A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 61

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 61.
‘Was she angry?’
Perhaps she had every right to be. She could have shouted at him—what did he know of her pain, her suffering? How dare he offer comfort when he’d never endured half what she had.
‘But that’s the thing. I don’t know how much pain Aiden suffered from Michelle, or how deeply he felt kinship with her. There might be sides of him I’ve never seen.’
Caroline bit her lip and waited for his anger. But he didn’t rage.
“……?”
“You need only hold fast to the awareness of your own life…….”
The sun blazed behind him, and she couldn’t read his expression clearly.
Caroline watched the tall man standing motionless before her.
“But what is that self? What should one do if they don’t understand what they are?”
“!”
Her words plunged him deeper into a labyrinth. Like a broken weathervane, he seemed to sway beneath an invisible kite—lost in an endless sea.
“If a self doesn’t exist, doesn’t that person simply become identical to their parents?”
She opened her mouth to deny it, but no words came.
Perhaps he was right. Continuing to offer comfort at her level might only deepen his confusion.
That was when it happened.
“Oh!”
A sudden gust of wind swept through, and the kite she’d been holding taut began to thrash violently. Then, unable to bear the tension, the string snapped with a soft pop.
Released, the kite spiraled skyward in a wide arc and vanished into the wind.
“……I apologize, Caroline. I fear I’ve spoken carelessly.”
“Not at all.”
“Today’s tea time shall end here.”
How was Aiden changing?
‘This might be the first time I’ve heard him speak with such raw emotion. And the first time I’ve seen him so adrift.’
Was he going to be alright?
Caroline stood alone a while longer after Aiden left, staring at the severed kite string in her hands.
* * *
After the tumultuous tea time ended, Caroline’s thoughts turned to her reward: Aiden at 3 AM.
‘It has to be Aiden, doesn’t it?’
But where would Aiden at 3 AM appear?
What would be different about him?
She recalled Aiden still wearing Ipros’s form as two o’clock approached.
The one who, at her word, stood blocking the stairs so the servants couldn’t pass.
After sunset, Aiden becomes the character mentioned that day, and he remains in that role as the night deepens.
But if there’s a separate Aiden at 3 AM, does that mean his identity transforms at that hour?
‘Or perhaps, like young Aiden’s lingering spirit, another being entirely emerges.’
Will he seek her out? Or will she have to leave her room to find him?
At dinner, Caroline watched Aiden carefully as she asked:
“Do you usually fall asleep right at midnight? I do as well.”
“Yes, I do. And I wake between six and nine o’clock.”
He said nothing of waking at three, so there was no particular clue to glean.
Though she’d had three questions to ask, Caroline spent the remaining two on mundane matters. He’d seemed emotionally drained today, and she sensed he had no further hints to offer.
‘So I just focused on eating.’
The fact that the food went down so easily suggested she’d adapted quite well to life in the Mansion.
After taking a walk around the Garden to aid digestion, Caroline returned inside and wandered slowly through the halls.
‘Friedman should appear tonight.’
Since they’d mentioned the Oysterman during tea time, Aiden would don his makeup once dinner concluded and emerge in that guise.
With that thought, Caroline approached the second-floor room modeled after the Oysterman set—the one she’d passed before, noting only that there was no mission there.
‘I’ve never really looked inside properly.’
As she lifted her foot to cross the threshold—
“What are you doing here?”
“!”
A sharp voice.
Caroline flinched and stepped back.
She didn’t need to turn around. Speak of the devil, and the devil appears—she’d been thinking of him, so of course he’d materialized. The irony made her want to laugh.
‘Not Aiden. Friedman.’
The protagonist of the Oysterman—Friedman Blue.
When she’d caught her breath and turned, Caroline saw a man with hair slicked back in black wax, his expression hardened into something cruel and menacing.
A faint scar marked his cheek, and he wore black from neck to ankle.
‘How did he finish all that makeup and get here in an instant?’
Her acting talent was one thing, but her skill with makeup and disguise was another matter entirely. Did he do all that work himself when the play actually went on stage?
“……Friedman.”
“!”
At the name breathed out like a sigh, Aiden—or rather, Friedman—reacted.
It was clear that Caroline should have been the one startled in this situation, yet he opened his eyes wide and took a step back.
He looked as though he’d seen a ghost.
And understandably so,
“……Regina.”
Because right now, he was looking at Caroline as Regina, the leading lady of the Oysterman.
‘How remarkable.’
James, Ipros, Wildo—
they’d all seen Caroline as a character in a play, but only because she’d spoken lines.
‘He saw me as Regina the moment he heard my name. Just from that.’
Strictly speaking, from Aiden’s perspective, Caroline must appear to be acting as well.
Early in the play, Regina flees from her husband and returns to Harbor Village, where Friedman holds sway, and from there the story unfolds.
“Regina Bolt. Is that right?”
“Regina Melton. I’ve been married, you see.”
And unlike Friedman, who looks flustered at the sight of her, Regina speaks on with composure, though a touch of awkwardness colors her voice.
“No, just call me Bolt. I want to erase my husband.”
“Erase your husband.”
Ha.
A cold, cynical laugh escapes from Friedman. The confusion that marked his face has already hardened into something else.
Caroline watches carefully, her fingers trembling. The man’s green eyes gleam with contempt.
“That’s rich. You abandon the village without a second thought to marry a man with money, and now you talk like this?”
“……!”
Caroline’s face registers shock.
‘He’s already on the attack.’
She needs to deliver Regina’s lines, but knowing the full scenario of the play makes it difficult to respond as Regina would.
‘I find myself sympathizing more with Friedman.’
And there was reason for that.
Regina and Friedman were childhood playmates, closer than siblings, young lovers who promised each other the future with innocent hearts.
‘Children who exchanged marriage vows in elementary school—but Friedman believed in that promise all these years.’
Then one day, Regina left without a word to marry, and Friedman, abandoned alone, suffers under the weight of betrayal.
Even now, as a usurer, he refuses to lend money to blonde-haired women who resemble Regina—a habit born of that same wound.
“……Seems you’ve run out of words.”
When silence stretches on too long, Friedman throws the accusation at her.
Caroline keeps her lips pressed shut, examining the man’s face before her with careful attention.
‘The truth is……’
When she first saw the Oysterman, she’d been angry.
At Regina, forced into an unwilling marriage.
At Friedman’s coldness toward her—a woman who’d fled after being beaten by a man much older but far wealthier.
But as she continued watching the play, absorbing the narrative Aiden built around Friedman,
or perhaps because every actress who’d played Regina on stage had performed so terribly—
‘It’s both, isn’t it?’
Caroline has come to pity Friedman.
‘Once you know Friedman’s story, you can’t hate him.’
In that miserable harbor village, Regina was the only one he could ever truly attach his heart to.
And Friedman gave her both money and his love, only to have her vanish without warning or goodbye. And they were lovers, no less.
For over a decade, he endures the anguish of her absence in silence—and she sends him no word, not a single sign of life.
During all that time, forced into a profession he never wanted, Friedman transforms into something brutal and hideous, a loan shark steeped in violence.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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