Chapter – 17…
After the duchy had collapsed in a scandalous mess, Louisa Messena had become the center of every conversation among the duchy’s citizens.
During meal times, every family would gather around and gossip about Louisa.
They spoke of how cruel she was, what strange antics she had committed this time—most rumors had grown so absurd that people would have believed it if someone said a horn had sprouted on Louisa’s left cheek.
And here, the family of Cutter, the innkeeper who ran one of the larger inns in the duchy, was no different.
“These kids nowadays, they really have no sense. Can you believe it? They flocked like a cloud to watch ‘that performance.’ Edith, most of them are girls your age!”
The ‘performance’ Cutter referred to was the recent staging of Romeo and Juliet at the White Friars Theater.
Before her father had even finished speaking, Edith coughed violently and nearly spat out the potato soup she had been eating.
“Cough! Cough, cough!”
“What’s wrong, dear?”
“It’s… nothing. I’m just… amazed that there are people going to watch a performance by such a cruel princess.”
This was Edith, the eldest daughter of the Cutter family.
Though born a commoner, her family was fairly well-off, helping with a large trading business. Edith was dressed in a new gown, her hair neatly braided.
Since the duchy had fallen, the number of merchants coming to the inn to sell goods had decreased sharply, and the Cutter Inn’s income had halved.
To make matters worse, Cutter’s health was declining, so nineteen-year-old Edith had begun acting like a mature lady, learning the ropes of running the inn.
Today, as always, she delicately wiped her mouth with a napkin.
Her face was calm and composed, but inside she was not.
“The person going to see that cruel princess… that’s me…!”
Indeed, Edith was planning to go to the White Friars Theater today with her friend Elize.
It would be their seventh time seeing the performance.
“Father, I’m sorry!”
“It’s the end of the world. This princess has caused so much trouble, and now our inn has fewer guests…”
“But, you see…”
“……?”
“Maybe it’s not entirely the princess’s fault, Father. I mean, it’s not like the duchy could have been ruined by a twenty-two-year-old princess all on her own. The duchy had already been declining for ten years, hadn’t it?”
The princess was simply a scapegoat in imperial politics.
She almost spoke those words aloud—until her father started speaking.
“Edith, you talk as if you’ve been bewitched by the princess after watching the play.”
“Eh? No, I—”
Startled, Edith set down her spoon, and Cutter sighed.
“Kids these days are too naive. They say the princess is close to the Emperor now. Not only the late Emperor, but even the first prince… that traitor who took his place!”
As her father cursed the Emperor, Edith internally sighed.
Her father, running the inn, had heard countless rumors and often believed them too easily.
“I think I should leave now. I have an appointment to go to the bookstore with Elize.”
Feeling stifled, Edith got up from the table.
Cutter smiled at her.
“Oh, yes, go ahead. By the way—”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget Peter is coming to visit this weekend.”
At the mention of Peter, Edith’s face scrunched up.
Peter was a glass merchant with whom her father had business ties.
Though he was fifteen years older than Edith, he often looked at her with a lecherous gaze during meals.
Edith had always ignored it, but with her father’s health worsening, both of them needed a reliable successor for Cutter Inn.
“Yes, I haven’t forgotten, Father. I’ll be going now.”
She sighed and left the house.
“Let’s go see the play this weekend too! It’ll definitely be fun even if we watch it again!”
Elize, already completely captivated by Romeo and Juliet, urged Edith to buy tickets for the weekend performance as soon as they met. Someone she knew was willing to sell them.
“If we miss this chance, someone will grab the tickets in less than an hour. Let’s go, just the two of us! Please!”
Elize coaxed her, but Edith’s face darkened as she reminded her of Peter’s visit, and Elize’s expression mirrored hers.
After complaining about Peter, the two girls arrived at the White Friars Theater.
Many female spectators were already lined up, eager to get the best seats.
“Ugh! We’re late today!”
Elize groaned. She had watched the performance one or two times more than Edith.
Elize had even been the one to initially convince Edith to go see the play.
At first, Edith had refused.
She had no desire to support tickets for the infamous duchy princess, and she had no expectation from the fallen princess’s acting.
Having grown up in the inn’s annex, Edith had seen countless performances by wandering actors.
