11. Wonderland (28)
11. Wonderland (28)
"A duet? Me and Miss Elphi?"
"Let's go! We're running out of time!"
Ella shoved the entry ticket in front of his eyes.
Beneath the printed registration deadline, the ink writhed as if alive.
It displayed the time remaining until entries closed. The digits were ticking down in real time, like a stopwatch. From the stage location she was pointing at, even a sprint would barely get them there in time.
Scarecrow let out a short sigh.
He had spent hours getting that ticket. He couldn't let the chance slip away now.
"Fine. Let's talk while we move."
He scooped Rumi into his arms and stood.
She was so deeply asleep someone could have carried her off without waking her. Even as he ran, her breathing never changed — and that was after he had stumbled more than once weaving through the dense crowd.
The claim that a fairy's sleep was next to impossible to disturb seemed to be true.
Ella explained the contest rules as they ran.
The system was simple: perform before the judges, and advance to the finals based on the scores they awarded.
"Scores? Wouldn't it be better to partner with Rumi, then?"
Ella glanced down at Rumi, still cradled in his arms, and shook her head.
"Doesn't look like she's waking up anytime soon. Besides, she can't enter anyway. It has to be a mixed-gender pair."
Scarecrow's patched-together face crumpled into a frown.
"But I can't sing."
Back in his streaming days, no matter how large the donation, he had refused to sing. Doing it alone was fine, but the moment he had people's attention, memories of begging on the streets would flare up — his face would burn, and his breath would catch in his throat.
"Oh, come on, singing's nothing. It's all confidence! Just enjoy it! You're not going to say no, are you? Do you know how hard it was to get this ticket?"
He hesitated, then reluctantly agreed.
If he missed this chance, there was no telling when the next one might come.
One problem remained.
"Is there anything Miss Elphi and I could sing together?"
"You said you've been dead about seventeen, eighteen years, right? Don't worry. I know plenty of old songs. Let's pick a famous one. Any come to mind?"
Scarecrow fell into thought.
He had been in this world for over half a year, but the songs he knew were few.
This wasn't the modern era where you could listen to any song on a whim. Phonographs existed, but they were hard to come by, and the music itself wasn't easy to obtain.
His complete lack of interest in music was the bigger reason.
Still, lately he had memorized quite a few pieces.
Helping rehearse The Five Acrobats meant he had naturally absorbed the songs that appeared in the play.
But he couldn't suggest those to Ella.
Admitting he knew songs from Christian's unreleased work would raise too many questions.
Then a song flickered through his mind.
Given its subject matter, The Five Acrobats contained many "plays within the play."
Most were invented by the author to suit the atmosphere, but one — exactly one — was drawn from a work he had published earlier.
It had been released twenty years ago.
A man who died eighteen years ago knowing it wouldn't strike anyone as strange.
Oz asked Ella if she knew the song, and she nodded at once.
"A Christian piece? I know them all by heart! Perfect, let's go with that."
By the time they had settled on the song, they had reached the waiting tent behind the stage.
The moment they stepped inside, a stagehand spotted them.
"Next act, get ready! Next act? Is the next act here?"
"Here! Over here!"
Ella raised her hand and rushed over to him.
The stagehand checked the ticket she held out and nodded.
"Just in time. You'll be on in two more acts. I need to give the emcee your names. May I have them?"
"Oz, and this is Elphi."
"Good. Have you chosen your song? The band can play anything that's been performed on stage at least once before."
"Ah, the song we'll be singing is..."
The two of them finished registering and retreated into the waiting area to go over the lyrics and sync their breathing.
Ella whistled after hearing him sing.
"What's this? You're plenty good. No need to be so modest."
Scarecrow scratched the back of his head, a little embarrassed by the praise.
"For some reason, it never works right when I'm in front of an audience."
"Don't tell me you've got stage fright? You've never seemed the type."
"It's not that. Just singing, specifically."
"Don't worry. I'll pump the energy way up, so just ride the excitement and go with it. The song's what, five minutes? Let's close our eyes and do it."
Ella's absolute confidence put him at ease.
There was no one more reassuring on a stage than her.
Their turn came quickly.
The stagehand signaled for them to get ready to go on.
"Uh, are you seriously going to carry her out there?"
Ella looked at Rumi, still plastered against his straw torso. She had tried peeling her off several times, but Rumi clung tight and refused to let go.
"No choice. I'll just have to hold her."
He braced her securely with one arm so she wouldn't slip, and picked up the microphone with his other hand.
Guided by the stagehand, they moved to the wing where the audience couldn't see them.
Ella stood there and took in the full atmosphere of the stage.
The size of the space, the band's positioning, the crowd's sightlines, the energy, the emcee's rhythm.
Inside her head, all of it flowed together naturally with the song.
She furrowed her brow, dissatisfied with something.
