20-2 Program Start

The audience seats were packed with guests.

However, the little ones did not look all that nervous.

Most of the guests were people they knew, after all.

Their familiar princes and princesses, their attendants, and also the familiar distinguished members of the Kingdom’s Knight Order had come.

Also, many people from town had come, both to cheer them on and for entertainment.

Well, originally, kindergarten and elementary school performances were like that.

Basically, people connected to the school and the parents came.

And then there were the invited guests too.

“We will now begin the first Beast-Ear Kindergarten school performance. Everyone, please relax and enjoy watching.”

The director’s greeting ended briskly.

There was no phrase like “the first in this world” anywhere.

This director’s greetings were always short.

That was because, back in my school days, I had been sick of how long teachers’ speeches were, especially the principal’s.

First came the songs.

We started with the little children’s section.

Everyone lined up, their ears wagging fluffily, and sang the royal hymn.

It was the one called “Song of the Hero.”

The king referred to here was, of course, the first king.

It was a standard song often sung by the Knight Order and the like during ceremonies.

And the audience was surprised.

Because the children sang even the difficult lyrics without looking at lyric cards.

Well, I had simply made them memorize it by rote, though.

I had made them memorize the lyrics by luring them with sweets too.

I had played the song repeatedly on a portable player.

Rather, because they were children, they memorized things like that quickly.

Among them, there were even children who remembered it after hearing it once.

There had been people like that when I was a child too.

They would already be perfectly singing the theme song of a program that had only just started, the next morning when we gathered for the school commute group.

Next, the older children’s singing section began.

I had made this one a little opera-like.

There was one amazing child.

She was a wolf beastfolk girl, five years old.

She was the same species and age as Camila, but of course, she was not Camila.

Perhaps because they could howl, the throat performance of wolf beastfolk was incredible.

Since the oldest group was handling difficult work like lighting and large props, the stars of the school performance were mainly the five-year-olds.

As for that wolf girl, although she was small, how should I put it, she was already at almost professional level.

Having it in a child’s high-pitched voice was also quite charming.

She might be able to make a living in this field someday.

Maybe I should have her do practical training at the food court theater someday.

Each time one song ended and the scene changed, loud applause rose.

There were also children who were amazing at playing instruments.

They were mainly using string instruments, and it was quite something.

The music was all from Earth pieces whose copyright had expired, ones whose copyright holders had died more than seventy years ago.

Even so, when used in a play like this, they still worked perfectly well.

Since I would upload it to Earth video sites to earn yen rather than foreign currency, I had to check the copyright.

Though if, because of the influence of the free trade agreements and the like, they suddenly said copyright would be protected until one hundred years after the copyright holder’s death, I would be in trouble later.

I wanted them to manage that somehow as a vested right.

Even a fussy country like America should not complain too much about that sort of thing.

That was because ridiculous things like retroactive laws were not accepted anywhere in the world.

It was the major legal principle known as “non-retroactivity of law.”

The enforcement date was important for the implementation of a law, so if that were ignored, anything could be done afterward like changing the rules after the fact, and the country would no longer function as a nation governed by law.

Some old hotels in downtown Las Vegas, for example, still had their vested rights recognized for properties that had existed before the law regarding combined casino and hotel operation changed, just as before.

The other children were also doing slightly difficult things, so everyone was completely serious.

The staff members were also fully occupied with supporting them.

We had also introduced a special instrument into the music.

It was something Yamamoto-san had played as a hobby, called a glass armonica, or glass harmonica.

It was a mechanism that produced sound by tracing one’s fingers over specially shaped rotating glass.

Apparently, Yamamoto-san discovered one I had made as a hobby before, and it finally saw the light of day.

I could not play it well myself, you see.

The original principle behind the instrument was that thing where you make music with glasses, each filled with a fixed amount of water.

Of course, you did not strike the glasses with a stick.

That was the field for me and the children.

You made sounds by stroking the rim of the glass with your palm, but that was difficult for me.

I could make sounds, but they would not become music.

That was why I had made a full-scale large glass instrument.

Depending on how it was played, that thing also produced a uniquely beautiful sound, but for someone like me, I was satisfied as long as sounds came out at all.

How should I put it?

In any case, it produced a mysterious tone, so I had adopted it here.

I felt like there had been a site where you could listen to sample sounds on a computer.

It would be good to try sounding a wineglass-like glass filled with water by circling your palm around its rim.

