12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (21)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (21)
The movements of the two fierce competitors slowed — perceptibly, and all at once. The audience assumed exhaustion had finally caught up with them. After nearly twenty minutes of frantic thrust and parry, that would only have been natural.
But what settled between them wasn't fatigue. It was tension. They were no longer scrambling across the stage, yet every tiny motion each made now drew a sharper, more finely honed response from the other.
That was when the crowd understood. They weren't worn out. They were waiting for something.
Even a fool could guess what. In this arena, only one variable shifted with time: the Fountain Explosion.
Both girls realized the other had made the same strategic shift, and their expressions hardened.
Did she read my play? What is she aiming for? Do I switch tactics? Or do I use that expectation against her?
The questions tangled in their minds, but there wasn't long to think. The interval between eruptions was barely five minutes. The time slipped away while they circled each other, probing, calculating.
Braaaaap.
The final horn blast — the one that would decide the match — rang out. A moment later, a BOOM shook the air and a column of water shot skyward.
The balls Ella had positioned ricocheted off one another, then converged on Reina at staggered intervals. The timing was exquisite — dodge one carelessly, and the next would catch her squarely.
Until now, Reina had always waited for the spray to settle, tracked every trajectory, then moved.
But not this time. The instant the explosion erupted, she hurled herself straight forward. She shot in a dead line toward the heart of the water column, indifferent to where the balls might be coming from. She was sure nothing was flying along this path.
Her suspicion of Ella had crystallized the second time she had evaded one of those explosive barrages. Something about the ball trajectories had struck her as odd. If Ella could launch a dozen balls at once, she could simply blanket the entire area where Reina was standing. Instead, she had sent them from multiple directions, across all kinds of arcs.
Reina knew Ella loved a flashy performance. But in a fight, would she really insist on one?
Thinking it through, Reina had understood. Ella hadn't had the choice. The balls were launched by the fountain jets erupting from the pool floor. That meant the projectiles spread outward from the blast — any ball coming head-on was forced to fly in from an off-angle at the periphery.
Reina's fist tightened.
Which meant that if she charged toward the center the moment the explosion erupted, she could not only evade every ball — she could land a surprise blow on the opponent waiting beyond them.
"Competitor Reina boldly pushes forward — she's through the center of the fountain!"
The announcer's commentary lagged a few seconds behind.
By the time he began speaking, Reina was already at her target. She scanned for Ella — for the red gym clothes, the black hair, the girl who had to be startled by her sudden appearance.
But...
Where is she?
No sign of her, no matter where Reina looked. She swept her eyes over every nearby red sphere. Nothing.
A large swell rolled through. Aftermath of the blast.
Reina fought to keep her balance and glanced back. The point she had launched from held no trace of Ella either.
"Where in the..."
Then she heard the crowd roar. She tracked their collective gaze — it pointed behind her.
Above me?
Reina pictured Ella launched skyward by the blast.
But dropping from that height would carry catastrophic energy. No swingby technique could cancel that out. Ella would plunge straight into the water.
Curious as she was about the intent behind such a move, Reina had no time to puzzle it out. She scrambled to dodge, bracing for an attack from above.
The blow came from somewhere she never expected.
A large ball slammed into her side from nowhere. Half her vision flooded red. A crimson sphere.
"Guh!"
She lost her footing and slipped off the ball. Instinct shut her eyes and held her breath. Cold water wrapped around her body.
Ah.
She swallowed a silent groan. She'd fallen in.
She clawed her way back to the surface, clinging to the thinnest thread of hope — maybe only a bare inch of her had been submerged.
"Whoaaaa!"
The dome filled with the buzz of an excited crowd. Reina knew at once the thunderous ovation wasn't for her. Coughing out the water sloshing into her mouth as the waves rocked her, she watched the match officials hoist a yellow flag.
"Golden Carnival, Reina Magier — eliminated!"
She sank her teeth into her lower lip.
I lost.
Her fist clenched until her nails dug into her palm.
I lost.
"Both of you were brilliant!"
"Yeah! Both of you!"
"Ella! Ella! Ella!"
"Reina! Reina! Reina!"
The audience cheered both names, honoring the all-out battle regardless of winner or loser.
Reina felt not a flicker of joy. She couldn't accept the result. She didn't understand how she'd lost. The red ball that had sent her flying hadn't come from above. It had come from directly behind her — from the exact direction she'd already confirmed was empty.
Worse than that...
She touched the spot where the ball had struck her.
Unless she was imagining things, that ball had come from below.
From underwater.
That was when the announcer's voice reached her.
"Ah, perfectly within regulations! No infraction! The elimination condition is submersion beyond a certain depth. Competitor Ella did not cross the line, so she remains in. Remarkable judgment and nerve, however."
Reina turned the words over in her head. A moment later, she realized exactly what had happened — and where Ella had been hiding.
Right beside her. Underneath one of those red balls.
Ella had been submerged, holding her breath.
A black line on the pool wall marked the depth at which elimination was declared. Roughly ankle- to knee-deep — the point where a submerged ball would be fully underwater. In practice, falling in at all virtually guaranteed elimination.
But there was one moment when the surface surged upward: when the explosions sent large swells rolling through. Even if you were submerged, the height of the wave kept you above the elimination line.
