10. Demon in a Bottle (24)
10. Demon in a Bottle (24)
She had improved dramatically over the past two days.
She still slipped into odd behavior now and then, but in public, at least, her composure had returned to that of a restrained, model student.
Yet as the medication wore off, her overall condition seemed to worsen.
She looked more haggard than before.
Her friends, believing she had been pulling all-nighters in the taming pens to care for a sick ferret, watched her with sympathetic eyes.
Clara, of course, knew every bit of that story was a lie.
She wasn't sick. She hadn't been under the influence of painkillers. And she certainly hadn't been nursing any ferrets.
Her thoughts drifted back over the last two days.
Phairen had drilled her relentlessly, night after night, on the finer points of mimicry.
How to walk like Clara.
How to smile like Clara.
How to greet people the way Clara did.
It had been a grueling, blood-sweating effort just to get the basics of Clara's habitual mannerisms into her body, and all she got from Phairen was mockery.
"Pathetic. It took you this long to copy her walk and gestures? Any first-year student could nail a simple impression like that in a day."
Clara's face fell. She'd been hoping for a word of praise.
Phairen's constant sneering and ridicule made her feel utterly incompetent — a defective, useless thing.
"Can you even keep this up for the rest of the school year? What are you going to do about the major acrobatic routines? You know you get expelled if you fail the monthly exam twice, right?"
"W-what happens if it comes to that?"
Phairen looked at her frozen-stiff mentor and let out a long, exasperated sigh.
"Then you leave school and find other work. What kind of jobs are there for a girl in the city? Peeling potatoes, maybe, or working in a sewing factory."
Clara shook her head.
No.
She hadn't broken out of that flask to end up doing work like that.
"C-couldn't I find a position as a private tutor? If I could use my knowledge to teach someone..."
Phairen let out a loud, deliberate laugh.
"A private tutor? What noble in his right mind would hire an acrobat as a tutor? Unless you're angling to become the master of the house's mistress. Hmm, now that you mention it, there's always work in taverns or entertainment houses."
"Ah..."
The light in Clara's eyes dimmed.
Knowledge and sorcery were useless without the social standing or money to make use of them.
She had neither.
Phairen decided it was time to soothe her mentor a little.
She wrapped Clara in a gentle embrace from behind.
"Or, how about you come work at my house? Cleaning, kitchen work. It's better than trying to scrape by out there. I could give you a generous allowance."
Clara turned the offer over in her mind and slowly nodded.
The idea of a former Demon God's Apostle being reduced to a housemaid stung her pride, but she had no other options.
Without this girl's help, she couldn't do anything.
She couldn't function as an acrobat since she couldn't perform. And even if she tried to wield her sorcery, she had no means to procure the necessary materials.
Clara consoled herself.
Anything would be better than falling back into the Black Magician's hands.
Her mind strayed to the time she spent trapped in that first flask.
Back then, she hadn't known who had created her or why she was imprisoned.
The only thing she'd ever seen was the face of a man looking in through the glass.
After shattering the flask and escaping into the world, she gathered information, piecing together clues to form a theory about her creator.
The Black Magician.
The mastermind behind the Circus Grand Prix terror attack.
A BioMancer.
A manipulator of the Curse Plague and Devolut.
A man who would slaughter tens of thousands to achieve his goals and perform human experiments without a flicker of remorse.
If he ever found out she was still alive, the outcome would be unspeakable.
Clara followed her friends toward the front of the lecture hall.
A tall man in a black cloak stood there with his back to them, organizing his lecture materials.
"The instructor's already here."
"The leader of the Wonderstein Circus Troupe. That's the circus Ella's in, right?"
"He really is handsome."
Clara stepped forward.
As the student representative, it was her duty to greet him.
The moment he turned his head, she bowed hers.
"Hello, Instructor. I'm Clara, the senior class representative."
He returned the bow.
"I'm Frank Wonderstein, leader of the Wonderstein Circus Troupe."
They both lifted their heads.
For a few seconds, they simply stared at each other.
Clara froze to the spot.
The moment their eyes met, her mind went completely blank.
The face before her.
It was the very face she'd stared at endlessly from inside that first glass flask.
The Black Magician.
What was he doing here?
She fought to suppress the trembling that wracked her body.
She could not calm down.
Stay calm.
I'm not that nameless Demon in the Bottle anymore.
I am Clara.
There's no way he could recognize me.
Just then, a single whispered phrase from the man's lips sent a shock through her mind.
It should have been far too soft for anyone to hear.
But though she had lost most of her divine Authority, she could still gather nearby conversations.
