“Everyone in place? Good, Act 2, Scene 1, starting in 5…”

Director Ttio called out from the audience seats, a good majority of Hanako Hall’s theatre troupe scattered around him.

Hatsuko was seated at the rear of the hall, lounging against the showy and tasteless red wall, her eyes locked on me as if she were peering through a telescope and I was the sole star in this galaxy of a stage.

Emiko was in the third row from the front, her thick black glasses in her hands as she cleaned the lenses. She pushed the fringe of her matching black hair out of the way as she returned the glasses to their spot on her face.

Seijun sat next to her, more curious at her fidgeting than the stage. He prompted her with a tap on the arm, but she waved him off with a reminder that the focus is on the show.

On me.

“4…”

A few of the support staff had made their way to the audience seats too, sitting in groups that coincided with the same groups that worked together on assigned tasks. Not all of them were down here though, some were continuing to work, while others were managing the lighting for this practice scene.

The support staff were dreadfully underappreciated for their work. They had the hardest jobs, managing and ensuring all the background scenes were completed on time was a full-time affair. That’s not to say the actors aren’t pulling their weight, but there is a reason most of them are part-timers or volunteers.

And the few that aren’t? Well, they’re the ones who aren’t just here on the mandatory weekend rehearsals, but also on the weekday afternoons when Hanako Hall closes for the day and opens for the practising night.

Those are the people who have hedged their bets against living a normal life. Except in this case the bet is made of talent, luck and persistence, placed on the hopes of fame, wealth, and acknowledgement.

Those are the standard goals we assume people have in these positions, but are they the true goals? They’re not mine, so perhaps they’re also not Emiko’s? Or Seijun’s? Or…

“3…”

Kaede Esumi’s.

She was opposite me, dressed in plain clothes and standing before me energised and waiting with her eyes wide open and her stare on me.

There was no challenge in her gaze, no battle or desire to beat me in this acting world. All I could see, and all I could ever see, is that same desire to act that lives inside me.

But hers… hers was uncontrollable, it filled her up like a spraying firehose into a bathtub. The water level is rising and there is no Iwabuchi Watergate to drain the height that has already surpassed the dangerous 7.7-metre threshold.

No longer a goddess, now just a storm.

Far worse than anything Tokyo has ever seen before.

“2…”

She closed her eyes, and her stance shifted, transforming her from a living, breathing person to a standing corpse, empty and vacant with her body language muted.

The lights begin to dim, the audience lost under a blanket of darkness that claws against the protective bubble of the stage, the lights above ensuring that we, and we alone remain in perception.

This was no battle, but it was a test.

Am I that same emotionless actress who stood on this stage two weeks ago? The one unable to do anything without Seina holding my hand, the crutch tucked under my arm as I limped through this scene in failure.

Or has my improvement bore fruit? All those afternoons of practice, and nights spent in research, and days tailored to performances. It all leads to this; do I possess the ability to stand toe-to-toe with her, not as a black hole or idealisation of myself, but as me?

As the actress I strive to be.

“1…”

The stage began to transform. The smooth browns of the wooden flooring below morphed into the rough tarmac and cracked pavement of a Japanese backstreet forgotten by the progress-obsessed advancement of the futuristic city of Tokyo-07, one of the 9 sections that make up this new Tokyo of the 22nd century.

The lighting suffered the same fate, altered into a dim white that flickered in and out as the degraded tall streetlamp it came from was shaken by the harsh wind. We were sheltered from its polluted gale; the surrounding aged homes that protected us kept the worst of its toxicity away, luck did the rest.

Next came the background, the red curtains vanished, the audience disappeared much the same, and the roof melted away to reveal the smokey and ash-red sky, not even the clouds were safe from this illusion of a faraway year, turned from fluffy white into mustard gas yellow that clumped together like digested flesh spat out from the machine of man that built this world.

However, it was no machine that built this fantasy of a world, but Kaede Esumi.

