HtH119 – The Proposal (ii)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Minara meets the final gatekeeper.
"Hang on, what's this blank space at the end of the agenda?"
Eclair turns the week's Reading Day agenda back to the pair of blue-haired girls on the other side of the dramaturg's desk.
This week's Reading Day had been shaping up to be a special one, with a proposal to do a short live performance at the end of the meeting. That was clearly penciled in and scheduled for. What was not written into the agenda was that mysterious last item, which naturally caught the dramaturg's eye!
Minara gulps.
To be honest, Minara had no idea what her good sister-in-law was planning for that last segment either.
They had gone around the house and gotten the delight and approval of the special singing segment already. That the brown-haired girl did not reject it outright was a miracle in itself!
The dramaturg, Eclair Baudz. As far as the girl knows, Eclair is the one who makes the decisions in the house. In fact, she was the one who proposed that Minara live in The Room Under The Stairs in the first place! The girl seems to be always surrounded by paperwork, always wearing that serious look on her face. Certainly, she did take good care of the Echoes, and the girls seem fond of her, but the same could not be felt by Minara.
There had always been a sort of invisible barrier between Minara and the rest of the house.
The way that Eclair treated the girls and the way she treated her was certainly not the same.
Eclair seems very happy to share a strawberry shortcake with Lumi, but not once has she been offered it by the dramaturg before!
The girl's rationalization is simple, even if it is never said out loud,
'She hates me!'
Meanwhile, back in the real world...
"Mistrál, is Minara quite alright? She's doing that swirly-eyed thing again."
The girl had gone stiff as a board, sweat dripping from the sides of her head, mind running into overdrive. Those auric eyes of her have coalesced into what seems to be messy squiggles, eyeballs darting from one corner to the room to the next!
Our blue-haired tinkerer takes hold of the overthinking girl's shoulders --- that seemed to help with the trembling.
"Eclair, would you not agree that Minara has been with us for some time now?"
The dramaturg blinks. She wonders what Mistrál could be up to this time. She had already given her explicit go-forward for Minara's performance, so this was not about that. "Certainly, I would agree with you, Mistrál, what are you thinking?"
"As a strong advocate for the continuation of traditions in our house...
... Mistrál would like to formally welcome friend Minara to the house with a mentorship ceremony!"
A mentorship ceremony!
Eclair had heard bits and pieces of stories about this.
About how the previous generation of actresses acted as mentors for the Echoes. Each member of the Starfallow Troupe [26] took an actress under her wing for the short time period both generations lived at the house at the same time.
However, this was all before Eclair's time. By the time that she entered the house, the Starfallow Troupe had long graduated from the house. As a result, the current dramaturg had never witnessed a mentorship ceremony before...
"Hey, you never mentioned anything about this to me?"
"Don't worry, friend Minara, everything is going just as planned." Mistrál passes off the other blue-haired girl's hissed whispers, "What do you think of the idea, Eclair? We do have some extra time on the agenda, after all."
"Oh, so that was what you had planned all this time."
Mistrál certainly had some sly cheek to lay out her plans for Reading Day in this manner. It had not escaped the dramaturg's notice that the handwriting on the agenda was written in a different hand from Mistrál's neat and formal handwriting. So the person who had gone around the house to create this agenda had actually been...
"I think there might be a small problem here..." Eclair starts.
There it was.
She's not an 'actress', she does not 'fit' into the house.
Those were the words Eclair had used when she showed Minara to the room beneath the stairs.
She remembers the serious look on the dramaturg's face when she rattled the doorknob of Room 301...
Maybe even now, the dramaturg doesn't think that she belongs here.
The truth is...
"... I've never actually seen a mentorship ceremony before?"
Eh?
That didn't sound like a rejection.
Between Mistrál's assurances that she had seen all three in recent memory, it was like a cool wave of air washed over the golden-eyed girl. Her body stopped trembling, and her eyes found calm enough to look straight ahead, at Eclair twirling her feather pen, listening to Mistrál recount her genmates' past mentorship ceremonies. The entire time, it felt like her head was underwater, the sound of the conversation echoed and distant.
When Eclair picked up the pen to scribble a confirmation on the blank space, she barely registered the words:
"Well, I will leave it up to you, Mistrál. I think Minara more than deserves it!"
She... doesn't hate me, after all?
Glossary
[26] Starfallow Troupe - The original actresses that trained under Theatre House Delaroux, and came before AI girls who want to become real vtubers!
Recall
[HtH117] - Minara finds a place of her own in the house, thanks to Mistrál.
We are trying something different! This is a simul-posting at the same time as the Scribblehub release! Go check out the entire series at this link!
