12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (End)
12. Rekachev Circus School Trial (End)
The stands of Arena Number 2 buzzed like a chaotic marketplace. After Sudden Death concluded, a crowd always swarmed the remaining arena, but today an unusually large number of people were determined to stay until the very end—even though the outcome was already decided.
"Sit down in front!"
"Yeah, you! We can't see!"
They had all come chasing after Ella. So many people had packed in that the organizers' designated seating had burst at the seams, encroaching on the reserved sections, and the crowd had even pushed forward against the barrier panels separating the stands from the arena floor.
"What incredible energy! Now, let me explain the one remaining rule! From the moment Sudden Death concluded, resurrection and item purchases are prohibited! All you can use are box keys and... clues!"
The emcee bellowed toward Ella as she entered the arena.
"One clue costs fifty coins! After deducting the price of the key, the Monster Circus can afford to buy exactly one with their remaining coins. Ordinarily, this would be a decision for the auditorium team to make, but with Ella as the sole remaining runner, I want to ask her directly! What will you do? Will you purchase a clue?"
Ella fought to still her trembling hands.
Was it because the suffocating chase was over?
As the adrenaline subsided, the injuries she had forgotten announced their presence. The pain was far worse than before. The fractured bone burned hot enough to numb her fingertips.
But she hid the hurt and flashed a confident smile.
"No, I don't need one. I already know the answer."
"Whoa, what extraordinary confidence! Runner Ella has just declared a complete clear!"
The crowd roared. Everyone chanted Ella's name.
Are you serious, Ella?
Clara had made her way to these stands as well. Sensing the direction of the voice, Ella winked toward where she stood.
Of course. Just trust me, Clara.
Truthfully, Ella had not reached the solution before entering this arena. All she knew was the summary Clara had relayed and the little she had confirmed firsthand earlier.
The core obstacles here were the snakes in the flowerbeds, the switches deep within the walls, and the Grand Staircase that transformed into a ramp.
The crevice housing the switches was shallower than a person's arm length, but it bent at an odd angle midway, meaning only someone trained in contortion could press them.
According to Clara, a group of contortionists had earlier pooled their efforts and nearly conquered the switches. But thanks to snake-handlers enraging the serpents, the attempt failed, and two or three contortionists were eliminated, leaving no chance for a second try.
The remaining contestants had kept attempting to control the snakes and make them press the switches right up until Sudden Death began, but the snakes had flatly refused that one command. Clara suspected that a chemical deterrent was sprayed inside the wall to prevent anyone from conquering the obstacle by any method other than contortion.
Ella had originally intended to buy a clue and obtain a tool to bypass the obstacle.
But the moment she stepped into the arena,
something she hadn't noticed before caught her eye. It was directly ahead, on the Grand Staircase.
The stair treads were painted in twelve alternating colors. Naturally, their arrangement differed from what she had seen earlier. But the positions of two specific colored treads remained unchanged.
Black and white.
The color no one could step on, and the color anyone could.
The instant Ella saw them, an idea blazed through her mind like lightning.
Twelve lines of stairs. Black dots studding them one by one.
Wait... is that sheet music?
Ella recalled that the snakes had refused the snake-handlers' commands to press the switches.
What if music that could issue that command to the snakes was hidden in those stairs?
That was far more plausible than having five contortionists simultaneously cram their arms into the wall. So far, every puzzle Rekachev had devised demanded that kind of conceptual leap rather than brute physical ability.
If the twelve lines of stairs were the twelve-tone scale, then the black marks were musical notes.
But one thing's missing.
Simply dotting lines did not make music. Sheet music required a reference pitch. The same score could become a sprightly tune or a somber one depending on the reference note. This score had no reference note.
Then something flashed through her mind, and she snapped her head up.
The entrance hall was, literally, the gateway into the school. A bell hung in its high tower. Up there, an automatic mechanism chimed the hour.
