Neal’s popularity was really something else. Or, no, it wasn’t just him, was it? While they weren’t at my brother’s level, all of the members of the team were good-looking. Char was quite attractive, and the sole girl of the team was very handsome; she seemed like she would be popular with both girls and boys. Honestly, they were all so attractive I was starting to wonder if they had been picked for their looks. They all seemed like they would garner a following.
I turned to Wagnes and asked, “Is that all you need me for today?”
“Hmm, I’m not sure...” The director crossed his arms as he thought to himself.
The recording for this show was happening gradually over each day. Today, we gave a light introduction to Wingroad skiffs. And by that, I meant a really light introduction—there was no point giving in-depth explanations to people with no interest in them, so we just covered the basics.
For this, the camera crew decided to record the skiffs while the Wingroad team were off at a meeting. This was when I realized that competition skiffs were surprisingly small. Well, maybe not the whole skiff, but the saddle itself was tiny. Apparently, the more lightweight and narrow the skiff, the faster it went or something.
The humiliation I had felt upon being too small to ride a skiff suddenly came to mind. Could I ride one of this size...? No, it might still be a little bit too big for me. My arms and legs were probably still too short. Why should I care, though? I could just run. I’d still make it to my destination at the same time if not faster.
“I feel like I want you to say something more, but what do you think, Nia?”
Ah, do you think what we have is too bland? If so, I agreed with him. All I’d done was give a boring explanation of what the skiffs were. It was like I was reading from an instruction manual. I couldn’t imagine it would be that fun to watch.
“But I don’t think I need to say anything pretentious here either.” The stars of this program were the team and Wingroad itself—I didn’t need to make myself any more prominent. Just recording the skiffs seemed perfectly fine for what they were trying to achieve.
“You’ve got a point... I do agree, but you know, you’ve come all this way. It feels like a waste to not do anything else.”
I’d rather you didn’t expect me to do anything else.
“Director, you shouldn’t ask too much of her.”
“Yeah, Wagnes. The fact she’s here at all with her busy schedule is already a lot.”
See? Even your staff are calling you out now. But it was hard for me to judge him for it. Going by my feelings alone, I was on Wagnes’s side. What I did today wasn’t anything that couldn’t have been done by someone else. I didn’t even need to be present—voiceovers could be recorded afterward. There was no point in me being here. I understood why the director was so caught up on that.
What else could we do...? Ah, I know.
“How about we record something else, then?”
“Huh?”
“I’m not sure if you’ll be able to use it, but I do think I can spin an interesting tale.”
“What? Here? Now?”
“Yes. We can get permission from the boy himself after, so let’s just record it for now.”
“O-Okay then.”
The camera was turned on and we began recording once again.
“Take a look over here.” I slowly walked forward, gesturing to one of the skiffs. “At a small shop in Altoire, Char Gaul had a fateful meeting with this competition skiff. The boy himself doesn’t even know how the skiff ended up in Altoire in the first place. He has since spent many long months and years gradually repairing it. While it may look like the rest of the skiffs from the outside, it is entirely different inside. If you hear one of the skiffs sounding different from the rest when they perform, what you are hearing is this skiff here.”
I continued, “A professional Wingroad team from Vanderouge will be arriving in Altoire in the coming days—perhaps they will have the answers to the mystery behind this skiff. Just what sort of eventful path has this ship followed to arrive here? I am looking forward to discovering the truth together with all of you.”
That should about do it. Wagnes gave the signal and the camera stopped rolling.
“I forgot all about that, actually,” Wagnes admitted. The story of Char’s skiff had been told on Dreaming of Wingroad, so the junior production crew were already familiar with it. Naturally, so were the viewers of the program.
“Perhaps there is some interesting drama behind it all,” I suggested. To be honest, I was fairly sure that the skiff was just something someone had smuggled into the country in the hopes of getting good money for it. But if that turned out to be the answer, then that was fine. At the end of the day, there was a mystery behind the skiff and that mystery may be revealed in the future. That alone was good enough to pique people’s curiosity. The actual answer itself wasn’t all that important.
“True. Maybe it’ll become a big story we can cover.”
Though on the other hand, depending on the results, it may end up something to be shelved, such as if the way it was procured was dangerous or a Vanderouge official had been the one to smuggle it. One wrong move and it could become an international scandal.
“Perhaps this will turn out to be tied to some dramatic incident,” I added.
Wagnes laughed at that. “Hey, at least it would be a massive scoop if it did.”
Wagnes and his staff were most likely all thinking the same thing: The skiff was probably smuggled. That was why they were able to laugh like it was nothing—they were certain it wasn’t some huge mystery.
But it turned out that the truth behind this skiff was a much larger secret than anyone could’ve anticipated...
Sorry, that was a lie. The truth was really quite simple.
Just as the recording for the Wingroad program had reached the one-week mark, the losers’ matches hit their halfway point. Unlike the preliminaries, they were going at a much steadier pace. Since they were being held directly in the capital, it was possible for there to be greater numbers of spectators; each day was alive with excitement.
“It’s been a long time, Miss Liston.”
Around the time that the stronger fighters in the losers’ bracket were starting to make a name for themselves and generating a good amount of buzz, a surprising guest came to talk to me while I was getting ready at the Cedony warehouse for another quick recording.
“Oh, Mr. Dallon. It’s nice to see you again.”
It was Dallon of Cedony Trading. He was a very gentlemanly older man. I was pretty sure he was one of the executives of the company, but I wasn’t sure where exactly in the ladder he was. We hadn’t talked enough for me to confirm. Usually, I would think it prudent to confirm his position, but I could leave it for another time—there was no telling when we’d meet again, anyway.