10. Demon in a Bottle (29)
10. Demon in a Bottle (29)
The atmosphere in the ballroom froze solid, as if the very air had crystallized.
Every gaze was fixed on Maya, as though she had cast a spell over the room.
Such was the mystical presence her appearance commanded.
Even those who already knew her felt as though they were seeing her for the first time.
On any ordinary day, she paid no attention to grooming.
Her standard look was a head of disheveled bed-hair and whatever clothes she had crumpled up the night before, pulled on again without a second thought.
She never bothered with creams or lotions — not even the simplest skincare.
But today, she had washed herself thoroughly, swept her hair into gentle waves, and even applied makeup.
She outshone everyone in the room.
Skin as white as fresh snow, silver hair cascading in soft, rippling curves.
Ruby-red eyes that sparkled like gemstones, lips glazed with a dewy pink sheen.
And a face sculpted with flawless proportions.
If a master dollmaker had poured his life's devotion into a single piece of perfect beauty, it would look exactly like her.
That divine craftsman had made only one mistake.
He never drew a smile onto her face.
Maya surveyed the ballroom with an expressionless face.
Every person who met her eyes — man or woman — instantly flushed red.
The emotion of envy never had a chance to surface.
The aura enveloping her overwhelmed them before it could.
A little grooming had transformed her into an entirely different person.
Her attire was not even lavish.
She merely wore a silver hooded mantle over her shoulders.
That alone was enough to render everyone else's finery dull by comparison.
Maya, however, was utterly indifferent to their reactions.
Only one person mattered.
She cared about nothing except how her Troupe Leader looked at her.
Spotting him was easy.
His own appearance stood out in the crowd.
His eyes, fixed on her, glinted like a man who had just discovered treasure, and his mouth quivered as if he were struggling to contain an irrepressible delight.
It was unmistakably rapture.
Victory flashed in Maya's eyes.
She clenched her fist in secret.
It worked!
Her partner, who had caught her subtle shift in demeanor, whispered softly.
"Not yet. Wait until the man is writhing with impatience."
"...Understood."
Maya executed the next step of the plan they had prepared.
She slipped off her mantle, handed it to the attendant at the entrance, and shifted her stance so she appeared to be leaning ever so slightly against Arno.
Her Troupe Leader's lips parted, as if forming a mute lament of regret.
A shiver coursed through Maya's whole body.
She had seduced him!
A thrill more electric than anything she had ever felt raced down her spine.
Her read on his state was dead-on.
Wonderstein was swallowing a scream of joy at the sight of Maya.
The Smiling Man's composure did not function when his delight was genuine.
Draped in the silver mantle issued to the Silver Screen Circus's troupe members, hair styled and face made up, Maya looked exactly like someone he knew intimately.
TT1's "Mage Maya."
TTT offered a wide array of collectible outfits for each character.
Leaving aside the swimsuits, maid costumes, and dancer outfits deliberately aimed at certain demographics, the default look from TT1 had always commanded steady, enduring popularity.
He had never expected to see her in that form.
Leaving aside how the questline to join the Silver Screen Circus had fallen through, the simple fact was that she disliked grooming.
In the game, a character's appearance never changed, no matter how much time passed. Every character maintained peak visual condition even in the middle of a slaughter-filled hellscape.
Because it was a game.
But for the real Maya, washing up and dressing nicely every day was an insufferably tedious chore.
Her fans from that other world would have been horrified to see how little she cared for her looks. If Yurakne did not corner her once in a while to scrub her down and tidy her up, Maya herself would never lift a finger.
Wonderstein had resigned himself to the idea that he would never see that TT1 look again — not until the day he returned to reality.
And now the girl he had only ever dreamed of was standing right before his eyes.
Makeup had compensated for the youthful softness of her seventeen-year-old face.
The Maya standing there in a silver robe was the spitting image of the character from the game.
Wonderstein could not suppress a proud grin.
It felt like unlocking another achievement as a gamer.
The moment was, of course, fleeting.
