13. Circus Charlie (25)
13. Circus Charlie (25)
A single gunshot wound to the chest. Between the sheer volume of blood Charlie had already lost and the condition he was in, there could be no real hope of survival. Wonderstein's power could knit his body back together, but knowing the man, he would never restore him whole. He wasn't the forgiving type—not when someone crossed him.
Merisa had proven that well enough. Reduced to a stone statue, she still stood among the troupe's ranks. Early on, not long after joining the circus, she had openly criticized Wonderstein's conduct, argued with him, and even attacked him. The contract forbade killing a troupe member, so he had not killed her. Instead he had left her in a state that made death seem merciful by comparison.
Ever since the Circus Grand Prix began, Ella had begged him again and again to restore her. He had turned her down every time. Even after she lost her memory and went to him in Yeterinpurk with that same plea, he refused. He had even thrown this answer at her:
"If I restore her, there's no telling what she'll try next. Leaving her as good as dead might be the kinder option."
He had spoken those words wearing the same smiling face he always did. It was one of the rare moments when the amnesiac Ella had felt genuine terror in his presence. Back then she had stammered something like, "R-right? She did try to kill you... L-let's just leave her as she is," and glossed the whole thing over. The situation should have struck her as strange, given how gentle his usual manner was, but her feelings for him at the time had simply blinded her to it.
"Miss Ella. Here is your friend. Charlie, was it?"
The man was now displaying her friend's body before her. Charlie's complexion, which moments ago had been that of a dying man, had somehow returned to normal. The bullet wound in his chest was cleanly sealed. Yet the sight brought her no relief.
"I called this man Mysterious. As I told you earlier, I truly had no idea he was your friend. At any rate, he's past the worst of it. Though he'll need a bit more work before he's fully healed."
Tentacles coiled around Charlie's body in a full revolution. The sight froze Ella solid. What would he do to Charlie? Turn him into a lump of stone like Merisa? No—that had been a lenient punishment, reserved for a troupe member. Images of the man's other victims flashed through her mind. She saw Charlie being toyed with, twisted into every grotesque form imaginable. Despair drained the strength from every inch of her body.
"E-Ella... f-fight him. K-kill this bastard... Don't worry about me..."
Charlie, too, had realized Wonderstein meant to use him as a hostage. But when a tentacle tightened hard around his chest, he could only groan and fall silent. An unspoken promise that he could do as he pleased with him at any moment—it was more than enough to shatter Ella's will to keep fighting.
She wrapped her arms around herself and spoke.
"N-no. D-don't... L-let Charlie go..."
Wonderstein smiled at her and nodded.
"Of course. I will let him go. But first... isn't there something you ought to do?"
He had been on the verge of telling her to recall the Reaper into its bottle, expecting her to ask what he wanted. Her actual response was something he had never once anticipated. She collapsed onto her knees before him. Before he could even stop her, she planted both hands on the ground and lowered her head to the floor.
"S-sorry... I-I was wrong... S-so please don't hurt Charlie..."
Ella was begging him.
The shock hit Wonderstein like a physical blow, and he stared blankly down at her prostrate form. This was Ella—the woman who had always held her head high no matter who she faced. The woman who brimmed with confidence even in front of the most daunting tasks. The woman who stood before audiences numbering in the thousands without a flicker of fear. That she could kneel and plead with anyone lay beyond anything he had ever imagined.
Her willpower, already stretched to its breaking point, had shattered completely the instant she pictured what Wonderstein might do to Charlie. Had he made this threat while she was still furiously pressing her attack, she might have ignored it and struck him anyway.
But she had already beaten down Reina, who had blocked her path, and in the end had even shot Maya. In that state she could not bring herself to let Charlie die as well. No—death would be a mercy. What she could not stomach was the thought of him turned into a plaything, trapped between life and death in this man's hands. The single-minded drive to tear her friend from his grasp made her cast everything else aside.
"Please... I'm begging you... I-I'm kneeling here begging, all right? Just... let Charlie go safely..."
A coil of displeasure rose from somewhere deep in Wonderstein's chest. He would be lying if he said it had never stung when she treated him with open hostility. But he had never wished to see her grovel like this. This was not a sight he had ever wanted.
