13. Circus Charlie (3)
13. Circus Charlie (3)
Charlie had resolved to write to Ella faithfully that year. He wanted to keep his promise fresh in her mind—and, if he was honest, quiet the unease in his own.
But once he was actually back at school, he couldn't so much as pick up a pen, let alone find a post office. He'd managed to send her birthday gift before the semester began, but after that, it was no exaggeration to say he barely had time to breathe.
The student representative role had always carried a heavy workload. The year Charlie held it, however, the burden was several times worse. The culprit was the Circus Grand Prix, which was set to open the following year.
The first Grand Prix in seventeen years was a festival the whole world had its eyes on. The professors wanted their students to deliver a spectacular congratulatory performance before the assembled guests during the opening ceremony at the end of May.
They went so far as to carve dedicated group rehearsal blocks into the schedule. As student representative, Charlie was pivotal. He and the school's other top honors students were expected to lead the performance. Every rehearsal left him utterly drained.
On top of that, the graduation project he'd developed with Ella's help had exceeded all expectations, which only added to the weight. The professors, who had been wrestling with how to structure the preliminaries, saw his report and decided to use it as the foundation for the trial.
The concept of turning the entire school into a racecourse had actually come from Ella. Back home, under her direction, they used to set traps all around the school grounds and run obstacle courses through them.
It was an honor, but it didn't make him happy. The task simply meant more work. After his regular duties, he had to lead the student council officers around the school, survey potential competition zones, and gather and organize ideas for obstacles and traps to deploy there.
Delegating was impossible. As it happened, he was the student who knew the school's interior best. He shuttled constantly between the sites and the student council room, documenting the progress. To meet the professors' deadlines, he routinely sacrificed his weekends and pulled all-nighters during the week.
Had he shouldered all of that alone, he might have worked himself to death before spring even arrived. Fortunately, someone was always at his side. A neat girl with sky-blue hair—Clara, the top-ranked second-year. She abandoned her own life entirely and threw herself into helping him as if his burdens were her own.
"Are you okay? Why don't you go get some sleep?"
"I still have data to sort..."
"Give it to me. I'll take care of it. Here, hurry. You look like you're about to collapse."
"All right. Thanks, Clara."
Charlie spent more than half his waking hours at her side. She'd followed him devotedly ever since her freshman year, even visiting his rented room uninvited. But the two of them only grew truly close after they started working together on student council business.
As their time together increased, so did their physical contact. Sometimes she'd bury her head in his chest and fall asleep; sometimes they'd massage the knots out of each other's shoulders and calves; sometimes they'd press close together on the makeshift cot in the corner of the student council room and sleep that way.
In that period, Charlie leaned on Clara heavily—physically and emotionally.
Now and then, Charlie would glance at his own hand resting naturally on her waist or shoulder and flinch. It felt as though he were betraying Ella. Then again, Clara was the one clinging to him even more insistently—so maybe it didn't matter.
Truthfully, the person who had made the last few months hardest of all was Ella herself. After a final reply saying she'd shared the pastries he sent with friends, she stopped writing entirely. He might have been too busy to put pen to paper, but he'd assumed she'd be curious enough to reach out first...
Charlie let out a long sigh.
The months of separation had cooled his head. Looking back, it seemed she hadn't taken his proposal as seriously as he'd believed.
Had he been the only one who felt their relationship had taken a step forward? Had she never once felt her heart race at the thought of a life together with him? Perhaps she'd seen it as no different from the boarding-house arrangement they'd always shared.
To make things worse, Reina had recently begun hinting at her own feelings in her letters, and that unsettled him. Ella's indifferent attitude only gnawed at him more.
Stubborn pride flared in Charlie. By winter's end, even when he had free time, he didn't write to her. He exchanged letters more actively with Reina instead. Determined to prove what a remarkable man he was, he boasted that several key parts of the trial were his own creation.
He also deliberately let Clara draw closer, resigning himself to whatever might come of it. He couldn't tell if her behavior sprang from genuine feelings or just the casual physical openness common in athletics schools, but he wanted to show Ella that he, too, could be as off-guard around another woman as she so often was.
What finally settled his wandering heart was a letter that arrived from home shortly before the opening ceremony. It was from his master.
The old man wrote that he had been staying at a hospital in Vegas for the past year. Knowing this was a critical season for Charlie, he'd deliberately asked the children not to send any letters until Charlie finished his studies.
Learning the reason behind Ella's silence flooded Charlie with relief.
Yes. There it was. There had been circumstances after all.
That knowledge helped him pull himself together. The opening ceremony performance went brilliantly, and the first preliminary trial, the June Acrobatic Rush, concluded without major incident.
