Chapter 295: The Bizarre Circus, an Entity Named Babelus (Patreon)

Papyrus kept smiling the whole time. He smiled as he watched the clown fall, smiled as he signaled Joe to keep throwing, and smiled as he watched the knife fly toward the blonde woman's throat.

Only when the blade shattered did the smile finally vanish from his face. His gaze locked onto Amamiya Rin in the audience.

"Oh my, my circus has a very formidable guest today."

Papyrus narrowed his eyes into two thin slits and murmured to himself, smiling with his mouth but not his eyes.

Joe still stood rooted to the spot, at a complete loss.

A throw he'd been one hundred percent sure of had gone astray, and then something from who-knows-where had smashed the knife to pieces. Between one thing and another, he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

"Seriously? That's the level they're at?"

Kawakami Tomie sank back into her seat, crossed her legs, and rolled her eyes in disgust.

"If they can't even throw a knife straight, they should just let Rin go up and perform."

Azawa Tomie licked her ice cream and chimed in through a mouthful, equally unhappy about the mishap.

They'd finally managed to get out and relax together with Amamiya Rin, and this was how it turned out. What a letdown.

Amamiya Rin didn't answer. The burst of power from the Crimson Lotus Breathing Method still echoed through his body and his heartbeat ran a little faster than usual, but it soon settled.

It was a letdown, sure. But circus performers were only human, and humans made mistakes.

This blunder had nearly cost a life, but it had been stopped in time, so nothing irreversible had happened.

Even so, Amamiya Rin couldn't shake a faint sense of unease.

At the edge of the stage, Papyrus had already put his smile back on.

He strolled to the center of the stage without hurry and bowed deeply to the audience.

"Oh my, I'm afraid I've startled our distinguished guests."

He straightened up and clapped his hands. Two men in black work uniforms ran onto the stage and hauled Joe away, one on each side.

Joe's legs had given out, and he was practically dragged along. He kept muttering under his breath: "Impossible... it's impossible... how could I miss..."

The blonde woman was also untied from the board. She clutched her neck and staggered after them.

Between her fingers, a shallow line of blood had already been smeared out, leaving a faint red streak across her pale skin.

"A mistake, merely a small mistake."

Papyrus spread his hands and gave the audience an apologetic smile.

"Papyrus Great Circus has always repaid your support with the most spectacular performances. The accident just now was because our knife-throwing artist was off his game. On behalf of the circus, I offer you all my sincerest apologies."

He bowed again, even lower this time. His top hat slid right off his head, but he caught it deftly and clapped it back on, drawing a ripple of good-natured laughter from the audience.

"Ladies and gentlemen!"

Papyrus's voice quickly regained the exaggerated excitement of the opening.

"Next to take the stage, the king of the African savanna, Ares the lion, and his tamer, Claude!"

A huge iron cage was wheeled onto the stage. A massive lion lay sprawled in the middle of it, its mane thick, its eyes lazy. The tamer was a muscular young man holding a whip and a round stool.

Claude opened the cage door. The lion ambled out unhurriedly and crouched at center stage.

The whip cracked sharply through the air. The lion lazily raised a front paw and performed the prescribed trick, earning a few sparse claps from the audience.

Claude snapped the whip again. The lion stood up, its hind legs trembling slightly, and slowly turned its head toward the tamer. Its jaws parted a crack, baring sharp fangs. Deep in its eyes, the murky dullness split open, and a long-suppressed restlessness came spilling out.

Suddenly, that huge body sprang up from its crouch like a burning tongue of dark yellow flame and pounced at the tamer.

Claude instinctively raised the stool to block.

But against a lion, what good was a mere stool?

Yet just as Claude was about to give in to despair, the lion's front paw froze in midair.

That mighty body might as well have been bound by a spell. It stood stiff and motionless, its mane bristling, every hair standing on end like a startled hedgehog's.

Shrill screams erupted from the audience. The lion's sudden lunge made the children instinctively cover their eyes, too afraid to look.

Several women in the crowd had already jumped to their feet, their chairs clattering as they shoved them back.

Claude had fallen to the ground, his pupils shrunk to pinpricks.

He could see the quiver deep in the lion's throat. He could see the traces of blood on those yellowed fangs. The gaping maw was right in front of his face. His mind went blank, his body locked up, and he couldn't even send the command to run.

But the lion, so close, never lunged. Instead, it was backing off!

That was right! A beast that was only a step away from mauling its tamer to death had actually shrunk back.

