As the two disappeared completely from sight, Ella jumped up from her seat.
All eyes turned to her.
She trembled as if stricken with a fever, her whole body shaking.
Yurakne, who was standing nearby, approached her with a worried expression.
"Are you okay?"
Ella stiffly turned her head to look at her.
"Yes, y-yes? Oh, ? I-I'm fine..."
But it was evident to everyone that she was not okay.
She breathed heavily, sweat beading on her forehead, her eyes darting around aimlessly.
She awkwardly smiled and looked around at the others.
"Why, why are you all looking like that? Haha, it's just a stomachache... I, I need to use the restroom…"
With that, she said and rushed into the mansion.
Not only her complexion but even her gait seed unsteady.
She staggered midway.
Everyone looked at each other with worried eyes.
They all knew why she was behaving like this. Enjoy exclusive chapters from empire
Ever since the incident at the freshn welco party, she had shown intermittent seizure symptoms.
It wasn't due to an injury.
It was sothing they had anticipated happening sooner or later.
Her lost mories were coming back to her.
The mbers didn't know what had happened between her and Wonderstein.
So, they couldn't casually speculate about it.
Of course, just recalling what they had witnessed, Wonderstein was a dreadful presence.
He ruthlessly killed people without changing his expression, like a monster.
Ordinary people would never have accepted him.
That was no different for the monster mbers.
They had avoided being with him for several months.
But the mbers were those who had been rejected by society at least once.
They had suffered all sorts of hardships from "normal people."
So, even if Wonderstein did sothing inhumane, they didn't feel as much moral repulsion as ordinary people would.
That's why they could choose to ignore his monstrous aspects as much as his human ones were revealed.
Of course, for Womon, Maya, and Gascon, who relatively joined the circus troupe late, they didn't know what he had done.
So, they had no initial aversion to him.
But Ella was different.
She was a founding mber of this circus troupe.
She had seen everything he had done until now.
Plus, there was a past that others didn't know about.
They worried about how shocked she would be when she regained all her mories.
***
Ella, coming out of the garden, ran without knowing where she was going.
She just had to go where there were no mbers.
She arrived at the garden area.
The ground was completely empty, thanks to the mbers harvesting all the pumpkins in the morning.
She grabbed onto any wall and barely caught her breath.
"Ugh, ugh."
She wiped the sweat from her forehead.
It was another damn hallucination.
It had been tornting her since the freshn welco party.
It appeared even with her eyes closed and her ears plugged.
The places and people varied each ti.
But there was a common denominator.
People died horribly, and Wonderstein was involved.
This ti, it was an open field in so forest.
A group clad in Armor surrounded them.
When Wonderstein reached out his hand, they exploded into bits of flesh and blood.
So fled, and so attacked with spears and swords, but they couldn't beco his opponents.
When he spread his arms, they all turned into a sea of blood and flesh.
He stood in the midst of that sea, laughing as he looked at her.
She wrapped her arms around herself.
Did he really… did he really do such things?
"No, no..."
Ella shook her head.
It was obviously false.
Surely, her constant negative conjectures about Wonderstein's past were being reflected in these visions.
It must be…
Thus, she kept repeating words she herself wasn't sure of.
Then, she heard footsteps from behind.
She turned around to see.
An old man, clad in muddy clothes, was trudging towards the garden area.
Approaching her, he extended a steaming cup towards her.
"It's a tonic to clear your mind. You can't stop mories from returning, but at least you won't have sudden seizures like this."
It was a freshly brewed herbal concoction.
He was undoubtedly responding to seeing her distressed.
"T-Thank… you…"
Ella cautiously accepted the cup he offered.
Gascon snorted and extended his hand.
"Hmph. You don't have to thank . It's all because of that guy's request."
"That guy?"
"My apprentice, who else? He's a real piece of work. Only learns what's promised and then disappears… tsk. How nice would it be if he worried about as much as he did about you."
Grumbling like that, he pretended to tidy up the dishevelled area.
Ella stared at the herbal concoction in silence, murmuring.
"The director… worries about …?"
A laugh escaped her lips.
The terror she felt upon seeing the hallucination dissipated as soon as she realized he was worried about her.
Gascon sighed deeply as he looked at her.
"You are fond of him, huh?"
"Hehe…"
She avoided his gaze as if embarrassed.
The old gardener shook his head as if in pity.
"Hmph. What's so good about that guy? A pathetic fellow hanging around the circus despite having such abilities."
Ella widened her eyes at Gascon's words insulting the two things she liked the most.
"What? A dung carrier sniffing around and rolling on the dirt floor!"
"A dung carrier?"
The two exchanged insults, raising their voices.
Startled by the noise, the mbers who rushed to the area breathed a sigh of relief seeing the usual sight of the two.
***
Clara humd a tune as she walked down the street.
She was singing the song the "Quartet" had played at the freshn welco party.
She occasionally hopped or swayed her shoulders in rhythm.
