last time he ate anything was. Oops.
When things settle down, ceiling on the ceiling and floor on the floor, Tsukasa is standing there, at the back of the house, hair perfectly pinned and an outfit impractically elegant for a late night practice session.
“Have you come for an evening at the theater, ma’am?” he says, with an affected voice of some old butler. “I’m afraid you’re several weeks too early.”
“It’s my birthday,” Tsukasa says, “so I’m allowed to do whatever I want.”
Kokuto play acts an exaggerated child’s tantrum and slams his fist into the seat back in front of him. “No fair! My birthday isn’t during the school term! When do I get to break into the Univeil Theater? This is discrimination!”
“It’s not breaking in, when you have a key.” Tsukasa lifts a chain up and lets it dangle, elegantly, from a wrist.
“They gave you a key? I’ve just been picking the lock.” He hasn’t, of course. He does have a key. And several copies of it he plans to steal at the end of the year. But that part’s a secret.
“Well, maybe you should be a more trustworthy and reliable class lead.”
“Never!” He stands up with that exclamation, and he’s only light headed from it for a second, so clearly, food isn’t that pressing. “I refuse to conform to the system!”
Tsukasa’s hand rests daintily above painted lips when he laughs. Kokuto imagines the key must be swaying to and fro, though he can’t see it from here.
Swaying to and fro… that’s right. The shipwreck at the cold open. It’s probably going to have to be done all in projection…
“Can I use your free birthday pass to break into the lighting booth?”
Tsukasa walks down the aisle, towards him and the stage.
“May I ask why?”
It’s not a no. It’s probably a no, though.
“I wanna play with the projector.”
“Then no, I’m afraid.”
“Awww,” he pouts. “What was the right answer?”
Tsukasa makes it to the row Kokuto’s been sitting at and slides in a few seats. Then he turns, and looks out towards the stage. “It’s a secret.”
“I can keep a secret,” Kokuto insists.
“Maybe I’d tell,” Tsukasa says, “if you were a more trustworthy class lead.”
Check and mate. Kokuto giggles. “Well played, madam, well played.”
He turns around and looks out at the stage, too. “So, why is the Princess of Rhodonite walking around in a theater like this alone late at night?”
“The Princess of Rhodonite, huh?” Tsukasa’s voice is a little less teasing then usual. But that could easily be as calculated as everything else.
Kokuto hums. “That’s right. I’d quite forgotten about your coronation. My apologies, your majesty.”
“I suppose that makes Mare the princess now?”
If he were allowed to be playing up in the booth, maybe he could turn the stage into a ballroom out of some European castle. There’d be little shadow dancers, waltzing in circles to silent music, just to give this conversation its proper mood.
“I suppose,” Kokuto says. “I wouldn’t know. I’m an only child.”
Tsukasa laughs, softly. “Well, that explains why you’re so bad at sharing.”
“I am not bad at sharing!” he insists. Though he’s never really thought about it before, either way.
“Then why don’t you let Kisa come to Rhodonite? As a present, for my birthday.”
“A new tactic, huh? But I’m afraid that’s off the table.”
Tsukasa sighs, gracefully, elegantly, and sits down in a seat. “Even if I let you into the lighting booth, right?”
Kokuto follows suit, sitting down himself. “You drive a hard bargain, but I’m going to have to decline. Besides, it’s not really up to me, anymore.”
“Unreliable class lead that you are,” Tsukasa says.
“Untrustworthy, too.”
Then they sit there, for a bit, without saying anything, either of them. Looking out at different stages projected over the same wooden boards. Well, not actually projected. Considering he isn’t allowed to mess with that by himself.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Kokuto says, because its more fun to talk if he can’t actually be adjusting the color balance on the storm clouds anywhere but in his own head. “What brings you to such a strange and treacherous place at such an hour.”
Tsukasa plays along easily. You don’t get to be a triple threat Al Jeanne, Tresor, and class lead without being able to roll with improv. Well, not if he were setting the requirements.
“Perhaps I enjoy a little bit of danger, from time to time. And what about you? What nefarious activities are you up to outside of your dorm at night.”
Kokuto looks from side to side, in exaggerated movements, as if checking for any prying eyes or ears. “Okay, okay you caught me. Secretly, I’ve been living in Univeil Theater. There’s no room for my bed in the dorm, anymore, so I just moved in here. Don’t tell Master Rukuro, though, he’ll have me in an ankle monitor. Or worse, make me get rid of some of the books.” He drops his voice down, low and scared-sounding. “Maybe even clean my room…”
“And you’ve chosen to try to sleep lying backwards on the audience seats, when there’s bound to be a perfectly good prop bed in one of the back store rooms.”
