15. Frankenstein's Successor (12)
Two days after watching Betty's performance, Ella and Reina returned to Billy and Betty's camp. Betty's promise to invite them hadn't been empty courtesy. She sent her gorilla Nina to deliver the invitation in person.
That day happened to feature Billy and Betty's aquatic animal trainers performing acrobatics at the stage built on the lake. Midwinter meant melting the lake's surface and regulating the water temperature had taken considerable time, so their show had barely managed to begin on the fifth day of the festival.
"They can communicate with fish like that? Wow, your troupe members are incredible!"
Even Ella, who had seen practically every form of animal-taming acrobatics, was witnessing something new. Her jaw dropped as dolphins bounced balls between their snouts, swam through hoops, and performed aerial flips. Betty, who had invited them to the highest seats to watch the show together, burst out laughing at her enthusiastic reaction.
"Ahaha, thank you! Though I should add—dolphins aren't fish. They're mammals."
Whether whales qualified as mammals or fish had been a long-standing debate in taxonomy. Historically, whales had been classified as fish, but about a hundred years ago, a handful of zoologists began arguing they were mammals. After fierce back-and-forth, the scientific community had concluded whales were mammals, but it had taken far longer for that to be reflected in daily life. Taxation and fishing permits complicated the matter considerably.
"Whales breathe with lungs and nurse their young, so they're..."
Every time Betty shared some piece of animal knowledge, Ella nodded fervently and hung on every word. Today's topic especially captivated her—aquatic creatures were something she, hailing from the desert, rarely encountered, and her reaction was all the more enthusiastic.
Reina smiled watching her friend's behavior, but she herself remained on guard. Unlike Ella, who accepted outside goodwill without hesitation, Reina was far more cautious. She knew better than anyone that a stellar reputation as an acrobat didn't guarantee good character. She couldn't relax until she knew exactly why Betty had invited them.
Fortunately, about halfway through the show, Betty revealed her purpose. She wanted to hear the full details about the script "The Five Acrobats" that the two of them had performed.
"Why's that?"
Ella's expression soured as she asked. She still burned with indignation thinking about the abuse they'd taken over that fake script. Betty raised her hands, emphasizing she meant no harm.
"The truth is, eighteen years ago, I crossed paths with that so-called 'Illusory 13th' script. Just a small portion of it, though."
"R-really? You're saying you met Christian?"
Ella looked incredulous, and Reina studied Betty with skeptical eyes.
Many people claimed to know the playwright Christian's identity. Yet even the most credible testimonies contradicted each other. Some said he was a young man. Some said a stooped old man. Some even insisted he'd been a young woman.
Christian scholars had analyzed the content and handwriting of his scripts, trying to deduce his gender, age, and birthplace. Nothing had ever been definitively established. His identity remained shrouded. Betty claiming to have met him—their disbelief was natural.
"Heh. I said I crossed paths with him. Never said I met him." She paused. "Years ago, I had access to a famous designer's atelier. I saw the costumes they crafted after receiving a letter from Christian. To make those costumes, the designer needed to know parts of the script's contents. That's how I got to steal glances at it."
Ella nodded, finally understanding. The rumors about the Illusory 13th had persisted for over a decade precisely because of the clues Christian had scattered across the world. While writing his scripts, he'd sent letters everywhere—collecting research, requesting musical revisions, seeking advice on stage direction.
"Does that atelier still exist?"
"No. It was destroyed in the Circus Grand Prix terror attack eighteen years ago."
A solemn silence fell. Anyone in this industry grew up hearing about the tragedies tied to that incident. The letter a dying young acrobat left for her mother. The orchestra that played on even as the Wonder Stage plummeted from the sky. Not a single story failed to wring the heart.
"Ah, I didn't mean to darken the mood. What I'm trying to say is—I don't think that 'The Five Acrobats' you performed was entirely made up. Where do you think this outfit came from? The atelier's commission was to create costumes for the five leads of the play. What I'm wearing now is modeled after the costume worn by the character in charge of 'taming.'"
