14. Melting Point (16)
14. Melting Point (16)
There was one thing that donations to welfare facilities and housewarming gifts for a studio apartment always had in common: practical necessities like rice, bottled water, instant noodles, and toilet paper were the preferred choice. They were useful precisely because they gave the recipient exactly what they needed, without anyone having to probe into the hardships of their life.
Yet there was another reason they were favored as donations to welfare facilities, distinct from housewarming gifts. They were bulky and easy to stack. A few boxes of instant noodles, some sacks of rice, a couple of toilet paper packs, and a few thousand won's worth of bottled water were all you needed for several people to stand in front of them and take a photo fit for the social pages of a local newspaper. The cost of assembling that folding screen was economical—often cheaper than the meal the group would share at a restaurant after the event was over.
Back when Scarecrow was living in the orphanage, his friend Tin Can used to sneer with words much like those every time such donations arrived. His view of the world was skewed, but he wasn't wrong about reality. While we ate meals made from donated instant noodles, the director would dine out with the benefactors—at a duck stew house or a charcoal-grilled Korean beef restaurant.
This wasn't to say that all donations to the facility were just for show. There were sometimes philanthropists who would hand over large sums without any strings attached. Even then, Tin Can's sarcasm never stopped—he'd claim it was for tax evasion, or that they'd been suckered by some pseudo-religion.
Though, after he let those last words fly, he'd always glance at his friend Scarecrow and shut his mouth. Because among those so-called suckers were Scarecrow's very own parents.
Scarecrow didn't believe that Sim Cheong, who donated three hundred sacks of rice to a temple, had some deep devotion to Buddhism. She had given up everything she had so that her blind father could open his eyes.
That was the same reason his parents had handed over their successful business to a church figure and went off to eat and sleep at a mountainside construction site, wearing grimy work clothes. They believed a pastor's promise that their child, born without arms or legs, would be given a proper body.
Not content with sinking their entire fortune—billions of won—into building a temple, the two of them laid bricks and spread cement with their own hands. What made their story different from the old tale was what came after. Unlike Sim Bongsa, his parents never saw their child again. They passed away in a fire at the workers' quarters, with the temple's completion just within reach.
He only learned the truth much later. As a child, he had assumed, like the other children, that his parents had simply abandoned him. He had been grateful that the Church of Omnipotence had taken in and raised a useless person like him.
'Troupe Leader Wonderstein saved my life, you know?'
Anais Bergson. The noblewoman expressing her gratitude had no idea that he was the very head of the organization that had tried to kill her and steal her trading company.
And to see her prattle on about grace like that... she reminded him of his own foolish past self.
But avoiding her wasn't purely a matter of personal distaste. Keeping his distance from her was also strategically correct for completing his Main Quest.
She possessed a powerful connection to the Voodoo Cult. While Wonderstein was the head of the cult, the one who practically ran its operations was one of the Three Witches, Rabbit Witch, who served as the Vice Cult Leader.
In the original series, the Three Witches were depicted as beings on a level equal to Wonderstein himself. Their individual personalities varied, but they shared a similar obsession with him.
Getting tangled with them would be a guaranteed headache. Hadn't he already been attacked once over that trial?
So he tried to keep his distance from her. He believed that was the safest route for both of them.
He knew, of course, that she liked him. Her diary, found in the game, had made that clear. Without that knowledge, his own obtuseness would never have detected that she was showing him romantic interest, and he wouldn't have been able to put up such an impregnable wall from the start.
His distancing strategy had been a success, and after the Rose Windmill Cabaret, there seemed to be no further chance of entanglement with her. In fact, not long after they arrived in Yeterinpurk, the contents of her letters had shifted to a purely formal, businesslike tone.
But a few days ago, the "gift" Ben Sullivan had brought him proved that his assumptions were wrong. The person he'd been exchanging letters with was not the real Anais. It was a doppelganger dispatched by the Voodoo Cult.
He knew that for a doppelganger to perfectly duplicate its target's psyche, significant preparation was required. It wasn't something that could have been produced in a mere three or four months since Pierre's betrayal.
Wonderstein had questioned Sullivan about it indirectly, and Sullivan had answered that the cult likely exploited an order Wonderstein himself had given three years prior—to investigate her body.
Three years prior placed it right after the death of Anais's father, the previous Viscount Bergson. In that moment, the information Wonderstein had gleaned from the original series rearranged itself in his mind, and he grasped the entirety of her narrative.
The Voodoo Cult needed funds and a distribution network to expand its influence. So they would have sought cooperation from the Viscount Bergson. He must have refused, and for that, he was likely murdered. It was officially called an "accident," but to someone like him, who had lost his own parents to a similar "accident," the Voodoo Cult's handiwork was unmistakable.
