10. Demon in a Bottle (35)
10. Demon in a Bottle (35)
The Avatar's wide-area curse had been devastatingly potent.
Even now, a full day after the curse had lifted, some victims still struggled with lingering aftereffects.
The clergy of the Orthodox Church refused to discharge anyone until they'd undergone comprehensive spiritual treatment.
"I'm telling you, I'm perfectly fine!"
"No. Absolutely not."
Technically, a patient could leave with their own consent and a guardian's approval. Wonderstein, however, had no intention of granting Ella her release.
He'd watched her push herself past her limits and collapse more times than he could count.
A few extra days of genuine rest would do her good.
Leaving her behind, Wonderstein and Maya stepped out of the assembly hall.
"How are you feeling, Miss Maya? Holding up all right?"
"Yes."
Her reply came out perfectly even.
But her self-assessments weren't to be trusted.
She wasn't the type to admit when something was wrong either.
Wonderstein studied her face and cautiously broached the subject.
"I understand you've been suffering from Papilax exposure for the past two weeks."
At his words, Maya stopped walking and turned to face him.
"...How do you know about that?"
"Mister Arno told me."
Maya clenched her jaw.
He'd promised to keep it secret.
She fought to steady her pounding heart.
Stay calm.
It still isn't certain that he knows everything.
"Did he... also tell you what caused the Papilax condition?"
"No. But it wasn't hard to guess."
A cold weight dropped into her stomach.
The color drained from her face.
Her mind raced back over the past two weeks — every small gesture, every careless word she'd let slip in front of the Troupe Leader.
She really had been too obvious.
Especially that stunt where she'd dressed up to catch his eye and tried to make him jealous by cozying up to another man — nothing subtle about that.
And come to think of it, Karen had blabbed to the Troupe Leader, too — feeding him nonsense about how she wanted him to take her to the ball.
A tremor ran through her shoulders.
This was the worst.
She silently cursed both Arno and Karen for their loose lips.
Any faint hope that the Troupe Leader might be mistaken about her feelings evaporated with his next words.
"You said you wanted to become my student. Is it appropriate to harbor those kinds of feelings on top of that?"
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Ah. There it was.
Heat flooded her cheeks.
Her heart pounded wildly.
She couldn't bring herself to look him in the face.
"I— I..."
"Don't worry. Everyone goes through that at your age. Heh heh."
He chuckled softly, as though he found her behavior endearing.
Every trace of her embarrassment vanished, replaced by a surge of anger.
He was lumping her in with every other woman who'd ever fawned over that face of his.
"It's... more complicated than you think, Troupe Leader."
"I know. I understand perfectly well."
That tone — the one that said he had it all figured out.
He was probably writing her feelings off as a teenage girl's passing infatuation with an older man.
"Don't treat me like a child."
At the ice in her voice, Wonderstein let his smile subside and answered evenly.
"My apologies. Well, then... Miss Maya, do you want to hear my answer?"
Maya inhaled sharply.
It felt as if her heart had stopped altogether.
The blush spread faster across her face.
She could hear her own pulse hammering in her ears.
Yes, she wanted to know.
What did the Troupe Leader truly think of her?
"Yes. I want to hear it."
"Good. Then follow me. There's a place that's perfect for this."
The two crossed Tetromino Square without another word.
Maya wondered where he was leading her.
Before long, they stood in front of a building. It rose opposite the confectionery factory, an imposing structure that boasted a full twenty stories.
"Here we are."
Maya's expression went rigid as she tilted her head up to look at it.
The muscles in her face twitched as though seized by a spasm.
She couldn't believe this.
The place he'd brought her was the absolute last thing she'd expected.
The tallest building in Yeterinpurk.
A hotel.
He turned back toward her, wearing a brazen smile as she stood frozen like a statue.
"What's wrong? Didn't you say you wanted an answer?"
It was only then that she remembered what lay at his core.
A womanizer. A lecher. A degenerate.
A wave of contempt surged up inside her.
Yet she couldn't deny that, at the same moment, a part of her was thrilled.
The implication of his bringing her here was unmistakable.
-Maya, you are pretty.
-Of course she is! I guarantee it!
-I'm sure he'll be so happy, he'll dance a jig!
Karen, you were right.
The Troupe Leader had accepted her feelings.
But she couldn't let herself celebrate without reservation.
Isn't going straight to bed rushing things a bit?
Just because she wasn't outwardly expressive didn't mean she lacked common sense or operated on some higher moral plane.
When she'd devised her plan to seduce him, she'd had her own hopes and expectations about how things would unfold.
And now he was barreling straight toward the final stage without any of the steps in between.
Maya's lips parted slightly.
Getting the words out was harder than she'd anticipated.
Voicing some romantic, starry-eyed ideal about love would only make her seem more like a child in his eyes.
Besides, they weren't exactly in the "just met" stage — they'd spent months together by now.
More than anything, if she rejected him here, she doubted he would ever reach out to her again.
Maya took a slow, steadying breath.
Honestly, considering the environment and the social standing he'd grown up with, his proposition wasn't nearly as far outside conventional norms as she'd first thought.
From what she'd heard, in the countryside it was ordinary for fourteen-year-olds to experiment with all sorts of things among their peers, and plenty of girls her age were already married.
He was a wanderer, on top of everything else.
If a woman caught his eye, he'd likely shared a bed with her the same night, more times than he could count.
This was a man who'd embraced a titled viscountess in a public venue.
