7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (2)
7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (2)
The young man's blade had been gliding in at a perfect angle, but the instant he made a sound his hand wavered, and the edge missed its mark by a hair.
It bit into the inner root canal of the wood.
A cloudy fluid spurted out with a sharp hiss.
"Oh, no."
That settled it. The bark trimming was ruined. Unless he carved out the entire section of damaged inner flesh, a tree of that species would never grow into a pleasing shape again.
To an ordinary observer, the young man's cut might have looked like an absentminded stab. Gaston knew better.
It was an exquisitely precise technique—the kind that emerges only after you have honed your concentration to the point of controlling every last nerve ending in your fingertips.
Anyone else would have felt a surge of irritation toward the person who had sidled up and shattered that concentration. And irritation always showed on the face.
Etiquette existed for the sake of those around you.
For someone who had entered a perfect State of Selflessness, the outside world ceased to exist.
There was only the path inward.
It was a phenomenon akin to what mages called the meditation space.
In such a state, emotions surfaced on the face entirely of their own accord.
Concealing them was no easy feat.
Hadn't there been a story about that?
An ascetic monk, revered as a living saint, was at last given a bowl of porridge after a long fast. A mischievous young novice snatched it away and ate it, and the monk, without realizing what he was doing, scowled and spat out a curse. Shamed to discover how far his discipline had fallen, he had retreated straight back into prayer.
Even for a monk who had endured such grueling asceticism, the emotions of that state of selflessness were that difficult to suppress.
Irritation. Rage. Disgust. Contempt.
Gaston had been certain the young man would level one of those emotions at him for breaking his focus.
But what the old man saw instead nearly made him doubt his own eyes.
"Who are you?"
The gardener scanned the face that turned toward him and found not a single trace of any dark emotion.
Only pure, unguarded curiosity.
He stared at Gaston with eyes as guileless as a child's.
"I—I apologize. For interrupting your work."
The old man dipped his head before he even realized he was doing it.
His apprentices would have been stunned to witness the sight.
That sly, cantankerous old fox, apologizing to a green whelp?
Gaston himself could not have said why he was acting this way.
If the young man had grown angry or cursed at him, he would have simply shrugged it off with a cheeky retort. But instead...
"Don't mention it. I was just swinging without a thought, haha."
The young man let out a hearty laugh.
Hearing that laugh, Gaston felt as if something that had been wedged tight in his chest had suddenly popped open.
Swinging without a thought?
A hollow laugh escaped the old gardener's lips.
Many craftsmen had attained the State of Selflessness.
Even the least talented man, if he poured his whole life into a single field, was bound to pull one or two works up from that sea. The world was full of monomaniacs who cared for nothing beyond their chosen craft.
But no matter how detached a craftsman grew from worldly concerns, it was rare to find one free of attachment to the State of Selflessness itself.
Most hoped it would let them produce a masterpiece to offer up to the world.
And here, for the first time in his life, Gaston had encountered an entirely different breed of human.
The man could not possibly have been older than thirty, yet the skill ingrained in his body surpassed that of veterans with decades of experience, and his seasoning did not seem a whit inferior to theirs.
Despite possessing that level of ability, not an ounce of arrogance showed on him.
Where in the world had a fellow like this sprung from?
"Have you studied gardening before?"
The young man hesitated a moment, then shook his head.
"No. I just picked up a little here and there by watching over people's shoulders."
Learning techniques by stealing glimpses while working as a gardener's assistant—Gaston had done the very same thing as a teenager.
He nodded.
"From what I saw earlier, a little though it was... you seemed to have a gift."
"Thank you."
"But to think you would dare lay hands on an expensive garden like this with only that much skill."
Gaston feigned anger in his voice.
No matter how free of greed the young man was, a remark calculated to prick him like that was bound to provoke him.
"I'm sorry."
"At this rate, you will ruin the whole garden. Follow my instructions, and at the very least you might avoid ruining it. What do you say? Can you follow my lead?"
Gaston was trying to draw out the young man's competitive spirit.
He wanted to see a blaze kindle in this carefree-seeming youth.
It was a kind of urge he had never felt before in all his years.
But the words that came out of the young man's mouth were startling.
"I'm not planning to work as a gardener."
"Wh-what did you say...?"
Gaston's face contorted.
He could not comprehend what he was hearing.
And he could not understand why a single sentence from this pup was making him this furious.
"Then why did you lay your hands on my garden!"
He shouted, and the young man gave him an awkward smile.
"I just wanted to test the technique..."
"Test? You dare 'test' your technique? Ha! You're a funny one. What technique could there possibly be to test with your piddling little skill!"
Gaston was genuinely angry now.
To possess that much talent and not give your all to it was beyond absurd...
'So that is how it was. Of course he had no attachment. Not with that rotten, arrogant mindset.'
Plainly, this was someone who looked down on the work just because he had a bit of cleverness in his hands.
That earlier cut along the grain—it must have been a lucky accident.
"Pick up your knife and shears this instant! As the caretaker of the Tomato Greenhouse, I will show you just how grueling real garden work can be!"
At the old man's stubborn insistence, the young man wore a troubled expression for a moment, then reluctantly rose to his feet.