He spoke again, his voice low.
"First, recall the Reaper into the bottle."
"Y-yeah, okay..."
"Tch. All this fuss over a single human hostage..."
Cappi made a face, but obediently followed her command and returned to the bottle. She stowed it away inside her clothes and turned back to him, her eyes full of desperate hope.
"Th-there, that's it, right? N-now you'll let Charlie go?"
"Before that... the way you're speaking to me. I don't like it."
He wanted to restore their relationship to what it had been before. But Ella, misreading him completely, looked even more terrified and said,
"D-did I upset you? R-right? I'm the Deputy Leader and you're the Troupe Leader... S-sorry... I-I won't use casual speech anymore. N-no, I won't! I'll use formal speech properly from now on... I won't grumble or complain. S-so please... please... just let my friends go safely... Charlie... and Mickey... and the rest of them too..."
"That isn't what I'm asking. I'm telling you I have no intention of hurting anyone."
"Yes! Yes! P-please do that! I'll do everything you say, Troupe Leader! I really will! I'll do anything!"
Watching her cling to him and plead, Wonderstein felt the corner of his mouth twitch. A stranger looking on would have thought him savoring her desperation. And indeed, that was exactly what Charlie thought. He glared daggers at Wonderstein, his body twitching as though he meant to lunge at him at any second.
"You... you bastard..."
Wonderstein felt the urge to swing a tentacle at him.
Whose fault is this whole mess.
But he knew that taking out his irritation on Charlie would only deepen the misunderstanding. Ella was already glancing anxiously between the two of them, teetering on the edge. He tamped down his anger and soothed her with a calm voice.
"Miss Ella, what I want is for you to treat me the way you always have. This is not what I want."
But even those words failed to reach her in earnest. She suddenly beamed up at him and said,
"R-really? Like I always do? O-of course I can do that!"
She threw her arms wide toward him and cried out,
"I-I mean it! I'll really do better from now on! This is what you want, right? Right? Right? S-so that means... you'll let everyone go safely, won't you?"
The smile Ella forced onto her face was so strained it bordered on unhinged. Wonderstein had never known a human smile could look so heartbreakingly pitiful.
He let out a long sigh inwardly. This was not what he had intended. All he had wanted was to restore their contract in exchange for healing Charlie. It might look like he was holding her friend's life hostage—and that, he had thought, was exactly the sort of thing the villainous Wonderstein from three months ago, the one she remembered, would do.
The result matched his intent. But the aftertaste was bitter beyond words.
And he was not the only one feeling the sting. Charlie could not accept the scene unfolding before his eyes. He had come to free Ella from that devil's clutches—and instead, he had only strengthened the chains binding her to him. He could not forgive himself.
He gnawed swiftly through the tentacle covering his mouth. As the soft flesh tore, a foul, ink-like black blood flooded into his mouth. He spat it out and yelled,
"Montecristo!"
That was the name of his blue-furred monkey. If he himself proved unable to overpower Wonderstein, he had left the monkey with standing orders as a contingency.
"Ook-eek!"
The monkey, hidden on a pillar near the altar, pulled a switch. Among the classes Charlie had taken at Rekachev were lessons in firecracker-making and fire-play. Using the skills he had learned there, he had rigged this place with traps meant to bury his opponent.
Boom.
The detonators for the bombs placed in the central chamber had mostly been destroyed during Wonderstein and Cappi's battle, but those on the cavern's outer edges remained intact. A massive tremor shook the chamber as a cloud of dust swept through the interior.
A few of Wonderstein's tentacles were ripped apart in the blast, and he felt Charlie slip free of his bonds and escape. He braced Ella's body and scanned their surroundings. In his current state, Charlie could barely walk, but he might still have a hidden gun. A reckless shot meant for him could hit her instead.
"Charlie! Let go! You damn devil!"
Ella struggled in his arms, even trying to bite his arm to break free. The way her attitude flipped the instant he lost his hostage was both absurd and strangely welcome. He held her firmly and kept his guard up. The attack he had braced for did not come.
Soon the dust settled, revealing the inside of the chamber. Several walls had collapsed, and earth and debris had poured in. Fortunately, the ceiling had held. The others were unhurt as well—he had shielded them with his tentacles from the moment of the explosion.