“Oh, no,” Kokuto says, emphatically. “I live in the vaults under the theater, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
If only Univeil theater had such aesthetic catacombs, complete with winding stone steps and an underground lake, he’s sure the inspiration he could find there would produce something perfect for Mary Jane. But then, the wifi probably wouldn’t even work, so that’s kind of a deal breaker.
“If you’ve come to sing for us, Prima Donna, don’t be dissuaded by a little phantom like myself.”
Tsukasa looks back out over the stage, quietly, for some time. “No,” he says finally. “Not tonight.” He stands up then, and walks out of the seating row and down the aisle to the edge of the stage. Kokuto watches from his seat, from the audience. Tsukasa touches the wood gently, and runs a hand over it, almost like he were petting a skittish animal. Or maybe a lover.
“Kokuto,” Tsukasa says, so gently it makes goosebumps rise on his arms to hear, “do you have a dream?”
“Of course I do,” he says, from his seat. It’s a silly question, really. “To make the best stage ever.”
Tsukasa laughs at him, all an act of condescension and pity. “You really are so childish.”
“So be it,” he says, and just to prove the point, he climbs onto the cushioned seat with both feet. It’s a bit unstable, so he braces with one foot on the seat back in front of him. “I’ll just be Peter Pan, then. I’ll never grow up!”
“Peter Pan is played by a woman in most productions, you know,” Tsukasa says. He leans back against the edge of the stage and crosses his arms.
“Well, I have been an Al Jeanne before, once.”
Tsukasa scoffs. “That hardly counts.”
“I got silver.”
Tsukasa doesn’t reply to that right away. There’s a beat of silence that feels heavy, to Kokuto’s ears. “Yes,” Tsukasa says then, sounding, maybe, almost a bit sad. “That you did.”
But now Kokuto’s thinking about Peter Pan, and pirate ships. He should try to figure out if they can make a collapsable ship, one they can put back together for the ending part. It’d be really cool if the play opened with a whole set collapsing. With the right hinges, and maybe some bracing that can be pulled out and reset…
But then he’d have to scrap the bird's nest look out for the final scene, and he really wants to have one of those.
Decisions… decisions… So many of them to make and so little time.
“If I’m Peter Pan,” he asks Tsukasa, “would that make you Wendy Darling?”
“I am much more mature than you.” Tsukasa looks away from him and back up to the stage. Maybe whatever Rhodonite is doing this time requires more stage effects than their usual fair.
“Well, it is your birthday,” Kokuto says. “You’re all grown up now. They wouldn’t even let you into Neverland. Not me though, I’m still a kid.”
Tsukasa hums. Even that’s high and musical. “For a few more months. Time marches on for both of us, you know.”
He does know. That’s why he’s here, at least a week early, trying to figure out all the tech cues, so that he can focus on the next play. It’s the last one he has before the big finale. The last chance to get everything set up before the final curtain.
If only they could all stay in Neverland, there’d be so much time for new stages. His office is a veritable city of half finished manuscripts and reference books. If time would let him, he’d wander in it forever, like a dream.
A dream… a dream…
“Momentary as a sound, swift as a shadow, short as any dream,” Kokuto recites.
“That’s Shakespeare, right?”
“As expected of the Queen of Rhodonite. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I suppose that would make you Titania.”
Tsukasa adopts the posing for it, regal and more than a little frightening.
“And that would make you, troublemaker that you are, that shrewd and knavish sprite call'd Robin Goodfellow.”
Puck climbs over the seat in front of him to perch atop it. “Thou speaks aright,” he says, “I am that merry wanderer of the night.”
It’s hardly a stable perch, though, so he scrambles down and into the aisle. He bows, lavishly enough that his glasses slide a bit down his nose. “Puck, at your service.”
“You would serve me now, instead of Oberon? How fickle,” Titania says.
“And what are we fair folk, if not fickle?”
Titania pushes off from the stage and walks with all the bearing due her title up the aisle to him. She grabs the rascal Puck by the chin. Her fingers' grip is harder than he thought it’d be.
“And what use do I have, for such a shifty and inconstant jester? How will you prove yourself to me? Will you bring me a changeling child?”
