11. Wonderland (23)
11. Wonderland (23)
"Are you absolutely certain this is the right way?"
Ella eyed the two guides suspiciously.
They had been walking for a full thirty minutes now. Oz and Rumi had assured her there was a way inside without passing through the Arch Gate, and were now leading her into increasingly remote territory.
From the outside, Cadsun bore an overall resemblance to the circus tents you could find anywhere. Stripes of red and white repeated across a basin-like shape, as if someone had upturned a washbowl.
The red bands were layer upon layer of crimson buildings. The white bands were curtains of shimmering light.
When they first claimed to have a method, Ella had naturally assumed it would involve using disguises or some tool to alter their appearance and slip through the checkpoint. Instead, they simply told her to follow, and rather than heading toward the Arch Gate, they began circling the outer edge of Cadsun.
Was there some kind of secret breach hidden somewhere in that wall?
As she trailed after them, Ella kept scanning the structure.
It looked as though buildings from every conceivable region and era had been piled on top of one another in no particular order, then daubed thick with red cement and left to set.
But despite its chaotic exterior, no matter how closely she looked, she could not spot a single gap wide enough to slip through. The haphazard stacking was somehow perfectly seamless.
"Hey, Mister, Miss—how much longer are we walking?"
The farther they trudged along the wall, the more distant the entrance became. At the same time, the number of people around them steadily dwindled.
Ella glanced around uneasily.
Could she really trust these two?
A lurching, beanpole scarecrow and a wingless fairy. It was not exactly a confidence-inspiring combination.
In response to her question, the pair merely muttered "wait a moment" while exchanging murmured asides and sidelong glances.
After a long stretch of walking, they reached the point where the first red zone ended.
Now, instead of a solid crimson wall, there was a curtain of white, rippling light running alongside their path.
The Scarecrow, who had until then offered nothing beyond "follow us," stopped and turned to face her.
"Miss Elphi, have you ever tried cat begging?"
"Huh? Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?"
Cat begging was the circus world's slang for sneaking your body under the tent to steal a glimpse of the show. The posture—upper body wedged beneath the canvas, rear end sticking out—resembled a cat stretching, hence the name.
It was usually the province of children who couldn't afford the price of admission.
"We were pretty poor ourselves. Everyone's done it at least once, right? Of course, if you got caught, you'd be grabbed and tossed right back outside... But what does that have to do with now? Ah... wait, don't tell me...?"
She looked at the curtain of light before them. She examined the spot where it met the ground. A small gap ran along the bottom.
"You're saying we can get in through here?"
"Yes. It adjusts its size to match whoever is trying to enter."
She approached the white curtain and lowered herself onto her stomach. As she did, the fabric rippled and obligingly widened the gap to the perfect size for her to crawl through.
She ducked her head to peer inside, but the backlight from the curtain's glow made it impossible to see what lay on the other side.
"Then why doesn't anyone else use this way in?"
It was Rumi who answered her question.
"This place has a powerful guardian spirit called the Bouncer. If anyone attempts to enter Cadsun without authorization, it will charge at them in less than a tenth of a second and throw them out."
She had tried to enter this way once as a child, with a group of fairy friends.
The teacher had already warned them, but wanting to experience being tossed by the Bouncer for themselves, they deliberately attempted cat begging.
-Visitor, this is not an entrance!
Just as the rumors described, a terrifying, violent gust exploded outward. A massive giant came charging at them, seized her and her friends in its rough hands, and flung them outside.
They no doubt flew several kilometers, crashing onto one of the bare hills ringing Cadsun, only to be arrested by the patrol and forcibly repatriated to the Arch Gate.
"The same applies to exiting. The moment you try to leave through here, you'll be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged back inside. The rule is: enter and exit only through the Arch Gate."
When Oz first brought up the idea of cat begging, Rumi had dismissed it as nonsense.
The Bouncer was a being powerful enough to toy with even formidable demons as if they were children. Evading its surveillance or resisting its strength was impossible for the likes of them.
But Oz had answered, "It's possible."
The method he proposed went against all common sense.
"How in the world are we supposed to get in that way?"
Ella cried out in surprise, just as Rumi had earlier.
"Ha-ha, Miss Rumi just gave you a hint, you know."
"A hint?"
At his words, Ella sank deep into thought.
In their exchange just now, the topic of entering had come up exactly once.
"If you try to exit, you get dragged inside?"
"Ding-dong-ding! A chicken coupon for you. Please tell me your address."
"What?"
"Ah, no. Word salad. Forget I said anything! Anyway, what you just said, Miss Elphi, that's exactly right! In other words, the Bouncer yanks inside anyone who looks like they are trying to exit."
"Looks like... they're trying to exit?"
Ella murmured as though grasping at a thread.
She couldn't quite form a concrete conclusion, however. Oz gave her another hint.
"The mistake made by everyone who attempts cat begging is that they stick their head in first."
She'd be a fool not to catch on at this point.
Ella looked at him with a bemused expression.
"So you're saying... we go in rear-first."
"Yes."
Ella looked at the gap beneath the rippling curtain.
The idea of sticking her rear into an unknown void felt deeply awkward—and if anything went wrong and she ended up being thrown several kilometers, she doubted she'd come out of it unscathed.
The Scarecrow twirled his straw hat around one finger and snickered.
"You've got that 'I don't buy it' look on your face. Fine. I'll demonstrate first. Miss Rumi, please watch Miss Elphi make her entrance, and follow after her."
Oz cleared his throat, then dropped onto his stomach in front of the curtain of light. Sticking his rear end out, he began to awkwardly crawl backward.
About a second after he began his reverse shuffle, something ticklish swept across his back. At the same instant, a booming voice rang out from behind him.
