8. Curse Plague (6)
8. Curse Plague (6)
When Maya was little, she'd had a cat.
A Castille shorthair named Wally, with a deep blue base coat crossed by stripes of red and white.
Wally was the only being besides her father who could coax even a faint smile out of her.
But less than a year after she'd begun raising him, an accident took his life.
Her first real experience with the death of a creature she'd loved.
She remembered exactly how she'd gotten through that grief.
She'd done nothing.
She'd left him where he'd fallen and walked home.
Then she'd locked every door that faced the outside world and set about building a fortress of logic inside her heart.
On the nature of life and the world.
On individuals and their bonds.
On living and dying.
After days of wrestling with those thoughts alone, she'd managed to bury her heart in the deepest chamber of that fortress.
Only then did she write Wally's death report.
She carved it out line by line in dry, clinical prose, recording nothing but the bare facts.
The task held no grief, no regret, no pain.
She had been relieved.
Yet at the same time, she'd felt a pang of loss.
The sound of his voice, always complaining about something.
The scent of his fur drifting through the air, something like freshly baked cookies.
The feel of his back and belly under her hand when he was being sulky.
All of it had vanished from her memory.
Only a blurry afterimage of his appearance remained.
But today.
For the first time since that day.
A cat's cry she'd thought she'd completely forgotten echoed from somewhere in the depths of her memory.
An emotion she'd believed she would never feel again stirred in the deepest part of her heart.
And its subject was the man standing before her, wearing an awkward smile.
He'd changed into a hooded monk's robe, and now he looked back at her and shook his head.
"Absorbing Devolut? You seem to be under a misapprehension, Miss Maya. I was merely—"
"Don't bother making excuses. I saw everything."
At the finality in her tone, Wonderstein abandoned whatever smooth deflection he'd been about to spin.
She'd spoken up and acted, and she was certain. He wasn't going to clear up her suspicions simply by calling it a misunderstanding.
'How do I handle this...?'
The instant she'd revealed his secret, he'd tensed up internally.
He had no idea how much she actually knew to be making such a claim.
In the games, the Curse Plague victims had all been treated as "casualties of Wonderstein's power."
By the time of the TTT trilogy, this wasn't some unexplained illness. Everyone in the game world knew the Black Magician's curse was responsible.
He had to be careful now.
Every single word had to be chosen with caution.
One careless clue could expose his identity.
"You must have a lot of questions."
Wonderstein studied the expression on her face first.
Fortunately, she wasn't confronting him because she'd arrived at some truth.
"You need a Milky Way injection right now, Troupe Leader. You can't just keep holding something like that inside your body."
She was simply alarmed that he'd absorbed Devolut and was pointing out the danger. She didn't seem to have reached the conclusion that he could exploit or harness it.
Wonderstein breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
The plague Devoluts rampaging through his system.
Using Milky Way would certainly stabilize his body.
But getting rid of the Devolut he'd gone to such lengths to acquire—and paying money to do it—was absurd.
At the same time, telling her "I'm a Madosa who uses Devolut as a resource" was far too dangerous a confession.
He couldn't afford to give her any more threads to pull at here. With a mind as sharp as hers, she could arrive at the truth from very little information.
He also had to prevent her from passing even a clue to anyone else.
Keeping Wonderstein's true nature hidden until the main series began was a non-negotiable condition for clearing TT0.
The moment facts like "the Black Magician" or "the source of the Curse Plague" came to light, any hope of competing in the Grand Prix was over.
He had to keep Maya quiet.
It was a little underhanded, but he had a method that was undeniably effective.
He smiled at her as she glared at him.
"Miss Maya, you once told me that to repay your debt to me, you would grant any request I made."
A flicker of dismay crossed her face.
He wouldn't.
A smile settled on the Smiling Man's lips.
"I'll call in that favor now. Please forget what you saw today."
Wonderstein understood Maya well.
She could be self-centered and cold, but she was also the type who, once she gave her word, kept it absolutely.
His judgment was correct.
Now that he'd invoked her promise, Maya couldn't press the matter further.
She bit her lip, a frustrated look on her face.
"...That's cheap."
"Hasn't Miss Ella told you? I've always been underhanded. Heh heh."
Faced with his teasing smile, Maya suddenly understood why Ella griped about wanting to smack him sometimes.
She had offered him that promise prepared to give up everything she had if he asked.
And he'd spent that chance on this.
Whether he realized how she felt or not, he gave her a reassuring smile.
"Don't worry. The Devolut I've absorbed won't cause any harm to those around me."
Idiot.
Fool.
Who was worried about that?
She wasn't the least bit concerned about that.
If anything, she knew better than anyone that he was not the sort of man who would harm others—he'd only let his own body suffer.
"But other people won't see it that way. So please don't mention it to anyone."
"...I know."
Ordinary people weren't going to look kindly on someone carrying Curse Plague factors in his body.
