7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (29)
7. Trial of the Rose Windmill Cabaret (29)
Legendary Cards, Epic Cards, Rare Cards, and Common Cards.
Each of the four rarities carried a different point value.
Whoever assembled the highest-scoring deck before the deadline would take the prize.
There were a few restrictions.
First, you could not include duplicate Legendary Cards in a single deck. For the other rarities, you were limited to two copies per card. Cards that formed a pair counted as three copies for scoring purposes. Finally, a deck could not exceed thirty cards.
To win, you had to submit a complete thirty-card deck — not something one person could easily manage alone. Even those who had bought large coin bundles had already burned through most of their funds.
Trading cards and pooling resources to build a deck together became the only real path forward.
"Hey, hold on! I've got a Legendary and an Epic. Let me in on this."
"Which cards?"
"The Legendary is Blood-red Plate Armor. The Epic is Musketeer Uniform."
"Sorry — we already have Blood-red Plate Armor. Try another team."
"Wait, you said you have Musketeer Uniform? How about a trade? We already have one of those. We'll give you an Epic and a Rare for it."
I worked through my makeup as quickly as I could, listening to the voices drifting in from outside.
I'd assumed there would be no more stage work today and had washed my face clean. I had not expected to transform back into the Jester.
After repeating this same makeup routine every day for the past week, I'd grown adept enough to handle it alone.
I faced the mirror and let out a laugh.
I'd gotten used to his face. His laugh, too.
The one thing missing was the partner who had always stood beside me.
When I came out with the tomato, Ella was slumped over the table, fast asleep.
She'd been dozing on her feet even during the performance. After pushing past every reasonable limit, it was no surprise she had finally run out of stamina.
Maya had already taken her back to the hotel.
Ella had nothing left to do here anyway.
Before I knew it, seven o'clock had arrived.
A whistle rang out to signal the end of the third week's showdown at the Rose Windmill Cabaret.
The troupe members, each in their own finished makeup, were waiting for me outside the practice room.
Yurakne, dressed in a Black Lady costume, looked at me and spoke.
"We heard from the hotel. Both of them arrived safely."
"Good. Then let's give it everything we have until the very end. No telling how the results will play out, but let's not slack on the performance."
I led them out to the lobby.
Audience members had gathered in scattered clusters, waiting for us.
On the far side, near the concession stand, the Morning Star Circus people were watching us.
They looked visibly rattled by the sudden twist that had struck in the final stretch.
In our concession kitchen, Anais's butler Bartel was mixing cocktails.
Hundreds of eyes were fixed on him, but he wielded his knife without the slightest sign of tension.
With a crisp thwack, the tomato split open and golden juice spilled out. A few more strokes of the blade, and finely diced fruit dropped into a glass bowl. He mixed in various liquors and herbs — the handiwork of a seasoned butler.
Finally, he divided the mixture into three glasses.
He garnished each with a wedge of tomato he had set aside earlier.
The crowd stared at the three gleaming golden cocktails.
One was for Anais, one for me, and the last for the winner.
We had structured it this way so that using a gifted tomato as a prize would not breach etiquette.
Among the greedy gazes fixed on the cocktails, I spotted Baron Dosville.
Our eyes met, and he flashed me a smirk.
Earlier, when the Golden Tomato first appeared, he had seemed ready to raise some kind of objection — but then he quickly shut his mouth and backed off without a word.
I had a guess at his game.
For now, he was cooperating with us in hopes of claiming the prize himself. But if he failed, he would attack us again during tomorrow's final settlement. He was precisely the type who would flip any argument he'd once made, so long as it served his purposes.
Anais was already preparing for that possibility, studying the rules of this contest with fierce concentration.
Tomorrow promised a verbal battle as vicious as any courtroom fight.
I could not predict the outcome, but right now I had no choice but to trust her.
I traded brief greetings with the crowd and moved straight to the drawing.
The first team to submit a deck had scored 215 points.
When I announced that, half the participants' faces fell. Their own decks fell short of that number.
As I opened envelope after envelope, the high score kept climbing. The number of disappointed faces grew with every shift.
Eventually, the score reached 262. The owners of that deck stepped forward with visible pride — only to have victory snatched away before they even reached me.
"281 points!"
The people who had been striding forward froze in their tracks.
The onlookers turned to one another, buzzing. Who had built that deck?
From my vantage point on the platform, I could see exactly who.
Baron Dosville emerged with a retinue of thugs flanking him.
They had not come to enjoy the performances. They had barely spent any coins this whole time, which had allowed them to draw far more cards than most.
He tipped his head with a grating smirk.
"I wonder if the two of you would mind my joining this little cocktail party of yours?"
His eyes blazed as he stared at the drinks.
Fewer than thirty of these tomatoes appeared in a year. Mathematically, a single glass like this was rarer than a hundred-a-year rarity.
The thought of tasting something he had only ever heard about had him nearly unhinged. Simply having drunk it would make him the talk of high society once more.
I could not decide whether to be furious or delighted.
If he claimed the prize, it would mean one less formidable enemy at tomorrow's reckoning. But the idea of this man — who had harassed us at every turn — walking away with something so precious gnawed at me.
I scanned the crowd.
Everyone was watching us with deflated expressions. It seemed no higher score was going to appear.
I opened the remaining envelopes one by one. No new high score.
