The grand communal hall of the Academy was transford. The stage was brightly lit, and the seats were filled to the brim; students, professors, and even so council mbers who had returned for the evening’s main attraction—the drama competition—were in attendance.
The air buzzed with energy as the C Class finally took the stage to perform their play.
The plot was a classic fairytale trope: a virtuous, beautiful heroine, a handso prince, and the inevitable cruel, jealous family mbers.
Below the stage, in the packed audience seats, three figures were engaged in a losing battle against hysterics.
Blaze, Aeron, and even the usually expressionless Zenon were slumped over, desperately holding their hands over their mouths.
Their faces had gone alarmingly red, and tears were freely flowing from their eyes.
They were trying far too hard to stifle their laughter, which was shaking their whole bodies.
Lenore, however, was not laughing. She was fuming in barely controlled rage, her eyes narrowed at the stage.
The reason for their contrasting, extre reactions was singular: Grey.
Grey was on the stage, imrsed in his role—a role that was neither hero nor formidable villain, but a completely different gender.
He was playing Grizelda, the Ugly Stepsister who was consud by jealousy.
Grey, usually a picture of masculine intensity and stoicism, was a sight to behold. He was clad in a gaudy, ill-fitting gown that exaggerated his muscular fra, and his face was layered with thick, purposefully unflattering makeup—a heavy brow, exaggerated crooked lipstick, and a fake, prominent mole.
In the current scene, the ’Prince’ (played by a nervous C Class recruit) was openly praising the ’Heroine’ (a surprisingly good actress from C Class) while completely ignoring Grey’s desperate attempts to garner his attention.
Grey, channeling the full frustration of the System’s ridiculous mission and three days of manual labor, was delivering his lines with a dramatic, booming voice that completely ruined the delicate tone of the play.
"Hmph! Why should she receive all the complints for her delicate disposition?" Grey-as-Grizelda sneered, hiking up his ridiculous skirt with a flourish.
"I, too, possess... refined calves! And an aura cultivation stage far superior to hers, I might add!"
The deliberate contrast between Grey’s intense aura and his silly performance, coupled with the terrible costu and overly dramatic gestures, was why Blaze, Aeron, and Zenon were dissolving into silent convulsions of suppressed laughter.
Lenore, on the other hand, was silently planning murder.
"That fucking drama leader. I’ll pull his intestines out."
That was her man, the fearso warrior, reduced to a cross-dressing joke for the entertainnt of the entire Academy.
The stage glowed, but the true spectacle was Grey’s commitnt to absurdity.
His character, Grizelda, the jealous ugly stepsister, had just delivered the jarringly out-of-place line about her "refined calves" and "superior aura cultivation."
On the stage, the ’Heroine’ looked appropriately distressed, while the ’Prince’ looked genuinely terrified, clearly wondering if Grizelda would decide to settle the romantic dispute with an aura strike.
Grizelda was supposed to be weeping gently in the background as the lovers reconciled. Grey, however, interpreted ’weeping’ as a full-body, over-the-top theatrical collapse.
He threw himself onto a fainting couch that was far too delicate for his musculature.
"Alas! Cursed is my fate!" Grey-as-Grizelda wailed, his deep voice cracking comically as he tried to hit a high note.
"To be rejected for a woman whose defense stat is clearly inferior to my own!"
"One day...one day definitely, I’ll burn you and wipe you out of existence system. All because of your fucking mission...my months of hard work of uphelding my image...flushed down the drain.." Grey was weeping inside.
He was given a perfectly useless role of the prince’s guard standing at the back without a dialogue, but calamity struck just then.
There were only two roles where a girl was needed, and one of them had to go missing right before the play, and all the others were playing important roles, except Grey, thus, this humiliating task fell upon him.
He was about to reject imdiately, but just then the system ding crushed all his hope, leading to the present situation.
Now, the audience had gone from polite interest to outright hilarity.
A ripple of uncontrollable snorting laughter spread through the front rows.
Blaze, unable to bear the sight of Grey’s massive fra draped pathetically over the couch, let out a loud, wet snort that sounded like a warthog clearing its throat.
Aeron tried to cover it up with a dramatic, exaggerated cough, but he instantly devolved into a fit of silent, shoulder-shaking spasms.
Zenon’s iron control finally snapped. A single, distinct, quiet "Hrk!" escaped him, and then he buried his face into the back of the seat in front of him.
The sight of the stone-faced Zenon actually laughing sent fresh waves of hilarity through the nearby students.
Lenore gripped the seat cushion so tightly the fabric nearly tore. She was vibrating with a silent, furious energy, her internal mantra being, "If we don’t win, I will make that leader suffer."
The scene continued as Grizelda attempted one final, desperate seduction attempt.
Ignoring the Prince, she directed her focus onto the handso, muscular ’Royal Guard’ (played by another C Class student).
Grizelda sidled up to the Guard, batting her heavily painted eyelashes. "Tell , handso sentinel," she purred in that booming tenor voice. "Do you enjoy a partner who is... structurally robust? How am I any less than her huh? Am I not beautiful? Am I not the one you’d fall in love at first sight huh?" Grey delivered the dialogue with puppy like eyes, completely betraying his testosterone filled manly features.
The Royal Guard, completely unnerved by Grey’s proximity and the sight of his bulging arms in a silk sleeve, broke character entirely.
He stamred: "Y-Your... Your Highness, I—I must check the ramparts!" and bolted off the stage in genuine fear and also to laugh out loud backstage.
The crowd finally lost it. The entire hall exploded in thunderous laughter and applause, not because the play was good, but because the disastrous absurdity of Grey’s performance was undeniably entertaining.
The final act was rcifully brief. The Heroine and the Prince shared a quick kiss, and the jealous stepsisters were banished (Grizelda giving one last, dramatic glare to the audience).
The final curtain dropped to a standing ovation, not of respect for the narrative, but of grateful relief for the sheer codic relief.
As the curtain rose for the final bow, Grey was seen straightening his ridiculous skirt, a faint, exhausted smile on his face.
He had endured the humiliation, and he had certainly fulfilled the "drama section" requirent.
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