She couldn't bear the thought of their troupe leader—already shunned for traveling with monster members—being treated as a plague carrier on top of everything else.
"I won't ask you to stay silent forever. Just bear with it for two years."
Two years.
The time remaining until the Circus Grand Prix Finals.
She understood his intent.
"Fine. But answer me one thing first. ...How many do you intend to absorb?"
"...About two hundred?"
She had to clench her teeth to keep from cursing at him as he smiled with a perfectly untroubled face.
"That many...?"
"Let's call it the bare minimum before I start taking any real harm."
She fixed him with a cold stare.
The fact that she didn't ask whether he was telling the truth was the last courtesy she could offer a teacher she respected.
"Fine. I won't ask any more. But you must keep your promise. If you show even the slightest sign of danger, I will stop you, no matter what it takes."
Wally's cry, echoing from the far side of memory, fell silent.
It hadn't vanished.
He seemed to gaze at his owner with something like satisfaction before retreating quietly into the darkness.
"Of course. I promise."
Wonderstein answered with confidence.
After all, he had no intention of releasing the Devolut he'd taken into his body until it was completely subjugated. His body would ache for a while, and he wouldn't be able to use the system's power for the time being, but he meant to endure.
Maya looked at him for a moment with resentful eyes, then let out a short sigh.
"Understood. With this, my debt to you is cleared."
"Thank you, Miss Maya."
For some reason, the relieved look on his face struck her as infuriating.
She paused at the door, stepping aside to let him pass, then stopped.
One last question lingered—the one she was most curious about.
"Will you keep this secret from the Deputy Leader too?"
Maya had always disliked the way Ella acted as if she alone knew things about the troupe leader that Maya didn't.
Setting aside whether it was even true, it bothered her to no end that Wonderstein genuinely seemed to lean on Ella so heavily. Watching the teacher she respected bend over backwards for some young girl grated on her.
The way the two of them seemed to share some understanding she wasn't part of.
What about this time?
Would the troupe leader, who had gone so far as to extract an oath from her, casually confess this secret to Ella instead?
Wonderstein looked at her and smiled.
"Of course. This is a secret just between you and me, Miss Maya."
At his words, Maya spun around and walked straight out of the room before he could even call after her.
Wonderstein scratched his cheek, looking nonplussed.
Well, that was a problem.
The one troupe member he could feel completely at ease with, and now the distance between them had widened again.
He had no excuse.
She had offered that promise in good faith, prepared to give him anything, and he'd exploited it to protect his own secret. Her pride had to be wounded.
After today, she must have realized he was no ordinary circus troupe leader.
How long would the gag he'd forced on her under the guise of a promise actually hold?
He checked the Status Window as he left the room and was relieved to find her Affection level hadn't dropped.
Still, raising it from here would be difficult.
He stepped out of the room in a slightly somber mood.
At the entrance to the hall, Knight Ivanenko and Maya were waiting for him.
She smiled at him.
It was still the same faint smile that others would struggle to notice.
"Let's hurry. The people who are going to help are waiting, aren't they?"
[M$a%a's Fa@@#r has risen by 2. As a rew@#d for reaching Fav#r 30....]
The Status Window glitch kept him from reading the message properly, but it was clearly a notification that Maya's Affection level had broken past 30.
Hmm....
Maybe he still didn't fully understand Maya after all.
Wonderstein tilted his head in thought and quickened his pace toward the village church.
As she followed behind him, Maya sank into quiet thought.
Wonderstein had asked her to forget what she'd seen, but her mind refused to comply.
What she had witnessed and heard in that room replayed itself automatically.
She'd been turning the conversation over in her mind when her thoughts caught on one particular line.
—You need a Milky Way injection right now, Troupe Leader.
At that point, Wonderstein had suddenly called in her promise to shut her up.
But now that she thought about it, a question nagged at her.
She had seen him suffering from the Devolut he'd taken into his body.
Wouldn't it be better to just use medicine to purge it than to keep it inside?
—Just bear with it for two years.
An uneasy intuition shot through her mind.
The reason he could let Devolut accumulate in his body so casually.
The reason he couldn't use Milky Way.
The two-year time limit.
All of those answers connected into a single line.
Because he wasn't going to live much longer anyway.
Because Milky Way would only cut short what little time he had left.
Because before that time ran out, he wanted to achieve his dream of reaching the Circus Grand Prix.
And the time remaining was exactly....
Maya looked at Wonderstein's face as he walked ahead of her.
His expression was far too serene, his smile utterly untroubled by any shadow.
That could not be the face of a man walking toward his death.
She pushed the absurd conjecture out of her head.
He had promised.
That up to two hundred, he would take no harm.
That was why he'd refused the Milky Way.
There was simply no reason to suffer the side effects.
That had to be it.
Surely.
From somewhere in the darkness, Wally let out a soft purr.