13. Circus Charlie (27)
13. Circus Charlie (27)
Wonderstein's first priority on returning to the surface was to review everything he knew about TTT. Until now, he had always sorted the people who appeared in the trilogy by installment.
TT1 was set in the Sky City Hippodrome, and its cast consisted mostly of challengers in the Circus Grand Prix. TT2 took place across the cities that housed the Six Great Theaters, populated by theater personnel and the residents of those cities. TT3 ranged across the world, but the figures who filled it were mostly tied to Wonderstein's own past.
For the Main Quest, he had needed to know mostly the TT1 and TT2 characters. The people from TT3, he had decided, were best kept at arm's length to control the variables. So far, that strategy had worked.
But an abduction like this was beyond anything that strategy could handle. Mysterious had come at him from a direction he had never anticipated. That was why his response had been so clumsy—why it had nearly driven him to his death.
Besides Mysterious, the trilogy had several other recurring figures whose affiliations were unknown. There was Reaper, who appeared throughout the series as a hidden boss, and there was Willy, the merchant who stayed in the heroes' camp and sold Skillbooks.
Willy was an enigmatic old man and the sole vendor of Skillbooks in the game. He had been there since TT1 and followed the protagonists all the way to the final stage of TT3—Wonderland—resupplying them along the way. Like Mysterious, little had ever been revealed about him beyond the fact that he bore a grudge against Wonderstein. Most players regarded him as a character created purely for shop-access convenience and skill management.
Because of that role, players had come to call him a "genius of education." The Skillbooks let you learn techniques in a single click, supposedly because his teaching was so exceptional.
I'd never paid much attention to that old man—he had always been a punchline. But he might well exist in this reality, too. The same way Charlie had.
Having worked his way through all the preceding figures, Wonderstein moved on to examining the TT3 cast. TT3's main enemies were Wonderstein himself and his sisters, the Three Witches—entities who, if encountered now, would be nothing but trouble.
In TT3, each of them commanded a different organization, with Wonderstein as its head. The Rabbit Witch led the Voodoo Cult, an alliance of Madosa. The Crow Witch ran Comprachicos, a trading company that manufactured children to order. And the Snake Witch controlled the Imperial Theater Troupe, keeping the emperor blind and deaf to the truth, turning him into a puppet, and ruling the empire from the shadows.
TT3's story began at Viscountess Bergson's manor, then moved on to dismantling the Voodoo Cult, crushing Comprachicos, fighting through the imperial capital—where the Imperial Palace and the Holy See were located—and finally concluding at Wonderland.
He had done his utmost to avoid contact with those three organizations. There were moments when he could have exploited future knowledge to his advantage, but he had no desire to alter the future that way and risk affecting the Main Quest. That had been the real reason he had kept Anais at a distance with various excuses. Becoming too entangled with her might have influenced the movements of the Voodoo Cult.
Aside from Anais, he had figured he had nothing to worry about with the three organizations. He and Comprachicos, for one, shared no common ground. He had taken Reina—a product of theirs—into the circus troupe, but that did not create a direct link to the Child Company.
Nor was there cause to fret over the Imperial Theater Troupe. The emperor was still bedridden and unable to rise. Only after he recovered would he begin executing his loyalists and surrounding himself with the theater troupe, convinced that someone close to him had tried to poison him. More importantly, the tongue that would whisper serpentine words into the emperor's ear was not yet in place. Wonderstein already had a complete grasp of the whereabouts of Snake Witch, one of the Three Witches.
That left only the enemies who appeared in the final stage. Right before the assault on Wonderland, Wonderstein had summoned his new personal guard. They were members of the Monster Circus—just like the bosses of TT1. Blue-Blood Ghost, the Centipede Old Man, the Siamese Twin Sisters, the Flesh Heap Woman, and the Invisible Man. All of them mirrored the bosses that had appeared in TT1.
At present, he had no way of knowing their whereabouts. The game itself had offered little detail about them. They had appeared for a single stage, their role limited to entertaining players with nostalgic lines and attack patterns that evoked TT1. The only information the game provided was that they had not been created on the spot—Wonderstein had taken them in and raised them long ago.
He was still organizing his knowledge of the trilogy when he caught the sound of voices coming from the sickroom where Ella lay. Unless Clara was talking in her sleep again, it meant she had woken up.
"Miss Clara, has Miss Ella woken?"
Wonderstein knocked and entered. The lamplight glistened at the corners of Ella's eyes. She had been crying again, it seemed. He asked Clara to step outside for a moment, then sat down beside the bed.
Swiping at her tears with her sleeve and barely steadying her emotions, Ella spoke.
"You didn't tell Clara, did you? That Charlie's... dead."
"No. It would be too great a shock for her."
Ella clenched the blanket as if she meant to tear it apart. Treating people he needed so kindly—that was the part of him she hated.
