When I was a child, 'Loveless' was a play. A play for small theaters, I should say. I suppose it was popular as far as unpopular plays go, but until I saw it I didn't move in theatrical circles, so I wouldn't know. For that matter, I didn't exactly move in any circles. I stayed in my room, went to mandatory parties hosted by my father, and went on equally mandatory "outings" with my many and varied bodyguards. Up until my fifteenth birthday, that's all they were. Understand that there is a sizeable difference between having a bodyguard, who could have come from anywhere with or without any qualifications, and having a Turk – let alone a team of Turks.
But before I had Turks, I had bodyguards, and my favorite thing to do with them was get them fired. My second favorite thing to do was make fun of them. Although collectively they were a grim, robotic bunch, the occasional light-hearted one would arrive. Of course, I would try to annoy him and get him fired just like the rest, but my days were admittedly more fun when my bodyguard had a sense of humor.
If you're wondering how the hell a friendly bodyguard has anything to do with a popular unpopular play, well, I'm coming to that.
Not long before my fifteenth birthday, one week after my old bodyguard had been fired, a new one came. He was an older man with graying hair who smoked too much (as many of my protectors did), and his name was Dempsey.
One usual Sunday, Dempsey made a decision that must have seemed harmless at the time: he decided to tell me that my derisive impressions of him were actually very good, and had I considered becoming an actor?
The thought that I could do something other than eventually take over the company had never occurred to me, and I was very impressionable, so I demanded that Dempsey take me to see real actors on stage. We went to a fairly small theater not two blocks from headquarters to see a rendition of a play called "The Shoemaker", I believe. I tried very hard to pay attention, but before long my eyes began to wander, and they wandered over the walls, which were made of old brick and plastered with posters from other plays. As I took in the titles and pictures on each, I evaluated them: "The Song-Lady of the South", with a picture of a country girl singing, joyous expression and all. Boring. "Forgive and Forget", with a young man putting his arms around an elderly couple, presumably his parents. Stupid.
My eyes connected to the next picture like magnets. It was this: another girl looking sadly at a gold locket on a chain. The title, of course, was Loveless.
Initially, the only reason I was interested was the girl – she had dark hair, and she was pale and slim. With that sad look on her face, she seemed much more real than the blonde on the other poster. Besides, I wanted all the attention that the audience was now giving to the cast I had barely noticed.
I stayed seated when most stood to clap, staring at that girl. Dempsey was telling me to get up, we had to go, but I just sort of silently protested and pointed to the poster.
"We can see it tomorrow," he said, misunderstanding. I settled for that.
The next day I was terribly excited; I put on one of my favorite suits and slicked my hair back – I didn't go through this much trouble for most of my father's dinner parties.
The theater was quite empty, Dempsey explained that the people who usually came to this theater were from "the city below" or poorer sections of the plate, and rags-to-riches stories were much more interesting to them than love stories. At that time, I had never been to the slums, and I didn't know how bad there were; I really only knew the word.
I was fully attentive throughout the entire play, enthralled by the depth of the characters and the talent of the actors. Certainly, some of them suffered from a lack of any talent at all: for example, the main female character (Laila) was a teacher, and she had a student who attempted to help her through her through her problems with the main male character (Clay). The student's name was Sam. I couldn't help but notice that, despite the fact that Laila's actress was exquisite and Clay's was at least decent, the boy who played Sam was terrible. I picked Clay's performance apart too, but he was a fair actor. Far superior to Sam, anyway. Clay was the part I set my sights on, you see, so I had to make him atrocious for myself. That night, still dazzled by the play, I set out to steal away his job, and his Laila – onstage, that is.
I might've been a little self-centered.
Anyway, I got out of my rooms easily enough (it was never very hard, since every guard I had slept in a little room off the entrance of my quarters until they were replaced by Turks; they didn't bother to actually guard me), and made my way to the street level with caution. I had long since learned by experience that very few security guards enjoyed their jobs, and most of them slept during the night shift. I would have done the same; loss of a low-paying ShinRa job was hardly a loss at all. As the President's son, let me assure you that in some cases, no job at all would be preferable.
Anyway – I left the headquarters around midnight and wandered down to Main Street. I'd done this before, but it never seemed to get less threatening - especially to a boy, as you can imagine, of thin physique, dressed in an expensive suit with blond hair combed neatly back.
Nevertheless, I made my way to the theater, drifting in and out of the streetlights as I drifted in and out of confidence: was it worse to face the whores (yes, I would have used that word then) and leering teenagers in the light, or the things unseen that lurked in the dark? Thankfully, it wasn't farther than a block.
I shoved open the backdoor (it is possibly worth mentioning that the front door looked exactly like the backdoor, that is, heavy and in need of paint) and peered inside. The lights were on in this particular stairwell, and three people – I estimated them to be about sixteen – were sitting and talking. One of them had a cigarette, but on the whole they didn't look too dangerous.
"Need somethin'?" slurred the only girl in the trio.
"Uh…I-I want to, um, be in the theater," I stammered.
The two boys glanced at each other; I got the impression that this was not the way one normally started an acting career. The girl also looked a little bewildered. "Well," she said slowly, "You gotta talk to Miss Poret, she does all the important stuff." She pointed down the stairs.
I nodded and mumbled a thank you, unsure of whether or not they'd heard me. I didn't really care, anyway.
