14. Melting Point (20)
14. Melting Point (20)
Nikolai had been able to read people's breathing since childhood.
Whenever an opponent made an expression, spoke a word, or took an action, a distinct wavelength radiated from them. Through that, he could discern their intent.
It was different from the mind-reading the dilettantes liked to gossip about. It was closer to how a dog reads its owner's emotions through gestures and glances alone—a kind of statistics, really. Observing that "when this kind of wavelength comes out, this kind of behavior often follows."
The better he knew someone, the more it developed into something approaching true mind-reading.
In games, especially, an opponent's choices were constrained by defined rules. In rock-paper-scissors, for instance, there were only three options. In that context, his ability displayed a power you could call prophetic without exaggeration.
As he grew and met more people, his strength developed further. Past age ten, his ability truly rose to a level worthy of the name mind-reading.
People didn't speak and act from an infinite field of free choices. They moved according to predetermined scripts dictated by status, society, and environment—just like game pieces. The more conventional the person, the more vividly he could grasp their thoughts.
To him, dealing with people was no different from strategizing a game.
Ordinary people learned social cues to gauge what others were thinking. He simply could see a little further ahead than they could, so he proactively turned those same social cues to his advantage.
How to be an endearing child.
How to be a respected lord.
How to be a promising Crown Prince.
How to be an admirable pupil.
Nikolai was built, layer upon layer, from the "established patterns" he had acquired that way.
Then, past the age of thirteen, he became able to play Go against the world itself. The world seemed complex and ever-shifting, but from a macro perspective, it resembled a single living organism. With enough information, he could grasp the cause of any phenomenon—and its solution.
That was how he had been able to draft a reform plan to save the declining empire. Or, to be precise, one more factor had played a role in making it possible.
The disappearance of the Imperial Theater Troupe's Deputy Leader, the "Snake Witch" Merisa Serpenti.
She had called herself the Emperor's mistress, manipulating him and controlling the empire from the shadows. Earlier this year, not long after the Emperor took to his sickbed, she had departed the Imperial Palace and never returned.
The faction she had gathered grew increasingly anxious as time passed. Cracks began to show. The Crown Prince had been able to declare his regency and seize power precisely by exploiting those cracks.
What purpose Merisa Serpenti had in leaving the Imperial Palace, and why she hadn't returned, remained an enigma. For that matter, her identity itself was one. No one knew where she had been born, what she had done, or how she had drifted into the palace.
She was a master of deception and trickery. Even the empire's most prominent political figures found her unnerving to deal with. More than a few had been used in her schemes or had drawn blood by her hand.
And the Crown Prince had been fighting this witch on equal footing for years. If the Emperor hadn't been on her side, she would have fallen to him long ago.
By now, he was confident he could defeat anyone who stood against him.
Even if the worst-case scenario his faction predicted came to pass—his stepmother's newborn brother replacing him as Crown Prince—Nika believed he had the ability to overcome it.
It was just that civil war would follow, so for now, lying low like this was the move. It wasn't that he doubted his ability to fight his father or stepmother and win.
He feared no opponent now. There was no human he couldn't read. The confidence he carried wasn't arrogance. People were merely complex puzzles, and the world was nothing more than a game requiring a few more rolls of the dice.
But now, for the first time in his life... he heard the sound of that confidence crumbling.
The carriage that had departed the station arrived at the hotel parking lot nearly three hours later. It stopped at the same moment Wonderstein finished tallying the score of the final game.
"It's a draw."
At his declaration, Nika let out a deep sigh. After four consecutive losses, he had barely clawed his way to a stalemate. Yet he couldn't feel the reality of it.
This had been unlike any contest he'd fought in his life. His best weapons, his strongest armor—none of it worked on this opponent.
He'd only managed to steel himself to set it all down when the fifth game began. He threw himself at the match relying purely on his mind and his nerve, without leaning on the ability to read wavelengths.
It felt akin to standing naked in a public square and flailing wildly.
"Ah."
A single tear traced a path down his cheek.
It was something he'd never had the chance to shed over all these years.
The terror of a five-year-old facing an unknown existence for the first time.
The helplessness of a ten-year-old meeting his limits for the first time.
The shame of a fifteen-year-old losing control of himself for the first time.
Experiences that anyone else would naturally have had at those ages—he tasted them all for the first time today. From the man in front of him.
"Then, let's consider the final wager void, and...."
With a few gestures as deft as sleight of hand, Wonderstein swept the cards scattered across the table into his coat.
"I'll see you tomorrow evening at the tavern entrance."
He disembarked from the carriage along with his party. Dozens of people were waiting for him outside.
"What took you so long!"
A black-haired girl who looked a year or two older than Nika stepped forward, scolding him.
"We made a snack bet with our fellow passengers along the way, you see."
"A snack bet? We've been waiting out here worrying about you people, and you were off having a grand old time."
The troupe leader of the circus, was it?
Watching him flounder under the scolding of a girl ten years his junior was somehow comical.
Nika felt a flicker of curiosity about them, but the urge to get away from him right this instant was stronger.
He parted from the man without having sorted through the emotions churning in his chest. He didn't speak a word all the way to his room.
"Your Highness, the shock appears to have been considerable."
Dmitri Kazenov, squad leader of the Imperial Guard, offered him consolation.
"You look rather pleased that I lost."
Nika spat the words out on reflex and immediately clamped his mouth shut. Prying into the hearts of those around him so carelessly—he hadn't done that since he'd grown up. If even his close aides began closing their minds to him, he would have to expend even more energy suspecting them and prying them open again.
Dmitri looked momentarily flustered, but quickly erased the reaction and let out a quiet smile.
"Well, what adult wouldn't feel a wash of satisfaction watching a little brat who strutted around acting like he knew everything finally snivel and cry?"