"I'm relieved you seem all right. I was worried you might slide back into panic when you woke."
"What are you talking about?"
"...You don't remember? After Mysterious—after your friend threw himself into the underground water."
Ella yanked her head away and shouted.
"I-I don't... I passed out right after, so..."
Wonderstein nodded. She really had been out of her mind in that moment. No wonder she could not remember. He felt a pang of regret for needlessly dredging up the instant her friend had died.
Seeming unwilling to dwell on it any further, Ella switched topics.
"Wh-what about Mickey? Did he get tangled up as Charlie's accomplice?"
"No. I made sure he was listed as one of the 'friends' who came running to save you."
Ella let out a faint sigh of relief and pressed further.
"So... what are you going to do with Mickey?"
"I can't simply let him go, so I'll bring him into our circus troupe. Which means his life is in my hands. So please—don't get any foolish ideas."
The reason Wonderstein had kept watch outside her sickroom all night was that he had feared she might try to take her own life upon waking. To keep her tethered, a "hostage" was the best option.
Ella bit her lip hard and glared at him, muttering.
"You villain."
"Yes. I am."
He answered with an easy smile. There was no undoing this misunderstanding anyway. Keeping hold of her like this would have to be enough for him.
"Nothing has changed. If you help me reach the Circus Grand Prix Finals..."
"You disappear from our sight forever... I know..."
Wonderstein watched her go limp, her head drooping. With this, the quest was back on its original track. She hated him, but she would cooperate with his work regardless. In the fundamentals, the situation was no different than it had been before she lost her memory.
Yet he could sense a shift in the way she treated him. The girl who had always glared at him sideways and pushed back at everything he said was now quietly submitting to his threats. He could feel the fear she was carrying—aimed at him, most likely. It left a melancholy ache in his chest. If only she would scream at him, curse him out. Then he would not feel so wretched...
Then a thought struck him. A way to provoke her without frightening her. He rose and stepped closer. Leaning down, he whispered in her ear.
"Then I look forward to working with you, Deputy Leader."
What he did next was something Ella had never expected. It was the one thing she had wanted so badly over the past three months—and that he had never granted.
*Smack.*
Wonderstein fully expected her eyes to fly open in outrage. He pictured her swearing at him, swinging a fist, kicking out. He was braced to take whatever attack she threw his way.
But she did not react at all. She simply dropped her head even lower, shoulders trembling. It seemed he had managed nothing more than outright harassment.
*Ugh. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.*
"Uh... well, I'll be going."
Wonderstein left behind an awkward farewell and hurried out of the sickroom. He barely registered Clara's greeting as he swept past, opening the Member Management Window to check the change in Ella's Affection level. He had meant to look the moment she recovered her memory, but circumstances had not allowed it.
'Her Affection level was locked at 30. It's probably dropped below half by now... No. After what I just pulled, it might even be zero...'
Regretting his own foolishness, he pulled up her profile window in midair. His brisk stride away from the sickroom slowed abruptly. He stopped in place and stared hard at the hovering profile before him.
Her Affection had indeed shifted significantly—by roughly the magnitude he had first predicted. But the direction was the exact opposite.
Name: Ella
Age: 17
Affection level: 46 (Next Reward: Affection level 50)
Title: Deputy Leader
Occupation: Beast Tamer
Traits
: [Inspira-Spirit Link], [Inspira-Hat Magic]
Far from dropping, her Affection level had risen. He could not make sense of it. Was she still in emotional turmoil? Or...
"You bastard."
Not long after he had left, Ella stroked the spot his lips had touched and spat the curse. That demon spawn—for three months, whenever she had clung to him, he had always said she would regret it later and had never once returned a kiss. And now, absurdly enough, the moment she got her memories back, he had stolen her cheek without a flicker of hesitation.
"Demon spawn."
In truth, she remembered everything that had happened underground. From demanding he hold her, all the way to whining and sobbing in his arms like a child. The instant he had brought it up, the flood of memories had come surging in, and she had wanted to drown in it and die.
"Son of a bitch."
She still could not lift her head. Not out of fear. She could not bear the thought of anyone seeing her face blazing crimson. Clenching her teeth, she muttered.
"It can't be."
Her pounding heart. The instant his lips had touched it, her heart—which had stopped—was now racing faster than ever. Surprise, rage, disgust, shock. She tried to describe the sensation with every word she knew. But there was one word she refused to utter, precisely because it came closest to the truth.
"I said it can't be."
She gripped the chest of her patient gown so fiercely it seemed about to tear. Her nails dug into her skin. Yet she could not stop her heart from beating like mad. Still, she did not ease the pressure.
"Never."
She could not admit it. A feeling like this.
The tears beading at the corners of her eyes quivered in the moonlight, scattering a pitiful pink glow.