12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (16)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (16)
Ella looked down at her two fingers, burning as though scorched by fire, and a memory from her school days suddenly surfaced.
Every first day of the month, they would fill a large basin with water and gather around it to do their laundry together. One day, a friend had gotten her hands on some expensive detergent from merchants as payment for a street performance. She'd generously poured heaps of the powder into every basin for her friends, but the stuff was so harsh that by the end of the day, every kid who'd dipped their hands in the water had swollen, inflamed fingers.
It turned out she'd brought a bleaching agent used in dye factories — something meant to be heavily diluted for any household task.
They all spent days groaning over the aftermath, yet no one could bring themselves to blame her. She'd washed her face with that same water, hoping to whiten her skin, and her complexion had broken out as if she'd been burned.
Was this a sign that her memories were returning?
An old incident she'd shoved into a corner of her mind now replayed as vividly as if it had happened yesterday.
Once she slipped out through the main entrance, Ella ducked away from the spectators' view, grabbed hold of her two broken fingers, and pulled hard.
Crack.
Her joints ground against each other. It hurt enough to bring tears prickling to her eyes, but she choked down the scream.
The fingers, which had been bent at grotesque angles, popped back into alignment. She knew this wouldn't magically knit fractured bone back together. If anything, forcing the joints into place might have worsened the break.
Still, restoring them to some semblance of a normal shape meant she could execute one more technique when the critical moment arrived. The instant she used it, the bone would definitely snap, but she could endure that — if that single move was the one that snatched the trophy.
'Once the match ends, I'll ask the Troupe Leader to fix me up.'
Before losing her memories, she'd never allowed him to lay a hand on her. Likely because watching him knead and manipulate people's bodies had triggered a visceral revulsion.
But this time, she genuinely wanted to entrust her body to him. She wanted to show him that she trusted him.
'I'll tell him my foot hurts too. And my calf, and my thigh — say they all feel injured. I mean, I brought back a star; that much pampering is a given.'
She imagined Wonderstein kneading her body with his bare hands. The prospect of being on the receiving end of his — ahem — "services" made a giggle bubble up involuntarily.
"Contestant Ella! Entering Arena 3! She's perfectly composed after that incredible stunt! She's even smiling!"
Passing through a short corridor into the next arena, she felt the spectators' attention converge on her and swiftly wiped the expression off her face.
Right. All of that comes after I win.
Arena 3, the Central Garden, housed a familiar bamboo forest — the same one Rekachev students used as a shortcut, climbing up and down through the stalks.
As soon as she saw it, Ella recalled the campus tour Clara had given her. That day, she and Reina had ascended by leaping between trees in textbook fashion, Karen had scaled a single trunk using nothing but grip strength, and Maya had conjured a staircase and walked right up. That had only been a month ago.
The garden measured roughly fifty meters across and was encircled by a spiraling ramp. Spectators lined the ramp from the second floor up to the sixth, peering down into the garden to watch the competition unfold within.
And within that space, a fierce contest was already playing out.
From the information Clara had provided, Ella knew there were four competitors here. One was "Meren of Silence," a master of the silent tightrope two years her senior, whom she'd crossed paths with a few times during her auditing days. Two others were veteran tightrope performers with at least a decade of experience each.
And the last was her fellow search-team member — the oldest member of their circus troupe.
Gaston was sticking to the plan they'd laid before the exam, doing his best to stay out of trouble in a corner of the arena. Clara had calculated the cascading shifts in tile colors for him, so all he had to do was stand exactly where she'd told him to be.
But he hadn't been standing there long before he ran into a problem he hadn't anticipated — a problem that hadn't existed during practice. The audience.
"What's that shriveled-up old prune doing over there?"
"You can't seriously tell me that grandpa's an acrobat."
"Did you miss him clearing the obstacle earlier? He whined and groaned the whole way over a fence that barely came up to his chest!"
"Good grief! They must've been desperate for bodies! Shoved some handyman geezer into the lineup and called him an acrobat."