And she has just opened her eyes.

“Action!”

Her presence was all-encompassing, those eyes of hers switched from milky hazel to piercing red with all the ease of a magazine change loaded into a roaring heavy machine gun; lethal and unignorable without doubt.

The colour of scarlet bled into her previously shoulder-length chestnut brown hair, reconstructing it from grace and vivacity into desperation and disorientation that laced through her newly made waist-length curly hair that held the colour of red in it like blood on a handkerchief.

The woman before me was no longer a storm.

Kaede Esumi; She was a modern-day Ship of Theseus, tear her down, build her back up, replace her with Jinko Akemi, with an actress, and ask yourself, is this person before you still the same as before?

No, she was Jinko Akemi, the daughter of Dr. Akemi, and the DNA template for the clone Eighty-Three, and all around her was the storm, its rain crashing down in unending torrential landfall.

Barely a second in, and she’d already proven her point. Where's the need for special effects when the illusion of creation lies in the palm of her hands?

“Who are you?”

The voice spoke coldly, a rough edge that threatened to rip my skin into pieces like a paper shredder, yet it was those red eyes that drew my attention.

An attraction of gravity that pulled you in and refused to let you go. However, in the next second, it pushes you away; a contradictory inversion of gravitational forces, trapped on the outer ring yet sucked into the maw at the same time. Forever trapped between opposing reactions that should never occur at the same time.

An explosive shockwave rang out from one of the underground refab manufactories that sat beyond the horizon, its concussive boom the signal of further expansion deeper down into the crust of the Earth. A smokestack of silver rose into the sky, the waste gases of TI-pO explosive powder that glittered with minuscule metal shades capable of turning the throat of anyone unfortunate enough to inhale it into a pincushion.

Jinko took a step closer, her form fully illuminated by the flickering white streetlight above, its bulb last replaced over three decades ago and left rotting in this forgotten neighbourhood all these years.

She was filthy, mud mixed with water and laced with spilling blood that leaked from her wounds like coolant from a burst pipe. I knew where she had come from, the script spoke of her struggle, but it never showed it, too violent and not relevant enough, it’d be discovered later though.

It wasn’t just an outtake pipe that spat out toxic sludge and waste products out into the stale brown ocean. Sure, that was the final exit she escaped from, her body pushing through the razor-sharp wire that had gotten trapped in the pipe, but never blocked it enough to warrant a maintenance bot clearing it.

There was more to it, the mystery of where she was for four years, and just why there was a body to be pronounced dead at the scene by the police in the first place. The answer seemed obvious, this was a play with a clone as one of the leads, so surely that’d have something to do with it.

Anyone with a brain can guess that the mess of cloning started this story, but the mystery is barely a fraction of the appeal here, it's the growth, the emotional impact of the character relationships, and I suppose, most importantly, it's the actors.

How well we can sell that emotion.

“Answer me dammit!” She screamed, desperate and confused, her hand tightening around the bleeding wound on her arm as she searched for a respite that did not exist.

Jinko took another step forward, but I did not stagger back like last time, I matched her and inched forward too. Her glare may have been like the headlights of a 4-ton truck barreling down the expressway without a driver, but my expression- no, Eighty-Three’s was equal to an aesthete rediscovering their favourite piece of art in the Louvre.

The last time I was here, I stalled, trapped between my use of Seina and the suffocating presence of Kaede’s acting skills. My voice failed me, and my words recoiled themselves back into my throat where they remained until the scene was brought to a close.

It will not happen again.

“J-Jinko…?”

I dragged the name out, spoken with a tone of shock, confusion, and most importantly, tenderness.

They were sisters, or at least that’s what Eighty-Three had been taught by their father. She knew she was Jinko’s clone, but what does the word clone even mean to someone who lacks the perception of what it means to not be a clone? It falls into the same category of trying to teach a fish what wet is, impossible without taking them out of the environment that taught them that in the first place.

