11. Wonderland (29)
11. Wonderland (29)
Thunderous cheers and applause poured onto the stage.
It was enough to jolt Scarecrow back to his senses, letting him take in the scene around them.
They'd been singing for barely ten minutes, but the crowd had quintupled. Everyone nearby seemed to have drifted over.
"Elphi! Elphi! Elphi!"
"One more song! One more!"
They chanted her name with fervor.
Ella bounded to the front of the stage, waving at the audience and feeding off their excitement.
What? Had he imagined it?
The girl bouncing with energy now bore no resemblance to the person who had been on the verge of tears mere moments ago.
Scarecrow shuffled over to her side.
That final verse she had sung kept pulling him back to the confession she'd made to him a few weeks earlier.
—Your hometown sounds so ordinary it'd bore me to death. I can't believe you came from a place like that. You're such a fun person. Actually, there's something I never told you. That wine I served you, I accidentally grabbed the wrong bottle. I only figured it out later when my family talked about it. It was 'Mama Wine.' The fake stuff they make from pig's blood to sprinkle on doorways during a plague. And you drank it down like it was good. A real person would've spat it right back out. But I'll keep my mouth shut. Won't say a word. I'll look the other way. Because watching you try so hard to hide everything is adorable. Because that's the side of you I like.
"Miss Elphi?"
He spoke her name quietly just as the emcee stepped forward to quiet the crowd. The spotlight shifted, and she was able to retreat a step and catch her breath.
"Whew, that was something. This really is Wonderland. Hey, mister! Good job out there! See? Nothing to worry about. That was great!"
As she spoke, blue flames rippled across her skin like something alive.
It was an illusion Rumi had cast to make her look like a Spirit Body — so that no one would realize she was still a living person. Beyond that translucent blue light, her face was brimming with energy.
"So why'd you drop the last verse? Forget the lyrics?"
She played it off like she had no idea what he was talking about.
A dubious look crossed his cloth-made face.
"I thought you were actually crying, Miss Elphi."
"What?"
Her expression twisted.
A moment later, she puffed out her cheeks and burst out laughing.
"Pfft—wait, did the mister seriously get so into character he started hallucinating? Why would I suddenly cry? That song barely even gets that emotional. Did the illusions mess with your eyes or something?"
"D-did they?"
Now that he looked again, the flickering flame did sometimes catch the corners of her eyes and make them glitter.
Embarrassment flooded through him.
He felt like someone who'd mistaken a friend's offhand remark for a hidden confession.
The emcee called them forward just then. The judges had finished their deliberation.
The two stepped to the front of the stage.
The crowd kept cheering Ella's name.
Several Personas sat at the judging table. They exchanged glances and nods before turning to face the duo.
"An impressive performance."
"Especially your voice, Miss Elphi. It tugged at the spirit — like hearing the timbre of the living."
"If it were up to us alone, we'd give you full marks."
Ella's expression stiffened for a moment.
Because that phrasing meant...
"But the judging must remain fair. This contest allocates fifty points apiece to the male and female performers. Miss Elphi's score is a perfect fifty. However, Mister Oz made an error — he missed his final lyric."
Scarecrow remembered his mistake and wished the ground would simply swallow him whole.
Getting carried away by emotion, all on his own.
"We've deducted accordingly, leaving you with... ninety-nine points!"
A roar erupted from the crowd.
Ella gaped at Oz.
He looked equally stunned.
"D-did you hear that? Ninety-nine! That's gotta be enough to advance, right?"
"It must be. The two teams before us scored in the seventies and eighties... so it's more than possible. No — this basically seals it!"
Their celebration was short-lived.
As soon as they left the stage, a staff member informed them that the cutoff for advancing was one hundred points.
Worse, quite a few couples who had performed before them had already made the cut.
Those contestants hadn't drawn nearly the same crowd response, but they'd passed the judging smoothly — no deductions, perfect scores.
The pair felt like they'd been smacked in the head with a hammer.
"So what was with the people who got seventies and eighties before us?"
"Haha, those must have been the outliers."
"You're laughing? This whole thing is because you blew that one point!"
Ella clenched her fist, trembling like she was about to deck him.
"Now, now. Aren't you the one who said the stage is all about having fun?"
"Your laugh is driving me up the wall."
A soft voice cut in between them.
"Um, could you maybe put me down now?"
Rumi had opened her eyes and was watching them.
She yawned and stretched.
"What the heck, when did you wake up?"
"Just now. While you two were arguing about the scores."
Ella clicked her tongue in disbelief.
"You slept through all that jumping around and singing? Now I'm worried about you. Leave you alone and some creep's gonna drag you off, you know that?"
Rumi pouted and shot her a sidelong glare.
"Us fairies don't just fall asleep anywhere — we just have a hard time waking up once we're out. We only sleep somewhere we feel completely safe..."
She cut herself off and clamped her mouth shut.
Ella smirked at her.
"Oh-ho, so the mister's arms are that kind of place, huh?"
"D-don't be stupid! I meant the bench was comfortable!"
Rumi's ears flushed bright red as she shouted.
"It's been a while since you left that bench..."
"Sh-shut up! Just tell me what happened while I was asleep!"
"Ah, well, we did a duet..."
"A duet?"
The word was out before Rumi could stop it.
She'd let herself react too sharply to something she could have let slide.
Ella caught the slip and grinned.
"Hehe, I feel kind of bad. While you were passed out, the raven-haired delinquent girl went and stole your man—"
"You little—!"
Rumi thrust out her hand, and the blue flames rippling over Ella's body surged with heat.
"Gah! That's hot!"
"Explain properly before I scorch you black!"