"What're you doing? If you're not going to play, get out!"
Gaston's face flushed scarlet with humiliation.
He, the head gardener of the imperial court, reduced to standing in a jester's variety show — and now suffering this indignity on top of it. Every fiber of his being wanted to abandon the whole mess, exam and all, and bolt out of there. If it hadn't been for the promise he'd made to his student, he might have done exactly that.
He forced himself to ignore the jeers raining down from the stands and focused on reading the arena.
The three acrobats were leaping through the air, working to conquer the bamboo forest. But none of them had managed to get past the third floor. Even Meren, who had easily reached the fifth floor alongside Ella and Reina just a month ago, was struggling.
The bamboo forest then and now were worlds apart in difficulty.
Back then, they'd had a clear objective: the fifth-floor railing. Once they'd plotted an optimal route, they simply had to follow it.
Now, there was no such target. Somewhere among the hundreds of bamboo stalks planted across this fifty-meter garden, at the tip of one tree, lay the path to a treasure chest — and no one knew which tree.
Moreover, the branches draped between the trees had multiplied several times over. Where once there had been only two types — sturdy and springy — now trap branches had been added in abundance.
Some branches bent like rubber under any weight, then whipped back to lash the climber's body like a scourge. Others looked smooth but were bristling with needle-sharp thorns that made them impossible to grip. Still others appeared robust but snapped like reeds the moment a person's full weight settled on them, sending whoever had perched there plummeting down.
Not being able to freely execute a breakfall compounded the problem. Here, as in every other arena, colored tiles were laid out in a grid across the floor. If you fell from a tree and landed on a tile that wasn't your team's color, you were eliminated.
That was precisely why no one had breached the third floor. With no way to tell what trap lay in wait at the next handhold — and no visible safe landing zone below — launching yourself forward became a terrifying gamble.
Ella reached Gaston's position around the time news arrived that the third Mini Game in the auditorium had concluded.
"Heh-heh. You made it, Deputy Leader."
"Hoo. You managed to get in here alive yourself, old man."
Normally, these two couldn't exchange a single glance without sniping and nitpicking at each other, but now neither bothered to hide their smiles. They were allies who'd each been stranded alone on the battlefield and finally reunited — no wonder they were so glad to see each other.
"So, old man? How's the analysis coming?"
"Ahem. Who do you think you're talking to? Am I not a Master of Herbology from the Alchemy Guild?"
Gaston puffed himself up as he spoke. He hadn't just been standing there gawking all this time.
"The branches rigged as traps in this bamboo forest aren't originally from these plants. The whipping ones, the thorn-studded ones, the reed-like snapping ones — they're all grafted on from entirely different species. The fact that they swapped them out within a single week tells me they had help from the Alchemy Guild. On top of that, a skilled horticulturist trimmed and shaped every graft so the colors and forms are indistinguishable from the real bamboo. They did a decent job, but it can't fool my eye."
He began pointing to the trees Ella indicated and detailing exactly what species of branch had been grafted onto each.
She listened to his explanation, tracing a hypothetical route through her mind. Her gaze climbed past the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, coming to rest on the uppermost level. There, a canopy of vivid green bamboo leaves — foliage that hadn't been present before — had grown thick and dense, forming a roof over the garden.
That had to be where the clue to the treasure chest was hidden.
"Then I'll be back."
Having gathered all the information she needed, she began to climb. With her left hand unusable, her pace was slow, but she rose steadily, inch by measured inch.
The emcee, who had only been tracking the sleek movements of the other competitors, found his attention naturally drawn to her gradual ascent.
"Third floor! The Monster Circus's Ella has reached the third floor! Unbelievable! A contestant who just entered the arena has broken the previous height record set by Meren! And there — she jumps from this spot! Could it be a trap? It isn't — no trap at all! With no red tiles below to catch her, a breakfall was impossible, yet she launched herself without hesitation! Where does that audacity come from? What incredible nerve!"