"Wow, really?"
Color returned to Ella's face. If she had to name her two favorite things in the circus world, they would be Christian and animal taming. That was why playing the trainer role in his legendary thirteenth script—"The Five Acrobats"—had made her so happy.
The disappointment when it turned out to be fake had been crushing, but hearing that part of it had been true all along restored a little of her pride. Especially knowing the outfit she wore regularly was modeled after a costume that had almost made it onto the stage of "The Five Acrobats"!
"I'm not the only one in the industry who believes parts of 'The Five Acrobats' are real. As you know, Christian left clues everywhere. Of course, nobody believes it's entirely authentic. Most people think someone gathered those clues and pieced together an elaborate fake. But still... I wanted to tell you that the costume you imitated from me—that, at least, is real. That's why I arranged this meeting."
"Hehe, thank you! That really means a lot."
From then on, the two of them hit it off, chattering away about every subject under the umbrella of animal taming. Even Reina, who had stayed on edge, finally relaxed and joined the conversation now and then. They talked without noticing the time passing, and before long the dolphin, seal, and otter water show had ended.
Betty genuinely enjoyed the meeting. She'd originally approached them just to build connections with promising newcomers, but it turned out better than expected. Reina was as cold and guarded as the rumors said, but Ella—a fellow devotee of the tamer's path—admired her, and they connected on many points.
Best of all, the animals Ella trained were only rats and pigeons. Her fatal flaw was that her obsessive possessiveness always crossed the line and ruined her attempts to maintain long relationships with talented trainers.
"Edward!"
"Yes, boss!"
At her call, the parrot waiting on a distant perch flew over and landed on the table. She stroked its feathers and spoke.
"Ella, I'd love to keep playing with you, but I have troupe business to see to now. Alexander's training program—the one you wanted to watch—will be starting behind our tent soon. Edward will guide you, so go have a look."
"Wow! Really? Great!"
Ella sprang to her feet, beaming. She looked ready to dash after the parrot right then, but paused as if something had just occurred to her and turned back.
"By the way—the name Alexander. Did you take it from that Alexander, the famous trainer of the 'Flying Baby Elephant'?"
Betty's expression stiffened for a moment before she answered smoothly.
"Of course. I admired him deeply. Though it's tragic he was crushed to death by the very elephant he trained in his later years."
"Ah, I see. Well, I'm off to watch! Lead the way, Edward!"
"O-of course! Follow me!"
The parrot shot a quick glance at Betty before taking to the air. Reina tilted her head at the subtle shift in atmosphere, then followed the two.
Once they were completely out of sight, Betty opened the documents she'd brought. They were applications for tomorrow's new-acrobat selection trial.
She ignored the applicants' names and backgrounds. Only one thing interested her: the animals they raised. Humming to herself like a wealthy lady flipping through a department store catalog, she read through them.
***
"Creator, do you not like going out with me?"
The girl with tangerine hair looked up at Wonderstein with a hesitant expression. The rotation for festival outings with him had finally reached Ruelo's turn. Though this hadn't been Ruelo's own request—it was for Samson, who shared her body.
Wonderstein stroked the girl's hair reassuringly as she blinked up at him with faintly apprehensive eyes.
"Not at all. I must have looked that way because I was lost in thought."
"Is that so! I understand! Then, could you buy me just one of those... those lollipops over there?"
She bounced a little as she spoke. Wonderstein looked at her with an expression of pure fondness and nodded.
"Of course."
He hailed a passing cart vendor, bought the largest lollipop, and held it out to Samson. Her face lit up as if she'd been given the world, and she began licking it at once. He watched her with satisfaction, then drifted back to his earlier worry.
Despite last night's events, Maya's Affection level, according to the system, remained unchanged. Even after she'd directed every imaginable expression of disappointment and disgust at him. The Affection level could clearly rise and fall—Ella's had once bounced between 14 and 15. So why wouldn't it drop now, no matter how much he displeased her?
