Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

Su Enxi was taken aback.

She lowered her head and looked again at the stack of photos scattered on the table. The girl in the photos did indeed look more and more like someone, not in terms of facial features. Erii and Frilian's features were never similar; one had the delicate features of classical Eastern beauty, while the other had the aloof and ethereal beauty unique to elves.

However, in the direction of the makeup strokes, the layering of the hairstyle, and the style of the clothing, all the arrows subtly point in the same direction, which is precisely where Frillian stands.

"The boss must have reviewed the makeup and clothing plans beforehand, right?" she asked, her voice much lower than before.

“Yes,” said Mai Shude.

She gazed out the window, her eyes passing over the towering buildings of Shinjuku and landing on some unknown distant horizon.

The clear skies over Tokyo, after being battered by torrential rain for several days, seemed incredibly precious, yet the expression on her face suggested she was watching yet another rain cloud slowly gathering on the horizon.

"The boss is turning Erii into another Frilian, and then delivering this Frilian Number Two into Lu Mingfei's hands, while—"

She paused for a moment, unsure whether she should say what she was about to say.

"And this Freylian II only has a few days left to live."

Su Enxi's fingers tightened suddenly as she gripped the photo. She opened her mouth, wanting to say something, such as "How did you know?" or "That's impossible", or "Lu Mingfei wouldn't admit it", but in the end, nothing came out.

Because she knew that Mai Shutoku was telling the truth, she knew that Erii Uesugi's physical condition as a "demon" had barely held on for so many years under the round-the-clock support of the Genji Heavy Industries' intensive care unit, and now that she was out of that environment, it would only decline irreversibly.

She knew that this grand, fairytale-like Tokyo love story had been accompanied from the very beginning by a countdown that everyone tacitly avoided mentioning. It was like sitting on a sightseeing bus that was slowly heading towards the edge of a cliff. The scenery outside the window was so beautiful that it was hard to look away. Everyone was holding up their phones, smiling and taking pictures, and no one looked down at the red line on the navigation map that was getting shorter and shorter.

Mai Shude began to sing a waka poem softly. Her voice was so low that only Su Enxi, who was sitting next to her, could hear it.

That wasn't her usual tone of voice, or even the tone of her singing.

Mai Shude never sings. Whether in a karaoke room or at a celebration party after a mission is accomplished, she always sits in a corner with a glass of whiskey in one hand, her expression telling everyone who tries to shove the microphone into her hand, "Do as you please, I'm not involved."

But at this moment, she sang. It was a waka poem that Su Enxi had never heard before, the melody so ancient that it seemed to drift out from a painting from the Heian period, each note carrying the heavy weight of time.

"Perhaps it is because they do not know dreams that wanderers chase after illusions..."

The singing was like a white bird, circling under the gloomy sky outside the window.

The clear sky had quietly turned sour at some point, and rain clouds were gathering again on the city's edge, like towering black mountains slowly and irresistibly moving toward the city center.

Tokyo is always like this; just when you're sure the sun is about to shine, it pours rain again, as if it's a fate you can't escape no matter what.

Su Enxi stood there, still clutching the photo of the white off-shoulder dress in her hand.

In the photo, a girl in a white dress is tilting her head and smiling at the camera, her eyes reflecting the sunlight of Shinjuku. She is completely unaware that the downpour is about to return.

Suddenly, a question popped into Su Enxi's mind that she had never seriously considered before: When you are weaving the most perfect puppet show in the world, will you fall in love with those puppets at some point?

When the puppet's strings finally have to be cut, will you regret having tied them so tightly, so meticulously, as if you were weaving something that could continue until the end of time?

Chapter 775 Kabuki

Ginza, Kabuki-za.

This theater has stood in the world for over a hundred years, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it the throne of the Kabuki world.

It has been burned down several times: the great fire during the Meiji era, the fire caused by the Great Kanto Earthquake, and the incendiary bombs that fell during the Tokyo bombing at the end of World War II. Each time, it was almost completely wiped off the ground, but each time it was rebuilt exactly as it was, as if something that even flames could not burn out was buried under this land.

