11. Wonderland (2)
11. Wonderland (2)
Outside the window, the air held a bluish darkness—the sun was about to rise.
I lay in bed for a while even after waking.
It had been a long time since I'd dreamed.
Ever since crossing into this world, I hadn't dreamed once.
Dreams, after all, are just chemical reactions in the brain.
Probably because of The Smiling Man's power—the thing that forcibly maintains my emotional equilibrium.
In Wonderstein's body, I had never dreamed.
But today was different.
Most likely because of what I'd ingested before sleeping last night.
Over the past two weeks, I'd been running an experiment on my own body.
I'd been taking the Fragment of Trill I'd obtained from defeating the Demon in the Bottle—Starlight—incrementally, increasing the dosage each day.
At first, there was almost no discernible effect.
Then about a week ago, something began to shift, and yesterday I received this message:
[Innate Trait "The Smiling Man" has been deactivated.]
I'd felt it even before the message appeared.
The floating sensation that kept my emotions and thoughts suspended was vanishing.
Bound by The Smiling Man, I'd always felt as though I were walking on clouds.
Now I felt like my feet were planted firmly on solid ground.
But it didn't last.
In less than a minute, The Smiling Man returned.
The thought crossed my mind to try again immediately, but I decided to attempt it at the same time tomorrow for the sake of experimental consistency.
I fell asleep soon after—and that's when I dreamed.
I sat up in bed and drank the water I'd left on the nightstand.
The feeling it left me with was far from pleasant.
Of all things, dredging up memories of the orphanage.
Ever since I was rescued from that place, I'd done everything I could to forget it.
Not that life in the orphanage was nothing but misery.
There were happy moments, certainly.
But nothing is more uncomfortable to enjoy than a comedy you already know ends in tragedy. And nothing is emptier than a memory with no one left to share it.
That was why, for so long, I'd kept those recollections buried.
I sat on the edge of the bed and gazed out the window.
It was hard to guess the hour from the view alone.
Yeterinpurk was so close to the pole that the daylight hours shrank noticeably with every passing week. Before we'd arrived in this city, they'd said there'd been a white night phenomenon—the sun never setting for twenty-four hours straight—but now night claimed more than half the day.
Just as I opened my Status Window to check the time, I heard a distant clamor of laughter and chatter drawing nearer.
The troupe members who'd gone to the early-morning market were coming back.
I threw on some clothes and went out to greet them.
***
A group outing was an unfamiliar experience for the monster performers.
Whenever they traveled, they were always shut inside wagons or cages. Arriving at a town or city meant being confined to the lodging, unable to step outside.
The triplets and Umon, especially—their physical features were so conspicuous that covering up with clothes like the others wasn't even an option.
Yet today, they'd walked openly through crowded streets, their bodies fully exposed.
Their appearance drew eyes, but nobody looked at them as though they were strange. Everyone simply assumed they were part of a costume parade and moved on.
Ella's tailcoat and Clara's Rekachev uniform, worn at the head of the group, only reinforced that assumption.
Today was October 1st.
The first day of the Halloween season.
Halloween technically fell on October 31st, but the festival began well before that. In the countryside, it was typical for it to start a few days early. Many cities began a week ahead. Larger cities sometimes started two weeks out.
But in Yeterinpurk, you could spot people in monster costumes on the streets a full month in advance.
That was due to two local peculiarities.
The first was the Rekachev Circus School.
They held a school festival during the Halloween period. Since the festival opened two weeks early, students began gathering in clubs a month ahead to prepare special events and performances. By early October, enormous pumpkin decorations were already rolling across the campus grounds.
The second was the Slagbort Confectionery Factory.
It gave out free candy to children who visited the factory in monster costumes.
Once winter set in, the empire's trade demand converged on its ice-free ports, causing warehouse and distribution costs in Yeterinpurk to skyrocket starting in late November. So the city's merchants would offload their inventory cheaply just before winter hit. Literally "clearing out the warehouse."
Confectionery, however—being both food and a luxury good—couldn't be stockpiled and dumped en masse like that. As a workaround, they began handing out Halloween candy gifts as early as October, a strategy to gradually reduce inventory.
Those two factors were why Yeterinpurk launched into Halloween earlier than anywhere else.
One popular destination during this season was the Gypsy Sorcery Market.
The eerie sorcery tools and exotic oddities the Gypsy sold were cheap and perfectly suited to the Halloween mood.
That was where the Monster Circus Troupe had gone in the early-morning hours.
At the Sorcery Market, you could find stalls selling taxidermied animals infected with the Curse Plague, shops displaying dried fairy corpses and Ratmen's severed forepaws, and even a craftsman who carved Demon figurines to order on the spot.
In a place like that, the monstrous troupe members' appearances didn't draw much attention.
Thanks to that, they'd been able to enjoy their shopping and return to the villa without incident.
As they climbed the alleyway, the most excited voice belonged to Umon.
He'd grown up deep in the mountains alone with his mother, so this was his first ever Halloween.
