12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (18)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (18)
At the center of the dome lay an enormous circular pool. Across its surface drifted the kind of balls used in circus acts, and atop them stood several acrobats.
The arena Sven presided over — the "Pool" — had once been the site of St. Victor Cathedral's All Saints Chapel.
The All Saints Chapel was a place where icons of the Orthodox Church's saints were enshrined, and at its heart, a basin filled with holy water would typically hold floating lotuses. In a smaller church, a stone basin ringed with fist-sized wooden icons might suffice, but in a great cathedral, a pond large enough to admit several wagons would be lined with stone statues taller than a man.
St. Victor's Cathedral boasted one of the three largest All Saints Chapels in the world. The diameter of its water-filled basin alone reached eighty meters, and at its deepest, the pond exceeded four meters. Since the remains of St. Victor — famed for curing the afflicted — were interred here, a widespread belief held that anyone baptized in these waters would enjoy a long life free of illness. And so, to accommodate the throngs of pilgrims, the chapel itself had been built to vast proportions.
The clergy of St. Victor's devised a special mechanism to bless the countless visitors each day: a fountain installation built into the pond's floor. By shooting holy water skyward like a firework, they could perform an aspersion baptism over hundreds, even thousands, of people at once.
Rekachev turned that mechanism into an obstacle for the exam.
Bwooong.
A sound like the whistle of a steamship echoed inside the dome. The pumps, which had been compressing air, were now poised to release it. Anticipation lit the faces of the spectators; tension tightened the expressions of the acrobats balanced on the water.
"Ugh, here it comes, here it comes..."
"Dammit, I have to hold on. I have to make it through this..."
The water heaved once. That ripple was the cue. A cannon-like bang tore through the air, and a column of water shot upward. Colorful balls launched into the air.
"Whoaah!"
"The hell—!"
"How is anyone supposed to survive this?"
The acrobats who had been teetering on the balls were swept away by the surge.
In a single instant, four of the five acrobats in the pool were eliminated. Only one remained. The announcer roared out the survivor's name.
"Incredible! Sven of the Monster Circus! He's survived yet another blast!"
A man in a skull mask and ornate costume touched down on a ball. The sphere he'd been standing on had been carried off by the eruption too, but he had nimbly hopped from ball to ball, shifting to a patch of calmer water just in time to escape unscathed.
He had survived every previous blast as well. His endurance record surpassed all past exam results in the venue's history. The crowd roared in approval, showering him with applause.
The Rekachev students serving as match supervisors watched him with expressions of exhausted defeat. The obstacles they had spent months devising failed to trouble him at all.
It was no exaggeration to say that Arena 9 was the hardest of the ten arenas. Submersion beyond ankle depth meant instant elimination, so the acrobats were forced to rely solely on the balls — the only surfaces rising above the water. And they couldn't just stand on any ball. Only the color assigned to their team was permitted.
A reasonably skilled acrobat could manage standing atop a ball a meter or so in diameter with little difficulty. But Rekachev had added a devilish extra feature.
The balls were designed so that, under weight, water slowly seeped inside. The longer someone stood on one, the more buoyancy it lost, sinking inch by inch.
That meant no one could linger on a single ball. They had to keep moving, constantly switching spheres. The number of balls was plentiful enough, and spaced favorably. The catch was that leaping onto one from a distance and landing hard was forbidden — that kind of impact would instantly drive the ball below ankle depth, ending the attempt.
The only method available was to roll the balls underfoot, like a log-rolling act, traveling from sphere to sphere before the current one sank enough to eliminate them.
Had that been the whole challenge, the arena wouldn't have earned such a notorious reputation. But as the crowd had just witnessed, every five minutes a fountain erupted from a random location, disrupting the search. The typical pattern went like this: just a little farther, just a little farther — then an explosion would catch them, and they'd plunge into the water.
"Pfft. I'm out. I give up."
"So that's why they called it the worst arena."
"Dammit. I pushed to come here, and for what? I can't face my team."
"Can't even tell if there's a treasure chest here or not."
The eliminated acrobats stared at the lone man still standing on the water with hollow expressions. He had already held out in this hellscape for thirty minutes. He had finished exploring the deepest reaches of the pool. No one could tell whether he was lingering to buy time until his team gathered enough coins for a key, or if he was bluffing that a chest existed here, stringing other teams along to waste their efforts on a dead end.
For one thing, with that skull mask on his head, his expression was impossible to read. For another, he clearly didn't consider staying here all that difficult.
He navigated the supposedly hardest arena like it was his own living room.
It wasn't that he possessed an extraordinary sense of balance or had mastered any special trick.
It was simply that—
"Hot-hot, because I'm light!"
Sven bounced lightly from side to side atop the balls, stretching his legs. The spheres wobbled but never sank.
The organizers had never anticipated that an acrobat might exist whose weight was too low to trigger the submersion mechanism. And even if such a person existed, they likely assumed anyone that light would be too short to participate in a game that required leaping between balls.
Yet here stood a man, one hundred ninety-one centimeters tall and weighing eighteen kilograms. In an average person, bones account for no more than twenty percent of total body weight. The composition of Sven's skeleton was different from an ordinary human's, but its weight was much the same. Even adding his clothes, he weighed less than half of the second-lightest competitor in this race.
"Hot-hot, far too easy!"
As if taunting the organizers, Sven threw in shows of one-armed handstands and backbends that bent his spine into a reverse curve. The crowd went wild over his ostentatiously precarious feats.
"Sven! Sven! Sven!"
Making the physically inevitable look miraculous — that was the very essence of acrobatics.
Reina neither enjoyed watching nor performing such feats, yet as an acrobat herself, she couldn't help but admire him.
The announcer spotted her just as she stepped into the arena and shouted.
