A Monodrama for Carolyn August - Chapter 79

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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 79
was, in the end, a romance, but there were several points that struck observers as peculiar.
The first was that the physical relationship between the two came before any exchange of hearts.
The second was that Isaha treated her male lead, Ifros, as nothing more than a servant, a machine, a tool.
‘There really are two things you don’t see in any other play.’
It made sense why the stakeholders had opposed adapting it to the stage.
“From the beginning…… I always thought was a play centered on Isaha’s changing feelings toward Ifros.”
Caroline spoke carefully.
“That’s an interpretation I haven’t heard before.”
“Of course, the main story of the play is saving a devastated world. Restoring life to a broken land. But I thought that message appears on a smaller scale in the way Isaha treats Ifros as well.”
At her words, Aiden shifted his body forward to sit more upright. The boat rocked gently beneath them.
“She always saw him as a tool for work, as someone to ease her loneliness at night. And it made sense that she did. Ifros, too, lacked human agency, was dependent, anxious about becoming useless and being discarded. They influenced each other.”
Caroline thought that detail made the play extraordinarily realistic.
Among humans themselves, trust was already hard to come by, and life itself was harsh. To truly regard a false being made of scrap metal as human was no small feat.
Especially not for someone as pragmatic and cold-blooded as Isaha.
“But Ifros gives his last fuel and allows Isaha to save the world. In that moment, something more than mechanical function reveals itself—altruism and love as a human would express them. And through that, Isaha too begins to regard Ifros as human.”
“While the plant she took from Ifros’s chest grows, she misses him, even writes letters.”
Aiden nodded.
“After years pass and Ifros awakens, the two become genuine lovers. Isaha truly comes to love Ifros as a person, giving him life by restoring what was broken in him.”
“You really should write a column about this. The original author would be delighted to hear such analysis.”
Having listened carefully, Aiden spoke with a light applause in his voice.
“But when I thought about what comes after the play ends, I found myself somewhat concerned.”
“About what?”
“Ifros spent his whole life being treated as a machine. Wouldn’t he still carry the inferiority and anxiety of knowing he isn’t truly human? Even when Isaha begins to cherish him in a human way, would he really be all right?”
“……?”
Caroline studied him carefully.
‘What’s wrong with someone who once saw me as a means showing me affection?’
“I was a machine. I remained a machine throughout. Even if I received the human affection I longed for, in the end I am still not human. I believe Ifros would continue to be anxious.”
“……I’m not sure I follow.”
“There are plenty of beings capable of receiving Isaha’s human affection. But I am a machine, less human than any other human. Rather…… the times when Isaha treated me solely as a means, when I alone was special—I think perhaps I preferred those.”
At his subtly altered tone, Caroline blinked.
In that moment, the man before her began to look like a mechanical android wearing lip gloss and mascara, made beautiful by artifice.
She rubbed her eyes.
“I desired something for a lifetime, but once I had it, I found it wasn’t rare at all—and so I became anxious again. My uniqueness had vanished. That’s how I understood it.”
“……I think I see what you mean. Ifros is the embodiment of deficiency. Of lack and anxiety and jealousy…… of never being satisfied.”
“When I actually performed, that’s what I felt. Until just now, I was thorough in playing Ifros, the machine—someone who doesn’t eat, doesn’t use the restroom, needs no sleep. But each time others cared for me, prepared food, treated me as human, I felt strange.”
“…….”
“It wasn’t that my performance was being disrupted. I regretted it. I found myself so uniquely special as Ifros, as myself. Even if that meant being hated by Isaha.”
“So you’re saying he would prefer not to be treated as human.”
“Yes. And even if there were a divine opportunity to become truly human…… I suspect Ifros would, after much hesitation, refuse it.”
Caroline regarded him in silence.
He had truly immersed himself in the character of Ifros, and understood him with a depth she had not anticipated.
‘The Ifros he’s constructed through his own reflection will be far more layered than what I imagined.’
It would be a character Aiden had contemplated and shaped with his own interiority.
“……Well, I’ve spoken at length. The ice in my coffee seems to have melted somewhat. Shall I go back and exchange the drink, and bring some simple finger food as well?”
He said this, then grasped the oar.
Caroline raised the coffee to her lips for one last sip before setting it down. That was when he spoke.
“I was deeply immersed in Ifros at that time. I wish I had understood sooner that all one had to do was not let go of the awareness of one’s own life.”
“Even if you live similarly, if you don’t let go of the awareness of your own life, isn’t that fundamentally different……? That’s what I meant.”
“!”
He remembers what she said the day before yesterday.
‘How?’
Startled, her grip on the cup as she lowered it slipped.
“Oh!”
The cup tilted outward, beyond the edge of the boat.
At this rate it would fall into the river.
Caroline quickly leaned in that direction, reaching out her arm. It was only then that she realized Aiden was turning the boat sharply with a hard pull on the oar.
The motion lurched. Her body swung through empty space. The sound of water struck hard.
Caroline fell into the Lake.
Without light, the water below was darker than she expected.
Caroline thrashed her limbs, but the hem of her One-piece Dress, worn unusually long that day, wound itself around her ankles in an instant.
She couldn’t splash her way back up.
[▲]
“!”
A red triangle appeared before her eyes.
Already she had drifted far from the surface, her body sinking steadily downward. Cold water clamped around her heart like a vise, despite it being summer.
Piranhas glided past her vision, their tails sweeping lazily through the dark.
‘What’s happening to me?’
[▲▲]
As more air escaped her lungs, two triangles bloomed in her sight.
If she had held her breath and dived deliberately, she might have lasted longer. But the sudden plunge had already forced water into her mouth.
What happens if I drown here? Do I lose my Heart?
Is that right?
The Heart is a Player’s life. And three-in-the-morning Aiden said that if you lose all your Hearts, you die.
So if I drown here, there’s no coming back from this?
‘How foolish.’
More than just no coming back—it’s death, pure and simple. In that moment, Caroline understood the situation clearly.
An ordinary Player would never have fallen into the water. They don’t drink tea at teatime, don’t drop their cups.
This accident happened because Caroline was a Player. And now she was about to lose her life over something as absurd as this game.
‘Is this really how it ends?’
If I’d slept better, wouldn’t I have been more nimble?
If there were no game, I wouldn’t have fallen into the water. Wouldn’t be about to lose my life.
Caroline finally grasped what she had wagered in this contract. How utterly unreasonable it all was.
‘I can’t die like this. It doesn’t make sense.’
Despite having no breath left, Caroline flailed her arms with desperate strength. She had to breach the surface. She had to survive, somehow.
Somehow.
Please.
But as if mocking her, her vision began to blur.
‘No.’
Then it happened.
A massive hand seized her wrist and hauled her upward with terrifying force. She was deposited onto the Gondola like a sack of grain.
“Come to your senses, Isaha.”
She felt her body being shaken roughly. Sleep kept threatening to pull her under.
Through her blurring vision, she saw a golden-haired Mechanical Android gazing down at her with desperate urgency. Her eyes blinked. Blinked again. Then darkness consumed everything.

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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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