(3rd Person POV)

Back at the Eastern Theatre, Arthur looked at the girl Leonard had brought in.

He recognized her. And from the way her eyes went wide the moment she saw his face, she recognized him too.

"You — you’re the mister who saved me from the bakery owner..." Elira’s voice came out small. It had been a brief encounter, barely a minute, but she had not forgotten his face.

"You know Master Arthur?" Leonard stroked his chin.

"We crossed paths once. She was making a run from a bakery owner with a stolen loaf." Arthur kept it short, then looked at Leonard. "What’s the situation?"

Leonard laid it out plainly — the fake tickets, how he’d tracked her down, how she’d tried to bolt the moment she realized what was happening. He told it without editorializing, but when he reached the end, he paused and added, quieter, "She didn’t look like she was doing it for sport. I think the circumstances pushed her into it. I’d ask that Master Arthur not be too hard on her."

Elira stood with her head down, staring at the floor.

"Relax. I’m not the sort of demon who punishes people just to punish them." Arthur smiled slightly, putting emphasis on the word demon. He was one, yes — but cruel was a different matter entirely.

Leonard let out a quiet breath. He had known well enough that Arthur wouldn’t harm a child, but some part of him had worried anyway. Apparently for nothing.

Arthur crouched down to her level. "Your name, and where you’re from."

Elira fidgeted with her fingers. "...I-I’m Elira. I’m from the Magicless District."

Arthur knew every district in Eisen City. The Magicless District was the one the nobles didn’t think about unless they had reason to — a cramped, neglected corner of the city where the magicless were left to sort themselves out, laws thin on the ground because nobody with power cared enough to enforce them.

"The Magicless District." He nodded slowly. Then, without warning, he reached out and patted her head. "You’ve had it rough."

Elira blinked, caught off guard.

"Leonard — get her a fresh set of clothes and have one of the maids clean her up. I want to talk to her properly, and she won’t be at ease looking like this."

"Right away." Leonard gestured for Elira to follow and led her out.

It took less than an hour. When Elira came back, the grime was gone, her hair was brushed out, and the new clothes fit her properly. She looked like a different person — neat, presentable, and, Arthur noted, quite pretty.

He smiled when she walked in. "Much better. Hard to believe that’s the same girl under all that grease."

"Th-thank you," Elira said — and then immediately tensed up. She was thinking, he could tell. A grown man, cleaning her up and dressing her in clothes that probably cost more than anything she’d ever owned. With her background, with what she knew about how the world worked, it wasn’t hard to see where her mind was going.

"You’re wondering what I want from you," Arthur said.

Elira went still.

"Nothing like what you’re thinking. I just wanted you comfortable before we talked. That’s all."

The color that rose in her cheeks was equal parts embarrassment and relief. She looked away.

"Now." Arthur settled back. "Who put you up to selling those tickets? I want to know who approached you, and who’s been supplying them."

Elira’s expression shifted. The embarrassment drained out and something harder and more frightened replaced it.

"I..." She stopped. Started again. "If I say anything... I don’t know what they’d do. To me. Or to my mother and brother."

At the side, Leonard’s expression quietly fell.

Arthur looked at her for a moment. "Your family is in the Magicless District with you?"

"Yes." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to them."

"Nothing will happen to you," Arthur said. "Or your family. You have my word."

Elira’s fingers tightened together. "I-I’m sorry. I want to believe that, but... words alone aren’t enough. The gang that came to me — they have real power in the Magicless District. They’re cruel, and they’re good at finding out who talked about them."

Arthur heard the word gang and didn’t react outwardly. But he understood. The Magicless District was nearly lawless — nobody with authority cared enough to change that, and people who wanted power had taken full advantage of the vacuum. Gangs were the natural result. It wasn’t surprising that Elira was scared, and it wasn’t unreasonable either. Words from a stranger, however well-meant, didn’t undo years of knowing how that world worked.

He thought for a moment, then turned to Leonard. "Prepare a place for Elira and her family at the mansion. Separate quarters, comfortable. As long as they’re out of the Magicless District, the gang can’t touch them."

Leonard’s eyebrows went up. Elira’s mouth opened and stayed that way.

"I’ll see to it personally," Leonard said, and the determination in his voice was genuine — not just duty, but something warmer than that.

Elira stood very still for a moment after Leonard excused himself. Then her eyes filled up, and she stopped trying to hold it back.

"Th-thank you," she managed. "Thank you very much."

"It’s nothing," Arthur said.

"It isn’t." She wiped her face with her sleeve, which didn’t do much good. "I’ll pay you back. I promise I will. One day."

Arthur chuckled. "You don’t need to."

She shook her head stubbornly. She was a child, but she clearly wasn’t the kind who took things without feeling the weight of them. Even with nothing to her name, there was a pride in her that had survived everything the Magicless District had thrown at it.

Arthur looked at her for a moment. "If you really insist — how about becoming an actress for my company?"

Elira blinked. "An... actress?"

"You’ve heard of the Wizard of Oz. The girl who played Dorothy — that’s what an actress is. Someone who performs in a film."

"Isn’t that just... a performer? Like in the theatre?"

"Similar, but not quite the same." Arthur leaned forward slightly. "A theatre performer plays to a live audience, night after night. An actress is captured by the camera — her performance is preserved, and it can be seen by anyone, anywhere, long after the filming is done. One performance. Thousands of eyes."

Elira went quiet, turning that over. The weight of it settled on her slowly — that the girl she’d built stories around, the Dorothy she’d described to her brother in the dark, had been a real person standing in front of a camera. And now someone was sitting across from her suggesting she could be that. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

"What do you think?" Arthur asked. "The pay won’t be bad."

"I — yes." She straightened up. "I’m willing."

"Good." A slight smile crossed his face. "As it happens, I have a project that needs exactly a child actress, and I haven’t found the right one yet."

That was true. He’d been turning Leon: The Professional over in his mind for a while now. A story that needed a child at its center — not a performer who had been trained into the role, but someone who already understood, in their bones, what it meant to live in a world that didn’t care whether you made it or not. Someone the audience would believe without needing to be convinced.

Elira, who had been doing exactly that since before she was old enough to put a name to it, fit the role better than anyone he could have searched for.

"Now," Arthur said, bringing it back. "Tell me about the gang."

And she did. All of it — who had approached her, how they operated, where the tickets came from. She talked with the particular relief of someone who had been carrying something alone for too long.

’She’s smart for her age,’ Arthur thought, watching her talk. ’But not cautious enough.’

She was smart — quick-eyed, careful in the way children who’d grown up hard tended to be. But she had opened up completely on the strength of a promise and a roof over her family’s heads. If he and Leonard had been different kinds of people, that trust would have cost her everything.

Fortunately for Elira, they weren’t.