"Dramatic conflict refers to the emergence, development, and resolution of contradictions in a play. Most plots revolve around one or more such conflicts," Kitagawa Ryo explained during a break in rehearsal.
"This concept is also common in other types of literature. For example, in the detective novels Shiina likes, there's a conflict between the detective seeking the truth and the criminal trying to hide it. The story unfolds from there."
Shiina tilted her head slightly in confusion. She had only known Kitagawa Ryo for two days, and didn't recall ever mentioning her fondness for detective novels. Still, what he said wasn't wrong, so she simply nodded in agreement.
"So in the original The Little Mermaid, the conflict is that the mermaid saves the prince but can't speak the truth because she sacrificed her voice to the sea witch—she can only watch the prince be with the princess, right?" Karuizawa Kei asked, sitting cross-legged nearby.
"Exactly. That's one of the common methods of creating dramatic tension," Ryo said, writing with a marker on the whiteboard in front of them.
He tapped the board and listed:
1. Let the audience know a secret the characters don't.
2. Make the audience feel the character is on the wrong path.
3. Add a sense of urgency.
"As a classic fairy tale, The Little Mermaid fits all three rules," he continued. "Hans Christian Andersen, as one of the world's greatest fairy tale authors, also embedded many subtle setups worth examining."
Though short even by fairy tale standards, the girls skimmed the original text again. Shiina, the more avid reader, was the first to share her insight.
"Tears," she said, pointing to a line: [One night, while the sisters held hands and surfaced together, the youngest stayed behind, watching them. She seemed about to cry—but mermaids have no tears, and thus felt even more sorrow.]
"The fact that mermaids can't cry is established early on," she said. "A great writer never inserts useless details. In the Twenty Rules of Detective Fiction, it's said that clues must appear earlier in the story."
Shiina bit her pen lightly as she spoke, clearly enjoying the rare experience of discussing books with others.
"I remember in Chinese mythology, mermaids can cry—and their tears are magical," Karuizawa said.
"Right," Ryo nodded. "In Chinese myths, there's the tale: 'Beyond the South Sea, there are mermaids who live like fish and never stop weaving. When they cry, their tears turn into pearls.' Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin also wrote: 'Under the moon over the deep sea, pearls bear tears.'"
"Then why, in The Little Mermaid, emphasize that mermaids can't cry?"
Karuizawa, who couldn't follow the literary references, asked honestly.
"Because sometimes, not being able to cry is even more painful than crying," Shiina answered softly. "Even at the end, when she dissolves into sea foam under the morning sun, she still can't cry."
She hugged the script to her chest and closed her eyes. "Crying is the most direct expression of sadness."
"Every step she takes feels like walking on knives, yet she dances for the prince. She watches him marry someone else, holds the bride's train at the wedding, and finally jumps into the sea and becomes foam—all moments where she should've cried her heart out. But she can't."
Shiina analyzed each passage, trying to uncover Andersen's original intent. While the scenery in the tale is imaginative and vivid, the emotions are restrained, often only hinted at.
"And the fact that she can't speak or cry also drives the plot," she continued. "A key element of tragedy is misunderstanding."
"Misunderstandings create dramatic conflict, and it's only through conflict that characters reveal their true selves and stories move forward."
"She saved the prince, but couldn't tell him. She can't cry, and always appears happy before him, always dancing for him. So of course, he never understands how she truly feels."
"It's a tiny setup, but it perfectly foreshadows the ending."
Shiina exhaled. "It's... masterful."
Her deep violet eyes sparkled as she opened them, as if she had just made an important decision.
"I want to revise the script."
She eagerly flipped through the script in her hands. "In Greek mythology, the sirens sometimes appeared as mermaids. Their singing lured sailors to their doom. There's even a similar scene in The Little Mermaid:
[At dusk, the five sisters would rise, hand in hand, singing more beautifully than any human. When a storm approached, they would float before the ships and sing to comfort the sailors, telling them not to fear sinking—because the sea was a lovely home. But the sailors didn't understand their lyrics.]"
Ryo immediately caught on. "Go on," he said.
"It's like performing a rain ritual and then it rains, so people believe the ritual caused it. We observe events, then look back and imagine cause-and-effect. That's human logic—and our curse. We seek patterns to feel secure."
Encouraged, Shiina stood and wrote keywords on the whiteboard:
"The mermaids sing when storms come, trying to comfort doomed sailors. But to the sailors, their songs seem to cause the storm."
Karuizawa finally grasped it. "So you're saying the prince's shipwreck..."
"Yes," Shiina nodded. "The mermaid sang for the prince out of love, but that same night, he suffered a shipwreck."
"Given the legends he'd heard from her sisters, the prince likely thought her song was a sea witch's curse."
"In truth, she was his savior," she finished, cheeks flushed with excitement.
"Clinging to a false truth is more tragic than never knowing the truth at all," she said. "He treats the true savior as an enemy and gives his heart to a fraud. And he never realizes someone gave everything for him."
"...Amazing," Ryo finally said, realizing why Shiina had so few friends before high school. Kids didn't usually discuss alternate narrative timelines.
Truly, literature girls were mysterious creatures.
He glanced at Karuizawa, who looked completely lost.
"Wait," she suddenly interrupted. "When was the princess ever a fraud?!"
Why is that what she latched onto?!
Ryo sighed and shifted to a more comfortable position in the corner while the two girls launched into yet another debate over whether the princess or the mermaid was the rightful heroine.
Surprisingly, the argument didn't last long.