Having exhausted his impressions of the Sorcery Market, he was now chattering about the Halloween costumes he'd seen in the streets.
"There were so many people in really scary, strange costumes."
The triplets were his audience. They too were brimming with excitement at being out and about like this after so long.
"That one was especially terrifying. The one with arms and legs dangling several meters long, all wobbly."
"For me it was that mime. The act where he was stuffed tight into a barrel—looked so real."
"I thought the woman painted purple all over was the scariest."
Without a trace of awareness that they looked far more frightening themselves, they shuddered.
"For me, it was the person on fire. More amazing than scary, really. How did they do that?"
"An illusion, maybe?"
"No, there was a real smell of smoke..."
At that moment, Ella called out from the rear, her arms full of pumpkins.
"That was probably a stage trick. Not real fire—metal powders oxidizing to produce flames, combined with fog devices. Must've been someone from one of the circus troupes gathered in the city. Anyway, how come I didn't see a single one of these people you're talking about?"
"They came by while you were off buying pumpkins."
They were just entering the villa grounds when Wonderstein stepped out of the building.
Ella spotted him and called out brightly.
"Boss!"
She set down the pumpkins, dashed over, and threw herself into his arms.
Wrapping herself tight around his waist, she pressed her face against his chest.
The other troupe members, long accustomed to this behavior, simply smirked.
Lately, Wonderstein had the distinct sense that she was clinging harder than ever.
He could guess why.
Anxiety about her returning memories, most likely.
The deadline Gaston had given for Ella's memories to come back was now less than a month away.
Every so often, she would suddenly sigh or clutch her head, as if something was surfacing. Each time, she'd break out in a cold sweat. But she never told him what she'd seen.
Wonderstein lightly stroked the back of her head.
He didn't know exactly when it would happen, but one thing was certain: this happy stretch of time was drawing to a close.
"So, how was it? The early-morning Sorcery Market?"
Still pressed firmly against him, she nodded.
"Lots of really fun stuff. You should've come. Oh, right—I bought you a figurine. You just tell them what Demon you want and they carve it on the spot."
Wonderstein took the carving, about the length of a forearm, and burst out laughing.
The figure had a deer-antlered rabbit's head, a monkey's body, and goat's legs, a giant scythe slung over its shoulder.
The Reaper Nua-Zakanuba.
The only difference from reality was the bat-like wings attached to the Reaper's back. Many books depicted the Reaper that way, but the actual being wore something more like rippling black fabric instead of wings.
"I could only manage small pumpkins."
She clicked her tongue regretfully, pointing at the pumpkins on the ground.
They were, admittedly, unimpressive—misshapen things smaller than a human head.
Just then, Gaston emerged from the villa, yawning wide. The noise had apparently woken him.
He scanned the troupe members, spotted the pumpkins, and tilted his head.
"What are you lot up to?"
"Halloween season starts today. So we went shopping."
Gaston shook his head at Ella's reply.
"I can see that. What I'm asking is why you bought pumpkins. Especially duds like those."
"Well, those were all they had..."
"Come with me."
He beckoned.
With a flicker of doubt, Ella followed, and the others trailed behind, expressions curious.
Gaston led them to the back garden.
Ever since he'd spread fertilizer everywhere, declaring he'd cultivate a field there, the troupe members had kept their distance because of the smell.
Stepping into the back garden for the first time in ages, their mouths fell open.
Just a month ago, the space had been bare.
Now, dozens of enormous pumpkins rolled across the ground, several times the size of the ones Ella had bought.
"How did you manage this?"
"Raising pumpkins to decorate the garden before Halloween—that was part of my job too. Figured you'd need them this time around, so I planted them early."
Ella's eyes went wide.
"They grew this big in a single month?"
"The Alchemy Guild's closely guarded secrets."
Gaston said it with deliberate smugness.
Under normal circumstances, Ella would have viewed his plant obsession with open disapproval, but not today.
"Old man, you're something else. Not bad, huh? You've got a touch of style."
Naturally, Gaston wasn't offering the pumpkins for free.
He demanded that Wonderstein excuse him from training for a month—and that Wonderstein agree to learn how to handle climbing plants.
Wonderstein let out a long, inward sigh.
This old man was relentless.
To have secretly prepared a gambit like this over a whole month.
Part of him wanted to flat-out refuse on the spot.
Truth be told, pumpkins of this caliber would've been easy to procure with help from the Bergson Trading Company. But seeing the troupe members' delighted faces, he couldn't dismiss the gardener's sincerity—the man had diligently nurtured these pumpkins for a month just for this.
That, of course, was exactly what Gaston had been counting on—having seen right through Wonderstein's surprisingly soft nature beneath the oily exterior.
"Fine."
Beaming, the gardener hauled his new pupil through the pumpkin patch, explaining every essential detail of cultivating climbing plants. Wonderstein nodded along with feigned attentiveness, copying his teacher's every word verbatim into his notebook.