13. Circus Charlie (1)
13. Circus Charlie (1)
The first thing Charlie's group did after arriving in Yeterinpurk was gather intelligence on the Monster Circus. The circus magazines ran stories about them, but only superficial details.
Mounting any kind of surveillance proved tricky. The troupe was lodged in a district dense with noble villas, where police patrolled the alleys. Loiter too long, and the whole operation was at risk of being blown if Ella spotted them.
Charlie had to be more cautious than the others. Barely three months had passed since his graduation. Too many people in the city could still recognize him.
The start of the Halloween season turned out to be a stroke of luck. The monster members who'd kept out of sight began venturing outside more often, and his own group could roam freely in costume, which made the work considerably easier.
While his friends tailed the Monster Circus, Charlie searched for someone inside the school who could help. Clara was the obvious choice. He'd known her for nearly two years, and she was the most capable, trustworthy junior he had. But approaching her wasn't simple.
Why? Am I not good enough?
No, no. You're a good friend, Clara. But I already... have someone I like.
After the way their last conversation had ended, turning to her for a favor felt shameless—especially when this matter was tied to the very reason he'd rejected her feelings.
The news that she'd taken a leave of absence because of the accident at the Freshmen Welcome Party only hardened that thought.
Whispers that dealt a mental attack... Papilax. Of all the voices that had tormented her, it felt as though his own was among them.
Reaching out to other friends didn't appeal to him, either. Under normal circumstances, maybe, but this was competition season. They might interpret any underhanded maneuvering to catch Ella as cheating on the exam and report him.
So he gave up on recruiting help from anyone at the school and resolved to move independently.
First, he secured a hideout underground. Beneath the old cathedral that housed the school ran a network of catacombs—a maze cluttered with skulls and bones, but to him it was like a front yard. He drilled his friends on the layout as they prepared their operation.
They still hadn't decided how far to cast the net of revenge. They'd heard that Ella had loosed monsters to slaughter her hometown folk—but did that mean the troupe's performers, or other demons and fiends entirely?
Most of the Monster Circus troupe looked ordinary enough from a distance, but observation alone could only reveal so much.
Charlie decided to try another angle.
"We might be able to get information out of Reina."
He told his comrades about the New Student Selection Test three years ago—how Lord Fantastic had sent his daughter to humble Rekachev, only for her to lose to Charlie.
"And that connection from three years ago means she'll help you now?"
"Well... actually, we've kept up a correspondence ever since."
Four pairs of eyes swiveled toward him with expressions that practically said, This guy? Every holiday for the last three years, Charlie had come back to his hometown without once mentioning this.
Charlie avoided their perfectly synchronized stares, his cheeks flushing slightly.
"Don't get the wrong idea. They weren't love letters. Just exchanging news and asking how we were doing."
He finished in a rush, voice verging on firm.
And for the first two years, that really was all the letters contained. They'd treated each other as friendly rivals who kept one another sharp.
Last year, though, the notes had grown steadily more personal. Reina had been the first to open up. Gone were the crisp, one-line replies—she now wrote with an elegant warmth that practically coaxed the reader into spilling his own secrets.
Could any man honestly claim to be immune when a beauty like her made such an overture? His heart had wobbled more than once. He still liked Ella, but at the time he'd been smarting from the sense that she'd never see him as more than a friend.
Afraid his friends might prod further, he changed the subject quickly.
"Anyway, I think I can ask her about the Monster Circus. She has a habit of hiding her identity to perform in the street. I'll approach her then."
Charlie said it as coolly as possible, though he couldn't quite deny looking forward to the meeting. Two people who'd spurred each other on through letters were finally facing each other, three years older and far more grown. Anyone would feel their pulse quicken.
Especially now, with his feelings for Ella tangled in confusion, whatever he felt for Reina had swelled larger than before.
"Do I need to show up in a suit?"
"Yeah, yeah. Douse yourself in cologne while you're at it."
"I can't exactly turn up looking like some vagrant living in a crypt, can I?"
Charlie answered his friends' knowing looks with the straightest face he could muster and left the hideout. His owl, which had been watching the neighborhood around the villas occupied by the Golden Carnival and the Monster Circus, had just signaled that Reina was out performing in the street.
He put on his finest suit and chose the mask known as The Smiling Man for his disguise—a comically upturned mustache, a chin beard drawn like a center line down the face, exaggerated dimples, and flushed cheeks. The choice paired neatly with Reina's own Weeping Woman Mask.