Passersby's smiled subtly at the sight of the tall lady behaving like an innocent child.
What good news does she have?
Clara was engrossed in singing, unaware of how people perceived her.
Although she had lost her power, she still had the ability to listen in on conversations around her.
She had always kept it on before, but not anymore.
Using that power put a strain on her body.
She couldn't keep causing trouble while indebted to her master.
So, she refrained from using it except when necessary.
As she reached her destination, she stretched her arms out and spun around, finishing her song.
Clara learned about the world through human "conversations."
In those whispers, she encountered nurous rumours, conspiracies, and manipulations.
Thanks to them, she could grasp the dark and shady side of politics, society, and economics.
While listening to all those secretive stories, she acted as if she understood everything about the world and humanity.
But when she stepped outside, the world was different from her expectations.
The sensations of feeling, tasting, and seeing everything were filled with wonder.
"Wow, miss, what's the good news? Why are you dancing like that from afar?"
A uniford old security guard smiled at her and spoke.
Clara smiled back at him and shouted.
"Just because everything's great! Here's my Vergsong rchant Union mbership card!"
"Oh, okay, hmm, right. I've confird it. Haha, it feels so good to see a young lady so bright and cheerful."
After confirming her identity, the old security guard opened the door for her.
She entered the bank.
Wonderstein and she had decided to divide the remaining tasks since it would take more ti for him to co out with clothes.
She visited the corporate bank, responsible for handling the financial affairs of the Union and the company.
The building was bustling with elderly people in suits.
She was the only teenager there.
The guests looked at her as if she were out of place.
In this era, corporate banks were not places for the general public to frequent.
With difficult jargon, ticulous paperwork, and complex processing procedures involving stamps and signatures, it took a lot of effort just to accomplish a single task.
The circus had never had any dealings with this place before.
In Luz, Anais had taken care of the paperwork herself, and afterward, she had personally delivered the funds regularly.
However, for so reason, they had lost contact with her recently.
She hadn't withdrawn her sponsorship.
They still had the qualification to participate in the Circus Grand Prix.
Wonderstein finally believed that the noble lady had taken an interest in sothing.
So, using the sponsorship qualification from the rchant union, he had been going through the formal procedures to obtain funds.
He couldn't believe it when Clara said she could handle it alone.
When he went to the bank, he and Ella always spent a lot of ti discussing and dealing with this and that.
The staff at the counter had the sa thoughts.
They didn't think a teenager who looked barely over twenty could handle business at a bank alone.
But for Clara, who had accumulated knowledge of the world for a long ti, bank business was nothing.
She handled what the bank demanded smoothly.
It was the skill of a seasoned rchant.
She handled the situation so well that the supervisor behind the counter even jokingly suggested that she should work for the bank.
Clara chuckled inwardly.
Perhaps she would have been moved by his words when her self-esteem was at its lowest, but not now.
She was with the world's greatest man now.
She didn't envy any other position.
So, she was able to finish the bank business faster than Wonderstein had initially anticipated.
With ti to spare, she found a nearby playground.
Although she was knowledgeable about high society, she hadn't investigated acrobatics deeply enough to be able to pass herself off as Clara.
But to properly fulfil her role as the director's secretary, she couldn't help it.
She needed to watch acrobatics and accumulate knowledge on the side.
Of course, there was another reason for her to be here.
"Alright, it's ti for an arm wrestling competition! Oh, wait, wait! You there, big guy, step back! This is for won only! Of course, if the gentleman is wearing a pretty skirt, we can consider it. I can't dare to check if it's attached to the lady or not, you see."
Laughter erupted from the crowd.
The bearded man closed his mouth again and stepped back.
Of course, he didn't go to put on a skirt.
Clara also signed up for the competition.
The prize for the competition was a Halloween cookie set from Slagbrot Bakery, which she was already planning to buy today.
If she won the prize here, she could pocket the money.
She believed she could win.
During this ti, she had also received so enhancent to her physical abilities from Wonderstein's ability.
She could easily handle the youngsters andering around in this market.
Her first opponent looked to be about six years old.
"Hehe, little kid, little kid, little kid. I'll eat you alive in the first match!"
Even though she was a kid, she didn't intend to go easy on her.
She decided to weaken the opponent's morale with so trash talk.
"Hey! Why did you co here if you're just a baby bottle sucker?"
Clara whispered loud enough for her opponent to hear.
The kid blushed and bowed her head deeply.
"I-I'm old enough too."
Clara pretended to listen intently to her mumbling.
"Yeah. What? Can't hear you? Want to co closer? Yeah, I can't hear you, your voice is too small like a little kid's!"
Then, from the crowd, the kid's father shouted to cheer his daughter.
Clara pointed at him and teased.
"Is that your dad over there? Is that guy a person? Maybe a rooster?"
The kid's shoulders trembled.
'Hehe, she's mad.'
The referee's whistle signaled the start.
Clara twisted her arm without giving her opponent a chance.
Thunk.
The match was over in an instant.
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