"Sir Dmitri!"
The female bodyguard cried out at him in reproach. Nika gestured toward her that it was all right.
"It's fine. I made a promise with Mitya. If I go digging into his thoughts without permission, he gets to speak his mind plainly. I apologize, Mitya. For suddenly reading you like that."
"I understand."
Dmitri nodded slowly.
"I felt something similar myself when I first got beaten by someone my own age, back when I thought I was a swordsmanship prodigy. How do you put it... It's... mortifying?"
"Sir Dmitri!"
Laughter leaked from Nika's mouth. He felt his melancholy mood slink away.
"Enough. You may go rest now. I want to be alone for a while. Because it's a little... mortifying, just as Mitya said."
Seeing that their lord had recovered his usual composure, the two guards nodded with crisp poise.
"Understood."
"But, Your Highness, the wager with that man...."
"I'll honor the promise. He just wants a few more rounds of card games. What of it?"
Nika dismissed his guards and collapsed onto the bed. Even though he'd come by carriage, he felt as drained as if he'd been mountain-climbing.
He recalled Wonderstein's face, looking at him with that smile.
Stripping away the terror, the helplessness, the shame, and regarding him with objective eyes—he was a remarkably handsome man. Even for Nika, who had seen countless beauties and handsome men while living in the Imperial Palace, such a specimen was rare.
'For the final wager, how about a kiss on my cheek? I'll put up the same thing I wagered in the fourth bet. I'll nullify all the earlier wagers you lost.'
He had narrowly blocked that final bet with a draw.
In Kiev, people close to one another often kissed each other on the cheek. Even between men. What he'd proposed wasn't entirely crossing a line.
But his insinuating tone had heavily suggested an intent to view himself as a man and Nika as a woman—and to toy with him over it. That was what had driven Nika to throw away everything and stake the match on his pride.
Of course, the murderous cheering from the two girls seated beside Wonderstein had also played a part.
'Those wavelengths were vicious.'
The instant Wonderstein had brought a kiss to his lips, two figures had nearly killed him with their stares: a doll-like girl with silver hair and a six-year-old child whose hair bristled as she puffed her cheeks in a scowl. Nika shook his head at the memory.
"Jumping to conclusions, the lot of them. I'm a man."
Nika shed his coat. The clothes beneath clung to his body, soaked with sweat.
Narrow shoulders, a slim waist, wide hips.
His overall physique was womanly, yes, but he was indisputably a man.
***
After we'd unpacked at the lodgings, we all changed into the bathrobes provided by the hotel and headed outside to enjoy the hot springs.
"We'll enjoy ourselves lightly for just one hour before dinner and then come back out."
The Golden Palace's hot springs were broadly divided into two categories.
The Heavenly Bath, and all the other springs.
The Heavenly Bath was mixed-gender, so you had to enter wearing a swimsuit, while the dozens of other springs were separated by gender and could be rented by the hour. If the Heavenly Bath was the lobby, the other springs were the private rooms.
The name "Heavenly Bath" came from the fact that you could admire the hot spring water as it cascaded off the edge of a cliff like a waterfall.
But unfortunately, the monster troupe members couldn't enter that area. The hotel management had refused, claiming they might alarm the other guests.
If they rejected people with tattoos, there was no room for us to argue. So they had to rent their own private spring.
Even that, however, required arguing with the staff at the entrance. The reason was the Ratmen.
Half the height of an ordinary human, with the heads of rats and bodies covered head to toe in fur—the Ratmen were a beastman race.
They were despised wherever they went. Even people who called the monster troupe members "victims of the curse" couldn't hide their revulsion when it came to Ratmen.
A mean-spirited, filthy, unclean race by nature.
That was the public perception of Ratmen.
But the troupe members who had lived alongside Ratmen for a long time knew it wasn't true.
Given a decent environment, Ratmen washed themselves thoroughly and stayed clean. They showed passion and responsibility in the work they were given.
The reason Ratmen were driven to squalor and cowardice was the position society forced on them. Unable to secure housing, they lived in sewers or slept under straw mats on the streets. The work they were assigned was always the irrational, degrading labor ordinary humans wouldn't touch—of course they became desperate and cunning.
And the reason Ratmen were treated as carriers of epidemics was their high resistance to disease. Their bodies produced potent antibodies against anything that invaded them.
Because such creatures spent so much of their lives in filthy places, they naturally carried all manner of pathogens on their bodies. That was why they'd been targeted as the source of the Black Death and massacred en masse.
The antibodies Ratmen produced in their bodies served as excellent ingredients for the Alchemy Guild's remedies. The representative example was "Milky Way."
The medicine's name originally came from the fact that it was water infused with dissolved "Starlight"—a powder byproduct created during the process of making Jewel Trill. Milky Way possessed the power to neutralize Devolut.
Later alchemists, unable to procure that Starlight ingredient, extracted blood serum from Ratmen who had survived the Curse Plague to produce the current Milky Way.
But unlike other remedies, Milky Way was difficult to mass-produce. Devolut was not a controllable disease. Finding a Ratman who had survived it properly and generated antibodies in their body was like plucking a star from the sky.
That was the internal situation of the Alchemy Guild as Gaston had explained it to me.
I knew that among my entourage were Ratmen who had been steadily exposed to trace amounts of Devolut over the past year. The Evolution Research Institute had informed me that their blood carried Devolut-resistant substances rivaling purified Milky Way.
I had only learned this recently.
What reason had Wonderstein had for keeping them with him?
Would he have needed to deliberately create a means to resist his own power?
Before I could ponder the question deeply, Clara came running from the distant counter, pumping her fist in the air.
"Troupe Leader, we succeeded!"
The negotiations had apparently concluded. We began heading toward the hot spring we'd rented.