SHC Chapter 16

16. Making a List

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‘When did they finish eating?’

I cooled my face with my hand and refilled the bowls, and as if they’d been waiting, they shoved their heads in and ate with loud, happy chomps.

They really eat well.

Red had already finished his food even though I’d just given it a moment ago, and he tried to steal Yellow’s bowl, only to get headbutted.

‘They act like that, but all the food ends up in the same stomach anyway.’

Letting out a long sigh, I rested my arms on my knees and buried my head in them.

‘I can’t. I need to talk to the ringmaster first.’

Filled with resolve, I headed straight for the container building.

As usual, I knocked… tap tap, and opened the door right after.

“Ringmaster!”

But the office was empty.

‘Did he go to his room?’

The ringmaster slept during the day, too. The times he worked during the daytime were, from a normal person’s perspective, basically overtime.

Still, thinking there was no way he’d be asleep already made my mouth pause. Calling someone who’s resting out of nowhere felt wrong, and besides…

“…”

I rubbed the back of my stiff neck. Heat filled my palm. From the central stairs leading to the second floor, I moved toward the bathroom. I washed my face with cold water and looked at myself in the mirror.

My cheeks were definitely redder than usual.

And my lips too.

I brushed my lips with my index and middle fingers. The light touch of my fingertips felt like the ringmaster’s lips, and it made my hair stand on end.

I quickly pulled my hand away, ran the cold water again, and cooled myself.

When I checked the mirror, my face was even redder than before. I’d never been this flushed in my life.

“This is ridiculous.”

Compared to the rest of my body, my face looked like it had been drenched in blood. Not even alcohol would do this to me.

‘I can’t trust this mirror either.’

Who knows. Maybe it was another weird mirror.

As all sorts of suspicions came to mind, I couldn’t even trust the reflection in front of me.

‘Wait. Come to think of it, what exactly can I trust here, and what shouldn’t I trust…?’

Shaking off my damp bangs, I left the bathroom and looked again toward the second-floor stairs. But facing the ringmaster while my face was still overheated felt too awkward, so I went into the guest room.

When the door shut with a soft thud, the room, after only a few days, felt almost like my own. I felt my body relax without even knowing how long I’d been tense.

Thump.

I flopped onto the bed.

‘How am I supposed to sort out what I can trust from what I should doubt?’

The thought had just come to me, but since things were already like this, I figured it wasn’t a bad time to set some proper standards.

Small Hell Circus.

This place twisted the common sense of the world I lived in, yet strangely shared many similarities too. That only made things more confusing.

‘That day, because I brushed off the ringmaster’s words, I ended up going the wrong way.’

I should have listened to that stranger who grabbed me by the collar and stole a kiss the first time we met.

‘And I shouldn’t have trusted the delicate girl locked in the animal cage.’

I should have ignored the young girl who begged me to please get her out of here.

‘I really don’t know.’

Rolling over onto my stomach, I reached for the notepad on the small table beside the bed. There was a fountain pen in the holder too, so I didn’t need to worry about writing tools.

I began jotting down what I could trust and what I should doubt, based purely on my own experiences.

“Then the ringmaster is… something I can trust, at least.”

First of all, he knew who I really was, and he genuinely intended to send me back to my original world quietly.

I had no choice but to trust that.

Besides, well… how should I put it? He kind of had the vibe of an older brother who looks after his juniors.

No matter what happened, deep down I was aware that he cared about me.

Then why?

‘Guess he just likes me, that’s all.’

Thinking that to myself without any real intention, I dropped the fountain pen onto the table and rolled across the bed.

‘No, that thing earlier! The kissing! Wasn’t that supposed to just be scent extraction?!’

Sure, you could say he was being considerate by making it soft enough to melt me, but when he started moving his lips at the end and rubbing them against mine, how was that extracting human scent? My lips kept parting all over the place; it even made me wonder if he sucked anything up properly at all.

On top of that, the whole time he was kissing me, the ringmaster held me tight, and his grip only got stronger.

Because of that, right before he pulled away, the fronts of our bodies were pressed flush against each other.

The memory of the solid weight I had felt below came rushing back.

“Ugh…”

I grabbed my hair, then collapsed forward with my arms hanging down. When I rested my hot face on my arm, the heat soaked straight through. At this rate, I wasn’t sure the warmth would cool off before today ended.

‘Anyway.’

Since I couldn’t fully trust him on account of not knowing what was going on inside his head, I decided to put the word “relatively” in front of him.

Holding the fountain pen, I tried as hard as I could not to think about the ringmaster as I continued building my list.

After scribbling for quite a while, the notepad was mostly filled.

Writing it down by hand instead of keeping it all in my head made things feel a little clearer, even if it wasn’t perfect.

| Relatively Trustworthy | Maximum Distrust |
| ———————- | ——————————————————– |
| Ringmaster | Kiss? (uncertain) |
| Pink Bear | Most troupe members |
| Clock, clothes, shoes | Mountain path |
| Black dog | Flower girl (grab her by the collar if I meet her again) |
| Red, Blue | Yellow (breathes fire) |
| Employment contract | Audience (?) |
| | Streets and sense of direction around the circus |
| | My common sense, ethics (trying to reason got me killed) |
| | Outward appearances |
| | Man-eaters |

‘Let’s leave it at this for now.’

I’ll add to it little by little from now on and be careful.

I decided to keep the paper in the room. Even though the ringmaster often barged in, he was the only one who came in anyway, so it should be safe.

‘Kiss probably uses the office because he’s the deputy ringmaster.’

No way he’d come into the living quarters, right?

“…”

I added one more item to the list.

My hasty assumptions

Only after tucking the paper underneath my phone inside the drawer did I feel a bit relieved. Even if it was nothing more than an ordinary list, it’d be troublesome if someone found it, so hiding it was better.

I lay down on the bed again. I had dozed a little earlier, but I still hadn’t slept enough.

Even so, my mind only grew clearer as fleeting warmth and lingering ticklish sensations kept brushing through me. Tormented by it, I shot upright.

After sitting for a long time with my brow furrowed, I finally picked up the fountain pen and began writing another list.

Things to ask the ringmaster

Just like he said, when it came to the missing-person report and everything else, there were countless things I wanted to ask.

Writing this list was much easier than the previous one, but at the very end, my pen froze at the question of what he thought of me. In the end, I bit my lower lip and slashed a line through it, deleting the final item.