"Ah! Reina Magier of the Golden Carnival! The possessor of the absolute sense of balance known as the 'Golden Libra' has just entered Arena 9!"
Sven halted his bouncing and turned to face her at the arena entrance. Her arrival didn't surprise him. He had already heard the news from Clara.
"I heard the reports. You blew away Miss Maya and Mister Gaston, I take it?"
"Yes."
Facing her, Sven felt an odd sensation.
The stark white mask of "La Llorona" — as if sculpted to embody a demon — and the woman's body visible beneath were unsettling to the point of grotesquerie.
He wondered whether people felt something similar when they looked at him.
"May I ask one question, Miss Reina?"
"Ask."
"Looking at your movements... did you know in advance which arenas we would visit?"
Sven was asking on Clara's behalf — the question she herself had been pondering. After being briefed on Reina's route, Clara had sensed something was off.
Reina's movements had been too nimble to be following someone else's orders. She had headed straight for their positions without a second's hesitation, laying traps as though she'd known their plan from the start.
"Yes."
Reina admitted it freely.
When her answer was relayed, Clara had worried about a leak. But Sven knew that wasn't the case.
"Two months ago — and we only spent about two weeks together, all told — yet you still read us with that much precision. Hot-hot. If we hadn't met as enemies, I might've gotten sentimental about it."
Reina watched him talk in silence, then spoke.
"You're stalling."
"Was I that obvious?"
"No. I read your expression."
At that, Sven flinched. The answer was entirely unexpected.
"When Mister Sven speaks with ulterior motives, his temporomandibular joint rattles subtly. In a human, you'd call it pursing your lips."
"Hot-hot. Miss Ella spent months watching before she started to pick up on that..."
Reina didn't ask why he was stalling. The signal she'd received from the stands already told her someone was pursuing her. She sensed the presence approaching from behind, turned, and spoke her opponent's name.
"Ella."
"Reina."
Reina's blue eyes met Ella's brown ones.
The announcer stared at them blankly for a moment, then belted out.
"Ella of the Monster Circus has also entered Arena 9! As some of you may know, these two placed first and second in the Rekachev New Student Selection Test! Could this be a rematch between rivals?"
"Ella! Ella! Ella!"
"Reina! Reina! Reina!"
To the cheers of the crowd, the two began to walk — slowly. They pulled their gazes from one another, fixed their eyes forward, and strode side by side toward the pool. Both halted precisely at the water's edge.
"Hot-hot. Well, the atmosphere between you two is certainly..."
Ella cut Sven off in a low voice before he could finish his joke.
"Step out of the pool for a bit, Sven."
"Pardon? But the treasure chest is right over there—"
"If you get caught in the middle of this and get eliminated, we're disqualified. You know that."
At the sharp bite in her tone, Sven glanced back and forth between Reina and Ella a few times, then raised both arms in a shrug and made his way to dry land.
Once she'd confirmed he was gone, Ella moved to question Reina. Reina, however, seemed to anticipate it and spoke first.
"We take the star, and you get eliminated. Under the Rule of Stars, that's the condition that lets me leave my father and join Troupe Leader Wonderstein."
At Reina's words, Ella finally pieced together how the situation was unfolding.
The Rule of Stars.
One of the Circus Grand Prix regulations governing member recruitment.
From one hundred fifty days after the start of the tournament, all troupes could recruit additional members based on the number of stars they had earned. But there was a crucial rider.
When recruiting an existing tournament participant, the transfer could only flow from the troupe with more stars to the troupe with fewer. This was designed to prevent the stronger troupes from monopolizing the finest acrobats, much like the draft regulations.
The one-hundred-fifty-day mark was only days away.
At present, the Golden Carnival and the Monster Circus each held one star — not enough to enable any transfer under the Rule. Even if both troupes earned a star in this exam, the stalemate would persist.
Only if the Golden Carnival won and the Monster Circus lost could a transfer proceed under the Rule of Stars.
And even then, the consent of both troupe leaders and the member in question was a given necessity.
"You think we'd actually take you in after you've beaten us like this?"
"What if I prove I'm better than you?"
Ella felt a prickling unease.
She'd detected that something was wrong with Reina's state. The compulsive edge to her voice, the tremor in her eyes, the shallow, rapid breaths. Having spent time around Reina, Ella knew exactly when these three signs surfaced.
They appeared whenever Lord Fantastic pressured her into a corner, forcing her thoughts down a single track.
"Hey, you..."
"If I beat you, the Troupe Leader will want to take me as his Deputy Leader. Anyway, the feelings you've been holding onto are fake, aren't they? Only a few days left, I heard?"
Snap.
Ella felt something inside her snap. That was how Reina chose to frame the secret she'd struggled to confide?
Ella understood that this was the result of the brainwashing, the hypnotic suggestions, the coercion Lord Fantastic had filled her with.
Gaining an acrobat of Reina's caliber was something to welcome. Under normal circumstances, the sensible thing would be to soothe her, to slowly undo the chains Simon had locked around her heart. But Ella's pride would not permit it.
She fired a derisive sneer at her.
"It's never going to happen. I am definitely walking out of here with that star. You can keep doing circus with your precious 'father' for the rest of your life. Like the good little daughter you are."
Crrk.
Reina ground her teeth. Father? That man? Do you even know who my real father is? He's right over there. Right next to the seat you've taken!
A cold chill blazed from Reina's eyes; a hot fire flared from Ella's.
Facing each other, the two of them launched themselves onto the balls.
At that instant, a boat-horn sounded.
Bwooong.
The water surged once. With a thunderous boom, a massive pillar of water shot skyward. The audience's eyes flew to where the two had been standing — but by then, they had already vanished from the balls. A crimson flash and a golden streak shot toward one another.