After stepping through the entrance, she immediately handed her mantle to the attendant.
Wonderstein let out a wistful sigh.
Ella was equally stunned by Maya's transformation.
Judging by her hair and makeup, she must have spent several hours on it at minimum.
The whole reason she had left early was clearly for this.
Ella had always known Maya was pretty.
But she had never imagined a little grooming could create such a staggering gap between them.
"I thought I might have to wait two years, but I suppose not. Heh heh."
Ella's expression stiffened at Wonderstein's murmured comment beside her.
She understood the implication behind his words.
This bastard.
So he had been looking at a girl who called herself his student with those kinds of eyes?
Ella bit down her indignation and muttered under her breath.
'With a ten-year age gap...'
She knew perfectly well the accusation did not hold water.
After all, she herself had roughly the same age gap with him.
It was simply resentment, pure and simple.
The fact that he had rejected her own confession the way he had, yet his eyes were fixed on Maya like he was staking a claim.
So her competitive fire only burned hotter.
She refused to lose.
She conceded that her rival had the upper hand in looks.
But she had her own weapons.
She just had to use them to fight.
Ella noticed Maya stealing glances their way.
She promptly linked her arm through Wonderstein's and rested her cheek against his shoulder.
"Maya really has turned into a beauty, hasn't she?"
"She has."
Whenever he gave these hollow answers, irritation normally flared inside her, but now Ella forced an exaggerated laugh, as if the two of them were sharing the world's most delightful conversation.
From across the room, Maya's eyebrow twitched.
See that? Whatever you pulled tonight, I'm the one at his side.
Ella pressed herself even closer to him.
"Looks like Maya invited her 'special someone' as her partner. What a surprise. I never imagined she would be pining after another troupe's leader."
"Mr. Arno deserves to be every illusion mage's idol."
Ella's ears pricked up.
There was a faintly self-deprecating note in his tone.
Wonderstein was thinking about how Maya had kept her distance from the other members over the past few days.
She had probably been plagued by doubts about her chosen path after scoring a zero in acrobatics practice.
If she had joined the Silver Screen Circus, she would be demonstrating her prodigious talent among fellow mages and rising fast. Instead, here she was in the Monster Circus, just suffering.
He had not been able to nurture her or support her properly.
All he had done was teach her the spells she should have developed naturally and give her one or two magic tools via the system.
In return, she had nearly died to demons after joining his troupe and had to endure horrors the original story never put her through.
And her humiliation from forcing herself to master acrobatics that did not suit her body — in a way, that too was his fault.
She had ended up that way because she had been desperately trying to win approval from his indifferent self.
"Would Miss Maya be happier as his student than she is now?"
Arno and Maya.
In the original history, teacher and student.
A relationship that his clumsy interference had knocked off course.
If Maya truly had feelings for the Silver Screen Circus, then this was finally her path snapping back into alignment with the original story.
Ella's expression hardened at his words.
"That's not it."
She knew just how deeply Maya respected Wonderstein.
The girl was always grateful to him.
Forgetting her own rivalry, Ella rose to Maya's defense.
"Maya doesn't see anyone but you as her teacher. If you ask me, all of this is just..."
Ella choked back the rest of the sentence and swallowed it.
She could not bring herself to say aloud, 'She's just trying to make you jealous.'
At that moment, the ballroom went dark.
A spotlight descended onto the stage.
There stood Professor Phairen in a formal dress, serving as the evening's emcee.
She briefly explained the purpose of tonight's event and the schedule, then introduced the band performing the celebratory number.
A moment of blackout, and then four silhouettes of wildly differing shapes emerged, wreathed in the mist that hung low over the floor.
The students recognized them by their shadows alone.
"The 4-member Band!"
"Whoa! They invited them?"
"What's gotten into the faculty?!"
The 4-member Band was an ensemble of four different species.
Traditional performance circles could not understand why they were popular, but young people practically worshipped them as idols.