Charlie graduated as top of his class, right on schedule. He turned down an invitation to join "Rekachev 25," the troupe composed of the twenty-five prior valedictorians. Anyone affiliated with the Six Great Theaters up to the tournament's start was barred from performing as an acrobat anyway. If he joined, he'd likely spend two years stuck as a probationary member doing grunt work.
No—putting all that aside, he already had somewhere to go. The place he shared with her was the finest circus troupe in the world. He had no lingering regrets.
Well, one thing still lingered.
Clara. She had confessed to him just before graduation, and he had turned her down. There had been a time when he'd leaned on her almost as if letting himself stray. But he couldn't help it. If forced to choose one, he had no choice but Ella.
He boarded a ship for home right after the ceremony. His plan was to stop in Vegas first to check on his master's condition, look in on the school, and once circumstances improved, set off on a life of Wandering Acrobatics with Ella.
July of this year.
Charlie came home.
But the girl who had promised to form a circus troupe with him was no longer there.
***
Through the owl's eyes, utterly transfixed, Charlie watched Ella step into Wonderstein's room.
After a year of constant anxiety about being discovered, of never daring to watch her up close—now she stood only a few paces away.
"Boss, I'm heading off now. Thanks. For making this happen."
"Heh, your thanks should go to Troupe Leader Arno. He's the one who drew the reporters away."
"Only because you asked him to, right?"
He didn't understand why she was here when she was supposed to be across the city. But Charlie couldn't afford to think about that. Every nerve he possessed was fixed on her.
She'd grown more mature over the past year. Taller, fuller in frame. What had changed most, though, was her whole bearing.
She wore the expression he had only ever seen in his dreams.
A dreamy gaze, a giddy laugh, shy little gestures. It was... the look of someone in love.
The version of her he had always imagined stood right there in that room.
Yet none of it was directed at him. The focus of her attention was the same man who had toyed with Reina. Whatever was amusing her, her smile never once left her lips as she chatted with him.
He must have pulled some kind of trick.
The bastard did the same thing to Reina. He even made that frosty Reina act strange.
He's definitely done something to Ella too. She never once... never once looked at me like that...
He didn't want to see any more. Didn't want to hear any more.
The sight of her gazing at another man with those eyes. The sight of her laughing and talking happily with another man.
But the falcon's vision, sharp enough to spot prey from hundreds of meters away, relayed the scene inside the room to him regardless.
I have to cut the connection.
His mind made the decision, but he couldn't tear his eyes away. He wanted to keep watching her. The sight of her as a "woman" was far too captivating.
I was supposed to be the one standing there...
"Well then, I'm off to have fun. Oh, hold on. Right. Before I leave, I have to give you your medicine."
Wonderstein tilted his head at her words.
"Did my master make that for you? It acts on the soul, so it'd be useless for me anyway..."
"It's fine. This one acts on the soul, too."
Without warning, she leaned in and pressed her lips to his cheek.
An icy numbness flooded through Charlie, as if his very spirit had frozen solid. He felt his mind plunging into a deep darkness.
The target of the kiss, however, merely let out a soft, dismissive chuckle.
"Unexpected."
"What is?"
"I thought, seeing me unable to move, you'd seize the moment and go for my lips."
Ella covered her mouth, giggling, and gave a one-eyed wink.
"I'm saving that."
"Saving it?"
"Mm. You had the nerve to be so certain. You said I'd regret it one hundred percent later. But I believe I won't. No matter what changes, I'll say the same thing to you. Just like that time."
Ella grasped the doorknob to leave. Before opening the door, she glanced back over her shoulder with a bashful smile and whispered in a singsong voice.
"I like you, Wonderstein. Sincerely."
Charlie's awareness snapped.
***
Long after its master's voice had fallen silent, the owl continued to carry out its mission.
The blond man lay in bed all day. Other people came and went now and then. But nothing suspicious could be detected from him.
Several hours later, the owl spotted someone on an upper floor. Blue hair. He recognized that person. She was the woman who had spent more time at his master's side than anyone else over the past year.
In terms of a human vocal signal, her name would be "Clara."
The owl recalled its master's command: if it saw anything unusual after the connection was severed, it was to report back. It took wing, rising into the sky to return to its master.
At that moment,
"Scree-eech!"
Puck.
A hawk descending from above struck the owl in midair. Its beak drove into the owl's eyes; its talons seized and snapped the owl's wings. Helpless, the owl plummeted over the cliff's edge.
"An owl. I spotted it at daybreak too. Has it been lurking the whole time? Could be surveillance through beast-taming."
Hawk watched the waves swallow the owl completely, then stepped into Wonderstein's room.
"You're getting quite good at flying now. What's that?"
He gestured at the blood and flecks of flesh caught in the hawk's talons.
"An owl latched onto me, so I shook it off."
"To think you'd even engage in aerial combat. You seem to have fully adapted to your body."
Wonderstein tossed him a few scraps of meat. Once his belly was full, he spread his wings again and flew back out.