11. Wonderland (16)
11. Wonderland (16)
The last of the city's designated late-night streetlamps had just gone dark.
The night sky seemed to take a long stride closer to the earth, and every color in the world deepened into a heavier shade.
Everyone was asleep, and yet the small hours were anything but still. At least, not for the soldiers guarding the old building inside the confectionery factory grounds.
The shouts of drunks, the nighttime clatter of factory machinery—none of it reached this far into the estate. And yet this was, unquestionably, the noisiest place in all of Yeterinpurk at this hour.
Grraarrr. Grrrrk.
A deep, sustained rumble rose ceaselessly from beneath the building where the acrobats were quartered. The basement had once housed a bakery kitchen, and its multiple ventilation ducts thrust outward like the pipes of an organ, carrying the sound with them.
An eerie bellow that crawled out of an aging basement every night.
It was the perfect setup for a ghost story, but the truth was considerably more absurd.
The first night they heard it, the soldiers had rushed into the building in alarm.
The structure had been lifted, foundations and all, and relocated decades ago. Since then, it had seen only the occasional cleaning—no one had ever lived here.
When ten-odd people suddenly moved in and spent all day leaping about for acrobatics practice, something was bound to go wrong. The building might even collapse.
In fact, by the time the soldiers got inside, the acrobats had already been startled into a stampede toward the first-floor entrance.
All except one.
Ruelo had been carried out in Ella's arms.
As soon as she understood why everyone had bolted out of bed, she buried her face in her hands and hung her head.
"It's... my dad's snoring..."
Rooster Minova.
A singer and strongman famed for possessing the mightiest vocal cords in the world.
The thunder shaking the whole building came from him.
That very day, Minova's sleeping quarters were moved to the basement.
For anyone bedding down in the same building, it was a fine solution—their rooms were on the third and fourth floors.
But for the soldiers on night duty, it was torture. Perhaps no one greeted the news that the performance had been set for tomorrow with more relief than they did.
Arno smiled quietly as the snoring swelled louder with every step down the stairs.
The Morning Star Circus must have had a rough time of it, too.
She opened the door and stepped outside.
Beyond the fence that ringed the building, the duke's private soldiers stood guard.
Not one of them noticed her leave.
She walked right past them.
She was using Invisibility Magic.
This was also why she could undress without the slightest self-consciousness in front of others.
A white robe billowed in the breeze. In moments, it dissolved like snow melting into the air. It was an illusion she had conjured.
Beneath the robe stood a short, plump witch.
Lumion, Deputy Leader of the Silver Screen Circus. And Arno's other face.
She shed the cloth wrapped around her body as well. It, too, drifted soundlessly through the air before vanishing into the darkness.
With layer after layer of illusion stripped away, what remained looked almost too mysterious to be real.
Her skin gleamed as if brushed with a glossy lacquer, utterly dreamlike.
Even more striking was her form.
She was unmistakably humanoid, and yet her shape differed from a human's in subtle ways.
Her height, less than a meter, and her slender limbs might have been overlooked. What felt truly alien was her smooth torso, which bore no clear markers of either male or female. Ears twice as long as a normal person's tapered to sharp points, and silver hair framed the antennae rising from her head—marks that she was not human at all.
Whenever Lumion revealed her true appearance like this, her hand drifted by habit to her back. There, something no human body possessed was attached.
Four protrusions, each tipped with a translucent membrane.
Where wings had once grown, only the vestiges remained.
She lifted her gaze to the moon and let out a sigh.
Twenty years had passed, and still, every time she touched them, the ache returned. Not for the loss of the wings themselves, but for what had caused them to fall.
Maybe it was because she faced those two people's child every day.
The spot where her wings had torn away throbbed more fiercely than usual.
She stood naked beneath the moonlight.
No clouds veiled the sky—a fine night for dancing. She turned her body this way and that, letting the moonbeams fall evenly across her skin.
Tonight, she meant to make up for every moment of moonlight she had missed.
A fairy who had lost her childlike heart lost her wings.
But dancing under the moon like this, she could still feel, however fleetingly, as though she had returned to the innocent days of long ago. The days before she knew love, or jealousy, or the sting of a broken heart.
Once she had completed her Moonlight Bath, she wrapped herself in illusions again and stepped back inside—and froze in place.
Someone was standing in the entrance hall, waiting for her.
Had it been anyone else, she would have tossed out a casual greeting and walked on. But the person waiting for her was Wonderstein, and that made it impossible.
"What... is it?"
She had barely regained her composure, speaking in Arno's voice.
Wonderstein shook his head with the same bland smile he always wore.
"I woke up in the middle of the night. Thought I'd take a stroll."
Lumion caught the glint of curiosity in his eyes.
Past him, through the doorway, she could see the garden where she had been dancing, bare and unguarded, just moments ago.
"Just now... did you see me?"
He smiled and shrugged.
"I didn't see anything. But I knew someone was out there."
"Truly?"
"Yes. Of course. I recognized it was you, Troupe Leader Arno, the moment you stepped inside."
Lumion let out a breath of relief at his words.
"Good. As long as you didn't see. It's not... a sight worth looking at."
"Was it your true form?"
His question stole the words from her mouth.
She wrestled with whether to answer honestly, then finally spoke.
"Yes."
"Why do you keep it hidden?"
"Because I hate how it looks."
"Is that so? I asked something I shouldn't have."
"Forget it. Don't concern yourself."
She realized her response had been sharper than she intended.
"I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."