Now only one envelope remained in front of me.
I opened it and pulled out the deck.
The first five cards were all Legendary.
100 points.
I tallied that and moved on to the next cards.
The next five were also Legendary.
Another 100 points.
Startled, I flipped faster.
The next five were Legendary as well!
Another 100 points!
That alone already surpassed Dosville's camp.
What followed was just as staggering.
One more Legendary, and the rest all Epic cards matched into pairs.
I shouted the score.
"425 points!"
An overwhelming gap — second place could not even come close.
Shock registered on every face. Baron Dosville's expression in particular was something to savor.
I turned the envelope over to check the name of the submitter.
The hell.
If I had not been wearing The Smiling Man's face, my own expression would have matched the rest of theirs.
***
Ella jolted upright the moment she opened her eyes.
The blanket slid down. She realized she was in her nightclothes.
'What happened?'
She looked around. She was in her own room at the hotel.
She had no memory of how she had gotten here.
Hadn't they been in the middle of the competition? Right at the final stretch, even.
Had she collapsed again?
Her heart hammered at the grim thought.
From the corner sofa, Butler Bartel — who had been reading a book — noticed her stir and offered a greeting.
"You're awake, Deputy Leader?"
Ella looked at the old man she had grown comfortable with over the past several days.
He had a knack for putting people at ease with nothing more than his expression and tone.
She felt her pulse begin to steady.
"What's going on, Mr. Bartel? Why am I here? Where is everyone else?"
"Everyone else has gone to attend the final settlement."
"Settlement? Wait — does that mean today is Sunday?"
Only then did she notice how bright it was outside the window.
The butler nodded.
"You slept for sixteen hours straight."
She tried to throw off the covers and stand, but the butler had already moved to her side and gently pressed her back down by the shoulder.
"I was asked to make absolutely certain you did not leave this bed."
"Urk — who asked that?"
"Troupe Leader Wonderstein."
Ella felt the strength drain out of her body.
Was it resignation? Or trust?
The moment she heard his name, a feeling of 'Well, if it's him...' washed over her.
She exhaled a long sigh and let his hand guide her back down onto the mattress.
"Fine. So what happened?"
Bartel recounted the previous day's events in a calm, measured voice.
Anais's entrance and the Golden Tomato. The last-minute reversal at the card draw.
He delivered even the dramatic moments as gently as he could, mindful that she was still recovering.
Alongside relief that the crisis had passed, Ella felt something closer to defeat.
She had not wanted to rely on a patron's help with the test...
"So what happened with the cocktail? Did Baron Dosville claim the prize?"
"No. Much to his chagrin, he placed second."
The butler let out a hearty laugh.
During their time together, he had grumbled more than once about Dosville. He could never bring himself to like the man who had stoked rumors about Anais and worked behind the scenes against her.
Ella allowed herself a small smile.
She, too, took pleasure in watching the man who had thrown a tomato at her get his comeuppance.
"Then there's probably a fierce argument going on right about now."
"Ha ha, well now..."
The butler's smile turned a little sheepish. Ella tilted her head.
Just as she was about to press him, the sound of carriages arriving came from outside.
The butler rose from his seat with a warm grin.
"It seems the rest of the party has returned. I'll go prepare a small gathering — whether for congratulations or consolation, I couldn't say."
"I'll help."
She braced a hand against the bed frame and pushed herself up.
He gently guided her back down.
"You rest, Deputy Leader."
"I'm really fine!"
The butler smiled at her again.
"What happened when you ignored the doctor's orders not to perform?"
"Ugh, that's a low blow."
The memory of dozing on stage the previous day flashed through her mind, and her defiance wilted at once.
The old man pulled the blanket up to her chin, then left the room.
"I'll send a troupe member up to let you know the result of the competition."
Not long after the butler left, she heard people coming upstairs.
Ella listened toward the hall.
The lively voices of troupe members passed by her door.
They sounded pleased.
It was hard to tell whether they were simply lighthearted after shaking off the pressure of the test, or genuinely giddy with victory.
Then her door opened.
At the sight of the person who entered, she felt a peculiar relief.
Of course.
It was Wonderstein.
He was dressed in his usual black suit and cloak.
It had only been a few days of seeing him as the Jester, but she already missed it. Would she never see that face again?
Everyone else had called it grotesque, but she had found something oddly reassuring in the way he looked then.
"Did you sleep well?"
"Yeah."
Wonderstein removed his hat and hung it on the rack.
"The others are still taking off their makeup, so I came instead."
"You all went in costume?"
"I thought it might undermine the impression if our monster members appeared on stage with ordinary faces. Was that overcautious?"
"No, no. You did well."
Beneath the blanket, she smiled quietly.
"To think you'd consider something like that. You're starting to act like a proper troupe leader."
"Heh heh, is that so?"
They chatted about the events of the past week for a while.
Neither of them brought up the result of the competition.
Only when Wonderstein's laughter had quieted did Ella broach the subject she really wanted to discuss.
"I heard about yesterday from the butler."
"Did you?"
Ella took a breath before speaking.
"How did the settlement go?"
Wonderstein regarded her for a moment, then answered.
"The organizers discussed it and came to a decision."
A strange, unreadable smile crossed his face.
"All proceeds from the Golden Tomato have been voided."