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This performance has been everything she’s ever dreamed of. Singing with Manuela Casagranda, whom Dorothea idolized long before she ever stepped out on to the stage herself? When she was just starting to shape her first notes?....And who knew that it would come from her enrollment at Garreg Mach, when she was supposed to be running away from her singing career altogether?...
Here, though, she’s seen a new side of Manuela. She’s seen a patience beneath her outer haughtiness, a frustration with the aristocracy with ancient titles and crests who don’t take either of them seriously. And behind all her outward professions of man-craziness, a curiosity….wandering eyes…that seem to find Dorothea’s hair, eyes, arms, bosom…
At the curtain call, there’s something….insistent?...in the way that Manuela pushes the last of those (and oh, hers is ample and pulsing against the tight dresses she wears to their classes where she tried not to stare) against Dorothea’s side, and the way she clutches at her waist, nails scraping along the sides of Dorothea’s dress so hard she fears it’ll rip.
She gives her co-star a look, and Manuela is smiling out on the crowd. A practiced smile that Dorothea knows she’s done a hundred, thousand times.
But then she glances back and…it’s not obvious. But Dorothea is practiced at reading girls and especially Manuela.
Dorothea can’t wait for the audience to stop clapping so they can sneak backstage. So she can tear this little performance apart to reveal the real Manuela inside.