During her two weeks attending this school, Ella had grown sick of hearing that sound. Hadn't she already heard it three times during this exam alone?
If she took that as her reference pitch and played this score...
"Runner Ella, five minutes have already passed. This is no time to stand still. You need to move! Show us anything! The remaining time is... ah!"
The emcee let out an exclamation and clamped his mouth shut. The murmuring spectators fell silent.
She had approached the flowerbed the snakes occupied, snapped off a blade of grass, rolled it, and begun to blow into it.
The music had no particular distinction—save for its extremely low register.
It was a sound precisely calibrated to the snakes' audible frequency. The bizarrely curled grasses in the flowerbed were clues planted by the organizers.
Other snake-handlers had used these to command the snakes earlier, but they had never deciphered the score on the Grand Staircase; they had only used frequencies that agitated or calmed the snakes to test one another.
Hearing Ella's performance, the snakes displayed very peculiar behavior. They slithered smoothly into the wall crevices where the contortionists had struggled to wedge their arms, then coiled their weight onto the switches inside.
Once snakes had settled onto every switch, the puzzle unlocked.
Gr-grind.
The sound of stone interlocking with stone rang out. It came from the direction of the Grand Staircase.
Stairs whose treads tilted and transformed into a ramp.
All of its treads flattened diagonally—
All but one color.
White.
White, the color everyone could step on.
Ella launched herself up the stairs and stepped on each white tread in sequence. She now realized the white treads were not mere illusion-light but were heavily coated with rosin. Thanks to that, they stayed grippy even when tilted.
The moment she stepped down from the final white tread, the Grand Staircase began to move. The stairs heaved once, massively, like a wave of stone. The stones pushed each other aside in orderly rows, exposing the hidden chamber within. The space was sizable—large enough to admit a carriage.
And there, inside, sat a treasure chest.
The emcee, voice trembling with excitement, declared that she had discovered the third treasure chest. The spectators rose from their seats, sending cheers and applause cascading toward her.
Ella stared blankly at the chest she had found. Her heart was so full that the noise around her faded to silence.
I did it. I actually did it.
What the me who hated him did—I did it too.
She repeated that to herself, inside, dozens of times. Hundreds.
How much time passed?
Maybe the tension had drained away. Strength abruptly left Ella's body, and she nearly collapsed on the spot.
Someone caught her from behind.
"Oh, Maya?"
Ella blinked and found herself looking up at her blank-faced friend, who gazed down at her. She wasn't alone. Behind her, Sven and Gaston were bowing grandly toward the stands. The three comrades who had served as her exploration team today had come out to greet her.
Ella let out a small laugh watching Gaston—bent at the waist, arms twisted behind him in what looked like some courtly bow. When Reina had slammed into him, she'd worried his old bones might have broken somewhere, but he seemed none the worse for wear.
"Old man, didn't you say you can't bend your waist in a place like this?"
At her remark, he straightened up, stroking his beard with an embarrassed air.
"Well, it's not so bad. Every now and then."
Ella tilted her head at his sudden shift in attitude, and Sven cut in from the side.
"Heh-heh, when Miss Reina sent him rolling all the way to the front of the stands—"
"Hey, hey!"
Gaston tried to clamp Sven's mouth shut, but the lanky skeleton nimbly dodged away.
"Hah-hah-hah! A middle-aged lady who was standing there wiped Mr. Gaston's forehead with her handkerchief! He's been grinning ever since..."
"You bone-headed—! That has nothing to do with it!"
"What did she say again? 'A respectable gentleman making a valiant challenge at his advanced age!' I think it was?"
Ella burst out laughing, watching Sven flee from Gaston's hands lunging for his neck.
"I'm glad. Nobody got hurt, and it ended well."
"You're hurt."
"Ah, right."
At Maya's pointed observation, Ella let out an embarrassed laugh.
Just then, a flutter of wings sounded as a pigeon landed on her head, and the rat riding atop it scurried down onto her shoulder.