Tsukasa lets go and Kokuto rubs at his chin. They’ve swapped the whole play around, with there little game, and it’s fun, even if his chin hurts, now.
He drops back into character. Puck snickers and scampers off to the edge of the stage before scrambling up into it.
“A changeling child?” Puck says.
“Is that what my fair queen desires?
A newborn babe whisked through heath and briar.
And to this Puck, quick of leg and quicker of tongue, such a task assigned.
Is there a child of mortal men that my liege did have in mind?”
Tsukasa - Titania, lifts herself up gracefully onto the edge of the stage. A feat that requires more strength than one would think, just by looking. “You’re mistaken, my dear Puck. The child I want is one already in fairyland. The one you — as Oberon’s retainer, guarded from me. Give me the child, and I will welcome you into my company.”
There isn’t much difference between Tsukasa’s own voice and Titania’s as he continues, “It is my birthday, after all.”
Kokuto breaks off the scene the rest of the way. “And suppose I were to give you Tachibana-kun— suppose between your charms, and my wits, we could convince Tachibana-kun to accept such a thing — and suppose Chui didn’t whisk him off in all the chaos first — tell me, fair queen, what would you do with him? This new Jack I’ve been training, will you let him be your next Jack Ace? Give Minorikawa-kun a bit of a break next year to run the class?”
Tsukasa taps painted nails against the edge of the stage. “You’ve quite proven he can be a Jack, yes. And from the rumors about campus, we’re in for a villain, right?”
“If you trust the rumors,” Kokuto says. He sits himself down, crosslegged.
“But a Jack is not a Jack Ace, is it? Certainly not in Quartz.”
“Never say never.”
“That’s a child’s thought, too.” Tsukasa looks out over the seats of the house beyond. “That there isn’t anything off limits or impossible. If you want a few more months of that, I suppose I should let you enjoy them.”
“And you think in Rhodonite it might be different?” He rocks forward, then back, to look at the turned-off stage lights overhead.
“Maybe,” Tsukasa says. “If he hits quite the growth spurt, and Mare doesn’t. Or perhaps, with Yuki. And there’s always next year’s class.”
“I don’t see what growth spurts have to do with it,” Kokuto says. He lets himself tip all the way back, so he’s lying on the stage now, looking up at the rafters of it. “I had one, and all it did was make me have to buy new clothes. All my old pajamas don’t fit me anymore.” Well, not the way he liked to wear them, anyway. They still fit, but the wrists just stop at the wrists, and they aren’t as comfy without being so baggy. But he’s grown quite attached to his new looks, so it’s okay. He doesn’t remember where he put them when he cleared out that drawer to put papers in instead, now that he thinks about it. Well, that’s a problem for later.
“Your Mukai, in the summer play, didn’t participate in the dance contest at all. Because the dance pairs wouldn’t balance that way. Hasekura, when he stands up straighter, is taller and more masculine than Ando. And, next to Suzu, Soshiro reads as a Jeanne. Though I hear he’s taken over the Jack role, this time. With his build, I suppose you could make it work in either direction. He’s about the same as Onyx’s up-and-comer, after all.”
“And one of Amber’s.” Though Kokuto isn’t sure how far either of them will climb. Chui doesn’t seem all that interested, and if they can’t hold Chui’s interest, no amount of practicing until they’re coughing up blood is likely to change his mind. “I would have had Mukai dance with Shiroma, but Mikki might have killed me for that.”
From the edge of the stage, Tsukasa hums. “Mitsuki is enough of a Jeanne that you could manage it, so long as it’s not front and center. But it’s still off balance. Some things you just can’t change.”
It’s true, if Tachibana were to just stand there next to anyone else in Quartz, the audience might assume him to be a Jeanne. But he doesn’t write plays where people just stand there. And, given how good Tachibana is getting, even without any lines or movements, he could evoke quite the Jack just staying still. The audience will adjust quickly enough. If the play is any good at all, they’ll be far too lost in the world of it to care. Maybe they’ll even find they like it, seeing something that breaks the expectations they’ve come to the theater for. In his experience, there are always some who complain, and a more interesting set who become even more captivated than before. And those usually win out.
“Then I’d just have to write Tachibana-kun a Jack Ace that can be shorter than the Al Jeanne. I’m sure my talent is up for the task.” He kind of wants to try, now, just because it might upset the most old-fashioned of the crowd. You can’t reach the best stage ever, with silly limitations like that.
