#Neuvillette is dead. Childe delivering the news

[predvestnik]

I can't begin to describe how chaotic this single game screenshot is.

[apopcornkernel]

fontaine phantom of the opera au

arlecchino as the phantom, furina and neuvillette as the new owners of the opera, lynette as christine, lyney as raoul (ish?), wriothesley as the persian

very long post ahead oops

when furina and neuvillette take the opera from its previous owner egeria, they don't take her warnings seriously. after all, it's ridiculous. an invisible man? a box always reserved? idiotic! there's business to be made!

but then the letters come, demanding box number five. accede to my requests, says the opera ghost, or there will never be peace between us. a janitor is found dead, hanging in the back rooms. furina is shaken, but they forge on.

and then it happens. their primadonna, navia, is taken out of commission in a horrible spectacle—and there is no one to take her place but little lynette, one of the opera troupe orphans.

lynette is a marvel. she sings like the voice of God has possessed her, and the opera rises to its feet. she sings, and sings, and then by the end of the week—she is gone.

her brothers come frantic to furina and neuvillette's office. lyney, especially, is out of his mind with worry. it's completely uncharacteristic for lynette to run away—so it only means she's been taken. but where? how?

lyney tells furina and neuvillette something interesting: all her life, lynette's been taking lessons under her angel of music. this angel of music, he says, is strict but kind, ambitious but caring. the angel of music has been like a father in the absence of their own.

but in the wake of lynette's disappearance their father has gone completely silent as well. lyney fears the worst—lyney has seen the worst almost come to pass, and though he is certain their father is not that kind of person, he will not risk his sister's wellbeing on that.

the next day, the opera ghost sends her demands. my box, she writes, for the girl. my francs as well. with their best tenor lyney threatening to leave and take half the people with him, furina and neuvillette have no choice but to acquiesce.

furina insists on delivering the envelope herself, and that is where she errs. she steps into box no. 5, all bravado, and when a voice like silk whispers along her nape she nearly screams.

"well met, miss furina." the ghost's eyes are red in the dark. "you've kept me waiting."

afterwards, furina will refuse to tell her co-manager about what transpired. but she comes back skittering, jumpy, with her nails bitten to the quick. neuvillette draws his own conclusions.

lynette is returned to them a day after furina's encounter with the ghost. she won't talk either, but she emphatically denies any question of unwillingness, and will only say that her father had been kinder than she'd imagined. lyney doesn't completely buy it of course, but with lynette's return is some money, labelled "for freminet's cough" in the elegantly curling script that delivers the opera ghost's threats (though he does not know this), and for the moment he is appeased.

and then! lynette is taken again :) the managers are at a complete loss. lynette was poised to sing a solo part at their next performance, so what are they to do now? lyney is going mad, and freminet has buried himself into his work, won't talk, won't look anyone in the eye.

all is lost, it seems. until one of the opera patrons approach lyney, and confesses knowledge of both lyney's father and the opera ghost.

they are one and the same, the duke of meropide says. they are my long-lost sister arlecchino.

lyney knows wriothesley's story well, as does the entirety of fontaine. as a youth he was convicted of murder, five men and two women, and then sentenced to prison, before he managed to work his way up to becoming its warden, and then earning dukedom from the king.

but wriothesley tells him now that in that wretched house unfit for any child, he latched onto a girl with whom he nourished a bond that grew to be stronger than any family he might still have. wriothesley tells him that when he'd killed their captors, arlecchino had killed with him.

she'd fled the country when he'd been caught, which he did not begrudge her. after he was released he traced rumors of her as far as a merry band of traveling fools who were anything but foolish; yet this lead, too, had come to a dead end, for she had left it years prior.

and then—the opera ghost. he'd heard of mme. furina and m. neuvillette's awful business, and lynette's disappearance, and all of it had clicked suddenly into place.

lyney, mad with preemptive grief, blames wriothesley's inaction for causing his twin's taking. wriothesley swears he will do anything to help lyney get his sister back. he already has a lead on arlecchino's hiding place, he says, lurking in the bowels of the opera. lyney makes him take them there immediately, and thus the two set off in search for their sisters.

meanwhile, on the other side of things: furina is haunted by the voice, the laugh of the ghost, sending shivers down her spine. no room in the opera is safe, and the only thing that convinces her she's not insane is the red crosses of the ghost's eyes: that is real, that is real.

one time she's petting one of the opera cats and the opera ghost emerges from the shadow. it is the first time she's ever seen her, and she is so beautiful that it is terrible to behold.

"how cute," the ghost says. "two little kitties."

furina backs away. "what do you want."

"oh, a lot of things. this opera house. a better harpsichord. caviar." she smiles. "you."

furina's so scared that her heart feels like it's going to beat out of her chest. "me?"

the ghost's smile widens. "i like your fear, miss furina," she says. "it's so very charming."

and when she advances, furina screams, accidentally throwing the cat in her arms, and runs away.

meanwhile, your regularly scheduled yaoi: lyney and wriothesley have descended into the basement of the opera, following the trail that the duke has painstakingly felt out, over weeks of personal surveillance.

they also do this shit taken straight from the novel:

lyney and wriothesley venture through the phantom's maze and at last make it to the end, but then they are trapped in the room of mirrors, sweltering in a false forest.

and it's unbearable. lyney keeps searching for his sister, his beautiful, beautiful tenor voice giving out with the force of his cries, and wriothesley can't do anything to stop him. the heat is like nothing they've ever experienced and mirages have begun to swim before their eyes. lyney crawls over to what he thinks is water, delirious, but it is only the noose hanging from the iron tree, and wriothesley has to wrench him back despite lyney's fury. the torture goes on and on and on until—