"Visitor, this is not an exit!"
"Whoa—!"
An immense force seized him by the scruff of the neck.
Before he even had a chance to resist, he found himself dangling in the air.
The thing holding him was a massive Spirit Body, five meters tall, dressed in a suit and fedora.
Its broad shoulders and chest put Umon's build to shame.
The Scarecrow stared at it with his tongue practically hanging out.
So this was the Bouncer.
The Guardian of Wonderland.
These beings had waged ferocious battles against Wonderstein's legions throughout the final stage of TT3. Though they only appeared in a single stage and were not particularly elite opponents, their tireless, rampaging efforts against the legion had left a deep impression on fans.
The Bouncer recited mechanically, "Please proceed to the Arch Gate," then set him down on the ground. It immediately resumed scanning the area for intruders.
Each time Ella, then Rumi, stuck their rears toward the gap, the Bouncer moved with the speed of lightning.
"Visitor, this is not an exit!"
"Please proceed to the Arch Gate."
It repeated the same formulaic lines as it snatched each of them up and set them down again.
Ella, set down on the ground, looked around with a dazed expression.
Being on the outer edge, there was not much to see apart from the jumbled outer walls of the tangled buildings and waves of white light flowing overhead—but she was unquestionably inside Cadsun.
"So, what did you think? The first course offered by our travel agency?"
"Satisfied?"
To the questions posed by the president and vice-president of the Wonder Tour, Ella smiled and gave them a thumbs up.
"That was brilliant! Mister, Miss—you're both way more dependable than I'd expected!"
However, instead of expressing pleasure at her compliment, the two exchanged a silent look. One seemed somewhat irritated; the other was clearly struggling to hold back laughter.
Ella recalled the similar atmosphere that had surrounded them while they'd been walking over here.
"Uh, did I say something wrong? Why are you suddenly making faces again?"
At her question, the Scarecrow muttered through clenched teeth.
"I'm not Mister."
"...Huh?"
"I said I'm not Mister! I'll have you know I'm in my twenties! And Miss? You called her Miss? Rumi may look young because she's a fairy, but she's actually in her fifties—gyaaack!"
A rope suddenly materialized from thin air and seized his arms and legs.
In an instant, he was bent into a shrimp curl, rolling around on the ground.
Only then did Ella realize why he'd been sulking, and she burst out laughing.
"Wait, that's what you've been pouting about? Hmph, twenty-something is absolutely Mister territory. And anyway, isn't that age based on when you died? You might actually be old enough to be called Grandfather, for all I know."
"Th-then what about Miss Rumi—hurghk!"
The rope constricted tighter.
Rumi planted a hand on her hip and glared down at him with a face like thunder.
"You think you can just run your mouth about a lady's age?"
Ella made a calming-down gesture toward her.
Then she addressed the Scarecrow, who lay sprawled on the floor struggling to breathe.
"Miss Rumi clearly lives young. So she gets treated as young."
"Guh. So are you saying I live old?"
"Yeah. Honestly, you give off kind of a stodgy old clown vibe."
The Scarecrow stared up at her blankly, and Ella, seeing his expression, broke into peals of laughter.
Even Rumi, who had been nothing but pushed around by him until now, joined in the laughter, relishing that he'd finally been put in his place.
"Aha-ha, you're wonderfully sharp! Any Troupe Leader with a Deputy Leader like you must be a truly blessed man."
"Right? Our Troupe Leader should really appreciate that."
At some point the rope had vanished.
Oz grumbled under his breath, rolling his shoulders as he picked himself up off the ground.
"Given all that, Miss Elphi, your Troupe Leader must have had his fair share of headaches."
"Not at all. He comes to my room every night, throws himself into my arms, and sobs, 'I can't go on without Miss Elphi!' you know."
At this point, Rumi shot Oz a positively murderous look.
He struggled to arrange his face into a dignified expression and shook his head.
Where in the world does she pick up this slander?
Just as he was about to try to change the subject, Ella spoke with a voice full of tender emotion.
"That was a joke. The truth is, I'm the one who leans on the Troupe Leader more. There isn't another person as good as that man."
At her words, Oz regarded her with slightly muted eyes.
"...Is that so?"
"Yeah. I used to resent him a lot because he did some awful things to me. But now that I think about it, he probably didn't do them out of malice. I'm sure it was for my sake..."
Rumi's face turned a shade more ferocious. She shot him a look that practically screamed, "What did you do to this girl?"
The Scarecrow shook his head desperately.
It's not the kind of thing you're thinking.
But there was also no way to offer an explanation.
The truth was far worse than what she imagined anyway.
Seeing Rumi's grim expression, Ella realized that her phrasing could easily be misconstrued, and she hurried to correct the misunderstanding.
She glossed over it with an account of how the Troupe Leader had worked her like a dog at the Rose Windmill Cabaret until she collapsed from exhaustion.
Rumi nodded, seemingly satisfied with the conclusion that he must have wanted his young Deputy Leader to gain experience, but the Scarecrow knew full well that wasn't what Ella had meant, and so he couldn't simply laugh along.
Having grown a shade more amiable than when they had first met, the three of them left the area guarded by the Bouncer.
They passed between ruined buildings, heading toward the center.
The path was considerably steep. Ella and Rumi had already been walking for hours today and were struggling to climb the building debris.
So the Scarecrow perched both of them on his shoulders and scaled the ruins.
The weight of two people caused his stick-thin legs to wobble precariously, but since Personas felt no physical fatigue, it was not especially difficult.
After a long climb, they finally emerged from the dark alleyways.
The moment they shed the heavy air and shadows, a cool breeze washed over them and an enormous open space spread before their eyes.
They found themselves standing on the rooftop of a building that must have been hundreds of meters tall.