The building in front of me is in the style of the Momoyama period. The golden Tang-style roof ripples with dazzling light under the sun. The vermilion columns are so thick that it would take two people with outstretched arms to barely hug them. A dark purple cloth hangs in front of the door, printed with the snow-white Kabuki crest, swaying gently in the breeze.

Countless national treasure-level Kabuki actors have graced this stage—Ichikawa Danjuro, Onoe Kikugoro, Bando Tamasaburo, each name a weighty monument in the history of Japanese traditional performing arts.

For a newcomer to stand here is considered the highest form of coronation. Countless young performers who have been working in training rooms since childhood, sweating until their sweat drips into the cracks of the floor, dream of one day stepping onto this stage, even if it's just to play a supporting role without a name.

Today, the person performing on the Kabuki-za stage is a newcomer who has never formally apprenticed to a master in the mainstream Kabuki world.

Normally, newcomers can't have high attendance rates. This is an unshakeable rule in the Kabuki industry. Even if you've built up some fame in small theaters, once you step onto a stage like the Kabuki-za, the audience will instinctively adopt a wait-and-see attitude, preferring to wait until after the premiere and read the reviews before deciding whether to pay for a ticket for the next show.

But today, the tickets were sold out very early. A banner with the word "Thank you" was hanging in front of the ticket window, and a line of small print below it read: "Tickets for this performance are sold out. Thank you for your support."

The crowd buying tickets was made up of young women, each dressed in a more provocative style than the last—Shibuya-style platform shoes, Harajuku-style fluorescent hair dye, Ginza-style elegant suits, Roppongi-style backless evening gowns. All sorts of styles were mixed together at the ticket window, like a joint exercise of all the trendy districts in Tokyo.

They chattered excitedly about tonight's show, occasionally tiptoeing to peek at the poster on the wall. The man in the poster had his profile photographed like a black and white artwork, with long hair hanging down to cover half his face, and the one eye that was visible held a kind of enchanting, half-smiling, chilling look.

These girls don't resemble traditional Kabuki audiences at all. Traditional audiences are supposed to be silver-haired elderly people holding thermos cups, middle-aged women in plain kimonos, and college students with notebooks tucked under their arms, not these fashionable young women with bags held to their chests, nail polish decorated with rhinestones, and eyes reddening with excitement when buying tickets.

The theater manager was an old man in his seventies who had been in this theater for half a century. He had witnessed Kabuki's rise and fall from the postwar revival to the bubble economy and then to the decline in the Heisei era. He had never seen anything like this in more than a decade.

He stood behind the window of his second-floor office, parted a corner of the curtain, and looked down at the bustling crowd below. Excited, he took out his phone and called his retired former manager. His voice trembled as he said, "Senior, we've finally waited for this! The vitality of this ancient art hasn't died out. Look how many young audiences it can attract. This must be a miracle bestowed upon Kabuki by heaven."

A shrewd young employee standing nearby smiled wryly and said, "Manager, you're mistaken. They're not here for traditional arts; they just want to see that stunningly handsome man."

The manager covered his phone to his chest, remained silent for a while, and then glanced down at the screaming girls outside the window.

Then he sighed and said, "That's fine too. As long as they're willing to step through this door, even if they initially only care about her face, who knows, as they listen, a few of them might start to truly listen to the story in the play." The reasons why young people push open this door are not important; what matters is that they actually do.

The newcomer on stage is named Kazama Ruri. The play is "New Edition of the Ancient Chronicles".

The curtains on the stage hung heavily, plunging the theater into complete darkness. The theater lights were dimmed to their lowest setting, leaving only a few faint rays from the floor lamps along the aisles, barely enough to help the audience find their way back to their seats.

The guests whispered in hushed tones, as if afraid of disturbing the gods sleeping in the depths of this darkness.

They are usually regulars at nightclubs, drinking and laughing loudly in Takamagahara or other host clubs. When they get into the mood, they will even stand up and sway their hips to the music. But tonight, the place is deserted.

Every audience member present was dressed in an elegant kimono or a long evening gown that reached their ankles. This was not due to the strict rules of the theater; the Kabuki-za theater has never been as formal as Western opera houses.

They came spontaneously to attend a sacred ceremony.