"You two came too?"
Gudol and Jjiksun, whom Clara had looked after during the exam, had sensed it was over and rushed to her. Ella stroked the rat's back as it nuzzled against her neck and fussed.
At that moment, the emcee quieted the crowd and stepped forward to conduct the final ceremony.
"Now, all team members have gathered! Lift the trophy, Runner Ella!"
Ella stepped into the chamber beneath the Grand Staircase. Judging by the aged traces left inside, this space had not been built for the competition—it was clearly original to the building. She recalled Charlie telling her stories about all the strange, mysterious hidden rooms tucked throughout the school.
She walked up to the chest, let herself savor the moment once more with a swell of emotion, then lifted the lid. Inside, a golden trophy lay bathed in radiant light.
Now I just carry this back to the auditorium and it's over. And then I hand it to him.
The Rose Windmill badge had been his gift to her. He had run in her place when she was injured and given her the glory. This time, she would do the reverse.
She would give him the badge she had earned by running in his place while he was hurt.
Ella reached for the trophy. But it was too large and heavy to lift with one hand. She turned to ask her comrades behind her for help.
"Hey, someone give me a..."
She couldn't finish. The entire cave encircling her abruptly crumbled and collapsed. At the same instant, she felt the ground vanish beneath her feet.
She screamed as she plummeted down.
Am I falling off a thousand-foot cliff?
The thought flashed through her, but the jarring impact that smacked her backside quickly yanked her out of that nightmare. Though that didn't mean she was thankful for it. It hurt badly enough to wonder if her pelvis had cracked.
The bigger problem was that it didn't end there. She had not landed on a flat surface—the ground sloped downward.
She slid down the passage. Grabbing at anything around her in this pitch darkness was futile. And both the floor and walls were greased; she had no way even to slow her descent.
She slid downward for several seconds.
Then she tumbled into a dust pit and rolled across the ground.
"Ugh, what the hell is this? Another trap?"
She rubbed her pelvis and rose to her feet.
Even in the deep darkness, the torches hung high on the pillars revealed the scale of the space.
The ceiling appeared to be several meters high, and the far wall vanished into the shadows, impossible to see.
Judging from the echo of her voice, the chamber was at least the size of the villa they were staying in.
"The school's basement has everything. Wait, this was originally a cathedral, wasn't it?"
Ella spotted paintings on the pillars and walls. Hard to make out in the dim light, but the distinctive style and composition were unmistakably old religious artwork.
As she surveyed her surroundings, she soon caught sight of a human silhouette standing in the darkness across from her.
"Ella."
"Wh-who's there!"
A figure—man or ghost, impossible to tell—called her name, and she jolted in alarm. The voice that rang through the shadows was cold, yet it carried an inexplicable familiarity.
"You had several chances along the way. But watching you run, I couldn't bring myself to interfere."
His words made her realize he had deliberately lured her here. But what seized her attention was not the content of what he said; it was the tender, yearning emotion woven through it.
I know this person.
Just as the owner of that voice was about to surface in her mind, the pigeon and rat tucked against her suddenly darted forward.
"Ah! You two, come back!"
Had they sensed a threat to their owner and launched an attack?
The two animals charged toward the figure in the dark.
But contrary to her fears, no violence erupted.
Instead, he greeted them with a joyful voice.
"It's been a long time—both of you. Gudol, Jjiksun."
The pigeon and the rat answered his greeting with delighted gestures. Not a trace of wariness could be heard in their cries.
"Why do you know my animals..."
Ella stopped mid-question.
When he leaned forward, his face emerged into the torchlight.
He smiled at her and said:
"Hello, Ella."
Chestnut curls, a tall frame, sharp eyes.
She recognized him immediately.
"...Charlie?"
The childhood friend who had grown up beside her for ten years in their hometown stood before her.
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The Rekachev Circus School Exam (End)