12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (10)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (10)
After the preliminary assembly in the auditorium ended, the students headed off to resume building the sets for the preliminary round.
Rekachev had its own technicians and laborers who specialized in stage equipment, but this month they were shorthanded—the Grand Prix exam running alongside the Halloween festival stretched everyone thin. So the students stayed after class to help, and they often worked well past school hours.
They juggled bricks back and forth, drove nails by hurling them instead of using hammers, brought in a tame bear to haul supplies, or stood upright on boards propped on end to reach the upper floor—putting on such a parade of odd feats that the newly arrived workers were left staring in disbelief.
"W-Whoa! They're going to fall!"
"I'd heard the rumors, but...."
"Is it really all right for them to be doing that?"
"Aha-ha, surprised you, did we? Don't worry. Compared to their usual training, this is nothing."
"These are kids who ride unicycles in midair while juggling, you know."
They said it lightly, but even the veteran workers couldn't help letting out murmurs of admiration when they watched the students balance on a tightrope stretched several stories high—carrying materials on their shoulders and chatting the whole way.
The students themselves were in the middle of a heated debate about the identity of the "Tinker Fairy."
"The Tinker Fairy must be Dmitri, the new top-ranked student after Clara, right?"
"No. It might not be strictly by grades. The Tinker Fairy does secret work—they can't be too conspicuous."
"Then maybe surprisingly, one of the freshmen?"
"They wouldn't pick a troublemaker on purpose, would they? Like 'the Shepherd Girl'? A junior in my club said she actually heard her claim she's the Tinker Fairy."
"Did you forget why she's got that nickname? You can't trust anything she says. She pulled that lying stunt at the New Student Selection Test, too."
"It's unlikely they'd pick a first-year who doesn't know the school layout well. And the professor would've told them to keep it strictly quiet—it makes no sense for someone to go around insisting they're the Tinker Fairy."
"What I'm more curious about than the Tinker Fairy is where they'll hide the treasure chests."
"I've had my eye on a few spots, actually...."
The locations of the trophy-laden treasure chests were kept strictly confidential until the exam day. Only the professors who designed the race and the students called the "Tinker Fairy" knew.
The professors didn't hide the chests themselves—they assigned those students to place them.
The reason lay in the exam held back in August. After watching the June and July exams, the competition participants—like people in other cities—had begun exploiting loopholes in the rules.
They'd thoroughly monitored the professors' movements before the competition, recording every place they passed, and prioritized those locations on exam day.
That was why the Silver Screen Circus, which had completed the test at the Rose Windmill Cabaret in the first week of June and moved on to Yeterinpurk around July, was eliminated in the August exam and had to retake it in October.
Arno had never imagined the other troupes would go that far.
The Rekachev professors, too, grasped the situation after observing the brazen behavior of several troupes and introduced the Tinker Fairy. A nickname that fit the legend of someone who slips in while everyone sleeps, finishes the unfinished work, and vanishes.
Charlie didn't know who the Tinker Fairy was either. But he could tell where the treasure chests would be placed.
He studied the construction site and the school map alternately, meticulously examining the trap placements, obstacle designs, and the locations of camouflaged devices.
He could sketch it all in his mind: which way they'd steer the contestants and which paths they'd block. The resulting traffic flow was like an enormous, swirling maze. He closed his eyes and piloted a single ship through it in his mind. The ship pushed through the violent eddies and at last reached the island.
The treasure chests' hiding spots became almost tangible, vivid in his grasp.
He marked three points on the map.
The exam had been designed around his graduation work, "Depart! Dream Race," to begin with. He already had a firm grasp of all the basic mechanisms used, so even though the scale and complexity had grown, he could still read the underlying logic.
Of course, even for him, that alone wouldn't have been enough to see through a labyrinth painstakingly woven by the professors. What allowed him to pinpoint the chests' locations this accurately was the setting itself: a school.
St. Victor's Cathedral. Or the Palace of Miracles.
He'd confidently assert that no one knew this place better than he did. He didn't even think the founding professors themselves knew it as well as he did.
He had already uncovered every hidden room and secret passage in the Palace of Miracles during his first year. He'd even explored the cemetery beneath the cathedral.
That place, called the catacombs, had once held the calcined bones of Yeterinpurk's citizens after cremation. Because of the plague that had once run rampant, this city was more accustomed to burning corpses than other regions. The number of people whose remains were interred there reached into the millions. Beneath the Palace of Miracles, a vast labyrinth of human bones had formed, spanning several kilometers in radius.
When the cathedral was closed and the school moved in, the entrance to the catacombs was sealed, but Charlie discovered a hidden passage and roamed inside with his friends. They even built a secret hideout there, sometimes sneaking out after dormitory curfew through those very tunnels.
In his second year, a giant serpent—bred by a former student who'd failed to tame it and secretly flushed it down a toilet, only for it to grow several meters long—infested the school's sewers and attacked students. His intimate knowledge of the school's layout was what let him track it down and dispatch it.
Now, Charlie's group was staying in those very catacombs. He heard footsteps approaching from a distance.
Could it be the Rekachev kids?
He recalled the faces of the juniors to whom he'd passed down a secret map of Rekachev.
But he quickly shook his head. They'd deliberately chosen a chamber he'd omitted from the map. In the thick of the Grand Prix, there was no way students would venture this deep.
From the echoes reverberating through the underground alone, he could analyze the footsteps. He recognized their owners: hometown friends.
Before long, their silhouettes emerged from the darkness. Every one of them wore a bizarre guise.