"I won, right?"
Reina stared up at Ella, who stood with her arms crossed looking down at her. She was gliding between crest and trough, riding the swells to stay above the black line as each wave fell away.
Ella had read Reina's posture just before the column erupted and realized she intended to charge straight in. So she'd timed her own move to the explosion and dived underwater.
She'd weaponized the assumption that a competitor naturally stood atop the surface. She'd pressed herself beneath a red ball, held her breath, and waited for Reina to approach. Waited beneath the surging waves. And the instant Reina faltered in confusion, Ella had launched the ball upward and burst out of the water.
Her original plan had been to hide under one of the balls that was already bouncing toward Reina and spring an ambush. But the moment she'd spotted her opponent charging directly at her, she'd shifted to laying a trap right there.
Ella had more she wanted to say to Reina, but she set it aside for now. The explosion's aftermath was fading. She needed to get back onto a ball before the surface height returned to normal.
She spotted a red ball drifting beneath the waves, leaped toward it, and stretched out her arm. It was well within reach.
But the moment her fingers made contact, they slipped — and she realized. Her left hand. Two fingers there had been bent fully backward, nearly touching the back of her hand.
Ah.
When did that happen?
Ella ran her memory back and recalled using her left hand as a brace when she'd launched the ball at Reina. With no solid floor underwater to plant herself on, she'd needed one hand to support the ball while she struck. The supporting hand must have snapped the instant she'd delivered the blow.
She'd been so elated by the success of her play, so thrilled by victory, that the pain climbing from her left hand had gone entirely unfelt until now.
"Oh, crap."
Her body sank below the surface. The depth was unmistakably beneath the threshold line. Flickering black phantom flames swallowed her form as the water closed overhead.
The sudden turn left both the announcer and the match officials momentarily frozen. Then the referee blew a whistle, and the officials thrust a red flag into the air.
"Monster Circus, Ella — eliminated!"
******
"Aha, a shame about that ending. A draw, eh?"
"Tch. I had a broken bone, man."
"Dislocations I'm quite accustomed to myself."
"Yeah, you and me are not the same."
Ella climbed into the elimination zone and changed clothes. No spare gym uniform was provided for the match, but Sven had stripped off his own and handed it to her, letting her put on a dry, fresh set. The height difference was considerable, so she'd had to trim the ends.
She used the cut-off scraps to improvise a brace for her broken fingers. The bones had snapped completely — no amount of setting would make them functional again — but she needed to stabilize everything for proper treatment.
"Who'd you use the revival on?"
Before the match, Ella had told Clara to use a coin and bring someone back. She'd been determined to beat Reina herself, but for the team's sake, she'd needed contingencies in place.
"Miss Clara chose Miss Maya, I'm told."
"Huh? Wouldn't old Gaston be a better pick than the girl who trips over her own feet?"
"Well, about that..."
Sven was about to explain when Reina approached. Ella spotted her and brightened.
"The water's freezing, right?"
Ella's voice was buoyant. She looked genuinely refreshed. There was no hostility in her expression. She was an acrobat to the core — unpleasant feelings like insecurity or jealousy melted away before a crowd's applause, like ice in summer sun.
Reina couldn't match that mood. She'd never loved the circus in the first place. A little sweat and a few tricks didn't heal anything for her.
She spoke in a cold voice, weighed down by a frigid sense of defeat.
"I lost."
Ella's face went serious.
"...Hey."
"I'll give up on joining your troupe. You were right. I'm going to stay with my father and—"
"Hey, hey!"
Ella shot to her feet. She regarded Reina with a complicated expression.
The tall frame, the mature figure, the provocative looks and manner — they always made people forget. But the truth was, Reina was a lot less hardened than she seemed. A frustrating friend who chafed under her father's grip but still couldn't break free. And one who, despite all that, hadn't let it warp her — which was admirable in its own right.
Ella met her eyes. Beyond the mask, droplets clung to Reina's lashes, making them glisten. Ella didn't ask where those had come from. Instead, she simply said:
"It was a draw. Yeah?"
"B-but I lost the strategic exchange. Your fingers..."
"Those broke because of you in the hallway. So that's your doing."
"Th-that may be, but..."
Ella smiled at the sight of Reina flustered, an incongruous match for the mask's grotesque expression.
"I don't know what Mr. Mustache has been telling you, but go talk it over with the Troupe Leader."
"W-with the Troupe Leader?"
"Yeah. Don't go stewing on your own and coming to some warped conclusion. Though I imagine that's exactly what the man Simon steered you toward."
Even at this, Reina still couldn't find her footing.
"B-but I'm a Golden Carnival acrobat... I need to beat the Monster Circus, I have to beat you... otherwise my father won't..."
Simon's suggestion ran deep. Even knowing now that he wasn't her real father, the conditioning had accumulated for too long to simply shrug off.
No matter what she tried to think, it would always loop back to "But Father said...".
Ella exhaled an exasperated sigh and raised her voice.
"Ugh, why won't you get this? Call your real dad! Tell him you're leaving the Golden Carnival and joining the Monster Circus."
My dad?
That one decisive word shattered the curse that had been smothering Reina's thoughts.