It made an indescribably mysterious and beautiful sound.

When I tried it myself, I felt that that kind of glass vessel worked better than an ordinary cup.

You might need to wet your hand a little.

I felt like that was what they did in the performance footage.

A glass harmonica was an instrument that shaped that into an easier-to-play form.

The term glass armonica might be French, with the initial H removed in pronunciation.

It was not made in Japan, but by companies in America and the like.

And it was also fairly expensive.

Since it was breakable glass, transportation required care too.

Apparently, even with violins, if you did not pay attention to the temperature during transport, the hide glue used in assembly could melt and make them fall apart.

If you did that to an ultra-expensive Stradivarius or the like, the hide glue would be ruined, and I believe those could not be reassembled, so there would be no fixing it.

Assembly itself might be possible, but apparently that beautiful tone would never come out again.

That hide glue could not be reproduced.

With paintings too, if they were not properly temperature-controlled, an ultra-expensive masterpiece could end up in a terrible state during transport.

For the finale, everyone lined up in a row and sang together.

The children in charge of tools also lined up and joined in.

Wonderful applause was sent to the children from the audience seats.

And at last, the main play began.

Once again, the oldest group took their positions at their respective posts.

The sound of wind blowing across the wasteland played from the speakers.

This was one I had personally recorded in a real wasteland, so it had an extremely realistic feel.

The power of the magic amplifier produced a forceful, pleasing sound.

Red lights represented flames, and the child in charge began the narration.

“This was a small country once called Ishtar, more than a thousand years ago.

Yes, and from here, the story began.

The story of the Albatross Kingdom where we live, the story of the first king.

The story of ‘The Hero’s Summit,’ drawn by the great master Gregory.”

A sigh of admiration escaped from the audience.

The excellence of the narration, full of difficult words, was one thing, but since this work was both a classic masterpiece and also a somewhat difficult work to handle, they were first impressed by its opening.

Because it was the first story in the founding records, it could not be clumsily altered, but making it ordinary would also be a problem.

Including the staging, it was a truly difficult work that tested the ability of the one handling it.

This time, Aoi-chan had finished the script I wrote, with Yamamoto-san as her assistant.

And in the end, not even a trace of the parts I wrote remained.

Then the story continued.

A powerful boy’s voice could be heard.

It was a deep, thick, abundant voice that was hard to believe belonged to a kindergartener.

This was Anthony, the tiger beastfolk.

Come to think of it, this child had been the leader of the group that first picked up Remi and took her in. He alone was the same age as His Highness Prince Emilio, so normally, he would be around first or second grade in elementary school.

Because of that, he was a little more mature, and he was very popular with the smaller children.

By mistake, small children sometimes called him “Father,” and when that happened, he would narrow his eyes and gently, gently stroke that child’s head.

He would surely become a good father in the future.

“Oh, what tragedy! Has Chief God Ross abandoned us? This is a world where even Sacred Elion, once present in this world, has been lost. Ross, please save us, the lost children of the earth.”

Here, fierce drum music went boom-boom, boom-boom.

The children beating the drums looked truly happy.

However, was this reliable sense of rhythm unique to beastfolk?

In Earth terms, was it on the level of the spring and rhythm of Black people?

It was a distant world that Japanese people, who belonged to the world of festival dances, could never possibly reach, no matter what.

Considering the many great achievements Black people had accumulated on Earth, not only in the world of music, I looked forward to these children’s futures too.

Then the scene changed, and one man was walking.

No, not one.

There were ten.

Wow, I was glad there were not eleven!

That work where there were supposed to be only ten people but there were actually eleven was a tremendous, turbulent drama spanning the universe, after all.

As expected, I wondered whether it would be suitable as a kindergarten school performance program.

And there were a lot of main characters here.

The audience from this other world did not understand that well and looked confused.

Well, of course they would not understand the circumstances of kindergarten school performances on Earth.

For example, that thing where many kindergarteners all played the peach boy.

That custom did not exist when I was a child.

But maybe I had gone a little too far in increasing the numbers?

Then they each spoke their lines in order, one by one.

There were children who were good and children who were halting, but everyone was doing their best.

Keep going.

Together, they expressed Takeshi Funabashi’s feelings as he was shocked by the town’s disastrous state.

Through words, gestures, and expressions, each person portrayed the hero in their own way.

Since Gregory’s original itself was already somewhat like a play, or something along those lines, performing it in this form did not feel all that unnatural.