"Owww — you're jealous, right? This is totally jealousy, isn't it?"
"Hey!"
The flames flared even higher.
From some distance away, a guard who had been watching them shouted.
"Miss Fairy! No illusions in public spaces!"
The two paid him no attention and kept squabbling. Oz, noticing the guard starting to head their way, stepped between them at once.
"I'll explain everything. Please, calm down."
He moved them out of the guard's line of sight and filled Rumi in on what had happened.
After hearing the whole story, she nodded.
"So we got eliminated."
"Rumi, I'm sorry. Please, lower the temperature a little..."
Ella whimpered beside her.
Rumi had kept the Spirit Body flames wrapped around her cranked to midsummer heat.
"Try messing with me one more time."
"I won't. I won't."
Rumi cooled the illusion clinging to her body.
Ella, drenched in sweat, sagged like a limp, soggy pickled cabbage.
"We almost got caught by the guards. That was too harsh."
At Oz's gentle scolding, Rumi looked away, having no good retort.
She knew perfectly well it wasn't something worth getting that angry over.
But Ella's joke — that she'd been "busy" right beside her sleeping body — had jabbed at her trauma and riled her up before she could stop it.
Rumi shook her head hard to push the memories aside and refocused.
"In any case, the plan worked, right?"
Ella's head shot up.
"What are you talking about? The plan only works if we advance."
Rumi tilted her head.
"Huh? What's this girl saying? That wasn't the goal."
"Haha, indeed. Here they come."
Ella followed Oz's gaze.
A swarm of figures was heading toward them.
They spotted Ella and waved eagerly.
"There, there she is!"
"Miss Elphi, was it? We just saw your performance — wonderful! Please, come to our theater!"
"Hey, wait your turn! Excuse me! I've written a new script — would you mind taking a look?"
"Join our troupe! We'll cast you as the lead in our next production!"
Only then did their original objective dawn on her again.
The three of them collected the entrance passes the Personas were thrusting at them and crouched together in a quiet alley.
Offers had come in from about thirty theaters.
"Not as many as I expected, given the reaction."
"This is plenty. What fraction of all of Wonderland even saw our show?"
They passed the passes around and examined them.
Each one listed details about the venue — size, stage type, location, facilities, equipment.
Even after going through them all, none matched the specific conditions they needed.
"Most can't start a show for at least two weeks. Their schedules are completely packed."
"What did you expect? The theaters sending people around the plaza to hand out passes are the ones actively operating. How many places leave a stage empty during festival season?"
Someone crossed Scarecrow's mind just then.
The patrol captain he'd met when they first arrived here.
He'd been a theater owner too — but he'd mentioned closing his theater's doors in the face of imminent extinction.
—Day after tomorrow, I'm inviting my friends to the theater for a modest farewell party. It'll be my last acrobatic performance. Drop by if you have the time.
If that theater was an option...
"Once word spreads by tomorrow, I'll bet we get a few more invitations. How about we rest for now?"
"Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sleepy."
Oz shook off the thought and rose to his feet.
Unlike him — who had no physical body — the two of them felt fatigue like anyone else. Whatever came next, they needed a place to stay first.
They left the central plaza and headed for the inn district.
Unlike the other streets of Cadsun, this one had more fairies and demons wandering around than Personas.
"Hello! How about staying at our inn?"
"Come to ours! Welcome drinks on the house!"
Hustlers were hard at work up and down the street.
Some were Personas; a few fairies appeared here and there.
"Oh my, a fairy guest! Come to our inn! We offer a fairy orchestra and a feast made with honey!"
The person who blocked their path was a fairy with butterfly wings.
At a glance, she looked similar to a fairy, but there was something a bit more... plump about her.
"A sprite. Where fairies specialize in illusions, those ones specialize in hypnosis."
"Hypnosis?"
Ella eyed the fairy warily and tensed.
Rumi let out a soft snicker.
"Don't worry. Like most fairies, they don't mean any real harm. They like to play tricks, though. All right, fair point — these ones can be a bit nasty."
Rumi whispered it low enough that the sprite couldn't overhear.
"Nasty?"
"I mean they can be mean-spirited. But it's fine. I told you, this is Kirkeus's paradise. If you're not a follower of Kirkeus, their power is weakened. You're not about to get hypnotized."
"One gentleman, two ladies! Our rooms have separate bedrooms centered around a common living area, so mixed groups can stay comfortably! There are even two separate bathrooms!"
The sprite was relentless. She stuck right to their side as they walked, rattling off every advantage her inn had to offer.
They had been tuning out most of the chatter, but at the mention of the room layout, their footsteps halted. Being fugitives from the guards, they hadn't wanted to take separate rooms — and the fact that this place could resolve the awkwardness of mixed lodging was a major selling point.
Exhausted anyway from all the moving around, they decided to follow the sprite.
"Excellent choice, ma'am! Walking might be tough for you — let me summon a mount!"
"Huh? I'm fine, really. I can just ride on his shoulders—"
"Oh no, we can't make the good sir work that hard! Hey there, you're free, right? Come on over!"
A group of gnomes across the street were just climbing off some kind of mount.
Another sprite sat atop its head, holding the reins.
Oz, Rumi, and Ella stared at the mount approaching them, and their expressions went rigid.
"There we go, let's hurry along. Our guests are waiting."
It was no magical beast, no spirit, no Persona of an animal.
"Ugh... I can't do this. It's too hard."
The mount let out a whimpering noise.
The fairy seated on its head raised the whip in her hand.
"You! Want another taste of this?"
"Eek! P-please, don't hit me!"
There, walking on all fours, was Clara.