14. Melting Point (21)
14. Melting Point (21)
The bath assigned to the Monster Circus Troupe was tucked into the gloomiest, most secluded corner of the hotel. The management had put them there fearing that if word got out about monsters and Ratmen bathing nearby, other guests would complain.
"They explicitly stated that reserving a special room came with at least a second-grade hot spring..."
"This is third-grade."
Clara, who had led the group here while boasting about his negotiations with the hotel as though recounting a heroic exploit, took one look at the shabby entrance and clutched his head.
"Hing, I-I'm sorry. I should've been more thorough with the terms..."
By now it was far too late to march back to the lobby and demand a change. And even if they did, there was no guarantee they'd be given a better spot. It had taken thirty minutes of haggling just to secure this one.
"Not at all. We only have this place because of you, Clara."
Wonderstein swiftly reassured him. The others chimed in with a word of praise for the dejected secretary.
"A quiet bath's better than a crowded, noisy one anyhow."
"Right. What do the facilities matter for an open-air spring? Atmosphere's what counts."
"And drawing stares from strangers is a nuisance."
Their words lifted his spirits in an instant, and a bright smile spread across his face.
"Heheh, well, that's a relief then."
Ben Sullivan, trailing at the very rear of the group, stared at him and clicked his tongue. Looking at that guileless expression, it was impossible to believe this man was Wonderstein's right hand.
-You're a Madosa who crossed over from the Voodoo Cult, right? Welcome. My name is Clara, Master Wonderstein's right arm.
Clara, following Wonderstein's order to "show the new member the ropes," had laid out what he surmised was Wonderstein's objective.
-The Master is gathering the necessary materials and biding his time until the Circus Grand Prix. Until then, there's no need for anything unnecessary—just assist with his preparations. Our immediate goal is to put this circus on the Wonder Stage.
Sullivan's work had mostly involved his fists, but he was still a Madosa who hailed from the Voodoo Cult. He had no trouble grasping what Clara was implying.
He understood the shamanic significance of aligning a ritual on this staggering scale with such exacting terms, bound by a contract of this magnitude.
And Kirkeus was the Demon God of the circus.
Likely this entire journey was a foundation-laying operation for a rite the likes of which he couldn't yet fathom. As the Cult Leader had instructed, he resolved to behave himself and act as a simple troupe member unless new orders arrived.
"Looks like we'll need to head upstairs to buy bathing supplies."
"Shall we all go shopping together, then?"
"Hold on. Is there any point hauling Maya back and forth? She'd get tired just clinging on, too. How about you two take her inside first?"
"Fine by us."
At Yurakne's suggestion, Ella and Reina supported Maya and entered the hot spring ahead of the others.
"Let go."
The moment she was out of Wonderstein's sight, Maya shoved them away and flew through the air on her telekinesis.
The two exchanged a wry smile at the sight. Everyone in the troupe knew she deliberately played fragile in front of him.
But her situation was too pitiable to scold her for milking it, so everyone simply looked the other way. Wonderstein himself had asked that of them.
Past a passage that bent at a right angle, an open-air bath thick with steam came into view. The three women folded their clothes into the baskets nearby.
During their training camp, Ella and Reina had shared a washroom and seen each other undressed before. But Maya, who had shared a washroom with Clara and Karen, was seeing the two of them fully bare for the first time.
Ella's body called to mind a lithe cat. The way she stretched out her arms and legs as she undressed, like a cat unfurling from a nap, was crisp and buoyant. She even hummed along to the rhythm of the motions. For her, simply disrobing was enough to craft a short performance.
Maya's eye for gauging three-dimensional form was keener than anyone's. She swiftly calculated the dimensions of what hung on Ella's chest.
Memories surfaced of her days sculpting still-life illusions at the academy. A class would set an apple in the middle of the room, and everyone would practice capturing its form with their eyes. Ella's own was nearly identical in size and shape.
'That much I can catch up to. Give it two or three years...'
She spread her palm and mimed stroking something that wasn't there, soothing herself.
But the confidence she had forcibly wrung out evaporated the instant she laid eyes on Reina's body. The moment Reina pulled off her top, what sloshed free was larger than Maya's own head.