Yet that would kill the fish, and for Eighty-Three? It wouldn’t make a difference, you can’t tear the part that makes a clone a clone and then turn them into a non-clone, nor can you tell them apart from a human, the only thing that stands out about my character is her name, and that can be brushed off with the reasoning of eccentric parents.

So to Eighty-Three, this wasn’t the terrifying meeting of seeing an image of your future self reflected before you in the middle of the night, rain pouring all around you and slowly washing the dried blood off your skin.

This is the meeting of long-lost twins, a chance get-together where one side believed the other was dead, and the second side didn’t even know the other existed.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“How… How do you know my name?” Jinko demanded with a harsh edge to her words, misery and uncertainty stitched into her skin.

She looked the exact same as she did in all those pictures scattered around Eighty-Three’s house. It had been four years since her body was found, yet she was still 16 years old, while Eighty-Three had aged the same as any human and was now 20.

It set a contrast between them and raised a question. In truth, I think this part of the script was written to justify the differences between the actresses playing the two roles, after all, no director could find a pair of actors that looked the same. This way, the small height difference between Kaede and me was easily written away. At the same time, the rest of the appearance, hair and eye colour, as well as facial structure could be brought into line via make-up, lightening, and the simple fact that we were far enough away from the audience that everything below the surface level would be missable as is.

“Why- Why do you look like me?” She continued that hurt and betrayed tone that seeped in through the broken crack of her voice.

She knew the answer, her speech gave that away. It was meant to, of course, to make it easier for the audience to understand. Dr. Akemi’s cloning expertise wasn’t a secret, it was placed front and centre, and thus this interaction is set up so the audience can infer that Jinko is aware of her father’s profession, and from that she can figure out what Eighty-Three is.

It's all a part of bringing Jinko’s character up to speed on the plot, the key interactions in Act 2 are the emotional scenes between the two as they come to terms with the situation, and from there they set up the climax that leads into Act 3.

“I thought you’d died?” I replied, trading a question for a question.

This was in the script- well, partly. I forgot to say her name before speaking, it doesn’t matter too much, but the name is used to build up the scene because by this point the audience has become familiar with it, yet not the person. The use of the name towards the person is what will stand out, it’s alien in a sense, the name ‘Jinko’ has only been used to reference someone already dead in passing conversations or as background knowledge, and yet here she stands, alive and well.

She took a step back, a contrast to how this scene first went. The script was obliged to the letter, her red eyes briefly breaking contact with my own. We were the same appearance-wise, only my character was a few years older, with red hair to red eyes, they all matched. The characters were designed to be as far away from natural humans as possible, it's a subtle nod towards the gene editing abilities that have been refined to a peak in this 22nd century.

I detested it, however.

Not the appearance, I understood that. The reds were distinctive, that was their purpose, to act as the highlight for any marketing and posters. There was only so much you could do in regards to unique character designs in stage work, after all, there is no CGI or post-editing in a live performance, this was as good as you could get without a ten-million yen make-up artist team.

So no, it wasn’t that. My issue was the similarities between the two characters. I hated that they looked the same, copies of one another down to the very DNA.

It reminds me of that face in the mirror, the same one I still wear. It's mine now, fully and totally, but it wasn’t always. And that’s the part that causes me to despise this scene.

The script demands that Eighty-Three welcomes Jinko warmly, that she shows compassion and love towards her newly discovered twin, and on the flip side, it orders Jinko to do the opposite, that she shows disgust, fear and confusion towards the clone.

However, why would I show compassion and love towards a reflection of myself? I am supposed to be Eighty-Three, correct? So if I were Eighty-Three, and I saw a person wearing my face, even if I were the apparent copy, how could I react in any way other than anger?

After all, I’ve already killed Seina, discarded work mode, and burnt them and myself into a single whole. I would never welcome them back as if I missed them, this is my life now, it will always remain my life, and I would rather they both die than give up this new existence of mine to them.

Then why would Eighty-Three?

