Lord: Starting with Biological Modification

Chapter 234: Chapter 229: Successful Audition

In the warehouse, a few slivers of gray-white light squeezed through the high windows, barely illuminating the gloom within.

The porter, Borg, nervously tugged at his hempen clothes.

The fabric was coarse, making his neck itch.

’This is the so-called costume?’

He looked down; it was no different from the rags he wore when he fled to the Grey Marsh Territory as a refugee.

He scanned his surroundings from the corner of his eye.

The tall, skinny man who called himself a poet was puffing out his chest, trying to look profound, but his constantly wringing hands betrayed him.

The others were even worse, their necks shrunk down, looking just like a flock of chickens waiting to be slaughtered.

Acting.

Borg mulled over the word in his mind.

The Lord had said he wanted him to play Tumo.

Of course he knew that Tumo fellow. He was a tavern owner now, and doing quite well for himself.

’But half a year ago, wasn’t he just another poor bastard grubbing for food in the mud?’

’Play him?’

’How am I supposed to do that?’

’Am I supposed to roll around on the ground and mimic the sounds of a starving stomach?’

Borg felt his cheeks burn.

At the other end of the warehouse sat several dozen people, all clerks and employees of the Lord’s Mansion.

Borg even saw the young man who registered his merit points. The man was whispering with the person next to him, occasionally glancing over with eyes full of curiosity.

’This is a disaster.’

He would rather be at the docks right now, hoisting a three-hundred-pound salt sack all by himself in front of everyone. That would earn him cheers and awe.

But now, he felt like a clown who’d been stripped naked.

"Ready."

Velin’s voice wasn’t loud, but the entire warehouse fell silent.

He walked up to Borg.

"Don’t be nervous. Feel everything you’re feeling right now, including your racing heart and your anxiety. Let those feelings become a part of you. Soon, you’ll get into character."

Borg was completely bewildered.

’Feel what? Get into what character?’

He didn’t understand a single word.

But he understood the Lord’s general meaning.

’Don’t overthink it. Just do what we rehearsed.’

Strangely enough, after hearing those incomprehensible words, the panic in Borg’s heart actually subsided a little.

’The Lord really is no ordinary person. Even the way he talks is so... sophisticated.’

There was no curtain, no horn.

When a clerk rang a small copper bell in his hand, the play began.

Borg walked to the center of the floor with stiff steps.

According to the script, he was now Tumo, a man with nothing, worried about how to feed his family.

A few actors playing neighbors surrounded him, pointing and muttering at Borg just as they had in rehearsal.

"Look, that Tumo fellow is going to try and farm that salt flat!"

"Is he crazy? There are more rocks than dirt in that field!"

The lines were delivered as stiffly as if they were reading from a ledger.

From the audience, a few stifled snickers could be heard.

Borg’s face flushed crimson. He opened his mouth and stumbled through a few lines.

He felt like his tongue was tied in knots.

The snickering from the audience gradually died down.

In its place came boredom.

Someone started yawning.

Someone else was staring down, fiddling with their fingers.

The young clerk was already leaning against his companion, half asleep.

As Borg watched all this, a buzzing filled his head and his mind went blank.

’What was my next line?’

He stood there with his mouth open, unable to force out a single word.

Just then, the boy playing Tumo’s son, Little Stone, was frightened by the strange atmosphere.

He looked at the wooden-faced people around him, then at the frozen Borg. His lip quivered, and with a "WAH!" he burst into real tears.

The cry was sharp and clear, ringing out in the quiet warehouse.

At that, everyone was stunned.

The drowsing clerk jerked awake.

The actors on stage looked at each other, at a loss for what to do.

Borg looked at the sobbing boy, and his heart clenched.

He remembered his own daughter.

He remembered a winter when they had run out of food, and his daughter, too hungry to sleep, had cried quietly just like this all night.

He, a burly man, could only hold her and lie over and over, telling her there would be wheat porridge to eat at dawn.

The despair and helplessness of that night flooded back to him in an instant.

He was no longer Borg the porter.

He was that desperate father with nowhere left to turn.

He hugged the child and began to tell the story of "Papa Bear and Baby Bear’s Hibernation."

But after finishing the story, when it was time for the next scene, he didn’t leave the stage.

Instead, he remained motionless, still holding the boy.

"Papa promises..."

His throat was bone-dry, his voice so hoarse it didn’t sound like his own.

"This is the last time... you’ll have to play the baby bear..."

That line wasn’t in the script.

The entire place fell silent.

The woman playing Tumo’s wife, Anna, was supposed to be standing in the corner.

She looked at Borg kneeling on the floor, at his trembling shoulders, and tears welled up in her eyes.

She hurried forward, placed a hand on Borg’s shoulder, and choked up, unable to speak a single word.

Onstage, the sneers froze on the faces of the "neighbors" who had been mocking Tumo.

One actor instinctively averted his gaze from Borg, a look of shame on his face.

The play had come to life.

In the audience, the young clerk who had been snickering earlier was now staring at the stage, his mouth agape.

Walker straightened his back, leaning slightly forward.

Tristan stood in the shadows, his gray-blue eyes reflecting the scene on the stage.

The rest of the performance broke free from the script’s constraints.

Borg stopped thinking about his lines; he was simply reliving the hardships he had once endured.

The exhaustion of swinging a shovel in the wasteland.

The guilt of seeing his wife trade their last bit of grain for a meat broth.

He poured all his strength, all his despair, and all his hope into his actions.

When the play reached its end, he finally traded the merit points he’d earned with blood and sweat for that heavy jar of sugar.

Borg didn’t put on an ecstatic expression like he had in rehearsal.

He clutched the prop sugar jar, staggered back two steps, then his knees gave way and he collapsed heavily to the ground.

He didn’t cry out.

He just buried his face deep in the cold ceramic jar, his broad shoulders shaking violently as he let out stifled, wounded-animal-like sobs.

At that moment, in the audience, the Lord’s Mansion cook, a middle-aged woman, could no longer hold back and broke down, covering her mouth as she sobbed uncontrollably.

Her sobs were like a stone tossed into a pond, sending out ripples.

The young clerk was roughly wiping his eyes with his sleeve.

A guard captain, known for his usual toughness, abruptly turned his head away so no one would see his reddened eyes.

They weren’t crying for Tumo.

They were crying for themselves—for the ones who broke their backs at the docks for their families.

For the wives who went hungry so their children could have one more bite of black bread.

For every common person in this land who had ever struggled to survive in despair, only to find hope once again.

The play was over.

A dead silence fell over the warehouse.

After a long moment, someone—it was unclear who—was the first to applaud.

The applause started sparsely, then quickly grew dense, finally swelling into a thunderous roar.

Everyone was on their feet, clapping with all their might.

Borg was still kneeling on the floor. He raised his head, looking blankly at the people applauding him.

He saw the young man who registered his merit points, who was clapping and shouting his approval, tears still streaking his face.

He saw the high-and-mighty figures of the Lord’s Mansion, all of them now on their feet, applauding him—a porter.

An unprecedented emotion rushed to his head.

It was more gratifying than hoisting a three-hundred-pound salt sack and winning the cheers of the entire dock.

Velin didn’t clap.

He stood at the very back of the crowd, holding his leather-bound notebook and quickly jotting down the improvised lines.

When he was finished writing, he closed the notebook.

The first rehearsal was an unexpected success. After some more polishing of the script, it would be ready for a formal performance.

Thinking of the scene of the entire audience in tears, Velin couldn’t help but think of the person the story was based on.

’Should I give the fellow a heads-up that his tavern is about to get a huge wave of business?’

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