Downstairs was a busy place, full of costume racks and boxes of props and most of all actors, digging through aforementioned racks and boxes, while laughing and joking with each other. Miss Poret's door, adorned with a piece of yellow paper bearing her name, swung heavily open.
From a cluttered desk in the middle of a cluttered room, Miss Poret glanced up. She wore a lot of makeup; I remember because I finally decided that she wore so much that it must have made her look worse. Nevertheless, she seemed a cheerful type. "Something I can do for you?" she asked brightly, folding her hands. Her fingernails were too long and too perfect to be real, and they gleamed red.
"My name is Rufus, and I, uh," I said. Before I could continue, she prompted:
"Want to join the junior theater? We've got three-"
"I want to be an actor!" I blurted. And then, in a more subdued voice, "in 'Loveless'." I hate chatty people, no matter how cheery they are.
Her stare went from blank and comical to hard and knowledgeable. I think she was trying to give me one of those piercing stares, though, and it was failing badly. Her eyes were much too ordinary to begin with.
"Loveless, huh?" she said. She fiddled with a coffee mug containing pencils and paperclips absently. "This could be a lucky break for me… I'm not exactly thrilled about the recent performances." She paused and chewed a fake fingernail. "Some of our actors…aren't so good, these days. I want to bring in fresh audiences, but nobody wants to see a bad actor ruin a good play, you know?" I nodded. Whatever. "And it is a good play." She was silent for a minute, and then she asked, "Who did you have in mind, for a part?"
"Clay!" This, again, in a burst of energy, but it was followed by no apologetic tone. I could give a damn good piercing stare, and I was at that moment fixing her with it. Her lips (perfectly outlined in a shade of pink that just clashed with the shade that filled them in) tightened into a hard line, and without looking she grabbed a sheet of paper and tossed it at me. I didn't catch it, though not for lack of trying.
"Read Sam," she said as I stooped to pick up the paper, "with feeling. Sympathy for Laila."
I was suspicious of her intentions (after all, I was expecting to read Clay's lines), but I read anyway. "Miss Laila," I said, turning to the empty space next to me, "you need to think this over." The paper said Sam drums his fingers on the desk and sighs; I pretended to tap my fingers on a desk, then leaned forward on it and sighed, burying my face in my hand. "It's just not as simple as you think, Miss-"
"Stop."
I stood straight, grinning inside and looking anxiously out. Miss Poret was smiling in a way that only a nice woman with too much makeup can.
"You're on," she said.
I protested, "But you didn't hear me do Clay-"
"I know." She bent over to reach deep into her desk, produced a thick script and tossed that at me. It hit me in the chest and fell on the floor. "You're Sam. Just as a trial, of course, or an understudy. We already have a Sam." She sort of mumbled the last part, like 'we already have one but he's not worthy of my appreciation'.
After a moment of joint happiness and disappointment, I stooped for the second time and mumbled "thank you", also for the second time. Miss Poret beamed at me.
She winked. "No problem, Sam."
I was about to turn and leave, and suddenly remembered to ask: "when are rehearsals?"
"Five to eight on Tuesdays and Thursdays, showtime's at eight every Sunday night."
Of course, I couldn't leave the headquarters any earlier than ten on any night, so now I had a problem. "I-I can't make that," I admitted. "Not before ten…er, thirty at night." I think I was blushing.
"Why not? You're here, aren't you? It's two in the morning on a Sunday night, um, Monday morning. Can't be school's the reason."
Ah, I understood it then. All of these younger people in the play were from the slums; most didn't go to school at all.
"Well, no, that's not the reason." I hesitated. "You see, I live at ShinRa and-"
"Look, we can't just change schedules for ya, dear, I don't care if you're the President of ShinRa." She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.
"I'm his son," I offered weakly.
Apparently she did care, because she suddenly looked up with great interest, and appraised my suit. I took out a wad of money from my pocket and started to thumb through it idly. "I believe you," she said at length.
"Oh, thank you-"
"But – ShinRa is going to pay me and my actors for the inconvenience, y'got it?" she said sternly. "Or no act. I'm gonna need three thousand gil to make up for this."
"Yes, absolutely!" I lied cheerfully. Three thousand gil was steep for a change in schedule; I wondered where she'd spend all that money and whether her downtrodden actors would ever see it. "Thanks again. So…when?"
She tilted her head and squinted one eye, clicking her fingernails on the arm of her chair. "Mmmm… make it eleven Tuesdays and Thursdays, showtimes eleven on Saturdays. Saturdays now, got that? It wasn't that popular, but maybe if we got some better actors" – she nodded at me – "and we put it on a popular night it'll generate a little more. But bring me money, y'hear?" she said the last part sharply, and I nodded. Lying was so natural to me it was like getting up in the morning.
I ran home, not to avoid the late night people, but because I didn't know exactly when things woke up at the HQ. I'd never stayed out later than two, which is to say that it was like I'd never left by 2:05. It was 2:33 when I reached the maintenance door, and it would take me about fifteen minutes total to get back into bed.
Of course, I made it, and I fell asleep promptly.
Tuesday was one giant daydream, with brief interruptions by my tutor, who got so angry with my silence that he left with one lesson untaught. Like I cared. I could've done anything in the world as President ShinRa's illustrious son, even then I knew it, and I was prepared to take full advantage. At any rate, evening came and went, and I left HQ like I had Sunday to go to my first rehearsal. The streets were just as dangerous, but that night I was confident. I was an actor.