15. Frankenstein's Successor (14)
The two younger brothers had been primed to tease their eldest brother the moment he stepped out of the tent. The sight of him—someone who would boldly speak his mind even under an intimidating police interrogation—losing his composure and rendered speechless when teased was simply too hilarious to them.
But when they actually laid eyes on him, both of them were momentarily struck speechless.
"Nika......brother?"
Mickey was the first to snap out of it and barely got the word out, but Umon simply stared, blank as someone whose soul had left him.
"S-Sorry... I look really weird, don't I...?"
Nika shyly squirmed, her face blushing at their flustered reactions. The two of them couldn't bear to look at her straight on; they averted their eyes and coughed awkwardly.
No matter how pretty a boy was, once he hit puberty, cross-dressing always had its limits. But in Nika's current state, there was no trace of a man to be found. The slender waist, the pleasingly wide hips, and the curved chest were unmistakably a woman's body.
The outfit she had chosen for today was the traditional dress of the Amur region. The Kievan people, once nomads, often wore trousers even as women in order to ride horses. But the Amur region was unique in that they wore skirts instead.
Instead, they added a side slit to their skirts, allowing one leg to be slipped out. Through the gap in the side of the skirt, Nika's pale leg was peeking out, half-revealed and half-hidden.
Perhaps noticing their stares, Nika straightened the side of the skirt and spoke rapidly, as if making excuses.
"The, the clothes turned out to be smaller than I thought... And the, the stockings I prepared were ripped, so I had no choice... I guess it was a mistake to buy them just by eye...."
Nika blamed her present state on choosing the wrong clothes. But she knew very well that wasn't the truth. The clothes weren't too small. Her body had grown larger.
The problem was the white powder she had swiped from Wonderstein. The moment she took it, her body began to change. A hot energy spread from her lower abdomen, and she felt as though her bones and muscles were twisting. It was as if a great pressure was kneading her whole body.
Starlight, a byproduct produced during the creation of the Eye of Kirkeus. Ingesting it could temporarily remove the modifications caused by Devolut. In Nika's case, it was the sex-change procedure she had undergone while still inside her mother's womb.
Like all Devolut-induced transformations, it hadn't made her into a complete man. It was closer to having draped a coat of blood and flesh over her body to make her look like a man. Inhaling the Starlight was equivalent to taking off that coat.
There wasn't even time to scream. The pain was fleeting, and the transformation happened in an instant. When she barely managed to get up and looked in the mirror, she was horrified. A woman who looked exactly like her was standing there, naked.
'Th-This is me?'
She ran her hands over her body. Something that hadn't been there before now rose on her chest, and what had been between her legs was gone. Her shoulders had narrowed, her hips had widened, and her jawline had slimmed. She had completely turned into a woman.
She touched herself here and there. This was no illusion or trick. Everything she touched and felt was vivid.
The newly revealed parts of her femininity were flesh that had only just come into the world, and they reacted with extreme sensitivity to any external stimulation. Every time she touched them, wondering if this was real, a pleasure she had never known sent shivers through her entire body.
"Hnn...."
A moan escaped before she knew it, and she quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. How could such a coy sound come out of her own mouth?
Shame and terror flooded her at the same time.
'Don't tell me... I have to live like this forever?'
Outside, her younger brothers were clamoring for her to hurry up. They were on the verge of bursting into the tent at any moment. She decided to solve the immediate problem first. She hurriedly changed into the clothes she had prepared.
"Hiss, damn it, what, what the hell is this... ugh!"
Every time the fabric brushed against her sensitive areas, she kept flinching. The clothes she'd bought for a man's body were, unsurprisingly, far too small. It took a considerable amount of time to change.
Before stepping out of the tent, she took one last look at herself in the mirror. Who, looking at a girl in a form-fitting skirt, would ever think of the Empire's Crown Prince?
'Ugh, and why are my breasts so big...?'
Her body was quite well-developed for her age. When she'd been a man, she'd worried about her slight frame; now the opposite was true.
This was because her suppressed femininity had burst out as a backlash. In an ordinary person, secondary sexual characteristics typically begin after age ten. Nika, however, had had her femininity suppressed for over four years. All of that accumulated development crashing into her fifteen-year-old baseline body at once meant that, physiologically, her female body was effectively nineteen.
"Let's hurry... to the arena."
Nika couldn't blame her younger brothers for constantly sneaking glances at her body. If the roles were reversed, she'd be just as startled and staring at someone she had always assumed was a man who suddenly showed up dressed like this.
Did they know that beneath these clothes was a real woman's body?
There wasn't much time left before the competition started. The three of them rushed to the venue where the event was about to begin. No words were exchanged between them. Partly because they were in a hurry, but more than anything, the shock of Nika's cross-dressing was too much.
Soon, their pace slowed drastically. Nika kept falling behind. The strap fastening the side slit kept her from lengthening her stride, and her bouncing chest hindered her running as well.
"Hey, didn't you go a little too hard on the cross-dressing? You just need to pass the inspection, that's all... Just what did you stuff in there?"
Mickey reached out and squeezed Nika's chest. Naturally, he'd assumed she had stuffed it with cotton or flour dough. But the squishy, palpable thing he felt... it was completely different from what he'd imagined. It was like....
"Hey, wh-what are you doing!"
Nika roughly smacked his hand away. Her face flushed bright red and she covered her chest, behaving exactly like a woman who had just been molested. She saw Mickey's expression and quickly composed herself, responding calmly as she straightened her chest area.
"You're ruining all the makeup I worked so hard on... I can't fix this by myself again...."
"Ah, right. Natasha helped you, didn't she? She's really good at stage makeup when we prepare our performances... She's amazing... making even something like this...."
