7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (23)
7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (23)
"Miss Ella."
Wonderstein had been watching her enter as if he'd been waiting for it.
His face wore the same unchanging smile it always did.
A brazen, teasing grin that seemed designed to get under your skin.
The instant she saw that smirking face, irritation prickled through her — and at the same time, something in her chest unclenched.
Of course.
Who was I even worried about?
I should save my concern for someone worth it.
"You knew I was coming?"
She held her chin as high as she could and worked to keep her voice frosty.
Just in case he somehow picked up on the fact that she'd felt sorry for him.
"How could I not, with all that racket out there?"
Another burst of raucous laughter erupted from outside.
Sven must have been mimicking someone else's performance again.
Ella noticed the cup of tea steaming gently in his hand.
"You never let go of that teacup, do you?"
"I'm fond of tea."
"You didn't touch a single cup the hotel served you."
"Yurakne's tea is a different matter, heh-heh. More importantly — what brings you here? You still don't look fully recovered."
He studied her complexion as he spoke.
She scratched the back of her head.
"No, I, well. Honestly... mm. I was worried."
"About me?"
At his teasing tone, Ella's face twisted into a scowl.
"Who'd be worried about the likes of you? I was worried you'd ruin the show! Worried about tomatoes flying at the stage, that's what!"
"Tomatoes?"
She drew a breath to steady herself.
His question about whether she'd worried over him had made her jump like someone with a guilty conscience, and by now she'd worked herself up over nothing.
"It's the ultimate humiliation for anyone who sets foot on a stage. They say the audience throws tomatoes when a performance is too boring to sit through."
Wonderstein let out an amused little laugh.
"Is that so?"
"It's a legend. I looked into it for a magazine piece once — apparently it's only happened once in the last thirty years."
She folded her arms tightly and gave the violet tailcoat he was wearing a thorough inspection.
"You conjured that outfit with your magic too, I see."
"How did you know?"
"Where else would a perfectly tailored suit materialize in a single day? Hmm, let's see... the tailoring's decent enough. That getup plus the grinning clown face of yours... ought to give off a pretty unnerving impression. Speaking of which, did you already wipe off the clown makeup? I wanted to see it..."
"You'll get another chance tomorrow. I'll be playing the emcee for the rest of this trial, at least. You didn't come here to announce you're climbing onto the stage yourself, did you?"
Ella crossed her legs and gave a short, scoffing laugh.
"Don't worry. Even if I wanted to, I don't have the costume. The old butler confiscated my uniform. Smiles on the outside like a kindly grandfather, but there's a serpent coiled up inside that man. Anyway, tell me about the performance instead. I want to know how you pulled it off."
"Didn't the troupe members fill you in?"
"Everyone sees a show differently. I want to hear it from the emcee's point of view too."
The moment the circus became the topic, Ella uncrossed her arms and leaned forward, her eyes brightening.
Wonderstein smiled inwardly.
Incorrigible circus maniac.
He started by explaining how he'd devised the look he'd worn.
At several points, Ella demanded he reenact specific gestures or lines for her.
Performing one-on-one with her staring straight at him was embarrassing, but The Smiling Man came through — letting him deliver that deliberately unnatural, not-quite-human performance with ease.
Ella nodded seriously.
"The script you wrote... you drafted it the moment you decided to take the emcee role yourself, didn't you?"
The sections of his draft she'd revised most heavily had all been the emcee's lines.
Something about the conversational focus and comedic beats had felt subtly off, forcing her to spend a great deal of time smoothing them out.
Looking at it now, though, she realized those very elements were perfectly tuned to Wonderstein's character.
The way he kept losing control of his own laughter. That faintly sardonic, needling attitude.
In TT1, Wonderstein had leaned fully into the circus-troupe-leader concept. Whenever a Boss Battle began, he'd materialize out of nowhere to introduce his members, and whenever a boss switched attack phases, he'd supply commentary from behind the scenes or throw in between-phase banter.
Ella, who knew none of this, found herself impressed all over again.
From her perspective, he'd already factored his own emcee persona into the script from the very first draft.
Having watched all the way through his closing remarks and the curtain call, she clicked her tongue lightly.
Delicious.
It had its rough spots in pacing and flow compared to what she would have directed, but it was unmistakably a tasty piece of stagecraft.
"...You did better than I expected."
"Oh? Unexpected, was it?"
Her praise had Wonderstein privately preening.
He'd talked a big game, throwing around his peak Twitch viewer numbers, but internet livestreams and an actual stage were fundamentally different beasts.
He'd scraped through by steadying his nerves with The Smiling Man, copying the in-game Wonderstein character, hiding his awkward expressions under makeup — every trick he could bring to bear, he'd deployed. Only just enough to get through.
Hearing "well done" from Ella, whose eye for performance was sharp and unsparing, finally let him relax.
"Honestly... I didn't trust you."
"Didn't you?"
"How could I? How can anyone trust a person like you? A shady character whose motives are impossible to read."
Wonderstein had no retort to offer.
He had been exactly that kind of person in the past, and even now, he couldn't claim to be candid with anyone.
"But now I know at least one thing for certain. Your heart is in the circus."
She still had no idea why he was so fixated on it.
Or why someone with that much monstrous power bothered to play circus troupe leader at all.
Still — the script he'd written, the genuine kindness he showed the members, the effort he'd put into mounting the stage, and his willingness to challenge Rooster Minova openly... all of it pointed to a passion for the circus that was, at its core, real.
"So I'll be counting on you for the five days we have left. At the very least, I'll trust the version of you that stands onstage."
Even if this connection was temporary.
Even if it was something that could never last.
Even if it wasn't a bond forged by any kind of good fortune.
