10. Demon in a Bottle (2)
10. Demon in a Bottle (2)
After leaving Alamo, Charlie's group arrived in Rouge and began asking around for Ella's whereabouts.
They quickly realized they were already a step behind.
The circus troupe Ella was with had already left Rouge.
So they returned to Vegas.
It was the most logical choice.
Vegas sat at the exact geographic center of the Six Great Cities.
Even if Ella turned up in another city, staying in Vegas would let them respond fastest.
More than anything, Vegas was familiar ground for them.
The distance from their school in Alamo to Vegas wasn't far. They'd regularly come here on outings and field trips, mostly to watch performances.
Vegas was the largest and most developed city in the eastern part of the continent. Wealth flooded in from every direction, and a steady stream of people seeking work had pushed the city past overcrowding to the brink of bursting.
The official resident count alone exceeded three million. Once you added illegal residents and traveling visitors, estimates placed it past five million.
The city lacked the housing to accommodate them all. Shantytowns had sprawled beyond the city limits into the wasteland, and even in areas already built up, illegal structures were squeezed between buildings or stacked on top of them in defiance of construction codes.
Yet for all its chaos, the district known as Paradise was an exception—its streets were clean and well-kept, because this was where the luxury hotels, auction houses, and casinos for the wealthy were located.
One of the auction houses here selected a theme every two weeks and handled related items, and the theme this time had caught Charlie's interest enough that he attended with a contact's help.
Circus memorabilia.
"Yes! The next item is an original from the Escape King Luini's puzzle series—No. 43, <Seesaw>!"
At the auctioneer's cry, a fist-sized brass casting was presented onstage. As the name suggested, it was shaped like an ordinary seesaw, but Charlie knew it was actually an assembly of five interlocked cast-metal pieces.
Charlie clenched and unclenched his hand as he watched.
'Number 43. What was the solution again? Did it go like this?'
He slipped into nostalgia, recalling the times he and his friends had competed over escape puzzles.
Their master had collected Luini's escape puzzle series going back quite far—some that were now hard to come by. Thanks to that, the school kids used to gather regularly and play with them.
"You don't know? Can't figure it out? Want me to show you?"
Ella, who had lived with the master since she was small, knew the solutions to every puzzle in the series. She'd help friends who were genuinely stuck.
Luini's puzzles could only be disassembled by pulling or pushing pieces in completely unexpected directions, at points that were visually almost impossible to spot. So she would take her friends' hands in hers and patiently walk them through each step.
Charlie had watched her lace her fingers with a boy's and guide his hands this way and that. She was absorbed in teaching the solution without a second thought, but the boy whose hands she was holding wasn't.
Cheeks flushed, he was staring blankly at Ella's face as she chattered away, pressed close to him.
Seeing that, something surged inside Charlie's chest. The boy wasn't someone he was especially close to, but neither was he someone Charlie disliked. Still, in that moment, he was confident he could have planted a fist in the boy's face with a smile.
Charlie looked down at the puzzle in his own hands.
No. 43, Seesaw.
It was already disassembled.
He looked back at Ella. The boy she was helping kept flaring his nostrils every time her hair brushed the tip of his nose.
Charlie clenched his jaw.
He was jealous.
He glanced at the disassembled puzzle.
What if he put it back together? Then, with an embarrassed face, he could tell her he just couldn't figure it out.
'Oh? The great Charlie is asking me for help? Hmph. Fine, I'll help you.'
Then she'd take his hand. He'd stall for time, pretending he didn't understand.
He swallowed hard.
Alright. Let's do it.
But before he could act, a friend next to him spotted the disassembled puzzle in his hand and shouted,
"Look at this! Charlie solved a Grade 4 puzzle!"
"Whoa! Grade 4?"
"Without any help?"
"We've only been messing with these for less than three hours!"
"Ella, how many hours did you say it took you to solve that one the first time?"
Charlie flinched and looked toward Ella.
She was already glaring at him, her lips twitching.
"Eight hours...."
At her grudging mutter, the kids erupted.
"Wooooah!"
"Ella took eight hours, and Charlie did it in three...."
He waved his hands in alarm.
"No, no. I'm three years older than Ella. Ella, you said you solved this years ago?"
"Two years ago...."
"See? Back then you were five years younger than I am now...."
But Charlie couldn't finish. Ella was already storming out of the room, her expression clouded with irritation.
She had been the senior-most student and, with her outstanding acrobatic skills, had always acted as the leader among the kids. But since Charlie had arrived, she'd been steadily losing that position to him.
"Ella?"
He called after her, but his voice was swallowed up by the cheers of the friends around him.
"Awesome, Charlie!"
"Can't you show us how you solved it?"