Having eliminated Jeral Bergson, the Voodoo Cult reached out to Pierre to seize control of the trade association while simultaneously preparing to replace Anais with a doppelganger. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to begin investigating her body three years ago.
Wonderstein, possessing the power of a BioMancer, would never have spent years laboring just to cure her illness. In truth, he could fix her completely with a single touch.
But Anais's talent far exceeded what the Voodoo Cult had anticipated. Before her doppelganger could be fully prepared, she uncovered Pierre's corruption. From the cult's perspective, the distribution network they had spent years building was about to be lost because of one misstep.
At that point, Wonderstein would have moved to deal with her in a different manner, and Pierre, in his own bid to salvage the situation, would have visited the manor with assassination in mind. That was the beginning of TT0.
But things had gone awry while resolving that first quest. In the original story, Pierre had given up on the assassination and retreated. Here, he had attempted it and failed, and the Voodoo Cult had been firmly marked as her enemy.
Naturally, she had mobilized the full extent of her trading company's connections to root out the cult, and Rabbit Witch, enraged by her running rampant under Wonderstein's protection, had activated the doppelganger to impose sanctions. The operation had begun right after he had left her side.
"You're telling me there's actually hot water coming out of the ground?"
"That's weird! Whenever we sold groundwater back home, the water was always cold..."
"I'm telling you, you can think of it like a volcano's roots boiling the water under the earth!"
The Monster Circus Troupe was currently moving toward the Borjomi region. Originally planning to head further inland along the Transcontinental Railway's main line, they had altered their schedule a few days ago at the leader's suggestion to take the eastern branch line and stop in the hot-spring town of Borjomi.
They'd been in a buzz of excitement for the entire train ride. Some of it was anticipation of the hot springs they'd only ever heard of in rumors, and some was delight at getting a break after a grueling forced march, but most of all, they were happy to all be sitting together in a passenger car.
Until now, the monster members had been classified alongside Ratmen as "non-human sapients" and forced to ride in the cargo cars. But from now on, they could enter the passenger cars openly alongside their human comrades. This, too, was thanks to an article published in the December issue of Christian Guide.
Of course, they couldn't mingle with the other passengers, so they still had to charter an entire car, but even that was a far more comfortable journey than before. More than anything else, they were happiest about being treated the same as everyone else.
Wonderstein watched their enjoyment with a pleased expression, but his face darkened slightly when his gaze fell on Maya, sitting in a corner with her legs stretched out, reading a book.
If the monster members were examples of him altering a fate for the better, she was an example of him twisting a fate for the worse. In the original timeline, she would have blossomed under Arno's guidance and reached the ranks of an Archmage. Instead, he had ruined her talent and, worse, left her lower body paralyzed.
Could he truly restore her body to normal before he returned to reality?
Wonderstein took a moment to steady his breathing, then looked at the bearded Jang Han sitting in a corner of the train. Sullivan, who had joined the troupe just a few days ago, was deep in conversation with Clara about something.
Wonderstein had given the other members a rough explanation that Sullivan was someone who'd heard of the Monster Circus's fame and had come seeking to join. He'd also asked Sullivan to strictly act as an acrobat within the troupe, and advised him to consult with Clara, his advisor, on how to fill that role. Thanks to that, Sullivan seemed to have become her closest friend in just a few days.
According to the information Sullivan had brought, Anais was currently being tracked by the Voodoo Cult's Madosa. It was a problem he could easily solve by intervening directly. They wouldn't dare defy Wonderstein.
But the problem then would be how Rabbit Witch would react. She wasn't stronger than Reaper, of course. If it came down to a straight brawl, he could stand his ground. But she commanded a powerful faction. If she decided to use that to obstruct him, that would be the real issue.
It would introduce a variable far greater than anything he'd faced so far.
It might even cause his Main Quest to fail.
Wonderstein let out a small sigh and looked back at Maya.
Right there was a child whose fate had been twisted because of him. If the condition of his Main Quest had been to cripple an innocent person, would he have stepped up to do it?
Wonderstein could answer that question instantly. And because of that, his dilemma regarding Anais naturally reached its own conclusion.
He had to take responsibility. He had to save Anais. And he had to return her life to her whole. If doing so brought him into conflict with the Voodoo Cult... then he was ready to fight.
Shhhh. Pweeeeep.
The steam-belching locomotive's breath was rougher than usual, and the screech of the wheels scraping against the track was sharper. All of it was due to this wretched weather, which had whitewashed the whole world. The train, having plowed through a blizzard for eight hours, had finally reached its destination.