"Casting off!"
The call of departure came with the sound of the ship's horn.
Elisabeth felt dizzy and gripped the deck railing tightly.
*Strange. Why is my chest so tight?*
The man she had bumped into at the dock earlier.
She had thought he had simply struck her chest with his fist. But what was this damp, hot sensation she felt from inside her corset?
"Your Majesty, are you alright? Your complexion is terribly pale."
The voice of her lady-in-waiting, Irma, buzzed as if from underwater.
Elisabeth tried to shake her head, but her vision swam as if she were dizzy.
The ship's engine noise changed into a dull drumbeat.
*Thud. Thud. Thud.*
The faces of the passengers standing on the deck began to blur and smudge.
Familiar faces.
*Mother.*
A familiar voice called from within black smoke.
Elisabeth's pupils trembled.
Standing there was her son, Rudolf, who had taken his own life at Mayerling ten years ago.
Wearing a blood-stained uniform, he stared at her with hollow eyes.
*Why did you abandon me? When the empire was collapsing, where were you?*
"Rudolf...?"
*You wanted freedom.*
This time, a stern voice came from the opposite side. It was her mother-in-law, Archduchess Sophie.
Behind her flickered the ghosts of her first daughter Sophie, who had died young, and Maximilian, who had been shot in Mexico.
*This is the price of that freedom. All that remains in the place you fled is a ruined Habsburg.*
"No... I...."
Elisabeth tried to step back, but her feet seemed glued to the deck and would not move.
With every breath, her corset dug into her ribcage and pressed against her heart.
The pain grew vivid, yet her consciousness grew distant.
Countless questions that had brushed past her life surged like waves.
— What had she done as empress?
— What had she protected as a wife?
— What had she left as a mother?
The questions were cast.
But she had neither the strength to answer nor the time to make excuses.
"Your Majesty! Blood! You're bleeding!"
Irma's scream tore through the hallucinations.
Only then did Elisabeth look down at her chest.
Upon her black mourning dress, a bloodstain like a red rose spread unstoppably.
Strength left her legs, and she slowly collapsed onto the deck.
The moment her cheek touched the cold deck, she felt it was the end of her life.
*Ah.*
So it ends.
This tedious duty, this guilt, the weight of the imperial crown.
The ship's horn sounded long once more.
As the world's final question to her, her vision went dark.
The life of Empress Elisabeth of Habsburg closed forever without ever answering those questions.
And then.
"Hey, what are you doing over there?"
"...Huh?"
I raised my head blankly.
Before me were neither Lake Geneva nor a deck drenched in blood.
Instead, blindingly bright lights and the boisterous scenery of a waiting room welcomed me.
"You weren't like this during rehearsal. Nervous before the actual show? You're spacing out."
Ah, right. I was reading the script because of the gender-free casting.
Normally in musicals, "gender-free" refers to productions where genders are freely switched.
Like a woman playing Jesus in *Jesus Christ Superstar*.
"Oh, going from Rudolf, you suit Elisabeth too?"
"Happy you're stealing my role?"
I'd only ever played Rudolf until now....
"You need to break away from Rudolf a bit. Aren't you Rudolf in *The Last Kiss* too?"
What are you talking about? I played Lola in *Kinky Boots* often enough.
"You're my counterpart too, Senior."
"Today I'm Joseph, huh? Aren't we fated?"
"Stop saying ridiculous things. Someone might think we're having an affair."
Senior Siu, who was Minhwa's husband and playing the role of Archduchess Sophie today, walked in.
"If you and Minhwa dated, adultery would be the problem? Being cousins would be the problem."
When you put it that way, I have no comeback....
"You know there are more countries where cousins marry? Joseph and Elisabeth were cousins too."
"This is Korea."
I should stop joking around.
I looked at the script and asked Minhwa.
"Nuna, I don't really get the emotional arc here. Why did Elisabeth take her daughter to Hungary?"
"That part is a bit complicated; it's like her struggle to take her daughter back as a mother... Instead, it's an important scene showing why you are rejected by Elisabeth, so you have to convey the emotional arc well."
I don't understand it, so how am I supposed to show the emotional arc?
Among Rudolf's numbers, there's a song where he looks in the mirror and longs for his mother's love.
"If you had a child, you might feel paternal love."
Well, Minhwa did say her emotional depth deepened after giving birth, and more people praised her for it. But.
"I need to understand Elisabeth's feelings right now, don't I?"
It's not like a baby is going to pop out of nowhere.
Nuna looked at me in exasperation.
"...How do you act as Lola?"
"I've never done Method acting to begin with."
It's written right there in the script. The scene just plays out in my head.
"Lola is a drag queen to begin with, not a woman."
"Then why don't you try contacting your aunt?"
"My mother?"
She nodded.
