1. Patron Anais (4)
1. Patron Anais (4)
It came as no surprise that toying with nobles invited punishment.
—Guaaards!
—Remove this man at once!
Sharp shouts and the tramp of military boots briefly shook the manor.
—You shameless, degenerate magician!
—Throw him in the dungeon for now!
Wonderstein and Ella were dragged off by the soldiers and locked in the manor's underground cell.
"I made the offer in good faith. Didn't expect it to go this way."
Wonderstein shook his head as he settled onto the cell's cot.
"Your problem is you were smirking the whole way through. They barely listen even when you're serious."
Even now, a smile lingered on his lips.
Frustration surged through Ella.
Was this all just a game to him?
She muttered inwardly.
Crazy demon bastard.
"Every time I travel with you, you take years off my life."
Ella let out a sigh and slumped onto the bed.
Across from her, through the bars, Wonderstein sat watching.
He regarded her with a placid smile.
"Is the situation all that serious right now?"
"If you put it like that... honestly, it's nothing much. No major crime. The worst case, we spend a night here, then the soldiers toss us out the gates. The real problem is having to go back to scraping by on the road again—wait, you...!"
Her face went pale, as though a thought had struck her.
"You're not planning to do something to the people in this manor, are you?"
"Heh heh, do something like what?"
He grinned back at her.
You repulsive bastard!
"This is always the pattern with you!"
The genial smile, the mild tone—it was all a mask.
He let insults slide off him without a flicker of reaction.
Then, the instant his target let their guard down.
He would flip and show his true face.
She recalled what had become of the villagers who had been discourteous to him.
The ones who died were the lucky ones.
Those still alive were no longer truly living.
She couldn't forget the look in their eyes as they begged her to kill them.
Ella's gaze flooded with terror.
The demon couldn't touch her—the contract bound him.
So she could be as insolent to him as she pleased.
But other people were different.
Anyone besides Ella, he could toy with and kill on a whim.
That was what she feared.
"Ah."
Wonderstein caught on to what was worrying her.
The atrocities Wonderstein had committed featured prominently in the games, too.
A mad demon who treated humans like playthings.
Yet still clung to polite speech and a smile—a contradiction of civility.
That peculiar charisma was what drove his role as the final boss across the entire trilogy.
Alongside the three protagonists, he was a figure who defined TTT's identity.
But the man here and now was not that man.
He had no hobby of turning people into monsters or killing them the moment they rubbed him the wrong way.
More to the point, he lacked the ability.
He was just an ordinary human with a measly ten Devoluts.
Wonderstein studied Ella as she bristled with open hostility.
He absolutely could not let on how weak he really was.
If it came out that the current him was a powerless, ordinary human...
—Kill the demon!
—Fight for our freedom!
He could picture it: the troupe members seizing weapons and charging at him.
And himself, helplessly overwhelmed.
To keep that from happening, he had to perform the Wonderstein everyone expected, by whatever means necessary.
Bold. Absolutely unflappable.
Wonderstein tried another round of self-hypnosis, the kind that hadn't worked the first time.
"Heh heh, I see what's worrying Miss Ella. But you needn't be so concerned. I haven't given up on the Viscountess's patronage. If only for that, I won't do anything to the people here."
Following the original story's course was already out the window.
However, the quest window was still active.
That meant a chance remained.
He had a rough idea what it was.
Ella fixed him with a dubious look.
"Give it up. The Viscountess won't even see you again."
"There is an opportunity."
"How? You plan to force your way in?"
"If I must."
"You—!"
Ella's expression twisted dangerously.
Wonderstein raised a hand to calm her.
"I used the word 'force,' but I won't do anything that harms the people in this manor. So please, don't worry too much."
Ella pursed her lips and shot back.
"...You mean it?"
"Heh heh, if I'm lying, can you actually stop me?"
"...Son of a bitch."
"So just relax and rest. No point making yourself sick with worry."
She glared at him for a long moment, then retreated to the corner and lay down with her back turned.
Going this far to protect other people.
A good kid.
Wonderstein allowed himself a faint smile, then sank into other thoughts.
