7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (20)
7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (20)
I opened the notebook I had gotten from Ella.
It contained every scrap of material needed for the performance.
The placement of the stage equipment, each troupe member's movement paths, light jokes to toss out between scenes, effective gestures, the angle and brightness of the lighting in every situation, and on and on.
The sheer volume of it was enough to exhaust anyone reading it.
Even so, I didn't gloss over a single detail. I read through it page by page, carefully.
I was deep into it when I paused at a particular passage.
It dealt with who would play the role of subduing Umon during his rampage scene.
The name 'Wonderstein' had been scrawled there, then scratched out roughly with a pen.
She could have asked me for that much, and I would have happily done it...
A bitter smile crossed my face as I turned the page.
Wonderstein's name kept cropping up after that.
Slash marks defaced it every time.
I couldn't fathom the state of her heart as she wrote and crossed out that name over and over.
By the time I finished reading the notebook's final page, it was somehow already around noon.
I closed it and let out a long breath.
The blood and sweat she'd poured into this work had soaked into every page.
An image surfaced: her lying in bed, drenched in a cold sweat, berating herself.
What did she mean, this was needless suffering she'd brought on herself?
Every ounce of her effort elevated the finer points of the performance.
If Ella had collapsed because Kirkeus truly deemed this a waste of effort and cursed her for it, then he had no right to call himself the god of the circus.
Thanks to this notebook of hers, we knew exactly how to prepare the stage.
I directed the cabaret workers according to her notes.
Naturally, the efficiency fell short compared to the notebook's owner leading them herself.
Ella had said we'd finish the work by morning and move into rehearsals in the afternoon, but we hadn't even completed half the preparations.
The troupe members had only ever focused on practicing their individual skills and acting up to now.
They had no idea how to handle stage equipment or install the set pieces.
The only reason the work had gone as smoothly as it had so far was the Ratmen.
"Lighting! Upper mounts use coarse-thread screws! Lower mounts use fine-thread!"
"Horizontal bars! Tied off with triple knots!"
Ella's efforts in taking the time to teach them consistently had paid off.
Ratmen were a species famed for being crafty, light-fingered, and masters of cutting corners.
Looked at another way, that meant they were a species with sharp instincts, clever hands, and a knack for working smart.
No wonder it was said that half the pickpockets in the world were Ratmen.
Their cunning and servility were the problems. If you paired them with someone like Ella who actually taught them how to work properly, they had the makings of fine craftsmen.
Even the veteran employees of the Rose Windmill couldn't hide their astonishment watching them work.
"Could Ratmen always work that well?"
"They're better than our new hires, you know?"
The way they swarmed a complex frame assembly and had it finished in a flash was genuinely impressive.
The choreographer Mare, who had spent over twenty years in this business, gaped at the sight of them.
"Remarkable. Ratmen are notoriously difficult to manage. I once gave up trying to teach them dancing myself. How did you manage it?"
I had to fight back a laugh.
"Credit goes to our Deputy Leader."
"Ah, Miss Ella! How impressive. How could someone her age cultivate that kind of ability?"
Choreographer Mare went on praising Ella.
Her acting, her singing ability, her sociability, and so on.
I picked up on the fact that Mare had something else she really wanted to say.
Sure enough, she got to the point before long.
"I once went through a period where I threw myself at any and every task like a madwoman, desperate for Director Maroine's acknowledgment."
Choreographer Mare.
I sifted through my memory of her backstory.
She was the daughter Yug Maroine had abandoned to wander the world in his obsession with the theater.
By a twist of fate, the two of them came face-to-face on the same theater stage.
A father who feared contempt if his true identity was found out, forcing himself to push her away.
A daughter who wanted to stand tall before such a father and earn his genuine respect through skill, not blood.
They each knew who the other was, but until the moment of death, neither realized the other had figured it out.
"That child is also yearning for your acknowledgment, Troupe Leader. Please don't make it too hard on her."
I felt no urge to correct her misconception, this willful misreading of our relationship. How would she react if she learned I had massacred Ella's friends and neighbors, that I was dragging her along with a contract as a leash?
I was sitting there vacantly after she left when a nonsensical rooster crow sounded behind me.
"Cock-a-doodle-doo."
I didn't need to turn around to know who the culprit was.
"Come to scout the competition, Minova?"
"It's been a while."
He walked over and stood beside me.
His gaze swept across the hall, and his voice took on a regretful note.
"Tsk, tsk. Still not done with the stage setup? Will you even have time to rehearse?"
"We'll manage."
A silence settled between us for a moment.
I studied the uneasy look on his face and let out a quiet snort of amusement.
"How's your daughter?"
"She's better. Much better."
"Sleeping well?"
"Of course. It's been so long since she had a peaceful night..."
Minova spoke with a face far more relaxed than when he'd first arrived.
"I heard about your Deputy Leader. Is she alright?"
"She simply pushed herself too hard. The doctor says a week of good rest will set her right."
"Can't you use that healing magic of yours on her?"
"My magic requires rather... specific conditions."
Minova nodded as if that made perfect sense.
"Well, it never looked like an ordinary skill. Curing an incurable disease with just a touch. There must be some kind of cost involved."
He offered a few more words of condolence about Ella, then rose from his seat.
"I've sworn an oath to Kirkeus. There'll be no going easy."
"That's how it should be. I won't lose to someone who seats his daughter as deputy just because she's family."