The tamer noticed, with sharp instinct, that the lion's huge body was trembling. It had tucked its tail between its legs. Its pupils contracted violently, and in those murky dark yellow eyes only one thing remained: fear!

Pure, primal fear, carved into its very genes!

It was the look of prey facing its natural predator!

A low whimper rose from the lion's throat, like a stray dog cornered against a wall with nowhere to run, a wail squeezed out from deep inside.

It looked ready to turn and bolt at any moment, yet had no idea which way to flee. Helplessness and despair poured off its whole body.

A bewildered look spread across the tamer's face. He couldn't understand any of this. He'd worked with this partner for nearly five years, yet everything the lion had done today was beyond anything he knew.

What on earth was going on?

In the audience, the screams gradually faded into confused whispers.

"W-what's happening?"

"It's... lying down?"

"Is this part of the act?"

"Must be. Look how well-behaved that lion is. They've definitely rehearsed it."

Someone answered in a low voice, clearly unsure.

Scattered applause started up, tentative and thin, as if people weren't sure whether they should clap.

Claude the tamer was still on the ground, shaking uncontrollably. His trousers were soaked, and cold sweat dripped from his forehead down the tip of his nose.

At the edge of the stage, Papyrus stood in the shadows. His gaze passed over the stage, over the audience, over the crowd still whispering in confusion, and came to rest on a seat in the third row. The curve of his smile deepened.

Then he put his professional smile back on and called out to the audience in an exaggerated tone.

"Oh! What a wonderful performance! It seems our tamer, Mr. Claude, and Ares the lion have grown even closer! Let's give them a round of applause!"

The applause finally came, a little warmer than before. Some people let out a long breath, visibly relaxing.

Claude pulled himself up from the ground, still trembling. He picked up his whip and cautiously gave it a crack.

"Crack!"

The lion's huge body shuddered. With its head hanging low, it slowly walked to its assigned spot at center stage.

It was as docile as a house cat.

Seeing this, Claude felt a rush of surprise and delight, and relief washed over him.

He had no idea what was going on, but as long as the show could go on smoothly, that was all that mattered.

The whispers in the audience grew louder.

"I knew it was part of the act!"

"Look how obedient that lion is. It was obviously just trying to scare us before."

"This circus has something going for it. Even the animals act this convincingly."

...

The audience chattered on. Some who'd been put off by the earlier mishaps perked up again after this performance, and the scattered claps swelled into warm applause.

Amamiya Rin leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the lion lying prone on the stage, the pressure radiating from his body gradually drawing in.

Obviously, he'd saved the circus's show once again.

He wasn't as skilled at it as Swordmaster Tomie, but intimidating with sheer presence was something he could manage.

Still...

"Isn't this way too unprofessional?" Amamiya Rin muttered.

One slip-up was forgivable, but three in a row? How had this circus lasted so long?

The clown fell, the knife missed, the lion went berserk.

Wasn't the Papyrus Great Circus supposed to be a world-famous, top-tier act? What was this string of blunders?

Amamiya Rin narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze around, but still found nothing obviously out of place.

Yet with this many accidents, he could no longer write them off as coincidence.

"Rin, here, say ahh~~"

Just then, Kawakami Tomie's voice drifted over from beside him. She held out her strawberry ice cream, already starting to melt, to his lips. Cream trickled down the edge of the cone and dripped onto her pale fingers.

"You bought it, you eat it."

Amamiya Rin leaned back to dodge the ice cream she was offering.

"Don't be such a killjoy. What, are you grossed out by me?"

Kawakami Tomie drew out the end of her sentence, her eyes drooping at the corners and her lips pushed into an aggrieved pout, though the arm holding the ice cream didn't budge.

"Not exactly grossed out."

Amamiya Rin said evenly. His gaze passed over the ice cream she held before him and lingered for a moment on the back of her hand.

That hand was fair and delicate, glowing softly in the dim light. Her fingers were slender, her nails painted a pale pink that matched the tone of her skin, like a piece of carefully polished white jade.

Cream had run down from the edge of the cone and pooled in a small pinkish-white smear at the web of her thumb. It made her skin look even more luminous, so translucent that the fine blue veins beneath were faintly visible.

Kawakami Tomie's skin had always been this good, never needing skincare or makeup.

But... did she look even more beautiful than usual?

Amamiya Rin wasn't sure. In his eyes, there was little difference between beauty and ugliness. After all, he had long since perfected the White Skeleton Visualization, and to him, everyone was equal.