13. Circus Charlie (4)
13. Circus Charlie (4)
Charlie released the Spirit Link and gasped—a ragged, desperate heave, as if he'd been drowning. Tears streamed unchecked down his face. A low, animal sob clawed its way from his throat.
He checked his timepiece. His friends would be back soon. The moment they were all together, the conversation would inevitably turn to Ella. He couldn't face that right now.
Charlie pulled his mask on and left the grotto. He walked with no destination at all, just following his feet.
But no amount of aimless wandering let him escape what he had witnessed. Ella confessing her love to another man. Every affectionate note in her voice, the warmth in her gaze—cherished and loathed in equal measure.
For ten years... he had been the one who loved her. So why, when it came to him...
He choked back a fresh wave of tears.
He roamed the streets. The whole night through. The sun rose, and he walked on without a moment's rest. None of it did a thing to ease the grief.
It wasn't until the sun hung directly overhead that Charlie finally halted. He looked around. Not far off stood the tallest building in Yeterinpurk—a fifteen-story hotel. He'd been walking all night and still hadn't left the square's orbit. It seemed he'd simply circled the perimeter streets over and over.
He wanted someone to lean on. To collapse into someone's arms and cry his eyes out.
His friends were at the hideout. They'd be there for him. But recounting what he'd seen would be its own torment.
Was there anyone else in this city? Someone he could lean on...
A face surfaced in his mind. For the past year, she had always been at his side, steady and supportive.
Clara.
He missed her. He missed her considerate voice and her thoughtful eyes.
Charlie opened his notebook. He'd been diligent about using up any Inspira that seemed useless just to clear the slots, but he'd saved the genuinely useful ones. The one he needed now had been sitting there for about two weeks.
⌈Messenger Pigeon⌋
You could entrust a letter to an animal you'd raised, and it would find the recipient no matter where in the world they were. This one had appeared in his notebook right after he arrived in Yeterinpurk. He'd saved it in case Ella caught on to their pursuit and fled.
That didn't matter now. Today was the preliminary assembly for Acrobatic Rush. It would be over by now. Ella probably wasn't running anywhere—she'd be taking part in the games. More than any of that, all he wanted right now was to see Clara.
"Ookakaka!"
The monkey in his coat took the slip of paper with Clara's name on it and scampered off. He followed. The creature led him down increasingly familiar streets. By the time they reached the Tetromino Square, he found himself standing in front of a building he knew well.
"This is..."
Charlie stared at the place where the monkey had stopped. Tucked into a corner of Tetromino Square, it was unmistakably the café where he had briefly rented a room on the second floor during his second year.
Clara was here?
He scanned the place with care. The table where they'd worked on assignments together, the streetlamp where she'd waited every morning to walk to class with him, the yard where he'd helped her refine her skills. All of it was right there. But Clara herself was nowhere in sight.
Had he released the Inspira too soon? When the monkey made to dart inside the building, Charlie swiftly blocked it and snatched the slip of paper back.
What if the monkey had simply meant to cut through the café on its way somewhere else?
He flipped through his notebook, but the Messenger Pigeon entry was gone. An Inspira was always consumed after a single use. Something else had already taken its place.
The café owner, who'd been drying cups in the kitchen, had been watching the masked man fidgeting outside her shop.
I'm sure I've seen him before.
After studying him a while longer, her eyes lit up with recognition. She stepped out and approached him carefully.
"Are you perhaps... Charlie? The student?"
"Ah—I, well, I...."
Coming face-to-face with his old landlady, Charlie tried to deny it. But she was faster. She beamed and seized his hands, shaking them vigorously.
"It is you. Charlie! How have you been? It's been so long."
Resigned, Charlie removed his mask.
"Ah, yes—it's good to see you. But, uh, how did you know?"
"A shopkeeper can recognize a regular just by the sound of their footsteps. And you stayed here for months, Charlie—of course I'd know you on sight."
The two exchanged pleasantries for a moment.
"So what brings you by? I thought you'd graduated?"
"Ah—I just happened to be passing through the area."
"Is that so? Are you... managing all right? You look unwell."