Short answer, she wouldn’t.

I wouldn’t.

“Stop asking me questions!” Jinko replied, that anguished raised voice coming off her wounded tongue, the frustration of being unaware of everything around her, yet recognising it all the same, “Answer me, please! Why do you look like me? Who are you?”

“I’m Eighty-Three…” My tone was pitched upwards, high and piercing, laced in such a way that you had no idea which direction it would go.

Would it morph into compassion? The script says it should, Eighty-Three reaches out a hand of love and longing, Jinko of fear and scepticism. But it could also become anger, vile and attacking, how dare you return now? Once I have already made this life my own, come to terms with your death, and began living for my desires. You choose now to curse me with your mirrored reflection?

It was off script, so very off script.

“I’m your-” I continued, the correct word was ‘sister’, or maybe it was ‘twin’? I’m not even sure anymore, but it didn’t matter as I’d already chosen my line.

“-replacement.”

Jinko staggered back, and for a moment the illusion faltered, the audience reappeared, I saw the traces of confusion in some faces, and in others I glimpsed intrigue, yet a few more showcased concern.

It was a mixed reaction from the few who knew I’d gone off script and the rest who weren’t even aware of the lines that made up this scene.

“You- you- ugh, who made you? What’s your purpose?” Jinko roared, yet her body became smaller and she took a step back.

A testament to Kaede’s skills as an actress, instead of ending the scene, she had also gone off script and was now improvising her responses all while staying perfectly in character.

“Why are you alive?” I shot back, the very same thing I would ask Seina if she were ever to return, that bloated work mode that she was.

The illusion trembled, it was ripping apart at the seams. Kaede could maintain this deception of a world for as long as we remained on the script, but now that we’ve left it, it was beginning to fail, allowing reality to bleed back in.

I caught a brief look of Director Ttio, his hand set on his chin as he softly tapped it in thought, all the while his eyes were peering directly past the illusion and at me. Not Eighty-Three, or an actress, but me.

There was something in his gaze that I couldn’t quite figure out. It wasn’t anger, or disappointment, or annoyance at my action, but a different emotion entirely.

However, it vanished as he spoke, “Cut!” He declared, the scene evaporating in the next instant, “Good work, you’ve proven your point, Miss Esumi.”

He stood up and turned to the crowd, “We’ve all seen the same thing, any complaints about reducing the special effects for this scene, and for this scene alone?”

No one spoke up in defence, all that remained of the opposition were a few stern nods of acceptance, rather than agreement.

“Great. Everyone can go back to do whatever else they had planned for the day, good luck.” He concluded, his voice signalling the start of a migration out of the stage hall as people went to begin working elsewhere.

Kaede stepped closer to me, drawing within a few inches of my ear, “Seina,” She hummed with a testing smile, “You are aware of what acting is? Please do it next time.” She finished, before continuing past me and down off the stage, not caring for a response from me.

Director Ttio followed up afterwards, calling out in a booming voice much like a drill sergeant, “Seina! Stick to the script in future, it's written that way for a reason.”

I nodded, offering a hum of agreement at the end which seemed to placate him slightly, as he returned the nod and wandered off to focus on whatever other tasks he had to complete this day.

It all left me with this feeling of dissatisfaction. I couldn’t quite place it, but that scene was dreadful, my performance was dreadful, and yet no one was bringing it up. Kaede had one pointed comment, and the Director settled on a simple reminder.

Was that it? Was that all that was expected of me? Some half-decent scene with a trace of emotion was all I needed to give to be awarded a passing grade of mediocracy.

What a fucking disgrace.

I had gone off script, I had put too much of myself into my character and lost sight of her original personality and story, I barely got through two lines before I discarded the rest for an improvisation that completely overlooked the core of the character.

All of that failure, and it was overlooked, and why? Simply because it was a marginal improvement over the first?

I didn’t cast work mode into the void and kill Seina just so I could gain a marginal improvement.

