15. Frankenstein's Successor (6)
The Monster Circus troupe had only just wrapped a week-long run and crossed over into Kaldir. Normally, after five straight days of performing, they would have collapsed and slept for two days solid.
That changed once Carlson joined. His massages had the troupe fully recovered within half a day, with no lingering side effects.
The monster performers' bodies were built differently from ordinary people, which meant the spots where their muscles knotted and seized were equally unusual. Carlson spent a few days observing how each of them moved, then devised custom massage sequences and stretches tailored to each individual.
That went far beyond mere technique. Only decades of hands-on experience with human muscle and flesh could make something like that possible.
When Carlson first signed on, Wonderstein had privately questioned whether a rubdown specialist really had a place in a circus troupe. Now, having seen what the man could do, he was openly delighted. He'd already resolved to entrust Maya's treatment to him.
His own efforts had simply never kept pace with the doctor's original prescriptions. The thought of her living with a permanent disability because of his incompetence—a disability that could have been cured—was unbearable.
Carlson examined her legs and immediately pressed firmly into several pressure points. Maya fought to keep still, but this wasn't the kind of thing you could suppress through sheer will. Her leg jerked involuntarily, kicking upward.
"Miss Maya! Your leg moved! Your leg! That wasn't telekinesis this time, was it? Right?"
"...No."
Wonderstein felt like he could fly. If not for The Smiling Man, he might have wept right there.
Something he had failed to accomplish in an entire month, and Carlson had managed it in minutes. A reputation thoroughly earned. But even after witnessing his skill firsthand, Maya flatly refused to accept further treatment from him.
"I want to receive it from you, Troupe Leader."
Physical contact was a sensitive matter for a girl her age. Preferring one person's hands over another was nothing unusual. But for Maya to dig her heels in like this—when the stakes were whether she would live as a cripple for the rest of her life—struck Wonderstein as deeply frustrating.
"Carlson's skill far outclasses mine. For your recovery, accepting his help is the wisest course."
"I still want to receive it from you, Troupe Leader."
She delivered the words with unwavering stubbornness, then sealed her lips. Wonderstein shot Carlson a look that said *do something*, but Carlson simply shook his head, his expression stolid.
"If she truly insists, I see no reason you shouldn't continue, Troupe Leader. When I palpated those pressure points, I could barely detect any residual paralysis. It felt like nothing more than the numbness anyone gets from sitting too long. I suspect my work was merely the finishing touch on the treatment you have been providing all along."
"Still, you would do a better job of—"
"Instead, let me teach you a massage method that excels at nerve stimulation."
With Carlson putting it that way, Wonderstein could press no further. He stole a glance at Maya, who was staring at him intently. The truth was, he was fated to go soft in front of her. Her injury was his fault, after all. Left with no other choice, he accepted her demand.
"Very well. I will continue. And I will learn everything you teach me to the best of my ability."
Maya barely suppressed the twitch at the corners of her lips. The next phase of treatment after nerve stimulation was yoga. That meant him holding her body directly, guiding her into various postures.
She swallowed hard. A few of the positions sketched in the prescription surfaced in her mind: the assistant embracing the patient's waist from behind, using his knee to press her thighs upward; the assistant facing the supine patient, lifting her legs to rest on his shoulders.
All of them were performed with the patient lying down. Two bodies pressed flush, rolling together across a mattress. Feeling each other's warmth, each other's breath. Exchanging glances. Acts that bordered on what only married couples might do—and she would be doing them with the Troupe Leader.
She had already tasted pleasure from his tongue and his hands on more than one occasion. This time, it was her turn to tempt him.
*Don't get your hopes too high. It could take a week. No, wouldn't that be thinking too poorly of Teacher? Two weeks! Yes. Two weeks should be plenty.*
An image surfaced in her mind: Wonderstein lunging at her like a beast. Countless other blush-inducing scenes replayed in her head. She had to be careful not to unconsciously manifest them with her illusions. No one else in the room had the faintest idea what kind of imagination was unspooling behind her expressionless mask.
Yet three weeks into the yoga regimen, Wonderstein still hadn't crossed even a sliver of the line Maya had been hoping he would cross. He mechanically repeated the prescribed treatments and nothing more.
Was the problem that she lacked feminine allure? Would things be different if she were Yurakne or Reina? Maya had never resented her girlish, undeveloped body more fiercely.
After days steeped in gloom, she stumbled onto a piece of information that shattered everything. She had a habit of using transparent paint to slip into Wonderstein's bedroom and blankly observe his face until her magic reserves ran dry.
Once the financial belt-tightening began, however, their lodgings had shrunk in size, and the Troupe Leader had acquired a roommate, so she had curbed her spying. But a few days ago, deep in the grip of her agonizing, she had soaked herself in paint without thinking and aimed her steps toward his quarters. That was when she overheard a conversation between him and Nika.
"Troupe Leader, did you use my cup?"
"Yes. My own got packed poorly during loading. It shattered."
"Th-that doesn't mean you can just use someone else's cup so... so unsanitarily! Another person's lips touched it...!"
"Heh. Come now, is that really worth fussing over? Haven't we already kissed?"
"Ugh, th-that was—!"
The opening exchange was a perfectly mundane squabble between roommates. Maya and Ella bickered daily over whose things were whose.
But the moment she registered the latter half of the conversation, the first half was completely erased from her mind.
*Two men... did what?*
She willed it to be a misunderstanding. Hoped the next words out of their mouths would prove her wrong.
Instead, everything they said to each other afterward operated on the clear premise that they had kissed. Maya's genius-level intellect informed her that no logic on earth could interpret their exchange any other way.
