11. Wonderland (38)
11. Wonderland (38)
Few people can recall anything from before they were five. But a moment burned into the mind—even from early childhood—tends to stay vivid.
Reina's oldest memory was from when she was four.
She had just been discharged from the hospital after a carriage accident.
Maybe it was the long absence. The house, the streets, even her father coming to take her home—everything felt unfamiliar.
The moment they arrived, he led her straight to the back garden. Her mother sat on a bench there, motionless as a block of wood, staring blankly at the empty swing in the corner.
She looked so haggard, like a woman whose soul had already left her body. Reina half-believed she was dead with her eyes open.
"Dear, look. Reina is back. Safe and sound."
The instant she heard her daughter's name, her mother's head snapped up. The moment her eyes found the child, those unfocused pupils flared back to life.
"Reina?"
Solane bolted to her feet. She stumbled once, kicking off a shoe, but she didn't care—she ran barefoot. Afraid that even a single blink would make her daughter disappear, she kept her eyes locked on Reina even as her knees scraped the ground.
Solane knelt before her daughter and cradled the girl's face with trembling hands.
These eyes, this nose, these lips. It was unmistakably her daughter, Reina.
She pulled Reina into a crushing embrace and pressed her tear-streaked face against the child's, over and over.
"You really were alive! Dear, isn't it true? I was right, wasn't I? Of course I was right. The doctor must have made a mistake. Yes. I knew something was wrong. Our Reina is perfectly fine, here and healthy, and they were spouting nonsense about there being no hope. Do you remember your mother's face? Hm? You haven't forgotten just because it's been two months, have you?"
She was babbling like a woman out of her mind. And for the past two months, she had not eaten a proper meal. Sleep had only ever come as a daze, exhaustion knocking her unconscious. She had often wept at visions of her daughter.
"You'll frighten Reina. She still seems disoriented—likely from the shock of the accident."
At her husband's gentle words, Solane wiped her eyes and spoke much more calmly.
"Is that so? I'm sorry, Reina. Mother was just so worried. You're perfectly fine, but that priest kept trying to bury our daughter. Was it cold underground? Were you lonely? I'm sorry. Mother will never let go of your hand again. Do you understand? We'll stay together from now on, all right?"
Reina gave a slow nod.
Was it because she had been in a coma for so long? Everything felt strange and distant.
Happily, that awkwardness faded in a few days.
Looking at photographs taken with her father and mother, reading the picture-diaries she had drawn, listening to the memories her parents whispered to her—she quickly recovered her old self.
Every day felt fresh and joyful.
Acrobatics practice was especially fun. "If you'd known how to do a back flip, you could have dodged that carriage!" her mother insisted, and so Reina began training her body young.
Both of them were first-rate acrobats, and they taught their daughter their skills without holding back. Reina absorbed everything they showed her the moment she saw it.
"Isn't she remarkable? I think she might be even more talented than you were as a child, dear..."
"I had no idea our daughter had such a gift before, did I? Heh heh. Perhaps it's because we've trained her so well? They do say geniuses are made, after all."
At those words, Simon's eyes chilled over.
"...Made? Nonsense. It must be innate. Where else would blood from you and me go?"
But the happy times were painfully brief. Only four years. Her mother died of illness when Reina was eight.
Simon packed all the belongings Reina had used as a small child into his wife's coffin. And after the burial was over and the mourners had gone, he lingered beside the headstone for a long while.
Her father stacked stones beside her mother's grave marker and built a small tombstone before he finally left. It seemed he wanted to give his wife something made with his own hands rather than a polished slab carved by a stonemason. Every year on the anniversary of her death, he repeated the ritual—piling stones into a new marker beside the old one.
Had something broken inside him after her mother died?
From that day forward, the way her father treated her changed.
"Um... Dad?"
"Do not call me Dad!"
Reina froze at Simon's icy retort.
He saw the terror in his daughter's eyes, let his expression soften a moment, then hardened it again and spoke solemnly.
"Reina. You are old enough now. How long do you mean to keep calling me 'Dad'? Address me as 'Father.'"
She had no idea why Dad—no, Father—was suddenly treating her so coldly. But she decided to obey.
"I understand, Father."
Age nine.
She tried to understand her father.
He must have been crushed by grief for Mother. Probably, he felt guilty toward her if the two of them went on enjoying themselves together.
Age ten.
As she began training in earnest, her father's discipline grew even stricter. Still, Reina believed he loved her. Only the way he showed it had changed.
I'll work hard and become an acrobat worthy of both their names.
Because I'm their daughter.
Age eleven.
For the first time, her father cursed at her.
Every small mistake she made was judged with brutal severity. The father who had once rejoiced at a simple display of talent as if he'd witnessed a miracle was gone. He was so harsh that she sometimes wondered whether those earlier days had only ever been a dream.
Age twelve.
For the first time, her father struck her. He claimed it was conditioning, but in his eyes as he kicked her, there was unmistakable hatred.
It's my fault. He has every reason to be angry. My skill falls short of his name.
Age thirteen.
She was forbidden from calling him "Father" in public.
Fine. It can't be helped. Flaunting a private bond during a performance ruins the teamwork, doesn't it? Father is right. I mustn't be childish about this.
Age fourteen.
She tasted defeat for the first time—a boy three years older, from a rural circus school, possessed of astonishing skill. The world truly was vast.
Her father called it a disgrace and postponed her debut.