Her instincts were telling her something was about two percent short.
She watched the previous act wait for the judges' scores, then suddenly spun toward the stagehand.
"Can I borrow a guitar?"
"You'll be playing live? Of course!"
The stagehand beamed and fetched a guitar sized to fit her. The moment she had it, she quickly plucked at the strings, adjusting the tone.
"Do you have a pick?"
"Yes."
Ella pulled a coin-sized object from her pocket.
It was a flat badge shaped like a rose. The "star" she had earned in Rouge.
At that moment, the emcee called their names.
"Next up — Oz and Elphi!"
Normally, contestants would burst out to the roar of the crowd right about here.
Ella didn't move. She stood still and waited for the cheers to die down.
About ten seconds.
Then, just as people began to wonder what was going on, she struck the guitar.
The atmosphere in the seats shifted at once.
The guitar phrase she played was brief, neither flashy nor loud. But like an appetizer that whets the palate for a course meal, it heightened anticipation.
She didn't miss the opening. She strode onto the stage. Scarecrow followed right behind.
Under the audience's gaze, she walked straight across the stage — then cut off the emcee before he could ask them to introduce themselves, snatching the microphone from his hand.
"Everyone!"
She strummed a light chord and shouted again.
"Are you going to sit there?"
The hall went quiet for a beat.
A moment later, a thunderous roar erupted as the crowd shot to their feet.
"What the—?"
"My body just reacted on its own."
"Why am I suddenly so fired up?"
She looked around at the spectacle and grinned.
Yeah. That's it.
It had been a move to fill in that missing two percent, and the effect had exceeded expectations.
Every wave she sent out seemed to shake the audience harder than usual.
Maybe this was what the locals meant by the resonance of the living.
"I'm sure no one here doesn't know this one! It's from Christian's Faded Away! We'll be performing 'The Most Ordinary Village in the World'!"
The crowd stomped their feet and clapped, laying down a beat.
Everyone knew the song.
She took a short breath.
Then she struck her guitar in time with the band's rhythm, perfectly synced to the crowd's pulse.
The moment her voice rang out—
all of Wonderland shuddered.
***
Faded Away
The protagonist of the story was a demon who dwelled in the Abyss. He was famous for an appearance so terrifying that even the bravest souls recoiled in fear.
One day, tricked by a fellow demon's goading, he accepted a wager.
In a countryside village on the surface, there lived a woman renowned for lacking any fear whatsoever. If the demon could frighten her using nothing but his looks — no threats, no tricks — his colleague would hand over a prized jewel.
Tempted by the treasure, the demon agreed without digging any deeper. He never doubted for a second that any human woman, however remarkable, would shriek the instant she laid eyes on him.
But when he reached the village, what he found was a woman who was blind.
Only then did he realize he had been duped. He raged, but a promise was a promise — there was no backing out. And so he threw himself into searching for a way to startle her and win the bet.
While the rest of the village was out working during the day, the demon would visit the woman and describe in detail just how horrifying he looked. But to her, trapped in the monotony of daily chores, this amusing, kindly visitor was nothing but a welcome guest.
"The Most Ordinary Village in the World" was the song the demon sang as he described his homeland to the woman.
The demon's desperate attempts to dress up the Abyss as some perfectly ordinary village stood in sharp contrast to his earlier single-minded efforts to terrify her. It revealed how his feelings toward the woman were shifting — a piece both funny and warm.
Truthfully, it wasn't a strategically sound choice for the contest.
The song's full flavor relied on props and backdrops depicting the demon village, plus the reactions of demon-villager actors.
Here, in the boisterous festival atmosphere, stripped of the play's narrative context, with only two people standing on stage delivering the song in isolation — half the charm was lost.
But Ella filled in those gaps with her own skill.
She got the chattering, seated audience onto their feet and led them naturally into singing along with the call-and-response parts. Wherever a moment felt empty, she patched it with ad-libs and sheer acting ability.
Even someone who didn't know the plot would watch her and feel the story's dynamics unfold.
Scarecrow, despite his earlier nerves, followed the current she set in motion without a hitch.
In a matter of moments, he had slipped effortlessly into the role of the demon.
Perhaps it was because the ridiculous sight of the demon trying to pass off wickedness as normal reminded him a little of his own situation — a man wearing Wonderstein's skin.
He bounced across the stage, throwing himself into the song with delight.
But he wasn't the only one who had immersed himself in the character.
The last verse sung by the blind woman carried an implication: she had caught on to the deception, and even if he was a demon, she would love him anyway.
As Ella sang those lines, her eyes seemed heavy with emotion.
At a glance, they looked almost glazed with tears.
The moment he met her expression, he missed his own final line entirely.
In the breath of hesitation, the band played the closing bars, and with a final crack of the drum, their stage came to an end.