Part 5: A Good Time

Kakania: It reflects your inner thoughts, like a mind's endoscope. I cast an arcane skill on it to help your thoughts surface.
Kakania: Look at it, and tell me what you see.
Kakania: Have I?
Kakania: Did I ever look into it? Look into myself.
Kakania: Before it shattered?
Middle-Aged Male: What is this thing?
Middle-Aged Male: The color and design are vulgar, and I don't see our family crest on it. Such a hand mirror is unsuitable for a lady.
Middle-Aged Male: Even though the surface of the mirror is rather smooth, it simply cannot do.
Middle-Aged Male: Klara Vingler, you cannot take this as your first hand mirror.
Kakania: ...
Kakania: I neither seek your opinion nor your approval, Father.
Kakania: I'm simply here to inform you that I have my first hand mirror. There's no longer any need for you to give me one.
Kakania: That's all.
Elbert: No, wait—
Elbert: Father, it's a gift and a blessing from Klara's friend. I think that's why this hand mirror means so much to her.
Elbert: And you, Klara—
Middle-Aged Male: Her friend? What friend?! This isn't that damnable gypsy again, is it? Or one of those filthy arcane vendors, scurrying around in the shadows like rats?
Middle-Aged Male: No matter who it was, the moment you brought this thing into our house, it was a humiliation to me and to the whole Vingler family!
Middle-Aged Male: "Your first hand mirror"? Hah! Don't be ridiculous!
Middle-Aged Male: It isn't qualified to be a Vingler mirror. In fact, it tarnishes our very name! I warned you not to try to win my approval with an inferior product—
Middle-Aged Male: Inferior like your "friends"!
Elbert: Father! This is too much.
Kakania: Elbert, I've fulfilled my promise. I showed him, and from now on, this is my mirror.
Kakania: I'm leaving.
Elbert: Klara wait! Just a moment.
Middle-Aged Male: Wherever she's going, she cannot take that mirror with her. I won't allow it.
Middle-Aged Male: Take that thing away from her, Elbert!
Elbert: Father, please. Let her keep it, will you? You can give her another one as her first official hand mirror.
Elbert: She didn't mean to—
Middle-Aged Male: "She didn't mean to"?! She meant every word! She spends her life on her "career" and "ambition" and pays no mind to the shame it brings to this family!
Middle-Aged Male: As long as she continues to lead such a shameless life, my humiliation will never come to an end!
Elbert: Father—
Kakania: Haha.
Kakania: Arcane vendors like rats? Need I remind you how you made your fortune?
Kakania: If the Vingler name is truly as noble as you claim, then why do the gentlefolk of the upper class always decline your invitations?
Kakania: You've worked so hard, haven't you? To hide away your past as an arcane vendor and wear the mask of a noble man.
Kakania: Or, should I say, a noble human.
Middle-Aged Male: You—You—
Kakania: You know I'm right. I'm simply telling the truth.
Kakania: The more you try to distance yourself from your arcanist identity, the more people are reminded of it.
Kakania: When you criticize Mother for keeping in touch with her arcanist friends, you don't realize it's because YOU don't have any friends anymore, and somewhere deep inside, that stings.
Kakania: I pity you, to be honest. At least I have true friendship.
Middle-Aged Male: KLARA VINGLER!
Middle-Aged Male: What right do you have to accuse me?! You, who have dropped out of university, had multiple scandals with married women, and started an illegal organization?!
Kakania: ...
Middle-Aged Male: But you are right about one thing. It's not your patients who should be sent to the madhouse,
Middle-Aged Male: it's you!
Elbert: Father! Do we have to end it this way?
Middle-Aged Male: Take it from her, Elbert.
Elbert: Klara—
The servants block the door like silent statues.
She cannot leave unless she gives him the hand mirror.
Kakania: No need.
Kakania: I'll do it myself.
She raises the mirror high above her head and throws it to the ground.
It shatters as it collides with the floor. Mirror shards scatter around the room.
Elbert: Klara.
Her eyes are firmly fixed on her father.
Kakania: This is the last time I do as you ask, Father.
Kakania: ...
Kakania: Yes, it shattered.
Kakania: How could I see myself in it?
Kakania: I never even had the chance.
Kakania: It was destroyed, like the table mirror that shattered in the "Storm."
Kakania gives a weak smile, but soon freezes.
She sees the broken table mirror, sees the rain in Vienna.
Kakania: The hand mirror was too broken, Doctor.
Kakania: I couldn't see myself in it, so I decided to let it go.
Kakania: "It's insignificant," I thought. "There are far more important things to come!" How naive I was to not see ...
Kakania: Our society is broken, and like a mirror, it will keep shattering into ever smaller pieces.
Kakania: No one can put them back together on their own.
Kakania: So it is my duty, Doctor, to appeal to the people—to urge them to face the problems in our society, to do something to change it, to repair it.
Kakania: How ironic that, in the end, I would be the one to hasten the breaking of it beyond repair.
Kakania: Why me? Why did I survive?
Psychiatrist: I can see why you'd think this way.
Psychiatrist: But I think you keep saying this because ...
Psychiatrist: You're still blaming yourself.
Kakania: What else can I do?
Kakania: Take this shameful event for granted? Feel lucky and cheer for my "second life"?
Kakania: Why should a girl so full of sin survive? What about those innocent people who still had hope for life—who wanted to survive in this world? They turned to dust and were washed away by the "Storm."
Kakania: Why did they die? What was the meaning of it?
Psychiatrist: So you looked away because you couldn't face yourself in the mirror.
Psychiatrist: But you won't often find answers unless you look for them.
Kakania: ...
She hangs her head at this gentle accusation.
Psychiatrist: At least give it a try.
Psychiatrist: Take a look at yourself in your own mirror.