"Yes. I was up all night working."
"Oh, dear. Shall I pour you a cup of coffee?"
"Ah, no—thank you. I'll need to be going soon. Actually... do you happen to know how Clara's doing? You remember Clara, don't you? She used to visit often...."
"Oh, of course. She was here today, as it happens. With some people from her circus troupe."
"Circus troupe?"
The reply caught Charlie entirely off guard.
"That's right. You must've heard about the accident at the school a few weeks back. They said Clara's taking a leave of absence because of it—decided to work with a circus."
"I see."
A rush of guilt swept through him.
What right did he have to come looking for her?
He had done something unspeakably cruel to her. Now, having endured the sting of unrequited love himself, he finally, fully understood how she must have felt.
Even so, the urge to lean on her was difficult to suppress. He suspected that if he told her he'd come back, she would welcome him with open arms. His own feelings toward Ella gave him reason to believe that. The fact that she'd revisited the very place where their memories together lingered was proof she hadn't entirely let go of him.
Charlie surveyed the café interior.
"So is Clara here now?"
"I'm not sure. I agreed to let the circus people use the upstairs room for the day, but they all went out in a group earlier—said they were getting lunch. I wasn't paying close attention, so I don't know if she left with them or stayed behind."
"I'll go up and check."
She was probably upstairs. The Messenger Pigeon Inspira had pointed this way, after all.
Charlie climbed the stairs. He'd once lodged here; he knew the layout by heart. Before opening the door, he stole a glance through the hallway window.
A familiar girl with sky-blue hair was inside.
It was Clara.
Relief blossomed in his chest as he stepped toward the door. But just then, a voice he recognized sounded from within.
A voice he never wanted to hear again.
"If you'd told me in advance, I would've handled this back at the lodgings."
That voice—laced with a mocking humor, as if toying with people.
Frank Wonderstein. It was his.
What's he doing here?
Wait... The circus troupe Clara joined—don't tell me...?
Frozen in front of the door, Charlie heard Clara's voice follow.
"I-I'm sorry. I tried to hold out until tonight, but I couldn't wait any longer."
She sounded small, almost whining, like a child.
He'd never heard her speak like that.
"Hopeless. Next time, don't hold it in—just tell me. All right, come here. Take off your clothes."
It felt as if a stone had dropped through his chest.
Had he misheard? Take off your clothes?
Charlie was certain Clara would refuse.
She wasn't the type to assert herself loudly, but she had an iron sense of propriety.
The Clara he knew would never comply with a command to undress in the broad daylight on the second floor of a café overlooking a public square—no matter who gave the order.
Even if a Troupe Leader tried to pull rank...
"Yes, Troupe Leader."
Her answer came in a voice so shy it was barely audible. He heard the soft rustle of fabric, one garment after another falling to the floor. A visceral wave of revulsion rolled through him, but he forced himself closer to the window and peered inside.
Maybe she'd only taken off a coat. An outer layer. A scarf. That had to be it. This made no sense. The model student Clara, agreeing to something this absurd...
He immediately regretted looking. Through the window, he saw a woman standing there, bare and pale, utterly exposed. And before her, a man, smirking as he appraised her body. The same man who had delivered last night's nightmare.
Charlie recoiled. His back hit the railing, and he slid to the floor in a crumpled heap. But even sitting there, he couldn't shut out the voices inside.
"Since it's hard for me to move freely, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to do the work, Miss Clara. Hm—this gap's been weeping quite a bit. Must've been hard for you to hold out, wasn't it?"
Wonderstein clicked his tongue, studying the cracked skin visible across several parts of Clara's body. Serous fluid, streaked with blood, was seeping from the fissures. She needed regular treatment—but she'd stubbornly endured it in silence until it turned into this mess.
"There—rest on my hand... yes, just like that...."
"Ma-Master... Ahnn...."
She'd always been the sort to yield quietly to others, but Charlie knew she carried a core of rigid, unyielding pride. And yet here she was, simpering before a man, meekly stripping off her clothes and letting soft moans escape at his touch. It didn't feel real. He told himself this had to be a hallucination—that the exhaustion of the sleepless night had finally broken something.