Tsukasa scoffs. Fabric shifts, and there’s the sound of sharp, heeled footsteps over the wood. And then there’s a face looking down at him from above. “You’re so stubborn. But you and I both know Kisa could become an Al Jeanne the likes of which this theater rarely sees. If you’re chasing the best stage ever, why fight that?”
“Maybe I’m not fighting it.” Kokuto shrugs against the stage. “Maybe I don’t know yet. Who knows what the best form for Quartz will be? I can only actually see ten seconds into the future. The rest is just guessing.”
Tsukasa quirks a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “You say some very strange things.”
“So people tell me.” Kokuto sits himself up. “But, you know, even if he is destined to be an Al Jeanne, so what? Why can’t he play around a little bit, first? If we’re all going to grow up, eventually.”
“You think you’ll find the best stage ever, playing this like a game?”
“A game of gestures, a game of make believe, theater games, a game of wagers, a contest for first prize…” He says it all in one breath, in a few seconds, before he gets distracted by another thought, and grabs his notebook he’d tucked into his side. He never goes anywhere without it, after all, even to fairyland.
Boardgames, a deck of cards, a candelabra - bent, church pew - sawed in half, a spinning wheel, a poisoned apple, a bowl of pinecones tangle with thread.
“Which is to say,” Kokuto continues, a half page of prop and set dressing requests later, which is about ten seconds, give or take — “why not play it like a game? We train with games all the time. Games are awfully serious matters.”
Gravestones, dead fish, a reliquary containing a tiny skeleton—
“You know...” he starts to sketch that last one out, as it flits through his mind’s eye. Maybe he’ll make it himself. “Chui said the same thing. That it was a waste to make Tachibana-kun play a Jack.”
He looks up at Tsukasa. “Why do you both think that?” It’s a genuine question. Tachibana is talented, really talented. They can all see that. Surely they can also see the way that talent works — the way his eyes take in the world, the way he’s been copying the movements of people on campus since the first week. He didn’t argue with Chui, in front of all the kids, but really, surely he should have understood at least this much. They used to be partners, after all.
“And you won a silver, even with that frivolous attitude,” Tsukasa sighs. “It’s far too easy for a Jeanne to start developing bad habits, Kokuto. You’re going to color him with all these Jack roles. It won’t be as easy as you think for him to switch back.”
“Maybe I just have faith in Tachibana-kun.”
Tsukasa laughs, sharp, and a little wicked. “I never took you to be particularly faithful to anything but your own whims.”
It’s something he’s heard before. People say all kinds of things about him. Amber hasn’t stopped gossiping in over a year. The rumors and accusations he’s heard from the survivors of Amber’s third years might even make Tsukasa blush. “My whims rarely lead me wrong.”
He finishes his doodle, and closes his notebook over the pen. “Besides, what makes you so sure they’ll be bad habits? Maybe they’ll be good ones.”
“You don’t learn to be a Jeanne by playing a Jack.”
“How do you know? You’ve never tried it,” Kokuto says.
Tsukasa scoffs. The disgust in it sounds a little too coarse for the way Tsukasa usually acts. Like it must be at least somewhat genuine. “I know more than I need to know about being a Jack.”
“You’ll have to teach me then. I’m playing a Jack this time around.” He’d ask Kai as much, a few weeks ago, when it was his birthday. Poor Kai, no one told him about the special birthday pass. Kokuto wonders what Kai would do with such a thing, if someone actually gave him one. Maybe bring mountain animals into the dorms. Or break into the other dorms and do all their chores for them, or something really naughty like that. His own sarcasm frustrates him. They really are running out of time, and Kai still is the type that would take a get out-of-jail-free card and give it to someone else, instead.
Well. Maybe he could have used it to get into the lighting booth.
Tsukasa shakes his head, dismissive. “The role of a Jack is to prop up the Jeannes on stage. Kai understands that much, at least.”
“I suspect Kaido would disagree with you,” Kokuto says. Vessels and flowers, flowers and vessels. They’re useful concepts to be sure, but sometimes he can’t help but feel like they’re holding the stage down as more than just anchors. He just hasn’t quite figured out how to break it yet, without the whole thing becoming as unmoored as Amber’s return performance had been. Those two first years were excellent, technically speaking, but they couldn’t translate Chui at all. Maybe that’s what Chui was going for, this time around. That play is his now, however he wants to do it. But—
“Kaido isn’t here, now, is he?” Tsukasa says.