Age fifteen.
Her father called her "a bitch who isn't worth the money spent on her."
Did he mean that raising her had been a waste of expense?
That night, she buried her face in a photo album and sobbed uncontrollably.
Age sixteen.
As time passed, her appearance grew to resemble her late mother's more and more.
Golden hair, a tall frame, a mature figure.
People who had known her mother began exclaiming that the Magician of Strings had returned.
But the more that happened, the colder her father's eyes grew when he looked at her. Sometimes his gaze was so sharp she thought she saw revulsion in it.
I must have imagined it.
And now, age seventeen.
Reina stared at the spirit of a little girl cradled in her mother's arms. The figure was translucent, but she recognized it instantly.
It was her younger self.
She always kept her photo albums meticulously ordered by date, so she knew exactly what age that image belonged to.
Four years old.
"Mom, we have a guest! She got here way too early for the show but said she wanted to meet you! So I stopped playing and brought her over!"
A hollow laugh caught in her throat at the child's words.
Mom.
Who are you to call my mother "Mom"?
But something far more sickening squirmed in her chest.
Setting that delusional child aside—there was what her mother had said a moment ago.
If I didn't mishear...
"Yes, Reina. You did well."
Reina? Who is Reina?
She barely choked back the urge to scream. Instead, she steadied herself and searched her mother's face again. Could it be someone else with the same name? Maybe it was an impostor. In the circus world, a little fame always drew cheap imitations.
But the voice addressing her, the look in those eyes, the gestures—Reina could not deny that this woman was her mother.
"Pleased to meet you. I am the theater owner of the Fantastic Floor—you may call me Lady Fantastic. What brings you here?"
Right then, Reina wanted to tear off her mask and reveal that her daughter had come.
But something deeper stopped her. She pointed instead at the instrument in Solane's hands.
"I, well... I heard you play the bass quite well. I was hoping you might listen to my playing..."
"Ah, are you a participant in the quintet?"
"Pardon? Yes... yes!"
"Heh heh, I'm also scheduled to take part next week. I'd love to hear what a competitor's skill sounds like."
Reina borrowed Solane's instrument and began to play.
Her performance was so awful that if her father had been present, he would have snatched the instrument away and hurled it to the floor.
Part of it was nerves—playing in front of her mother. Part of it was the distraction of keeping an eye on the fake Reina. Above all, the piece itself was clumsily put together.
It couldn't be helped. It was a song she had composed on her own when she was seven.
"A pleasant tone. But with this much tension, do you think you can stand on the stage of the Central Plaza?"
At that warm yet piercing observation, Reina's lips trembled. She could no longer doubt that this woman was her mother. It felt exactly like speaking to the mother she remembered from back when she was alive.
"And the piece you chose doesn't suit the bass. Why select a song like this...?"
"...Have you heard it before?"
"No. This is the first time."
Reina nearly let out a groan of despair.
The disappointment struck that hard.
"It was a piece I composed when I was seven. A birthday gift for my mother."
"Ah, that explains it—a congratulatory song, full of a child's innocence. You must have chosen it because you have a daughter of your own."
My daughter?
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Hearing her mother call another child her daughter was unbearable.
Was this how Dad felt?
When I kissed Troupe Leader Wonderstein on the cheek right in front of him?
No—more than that. Why.
Why doesn't Mother remember this?
It's an important memory. My first composed song. A piece I prepared for her birthday.
She said it was so lovely, so moving, that she would never forget it as long as she lived...
She bit down hard on her lip, then forced out the single word she had been aching to say.
"Mom."
But the instant it left her mouth, her lips cruelly and swiftly tacked on another sentence.
"...is what that child called you earlier."
Reina waited for her to offer some excuse.
There are plenty of spirits and fairies around here, right? Yes, maybe it's an illusion. I missed her so much I conjured a fake doll. Or perhaps hypnosis. No—a changeling! I've heard of fairies who slip into human families like cuckoos and pretend to be the real child. Could that be it?
But Solane's next words trampled her hopes without mercy.
"Yes. Reina. She is my beloved daughter."
She stroked the Young Reina in her arms.
"Hee-hee."
The older Reina barely kept herself from seizing that impostor perched on her mother's lap, smiling with her eyes, and hurling her to the ground.
That's my place.
So why are you sitting in it as if it's yours?
"Your daughter must have died young."
Reina startled at her own words. A note of spiteful mockery had crept in before she could stop it.
It rose from resentment toward a cruel mother who couldn't even recognize her daughter standing right in front of her.
But Solane noticed nothing unusual. She simply smiled and stroked Young Reina's hair.
"Yes. She passed away four years before I did, in fact. But we've been together ever since. My daughter became my guardian spirit."
Reina remembered what Chen Hawk had told her earlier.
Some souls, bound by powerful grudges or attachments, cannot pass on to the next world and instead wander the earth. She had thought of evil spirits when she heard that—but was a case like this possible too?
"A guardian spirit?"
"Yes. Oh, but I am far from a good mother. I realized that only after I died."
A single intuition screamed inside Reina.
This was the moment to stop asking questions.
She must not dig any deeper here.
But she swallowed every ominous feeling and asked anyway.
"What do you mean?"
The strength drained from her body the moment she spoke. The wait for an answer lasted only an instant, yet to her it felt like hours.
At last, Solane's lips parted. Her low voice crashed through Reina's mind like thunder.
"That my daughter died when she was four years old."