Although Kazama Ruri's background as a male host is no secret in Tokyo's entertainment industry, and in some ways this identity adds a touch of legend to his popularity, his Kabuki performances have earned him unreserved praise from several Kabuki masters.

Those elderly, white-haired national treasures openly told the media in newspapers that, just to hear this young man sing a song, they had humbled themselves to go to noisy nightclubs, huddled in a corner booth, sipping ice water while watching the young man, who was mingling with female customers, occasionally improvise a song.

They said this young man was a genius who only appears once every fifty years, not an amateur dabbling, but a proper Kabuki performance, a masterpiece that could be weighed on the same scale as the most wonderful performance they had ever seen in their lives.

The fat woman and her girlfriends sat in the front row of the first floor, near the aisle, rubbing their hands together, their faces displaying a subtle mix of anticipation and smugness.

Their tickets didn't come from normal channels. If the young girls who lined up all night at the ticket window knew who had snatched their tickets, they would probably scream like the roof would fall off. They bought them from someone else at a high price, five times the original price, but they thought it was worth it.

Tonight, the fat woman was dressed in a deep crimson velvet kimono, with a gold-embroidered sash around her waist. Her hair was styled in an extremely elaborate traditional updo, adorned with three heavy tortoiseshell hairpins. Her girlfriends were equally dressed up, their foundation thicker than usual, and their lipsticks all a more subdued dark red, treating tonight like a tough battle.

Caesar and Chu Zihang sat in the central private room on the second floor.

That box had the best viewing angle in the entire Kabuki-za, directly facing the center of the stage, and its height was just at the actors' eye level. In the old days, it was a place where only the Emperor and the Shogun were qualified to sit.

They wore pure black "iromuji" haori, a traditional formal dress worn by Japanese men on the most formal occasions. The fabric has no patterns, and the aura is supported entirely by the texture of the fabric and the cut of the garment. Each of them held a white paper folding fan.

The fan, along with the haori (traditional Japanese clothing), was presented respectfully by the waiter upon entry. The fan was completely white, without a single word on it. In their hands, they held invitations personally written by Kazama Ruri. The invitations were made of high-quality traditional Japanese washi paper, with a subtle chrysanthemum pattern embossed on the surface. They were VIPs among VIPs, enjoying royal treatment. Upon entering, waiters helped them change into haori and straw sandals, and then they were led to the best-viewed private room.

Caesar looked down from the railing of the private box, taking in the sea of ​​heads on the first floor, and gently tapped his palm with his folding fan.

Lu Ming insisted on accompanying the humanoid weapon on a shopping trip to relax, so the extra invitation ended up in the hands of the humpback whale.

The humpback whale sat in a corner seat on the first floor, but he had no complaints about it. Just being able to step into this venue was a great honor for him.

He wore a white cloth band with the three characters "Kazama Mikoto" written on his forehead. He had personally ground the ink and written those three characters with a brush, the strokes so vigorous that they didn't seem to come from the hand of a host club manager. A small black pair of binoculars hung around his neck, his hands were clenched into fists and rested on his knees, and the expression on his face could only be described as "fanatical."

"Have you ever seen Kabuki before? Did you understand it?" Chu Zihang asked in a low voice.

“I saw a performance in New York, a show hosted by the Japanese consulate.” Caesar leaned against the railing of his box, his folding fan half-open, shook it twice, and then closed it again. “The actors’ faces were all painted as white as dead people. White from head to toe. After the whole show, all I could think of were those white faces.”

"You only remembered this?" Chu Zihang asked.

Caesar thought about it carefully for a moment, then tapped his temple with his folding fan and added, "And the girl who accompanied me that day wore a nude-colored evening gown with rhinestones studded around her waist, and her slender waist swayed dramatically as she walked."

"So you don't understand Kabuki either, right?" Chu Zihang said.

Caesar shrugged, completely unfazed by the question.

He pointed his folding fan toward the front of the private room, where a rectangular electronic screen hung, looking out of place in this traditional Kabuki-style room, like a carbon fiber scabbard fitted to an ancient sword.

"Just look at the translation screen on the stage. The waiter just said that Kazama Ruri specifically asked for it to be installed. Tonight's audience is all Japanese, and everyone in the theater except you and me can understand the lyrics, so that thing was specially prepared for us."