“Well,” Kokuto says, “it’s not his birthday.”
He opens his notebook again and flips through it, though he isn’t sure what it is he’s looking for, exactly. “But I bet Chui would disagree, as well.”
“Then why don’t you ask him?”
What a strange idea. “Ask Chui?”
“He was your partner, after all.”
That he was. “I don’t really think he wants to talk to me, though.”
His fingers stop flipping through on a page covered in symbols and runes. Scribbles, really. He’s quite a few notebooks past the return performance, but he’s pretty sure that shape there had something to do with doubling. Or mirroring, maybe. He circles it, and draws it again at the corner of the page, in case it’s important. Sometimes he isn’t even sure what his talent is up to. But his whims rarely lead him wrong.
Lines from the opening of the fifth act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream float through his mind, as he does.
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
“They have a version of it, you know,” Kokuto says. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the archives. It’s been performed twice, both times by Amber. The last time was back in the 41st term, though.”
Tsukasa looks at him some kind of way then. His brain is very suddenly going too fast towards a new idea to stop and figure out what it means. “You really are a walking encyclopedia.”
“Nonsense,” Kokuto says, careening hard towards something far more interesting. His notebook’s open on the stage and his pen is moving, already. “Encyclopedia entries have no depth to them. Besides, you have quite the memory yourself. You frightened our dear Tachibana-kun during the summer you know, singing the maiden’s song out at night.”
Tsukasa titters. “Well, you’ve quite frightened our darling Ion, with your scary little play this term. So we’re even.”
“Ah,” Kokuto says. “That’s right. You do have a second Jack who can play larger roles, don’t you? He even won a medal, as I recall, over the summer. Well, that puts you one less short, for Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“If we had Kisa, I’m sure he could manage one of the Jack’s quite well.”
“Now you want him to play a Jack?”
“Would you let me have him if I did?”
Kokuto doesn’t answer that, less because he’s busy writing and more because they’ve been over all that several times already. There’s nothing new down that road, so he goes down another.
“Do you know why they stopped performing it?”
“Do you?”
“It’s only a guess, but the play is quite the ensemble production. Of course, there’s the Al Jeanne,” he nods towards Tsukasa, “—that would be you, my fair and powerful Titania. And thus, the Jack Ace role goes to Oberon. But neither of them are the protagonist, are they? And at the end, theirs isn’t the romance at the center, is it?”
“If only Univeil had a special role for its clowns, you’d be set, wouldn’t you, Puck?”
“Oh, but then my talents would be tied up on the bowers of the stage, and I’d have no time for all my mischievous script writing.” He drops that voice and goes back to explaining, while he starts drawing shapes out in his notebook — other formations that aren’t as clean as a single Jack or Jeanne. Love triangles, love rectangles, love pentagons — shapes where the sides don’t connect at all. “And if you don’t have strong enough players for some of the cast, entire sections of it will drag too long. The version Univeil has tries to adjust for this, but in doing so, it takes out most of the best part.”
“Which is…”
“The players, of course! The mechanicals. It’s a play about putting on a play, if you let it be.”
“I prefer the romance,” Tsukasa says. He walks back to the edge of the stage.
“Yes,” Puck says, “of course my queen.”
Univeil does tend to prefer things that way. But he keeps sketching out the ideas, all the same.
He can see it on the stage around him, the crisscrossing branches of Mt. Oodate superimposed onto the backdrop, it’s many colors stolen for the set dressings, a fog machine gently filling the air between scenes with the same mists that hangs over that old, sacred mountain.
In Quartz, Fumi and Kai would carry the king and queen of the fairies. Especially in the version from the Univeil archive, that rebalances the parts and takes them front and center, it could work. It might even be good for them, as a pair, to have a big fight like that on stage. Yes, it could work well. And Orimaki and Yonaga as Lysander and Demetrius, though he’ll have to figure out the ordering for it later, depending on how Mary Jane plays out. Which would leave Tachibana a natural for Hermia and Shirota as Helena. Or maybe the other way around there, too. And, of course, himself and Otori as the show stopping Puck and Nick Bottom.
And all of it playing out under the large, bright moon.
It’s a little tempting, for a final production, when he could really go all out without having to start on the next one. But only a little. It would be pretty pessimistic to imagine the best stage ever had already been written almost 500 years ago. Though, there are plenty who argue for that, he supposes.