Charlie was standing beside a fissure that had opened below the altar. From it came a roar loud enough to shake the whole chamber. There was no doubt—an underground watercourse ran through it.
Bleeding heavily, he clung to the altar and fixed Wonderstein with a glare.
"Hah... hah... Y-you... you'd use me as a hostage... ngh... to demand even more from her..."
Wonderstein understood exactly what he was about to do. He tried to raise a Shabain tentacle from the nearest shadow to stop him, but no shadow had gathered where Charlie stood. The particles of light drifting through the sanctuary kept the area illuminated.
"Rather than watch that happen... ngh... I'll die!"
"No, Charlie! Charlie!"
Ella, too, understood what he meant to do. She pounded on Wonderstein's restraining arm with her fists, desperate to run to her friend. He did not loosen his grip.
"Ella... please forgive me for this..."
"No! Don't do it!"
With those parting words, Charlie threw himself into the abyss where the underground water roared. The darkness swallowed his body in an instant. What remained was only the violent churn of the water.
"Ahh... aaahhhh!"
Ella clawed at the ground, ready to crawl toward the fissure even if it meant snapping her nails and breaking her fingers. Pity pressing on his heart, Wonderstein held her body down and forced himself to say,
"Think of the one still here."
He jerked his chin toward the corner of the chamber. There lay a boy in his early teens, wrapped in tentacles with his eyes closed. Mickey—one of Charlie's party.
Ella stared at him blankly, then shot Wonderstein a look seething with resentment.
"You—!"
He nodded, confirming that he was indeed using the boy as leverage. Let her resent him. He had no choice. He could not let her throw her life away. And he was hardly making some grand sacrifice himself—this was just one more spoonful of sin added to the mountain of villainy Wonderstein had already accumulated.
Ella pulled a dagger from her clothes. She swung it at his chest. Blood welled up. His body had been significantly weakened from fighting the Reaper, and her blade sank deep enough. The sensation of piercing human flesh made her flinch and pull back, but when she saw he was still smiling at her, she swung again.
"You bastard! You bastard! You bastard..."
With every swing another wound opened on his body. He did not resist in the slightest—simply endured it in silence. He had wanted to clear up the misunderstanding, and instead it had only grown worse. Though they might never move forward, he still wanted to remain by her side. And for that, this was necessary.
After stabbing him dozens of times, Ella stared at him, at that unchanging smile he still wore, and a hollow emptiness overtook her. She let the knife fall from her hand. The blood-soaked dagger rolled across the floor. Only then did Wonderstein release her. Gasping for breath, she crumpled to the ground. She turned her head toward where Charlie had fallen. She made no attempt to jump in after him, but she gazed endlessly at the spot, searching for any trace her friend might have left behind.
"Ahh."
A bestial sound escaped her as her body shook. A loss unlike any she had ever felt wracked her entire frame.
"Ahhh."
She wanted to lean on someone. To be held. To be comforted. In her whole life, only two people had ever been able to give her that. Her grandfather was not here now. And cruelly enough, the other one was right beside her.
Without realizing it, she grabbed the hem of his trousers and spoke.
"...Hold me."
The unexpected request caught him off guard. Had she demanded he die in Charlie's place, he would have been far less bewildered.
"...What?"
"Please. Don't say a word. I don't want to hear any comfort from you. You're a villain. A bad man. A son of a bitch. So... so... just shut up... shut up and hold me. Please."
She grabbed his waist and leaned her body against him. Ella noticed that his chest was riddled with wounds from the knife she had wielded. For a moment she let out an amused giggle and dug a finger into one of them. Even as she prodded the wound, he kept smiling. She found it satisfying, and somehow sad.
"Stroke my back."
He obeyed faithfully. She closed her eyes and accepted it, biting down hard on her lip to keep the tears from breaking loose.
"P-pat me."
Again, he did as she asked. With every pat on her back, a small sob leaked from her lips. It was not long before they broke free and became full-throated weeping.
"Waaahh— sniff— I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Charlie... I'm sorry... waaahh..."
She cried and cried in his arms until exhaustion finally dragged her into unconsciousness.
In the arms of the man she despised above all others.