Backyard plays at inns all seemed the same.
Great heroes’ stories, debauched noblemen, and sublime love tales—those were the three main types.
The stories were simple, and the acting was exaggerated.
When she was very young, she enjoyed watching actors wildly brandishing swords to simulate war, but as she grew older, she realized acting was just acting, and it no longer moved her.
Having watched hundreds of performances, her standards had naturally risen.
Only one actor in her nineteen-year life had ever captured her attention.
Molière White, a renowned actor from a famous theater troupe at White Friars.
At just nineteen, he appeared like a comet on stage, captivating everyone with his performance.
After only two performances, he became the troupe’s leading star and the theater’s centerpiece. Rumor had it even the Queen secretly watched his performances.
Though she was a commoner, Edith had paid for expensive tickets and watched his plays several times with her cousin.
Each time, she had been captivated by his acting.
But since Molière retired at twenty-two, Edith had never seen another actor who could catch her eye.
Not even once.
“Stupid nanny.”
After Molière, no actor had ever grabbed attention so completely at first sight.
None exuded such a suffocating aura.
The faint, catlike smile, the superior gaze—this face was certainly not kind.
Nasty.
Teasing older nannies, actively seducing heirs of enemy families, stealing the man her cousin loved overnight, defying her parents.
Yet…
“Refreshing.”
She found herself immersed in Juliet’s grief, anger, and suffering.
A girl her age, undergoing—or having undergone—adolescent turbulence, felt as though Juliet were her friend.
Juliet, only fourteen, naïve, impulsive, and defiant—yet braver than herself, who awaited being sold to Peter. She knew how to fight for love.
To Edith, Juliet’s story was no longer a mere tale of doomed love.
It was her story.
By the time the play ended, she realized she had been utterly swept away.
“Seeing it a second time, the lighting is really fascinating. When Capulet appears, it’s red, and Montague is blue. How about it, Edith? You’ve seen many plays, have you ever seen anything like this? It’s my first time! You know more than I do…”
Elize’s eyes shone, awaiting Edith’s review. But Edith had nothing to say.
She was too absorbed to critique sharply as she would other performances.
She couldn’t even leave a good review.
She was carried away, as if by a massive wave.
There was no choice.
She had to see it again.
And this was her seventh viewing.
She hadn’t planned on watching so many times; knowing the story, she thought seeing it again was unnecessary.
Yet something was unusual.
The second viewing had revealed differences from the first.
“Stupid nanny. Look here! Idiot. Idiot!”
Juliet sometimes changed her lines, and the experienced middle-aged actors adjusted accordingly.
Even her costumes changed. One day she wore a brilliant red dress, perfectly matching Capulet’s symbolic color—it looked stunning.
Juliet—no, Louisa—looked especially beautiful in red.
“It’s her eye color!”
Red eyes matched the red dress, and the sapphire necklace completed the look, making her seem like a living sapphire.
Wealthy viewers even ordered sapphire jewelry from jewelers.
“As if they could ever be like Juliet, pigs wearing sapphires!”
Yet she herself wished she could buy the sapphire, if only to feel closer to Juliet.
“Honestly, if it weren’t for Juliet, I wouldn’t even watch this play.”
Some foolish viewers waited outside the dressing room for handsome male actors to appear, but to her, none compared.
Their practice seemed insufficient, and they didn’t act with the sincerity Juliet did.
No empathy, no affection.
“No matter how handsome, if an actor can’t act, it’s over.”
But then…
“Don’t fight! Are you going to defy the lord’s orders? We’ll all be captured! Please!”
Benvolio’s performance finally caught her eye on the seventh viewing.
Benvolio, a character she had dismissed as a cowardly minor role, was different today.
The pink-haired actor typically matched the character—gentle, timid, somewhat cowardly.
But today…
“Love stops time? I’ve never heard that. Maybe it’s because there’s no clock?”
Clumsy, yet strangely outspoken.
The audience erupted in laughter.
Edith couldn’t help but giggle too.
At that moment, Benvolio looked toward the audience, startled.
“……?”
Why were they laughing?
Henri had truly thought so, but he realized the audience wasn’t mocking him—they were enjoying Benvolio.
“Mine.”