In that instant, lightning struck her mind. Every doubt that had been accumulating, piece by piece, resolved into clarity.
Could the reason the Troupe Leader had never shown any physical interest in her body... could the reason he was so kind to the female troupe members but never, ever became romantically involved with any of them... could it be... could it possibly be...
*The Troupe Leader is... into men...?*
"We'd best head out soon. Everyone is waiting."
Today's massage session was finished. Wonderstein straightened Maya's body supine once more, tidied her rumpled clothes, and helped her into her coat. While he did so, she stared blankly at his face.
"Alright, onto my back now."
"...Yes."
Maya looped her arms around Wonderstein's neck and buried her face against his back. His hands settled beneath her, supporting her where her thighs met her hips. In earlier days, every moment of physical contact like this would have sent her pulse racing as she imagined what the Troupe Leader might think of her.
But no longer. Now that she understood no amount of effort would ever let her become more than a protégée in his eyes, she sank into an unbroken melancholy.
***
The city of Kaldir had invited a total of seven circus troupes to the festival. Strength Show-off, tightrope walking, animal taming, Ground Acrobatics, and shooting—the Traditional Five Acts—along with a clown troupe and a performance-design troupe. Each was distinguished by being composed entirely of a single type of performer.
Two of them already had prior ties to the Monster Circus Troupe. Wonderstein and Maya had received invitations from people in both groups, which granted them easy access behind the stage.
Performers from all seven troupes bustled back and forth. They had scarcely entered before a girl with vivid red hair, dressed in black tights, shorts, and a short coat, approached them.
"When I spotted an eccentric carrying a beautiful doll on his back, I wondered who it might be. Turns out it's you, Troupe Leader."
Papael Circus was a troupe representing the "Ground Acrobatics" discipline and had been invited to the festival in that capacity. Karen greeted them warmly, her eyes going to Maya on his back. When Maya merely nodded listlessly in response, Karen tilted her head.
"Then I'll entrust Miss Maya to you for a while."
"Who invited you, Troupe Leader?"
"The Troupe Leader of the Silver Screen."
Among existing troupes, no circus was composed entirely of performance directors—such an outfit could not logically exist. By the reasoning that each individual was equally a director and a designer, the Silver Screen Circus, made up entirely of illusion mages, had been invited to represent the "production" discipline.
The moment Wonderstein vanished completely into the Silver Screen's area, Karen, who had been holding her tongue, slipped closer to Maya and whispered.
"Did something happen? What's wrong?"
"Karen..."
Maya looked at her friend. Karen had spent her life jostling among men. Perhaps she could untangle this misunderstanding. When Maya told her what she'd overheard, Karen didn't answer immediately. She struck a thoughtful pose before speaking.
"That alone doesn't tell you much. The other guy is an imperial aristocrat, right? Are you sure it was a real, romantic kiss? People around here kiss each other on the cheek even between men. And not having a girlfriend isn't proof of anything either. Look at our Hobbs. He's not so bad-looking he'd get passed over, but he lives like a widower—shabby as can be, well into his mid-thirties. There's such a thing as disposition. A man can attract plenty of women and still never end up with one. For someone like the Troupe Leader, who's walked a single-track life devoted to the circus, women probably just don't register on his radar."
"You think...?"
Maya felt some of the fog in her heart begin to thin. At that very moment, two figures emerged from the distant Silver Screen tent: Wonderstein and Arno, the leader of the Silver Screen Circus.
The sight triggered a memory that struck her with force—a conversation she'd had with her father just before leaving home the previous year.
That was when her father had first revealed that Eunmak Arno, famed for his illusion magic, was an old acquaintance of both him and her mother. Maya, who had always dreamed of becoming an illusion mage, had pressed him on why he'd never mentioned it before.
"We parted on... somewhat bad terms."
Her father had retrieved a painting from the corner of the storeroom. Three figures were depicted inside it. He told her he had painted it himself.
"Arno and your mother conjured the illusions. I simply painted what I saw."
"So why did you part on bad terms?"
After a moment's troubled hesitation, her father had answered like this:
"It was a love triangle."
"You were rivals for Mother?"
At her question, her father had looked briefly flustered, then adopted the playful expression he so often wore.
"No. They were rivals for me. Ha ha ha!"
Knowing her father's habit of cracking stupid jokes, she had naturally ignored that.
"So would it be all right if I sought Arno out?"
Her father had smiled at his daughter, who stood tilting her head with a blank expression.
"Why? Afraid he might develop some other sort of feeling for you?"
"No. I'm afraid he might throw me out, since I'm the daughter of his rival."
"That matter is long settled. He told me you could come anytime. And there's not the slightest need to worry about him harboring any strange intentions toward you. He isn't like ordinary people. He..."
He had paused to let out a sigh, then continued.
"He has a secret. It's not mine to reveal beforehand. Meet him yourself, and judge."
Maya had nodded absently.
"All right."
"Now, then, my darling daughter. Before you go—a kiss for Daddy's cheek..."
"Get lost. You're a nuisance."
The warnings her father had entrusted to her about Eunmak Arno before she left.
A love triangle.
Arno's secret.
Why her father had said she had nothing to worry about.
Every fiber of Maya's focus lanced toward the two men in conversation. Their laughter, their glances, the rhythm of their breathing. Her instincts cried out: this was not the kind of current that flowed between men twenty-some years apart in age.
It couldn't be. It couldn't be. It couldn't possibly be.
A razor-edged intuition traced a cold line down her spine.
"Karen."
"Mm?"
"Help me."
Maya drew the bottle of transparent paint from her coat and clutched it tight.