There was a reason he'd specifically said he wouldn't touch "the people in this manor."
He recalled the face he'd passed as the soldiers dragged him out of the reception room.
A man with a neatly trimmed beard and a ruddy complexion.
—Anya, what is the meaning of this?
—Ah, Uncle. It's nothing. Another pack of frauds came calling.
Anais had called him uncle.
That had to be the important guest who had supposedly arrived out of the blue today.
Wonderstein recognized that face.
Pierre Maupassant.
He, too, was a figure who appeared during TT3's Prologue Stage.
And if he was the same man Wonderstein had seen in the game, then something bad was going to happen in this manor tonight.
Objective
: Secure patronage from Viscountess Bergson.
The quest was not "cure the Viscountess's illness"—it was "secure her patronage."
So long as he found a way to put the Viscountess in her debt...
Wonderstein lay back on the cot and waited for the quiet of the night.
***
Anais knew she was special.
She grasped books that gave grown adults trouble.
She could see straight through the logical threads linking numbers and numbers.
Being cooped up in the manor was stifling, true, but she didn't exactly hate being treated like a princess.
"She can't survive without everyone's care"—looked at another way, that also meant she was special enough to warrant everyone's care.
The machine that always trailed behind her was the emblem of that specialness.
Who else lived with the support of a device worth more than a whole manor?
Who else consumed a meal's worth of nutrient fluid that cost as much as its weight in gold?
She was that kind of special existence.
The young lady who'd be shut in the manor her whole life.
The young lady who'd depend on a machine her whole life.
Our poor young lady.
The pitying looks from the servants.
Hmph. Let them run their mouths all they want.
I'm pitiful?
Lives like yours, suffering over pennies—those are the pitiful ones.
I am not pitiful at all.
I am a noble.
I am rich.
I am a genius.
I am special.
I am...
Haa.
Haa. Haa.
Anais buried her face in her hands.
I can't breathe!
I'm going mad from the suffocation!
That oxygen mask clamped over her nose and mouth!
She wanted to rip the damn thing off right now!
She wanted to feel the air outside!
Fury at the constriction boiled up from her chest.
I am special.
I am special.
This was how...
How many times a day she soothed herself.
Endlessly repeating it to herself.
But this was a lie.
The thoughts she'd just summoned were not her true feelings.
What she genuinely wanted was not some notion of being "special."
She wanted to breathe freely.
She wanted to eat to her heart's content.
She wanted to go wherever she wished.
She didn't need people lauding her as a genius.
With someone I love...
...I want to share warmth.
But would a day like that ever come?
Anais looked down at her thin arms and legs exposed between her nightclothes.
They were pitifully gaunt, pale enough to see the veins.
The body of an invalid, utterly devoid of vitality.
Metal tubes driven into her back like nails.
Grotesque.
Just looking in the mirror sent her into a depression.
Who could ever love a woman like this?
Plenty of men approached her.
But every one of them was revolting.
The pretexts varied, but what they all wanted was her money.
Claiming they could cure her illness, or whispering that they loved her.
Transparent, all of them—cut from the same cloth.
—May I touch it?
She hadn't expected to meet a man who tried both lines at once, though.
First he sweet-talked her about curing her illness, then he immediately moved to put his hands on her body.
And on my...
Her face flushed crimson.
What a degenerate.
His approach was as low as his wandering-circus pedigree.
The noblemen who'd proposed to her before had at least maintained some decorum...
They'd tried, in their own way, to move her heart...
—I possess a method to treat the Viscountess.
Shameless liar.
As for his looks... well, among all the faces she'd ever seen, his was certainly one of the better ones...
But judging by his behavior...
That face was wasted on him.
Hmph.
Anais mashed her burning face into the pillow and rubbed it back and forth.
Frank Wonderstein.
He said he was the leader of some wandering acrobat troupe?
Pathetic.
A man of no consequence.
Just one more swindler of the sort the old butler was always dragging in.
A man not worth a second's space in her mind.
It was only...
Only... that brazen stunt of his was so utterly absurd that it still grated on her nerves.
—A pleasure to meet you. My name is Frank Wonderstein.