"It's all right. I understand how you must feel."
Wonderstein gave her a kind smile and a small nod.
Lumion felt as though she had suddenly slipped twenty years into the past.
Maya's father had been like that, too. Pretending to accept her completely, pretending to understand.
She had fallen for it utterly. A single small gesture of his, a single smile, had stolen her whole heart. She had given him everything she had to give.
But he had chosen Maya's mother.
What he saw in that wooden, emotionless woman she would never know—he confessed to her.
The way Wonderstein was being gentle with her now brought him rushing back.
Leading people on like that. That's the problem with men like you.
Anger flared hot in her chest.
"Save your comfort. You've never even seen what I look like. What could you possibly understand?"
She bit the words out coldly, then stomped up the stairs.
Pointless hope was nothing but poison.
The agony of losing her wings—once was more than enough.
Watching Arno climb out of sight, Wonderstein realized he had misstepped.
If he had been his original self, maybe, but in this body, telling her he understood her feelings carried no weight.
Still, how strange could her appearance be to make her react like that?
Even in the original story, Arno had concealed herself obsessively.
Her own disciple Maya had never once seen her teacher's face.
He shook his head and let the thought of Arno go.
He had business to attend to tonight. Saying he had come down for a stroll had been a lie.
He drew a small bottle from his coat, filled with a shimmering powder.
One final experiment with the Starlight.
Tomorrow would be the perfect chance.
The Jewel Trill was nicknamed the "Eye of Kirkeus" because people believed the Demon God Kirkeus watched performances through it. When it witnessed an entertaining show, it glowed with a red light.
The Main Quest instructed him to wait until it had turned completely red and then swallow it. The reward, it said, would be the ability to manipulate his Innate Trait.
So, what about the Starlight?
How would it respond to tomorrow's performance?
Street-corner tricks and third-rate theater plays had failed to stir it in the slightest. Any time he thought he caught a faint reddish tinge and peered closer, it turned out to be nothing more than the red of his own palm showing through.
But the show they were putting on tomorrow was nothing like anything he had observed so far.
A never-before-seen play written by the greatest playwright alive, performed by the finest acrobats in the world.
The odds of it provoking some kind of reaction were high.
His destination was the stage where they had been rehearsing until a short while ago.
He would leave the bottle of Starlight at the duke's seat beforehand and observe whether it turned red.
The stage sat directly above Minova's makeshift bedroom.
The closer he drew, the louder the snoring became.
But threaded through it was another sound.
Unlike that brute-force noise pollution, this one had melody and rhythm—music. Someone was playing an instrument in the hall.
Wonderstein eased the hall door open.
A singing voice reached his ears, clear and distinct.
It belonged to Reina.
She was perched on the stage in her nightclothes, plucking a stringed instrument.
It resembled a guitar, but not quite. Where a guitar's body curves into a gourd-like shape, this one formed a perfect circle.
Unwilling to interrupt, he took a seat among the audience chairs and listened quietly as she sang.
From the lyrics, it was a lullaby of some kind.
The sort a mother might hum to her child.
When the song ended, he clapped loudly.
"Troupe Leader?"
Her eyes went wide as she stared at him.
"H-how—?"
"I was out for a late-night walk and followed the sound."
"Was it... very loud? I came here on purpose so no one would hear..."
"Not at all. I was heading this way and happened to catch it."
The two of them sat together on the edge of the stage and talked.
Every now and then, she played or sang a piece he requested.
"This is an instrument my mother used to play. She called it a benjo. She used to sing lullabies for me with it."
Wonderstein nodded, and then, as if something had just occurred to him, spoke.
"You did mention once that when something was bothering you, you'd go out and perform on the street. Was tonight like that?"
She let out a laugh, lighter than her usual, and strummed the strings softly.
"No. A little different. Tonight, I just felt... fluttery."
"Because of the performance tomorrow?"
"Yes. I've always treated performing as something I just do because I'm told to, but tomorrow's... I'm genuinely so excited."
"The script must have won you over."
"Partly..."
She hesitated, stealing a glance at him.
"Before morning rehearsal today... my father, he... called me over and said I had done well. Said he was proud to have me as a daughter."
Reina said it, and then, as if unable to contain the joy, laughed again.
"That's wonderful."
Wonderstein nodded, sharing in her happiness.
But at the same time, his conversation with Lord Fantastic the night before surfaced in his memory.
The man had been listening to Wonderstein's impressions as a spectator, taking notes, and occasionally trailing off into muttered asides as something struck him. At one scene, watching Reina's acting, he had said this:
—Everything's fine, hm, everything's fine except... something about how she's trying so hard to prove herself... it grates. She clearly grew up well-loved by her teacher... it reads like a need for affection...
He had stopped himself mid-sentence, mouth snapping shut.
Wonderstein could guess why the man had suddenly started treating her warmly. Everything was for the sake of perfecting the performance.
And indeed, Reina's acting today had been markedly different in that very scene. But he had never imagined there was this kind of story behind it.
"If I just keep doing well, like this, from now on... it'll be all right, won't it? Father will..."
He didn't have the heart to tell her not to harbor a hollow hope.
All he could do was smile and nod.
She beamed back at him.
"Thank you, Troupe Leader. I can't... cling to you like I used to, but... would it be all right if I still came to see you like this, now and then?"
"Of course. Anytime."
Not long afterward, she went back upstairs to sleep.
He lingered, claiming he wanted a bit more of a walk, and once she was gone, he placed the bottle of Starlight beneath the duke's seat.