He waited until she finished her show. She'd performed on the blade of a straw-cutter with a sense of balance so flawless it barely seemed real. After the applause, she slipped down an empty alley—a stroke of luck, since he intended to remove his mask and reveal his identity. The square where she'd been performing still had a scattering of kids in Rekachev uniforms.
Then, shadowing her, Charlie witnessed something he couldn't believe.
"Dad!"
The girl who'd always carried herself with such cool pride beamed like a child and threw herself into a man's arms. Mask off, she nuzzled against his chest, whining for affection in a petulant little voice.
"Pat my head!"
"Kiss me!"
Charlie stood frozen. The image of Reina he'd assembled in his mind shattered all at once.
The impression she'd made when they met in person. The letters they'd exchanged. The articles about her. The glimpses through his owl over the past few days.
Every piece of it rejected what he was seeing.
"My girl's been holding it in, hasn't she? Clinging the second she sees me."
The man she'd called Dad handled her like someone thoroughly accustomed to this.
His hair was the same shade of gold as Reina's, his features so refined that for a moment Charlie had the mad thought that he really might be her secret real father. In the countryside, people married as early as fourteen or fifteen. The age gap didn't look large, but considering how mature Reina always seemed and the possibility that this man had a remarkably youthful face, it wasn't impossible.
Not long after, though, he caught Reina murmuring about "role-play" in a calmer tone and realized they were merely acting out a father-daughter scenario.
That hardly made him feel any better. If anything, the whole thing struck him as even more sordid. And the identity of the man she was with made him deeply suspicious.
No decent man went around making a younger girl call him Dad while his hands wandered over her body. The stranger's handsome features and greasy smirk only fed that suspicion.
The pair stood against the back of the alley and chatted. Mostly Reina confessing hardships while the man soothed her.
"The exam's almost here."
"That's right. We'll need to step up rehearsals soon, too. Though his grace summons us out of the blue in the thick of it... Have you heard what it's about?"
"I don't know. Father probably does, but he won't tell me. It'll be another piece of information he dug up through some back-channel scheme..."
Running down Simon was one of Reina's regular topics whenever they met.
That sent another jolt through Charlie.
He'd known she chafed under Lord Fantastic's brutal training methods, but he'd had no idea her resentment ran this deep.
Up to now he'd believed she respected her father—the letters over the past year especially had practically brimmed with pride in him.
He'd thought they'd grown close, sharing honest feelings...
Had it all been pretense?
Charlie fought to steady his pounding heart. But the shocks weren't over yet.
"You know what my father did to get information for this exam?"
The story that came out of her mouth both answered some of his questions and ranked as the most staggering revelation he'd heard all day.
"It was so strange! At some point, letters from Mr. Charlie just stopped coming. Then I found out—my father had been impersonating me for over a year, exchanging letters with Charlie. Sweet-talking him to pry out details about the Rekachev Exam. 'Boys are all the same. Flatter them a little and they can't wait to show off what they know.' He said it right in front of me, practically crowing about the bits of usable strategy he'd fished out! Can you believe it? It's my fault for telling my father that Charlie was in charge of the exam's overall design..."
Wonderstein listened and swallowed a sigh.
Simon Magier. The more you learned, the more bizarre the stories got.
What a grotesque scheme.
The two soon parted with a promise to meet at the confectionery factory.
Left alone in the alley, Charlie stared at the ground for a long while. Once he was certain they were far enough away, he tipped his head back and exploded into laughter.
"Pwahahaha!"
He shoved the gift he'd brought into a trash bin and wiped his eyes.
It wasn't sadness. What he'd felt for her was a quiet fondness, not a deep crush or a confession. The whole thing was simply too ridiculous not to laugh at.
It was nothing.
Yeah. Nothing at all.
"It was a misunderstanding from the start."
Material for a perfect anecdote. He'd have used it as a joke himself if it hadn't happened to him. Too mortifying to tell anyone. The punchline of the whole laugh was that he'd been fool enough to think she liked him.
Dusting himself off, Charlie stood and turned his thoughts to the man who'd been with Reina.
Who was he?
The budding feelings he'd imagined were indeed a misreading, but recalling her acting coy in that man's arms didn't sit well at all.
How could a person's demeanor flip so violently?
Was it hypnosis? Some kind of hypnotic suggestion?
Charlie felt certain he'd seen that face somewhere. He hadn't dared study it closely enough to risk being caught, but a face that handsome wasn't easy to forget. Lost in thought, he walked a few more steps and stopped.
A blurry black-and-white photograph surfaced in his memory. The resolution of this era's photos was poor, but you could still tell whether two faces matched or not.
Charlie remembered who he was.
That man.
He was the troupe leader—the one Ella belonged to.