"Urgh, I put our Ruelo in that seat on pure skill, you hear!"
"Heh heh, of course you did."
Minova's face twisted into a scowl.
"You're going to keep this up to the bitter end! Just don't forget the promise you made. The winner's deputy is acknowledged as superior!"
"Naturally."
Minova departed.
The work was more or less finished by late afternoon.
The troupe members took to the stage for rehearsals.
They performed splendidly, exactly as they had practiced.
The Rose Windmill staff stood in as the audience.
Everyone who was acquainted with Ella showed up.
Among them was the general director, Yug Maroine himself.
He watched the troupe's acting and nodded with a satisfied expression.
"To craft a performance of this caliber with a monster circus. That girl's future is a terrifying thing."
"I'll pass that along to Miss Ella. She'll be delighted to hear Director Maroine praised her."
"Don't be so modest. I heard you wrote the script yourself?"
"Miss Ella told you?"
"She did. The way she'd try so hard to hide the obvious pride, wanting to brag about it every time... it was endearing."
"...Was it, now."
After rehearsals ended, the troupe members headed for the dining hall for a late dinner.
I remained on the stage alone and unfolded the script.
The staging, the acting—all of it was ready.
There was only one problem left.
Whether I could properly serve as the emcee for this performance.
Memorizing the script wasn't an issue. I had been right beside her all along, watching her revise it, and the volume wasn't large. I'd already committed it all to memory by morning.
It wasn't stage fright, either. The Smiling Man always kept my mind preternaturally composed.
Right. That was the problem.
The Smiling Man itself.
Ella understood how to modulate the mood of a stage.
In frightening or horrifying scenes, she knew how to draw out the audience's emotions with the right acting and tone of voice.
But for me, making any expression other than a smile was impossible.
Even delivering lines meant to be tense, all I could do was leer, so none of the tension carried through.
The impact of the troupe's acting was cut in half.
No matter how I struggled to suppress the smile, my lips wouldn't budge.
Looking spine-chilling was the easy part, honestly.
I could pull out a few of Mantula's Blades from my back. Make a cluster of tentacles erupt from my arm. Shove a tooth-filled mouth into my eye sockets in place of eyeballs.
But I couldn't do that.
It had nothing to do with protecting my image.
The Black Magician.
Seventeen years ago, the extent to which Wonderstein had revealed his form remained unknown to me.
What I did know was that, at the very least, his human shape hadn't become public knowledge.
As long as people were on guard for his existence, I could not assume any shape that might remind them of him.
Just how many beings in this world could freely knead and distort their own bodies at will?
In the end, I had to frighten people purely through makeup, rather than modifying my body.
Was that even possible?
Wonderstein's appearance and smile were such that even I, a man, could only describe them as "stunning."
How could I avoid undermining the troupe's horror image?
I brought the members' appearances to mind.
Aside from their grotesque physical features, they were no different from ordinary humans.
Why did people call them monsters?
I dusted off a theme I'd sorted through once before.
In a world where beastmen with rat heads walked around openly, why were they the ones treated as monsters?
It was because they deviated from the average.
If the dwarf Yobel grew taller, he wouldn't be treated as a monster—but if his height exceeded ten meters, he'd be treated as one again.
If the Trimery Triplets had fewer heads, they wouldn't be treated as monsters, but having zero heads would make them monstrous again.
What mattered, in the end, was staying within bounds.
Conversely, that meant if you wanted to appear as a monster, all you had to do was step beyond those bounds.
Up until now, I had been trying to devise a disguise that would somehow suppress or hide this smile.
But did I really need to?
In that instant, an idea flashed through my mind.
***
The last Monday of June.
Week three of the contest.
The audience that filed into the cabaret's Hall 3, into <Wonderstein's Monster Circus>, was broadly divided into two camps.
Those who had come purely to see a circus, and those who had come to gawk at Troupe Leader Wonderstein.
The numbers were roughly even, but if you had to split hairs, the latter group was slightly larger.
That was how much of a sensation the incident at the opening ceremony had been.
Many women swept their gazes across the stage with eyes full of longing.
They had heard he was handsome enough to cause a scandal with Chairwoman Bergson despite being a mere wanderer.
They heard his dazzling smile could turn anyone watching into a swooning puddle.
Some had resolved to ignore the monsters entirely and fill their eyes with nothing but Wonderstein's face.
The hall doors closed, and every electric light dimmed into darkness.
A single spotlight remained, trained on the stage.
A moment later, the sound of footsteps echoed.
Clack. Clack.
Someone was walking onto the stage.
The spotlight crept upward from his shoes, slowly revealing his lower body, his upper body, and then his head.
As his figure was unveiled, a slow tide of dread spread across the faces in the audience.
An orange shirt under a purple tailcoat, with a red rose ornament flickering like a flame on his chest.
A wild, tangled mess of green hair.
Against a face painted stark white like a blank sheet of paper, a pair of blood-red lips curved up so far they nearly reached his ears.
People recognized at once that the white face and red lips were makeup, but the chill they felt upon seeing him did not fade.
Today was the first time they had ever understood that clown makeup could look so terrifying.
"Welcome to the Monster Circus. I am the troupe leader, Frank Wonderstein."
He spoke to the audience, whose faces had frozen stiff as they stared at him, smiling a hair-raising smile.
"Why so serious?"
The Smiling Man stood upon the stage.