12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (8)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (8)
Ella tapped her foot against the floor in sharp, impatient beats, checking the time.
4:20 AM.
By the schedule Clara had drafted yesterday, the troupe should have finished getting ready and been waiting outside for the carriages by now. Not a single member was ready to leave.
"Ella, the shower's only running cold!"
"We're out of hot water! The Ratmen are firing up the backup boiler, just wait a minute!"
"Hot-hot, Miss Ella? Have you seen my arm? It fell in the toilet yesterday, so I had it washed......"
"Arm bones? I saw Trimery carrying an armful of laundry upstairs earlier—yours might be in there. Check the second floor!"
"Hey, I said there's no hot water!"
"I've only washed one head!"
"What's going on?"
"I told you, wait! Go do something else in the meantime!"
"Like what?"
"Go help Yurakne in the kitchen or haul firewood for the boiler!"
"Squeak-squeak, Deputy Leader! Went to storage! Firewood! Gone!"
"What? It was there the day before yesterday......"
"Ah, you looking for firewood? I hauled all that oak up onto the annex roof so I could dry it out!"
"Old man, why in the world would you do that?"
"Oak's thermal efficiency improves once the moisture's gone. It'll be bone-dry by now. Forgot to bring it back down, though."
"Squeak! Old man! Making us do the job twice!"
"Ella, didn't you leave to grab spoons?"
"Right—be right there!"
It was pandemonium.
Shouts erupted from every corner. Members scrambled up and down the stairs in a frenzy. Some still weren't dressed. Others hadn't managed to wash. A few were still wandering around in their nightclothes.
Everyone had overslept.
Ella, the only one who'd gotten herself together quickly, was trying to manage the chaos from the middle, but leaving on schedule looked hopeless.
"Clara, what about the carriages?"
"Um... the drivers said they can wait until five if we pay extra...... but after that point they absolutely have to depart because of their later schedule......"
Clara couldn't look Ella in the eye. She stood there like a guilty criminal—and she had every reason to feel that way. As secretary, the lion's share of this mess was her fault.
She was the only person in the troupe with a tabletop clock—a precious gift Anais had given Wonderstein. Thanks to that, she had woken up at the planned time.
She had roused Yurakne and sent her down to the kitchen, then stepped into the bathroom to shower. Soaking in the tub under the stream of hot water had been pleasant enough—so pleasant that warmth and drowsiness overtook her, and she'd fallen asleep right there.
She didn't wake until past four, and even then it wasn't on her own. Yurakne, having finished the meal preparations in the kitchen, had noticed nobody else was up yet and come running in alarm.
"Eeeek, we're late, we're late!"
She'd been so startled she bolted out of her room without a stitch of clothing. If Yurakne hadn't caught her, she might have burst into Wonderstein's room stark naked.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!"
Wonderstein watched Clara bow to him over and over and gave a small smile.
He didn't raise his voice or so much as furrow his brow. He simply asked her to bring him his wheelchair.
"Didn't you set the alarm on the grandfather clock as well?"
The night before, Clara had set the alarm on the large grandfather clock in the center of the lobby just in case she failed to wake up. It hadn't gone off.
As she helped Wonderstein settle into his wheelchair, her voice shrank to barely a whisper.
"I, um, I set it for 3:40... PM. Instead of AM."
"I see."
The quiet way he smiled made Clara's stomach drop.
"You're— you're not angry, right?"
"What's done is done. Let's hurry."
But beneath his untroubled exterior, he was quietly grinding his teeth.
Between the members' Average Affection level and the Circus Troupe Fame, he was pulling in about 40 Devoluts a day lately. The resources never seemed to accumulate, though. There was always somewhere to spend them.
Periodically adjusting Clara's body ate a lot of Devolut. A few days ago, he'd poured a substantial amount into shaping Hawk's new body. And yesterday, he'd squandered more than necessary on cleaning Reina's body.
Now he had to spend Devoluts in yet another unplanned expense.
He used the Sound Room Function to wake the troupe, announcing that it was already past four in the morning.
"Everyone, please hurry as best you can."
The villa, silent until a moment ago, plunged into uproar.
Yurakne bundled the food she'd set on the table into packed lunches. There was no time to sit down and eat a leisurely breakfast. They'd have to eat in the carriages on the way.
That alone saved them considerable time. If everyone rushed, they might just manage the planned schedule.
Things didn't roll that smoothly, of course.
"The boiler's out of hot water!"
"Eeeek!"
The culprit this time, once again, was Clara.
She'd left the hot water running for over an hour. The supply ran dry before more than a handful of people had washed.
Cold water wasn't an option. October in Yeterinpurk felt like midwinter in the southern provinces.
The region was considered one of the warmer parts of the empire, but that was by the standards of Kiev folk, who happily swam in rivers during subzero weather.
Time slipped past 4:30, then past 4:40.
Most of the urgent problems did get resolved. Members began trickling into the lobby, dressed and ready. Yurakne emerged from the kitchen and went upstairs to change.
With a little breathing room at last, Ella scanned the lobby and spotted a heap of fur that had been piled in front of the fireplace for a while now.
Laundry?
She walked over for a closer look—and shouted in disbelief.
"Maya, what are you doing down here again!"
It was Maya, wrapped in a lumpy cocoon of cardigans and sweaters. She was curled up on her stomach in front of the fireplace, sleeping like a cat.