But I also didn’t get rid of them on behalf of acting, I got rid of them in spite of acting. The purpose was to live for myself, with the acknowledgement that losing work mode might set me back a few steps.

Has it set me back? A marginal improvement is still an improvement, and one not over my own skills, but over the peak of what work mode brought to the table. That is to say, even if Hanako Hall expects nothing from me, I have still surpassed what work mode could do in such a short time, does that not mean I could go further in due time?

A black hole fails against a goddess, yet I managed so much more.

Maybe not quite David yet, but the rock just skimmed the target, and the second stone is already in my grasp.

Most of the room had cleared out by now, Hatsuko was still hanging around, her gaze on me as she waited for me to approach for that talk I had requested after the scene.

“Hatsuko-” I began, drawing closer to her.

“That scene was so shit that I’m wondering why I even expected better.” She announced curtly, her true personality coming out now that no one else was in earshot of us.

“I know. Why did nobody say anything about it?”

“Oh, they will. Don’t worry about that, just not right now.” She declared honesty and experience dripping from each of her words. “Do you know what you did wrong?” She asked, seeing my silence.

“I put too much of myself into the character?”

“Yep, you blurred the lines between yourself and your character too much. It's quite common among new actors- usually happens when a person doesn’t understand a character enough- or understands them too well.”

“How can I fix it?”

“Ttio seemed fine with it, so why bother?”

There it was, that instant disregard. This wasn’t a job she had high hopes for, and I wasn’t an actress that she cared for beyond the performance of this play. Appeasement was the sole goal here, and in no world does she care for anything that goes above that.

It all makes me ask that question again, why did she choose me? On that small street, running between the lives of work mode and myself that settled in that apartment and the Ha:Yami Club.

What could she possibly hope to achieve by taking this job on, and handing the lead role over to an amateur?

“Hatsuko.” I called out.

“Seina.” She repeated back to me in the same mocking manner.

“How can I improve?”

She smiled, thin and scheming as if I was a mouse who had finally placed my foot in the trap all for the deception of cheese.

And what was the cheese? Why do I still want to act so badly? There is no longer a work mode Seina to become, that addiction to being her has faded, and all those emotions that can only be experienced in her skin, now freely course through me.

So why? Why is this desire still here? The friction between tectonic plates that have stuck against each other is waning, soon the two will break contact and jump forward shaking the continents above, and what of me? Am I the plates or the land on top?

Has the reason truly changed? The addiction to be Seina has dissolved, but that was the solution, not the cause.

I yearn to be someone else.

The void that I am, perhaps not totally empty, half-filled with Seina, the forge hot enough to combine her into me. But I am still not complete, an emptiness lingers within me, bits of my soul mined out and collected like ore to a foreman.

I may live today, that rush of electric emotions through my veins, and the wanting beat of my heart, but it is not enough. Only the stage can provide; the need to slip into the minds and bodies of characters all to experience a lie created in the illusion of this acting world.

The lie of my life created work mode as I dipped into truth, and now we’re at last whole again. But this whole is not everything, only a fraction.

To become everything, I must become an actress.

To fill this void, a thousand emotions from a thousand characters must be shovelled in.

Man has one life, yet how many does an actor have?

“Hmm, remember that talk we had about Immersion Acting?”

It's not about becoming an actress, or even just becoming a character. It's about completely emptying and refilling yourself with that character. Replacing who you originally were for a facade so perfect it becomes you.

A void could do it easily, no personality to remove from the empty vessel, just a space to fill. But I am no longer a complete void, half-filled as I am, yet would that ever stop me?

Work mode was a bullet compared to the nuclear bomb that Immersion Acting is… but it's also limited to the stage, no crutch to rely on nor emotions to be stolen from me, simply pure and unfettered acting.

A fair trade, but also a brutal one.

“Do you think you could do it?”

To fill this half-empty void that I am.

To truly live, is to act, so yes…

“Yes, I do.”