Editing Failing Witch:Volume2 Episode1 (section)

===Part 9===

Trouble wasn’t brewing. It had already arrived.

Yagoro felt like he had received a gift with a bomb inside, but Arbamini had warned him nonetheless. He decided to keep that in mind.

He again set out for the squatter’s district exit.

He was walking through the labyrinthine streets created by all the unnecessary extensions when something fell from above. It was a notebook made from tying fliers together with string.

“Hm?”

“Ah!”

He looked up to see a bridge between two short buildings. It was little more than a skinny metal beam, making it only slightly better than a ladder.

The girl crossing the bridge wore a dress and shorts that were so tattered she looked like Cinderella before the fairy godmother. She also wore a witch hat and a thin summer cloak. After noticing the tutor looking up at her, she held down the hem of her short and tattered skirt. She was apparently old enough to worry about such things.

She was the little witch in training named Roslynica.

“Here, Roslynica. This study notebook is important to you, isn’t it?”

“Yes…”

She hopped down from the metal beam bridge.

As damaged as her clothing was, it gave her a witchy and a girly look. Everyone in the squatter’s district must have gathered cloth from all over to mend it.

She would be growing quickly at her age and the squatter’s district didn’t have much in the way of resources. Unisex pants would be more convenient since they could be reused by another child once she grew out of them, but they had still made her a skirt.

Was that another sign of how much the district expected of her?

But the witch in training didn’t seem to be in the mood to chat as she accepted the homemade notebook from Yagoro. She seemed somewhat restless. The people of the squatter’s district were apparently selling firewood, collecting trash, and otherwise working here and there to make what little money they could, so maybe this had to do with that.

“Sorry. A first-come-first-serve job?”

“Um. Yes, but if I don’t get the work first, everyone else tries to do the work for me, leaving me to rest on my own.”

…It sounded like Raynold was turning into a real gentleman.

But it didn’t sound like it was just the one kid. The entire district was supporting Roslynica. Yagoro was reminded of the old-fashioned craftsmen who had worked together to build a cutting-edge lunar rover. Success stories like this one could be found here and there on Earth as well.

“Why not just accept their kindness? I’m sure they’d prefer it that way.”

“B-but Maleficium is a really difficult school, isn’t it? I know they all say I can get in, but I feel so bad seeing them work so much to save up the money…”

“I doubt they’re the type to hold it against you if you don’t get in.”

“It’s not that. I-I just have to do this the right way.”

He watched her run off, clutching her flier notebook to her chest.

And he muttered to himself.

Come to think of it, she appeared to be lacking something necessary to become a witch.

“I wonder…”