If he were reworking it, he might double up the roles — start from the mechanicals, rehearsing a tale within a tale. Tell the first scenes as gossip and have the actors become the actors. And the fae court, besides. Tricksters as clowns. It would take some nudging, some adjusting of the beams and joints and weaving of a new cloth. But he’s pretty sure he could make it work. Or, at least, scavenge something else from the idea, for later.
He looks back over to Tsukasa. With the stage lights off and house lights on, Tsukasa at the edge of the stage is backlit, silhouetted against the sea of red seats. As striking and terrifying as Fumi would be, bringing the Fae Queen of Univeil’s version to life, there's only one choice at the school for that role.
“You really would make a wonderful Titania.” Kokuto says. “And Minorikawa-kun could play Oberon. You’d have your brother as Hermia, and, of course, if you were to get him, Tachibana-kun as Lysander. Your Torimaki-kun could be Helena, and, I suppose Ichinomae-kun then gets Demetrius? But you see, that leaves no one for all the mechanicals. Our poor Nick Bottom…”
“Or,” Tsukasa says, still looking out beyond the stage, “Demetrius can be played by one of our second-string Jacks, and Ion could play that role, since you insist it should be bigger than the adaptation the archives have.” All Kokuto can see of any expression is the tilt of the back of Tsukasa’s head, but his voice sounds cunning, even a bit cruel. “Demetrius shouldn’t have too much appeal, anyway.”
“A mean but fair bit of literary analysis!” Kokuto swaps the actors in his mind. It works.
Tsukasa turns back around then, to face him. He takes a half step closer and leans over, slightly, looking down at where Kokuto is still sitting. “You’ve forgotten to cast Puck. Were you planning on playing the role yourself? You’ve already switched classes once, after all.”
“As honored as I am for the invitation, no.” He looks up to meet their gazes.” Your little brother’s friend Ushiro-kun would be perfect for that role.”
Tsukasa brushes his hair over his shoulder. “Yuki would never play a Jack.”
“You see?” Kokuto says, “this is why you can’t think so rigidly. It’s quite simple. Puck can be a Jeanne.”
“Puck as a Jeanne...”
“Well, that settles it!” The cast, the setting and backdrops, even the feel of it is all lined up.
“You’ll give me Kisa for my birthday, after all?” Tsukasa asks.
“No, but I’ll give you something even better!” He gets up on one knee, like a knight before a queen. “I, Neji Kokuto, will rewrite and direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Rhodonite!”
Tsukasa tuts at him. “You really love butting your nose where it doesn’t belong, don’t you?”
Kokuto pokes at his own nose. “My nose is very cute, people should be happy about that!”
“Only because it doesn’t grow when you lie.”
“I never lie!” The misty forest set is gone, in a flash of lightning, and in its place is the entirety of Pinocchio, somehow all at once. And, on top of that, Mary Jane — Geppetto’s workshop and Mary’s cabin blurring and mixing together into some even wilder set he knows he’ll have to rework into his sketching. Sister Ghost as the blue fairy and himself, the wise ghost Ushinoko, as a cricket instead of a cow. He can see Kai as Pinocchio already. It gives him several new ideas for movements Kai was asking about, for Jacob.
Mary makes dolls, not puppets, but they come to life all the same. Dolls… dolls…dolls!
“Pinocchio as an Al Jeanne!” he says, triumphant. “A little porcelain doll, come to life, instead. You could rework the whole world around it!” It’s an exciting idea. He flops back to the ground and starts writing, and soon he’s already filled a page in his notebook with it. “It’d be perfect for Rhodonite, if you swap it around like that. You’ve already got a green nagging cricket, even!”
Tsukasa laughs, more loudly than usual. He still covers his mouth, daintily for it, but all the same, Kokuto considers it quite the win.
He keeps writing. The whole world of the story takes on a new color, if it’s about a cute little doll instead of a wooden boy. Pleasure Island’s carnival, which morphs, in the eyes of the audience, from a circus of wonder to a seedy den of vice takes on a new shade. Something he might have to tone down, for Univeil’s stage, which would really be a shame. And then—
And then they’re back at Midsummer Night’s Dream, with people turning into donkeys.
“You’ve been quiet for more than five minutes,” Tsukasa says, when he finally looks up, head spinning, from his notebook. “It was almost peaceful.”
“I’ve written you an opera,” Kokuto says, the Phantom wearing the Masque of the Red Death, descending the stairs. And, in a totally different voice. “It’s too late to say no! I’m almost finished it, already.”