A large man who mimed being stuck inside a barrel.
"August."
A several-meter-tall boy with elongated limbs.
"Mickey."
A woman whose whole body appeared to be engulfed in flame.
"Veronica."
And a woman dyed entirely purple from head to toe.
"Viola."
All of them were in Halloween costumes. Afraid their faces might be engraved in someone's memory during reconnaissance, they changed into different costumes every single day.
Charlie noticed that the outfits they wore were the very same ones they'd put on two weeks earlier when they went to the Sorcery Market to spy on the Monster Circus Troupe members. Today seemed to be the day the rotation looped back around.
The flesh of the man who'd been miming inside the barrel swelled up, plump by plump, returning to its normal shape. He looked at the map laid out before Charlie and spoke.
"Did you figure out where the treasure chests are?"
"Yeah. Focus the work around the places I circled. How's the construction job? Manageable?"
"Thanks to your letter of introduction, the foreman's been real helpful."
"Good. Then that takes care of the construction site issue.... Everyone, gather around."
Charlie spread the map under the electric light and briefed them on the operation. The group, most curious about why he'd chosen these specific spots, nodded as his explanation clicked into place.
Once the briefing was done, Charlie looked around at them and asked a question.
"What about you guys? You decided to have a look around while their villa was empty, right?"
"Yeah. There were only about ten Ratmen besides the troupe members."
"They just looked like hired laborers, didn't they?"
"Nothing stood out as unusual."
Two weeks ago, upon arriving in Yeterinpurk, they'd agonized over how wide to cast the net for vengeance. They didn't know exactly who had been involved in the atrocity back in their hometown. The surviving children's testimonies were a mess, likely due to the shock.
The only common thread was that Ella had called a demon into the village and then left with him.
"At first, seeing the way those troupe members looked, I thought maybe they were the ones who raided our village."
"But they're surprisingly simple, innocent people, despite their appearance."
"Yeah. Just ordinary folks. We observed them over and over, but we kept reaching the same conclusion."
"Our target is just Ella, right? Feels like we can just ignore the others, can't we?"
Charlie, who'd been listening quietly to his friends' opinions, slowly shook his head.
"No."
His gaze drifted to the blackboard set up in the corner. It was filled with dense chalk handwriting. Names, personalities, and traits of the Monster Circus Troupe members they'd investigated were scrawled there, with Ella at the center of the web of relationships.
"We need one more person."
He fixed his eyes on a single name connected to her.
"The Troupe Leader, Frank Wonderstein."
A chill, bleak killing intent flickered in Charlie's eyes.
***
After the preliminary assembly, the Monster Circus didn't head straight back to their lodgings. Having already made such a racket getting out in the morning, they felt it would be a waste to return right away. They decided to spend a little more time outside while they were at it.
Thanks to Wonderstein, they were able to slip out of the school via a side gate, avoiding the public eye.
"Impressive. How'd you find out about a route like this?"
"I heard rumors. They say it's a 'rat hole' the students use often."
They caught glimpses from a distance of reporters mobbing the Golden Carnival and the Silver Screen Circus, and moved deeper into the alley, walking carefully.
Their destination was a café across from the confectionery factory that Maya had often frequented. When they searched for a place where a group their size could pass without attracting attention, Maya mentioned that the second floor of her usual café had a private room for groups that was currently empty.
"Oh my, Maya! It's been so long."
The old woman who ran the café alone greeted them warmly. She pulled Maya into a tight, delighted embrace and gave her a Kiev-style kiss on the cheek. Then she also planted a kiss on the cheeks of Wonderstein and Ella, whom she'd seen a handful of times.
As she scanned the party for any other familiar face, she spotted Clara's visage and broke into a pleased smile.
"Aren't you the student Clara?"
"Huh? Sorry?"
Clara started and stared at the old woman. She'd worn a Halloween mask on the way to school to avoid troublesome encounters, and had taken it off the moment she stepped outside, complaining it was stuffy. She hadn't expected to run into an acquaintance in such an unexpected place.
"Hoho, we saw each other's faces so often two years ago—have you forgotten me already? I can guess you might be pretending not to know me because you're in front of your friends, but...."
"Th-That's, I...."
She had painstakingly gathered information to pose as Clara before leaving the bottle, but she hadn't covered conversations involving an insignificant old woman like this.
The café owner looked at her, shuffling awkwardly in place, and smiled as if she understood.
"Did Clara come here often?"
The old woman seemed momentarily puzzled by Umon’s familiar way of referring to Clara, but she quickly nodded and answered.
"She certainly did. Two years ago, you see. There was an incident where Rekachev students were being attacked by a mysterious creature every night. Because of that, the dormitories were closed for weeks. So the students lodged with help from nearby residents—I also offered up the room on this café's second floor."
"So Clara stayed here?"
As if she'd been waiting for that question, the old woman let out a mischievous chuckle and glanced at Clara, who was floundering for words.
"No. The student Clara liked was living here. Just like any woman in love, she dropped by every day to look for him."
"Ha-ha-ha, hoo, Miss Clara liked someone?"
Sven cried out as if he couldn't believe it. The other troupe members were no different. The way she normally behaved, a story of pure puppy love didn't suit her at all.
"What kind of boy was he?"
Yurakne asked, unusually excited. She seemed half-moved by the thought that even this reckless, wild girl had once had a springtime romance of her own.
Taking Clara's complete lack of a retort and her deeply bowed head as an implicit admission, the old woman answered.
"A tall, handsome student a year above Clara named Charlie. He was even the top-ranked student in the entire school."