Inside Rekachev, there was even an imitation band club — that was how high their status was among the students.
"What're you all gawking at?! Is this some kind of young-master school?"
"Everybody up!"
The human with the bass and the reptilian with the guitar came into view first.
At the front, a fairy darted around with a microphone, and at the back, a ratman sat surrounded by his drum kit.
"Whoaaaaa!"
"It's really the 4-member Band, the 4-member Band!"
"Hurraaaaay!"
A roar of cheers, and the performance began.
The Freshmen Welcome Party at Rekachev was operating at a level that matched the Circus Grand Prix season.
It opened with the prestigious 4-member Band, moved on to a circus quiz with partners, a group dance following the Yeterinpurk City Ensemble's ballroom piece, and even an acrobatics showdown testing simple sleight of hand.
The programming was so entertaining that everyone set aside their worries from outside and threw themselves into the fun.
Even Ella and Maya, who had been keeping each other in check, happily clasped hands during the group dance, spinning around in step with the beat.
Only two people failed to enjoy themselves.
Lord Fantastic and his daughter, Reina.
Simon's face had clouded the moment Reina made a mistake on the circus quiz and got one question wrong, and when they lost by the slimmest of margins to Wonderstein and Ella in the acrobatics contest, he threw a fit and stormed out of the ballroom.
Reina sat alone in a corner of the hall, dejected, until Wonderstein led her outside to console her.
Ella had no choice but to tolerate this one.
Reina just looked too pitiful.
That piece of human garbage, honestly.
What kind of father acts like that?
Simon's fierce obsession with winning had a reason.
The accumulated scores were used to select tonight's Party King and Queen.
One final stage remained, of course.
The popularity vote.
The attendees would vote on which couple had stood out the most tonight.
Simon had given up and walked out before it even began for a simple reason: the outcome was too obvious.
Half the room's attention tonight had been stolen by the 4-member Band, and the other half had been claimed by a single girl.
Just as he predicted, the winners after the composite scores and popular vote were Arno and Maya.
Their score had been in the middle of the pack, but the popularity vote more than made up for it.
"Maya! Maya! Maya!"
The result was owed entirely to Maya's looks.
From a distance, Phairen shot a death glare at Meren and Clara — who by now had grown quite chummy and were chattering away — then climbed onto the stage.
There stood Arno and Maya, side by side, tonight's Party King and Queen.
Phairen smiled a mischievous smile.
"Now then, shall the Queen bestow a kiss of honor upon the King's cheek?"
At those words, Maya's body — which had moved so fluidly under Arno's guidance all night — turned rigid.
What?
Whether or not the crowd understood her feelings, the partygoers, drunk on the evening's revelry, erupted into wild cheers.
"Ooh, a kiss!"
"Do it! Do it!"
In many other cultures, demanding that someone kiss the cheek of a person who was not their lover in a public setting would be considered deeply rude and tasteless.
Not in Kiev. It was a little embarrassing, yes, but ultimately nothing more than a gesture of friendship.
That said, it still carried just enough weight to be wielded as a kind of playful penalty at these events.
Maya looked at Arno and hesitated.
These were lips that had never even dared to touch her Troupe Leader's cheek.
And now, in front of him — another man's cheek?
Revulsion surged up inside her chest.
She had followed Arno's plan all night, but this she did not want to do.
Maya scanned the ballroom.
She needed to find him.
But the blazing stage lights blinded her to the darkness of the hall beyond.
What should she do?
Arno gazed at her with affection.
A girl who carried traces of both the woman he had loved and the man he had envied, in equal measure.
He had decided to help her — left unable to use magic by the Papilax — because both of those people had been his comrades.
The plan was simple but effective: show her looking beautiful at another man's side, spark the man's jealousy, and use that to replenish her self-esteem and restore her magic.
"Come on, now! Hurry up! Oh, for goodness' sake — if the Queen won't, then let the King kiss the Queen!"
Wha—?
At Phairen's words, Maya froze — and in that instant, Arno pulled her toward him.