11. Wonderland (11)
11. Wonderland (11)
When I opened my eyes, the first gray light of dawn was just fading.
I checked the time. Barely two hours since I'd fallen asleep.
Yet my body hummed with energy—a lightness that made me feel as if I could take flight, as though the night's vigorous exertion had never happened.
That was thanks to the Devolut I'd kept using to restore my stamina.
Still, the exhilaration coursing through me couldn't be explained by physical recovery alone.
Psychological release.
That was the greater part of it.
I gazed down at Yurakne, who lay asleep with her arms wrapped tight around my waist.
Traces of last night's heat covered her body.
Pinch marks, bite marks, the imprints of my hands—all scattered across her skin.
I used Devolut to clear my marks from her body. The exposed areas—her face and neck—I treated with particular care. A single pass of my palm across her skin, and the evidence vanished without a trace.
Six arms made the work quick.
I left the marks on her more private places untouched. Some of that was necessity—her sleeping position made those spots hard to reach. But part of me wanted to preserve at least a few tokens of what we'd shared the night before.
The Research Institute notified me that the Starlight's efficacy was nearing its end.
I'd always considered its Diagnosis Function useful, but since last night my trust in it had only deepened. That feature had let me map every one of her vulnerabilities as the evening unfolded.
Soon enough, the first shy rays of sunlight slipped over the horizon and through the window.
Her form grew clearer than before.
She always wore her hair pinned up with an ornamental clasp. Now it lay loose, spilling everywhere.
The strands curled and coiled like seaweed drifting underwater.
Where her head had pressed into the pillow, the hair had tangled itself into a wild, chaotic knot.
So that's why she always kept it bound.
I was glad to have discovered another side of her I hadn't known.
I stroked her hair and let my thoughts drift back through the events of the night before.
Some moments were embarrassing enough to make my face flush; others brought a quiet smile to my lips just to remember.
It was a first for me—pressing my body against another person's like that.
I'd gained extra arms and legs since arriving here, but my mental relationship with my own body had stayed the same.
A handshake was something I performed using the "tool" called an arm. Walking was something I accomplished using the "tools" called legs.
Psychologically, I'd kept my sense of self sealed inside my original human shape. To me, this body's extra limbs were just supplementary attachments tacked onto the real me—traits like Mantula's Blade, not truly my own flesh.
Last night, I crossed that barrier.
Was this how a mute person felt the first time their mouth found speech—when words they had only ever understood in their head suddenly became real?
Feeling another person with my body, affecting another person with my body—it was a mysterious experience.
And she wasn't just any other person. She was a woman I already held affection for.
The troupe member I could talk to most comfortably, the one who possessed so much that I lacked.
The ecstasy I felt when our bodies intertwined wasn't only physical sensation. The emotional fulfillment ran just as deep.
"Mmm... Troupe Leader?"
Had I stroked her hair too much?
Her eyes fluttered open.
She gazed up at me through a drowsy haze.
Her violet irises caught the sunlight slipping through the window's edge.
Reflected at their center was my own face.
She was still frowning, not fully awake, yet even that expression struck me as beautiful.
I felt a boundless tenderness toward her, something I'd never been capable of before.
I wanted to thank her. To convey a feeling I could only articulate right now, in this moment.
But just as my lips began to part, a notification window appeared.
[Innate Trait 'The Smiling Man' re-applied.]
I felt the muscles in my face contort. A smile utterly divorced from my will stretched across my mouth.
The buoyant mood I'd been riding moments ago settled into flat calm.
Living with this thing always active, I'd never noticed.
But now, returning to it after tasting true freedom, I felt it acutely.
This suffocating leash on my emotions.
What made it more infuriating was that I couldn't even be angry about the situation.
I kept smiling. No matter how much I wanted to rage, my heart kept settling back into placid stillness.
The fond feelings I held for her were still there, but the rawness was gone. An artificial sheen clung to them, unpleasant and chemical.
Why had Wonderstein ever grafted a trait like this into his own body?
My reflection in her eyes hadn't changed much.
She'd flinched the tiniest bit, but I was still smiling.
She noticed the shift anyway.
She studied my face for a moment, then spoke.
"Has it come back?"
"...You caught that."
"It's obvious. At this point, when it comes to your body, Troupe Leader..."
She gave a shy little smile.
Normally that smile would have made me fall for her all over again. But right now, I couldn't feel that depth of stirring.
"Can you tell what I was about to say, too?"
"No. But I can feel it even if you don't say it. We talked enough last night."
Suddenly she reached up and traced her fingers across my cheek, miming the gesture of wiping away tears.
An awkward sight—someone brushing at the eyes of a smiling man. Yet something in my chest ached in answer.
"Heh. I guess I can't fool you anymore, Miss Yura. What gave me away?"
"Nothing. I just knew."
I scratched the back of my head ruefully.
"That's trouble. Now I've got a troupe member my authority doesn't work on."
"One is nice to have, isn't it? Someone who notices your performance."
We climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom to shower together.
Even as we washed, she kept pressing her body against mine in little moments.
I couldn't respond to any of it.
The Smiling Man dulled me across every dimension. Not just my reactions to stimulus—my thinking, too. Her subtle overtures now required a deliberate second of analysis before I could parse their meaning.
She must have sensed it, because she stopped her quiet advances.
"That promise you made—about fixing our bodies. Does that apply to yours as well, Troupe Leader?"
I nodded.
The Fragment of Trill had managed to suppress it, even if only temporarily. That suggested Wonderstein's innate traits weren't fundamentally different from any other troupe member's—special, maybe, but not exempt from the same rules.
A real Trill would be capable of fixing this body, too.
"I hope your research succeeds."
But would it even matter by then?
By the time that happened, I might have already returned to my original world...
Once we were out of the bathroom, I raised the temperature of my palms above sixty degrees and dried her hair. Using techniques I'd learned from the Skillbook, I combed through it and wound it up into its usual style.
Now I understood how she'd always managed to tame those wild curls into something so neat.
It took six arms to pull off.
When the work was done, I decided to retract all four extra arms back into my body.
I could feel her disappointment.
"When it's just the two of us, I'll keep them out more often."
"Really? It won't strain your body, will it?"
"Not at all."
We wrapped all six of our arms around each other.
And shared one last brief kiss.
The same feeling from before didn't come.
The artificial cheer of The Smiling Man got in the way.
Had I really been living all this time thinking of this state as "normal"?
I'd always believed that even with The Smiling Man active, I could still feel sorrow and anger deep down. Now I saw that for the self-deception it was.
Compared to genuine emotion, this was a pale, shoddy imitation. The experience sharpened my wariness of The Smiling Man all over again.
Not long after breakfast, the tailor arrived at the villa.
Given how far our troupe members' bodies deviated from the norm, no amount of preliminary measurement had been enough—too many discrepancies emerged. He worked on the spot, altering each garment to fit its wearer.
When Yurakne's turn came, he let out a cry of admiration.
"Remarkable! Ho-ho, and I thought your garment would be the most challenging of them all, madam. The articulation of the arms, their full range of motion—we had no reliable data. I was worried nothing would fit properly. Yet here it is, absolutely perfect!"
The tailor kept exclaiming his amazement.
Yurakne and I exchanged a knowing smile.
The real dress she'd received yesterday had been torn to rags and discarded. What she wore now was something I'd pulled from the Costume Room's ability.
The tailor departed, and before long the carriage Duke Slagbort had sent arrived.
Ella, Maya, and I climbed aboard.
The troupe members came out in front of the villa to see us off.
Everyone was exchanging their usual farewells when Yurakne approached the carriage.
She was in her Halloween costume—white robe, white conical hat, glasses.
The White Witch swept a quick glance over Ella beside me, then over Maya seated across. She gave them a small smile, leaned close to my face, and whispered.
"Have a safe trip, Troupe Leader."
Before she pulled back from the carriage, she pressed a surprise kiss to my cheek.
It was a very brief kiss.
Shorter than what Ella or Reina had given me. Shorter, even, than what the fruit-shop lady had planted on me the other day. Barely a touch of the lips.
But more than enough to throw the troupe into shock.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha! M-Miss Yura, you're f-finally, pfft, ha-ha-ha, m-making your move? Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
"Whoa, what? What?!"
"D-Don't make a scene, Umon! In K-Kiev this is a t-totally normal greeting!"
"Th-That's right! I-It's nothing to g-get worked up about, nothing at all!"
"You two are louder than Umon, you know that?"
Everyone except the taciturn Bandik erupted into chaos over Yura's gesture.
Even old Gaston was clutching his belly and laughing at whatever he found so funny.
Wearing the same placid smile as ever, I signaled the carriage to depart.
"We'll be off, then."
Through the rear window I watched her turning scarlet under the troupe's teasing, shrieking at them. Her slap sent Sven's head tumbling across the ground again.
Then her eyes met mine.
We traded smiles and lifted our hands in a small wave.
Only after the villa had completely vanished from view did I turn and settle back into my seat facing forward.
Ella and Maya were stealing glances at me, murmuring something to each other.
In all these months, this was the first time I'd seen them look so friendly together.
They spoke in voices pitched right at the edge of my hearing.
I couldn't catch everything, but fragments reached me.
Ella mentioned to Maya how she'd heard Yurakne had deliberately ordered her dress a size too large—and wasn't it strange how perfectly it had fit her anyway? Maya nodded and replied,
"I think she's gained weight."
Oh. Was that it? So that's why the dress had split open.
I felt grateful for the weight she'd put on.
Without it, her dress wouldn't have torn yesterday—and she'd never have had reason to come to my room.
"If she did gain it, then I'm glad she did."
At my words, both Ella and Maya's eyes went wide. They stared at me, lips twitching as though they had something to say—then turned to size each other up instead.
By the time the carriage entered the plaza, both of them had gone a little subdued.