I'm Not A Master, I'm A Director
Chapter 404: An Opening That Goes from Seductive to Straight-Up Uncanny
Because he had spent a little time chatting with his younger sister, Shinji didn't enter the theater until just a few minutes before the movie started.
He had just sat down in his seat when Shiki, dressed in a red, form-fitting evening gown, walked over. Her seat happened to be right beside his.
Perhaps because she was used to wearing kimono and wasn't accustomed to Western dresses, Shiki tried several times to adjust the hem of her skirt but still couldn't sit down properly.
In the end, Shinji bent over to help her straighten the fabric behind her hips and pulled out a part of the skirt that had been stepped on by her high heels. Only then did Shiki finally manage to sit comfortably.
"Thanks."
Shiki smiled as she thanked him.
"These Western gowns are torture. I thought I'd try something new since I've never worn one before, but who knew it'd be this troublesome? Next time, I'm definitely not wearing one!"
"Well~"
Shinji replied with a gentle smile.
"It's normal to feel uncomfortable the first time. When Lissy tried wearing a kimono before, she tripped over the hem several times. She said almost the exact same thing."
Shiki nodded in deep agreement.
"See? People really shouldn't force themselves~"
"I think trying new things once in a while isn't a bad thing."
Shinji glanced at Shiki. Without the restrictive layers of her usual kimono today, the view at her neckline was particularly eye-catching.
In terms of absolute measurements, Shiki's chest was far larger than Rin's or Mordred's—the firmly established members of the "flat faction." But compared to the truly well-endowed types like Rider or Irisviel, she was still a little behind.
However, comparison changes everything.
Because Shiki's usual kimono wrapped her up so tightly, today's dress only needed to loosen things a little for Shinji to feel as if Shiki had somehow undergone a miraculous enhancement.
"Shiki-nee, you look completely different today."
After appreciating the rare "Ryougi Shiki — Evening Dress Ver." in high-definition before him, Shinji finally sighed in admiration.
If the usual Shiki was a quiet Yamato Nadeshiko, then today she resembled a noble and elegant Juliet.
Shiki brushed the black hair at her temple aside and asked,
"How am I different?"
Naturally, Shinji couldn't say "your chest looks way bigger," so he phrased it more tactfully.
"You're prettier… and more charming. More alluring."
"Shinji, that's very nice to hear, but…"
Shiki's gentle voice carried a hint of playful teasing.
"Do you know of an old saying?"
"What saying?"
"Let me think~"
Leaning closer, Shiki whispered into Shinji's ear. The faint, drifting tone of her voice made one's imagination wander.
"The more compliments a man gives a woman… the more it means he's interested in her~"
Shinji raised an eyebrow.
"Shiki-nee, that's a saying you just made up, isn't it?"
Shiki patted his shoulder with a grin.
"Shinji, you should worry about winning over that French saint first."
"Are you encouraging me?"
Shiki didn't answer. She simply narrowed her eyes and smiled.
Then, Garden of Sinners began to play.
The opening scene of Garden of Sinners was destined to become one of the most unforgettable openings—not only in Type-Moon films, but in the history of cinema.
Unlike Shinji's usual preference for diving straight into the story, what the audience saw first this time was a torn dark dress, the graceful lines of a slender female body, smooth curves, and a full, rounded figure, paired with a delicate, moving face.
In the opening long take that lasted over ten seconds, the woman on the screen wore only her tattered clothing as she lay alone on an old billiards table.
Although her vital areas were carefully concealed, the tight outfit did nothing to hide the perfect curves of her figure.
Through the tears in the fabric, glimpses of the girl's pale skin appeared, presenting a strange and eerie form of incomplete beauty.
Mystery. Seduction. Temptation. Danger.
These were the feelings that surged through countless viewers when they saw this opening scene.
Combined with the dilapidated bar setting surrounding the girl, it was easy for the audience to assume that the film might soon venture into R-rated territory.
However, the audience members who had already gotten excited had no idea that this opening scene was the absolute limit of the film's visual exposure. Until the very end of the movie, there would not be a single shot revealing more than this.
After all, Shinji's tastes were far lighter than Kinoko's. In this version, the hooligans had barely managed to tear Fujino's clothes before she twisted them into human pretzels.
"Wow~ that's unbelievably beautiful!"
"Did we walk into the wrong theater? Or are they playing the wrong movie? Is this really a film by Shinji Matou?"
"Could this be some deleted footage from Heaven's Feel?"
…
"Ahh… ahh… what a bunch of fools."
Hearing the whispers from the audience behind them, Ryougi Shiki sighed.
Lowering her voice so that only the two of them could hear, she leaned close to Shinji's ear and murmured, "If they knew the woman on screen is already over a thousand years old… do you think they'd be disappointed?"
"Please don't destroy people's dreams. Since when has there ever been a seventeen-or-eighteen-year-old grandma?"
Shinji replied with an exaggerated expression, like the classic 'yaranaika face' meme face.