Under Gaston's direction, he trimmed branches, wiped petals, set stones, and trained stems.
Watching him work, Gaston felt his anger dissolve like snow.
This was no mere man with clever hands.
If a Demon God of gardening existed, this man could be called its Avatar.
His claim of never having properly learned the craft was neither humility nor deception.
He kept absurdly disregarding or skipping over things that anyone in the horticultural trade would naturally know as common sense.
'Astonishing. Truly astonishing. What a truly astonishing gift.'
But what amazed Gaston even more was the air of a man who had already transcended attachment to his own fate.
Even when the old gardener made veiled references to the salary and treatment he commanded, the young man showed not a flicker of interest.
He only gave an empty little laugh, as though it were a matter of no concern to him whatsoever.
The old gardener grew curious.
What had reduced a man barely in his twenties to the manner of an old soul who had already lived out his whole life?
The young man said his farewells and withdrew.
Gaston summoned the hotel manager and inquired about his identity.
The manager listened to the old man's description and nodded.
"Troupe Leader Wonderstein."
"Who is that?"
"Did you not hear the news of the Circus Grand Prix opening ceremony the day before yesterday?"
"I was aboard an airship at the time."
The manager told him of the conspiracy and the trial that had unfolded at Rouge's Rose Windmill Cabaret.
Had Wonderstein heard the account, he would have pointed out a few embellishments.
He had not been pelted with a baptism of rotten tomatoes, nor had enraged nobles dragged him onto the stage like a dog, nor had anyone spat in his face.
Gaston let out an uneasy groan as he listened.
Judging solely by his appearance and bearing, he had been certain Wonderstein was a fallen aristocrat or perhaps a noble's former attendant.
Historically, gardeners worked for nobles or wealthy magnates. A certain station and decorum were prerequisites for the role. It was, in effect, a quasi-noble profession.
The very idea of a Gypsy or a wandering gardener was something he had never once encountered.
-Me, a gardener?
That smile of his, and the desolate look in his eyes that had accompanied it.
Only now did the old gardener understand what it had meant.
To have such talent crushed by the circumstances of one's birth.
And if he had suffered such an ordeal only recently, small wonder he had looked at Gaston's offer with nothing but disillusionment.
As his heart hammered with fury and pity, the old gardener arrived at a revelation.
Why, year by year, he had grown ever more cynical, more cowardly, more disdainful of the young, more resentful of everything around him.
It was a lack of talent.
Gaston had become the caretaker of the Tomato Greenhouse at barely thirty.
But in the thirty years that followed, not a single successor to equal his talent had emerged.
That was why everything had come to feel hollow.
Because he kept sensing that the garden he had poured his entire life into would wither and die the moment he was gone, and so he had grown angry and bitter toward all things.
And the reason he had felt such joy upon seeing this young man called Wonderstein was the precise opposite.
At last, he understood.
What his master had truly meant, all those years ago, when he had called Gaston a blessing as he departed.
In a flash, he envied his old master.
He wished he could depart the same way.
A spark caught in his chest, which had been festering with a foul stench.
"Bring me my tools."
Politics. Expediency. Power.
Suddenly, none of them frightened him in the slightest.
For the first time in ages, he felt as though he had returned to being the pure craftsman he once was.
That afternoon, a rumor spread throughout all of Charlotia that the Regent had thrown his support behind Viscountess Bergson in the recent noble dispute that had erupted in Rouge.
Until then, the Regent had maintained nothing but an ambiguous stance on the matter.
In normal times, a passive Regent would not have drawn remark, but many had been disillusioned to see him behave that way even when national prestige was at stake during an international event.
Had that attitude of his all been a ruse?
He had secretly dispatched Gaston Haliwooden, the gardener of the Tomato Greenhouse, to the hotel where Viscountess Bergson was staying. Sending a gardener was a means of conveying a message through form and symbol.
Whenever the Regent intervened in disputes between nobles, a subtle gesture was the usual method.
Given his customary character, everyone had assumed he would content himself with merely restoring the garden, signaling that enough was enough and everyone should return to their proper places.
But the surprises continued.
In the restored hotel's courtyard, a structure never seen there before was erected.
Its meaning was clear even to those who had only a surface-level knowledge of the affair.
Rose vines had been trained into the shape of a windmill. And the white roses planted there—the flower that signified innocence and vindication—delivered a message so blunt it bordered on the brazen.
The Regent's household was famous across the generations for its ironclad neutrality and instinct for self-preservation.
There was even a saying that the man who most underestimated the power of Charlotia's Regent was the Regent himself.
But now, that Regent had stirred.
Had the rumors that the new Regent was even more timid and dull-witted than his father been a distorted fiction?
Or had they been a facade the Regent himself had worn?
He had scarcely been sworn in, and already he was raising his head.
The nobles of Rouge had hoped to invite the gardener and delicately probe for clues about the Regent's true intent. But he had been urgently recalled by the Regent's Residence and had hurriedly boarded an airship to return, so they never got their chance.
Already, however, one thing was a settled certainty: the factional war between the nobles in the Rouge region had concluded with the victory of the Marquis Mustang and Viscountess Bergson's camp.