“It won’t work,” Tsukasa says.
Kokuto pouts. “You haven’t read it yet.”
“Pinocchio’s story is a solo lead show. It doesn’t fit the form of Univeil.”
“There’s Jiminy Cricket,” Kokuto points out, though in the version he’s been writing, that role is actually smaller. Tsukasa has a point, it really doesn’t fit with the usual structure of how Univeil does it shows.
“But so what?” Kokuto says. “So long as there are enough chances for the other strong actors to shine, what’s wrong with a solo lead show, now and then? Univeil does three way leads, sometimes.”
Tsukasa shakes his head. “Ensemble shows, solo shows, short Jacks and tall Jeannes, and actors who switch between them every other play. You really don’t care for convention at all, do you?”
“Nope!” Kokuto says, proudly.
The way Tsukasa looks back at him, that was clearly the wrong reaction, somehow. Not that he really cares. “Then why did you come to this school at all?”
“For the stage, of course.” That should be obvious enough. After all, he’s sitting atop it as they speak.
“But why this one? There must be some other theater school in the country that would let you—“ he waves his hand in a circle, gesturing around the stage, “experiment.”
There are. A few which are almost even as respected as Univeil, though not with quite the devoted fanbase and following.
There’s a reason for it, of course, for choosing this one. A long and sad story. Maybe even a Shakespearean tragedy, if you wanted to stage it that way. The way the house lights reflect off the curl pinned in Tsukasa’s hair makes it, suddenly, seem almost like an ocean wave. Kokuto lays back down against the stage to keep it from rocking from side to side. Like a boat on the water. In a storm. Heading for a shipwreck.
“Dunno,” he says, up to the metal beams that cross overhead. “It seemed like it’d be fun, I guess.”
Tsukasa walks to his side. Kokuto keeps looking up at the ceiling, at all the lights on sliders, connected by wires up to a booth he’s not allowed in.
“Since it is my birthday,” Tsukasa says, light, and soft, and clearly serious. “Will you answer one question for me?”
“Sure,” Kokuto says.
Tsukasa sits down next to him, on the stage. “Do you know why it is I want Kisa to come to Rhodonite?”
Seems like kind of a waste of a special birthday question. “Because Tachibana-kun is a genius. He’ll make any stage he stands on stronger.”
Tsukasa hums. “That’s part of it, of course...” He pauses, then, in such a way that even Kokuto, who’s usually pretty bad at this, can tell not to interrupt just yet. “I don’t really expect you to understand what I’m going to say next.”
“I’m pretty good at understanding stuff,” he says. He turns his head so at least he can see Tsukasa as he talks.
Tsukasa hums, unconvinced, but continues. “Out of all the classes at Univeil, Rhodonite is special.”
All the classes are. They each have their own flavor and their own strengths. No two are quite the same, and that’s what makes the theater festivals so exciting. It isn’t just one type of play done by four different troupes. Instead, no matter who wins, there are fans of each kind that walk away satisfied. But clearly, that isn’t what Tsukasa is talking about.
“Those globetrotting Jacks in Onyx, their skills will transfer over to almost any stage in the world, after this one. And Amber grinds everyone, Jack or Jeanne, into a similar knife’s edge. Quartz, well…” He trails off there, for a moment, and takes in a big, opera singer’s breath. “Quartz seems to attract a certain eagerness, I suppose. For the stage. Rhodonite isn’t like that. There are plenty of people who find their home in Rhodonite who don’t care that much, one way or another, about the performances. It isn’t just because he’s a Tresor that I kept trying to get Mitsuki to join Rhodonite. I really thought he’d fit in better here. But…”
Tsukasa trails off, and the monologue is suddenly a dialogue again. It’s been almost a week since Shirota screamed like that at Chui. Kokuto’s pretty sure he, Fumi, and Kai collectively lost their breath all at once. He’s talked to them both about it, since. Fumi says even Mitsuki didn’t know why he’d done it. But, in these past few days of rehearsal, Kokuto thinks he's starting to understand. He sits back up. “Something’s changed for him now, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Tsukasa agrees. “It has. And do you know why?”
“Well,” Kokuto says, “he is an upperclassman now.” He can’t really be sure, only that it’s something he’s always seen the potential for in Shirota. The way he watches rehearsals, the way he works on the music, the effort he puts into his songs. If he couldn’t see it, he wouldn’t be trying to get Shirota to play the role of upperclassman this way. If there were no potential class leader in there, he’d have started looking at the first years for the job. But what, exactly, made the change happen now, he doesn’t know for sure.