Whatever he chose to believe, the scene inside continued.
"Tongue will work better than fingers on this spot."
"Aah! I-it feels strange!"
"Does it hurt?"
"It—it hurts, but it feels good, so...."
"Next time, we'll do this properly in my quarters. Look at this mess. I had to ask Miss Ella to round everyone up and take them out just so we'd have the room."
"Uuu, Troupe Leader...."
"I'm saying this for your sake, not mine. Heh—this is what it takes to keep you alive, you know."
"Yes... yes... I'm sorry. It's all—my fault... H-hyeok!"
Wonderstein watched her gasp in pain, his expression tinged with sympathy. His own soul had been torn and rebuilt; he knew exactly how agonizing it was to have a body forcibly restructured to fit the spirit inside. He'd applied the same narcotic saliva he'd used on Reina the day before, but the pain still broke through in paroxysms.
So, like a pediatrician distracting a child before an injection, he reached for a topic that might pull her attention away.
"Come to think of it... this used to be that Charlie fellow's room, wasn't it?"
"Huh? Y-yes!"
"Heh—the man Miss Clara had a crush on. I'd love to see the face of someone so impressive."
He was teasing her, using the story about her first love that the café owner had told him earlier. He hoped it would help her forget the pain, even a little.
It worked. The face that had been contorted in agony moments before flushed red, and she burst out.
"I-I wasn't in love with him!"
"But I distinctly heard otherwise. Weren't you the one who asked him to walk to school together every morning, Miss Clara?"
She'd caught on that the owner was making fun of her, too, and gave up trying to defend herself.
"Th-that was because he was the top student—I wanted to improve my grades...."
"But didn't you confess to him as well?"
"Th-that was because I heard he was going to join a famous troupe...."
"Hm. So if this Charlie were here now, would you go to him?"
"N-no! There's—haht—there's only you, Troupe Leader!"
"Oh, come now—surely you still like Charlie? I could even bring you to see him. I'd do this treatment for you whenever you needed it, you know."
"I don't want that! Even without—without this, I want to stay by your side...!"
Charlie clamped his hands over his ears and buried his face between his knees. He clamped down on each breath to block out the noise, but nothing stopped the tears.
Why... why...
'I like you. Please go out with me.'
That was what she'd said. That Clara...
Before long, word came that Ella was on her way back, and the two inside straightened up and readied the room.
Charlie, sunk in despair, jolted alert at the sound of her name.
Right. I still have something I need to do.
He fled the spot. Careful not to trip, he stumbled down the stairs on unsteady legs. On his way out, he asked the café owner to keep his visit a secret. She, well aware that he'd been the one to break things off with Clara, seemed to draw her own conclusions and agreed without protest.
Charlie had no memory of how he made it back to the hideout. When he came to his senses, he was already in the underground grotto, his hand moving on its own across the operation plan.
He tried to take the most positive view of the situation he could.
The whole reason I started investigating that bastard in the first place was to find evidence that he was manipulating people. And I've got more than enough now. Think back to what he said to Ella—his whole argument assumed that once she came to her senses, she'd hate him. The same has to be true for the others. For Reina. Even for Clara.
As he stared at the blackboard, a cold, poisonous glint seeped into his eyes.
His friends returned from reconnaissance around dusk. They had no idea what the last two days had put him through.
"But they're surprisingly simple, innocent people, despite their appearance."
"Yeah. Just ordinary folks. We observed them over and over, but we kept reaching the same conclusion."
"Our target is just Ella, right? Feels like we can just ignore the others, can't we?"
Charlie, who'd been listening quietly to his friends' opinions, slowly shook his head.
"No."
His gaze drifted to the blackboard in the corner, covered edge to edge in chalk script. Names of the Monster Circus Troupe members they'd investigated. Their personalities, their traits. At the center of the relationship chart stood Ella.
"We need one more person."
He fixed his eyes on a single name connected to her.
"The Troupe Leader, Frank Wonderstein."
A chill, bleak killing intent flickered in Charlie's eyes.