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Martha, famously known as the “Dancing Princess of the Downtown,” is a woman who lives for love.

Countless are the romantic tales she’s left in her wake. From the sons of noble families to jobless, alcoholic old men—once she falls for someone, she charges straight ahead, blind to everything else, utterly and completely devoted to love.

It doesn’t matter if the target is a priest, another woman’s husband, or even a boy not yet of age.

Her utter lack of restraint often earned her whispered remarks from fellow dancers and working girls alike, said half in envy and half in exasperation: “That woman is so broad-minded she has no boundary,” or “Her striking zone is so wide, it stretches past the horizon.” But Martha, who never cared what anyone thought unless it came from someone she actually liked, was never hurt or even bothered by such gossip.

To her, to love is to live—or rather, it’s like she dances through life as a casual side act while savoring love itself.

That said, she does have enough sense to know that people have different tastes.

While she can find herself loving any number of people at once, most women, as far as she can tell, only have room for one or two. Martha doesn’t really understand it, but she figures they just have a ridiculously narrow taste in men.

Lacking even the faintest concept of chastity, she simply accepted that as the way things are.

Incidentally, while she’s fawned over as a “dancing princess,” her origins are far from noble—in fact, not even equal to a slave. Born to wandering vagabonds, perhaps from a foreign land or even with mixed blood, Martha never knew her real parents and grew up in a garbage heap of a slum.

But with her exotic dark brown skin, vividly split green-and-red hair from the crown, almond-colored eyes, and the beauty mark by the corner of her eye, she had a striking appearance that drew attention early on. She quickly caught the eye of one of the slum’s local bosses, who took her in as both a pet and a future mistress.

Every day, she was dressed up and fawned over, groped by greasy, heavy hands.

Most girls in such conditions would develop a deep loathing for men, often ending up mentally scarred. In fact, many other girls in similar circumstances—while not as beautiful as Martha—suffered just that: either they lost their minds entirely or grew up with an obsessive hatred toward men.

But not Martha.

In fact, she grew to like men.

To her, even that greasy slum boss was a “good man” who had the strength and guts to rise to the top, and she secretly wished she could have him all to herself. That, in fact, was her first love.

But when she was nine, the boss was killed in a turf war with a rival gang.

She was, of course, a little sad.

But the dead are dead, and in the slums, a human life is worth less than a single copper coin. That much was self-evident.

After that, a priest from the ever-righteous-looking Church came in, and the slum area was swiftly “cleaned up.” The girls who had been kept by the local boss—including Martha—were taken into the Church’s convent.

—But Martha slipped away the first chance she got, saying to hell with that.

No way in hell. A convent? That’s an unhealthy place filled with nothing but women. A proper world is one where men and women live together and fall in love. Why on earth would she willingly go somewhere so dreary?

And so, after various twists and turns, Martha now found herself, for some reason, in a position to host and sit with the Church’s highest-ranked noblewoman—none other than the famed “Shrine Maiden Princess.”

It wasn’t a role she had asked for. But her old flame Dan, whom she hadn’t seen in ages, had earnestly begged her for the favor—and she reluctantly agreed.

Dan had been out of touch lately, apparently because of his daughter’s illness. But when she saw him again, he had become like a drawn, sharpened blade—far more intense than before. *Dangerous*—her instincts as a woman told her so. He might just burn out and destroy himself soon. That being the case, maybe she’d lend him a favor and share a bed tonight. Just to see what kind of reaction she’d get.

Dan clearly had some ulterior motive, but then, so did she.

In that sense, they were two of a kind—using and being used.

*Whatever the goal, it’s for the sake of love. So I’ll give it my all!*

As she climbed the creaky stairs of the “Opera House: Luminous Butterfly,” carrying a kettle of freshly boiled tea and cups in both hands, she passed through the warped kitchen doors and down the hallway, breathing deeply to psych herself up.

“Here you go~ Lady Shrine Maiden… and everyone accompanying her. Have some western black tea~”

With a light knock, she stepped into the guest room.

♢♦♢♦♢

You might call it a “private room,” but to be precise, this is more like a makeshift mezzanine box seat set up inside a temporary wooden scaffold.

Partitioned off—well, more like loosely divided—with thin wooden panels on each side, the space is enclosed on one end with a door that opens directly onto the hallway, while the other end is wide open (or rather, completely exposed to the air) and offers a full view of the stage below.

Looking down, the first floor is essentially one large open space. About a third of it is taken up by a raised stage area and a backstage section curtained off from view. The rest consists of roughly a dozen round tables, each with four or five backed chairs, plus a counter along the wall with about six or seven round stools.

Altogether, the space covers somewhere around twenty to thirty *tsubo¹* (or its equivalent).

Incidentally, this world uses a local measurement system—something like the old shakkanhō². Here, the standard unit isn’t *mertes*, but *dale* (1.8 *mertes*), and one square dale is called a *morgenn*. It’s roughly equivalent to one *tsubo* in Japanese measurement. So, to be precise, we should say the room is about “twenty to thirty morgenn” in size. Not that it’s something you ever really need in daily life.

Noticing my gaze as I stared at the stage with interest, Martha offered an explanation:

“This place usually opens after sundown, you know. They light the gaslamps out front, bang some drums and ring bells to get things lively, and go like, ‘Come one, come all! It’s Songstress Martha’s show tonight—singing and dancing galore!’”

She placed the teapot down on the table, then dragged over a nearby backed chair to our table. Flipping it around so the back faced forward, she straddled it, sat down, and explained all this with a bright, carefree smile.

“Ah, sorry. I know it’s not the most ladylike posture—bad manners, I know. Can’t help it though, it’s how I was raised.”

Like a child playing around, she had plopped herself down with her legs wide apart, straddling the chair and clinging to its back. Resting both arms atop the backrest in a relaxed position, she bobbed her head lightly and gave a small, absentminded bow of apology.