Chapter 27
Before Ian got out of the bumper car, he casually asked the staff member who was tidying up the broken wreckage.
“Do you happen to know where the theme park manager is?”
“The manager? The manager is in the tower!”
Fortunately, the staff member answered kindly. He nodded, stepped outside, and opened the booklet.
“We've pinpointed the manager's location. Clear one more thing, and the escape route will open too.”
“R-right...... That was faster than I expected...... hehe.”
They had already cleared two rides. Now that they’d found the manager's location, all that remained was to clear one more, pluck out the heart, and make their escape.
He didn't trust the staff member's words blindly. Still, with no information to go on, there was no need to suspect and avoid the place he’d been told about. They could check it first, and if it wasn't there, look somewhere else.
Ian flicked his cigarette onto the ground nearby and looked over the next place to search.
“Oh? A guest?”
At that moment, a staff member passing by them tilted her head in puzzlement and approached.
Her face was no different from a normal human's. But where her spine should have been, a streetlamp was jammed in, and light bulbs had been embedded in her eyes. The two of them were faintly reflected in her blinking, lit-up eyes.
“......!”
It was the first time since entering the theme park that a staff member had spoken to them first. Ian tried his best to stay calm and gripped the revolver hidden inside his coat. Yuna also tightened her grip on the staff she held.
“......What is it?”
“The parade is about to start, and you can't stand around here. Hurry and put on your masks, then gather in the plaza.”
The staff member spoke with her mouth curved into a smile, as if admonishing a child.
“......The parade, you say?”
“Yes! It's the pride of our theme park. Every guest and staff member is required to attend the parade!”
At the aberration's words, Ian let out a low groan and turned his head slightly.
A long procession of staff stretched across the theme park street that had once been wide open.
None of them looked normal. Their bizarre appearances were a given, and their expressions were grotesquely twisted as though they were dying with excitement over the parade. Some even had chunks of flesh smeared all over their mouths and teeth, as if they'd been scavenging on human meat somewhere.
He couldn't tell exactly what kind of parade this was, but at the very least, it was definitely not normal. Ian spoke politely, trying to get out of it somehow.
“I'm sorry, but we'd like to enjoy a few more rides a little lon—”
“Guest.”
“......!”
The atmosphere changed. The instant the staff member cut Ian off, every moving theme park employee stopped in place and glared at him.
“Aaah......”
Yuna clutched her staff tightly, her face pale. Ian quickly made his decision and nodded with an awkward smile.
“......I misspoke. We'll attend the parade.”
“......”
“Where can we get the masks?”
Instead of answering Ian's question, the staff member simply stared at him silently.
The other staff members also glared at the two of them, unconcerned even with the blood trickling from their eyes.
Silence dragged on. Feeling cold sweat run down his spine, Ian mentally ran through escape routes in case things went wrong.
Then the staff member's face broke into a bright smile.
“I'll get the masks myself! Would you please wait here for a moment?”
“......Yes. We'll wait.”
Ian replied with a sigh of relief.
“Haha!”
“Ahaha!”
Only then did the staff start moving toward the plaza again. The murderous intent that had been hanging in the air just moments ago scattered like a lie, and the streetlamp staff member handed Ian and Yuna two cat masks she'd somehow fetched.
“Put them on when you come back! We won't be responsible for the consequences if you don't!”
With those words, she dragged her legs as she walked toward the plaza.
“......”
By the time her back was no longer visible, Ian leaned against the wall and let out a stifled breath. Yuna, standing beside him, also panted as if the ordeal had taken ten years off her life.
“I-it was dangerous......”
“......Yeah.”
Needless to say, even a mage wasn't invincible against aberrations. One or two of them might be manageable, but when dozens of aberrations were glaring at you, your knees couldn't help but turn to water. A head-on breakthrough was impossible.
If they had been fleeing, the situation would have been better. They'd only need to worry about the ones chasing from behind, so if they kept fighting to a minimum, slipping away wouldn't be that hard.
But if the enemy openly showed hostility right in front of them like just now, even running away became difficult.
With one aberration standing firmly right in front of you and others pressing in from behind, what escape was there?
If they'd kept resisting, they would have been torn apart on the spot, just like Bureau agents.
‘There is a rule to obey the staff, but does that mean we can't even refuse a trivial order like this?’
He had expected it to be a tough place, but this was far more grueling than that. He really missed the time when they were beating up vampires.
“......Once this is over, I should rest until the New Year.”
Ian murmured that as he looked down at the mask.
It was an ordinary mask with nothing particularly unusual about it. Its appearance was a bit grotesque, but there was no ritual work or curse on it. It seemed like wearing it wouldn't cause any problems.
“Let's go, Han Yuna.”
“Y-yeah......”
Ian put on his mask. Yuna also tucked her staff into the guitar case, then put on the pink mask and joined the moving procession.