Natasha was among the top agents in the Imperial Intelligence Department in infiltration and disguise skills. It was thanks to that talent that she had been put in charge of the troupe's makeup when she joined the circus. Her skill was so refined that she could turn Maya and Clara—people Yurakne had to spend one or two hours on just to make them look presentable—into dolls fresh out of a gift box in just thirty minutes.
Of course, what Natasha had actually helped with in Nika's disguise was limited to tying up her hair on both sides. Still, it was a better explanation than suddenly admitting she'd turned into a woman, so she credited her entire current appearance to Natasha's handiwork(?).
While Mickey felt reassured after receiving a plausible explanation for the sensation he'd felt, Umon found something odd about the way Nika had just screamed. The voice that had burst out reflexively in her panic was high and thin—just like a real woman's....
"Anyway, at this rate we won't make it in time. No choice—hey, Umon, carry Nika on your back."
"Right now...?"
"Yeah. There's no other way. We have to get used to it for the competition anyway, though it feels like we're wasting stamina...."
Umon glanced at Nika, who was fidgeting and looking at him, then reluctantly bent down.
"It's the first time I'm carrying a guy on my back, but... I can't just throw away a whole week's allowance...."
"Thanks, Umon."
Nika approached, whispering kindly. At that moment, the scent of a woman's skin hit Umon's nose sharply. His sense of smell was sharper than anyone else's in the circus troupe—so sharp he could even pick up the scent of blood from tens of meters away.
He made a point of ignoring the scent and shook his head, scrunching up his face.
"Ugh. That perfume stinks."
"Huh? I'm not wearing perfume."
"Oh, I mean the fabric freshener on your clothes."
Umon's skin was red by default, and his voice always sounded like a growl. Because of that, neither of them noticed that he was feeling embarrassed.
Thanks to Umon carrying Nika on his back as they ran, they just barely arrived at the competition starting point on time. The wide riverbank was crowded with thousands of people. Mickey kept shouting at them from behind as they entered, telling them to remember what they'd practiced.
"Umon, you're recognizable even from a distance."
"Troupe Leader?"
Not long after they stepped into the clearing, Wonderstein approached them. He looked at the cross-dressed Nika and flashed a mischievous smile.
"Ah, Nika, hoho, no—should I call you Miss Nika now?"
"Please, just Nika."
Wonderstein examined her figure and wore a troubled smile.
"I can see you're excited about shedding your male disguise after so long... but isn't this a little too blatant? I'm surprised Mickey and Umon aren't suspicious."
"Urk, th-this is all because of Natasha's makeup."
"Ah, I knew it! I was surprised because your figure has become so much more mature compared to a month ago. It was so flat back then."
"Such vulgar words...! This is all because of who...!"
Nika started to confront him about the drug but shut her mouth. She could read Wonderstein's inner thoughts. She'd expected that seeing her changed appearance would make him definitely suspect she had taken the powder, yet he seemed to have no clue at all.
What's going on? Is turning into a woman a side effect that only applies to me? But then, does that mean it might not wear off in a few hours for me either? I might never turn back into a man?
Fear suddenly surged over her. Because of its characteristic aura, Inspira—the authority bestowed by Kirkeus—was generally perceived as harmless. In practice, most of its abilities were the sort that ended as a comical joke.
But there were cases—a magician who botched a separation trick and had to live split in half, an acrobat who hid from a flying dagger that pursued him forever until it finally stabbed him to death, a contortionist who endlessly folded himself into a box and vanished from this world. All of these served as stark lessons that the power of a Demon God must never be handled carelessly.
Wonderstein's powder could well hold the same kind of danger. She recalled the legend of the prince who was turned into a princess by a Demon God's curse. Wasn't that exactly what she was now?
Nika tried to ask Wonderstein for more details about the white powder, but at that very moment a competition official at the main booth suddenly shouted into a megaphone.
"Hey! You two men! Dressing as a woman to compete is forbidden!"
Nika's body went rigid. Umon was just about to submit their IDs to the competition headquarters and receive their number tags.
Had she accidentally handed Umon the wrong ID? Startled when she turned into a woman, had she grabbed her male ID from their lodging?
All kinds of ominous thoughts rushed in. A chorus of shouts and laughter followed.
"Which neighborhood, who is it?"
"Tsk, tsk! Sneaking a man into the carried role is a foul! How shameless!"
"Pfft haha, let's see what she looks like cross-dressed!"
"Just strip him naked! He's not even a man!"
She thought the noises were directed at her. Her two hands clutching the skirt trembled. But Wonderstein wrapped an arm around her shoulders and shook his head, reassuring her.
"It doesn't seem to be a problem with your ID."
"......Pardon?"
"Look over there."
Two people were being dragged out by officials from the direction of the competition headquarters. They were Allen and a cross-dressed Joe.
But Joe's disguise was so half-hearted that anyone could tell at a glance he was a man. He had just haphazardly thrown on a floral dress and shoved some cushions into the chest. He hadn't even bothered to shave off his mustache!
"I told you so! I told you to take that off!"
"The mustache is my pride!"
"Even if you had taken it off, no one would've been fooled by you two!"
The two were flung straight into the mud outside the competition area, and the crowd roared with laughter. Even after that, Allen and Joe kept bickering with stubborn logic, entertaining the audience.
Wonderstein had been a streamer for a long time. He could sense the two of them were thoroughly enjoying the crowd's reaction. Getting caught and kicked out like this had probably been their intention all along.
The clowns who would handle the interludes—ones he had been planning to recruit in the new year. The thought flickered through Wonderstein's mind that those two, just as they were, might really be able to pull it off.