"Men really are visual creatures." Shiki curled her lips slightly. "What's so great about that otherworldly hostess anyway? Who knows, if you got close enough, she might even smell like decay."
("Achoo!" Somewhere not far away, Yu Mei-ren sneezed.)
"What kind of otherworldly hostess are you talking about?"
Shinji's face darkened with exasperation.
"If it were you, you'd never agree to shoot a scene like that, right?"
In truth, Yu Mei-ren had struggled for quite a while before filming this scene. If Shinji hadn't guaranteed that only a bit of skin would be shown, she probably would have refused the role entirely.
'Still… why are all of Yu Mei-ren's Servant outfits in FGO so ridiculously revealing?'
'Did her sense of shame just completely unlock after becoming a Heroic Spirit? What kind of terrifying place is the Throne of Heroes, anyway?'
Of course, Shinji knew that the revealing designs of Yu Mei-ren's cards in FGO were meant to bait players into spending money. But in this world, things weren't quite the same.
'Man… I really hope that one day I can see Yu Mei-ren wearing that outfit.'
Actually, maybe I should just skip Part 1 of FGO entirely and start filming from Part 2.'
Seeing Shinji resting his head on one hand, clearly lost in thought, Shiki's expression darkened slightly.
She deliberately leaned a little closer to him before speaking.
"Hey, Shinji~ Look at me. My body's only in its twenties, you know. It doesn't lose to hers at all, right? All those thousands of years she's lived are basically wasted."
Shinji's mouth twitched.
"You should try saying that in front of Akuta. She'd be delighted to drain every drop of blood from your body."
"Well, she can't hear me anyway."
Shiki wasn't afraid of Yu Mei-ren at all. She knew that old woman wouldn't care about idle gossip like this.
Instead, the dim darkness of the theater seemed to be making her increasingly bold.
"Hey~ Shinji, you think so too, right? As the heroine, I'm obviously more perfect… and more attractive than her, the supporting female lead."
"And also lonelier."
Shinji stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"That's right. Ryougi Shiki—a lonely woman."
"That's not what I meant!"
Shiki shifted restlessly in her seat and spoke softly,
"I mean the real-life me—"
"KYAA—!"
A sharp scream suddenly interrupted her words.
The long opening shot had finally ended. The camera had shifted away from the seductive girl and now showed the entire interior of the abandoned bar.
And so, the audience finally realized what those shapes lurking in the shadows—sharing the room with the beautiful girl—actually were.
Corpses.
Shinji had put tremendous effort into filming and post-production for this scene. In order to present the twisted, pretzel-like bodies of the hooligans while still staying within the acceptable rating limits, he had spent a great deal of time planning every detail.
The dim lighting concealed the bright red bloodstains, revealing only faint crimson specks near the wall lamps, creating a chilling atmosphere.
As for the bodies twisted into grotesque shapes, Shinji never gave them a direct close-up. Instead, he used shadows cast under dim lights and fragmented flashbacks from Fujino's memory to suggest what had happened.
This approach allowed the visuals to pass censorship, but it also amplified the horror.
Half-hidden, half-revealed, like a pipa concealed behind a veil, the cinematography created a sense of mystery and the unknown.
And for humans, the unknown is the greatest fear of all.
So when the disturbing elements of the scene gradually emerged, the audience—who had initially been admiring the beautiful girl—found their hearts slowly tightening with tension.
Until finally, when the truth was revealed and the corpses were exposed—all that pent-up tension burst out in a wave of shock and screams.
Most of the audience only shuddered slightly, but there were always a couple of timid people who let out actual screams.
"That was way too intense." Fujita lightly patted his chest, still shaken as he complained, "Jumping straight from seductive to horror… that's way too big of a leap, isn't it? Isn't Shinji Matou worried about scaring people into impotence?"
"Isn't that more of a you problem?" Alice shot back irritably. "Normal people wouldn't have such filthy thoughts."
"No, I think it's the opposite…"
Shibamatsu muttered a quiet rebuttal.
"The way that girl looked just now… even girls would find her charming, right?"
"I agree with that!"
Aoko, who had rarely joined them for a premiere before, raised her hand excitedly in agreement.
"A girl that cute either awakens someone's desire to protect her… or their desire to hurt her. She's the kind of terrifying girl who could push people toward extremes~"
"What kind of explanation is that supposed to be…"
Alice smacked her palm onto Aoko's head and whispered a warning.
"The characters created by Sir Matou are not toys for you people to mess with!"
'The hidden meaning of that sentence is that only Shinji Matou gets to play with those characters, right?'
Shibamatsu glanced at Asagami Fujino on the screen, who was now staggering out of the bar while muttering, "Two of them ran away… I have to get them all."
A trace of sympathy flashed across his face.
For some reason, he saw a shadow of Sakura Matou from the Heaven's Feel route in this character. He had a feeling her story would be filled with twists and suffering.
'I hope she gets a happy ending.'