"Actually, the real problem is the prince," they said in unison.
"He says he likes the mermaid, then marries someone else."
"He has a fiancée, but still falls for a stranger."
"Scumbag!"
"Scumbag!"
-------------------------------------
Seven days later.
"Final scene of The Little Mermaid, rehearsal starts now!"
The mermaid's sisters had traded their hair to the sea witch in exchange for a dagger. They surfaced and said to their youngest sister:
"Take it—look how sharp it is! Before the sun rises, you must plunge it into the prince's heart. When his warm blood spills onto your feet, your legs will fuse together into a tail again. You'll become a mermaid once more, and return to our world beneath the sea.
Do it quickly! Return to us! Can't you see the red light in the sky? In a few minutes, the sun will rise—and then you'll disappear forever!"
The sisters, believing they were saving her, enchanted the prince and princess into a deep sleep. In their minds, this was the only way to bring their youngest sister back—the greatest form of love they knew was familial.
Her steps were unsteady.
Her senses blurred—was it an illusion? Each step no longer stabbed like walking on knives, but felt soft, like stepping on clouds.
She pulled back the purple curtain of the royal tent. The beautiful princess lay sleeping with her head on the prince's chest. Dawn's light began to brighten the sky.
She looked at the dagger, then at the prince. Even in sleep, he murmured the name of his bride. His world contained only her.
A sharp wave of jealousy pierced the mermaid's heart.
"The church bells are ringing, and the mermaid can only watch~"
"The engagement news has spread, and the mermaid can only watch~"
"The bishop's blessing has been read, and the mermaid can only watch~"
"The mermaid dressed in silk and gold must carry the bride's train~"
"Blind and voiceless, the mermaid must dance for the wedding of the prince and princess~"
These painful memories were like a missing tooth—bare and empty.
Ignoring it was a hollow ache. Touching it was a stabbing pain.
She plunged the dagger into the prince's chest.
The sharp blade pierced layer after layer of fine clothing, sliced pale skin, and buried itself in his heart.
With each inch the blade drove in, the mermaid's own heart ached even more.
Blood gushed out.
Unlike the cold sea, the blood lapping at her ankles was warm.
It slowly wrapped around her scarred feet.
A black mist rose.
She could feel her legs fusing. In a few minutes, she would have a tail again. She would become a mermaid.
Her heart trembled.
Drip... drip... was something falling?
She snapped back to reality. It had all been a fantasy.
[But I was the one who saved you. The one you love should have been me.]
Her hands trembled. She could barely hold the dagger. It clattered to the floor.
All she had to do was stab the heart of the man who betrayed her, walk out of the room, and leap into the sea.
She would reclaim her 300-year lifespan and be reunited with her loving sisters.
Shiina Hiyori took a step forward.
One step, two steps, three. Just three steps away.
Recalling the first moment she fell in love, she turned her head.
Her vision blurred with tears. Her sobs scattered on the wind.
She looked up. The sky was shifting from night to morning.
She pressed the dagger to his heart, leaned close, and sang to him—a song of a girl in love.
There was crying.
Whose voice was it? In the dark, there was a flicker of light.
The prince opened his eyes, confusion swirling in his dark irises.
The song by his ear was distant, yet so close. Just like that time...
The storm, the screams, the deep sea and endless night.
The monsters of the sea sang.
He remembered the captain's desperate cries during the shipwreck:
"Sea witches! These monsters brought disaster and storms!"
The prince screamed.
Frantically, he flailed to sit up. His hands scrambled—and found the dagger pressed to his chest.
In a panic, he seized it and thrust it at his nightmare.
Suddenly, silence.
The blade didn't meet flesh.
The first light of dawn had spilled across the room.
He had stabbed a cloud of sea foam.
-------------------------------------
Although Kitagawa Ryo had already known about Shiina Hiyori's talent for rewriting scripts to suit her own tastes—having co-starred with her in numerous wildly altered plays during a previous simulation, some so dramatically changed Shakespeare himself might have risen from his grave—it wasn't until this version of The Little Mermaid unfolded before him that he fully realized her potential.
It was a talent honed through years of reading: a mastery of language and the ability to stir emotion.
"Truly impressive," Ryo said, admiring the prop dagger in his hand. "If you can keep up this level of performance for tomorrow's assessment, we should be in the clear."
"Yay!" Karuizawa Kei cheered, raising her hand in victory. Shiina Hiyori clapped along beside her.
"Let's take a commemorative photo together," suggested the troupe's official photographer, who had come to the formal stage rehearsal and now gestured at the three of them with his camera.
"What kind of pose should we do?" Kei perked up immediately at the mention of photos and dragged Hiyori off to a corner to whisper conspiratorially.
After a week of intense rehearsals, the two girls had grown quite close. When they returned, even the usually reserved Shiina wore a faint, mischievous smile.
"Ready?"
"Three, two, one!"
"Cheese—"
Just as the photographer pressed the shutter, both girls suddenly pulled out prop daggers from their sleeves and, in perfect sync, stabbed toward Kitagawa Ryo from either side.
"Scum. Bag. Prince!"
The two girls burst into laughter.
Ryo dramatically collapsed onto the floor in mock agony.
He stared up at the stark white ceiling, but his vision was quickly overtaken by the two smiling faces peering down at him.
For the first time, a strange warmth welled up inside him.
Outside the window, the faint green shadows of trees danced in the wind. The supple branches swayed gently, and dazzling sunlight filtered through the budding leaves, scattering dappled light across the glass.
This year, spring had come a little early.
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