And she understood it perfectly.
"Ah, it was you. So you're still alive."
Clara's consciousness simply blinked out where she stood.
***
The moment Wonderstein saw Clara, he thought he recognized her from somewhere.
Was there a character like her in the game?
After a brief hesitation, he remembered Rekachev's Seven Mysteries.
Rekachev was packed with every element you'd expect from a school setting. One of those elements was the urban legends that floated among the student body.
Most were typical school ghost stories.
Like the one about the statues of Saint Victor and the Emperor coming to life at night to duel each other. Or the one where you should never count the bamboo stalks in the jungle gym — one will have multiplied, and if you step on it, you slip, break your neck, and die. Or the one about a secret room where a hidden demon has turned a professor into his servant and is using a female student as a host to resurrect himself.
The 'Suicide of Clara' was one of those seven mysteries.
According to the legend, she was a beautiful girl with grades good enough to be the top of her class. Then one day, she killed herself.
The Seven Mysteries were the sort of thing you occasionally found clues or Easter eggs about in-game — for instance, if you fulfilled certain conditions, the statues of Saint Victor and the Emperor really would animate and fight monsters. But the suicide of Clara never got a clear explanation.
She was just found one day, hanging from a tree on the school grounds.
The fan theories had been rampant. The pressure of grades, a secret pregnancy with a professor, bullying.
The school, unable to determine a cause, simply wrote it off as a suicide and moved on. Clara's parents had even hired a sorcerer to perform a soul-calling ritual, only to receive the deeply unsettling answer that the body contained 'no soul.'
What had happened to her soul?
Was it still wandering the school somewhere?
Or was it possessing someone new every year, continuing its school life for eternity?
Speculation was all there was.
In the actual game, the only trace of her appearance you could find was a single old photograph tucked inside a diary.
That was why he only recognized her after staring for a long moment upon hearing the name 'Clara.'
They said she was a senior now. Considering the timeline that serves as the backdrop for TT2, the month of her suicide would be this one.
What was going on?
She definitely looked unwell. The color drained from her face the instant their introductions were over, and she fainted dead away.
Wonderstein caught her as she fell. He scooped her up, carried her to the prep room beside the stage, and laid her down on the sofa.
While the other students ran off to fetch Dr. Nakhimov, the head of the school infirmary, he questioned her friends.
Had anything unusual been going on with her lately?
They rushed to speak up all at once.
"Well, she's seemed to be struggling for a few months now. She's the student rep, but with the shadow of her predecessor, Charlie, looming so large, she gets compared to him constantly."
"And her pet ferret suddenly attacked her out of nowhere, sent her into a panic. You know, how she was thrashing around like she had rabies?"
Dr. Nakhimov arrived shortly after, examined her, and concluded it was simple exhaustion. He left her a few nutritional supplements, told her to visit the infirmary later, and left.
Her friends seemed relieved, but Wonderstein couldn't share the feeling.
He knew better.
This wasn't just a case of fatigue.
The ending waiting for her was 'suicide.'
If he hadn't known, maybe he could have ignored it. But now that he did, he couldn't just stand by and watch.
Lecture time was approaching. He had to go teach.
But he was so worried about Clara that he couldn't bring himself to leave.
In the end, he opened the door and went back inside. She was sitting blankly on the sofa and flinched when she saw him enter.
Her eyes were unfocused, and she was trembling like she'd suffered a nervous breakdown.
What could have driven this kid to such an extreme point?
He sighed inwardly in sympathy.
"You're awake."
Clara looked up at him and the smile on his face.
That face was undeniably the man from the flask.
The man the world knew as the Black Magician.
She briefly considered trying to bluff her way out, then gave up.
Playing dumb wouldn't work. He'd already recognized her.
"It has... been a long time...."
A long time?
Wonderstein thought for a moment, then recalled that she'd come out as the student representative to give a greeting during the Draft. He'd been so focused on Lord Fantastic's movements back then that he hadn't paid any attention to her.
"Yes, not since that day."
A reunion after a full seventeen years.
A tremor in her eyes, she nodded.
Wonderstein remembered her from back then, standing poised and confident before thousands of people. What could have happened in between to make a person fall apart like this?
"You've changed a great deal."
Clara thought he was referring to her old, original form. The hideous, crusted shell with the writhing black flesh.
"A lot has happened."
"Has it?"
Wonderstein walked closer to her.
She flinched and shrank back, afraid of what he might do to her.
He didn't lay a single finger on her body. Instead, he picked up the blanket that had fallen off the sofa and covered her with it.
Then he dumped the cold water from her cup and poured her a fresh one from the pitcher.