Shibamatsu silently offered a small prayer for Miss Fujino.
◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇◆
Shibamatsu's judgment was very accurate.
However, the movie was not in a hurry to reveal Asagami Fujino's tragic life.
When the girl closed the door to the room filled with corpses, a drop of blood fell slowly from the doorknob. As it descended, it gradually transformed into the film's title:
Garden of Sinners
And beneath it, the subtitle:
Remaining Sense of Pain
The appearance of the title meant the movie had officially begun.
But at this moment, the audience sitting in the theater had their minds filled with question marks.
They had understood the first scene well enough. A pitiful girl had her powers run wild while being assaulted by a group of hooligans, killing all of them except for the two who escaped.
After experiencing everything, the girl seemed to be on the verge of breaking completely. She didn't hesitate over the fact that she had killed people, instead, she intended to hunt down the two who had escaped and eliminate them as well.
The sequence itself wasn't difficult to understand.
But the number of unexplained questions was enormous.
Why did the girl possess such power?
Why did she immediately seem to "darken" after losing control of her ability?
And what was the mysterious "oddity" the hooligans had mentioned during the assault in her memories?
There were simply too many questions.
Yet the film offered no explanations at all.
The audience felt as if they had just watched a segment of The Lord of the Rings, but the director hadn't provided Tolkien's worldbuilding.
And clearly, Shinji Matou had no intention of explaining things anytime soon. Because after the title sequence ended, the scene immediately switched to the inpatient ward of a hospital.
There were many patients in the hospital. Nurses moved constantly through the wards, busy with their work.
But the camera didn't focus on any particular nurse.
Instead, it moved slowly and calmly along the corridor, as if someone were simply strolling leisurely through the hospital hallway.
With no clear visual clues, the audience could only piece together fragments of information from the conversations between the nurses.
Bit by bit, they began assembling the background of the story from the scattered hints the director had given them.
"Hey, have you heard about the patient in the single room on the third floor?"
"Of course I have. The whole hospital was buzzing about it last night. It's really unbelievable, a patient who had been in a coma for so long suddenly woke up."
"The important part isn't that she woke up."
"It's that after she woke up… she tried to stab her own eyes."
"Really?"
"Yeah. The doctor already issued a gag order, so we're not supposed to talk about it. Apparently, when the doctor wasn't paying attention, that girl used her own fingers and tried to stab straight through her eyelids. Oh my~"
From the slightly boastful tone of the nurse, it was obvious that not only was she terrible at keeping secrets, she also loved showing off the information she had.
"Wait! But that girl has been in a coma for two years, right? Logically speaking, she shouldn't even be able to move."
The second nurse clearly seemed more responsible. Compared to gossip, she cared more about the patient's condition.
"Exactly. Her joints still aren't flexible enough to move freely. Luckily because of that, her eyes were ultimately saved."
"That's still incredible! Normally, after sleeping for two years, people lose most of their bodily functions."
"Which is why the doctor got careless…"
The gossip-loving nurse sighed heavily before adding with a tone of sympathy,
"The reason she tried to do that was because of a subconjunctival hemorrhage. Her eyes couldn't see anything because of it. Apparently, they wrapped her eyes with bandages according to the patient's own request."
"Hmm… from darkness, back to darkness again? That's really heartbreaking…"
The nurses' conversation resonated with quite a few members of the audience.
After all, finally waking up from a vegetative state only to discover that you couldn't see anymore—anyone in that situation would feel their mental state collapse.
However, the patient's tragedy hadn't ended yet. The first nurse added another piece of bad news.
"That girl has another problem too~ How should I put it? I think it's called aphasia? She can't properly speak at all."
"Huh? Then what are they going to do? Dr. Araya resigned last month. Our hospital doesn't have a specialist for that anymore."
The mention of Araya Souren, the fake monk, was meant as foreshadowing for later events. Of course, the audience had no way of realizing that yet.
"Right, so the attending doctor contacted a speech therapist from outside. What was the name again? I think it was… Aozaki Touko?"
The moment the nurse spoke Touko's name, the camera happened to enter the hospital room.
A frail, sickly beauty sat quietly on the bed, absentmindedly playing with a Rubik's Cube in her hands. Her eyes were wrapped in bandages, creating a strangely unsettling contrast.
Just as the blind girl was about to finish solving the cube purely by touch, a red-haired woman with a single ponytail walked into the room.
Wearing a white coat but carrying none of the professionalism expected from a doctor, the woman greeted the girl in an extremely casual tone.
"Yo~ Hello there~"
Aozaki Touko had met Ryougi Shiki.
And with that, the story of Garden of Sinners officially began.
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Tn: I updated the story once every 2 days, but if you want to see more chapter of this story ahead of time, please go to my Patreon.
Latest Chapter: Chapter 429: Another Poor Kid Who Gets Sold and Still Says Thanks[1]
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[1] https://www.patreon.com/posts/155854306?collection=31097
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