7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (16)
7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (16)
Bwallet wasn't gone long.
He stepped onto the stage with a somber expression and bowed his head to the audience.
"I apologize for the delay. We on the organizing committee acknowledge our mistake."
He drew a sheaf of papers from inside his coat.
Baron Dosville, ever generous, had even compiled all the evidence needed to set the price.
For the new puzzle series released in recent years, a fixed ratio had emerged between mass-produced copies and the original. With over a hundred puzzles in the series and both production volume and collector demand holding steady, something close to a market price had established itself.
Depending on the puzzle's difficulty, the original commanded anywhere from two hundred to six hundred times the price of a mass-produced copy.
The committee assigned the original Maya had received a value of five hundred times that of a standard puzzle.
By the rules, an amount equal to the prize's value—the sales from five hundred puzzles—was deducted from their total.
Luini's face went pale as he listened to the explanation.
His troupe members couldn't hide their dismay either.
Nobody bothered to do the math.
The outcome was settled.
Bwallet raised his hand. The spotlight swung in the opposite direction from before.
"The victor is the Silver Screen Circus!"
The applause and cheers that followed came half a beat late. The ovation was noticeably smaller than what Pandora had received, and the faces in the crowd wore an awkward strain.
The winners themselves looked equally uncomfortable.
Somehow it felt like they had stolen a prize meant for someone else.
Arno found no ease in it, either.
He did not believe the original puzzle offered as the prize had been responsible for five hundred puzzles' worth of sales.
The prize had, after all, been awarded around noon on the contest's first day.
It had contributed almost nothing to boosting sales.
Deducting a full five hundred was an unfair measure.
But what could he do at this point?
Withdraw?
The thought flickered through his mind, but he shook his head.
Neither he nor his troupe members had entered this contest lightly enough to throw away a victory already in hand.
And given the circumstances, even if he tried to forfeit, there was no chance the other side would respond with a polite, "Ah, thank you," and accept.
Perhaps he could contest the five hundred-puzzle figure?
If they competed using only the sales made before the puzzle was solved...
As that thought reached him, his eyes met Luini's across the way.
The man looked ten years older than he had when he was boldly declaring victory.
Luini offered a bitter smile and shook his head at Arno.
As Bwallet steered him toward center stage, he whispered softly.
"Even deducting thirty-four, the victory is still yours."
Ah.
It seemed the competition organizers had anticipated such objections and run the numbers in advance. Announcing a deduction of five hundred served as a warning against potential misconduct by the remaining teams.
Arno made up his mind.
Lingering any longer would only add to the confusion.
He stood at center stage and delivered his victory remarks.
Half of his speech was devoted to how magnificently his opponent had fought.
The audience, sensing the sincerity behind his words, greeted the end of his address with cheers and applause far louder than before.
The Pandora troupe likewise offered their congratulations.
Luini's expression seemed a shade lighter than it had been.
***
The first week's match had been gripping.
Performances brimming with distinct personalities, unexpected factors tipping the sales scales, and a reversal no one had seen coming.
The man who shaped that ending wasn't exactly welcomed, of course.
"Miss Ella, you were rooting for Pandora, weren't you? A shame how it turned out."
"Can't be helped. The Baron's logic was sound."
Ella sat in the carriage, bent over a notebook, writing furiously.
Ever since the first day, she had diligently noted every intriguing idea or strategy she spotted.
Then she applied them to our program.
Emulating what was worthy, revising what fell short.
She often worked through the night.
Now she was re-examining the 'Prizes and Giveaways' section.
Checking whether our own planned program might run into similar trouble.
"What do you think? Is there any chance the item we've prepared could run afoul of the rules?"
Ella scratched the back of her head as she flipped through the notebook.
Her hair stuck out in disarray, and dark shadows had settled beneath her eyes.
She'd said she stayed up all night again yesterday, analyzing sales figures, strategy, and performance.
As our performance slot drew nearer, her hours of sleep shrank further.
"I've reviewed it—no issues, fortunately. The prize side of things was just... Pandora's mistake, really. If they'd been a little more meticulous about reading the rules, there wouldn't have been a problem..."
Ella spoke with a regretful look.
With one hand she turned the pages; with the other, she spun a quill pen in her fingers.
Not two fingers—a single finger.
Yet the pen never left her hand.
Because as it spun, her finger kept shifting to the ever-changing centerpoint of centrifugal force.
A feat of acrobatics that should exist only in theory, and she was pulling it off casually while holding a conversation with me.
Truly remarkable talent.
Nearby, the other troupe members watched her dexterity with astonished eyes.
Whether she noticed the attention or not, she kept delivering her critique of the match.