"You've had a hard time, haven't you?"
His tone and attitude were nothing but gentle.
Was this really the Black Magician?
This didn't match any of the intel she had gathered...
Of course, she knew the weaknesses of the 'Garden of Whispers.' It only collected the hearsay that floated between people. It was far from the truth or objective reality.
Still, considering the things he'd done — or at least, the things he was reputed to have done — he was no saint.
She had never expected him to act like this.
"You're very different from what I'd heard."
"Oh, you mean the rumors about me?"
Wonderstein shook his head, as if thoroughly weary of the topic.
Womanizer, coward, conman, slave trader, abuser of the disabled...
The more famous he became, starting with the affair with Viscountess Bergson, the more vicious slander he attracted. The sinister reputation of a monster circus made it damn near impossible to shake the stigma.
He'd nearly laughed himself sick when he heard the latest absurd rumor — that he apparently possessed some kind of supernatural Inspira that seduced women.
"Sounds like the gossip really got out of hand."
"...Yes."
Wonderstein recalled something Ella had warned him about.
That the students of Rekachev would try to eat an outside instructor alive. Lord Fantastic had spent his entire lecture the previous week getting ripped to shreds over his own rumors and weaknesses.
"Don't worry. I didn't come here to fight. Just to have a chat."
Clara swallowed hard at his words.
His kindness suddenly made sense.
He could kill her right now if he wanted, but he was letting her live. The reason was obvious.
"Do you... want something from me?"
Her voice was thick with suspicion. He shook his head.
"No. It's a purely charitable gesture, shall we say?"
Though he said that, Clara's eyes didn't seem to believe a word of it.
Seeing the distrust in her expression, he quickly added,
"If I want anything, it's simply for you to stay alive. I won't ask for anything else."
"To... stay alive? Is that really... all?"
She looked like she'd been slapped. It was the last thing she'd ever expected to hear from him.
So she really was thinking about suicide.
He nodded, noting the shocked look on her face.
Wonderstein paused to steady his breathing, and an old memory came back to him.
There was a time when he had seriously considered suicide, too.
"Let me tell you a story about someone. He was a man who couldn't do a single thing without help from others. A pathetic, insignificant existence, confined to a small room, incapable of even sustaining his own life."
Clara knew exactly who he was talking about.
It was her story.
"Watching from the sidelines, sneering and laughing down at all the people living their lives outside — that was the sum total of what he could do."
Wonderstein thought of himself before he started the gaming broadcast.
That really was the kind of person he had been. Full of rage and inferiority toward the world, just drifting through the internet.
Clara scratched at the sofa in shame.
He saw right through her.
"But then, that same man got a new name. He left his room and stepped out into a new world. He intended to do work that brought joy to others and earned their applause."
Clara's face turned red.
She was suddenly mortified.
He had the wrong idea. She'd never had any such wholesome, noble thoughts.
She'd only stolen this body and name to hide from his sight. Using the information she'd eavesdropped on, she'd planned to operate comfortably from the shadows of society.
The ridiculous thing was, she hadn't even managed to do that, and was now thinking of just leeching off someone else's household.
She couldn't hold her head up before the man she might call her 'parent.'
"You don't know my circumstances... I'm not a being that even amounts to that much...."
"I only wanted to tell you that I'm rooting for you. I'm sorry if it sounded like I was prying."
A teaching assistant called his name from outside.
It was time to start the lecture.
Wonderstein felt antsy. He'd wanted to give her some words of courage, something to lift her spirits, but all he'd managed was a lot of hollow talk.
He stood up, offering one last piece of advice.
"Filling another person's shoes is a heavy burden. You don't have to be an exact copy of the person who was here before you. You'll find your own way of doing things."
Wonderstein spoke from his experience as a Possessor.
It was a little off-topic from her troubles as a student representative, of course.
The demon gave a slight jolt of her shoulders.
To her, it sounded like he was telling her to stop obsessing over mimicking Clara.
"Oh, and one more thing. It's not uncommon for a pet you're raising to suddenly act out. If you let every little thing like that stress you out, life gets unbearable."
He offered that last piece of advice, something Ella always said, and walked out of the room.
Once he was completely gone, Clara mulled over the meaning of his final words. A grumble escaped her lips.
"A pet?"
He'd said it like he was talking about a housecat that ran away and caused him a headache.
So that's how he assessed her escape and seventeen years of desperate struggle.
Thinking about it now, she remembered what she used to call him, long ago.
The one who had filled her flask with nutrient fluid from the outside. That's what she had called him back then.
"Master...."