"Loud Speaker"

......

Talk about her

Yuanyuan Manor's reputation is growing by the day. Maybe I should write a guidebook or two about innkeeping.

That way, when new hires come along, they'll learn everything from start to finish. The posture, the vocal style, the stage-blocking details, right away.

Master one skill and you master them all, dear patron. There's real depth to this!

Dear patron, what would you like to know?

That's a long story...

A while back, there was this stubborn old Leithanian guy in La Fantoma who dealt in antiques.

Lady Si went out on a trip that time and somehow got into a spat with him.

That old man insisted that the broken phonograph before him had been singing from hundreds of years ago all the way to the present. It was surely "worn out in body and soul", and should be allowed to retire gracefully.

Lady Si must have been in a good mood that day. She insisted on arguing the opposite. She said whether it wanted to keep singing or not should be up to the phonograph itself.

So with a spark of spirit and a touch of enlightenment, the phonograph became a waregeist. But the first thing it said was: "I want to be human".

I don't remember much of what happened after that. I just recall Lady Si pausing for a moment, and then she must have painted something...

I really don't remember. I'm sorry, dear patron.

Am I the form taken by that waregeist after it changed its appearance? Or am I a bit of spirit that Lady Si traced from it?

I used to care sometimes, and think about it a lot. But now ... real or not, what does it really matter?

All better now, dear patron, I'm just thinking...