Charlie smiled awkwardly amid the crowd of friends surrounding him, repeating to himself that this wasn't how he'd meant things to go.
"Those were the days, huh."
Charlie smiled, lost in memory, as he watched the original puzzle find a new owner.
The next item was placed before the auctioneer. This one had been pictured on the banner outside the auction house—the star of the day, and the final lot.
Apparently three hours had passed. The items had been the kind that would make any circus fanatic's eyes spin, so he hadn't even noticed the time.
The seven magical hats of Crazy Hatter, renowned as a master of hat magic. The original deck of cards from Diamond Queen, credited with laying the foundations of card tricks. And the escape king's original puzzle series that had just sold a moment ago.
Mostly, the lots were objects from old magicians. There were few items from acrobats, which made sense—magicians had long built their reputations performing at upper-class parties, while acrobats worked primarily in the streets.
Acrobats hadn't begun earning real prestige until after the rise of the Five-Person Gang.
Ella would've loved it here.
Charlie pushed himself off the wall he'd been leaning against. Dirt and blades of grass fell from his clothes.
"Now then, the final item is something absolutely unmissable for any circus aficionado. Yes, it's the item you've all been waiting for. You all saw the article that came out yesterday? The 'dust' mentioned in it has come to auction. Behold...."
"Hey!"
"Charlie!"
Charlie pulled his eyes from the auction house window. Across the street, a large young man and a short boy were approaching him.
Charlie produced an awkward smile. These were, of all people, the very friends who had appeared in his Seesaw-puzzle memory in the most irksome light.
"What's with that grin? Creepy."
The large young man gave him a displeased look. Charlie's gaze flicked briefly to the man's nostrils—the way they flared changed with his mood—and then he shook his head.
"No, nothing. Just thinking about something else.... Anyway, what's going on?"
Instead of answering, the boy next to him thrust out a magazine. Charlie spotted a familiar face on the open page.
"Reina."
The girl who had gone neck-and-neck with him in the entrance exam four years ago was now a mature young woman gracing the cover of the magazine.
"Not there. The other side."
At the boy's prompt, Charlie turned the page. Standing across from Reina, hand on her hip and glaring at her opponent, was a face they all knew.
"Ella."
He murmured the name before he could stop himself, a note of longing slipping in. The young man and the boy didn't remark on the warmth in his voice—they felt much the same.
Still, their group included a friend who would get testy the moment anyone spoke a nostalgic word about Ella, so for a long time they'd avoided the subject.
Charlie read the article below the photo. It was about Reina and Ella, and how the two had waged a nail-biting duel during the Rekachev entrance exam.
The final score was 13 wins, 12 losses—Reina had won.
Ella lost?
For a moment Charlie was taken aback, but then he reasoned that if the opponent was Reina, it was possible. Her talent matched his own.
"Rekachev—that's the school you went to, right, Charlie?"
"Right. It's also one of the Six Great Theaters."
The boy flipped to the next page and pointed out a passage in the article.
"It says Ella's circus is entering the exam in October."
"That's still over a month away. They'll stay there until then."
"What are we going to do?"
'Rekachev.'
Charlie called to mind the place where he'd spent several years. She was there now.
"How's the master?"
"He's been bedridden for a year. Seems like he might finally be able to get up and about soon. The older guys working at other circuses and the ones working here are all pitching in for the medical bills, so that shouldn't be a problem."
Charlie let out a sigh.
"Yeah? That's a relief. Next to them, we make some pretty rotten disciples."
The young man's and the boy's expressions hardened. They understood what he was getting at.
"We're going."
The three of them called the other two, scattered across the city, and began preparing to leave Vegas.
Inside the auction house at his back, a commotion arose. The final lot had found its owner after a fierce bidding war.
The auctioneer smiled as he watched a well-dressed man rise from the audience and walk forward.
Today's auction, which he had organized, had generated far greater profits than anticipated. The last item in particular had sold for more than ten times its expected hammer price. A bidding war that had originally only doubled the price had climbed that high thanks to two rival factions going head-to-head.
'Is it really that special?'
The auctioneer gazed at the glass bottle and the powder filling it. Countless sparkling fragments, as though someone had crushed stars into dust, were packed inside.
The winning bidder signed the ownership documents the auction house presented.
Two names appeared, alternating—the signer's own name, and the name of his employer. At moments like this, it wasn't uncommon for a legal proxy to appear in place of the actual owner, especially when the owner lived far away.
The auctioneer confirmed the owner's name, imagined the commission that would land in his lap, and smiled as he said,
"Thank you. Ownership of this item is hereby transferred to Duke Slagbort."
The glass bottle was meticulously packaged and shipped to Yeterinpurk under heavy guard.