The two of them had, on this one point — the circus — learned to trust each other.
"It's ironic, though, isn't it? The best way to match your troupe's monster act was for you to give up on acting human yourself."
Wonderstein released a silent sigh.
I was just pretending to be Wonderstein too, you know...
But he couldn't defend himself.
Explaining that misunderstanding would require starting with the fact that he wasn't the real Wonderstein.
And that claim would never fly.
She'd think he was mocking her.
Just then, the noise outside swelled.
It sounded like the butler had arrived with drinks and food.
Wonderstein gestured with his eyes for her to join the others.
She hesitated, then rose from her seat.
Hand on the doorknob, she paused and glanced back at him.
"Listen..."
"Yes?"
"Why don't you... come out and say a few words? A toast or something?"
Wonderstein tilted his head.
Had he heard that right?
A toast?
"From me?"
"No, I just mean... if the so-called troupe leader stays too aloof, even the butler's going to think it's strange, isn't he... And besides, this is our circus's first official performance, isn't it? It'd be disappointing not to hear a word from the boss."
He mulled over her suggestion.
No Member Quest window had popped up.
Under normal circumstances, he would have refused.
He didn't like doing anything that offered no reward and risked lowering the members' Affection levels.
But not now.
After watching Ella collapse, he'd grown a little colder toward the system's prompts.
"All right."
The practice room had been laid with an impressively generous spread.
The kind the members had never once received when they shuffled into the kitchen to fetch their own meals.
They'd always gone in timidly, barely managing to collect whatever the kitchen staff handed them.
And even that, outside of regular mealtimes, was nothing more than bread or fruit.
Yet here was Bartel, bringing in an extravagant assortment they'd never seen even at a proper dinner.
Wonderstein suspected this was the touch of a butler who'd long had the household staff under his thumb.
Ella stepped forward.
She had a glass filled with juice in her hand.
"Everyone worked incredibly hard today. You all covered for my absence so well. We've still got five days to go, so don't get too comfortable — just a light drink and a bit of fun tonight."
She raised her glass high and shouted,
"To the Circus Grand Prix Finals!"
"To the finals!"
The members echoed her last words.
She looked over at Wonderstein, her expression asking, Nothing to say?
Every other set of eyes in the room turned toward him.
He was still their difficult, intimidating leader — but not nearly as uncomfortable to be around as before.
Sharing a stage with someone was a remarkable thing.
It closed in an instant the distance he'd spent three months trying to shrink.
Wonderstein smiled at them and lifted his glass.
"To our Deputy Leader's health."
"To her health!"
Smiles bloomed across the members' faces.
Glasses clinked against one another in cheerful clamor.
[Ella's Affection level has increased by 5.]
[Sven's Affection level has increased by 3.]
[Bandik's Affection level has increased by 2.]
[Maya's Affection level has increased by 1.]
......
[Yurakne's Affection level has increased by 4. For reaching Affection level 30, a reward — <Inspira: Wall-Climbing> — is granted to Yurakne. Current Affection level: 33 (Next reward: Affection level 50)]
[Umon's Affection level has increased by 3. For reaching Affection level 15, a reward — <Inspira: Blade-Juggling> — is granted to Umon. Current Affection level: 16 (Next reward: Affection level 30)]
Notifications cascaded through his vision like a flood.
The members hadn't exactly been clamoring for him to come out.
That was why no Member Quest had triggered.
The system had been precise.
But sometimes, stepping past the line where the other person hesitates — that alone could draw hearts closer.
Wonderstein realized he'd spent so long living without genuine human connection that he'd forgotten how it worked.
He'd holed up in his room, communicating only through a monitor.
He'd given his viewers what they asked for and earned his income from it.
He'd lived no differently after arriving here.
The system had simply absorbed the role his computer used to play.
And now, for the first time in what felt like ages, he'd broken free of it.
Surrounded by people laughing and chattering, he felt, for a moment, as though he'd traveled all the way back to his days at the orphanage.
The three-headed Trimery was already chattering again about today's performance.
Ella, though she'd already heard the stories earlier, chimed in as if for the first time.
No one ever forgot the moment they first stepped onto a stage.
Sven pointed at the food on the table and shouted "Fresh meat!" in an imitation of Umon. Umon, growing tired of his relentless needling, turned his head away with a sulk.
Bandik and Yobel traded drinks in the corner without a word. Judging by the bottles accumulating in front of them, they'd already forgotten Ella's instruction to keep it light.
Yurakne cornered Wonderstein, demanding a detailed critique of her seductress act. When he told her it suited her well, her face went red with embarrassment; when he said it suited her poorly, her face went red with dismay.
Maya sat off in a corner by herself, sipping her drink and quietly sketching.
Ella rested her cheek against her cold glass and smiled, unnoticed.
This.
This was it.
This, right here.
This was the scene she'd imagined —
the day she'd first met him,
the day he'd asked her to come along.
If the next two years and three months were going to be like this...
Maybe she could manage it after all.
She sprang up from her seat.
"All right! Allow me to present a personal specialty!"
She picked up a pair of chopsticks and sent a plate spinning on top of them.
That part wasn't surprising.
She set another chopstick upright atop the spinning plate and started another plate whirling on that one, too.
"What— what is that?"
"Is that even possible?"
"Remarkable."
As the plates and chopsticks multiplied, so did the exclamations.
A hot-blooded audience was an acrobat's happiness.
For the first time in a long while, she could laugh brightly inside her own circus troupe.
Amid her laughing comrades, she offered a silent prayer to the circus god, Kirkeus.
Until the day she had to part ways with him.
Let no one get hurt. Let no one die.
Let it keep going, just like this.