Vil and Rook (pt1)

Vil says that he has taught Rook everything Rook knows about cosmetics, and tried a lot of different brands on him before they eventually settled on Felicity Cosmetics.

Ace says he thought that Rook has always been fashionable, but we learn in Book 6 that this was not the case.

Rook says that one of the first things that Vil told him to do once they became acquainted was to take care of his nails. Vil says that they spoke for the first time a few months after starting school at NRC, and Rook did not give a very good first impression.

Vil explains that they once had an intense discussion about how the audience plays just as large a role as the performers in plays and concerts and he encouraged Rook to dress up for a play for which he had a front-row seat. 

Rook said the hadn’t had any interest in dressing up before then, but Vil gave him wonderful advice and even coordinated his entire ensemble, and he has had an appreciation for personal care ever since.

(Vil: “I now know the actor Rook mentioned was Neige. And Neige wouldn’t mind a bit if his fans saw him in tattered sweats or patchwork pants. So my advice was entirely unwarranted.”)

Vil says that the first time Rook approached him was when he was sitting on a bench I the courtyard, reading a script for his next play. Rook says he was “terribly nervous” but Vil calls him a liar, saying that he will never forget their first conversation, where Rook comments on how convincingly Vil played a “cold, tyrannical, tantrum-prone fiend.” Rook says he meant it as a compliment.

Vil explains, “From then onward, Rook would come up and talk to me even when I didn’t engage him at all. He’d share his completely unsolicited opinions on my performances, then go on his way. Both his positive impressions AND negative ones. At first, I thought he was no more than an armchair critic, trying to tell an actor how to do their job. But over time, I realized that his observations were oddly perceptive.”

Vil says that, at one point, he asked how he would have performed a particular scene, and Rook proceeded to go on for five hours straight (Rook: “What a rewarding discussion that was.”)

Vil says that he had been fully convinced, at the time, that no one his age knew as much about theater and art as he did, but Rook quickly disabused him of that notion with his breadth of knowledge (Rook says that he simply had more free time).