"She's Austrian. And Sisi is famous as the last empress."
Well... if I had to nitpick, the last empress is Zita, but.
I wasn't so lacking in social awareness that I'd nitpick about something like that.
"I already tried contacting her. She stopped responding because she's going to the Mozart Museum."
Why would an Austrian go there?
How is that any different from a Busan person traveling to Haeundae?
"Always playing Rudolf, you've really become Rudolf."
I actually liked it.
Whenever my parents traveled, I could play games at night or eat late-night snacks to my heart's content.
"Wouldn't my personality actually be more similar to Elisabeth's?"
Nuna thought for a moment, then nodded.
"Longing for freedom, hostility toward authority, obsession with looks, cynical attitude."
"Is that how you've seen me? And since when am I obsessed with looks and cynical? I followed school rules, so I don't have hostility toward authority either."
"What are you talking about? When you were little, you said you hated my dad because he was ugly and ran to your mom."
...I did?
"And even among actors, there are almost no male actors who groom and dress up as much as you?"
Siu, who was beside us, chimed in, agreeing.
"Looks are a spec too these days."
"That's a cynical attitude."
"Siu, do you think I'm cynical too? You know how warm-hearted I am."
"Is that so?"
Wow, he won't even agree with me on this?
"Nuna, actually, last week—"
"Hahaha... that's right. A warm-hearted man."
Our male alliance nearly fell apart.
"What is it? Did you go fishing again last week?"
"No, no."
The two bickered before turning back to me.
"Hmm, or maybe look it up on Wikipedia?"
"That's the least I could do, since she's the role I'm playing. I looked it up in English, German, and Hungarian too."
"You probably just ran it through a translator, didn't you?"
She was right. The content wasn't all that different, just somewhat similar.
A staff member's voice came from beyond the door.
"The show begins!"
The two said to me.
"Let's go."
The difference from when I played Rudolf was that I was on stage for almost the entire time, since I was the lead?
Since Elisabeth is literally her name.
The prologue began, and I watched from backstage.
The scene where the assassin Lucheni, imprisoned and interrogated for a hundred years for assassinating Empress Elisabeth, argues why he killed her.
Did Elisabeth truly wish for death?
...In the musical, she wavers between Death and Joseph before finally choosing Death in the end.
But did the real Elisabeth wish for death too? If she had, wouldn't she have made the same choice as Rudolf?
The prologue starts entirely from the perspective of everyone except her.
Lucheni claims she died because she longed for death all her life. His position is that he was merely an agent who granted her wish.
Death claims that he loved her, and that she always wished to come to him.
Joseph defends himself, saying he loved the empress, and Rudolf spits out resentment toward the mother who never gave him love.
And the ghosts of the empire testify that she despised her duties as empress, that she was selfish, cold, and drove the empire to crisis through compromise.
"You're ready, right?"
I went out on stage and shouted.
Just a single line.
"I belong to me!"
The audience today definitely has a different energy.
This is why we do gender-free productions once in a while.
Or maybe because cases where the entire cast is gender-free like this promotion are rare.
With the blackout, I quickly changed costumes.
"I didn't know it would be this busy."
The staff joked with smiles.
"You've worn dresses often before, right?"
"I'm Lola. But a dress like this is my first time."
After that, the musical continued.
Elisabeth saying she wants to wander like a gypsy toward her father Max, and Max scolding her, asking if she isn't better than her sister Nene.
In the next number, she walks a tightrope alone at a family gathering, falls, and makes eye contact with Tod for the first time.
I feel this every time I play the lead, but it's incredibly busy.
The scene shifts to Bad Ischl, and when Joseph hands me a necklace, I had to act immature, saying it's only heavy.
"Quickly, here's the crown."
I put on the crown and immediately went up on stage with Nuna.
The next numbers were *All Questions Asked*, *She Doesn't Belong Here*, *The Last Dance*.
A scene where I had to show an immature side purely through acting, without Elisabeth's lines or songs.
Spinning round and round following Tod's gesture among the crow-like angels of death... Done!
Even so, to express that I choose Joseph, I approached and stood by Joseph's side.
As expected, I think Sisi really did choose life over death.
"...April 24, 1854. I hereby declare the union of these two people."
Was there originally a line like this?
When I looked ahead, a priest—not an actor I knew—was standing there.
"...What are you doing?"
Who are you to be holding my hand?
Where did Nuna go, and who is this man...
"Sisi?"
Right, that is my role.
I immediately looked around, trying my best to assess the situation.
What is this?
Where did the audience go?
What came into view was a space that looked like a cathedral, a strange man holding my hand, and Westerners watching us in old military uniforms and dresses that looked like something out of a fairy tale.
My brain must have overloaded; my vision began to blur, and the world tilted.
"Her Majesty the Empress has collapsed!"