“It’s because that eagerness of Quartz is contagious. And there’s one person in your cast that is far more infectious, in that regard, than the rest.” Tsukasa smooths the skirt of his dress down over his legs. “You know who I mean, I imagine.”
He does. “Tachibana-kun does seem to have a way of bringing new things out in people. And you think that what, if he were to go to Rhodonite it would make your students work harder? I thought Minorikawa-kun has been trying to do that all year.”
Tsukasa laughs, softly. “Poor Kiito. I think all he’s managed to do is push the rest of them further away from it. He still doesn’t really know how to speak to Jeannes at all.”
“And you think Tachibana-kun would be different?”
“I know he would. My little brother is already utterly taken with him, you know.”
It’s probably true. Tachibana’s power isn’t just from what he can do on stage alone, but in the way he makes the whole mechanism of the stage work together. A gear that could fit in all sorts of openings, strong enough to turn any number of other gears around it, without locking up or breaking.
“I think most of the school is taken with him,” Kokuto says. “So, you want Tachibana-kun to get the rest of the class to care more?”
Tsukasa sighs. “You don’t have to frame it so crudely. Rhodonite is a special place. In order for it to stay that way, it needs the right mix. People as fastidious and hard working for the stage as Kiito, and people who come here for other reasons entirely. But it’s fallen out of balance.”
He isn’t sure he’s totally tracking what Tsukasa means. “And you think Tachibana-kun is what you need to rebalance it?”
Tsukasa shakes his head. “No. I think what Kisa can do for Rhodonite is far greater than act as a counterbalance. Somehow, I think Kisa is the key to making all of the class harmonize.”
It’s not far from the metaphor Kokuto was thinking about himself. Maybe it’s the same metaphor, really, except phrased as a Tresor would phrase it. “You’re probably right.” He can’t argue. And so, he agrees.
“So,” Tsukasa says, “will you at least consider it? I don’t expect anything from now until the performance, of course. You’ve already had to change your casting around once, after all.”
“Tsukasa,” Kokuto says. “Quartz is special, too. Before I transferred, despite having Fumi winning golds, despite having a newly minted Tresor, and despite just falling off a three year victory streak, it was in pieces. Formless, transparent, whatever you want to call it. It doesn’t have the clear identity the rest of the classes have. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. It barely knows what it is.”
Tsukasa chuckles, lightly. “Is that why you transferred, then?”
Kokuto just shrugs. “It doesn’t matter why I transferred. Like you said, time marches on, no matter how enchanting the dream. Quartz needs Tachibana-kun, too.” He looks out at the audience, at the theater. “And, I suspect if Kaido were here, he’d give us both a very powerful speech about why it’s actually Onyx that needs Tachibana-kun the most.”
“And what of your former Amber?” Tsukasa asks.
Back in the courtyard, Chui’s intent gaze had been fixed on Tachibana. Like the rest of the class — the rest of the world, even — might as well have fallen away. Like he was seeing someone he thinks could rule all of fairyland by his side. “I don’t know if Chui would bother giving us a speech. But Tachibana-kun certainly has the talent for Amber. Chui can see that much.”
“Well,” Tsukasa says, smoothing over his clothing one more time, and standing up. “It was worth a try, at least.”
“My other offer still stands, you know. I don’t know where I’ll find the time for it, but if you’ll have me, I’d love to write your Rhodonite a play.”
Tsukasa smiles at him, a smile he can’t read at all. “How does it go, again?
First rehearse your song by rote
To each word a warbling note:
Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
Will we sing, and bless this place.”
“Those are Titania’s final lines in the play, right?” Kokuto says.
“Yes,” Tsukasa says, “they are. And so, sweet Puck, I’ll leave you to your mischief.” And, without another word, he slides himself gracefully off the stage and walks up the aisle to the exit.
Kokuto stands and walks to the edge of the stage to watch. When Tsukasa is just about at the door, Kokuto calls out, over the seats of Univeil Theater.
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream.”
Tsukasa laughs. For something so soft and gentle, to be as high, resonant, and clear as it is, all the way to the front of the stage, must be some fairy magic indeed. And then Tsukasa slips, without another word, out the door and into the mid-autumn’s night beyond.