"The management aside, I'm also worried about the Escape King's stamina. He has over two years of this journey ahead—I'm not sure he can maintain that form."
With that, she flicked the spinning quill.
The nib slipped neatly into the narrow mouth of a portable ink bottle.
"Wow!"
Yurakne let out a cry of delight and clapped; Sven rattled with loud laughter. Maya blinked, her gaze darting between the pen and Ella's hand.
Ella looked up, puzzled by the reactions, then grasped the situation and smiled sheepishly.
"What, you're impressed by that?"
She was an acrobat by nature.
Exhausted as she clearly was, the applause seemed to energize her. She took the opportunity to demonstrate a few more tricks with the quill.
So absorbed were we in Ella's little performance that we arrived at the hotel without noticing the passage of time.
"Oh, right. Did you pick up the second-week tickets and coins?"
She caught me just before I stepped down from the carriage.
I showed her the pouch I'd tucked into my coat.
"I did. But didn't we agree not to go?"
Competing in the third week meant we needed to finalize our preparations during the second week's contest. There was no time to leisurely take in the other shows.
Ella waved a hand dismissively.
"It's fine. I'll go by myself."
"Alone?"
"Mm. My workload has lightened a lot, hasn't it? If anything, you and Maya have more on your plates now."
I couldn't readily agree.
It was true her share of the work had diminished, and true that Maya's and mine had grown. But she still carried more than either of us.
More than both of us combined.
"I won't stay long. Just a bit of reconnaissance... whoa."
She hopped down from the carriage.
But something was off about her landing.
Just slightly, her balance teetered.
A motion no one else would have found remotely odd.
But I had watched her step down from carriages several times over the past few weeks.
Never once had she wavered or hesitated. She moved as smoothly as if walking on level ground, as fluid as water.
And now, her center of gravity had slipped.
"Miss Ella."
"Mm?"
"Talk of stamina management applies to you as well. Aren't you pushing yourself too hard?"
She shot me an incredulous look.
I felt a pang of regret the moment the words left my mouth.
Who had been shouldering all the work for her all this time?
Me. Exactly me.
She fixed me with a mock glare.
I had nothing further to say in my defense, so I just stood there. Then a small laugh escaped her.
"Don't worry. My contract is to help keep this circus running properly. And I'm not particularly overdoing it, either—I've been keeping this pace for a month straight."
A month straight?
Before I could retort, she snatched the pouch from my hand and strode into the building.
Starting the next day, we threw ourselves fully into performance preparation.
Our current script completion rate stood at twenty-five percent. The time had come to double it.
A performance wasn't just about the actors.
Even if the troupe members perfected every line and feat in the script, we would never clear fifty percent.
Costumes, props, backdrops, special effects.
All of it added to the performance's polish.
Ella estimated that her handmade tools could contribute roughly another twenty percent.
So until now, she had focused entirely on raising the troupe members' individual capabilities.
Costumes, props, and backdrops could be built up over time and would suffice if they came together at the end.
But we had made far more progress than the original plan called for.
Maya's addition had dramatically improved the quality of our props and backdrops.
The special effects, which we had assumed would be pressed for time, were barely on schedule thanks to the extra three weeks we had been given.
Maya could now produce illusions of explosions, lightning, and fog.
The biggest leap forward came in costuming.
Ella had said that no matter how hard she worked, she couldn't manage more than a four-percent improvement from costumes alone.
This was where my new ability shone.
The Costume Room.
It recorded every garment I had seen and touched. At any time, by paying a rental fee in Devoluts, I could produce those clothes and dress anyone I chose. Of course, as a function attached to 'Member Management,' the targets were limited to myself and the troupe members.
One advantage of this ability was that any outfit automatically adjusted its size to fit the wearer's body.
That allowed us to reach into areas we had never been able to attempt before.
"Hrragh!"
Umon pried open a wooden crate with a crowbar.
Inside lay the crimson-tinged armor we had borrowed through Anais.
In the game, the battle against the 'Red-Blood Ogre' unfolded in three phases.
The 'Butcher's Shop'—where he wore an apron and charged with a cleaver.
The 'Forge'—where he wrapped himself in chains and charged with a hammer.
The 'Furnace'—where he donned armor and charged with a hook.
Of the costumes I wanted Umon to wear, the first two had been manageable to acquire.
The last one was the problem.
No matter what I tried, I couldn't find armor that would fit him.
His sheer size was part of it, but his physique also differed subtly from an ordinary human's.
His abnormally broad shoulders, the shape of his muscles, the proportions of his limbs—all of it sat slightly askew.
So Ella had given up on putting armor on him.
And he wasn't the only one. Each troupe member's physical idiosyncrasies made sourcing proper attire difficult.
But my Costume Room ability had solved most of those problems.