Roaming Romeo

A nameless vagabond—equal parts Chaplin-esque waif and Dante-guided rover—descends from a boxcar into a half-built city where scaffolding outnumbers souls. Mistaken for the vanished heir of a steel dynasty, he is draped in tuxedo armor and paraded through smoke-choked ballrooms, while the real prince skulks in the shadows, nursing absinthe and a grudge. The impostor courts an heiress whose laughter sounds like coins clinking; she, in turn, uses him as a pawn to escape the gilded cage her father welded. A three-ring carnival of deception unspools: slapstick board-meetings where ledgers become origami weapons, a rooftop chase across painted billboards that bleed in the rain, a wedding staged in an abandoned ice palace lit only by magnesium flares. When the masquerade combusts, the wanderer sheds his borrowed skin, leaps onto a moving carousel horse, and vanishes into the river mist—leaving behind a single cracked monocle that winks like a dying star.