"Y-you cheat!"
"Huh?"
"What are you suddenly talking about?"
Ella and Reina tilted their heads at Maya, who floated in midair staring at them with a rigid expression. Neither of them seemed to realize what she was fixating on. Instead, they swept their gazes up and down her undressed body and spoke.
"Maya, you have been doing those lying-down exercises the doctor prescribed, right?"
"You did look like you never got enough exercise to begin with..."
"Y-you two...!"
"Hmm, you've softened up a bit. Your lower belly and inner thighs are getting doughy."
"Right, you've put on some flab here and there."
'Flab? Who's the one hauling around the biggest useless lumps of flesh here?'
Maya shot Reina a look thick with indignation. But the two had already looked away from her and were testing the bathwater.
"Temperature's just right."
"Let's get in. Ugh, it's freezing out here."
They hurried into the bath. Maya glared at their backs for a moment before lowering herself in after them.
A searing warmth heated their bodies through. They felt their whole frames going soft as if melting.
Snowflakes tumbling thickly from the sky crumbled apart as they neared the spring, vanishing after leaving the faintest ripple on the water's surface. For a long while, the three listened quietly to the bubbling murmur, tipsy on the heat and gazing blankly up at the falling snow.
"You really don't take that mask off even in the bath, huh."
"I can't. I told you, it's a curse I picked up coming out of Wonderland."
"Hmm, isn't it uncomfortable? Don't you need to wash your face?"
Wash her face. Reina recalled exactly what she asked of the Troupe Leader every time under that pretense, and she flusteredly shouted,
"N-Not at all! I-I don't need to..."
Ella eyed the flustered Reina with a puzzled look before turning her gaze to Maya.
"What about you? I heard the treatments are showing progress."
"A little."
"Are the massages helping?"
Massage. Maya pictured how she weaponized her sham illness to exploit the Troupe Leader's services and turned her head away, reddening.
"I-It's nothing special..."
Ella cocked her head at their reactions. Had she asked something wrong?
Her puzzlement didn't last long. Moments later, a gaggle of female Ratmen burst in, chattering loudly. Spotting the dry floor around the showers, they flung remarks at the three like "Before bathing! Showers are mandatory!" and "Squeak! Unsanitary! We can't live together!" before showering and climbing into the bath.
The spring was designed for human proportions, so the water was a little deep for them, but they paddled around vigorously with a dog-paddle-like motion. They pointed at a wall of cut bamboo on one side of the bath and cried out.
"Over there! The other side! Is the men's bath!"
"Stay alert! For any Peeping Toms!"
"At Ratmen height, that seems pretty unlikely..."
The Ratmen women shook their heads at Ella's observation.
"Not just! Fellow kin!"
"Humans! Must be watched for too!"
At their histrionics, Reina looked at them with questioning eyes.
"Who do you think is going to peep?"
"The Troupe Leader!"
"What?"
Bewilderment rose on all three faces.
"When we joined! This circus! We were body-inspected!"
"The Troupe Leader looked at my body! With lecherous eyes!"
"We were worried! He'd steal our chastity!"
"In the early days! I couldn't sleep at night! Afraid the Troupe Leader would pounce on me!"
At the Ratmen women's absurd nonsense, Ella and Reina looked at each other and burst out laughing. Even Maya, who rarely laughed, let out a snort.
"If anyone in this troupe has something going on with the Troupe Leader,"
"Yura would be the one."
"True."
The three tidied the conversation away by invoking Yurakne's name. Though in truth, none of them actually believed Wonderstein had slept with her.
'Heh, you can't even imagine the kind of massages the Troupe Leader gives me.'
'Hmph. That man only ever walks on eggshells around me. Whatever happens, I come first.'
'Hehe, they have no idea that the Troupe Leader and I bathed together and did all sorts of things, do they?'
The three of them addressed one another in tones far more polite than usual.
Before long, voices sounded from the men's bath beyond the fence. It seemed the shopping party had returned.
Ella cleared her throat to signal that there were women present. But before she could, Minova struck first.
"Alright, boys, whip 'em out."
