Walpurgis Night: The Midnight Blood-Red Rose - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: The Mageka on Duty (Part 2)

“I almost got scolded again today.” I let out a sigh.

“Mm-hmm.” The individual next to me nodded.

“That exasperating hag always shoves urgent tasks at me at the very last minute. Today, she told me out of the blue that there’s a client urging for a report and asked me to get it done by noon, but then she kept checking up on me every ten minutes or so – how was I supposed to stay focused! Luckily the client’s file happened to be part of the batch I organised a few days back, or else there’s no way I could’ve made it in time with scraps of information here and there!” I went on with my grumbles.

“Mm-hmm.” She responded with another nod.

“And I only knew about that fact when I took the documentation from the finance department, that the client had already demanded a report from that woman two weeks ago. So that means the request somehow slipped her mind, and she leaves it to us all to clean up her mess again! The point is: we managed to fulfil the request by the deadline, yet she still insisted it’s our problem and nagged us about it with her nonsense like ‘Why didn’t you confirm with the client in the first place?’, ‘You should at least have an idea of what the client’s thinking’, blah blah blah… I mean seriously, such a specific request? Don’t pass the buck to someone else when it’s absolutely your fault for leaving the issue behind!” At the thought of someone who seemed to see eye to eye with me on the matter, I spilled my guts all out like a machine gun.

“Mm-hmm.” Still, without a word, she nodded once more.

“All this annoying and meaningless work day after day, I feel like I’m going nuts! Honestly this only makes me miss my past career even more! Why can’t I do that instead?” Throwing out the phrase “past career“ which I normally didn’t even dare to mention in front of others – I supposed my tolerance had already reached the summit.

“Mm-hmm.” Yet without raising a brow or anything, she just kept nodding like she had already been all along.

“By the way, are you even listening?” Noticing her lack of verbal response, I frowned at her.

“Mm… Hmm? Oh, have you been talking?” Awakening from her dormant state, it appeared she finally realised my complaints were over.

“Can you not play dumb?” I spoke out of discontent.

“I didn’t ‘play dumb’. Oh right, what do you mean by ‘play dumb’, Sakura?” She ended her turn by hitting me with such a question, right when I was obviously losing my temper. She’s just trying to get on my nerves even more, isn’t she?

“It is exactly what you’re doing right now, Igarashi!” I don’t have the patience to play your little game. You should’ve known best what you are doing!

To my surprise, the gal tilted her head in confusion. With a puzzled face, she questioned, “‘Igarashi’? Do you mean me, or my parents?”

“Of course it’s you, missy! Who else here do you think goes by the name ‘Igarashi’?” My temper went through the roof as I pointed my finger at the passers-by. Look, does it seem to you that there are any other Japanese around?

“Missy…Me?” Who would have thought. Her attention landed on the word “missy” instead.

I could tell this was never going to end, given that astonishing logic of hers. “Okay fine, I’m not pushing this any further. It’s always me who loses anyways.” I sighed.

“Is that so? What a pity.” She sighed along, as if a game which she was about to beat suddenly got cut short.

“‘A pity’ you say… “ I was left speechless.

The girl who sluggishly sat through all my complaints as of just now was named “Kou Igarashi”. As the first human I had encountered after my arrival in this world, she was kind of a friend of mine, one of not many I had.

This was not the world I belonged to. In fact, I came from a distant realm which barely anyone from this world knew about – a place named “Glace” which existed in a separate dimension on planet Earth. To put it this way, an “alternate world”, where I was addressed as a “mageka” who harnessed her magical powers.

As for Kou, according to her, her clan as one of the renowned “Shake” (Japanese priesthood clans) in Japan gave rise to her Japanese surname. Her parents, however, for some reason chose to relocate from Japan to this city named Hong Kong prior to her birth, and continued to live their lives here as ordinary civilians after. It lasted until two years ago, when they both retired and made the decision to move back to their hometown.

“Sakura, could you help holding this cup of coffee for me? I’d like to find something,” Kou asked.

I didn’t take her cup, but instead, murmured a word as I glared at the translucent substance, “Fixatio.”

The cup froze in the air as I cast the spell, only to be nullified when Kou grasped it back after taking a tissue from her handbag.

“Must you really use magic just for holding a cup?” She looked annoyed.

“Come on, let me do the tricks from time to time.” I pouted. “It’s not like I always get a chance other than trivial matters like this.”

She then took a sneaky peek at the surroundings and lowered her voice, “Aren’t you afraid of being caught in the act?”

“Of course I pulled this trick knowing no one would have seen it.” Despite the fact that the promenade was crowded with people, most of them were busy chatting with one another, down on their phones or sped through the avenue. Not a single soul would have noticed anything out of the ordinary on an inconspicuous bench. “Such cautiousness even for a minor trick… What a distress…” I exhaled a heavy sigh.

“It can’t be helped. It just so happens that magic is something that can only be done in the shadows in this world.” Kou expressed her kind understanding of my concerns.

Indeed, the two realms had completely distinct perspectives when it came to magic.

In Glace, magic was practically a part of the ordinary rooted into everyone’s daily lives. Possessing magical powers was a normal thing. Although not everyone had full access to such powers, each would have at least a certain degree of possession. As for mages and magekas, people who made a living out of magic, they were just as common as service occupations in the mortal world, which certainly did not require any form of concealment.

Not until I arrived in the mortal world had I always naively thought people here would treat magic the same way as they did back in Glace, and the bubble finally burst when I learnt the fact that magic was actually a sign of abnormality here. If my ability to perform magic was exposed, I would most definitely be treated as an outcast. And so, I was forced to seal my identity as a mageka and turned into an average “wage slave”, working myself to the bone in the office every day like a machine for a living.

There went another sigh of frustration.