From the moment she first laid eyes on him, something about him had rubbed her the wrong way.
For a man, his skin was fairer than her own—and she was a woman.
Add to that a nauseating smile and an oily, ingratiating manner of speech.
One look was enough to tell: here was a man who lived by his face and his silver tongue.
The outgoing type, the sort who thrived at parties.
She couldn't help comparing him to herself, shut away in this manor, buried in the smell of paper and ink.
No doubt he'd been with plenty of women out in the world.
A man who inhabited a reality utterly different from hers.
Someone she would never, ever have cause to...
Was that why?
Without realizing it, she'd needled him more viciously than she normally would.
Even after he'd been thrown out, he stayed on her mind.
She'd pushed off the tasks she needed to finish that afternoon to the next day.
—Thump.
She still couldn't calm down.
It was because of that scoundrel.
Anais kicked the blanket, thump-thump.
Nothing like today could ever happen again.
Tomorrow, first thing, she'd speak to the old butler and have that man...
Have him...
That is...
What would she have done?
Ugh.
Anais shook her head back and forth.
Ah, no. My thoughts keep spiraling.
I need to sleep. I have to sleep now. I have so much to do.
Think about tomorrow's affairs tomorrow.
Rise at the appointed hour, work at the appointed hours, sleep at the appointed hour.
So why was sleep refusing to come tonight?
Especially since the machine was quiet for once, perfect for rest...
Wait... the machine...?
Anais strained her ears toward the next room. The machine was kept outside her bedroom while she slept. Only the tubes were fed through a gap under the door.
Even so, the pump's drone was usually so loud that she could always hear it faintly. Now, she heard nothing at all.
Five minutes a day.
Before midnight, the machine had a single five-minute cooling interval.
The time it took to cool the power source and run its own self-diagnostics.
During that window, the machine stopped, but it barely affected her breathing.
The diaphragm, stimulated all day long, would keep moving on its own for about thirty minutes out of sheer inertia even without assistance.
Because the process always happened while she slept, she rarely ever noticed it.
Tonight, though, she was awake.
The machine had been stopped for what felt like more than ten minutes.
About five minutes ago, she'd heard the bell toll midnight.
By all rights, the machine should have restarted by now.
It was a device that hadn't malfunctioned once in over fifteen years.
It had undergone its regular inspection not long ago.
But the cruelest thing about statistics is that they speak only of the past.
Yesterday's success was no guarantee of tomorrow's.
A wave of dread crashed over her without warning.
—Thirty minutes of autonomous breathing should keep you safe.
If that was true, she had less than twenty minutes left.
Anais staggered out of bed.
It was hard to keep herself upright.
She'd thought the drowsiness was just a sign of sleep coming on—it wasn't.
Her breathing was growing slower.
Anais yanked hard on the cord beside the bed.
It was the bell to summon her lady's maid.
Pull it, and the maid on night duty would open that door within ten seconds.
Tonight, however, was truly a night for her faith in statistics to wither.
The door didn't open.
Was she dozing off? Or maybe she'd slipped to the kitchens for a late snack?
'No—if she'd been properly standing watch, she'd have noticed the machine stopped!'
Anais forced herself to move. She had no intention of standing there stupidly and waiting to die.
'The next room... if I can just reach it....'
The next room held a manual respirator for emergencies. If the servants took turns pumping it, she could hold on easily until a mechanic arrived.
Anais threw her weight against the handle as though clinging to it and pulled the door open.
A long creak.
Between the flickering light, the sitting room came into view.
The hearth ablaze, the lamps glowing softly.
So far, everything was as usual.
The maid, sunk deep into the sofa and sleeping like the dead.
The respirator had stopped.
So far, everything matched what she'd expected.
But tonight, she was made to feel the limits of statistics once again.
Seated in the sitting room was someone she had never imagined would be there.
He drew a pocket watch from his coat, glanced at it, and clicked his tongue.
"Ah, what a shame. It would have been so much better if you'd simply drifted off in your sleep."
For a moment, Anais froze where she stood.
Why... was that man here...?
"Uncle Pierre...?"