Whip them out? Silence fell over the women's bath. Even the Ratmen stopped splashing and turned toward the men's side. Ella shook her head.
No, surely not. They wouldn't possibly engage in such vulgar behavior just because they thought they were among themselves...
"Whoa, that's huge!"
"Umon's is exactly what you'd expect from Umon."
"Isn't that the biggest among us?"
Really?
The three turned to each other. They were equally mortified.
Then came the hiss of a jet of water.
"Whoa, that's practically a waterfall."
"With Umon's build, that's only to be expected."
"Huh, but the Trimery Triplets don't have three?"
"Hey, we've only got three heads. Everything else is standard single-person issue."
"What'd be the point of three? Take turns firing?"
It was getting worse. The conversation was growing increasingly explicit.
Unable to take it any longer, Ella shot to her feet. She was about to shout at them to cut out the crude talk. But the next words pinned her body in place.
"Oh, the Troupe Leader's here."
"Oh, Troupe Leader!"
"Get a look at the Troupe Leader's."
"Not as big as Umon's... but it's still bigger than ours."
"Ha-ha, Troupe Leader, have you ever used that thing?"
Wonderstein replied to Sven's question in a voice tinged with laughter.
"As a matter of fact, I just gave Yurakne a shot on my way in."
Reina sucked in a sharp, audible breath. Ella's face twisted like a demon's. Maya's expression froze as hard as an icicle blade.
At that moment, the door to the women's bath swung open, and Yurakne, Clara, and Ruelo walked in. The three already inside slowly turned their heads and fixed her with frosty glares.
"Wh-what's the matter, you three?"
Yurakne faltered backward in confusion.
Reina aimed a chilly-eyed stare at her from behind her mask and pointed.
"Your hair... is wet."
At her remark, Ella and Maya noticed the dampness in Yurakne's hair. The shop was inside the hotel building. There was no reason she'd have been caught in the snow just to buy supplies.
That was clearly... that was clearly...
The traces of a quick... something... with the Troupe Leader... and then a shower...
Ella squeezed her eyes shut. Who that man slept with had nothing to do with her. She couldn't fathom why rage was boiling up from her chest.
Reina's chest grew just as heavy. Hadn't she shared the most intimate conversations with him? Did he truly regard her as nothing more than a patient?
Yet even the reactions of those two could hardly be called extreme compared to what Maya displayed.
Rumble.
Around Maya, the bathwater surged upward in a mass the size of a house. Whispers from the Demon God rang in her ears: the voices of the Troupe Leader and Yurakne, drunk on pleasure, devouring each other.
She could hear her friends beside her pleading with her to stop, but she couldn't control her magic.
Was she jumping to conclusions again?
No. This was real. It had actually happened. Right before her eyes was unmistakable circumstantial evid—
Just then, a booming shout sounded from beyond the fence.
"All right, let the water-gun battle begin!"
A roar went up, mixed with the splashing of water and the hiss of streams firing.
"Hey, Umon, that size is cheating!"
"Gah, gah! This water pressure's no joke!"
"That's not a water gun, it's a pump!"
"Dammit, if only we had arms for three people, we could hold three water guns."
"Look at that fire rate! I should've bought the expensive one like the Troupe Leader, too!"
"Blow a whole month's allowance on it?"
In an instant, the men's bath had dissolved into chaos.
But the women's bath, by contrast, fell quiet. It did not take the three of them long to realize they had misread the situation entirely.
The whispering in Maya's ears ceased. Her magic scattered, having lost its purpose.
At the same time, the mass of water she had raised came crashing down. Maya's body, which had ridden it to its highest point, was swept over a wave beyond the spring and tumbled into the brush below.
"Maya fell off the cliff!"
"Waaah! Yura, use the Magic Lasso!"
"Grab hold! Samson! Lend us your strength!"
"What's going on in the women's bath? What happened?"
"D-Don't come in here!"
"Get lost!"
The commotion took a while to settle. Once the men confirmed nothing serious had happened, they went back to their water-gun war with newly purchased armaments, while the women shared a laugh over the misunderstanding they had all just entertained.
'Hoohoot, but what should I do?'
Yurakne swallowed her laughter as she watched the three girls' relieved expressions.