Bringing her here could actually be seen as a gesture of consideration toward her.
Not that she'd never imagined what it would be like to share his bed, either.
Back when she'd mistakenly believed Reina had slept with him, she'd even caught herself wishing she could have been the one in Reina's place.
She was just frightened by how abruptly his attitude had shifted — by how aggressive he'd suddenly become.
Had yesterday's scheme worked a little too well?
While she sorted through her thoughts, Wonderstein stepped away to the front desk and returned.
He'd secured a room, it seemed.
"All right. Let's head up."
Maya hesitated for a moment, then gave a small nod.
"...Okay."
The hotel had an elevator.
Mechanically operated contraptions had existed for ages, but these newer, electrically powered ones were only now proliferating through the high-rises of the major cities.
The elevator attendant guided them to the top floor.
Wonderstein had apparently booked the most expensive room in the building.
Maya found herself wondering what the attendant was thinking as she looked at the two of them.
Was the age gap too obvious?
Or did they look like a perfectly matched couple?
Only the hum of the motor filled the silence as the elevator ascended.
Maya pressed her legs together and shifted her feet restlessly.
Whether it was fear or anticipation, a fluttering tickle had settled in her lower belly a while ago.
Would it hurt a lot?
She'd heard the first time was intensely painful.
The elevator reached the top floor.
He led her toward the door directly ahead of them.
Only then did he notice that her shoulders were trembling.
A girl who'd faced down demons and Avatars without flinching was scared of this.
Kids really were just kids, after all.
"Is this your first time?"
Maya's expression hardened at the question.
The gentle, caring teacher she normally knew turned remarkably crass when it came to women.
"Yes."
"I didn't rush you into this too fast, did I? If you need time to sort out your thoughts, we can turn around right now."
You awful man.
Saying something like that after bringing her all the way up here.
Maya shook her head.
"No. I can do this. Please."
Her voice was resolute.
She'd already made up her mind.
If the Troupe Leader was going to be her first, she could accept that.
Today, she would become an adult.
They opened the door and stepped inside — and were immediately met by a sudden wall of noise.
It was a dining room.
Dozens of people sat in groups of three or four, deep in conversation.
Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the entire space.
Beyond them, an outdoor terrace overlooked the city below.
That area was fairly crowded as well.
Maya couldn't mask her bewilderment.
What in the world?
Her eyes found the sign hanging above the entrance.
She blinked as she read it.
<Sky Lounge: An observation restaurant with a panoramic view of Tetromino Square>
"Today, we're going to resolve the problem that drove you into Papilax in the first place."
When Wonderstein had heard from Arno that she'd fallen into a Papilax state, he'd understood the cause immediately.
He remembered the puzzle she'd been obsessing over for weeks.
The riddle of the Tetromino Square tiles.
Maya had unquestionably gotten herself tangled up in the same enigma that had driven countless scholars to madness.
He ordered a drink for each of them at the Sky Lounge and then stepped out onto the observation deck.
The entirety of Tetromino Square spread out beneath the terrace.
To a modern man like him, this height was nothing, but Maya had said it was her first time in such a place.
He wouldn't have blamed her for being afraid.
He began to explain the solution — the answer that players around the world had spent weeks puzzling over after TT2's release.
First, each tile on the square floor held a hidden meaning.
The number of distinct shapes that could be formed by combining four squares was seven in total.
J, L, T, Z, S, O, I.
Those were the same blocks that appeared in the game "Tetris."
What those shapes correlated to could be deduced from a hint found in another stage — a document belonging to the Alchemy Guild. The guild possessed a chart that organized elements much like the real-world periodic table.
Of course, being a fantasy world, its table differed from the modern one.
Magical mysteries were woven into it.
Water, fire, wind, and lightning, for instance, were listed proudly among the elements.
The chart was divided into color-coded cells much like the real periodic table, and by mapping those cells onto the seven block-shapes from the square, one could determine which real-world elements each shape represented.
Oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus.
Each shape corresponded to one of five real elements. The two remaining shapes stood for "water" and "tachyon." Water, while a single element in this world, was composed of oxygen and hydrogen in reality — thus it symbolized "bonding." Tachyon, a particle that had been proven not to exist in reality, symbolized "void."
When the 2.5 million Tetromino tiles were converted through those five elements plus the concepts of bonding and void, the result was the following configuration.
Any modern person would have recognized it at a glance: a double helix.
DNA.
Two strands of DNA, spiraling together simultaneously.
A quadruple helix.
A structure that, naturally, could not exist in the real world.
"You see that memorial monument in the center of the square? The one Saint Victor erected for the victims of the plague? Two double helixes. The answer's been sitting right in front of our eyes the whole time."
He knew exactly why the developers had hidden the DNA structure inside the game.
It was meant to symbolize Wonderstein's power — his ability to manipulate biological matter.
He finished his explanation and realized she was glaring at him.
Her expression held a glint of anger, of irritation.
She let out a sigh that seemed to come from the soles of her feet, then spoke in a voice cold as a winter gale.
"Not interested."
With that, she spun on her heel and strode off the observation deck.
Look at that.
After I went to all the trouble of explaining it.
She was at that age — the age when you're convinced you know best. Normally she called herself his student, but the moment she'd hit a real problem, she'd refused to ask for help, tried to solve it alone, and only made things worse. That told him everything he needed to know.
And now, after he'd even paid for the Sky Lounge entry, she was just walking away.
He supposed he'd have to be the adult and let it slide.