The crowd buzzed with excitement. When she grabbed a branch with only her right arm, swung her body like a pendulum, and let go at precisely the right moment to land squarely on the branch opposite, the audience erupted into cheers.
"Unbelievable. After all that Frank 10 nonsense, I'd written her off as some con artist."
"Nah. Her skill's the real deal. You must not have heard what went down at the New Student Selection Test."
"They say the Golden Libra — Lord Fantastic's own daughter — basically lost to her."
Even with all those eyes fixed squarely on her, Ella remained composed, steadily crossing from branch to branch. Before long, she had reached the fourth floor.
Gaston moved from his original tile to a spot closer to her, continuing to point out which branches she needed to be wary of.
'See that branch jutting straight up at five o'clock? It only looks like bamboo. That's actually a large-rooted reed variety — it oozes a sticky sap.'
'What about the branches on the right?'
'Not sure of the species, but they're all grafts. Definitely traps.'
Guided by Gaston's advice through the Sound Room, she ascended to the fifth floor. Spectators leaning over the fifth-floor railing applauded when she appeared right in front of them. The sight of a girl balancing on a single bamboo branch suspended thirty meters above the ground was nothing short of wondrous.
"Ella! Ella! Ella! Ella!"
She looked around at the crowd chanting her name. She'd been so fiercely focused on the competition that she hadn't registered them before — but now, expectant gazes were pouring her way from every direction.
Ella relaxed the hard expression that had unconsciously set on her face during the climb. Then, to the spectators' astonishment, she waved her arms from side to side, returning their enthusiasm in kind.
"Thank you! Thank you!"
She even bounced in place — while still standing on the branch, no less.
The crowd initially recoiled in alarm, but when she deftly twisted her body to show off her control, their mouths fell open and they erupted into frenzied roars of approval.
'Yeah. This is what a circus is.'
Honestly, the theme of Acrobatic Rush had never sat right with her. Skill was undeniably a crucial element of the circus, but it wasn't everything. More than anything else, a performance had to delight its audience.
She'd read the press coverage of what had happened during the June, July, and August exams.
The races, which had started out loose and playful, grew progressively uglier as the rounds went on — acrobats turning vicious against each other, a steady stream of injuries from traps, and by the end, the audience was an afterthought while the competitors effectively brawled among themselves. The consensus in the reviews was that the whole thing had left an unpleasant aftertaste.
Everyone was so fixated on showing off their own skills to score high and overtake their rivals that the enjoyment of the people who'd actually come to watch became secondary. This October Test had supposedly introduced several new rules to address those criticisms, but the fundamental nature of the event hadn't changed.
The character of an elite athletic academy inevitably showed through in moments like this.
She had discussed this very topic with Wonderstein once.
'I agree with Miss Ella's opinion.'
He'd answered after reflecting on his own past as a game streamer.
Thanks to his extraordinary dynamic vision and eye-tracking skills, he could play any game at a top-tier level. But he'd never been particularly fond of games that obsessed over raw mechanical difficulty.
Early in his streaming career, he'd been seduced by the adulation of fans from the fighting, rhythm, and racing genres. He'd gotten more heated over a single win or loss, one point, or a hundredth of a second than he did over making the broadcast entertaining.
Predictably, his live viewer count had plummeted, and he, as the player, had grown increasingly exhausted and bored with the games themselves.
With that experience behind him, he understood perfectly what Ella was trying to say.
That day, the two of them had talked for hours about performance.
Yeah. Someone that sincere about the circus couldn't possibly be a bad person.
She repeated the thought to herself — but she couldn't stop the question that rose from a corner of her mind: 'What about Lord Fantastic?'
"Then I'm heading for the top! Watch me!"
Having fully acknowledged the crowd's cheers, Ella prepared to climb to the sixth floor. She stood at the tip of a branch and waited for Gaston's guidance on which way to go. But no matter how long she waited, his response never came.
Sensing something was wrong, she looked down — and immediately recognized that a disturbance had erupted below.