"Get up!"
Ella shook her roughly. Maya peered up at her with drowsy eyes.
"......Deputy Leader? What's going on?"
"What's going on? How long have you been lying here?"
"Since last night."
"What?"
"It's warm by the fire."
"With all that racket, you didn't wake up once? Unbelievable! We leave in ten minutes! Go get ready!"
Ella hauled her to her feet. Maya let out a slow yawn and floated up to her room on a cushion of telekinesis.
By the time the clock had crawled to just before five, the troupe had barely finished preparing and managed to board the carriages.
Yurakne, last out of the villa, climbed in gasping for breath. She didn't even have a moment to catch it.
"What in the world are you two wearing!"
She took one look at Maya and Clara, who were sharing her carriage, and recoiled in horror.
Maya had stumbled out in the same clothes she'd been wearing since the day before, wrinkled and unwashed. The cuffs and elbows were stained, pills covered the fabric, and threads were pulling loose in several places.
Her hair was a mess, too—static from the wool, worse in winter, made it stick up every which way.
"You're going to stand in front of people looking like that?"
Yurakne whipped out an emergency comb and worked through Maya's hair. She tidied the pills and loose threads on the sweater and cardigan as best she could with a piece of nonwoven cloth, but the wrinkles and stains were beyond fixing.
Such a pretty girl, walking around looking like a beggar. It was a tragedy.
Wonderstein could swap her into clean new clothes in an instant if she asked, but she couldn't bother a man in his condition with something this trivial.
Clara's outfit was passable. Her hair, however, was a disaster—half-damp and clumped into tangles, as if she'd hauled a fistful of wet seaweed straight out of the ocean and draped it over her head.
This was the honor student?
Yurakne groaned at the sight.
"Good heavens! You used to be so much neater back in school!"
"Ah, well, back then my friend helped me......"
Clara clicked her tongue wistfully, thinking of Phairen. Whatever else you could say, living with her had been easy—she'd bathed her, changed her clothes, even spoon-fed her meals.
Yurakne sighed, thinking that Clara's roommate must have had a rough time of it.
"All right, both of you, look at me. I've told you a hundred times before......"
For the next thirty minutes, Yurakne lectured them about a woman's proper grooming. Neither the lazy Maya nor the fiercely self-paced Clara seemed to pay much attention—until Wonderstein's name came up, at which point their eyes flickered with sudden intensity.
"Would you be happy if the Troupe Leader got insulted in public because of you? He's not going to like seeing women who can't keep themselves tidy, either."
"The Troupe Leader......"
"......You really think so?"
Yurakne watched the atmosphere shift the instant Wonderstein was mentioned and laughed inwardly.
Our Troupe Leader really is something else.
They ate their packed lunches along the way, traded idle chatter, and pulled into Tetromino Square a little past 6:30. A crowd of reporters was already waiting in front of the school.
"Carriages incoming!"
"Hey, who's that?"
"Hold on—is that the Monster Circus?"
"Seriously?"
The reporters surged toward them the moment they stepped out. The barrage of questions concentrated on Wonderstein, Ella, and Maya.
"The Golden Carnival and the Silver Screen Circus are participating this month, too—any thoughts?"
"Weren't you comrades preparing the Illusory 13th together?"
"Planning any more backroom deals between troupes this time?"
"Come clean—you knew they were fakes when you worked with them, didn't you?"
"We hear you're a Christian fan, Deputy Leader Ella?"
"That story about flinging a thousand blades with telekinesis—it was just an illusion, right?"
The same questions that had hounded them relentlessly for days came pouring out all at once.
Ella pushed through the crowd with an impassive face. After stepping out yesterday on Wonderstein's suggestion, the dark clouds that had been hanging over her had dispersed.
Thanks to that, even the reporters snapping at her heels couldn't intimidate her.
The rest of the troupe didn't take the bait either.
The monster members, long accustomed to hostile stares, found this level of mockery little more than a joke. Wonderstein and Maya, as always, didn't so much as twitch no matter what anyone said. And Gaston, who'd spent decades standing like a single tree at the center of political storms, found their antics nothing short of laughable.
Clara was the only exception. Having once been an Apostle of Sinepekus, she was several times more sensitive to the whispers around her than anyone else.
It didn't become a problem today, though—the moment Wonderstein saw her starting to panic, he used the Sound Room Function to block out the voices aimed at her.
They managed to enter the auditorium without further incident.
Several of the troupes participating in this month's exam had already arrived. Among them stood the Golden Carnival.
"Reina!"
Ella spotted the Weeping Woman Mask and called out in cheerful recognition.
Reina startled, looked at her, then met Wonderstein's eyes beside her—and immediately turned her head away.
She stared silently at the floor without a word in reply.
Lord Fantastic likewise pretended not to see them, acting as though they were complete strangers.
The other Golden Carnival acrobats behind him, however, remembered Ella and waved.
Ella returned their greetings while keeping a close eye on Reina.
"Well, I didn't expect anything from that mustache, but Reina too, huh? So we're enemies now, is that it? Hmph."
Before long, the Silver Screen Circus and the remaining troupes arrived, and the auditorium doors were closed.
At seven o'clock sharp,
the students filed into the audience seating in their pristine white uniforms, and then the faculty took the stage—led by the Four-person Gang who had established the Rekachev Circus School.