"It seems that Kazama Ruri really wants us to understand his performance tonight," Chu Zihang said, looking away from the screen.

"Then watch carefully." Caesar gently waved his folding fan, the fan surface creating a fine breeze that caused the few strands of golden hair on his forehead to sway slightly.

"As a ghost that lives only a day, who knows if this is his last performance?"

Chapter 776 A Fleeting Ephemeral Flower Appears in the Moonlight

All the light was wiped clean from the dome by an invisible hand at the same instant.

Even the floor lights on both sides of the aisle, which had been on since the beginning of the show, went completely dark. The entire Kabukiju was plunged into absolute darkness, so dark that you could almost hear your own blood flowing in your eardrums.

Someone in the audience instinctively gasped. The extremely faint sound was amplified several times in the vast silence, like ripples spreading outwards from a pebble thrown into a deep pool.

But no one spoke, no one stood up, and no one reached for their phone in their pocket. Everyone held their breath in the darkness, waiting.

The drum came, and the Sakuragi drum was struck.

Someone slammed a heavy blow into the drumhead with a drumstick, then gently wiped the drumhead with their palm. The two completely different sounds collided violently. The blow was as fierce as a thunderclap exploding overhead, while the wipe was as hoarse as the last breath of a dying person.

Two voices intertwined and bounced back and forth in the dark theater, like ghosts crouching in a distant ancient corner whispering. No one could understand what they were saying, but everyone who heard it felt a chill run down their spine.

Before the drumbeats had even faded, the second beat followed, then the third, and the fourth. The rhythm grew denser and the tone deeper and more resonant, a beat that seemed to strike right at the heart.

The curtain slowly opened amidst the increasingly intense drumbeats.

The curtain of the Kabuki-za theater still retains the ancient tradition of being dragged by people from both sides. Two "black-clad troupes" dressed in black hold the ropes from both ends of the stage, their movements so slow as to be almost imperceptible, as if the thick brocade curtain is not being pulled open, but rather being crushed inch by inch into flowing shadows by an unseen force.

A lone lamp lit up in the center of the stage.

A paper-shaded portable lamp was suspended less than half a meter above the stage floor, its wick burning with the most old-fashioned rapeseed oil. The flame flickered gently in the darkness, its orange-yellow glow barely enough to illuminate a space within a two-step radius.

A woman in pure white stood quietly in the center of the halo of light. Her long, jet-black hair cascaded down from her head, obscuring her entire face, with only a pointed tip visible at her chin. The hair trailed down to her ankles, covering her plain white robe, which was devoid of any patterns. The contrast between white and black created the only striking color contrast in the entire theater.

She stood there, barefoot on the wooden stage, completely still.

The humpback whales in the audience almost cried out; they looked exactly like Sadako crawling out of the television set.

Anyone who sees her will feel weak in the knees, but upon closer inspection, she exudes an indescribable charm and allure.

"All happiness in this world is but a fleeting moment, like a flower blooming in the moonlight; only loneliness and pain linger in the depths of the underworld," the woman sang softly, slowly raising her head.

Her long hair was parted in the middle to the sides, revealing a face that was so white it was almost transparent.

Two colors remained on her face. Her complexion was as white as snow, devoid of any blood, even her lips were white, as if all life force had been drained from her face. Only at the corners of her eyes were two mournful streaks of blood red, not rouge, nor eyeshadow, but two red marks that slanted upwards from the corners of her eyes into her temples, like remnants of dried blood and tears embedded in her skin.

The red was both alluring and somber, gleaming with a moist sheen in the dim light of the paper lamp.

Her appearance clearly resembled that of a vengeful ghost from the depths of the underworld; those two streaks of blood made every viewer afraid to linger their gaze on her face for more than three seconds.

Yet her figure exuded grace and charm. Although the white robe was loose, the lines of her body betrayed her every move.

The rounded shoulders as they turn, the supple waist as it sways, the graceful curve of her neck when she raises her head—every detail is brimming with an indescribable allure. It's like a stunningly beautiful woman veiled in a thin layer of gauze; she reveals nothing, yet stirs the heart.