A short while later, the two arrived at the plaza.
KABOOM!
The blood-red fireworks bursting from the fountain soared into the sky and painted the shape of a clown.
All the gathered staff were wearing masks of unknown origin. There were a few animal masks like Ian and Yuna's, but most were wearing masks made by grotesquely cutting human skin.
“......I-it really is human skin.”
“......”
The two of them glared at the plaza from a spot slightly away from the gathered aberrations.
Soon, colorful mist began to spread from the center of the plaza.
“Waaaaaah!”
“Ahahaha! Hahahahahaha!!!”
The staff burst into cheers and laughter just because smoke had started pouring out.
He wondered if it was some kind of laughing gas, but the smell wafting over was perfectly ordinary. It didn't make him laugh at all.
Ian idly fiddled with the revolver tucked in his coat and quietly watched the parade.
Scrrrt.
Clowns began crawling out from inside the billowing smoke.
Clowns whose appearance looked as though a child had freely assembled a human body.
Smiling all the while, they looked up at the sky and danced with exaggerated swaying steps. Music played to match their ridiculous movements.
‘Nothing special so far. I hope it stays this way to the end.’
The moment he thought that, the clown snapped its fingers into the air. At the same time, a thin skewer appeared in its hand.
At the end of the skewer was a human impaled on it.
Not a grotesquely twisted human, but a pure, ordinary human being.
But perhaps its breath had already been cut off, because the pierced body didn't move at all. Only blood ran down the skewer.
“This is one of our special guests who has been successfully rehabilitated! Moved by our theme park's service, this guest graciously allowed itself to be used as fertilizer!”
The clown spoke. It gradually shortened the skewer until it was level with the corpse's eyes, then suddenly gave the corpse's lips a light kiss.
The corpse touched by its lips began to bubble and boil, then sprouted smiling faces all over its body like blooming flower buds.
The corpse, now forcibly given dozens of eyes and dozens of mouths, widened its eyes. Then it opened every mouth wide and began spewing its internal organs.
“Now!”
The clown cried out in a delighted voice, holding up the fallen intestines in its hand.
“Let us make our theme park even greater by using every last bit of the food our guests have made for us!”
As soon as he finished speaking, the staff lunged like beasts toward the fallen organs.
The clown snickered at their gluttonous display and pulled out dozens more skewers. As if it were only natural, more corpses were hanging from them too.
“......This place is bad for the mind.”
“Yeah......”
From a safe distance, Ian and Yuna watched the corpse breaking apart, the staff showered in blood, and the organs being torn away. Fortunately, there were no aberrations forcing them to eat the flesh.
“Thank you for enjoying today's parade! Up until now, I've been everyone's clown!”
Before long, the parade ended. The clown exited in a ridiculous flourish, and the staff headed off to return to their posts.
Ian watched their backs for a moment, then took off the mask he had been wearing and turned to Yuna.
“Let's go too.”
“W-wait a second.”
Yuna answered without taking off her mask, staring at the stairs leading into the plaza.
“S-something's coming up from there......?”
“......What?”
“Ah, it's the Bureau!”
At Yuna's words, Ian hastily put his mask back on.
Instinctively, he threw the grimoire into the nearby bushes.
Turning his head, he saw men and women in suits coming up the stairs. Among them was the agent Ian had seen at the convenience store.
Every one of them looked extremely tense.
The woman with a sword at her waist seemed to be handling the situation the best, but the others couldn't hide their tension. It showed on their faces.
‘Even Bureau agents find a place like this unsettling, huh.’
It seemed even the Bureau recognized this place as a highly troublesome paranormal phenomenon.
Come to think of it, the scale was absurdly large, entry conditions limited exploration, and even survivors were hard to find, so it was bound to be considered troublesome.
Until they figured out how to crack it, they had no choice but to take a cautious approach on their end as well.
It wasn't particularly important to Ian. He wasn't a Bureau agent, nor was he allied with them.
He could infer their circumstances, but there was no reason for him to care.
The important thing was whether their presence would help resolve the request.
“......”
They had already become aware of each other. The Bureau agents were staring at masked Ian and Yuna, and the two mages were staring back blankly at the Bureau agents.
At this point, fleeing blindly wasn't a very good choice.
If he didn't want to blatantly advertise that he was a mage, now was the time to act. In a space this difficult already, if he ended up opposing not only the aberrations but the Bureau as well, things would only become more complicated.
So it'd be best to fool them by acting like ordinary people caught up in a paranormal incident, with the gimmick that the masks wouldn't come off.
Ian gathered his thoughts, cleared his throat, and glanced at Yuna.
“......Han Yuna.”
“Y-yeah. I think I had the same thought......”
She trailed off and gave an awkward cough.
The instant Ian confirmed her slight nod, he shouted toward the Bureau agents.
“P-please save us!”