A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 7

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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 7.
‘I don’t even know my way around this Mansion!’
Just as Caroline was wondering which direction to run, she felt a small hand tugging at her sleeve from below.
‘?’
“Ah—!”
Caroline trembled and quickly clapped her hand over her mouth.
A small boy she hadn’t noticed until now was looking up at her.
‘I thought he was a ghost—scared me half to death!’
Unlike her alarm, the boy’s face remained perfectly calm as he pressed down his Brown Hat and gestured for Caroline to follow.
She didn’t know who he was, but following seemed her only choice.
Keeping low like a child and scurrying after him, Caroline hoped the Garden’s plants would shield her from view.
While Aiden and the Servant occupied the center of the Garden, the two of them moved along its outer edges.
They had moved considerably farther from the Mansion’s doors than before. Bewildered, Caroline whispered to the boy as he pressed ahead, clutching her skirt.
“Does this way lead somewhere?”
It was only now that Caroline began to consider the boy might not know her situation at all.
‘What if he takes me to just any Servant? And who is this kid anyway?’
Judging by his worn Brown Hat and Suspender Pants, he appeared to be a Servant’s son.
As unease began to creep up, Caroline bumped directly into the boy’s body.
“Oof!”
He had stopped abruptly at the boundary where the Garden transitioned into the Maze.
“What is it?”
The boy didn’t answer Caroline’s whisper.
His face was obscured beneath his hat, and the rain made it impossible to read his expression.
As Caroline grew anxious and began to press him, she realized something odd about the ground beneath her feet.
“…Huh?”
Unlike the earthen soil, a similar-colored metal surface reflected the moisture.
She could make out a square shape, about a step’s width across, complete with a handle designed for pulling.
“I should pull it?”
When the boy nodded, Caroline did exactly that.
Clank.
The sound came with rain pattering down into a dark space below.
‘Is he trying to get me killed?’
Looking closer, she saw crude steps leading downward. As Caroline hesitated, the boy took the lead and began descending.
Fearing discovery, Caroline quickly followed.
In the dark but relatively dry space, the boy struck a Matches.
Walking slowly down the narrow passage, Caroline realized this was a Secret Passage connecting the Garden to the Mansion.
As expected, after walking a distance and opening several doors, a space that appeared to be the Basement of the Mansion came into view.
‘I thought he’d leave me here.’
She’d expected him to depart once he’d brought her to the Mansion, but instead the boy looked around cautiously and continued leading her forward.
They emerged onto the second floor via a relatively quiet corridor on the opposite side from where the guest rooms were, eventually reaching the entrance to Caroline’s room.
“Thank you.”
The boy stood some distance away, as if about to leave immediately.
‘Should I get a Towel from inside to offer him?’
With that thought, Caroline opened the door and turned back to look at him once more,
‘Huh?’
The boy had vanished.
* * *
‘Ah, my head.’
Whether from being soaked by the rain or something else, she felt feverish.
Having skipped breakfast and instead sipped warm water for a while longer, Caroline came downstairs when Tea Time arrived.
Only then did she learn that three more people had disappeared during the night.
‘Two more guests, then.’
Aiden and the Servant still hadn’t tallied the count.
‘What in the world is wrong with all of them…?’
Despite more than half the guests vanishing, they maintained their composed demeanor.
Caroline felt fear creeping in now.
More than the guests’ strange behavior, it was this place’s atmosphere—how it carried on as if nothing were amiss—that unsettled her.
‘If we’re talking about what’s strange, there’s no shortage of it.’
Who was that boy from yesterday?
She was grateful, but he’d left before she could even ask his name or why he’d helped her.
‘And…….’
Yesterday’s Aiden.
‘That was James’s appearance.’
The necktie and shirt, the cut on his cheek and the bandage wound around his wrist—Caroline recognized it at once, identical to what appeared in the play.
Why was he dressed like James from , the rowdy delinquent role?
‘Was he practicing his craft after all this time? But why practice acting while getting soaked in the rain……?’
To the best of Caroline’s recollection, the play contained no such scene.
Perhaps he’d wanted to become James for a moment while reminiscing with his fans after so long.
‘Then why did he speak like that?’
‘Don’t lay a hand on me.’
That line was rather befitting of James.
Caroline’s thoughts halted when she encountered the enormous yacht anchored at the lake behind the Mansion.
“The wind is lovely today. I thought we might take a yacht out together.”
The elegant, sizable yacht swayed at the lakeside dock near the Mansion. Guests climbed aboard one by one, taking the servants’ hands—their smiles painted on like canvas portraits—and settling onto the deck.
People gathered around tables laden with finger foods and fizzy, refreshing beverages.
“Every time I’m on a yacht, I cannot help but recall .”
As if a curtain had risen and a play begun, two guests looked up in unison at Aiden’s words.
Caroline noticed the paper and pen already positioned beside them and clicked her tongue.
‘Here we go again.’
” is a performance that marks the beginning of each year for me. It’s the longest-running play aside from .”
“What sort of man do you interpret the Oyster Man to be?”
Though the question came suddenly, Aiden answered without hesitation.
“Romantic, frail, a man who deceives himself.”
Caroline nodded. Freedman, the protagonist of , truly was such a person.
Though he was rather rough and carried himself with false strength—a dockside man, after all…….
“Many would reject such an interpretation. By his lines and actions, Freedman hardly appears that way at all.”
“Why do you think Freedman fell in love with Regina?”
“If there were a line capable of steadying Freedman in any circumstance, what would it be?”
Questions tumbled forth as the women’s papers filled from top to bottom.
‘One might think they were writing a biography.’
She, being a devoted fan, already knew it all and had no need to listen.
“Freedman is an easy man. At least, to Regina. Once he knows his counterpart is Regina, he becomes gentle. Yet if I must choose one thing…….”
“A song.”
“Not a line, but a song.”
Thus.
When Aiden’s voice and Caroline’s overlapped, attention flooded toward them both. Even the eyes of other guests, which had always fixed solely upon Aiden, turned to her.
Having spoken with such confidence, Caroline’s ears gradually flushed red.
Aiden, regarding her with an odd look, nodded with a subtle smile.
“Precisely. The number that plays when he gives the Peppermint Candy from the Pink Metal Box.”
The dockside man, who softened particularly for his childhood friend Regina, would see all his defenses crumble whenever she sang a specific song.
It was precisely when Caroline, having seen Aiden’s play dozens upon dozens of times, recalled this detail and began to avoid his gaze—
—that a familiar musical sound drifted through the air.
‘What?’
A high, crystalline metallic tone. It was playing the very song that fit the moment so perfectly.
‘Isn’t that the song we just mentioned?’
Had someone turned it on to suit the mood? Yet Caroline noticed that none of the servants aboard the yacht had vanished from sight.
‘If it wasn’t set up beforehand, there’s no way a Music Box would be playing.’
Though she glanced about in bewilderment, the guests showed no sign of noticing anything amiss. Aiden, too, continued speaking calmly before them as they took notes at imperceptible speed.
Caroline felt as though something were calling to her.
That was why she rose from the Tea Time table in the midst of conversation and descended below the yacht’s deck.
Aiden’s gaze lingered briefly on her retreating figure before drifting away.

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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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