One hypothesis explained it. The Affection level represented only the accumulation of positive factors, not negative ones.
Ella's Affection level toward him probably measured her feelings for him as a troupe leader, a circus enthusiast, a partner. Maya's Affection level probably measured the emotions she felt toward him as a teacher, a benefactor, a fellow magic researcher. Nothing else accounted for the current situation.
It was a bitter conclusion, in a way. If their Affection levels didn't drop even when he'd done something so personally disappointing to them, that meant they hadn't felt any personal fondness for him in the first place.
The moment he realized this, an inexplicable loneliness washed over him. He'd taken pleasure in watching his members' Affection levels tick upward as this life went on. Seeing them trust and follow him more and more had felt almost like gaining a new family.
But now it seemed those numbers might not measure personal closeness at all. They might be nothing more than the goodwill one feels toward a source of convenience. Hadn't Maya, whom he'd trusted, turned on him the instant he made a mistake? He'd never imagined she would hurl such abuse at him, or slap him across the face.
'Then is it right to let Ella go too?'
He'd never seen her so animated as she'd been these past few days. He'd heard her gush more than once that Billy and Betty was the dream circus troupe she'd wanted to join since childhood.
Watching that, a sudden worry had crept in: what if she said she wanted to leave? Would he have to pull out the hostage card and threaten her again?
Back when he had no one else to rely on, necessity would have prevented him from even considering letting her go. Even now, he wanted to cling to "Affection level 47" as an excuse to keep holding onto her. To tell himself she wanted to stay, too.
But losing her wouldn't actually prevent him from carrying out the Main Quest anymore. He had more people to support him now. In that case, if the Affection level didn't truly reflect her feelings, he had no real justification for keeping her.
'Billy and Betty, huh...'
Wonderstein pulled up what he knew about the animal-specialist circus. They had appeared in TTT as well. Participants in the Circus Grand Prix, but oddly enough, they'd shown up in TT2 rather than TT1.
TT2 began when heroes heard that monsters were appearing in the wreckage of the Wonder Stage and went to investigate. Its Prologue Stage was essentially a destroyed version of TT1's final stage.
When the heroes arrived, they found one circus troupe already there, picking through the ruins. Their name: Billy and Betty. Its leader, Betty, had gotten her hands on a Fragment of Trill and was scheming to claim the power of Wonderstein that dwelled within it.
After defeating countless mutated acrobats and beasts, the heroes reached the heart of the Wonder Stage and confronted her—now fused with the bear she'd raised, transformed into a monster. She'd succeeded in seizing the Fragment of Trill, but she could never truly control it. Wonderstein's soul, embedded in the fragment, dominated her instead. Under his command, she shattered the fragment into six pieces and dispatched them to the Six Great Theaters.
She was TT2's Prologue Stage boss. The heroes defeated her, and the plot of TT2 revolved around tracking down the six fragments she'd sent across the Six Great Theaters.
Her villainy belonged to TT2's story. According to the lore, she'd operated as a perfectly normal circus leader before that, so there was no cause for concern yet. But viewing her through the lens of possibly losing Ella made every small flaw stand out.
He scraped his memory for every obscure suspicion ever posted in the community forums, trying to build a case for why Billy and Betty wasn't a place worth joining. Just as he'd latched onto one that seemed plausible, Samson called to him in a tearful voice.
"Creator, my candy... my candy..."
Maybe the lollipop he'd bought was too large, or maybe she'd swung it around with too much force. The stick snapped under the strain, and the candy shattered against the ground.
"Oh dear. Don't cry. I'll buy you a new one."
"I don't want a lollipop anymore! A f-frail... pathetic... thing like that... I don't even want to look at..."
"All right. There, there. What would you like instead?"
"...Mm, wait!"
Was it because she shared a body with a child? Samson's speech and mannerisms seemed to grow increasingly younger.
He set his worries aside for the moment and focused on keeping Samson company. Because of that, by the time they returned to camp, he'd completely forgotten the suspicion he'd unearthed—and even that he'd unearthed one at all.