Editing Failing Witch:Volume2 Episode1 (section)

===Part 6===

Evening had fallen.

Myousou Yagoro spotted Viocia, Melehe, and Dorothea gathered in a corner of the cafeteria doing something. While there was a ticket system in place to rent out time in the lecture rooms and self-study room, quite a few exam students used little spaces like that to get their studying done.

“Where did I go wrong in today’s divination class? Oh, no. If I don’t do better, teacher’s evil scheme will keep me from going on the field trip!”

“<span style="font-size:75%">I don’t think he has a say in that part.</span> Eep. B-but if you’re having trouble, just keep working at it. You need to get this under control before you convince yourself you’re just bad at it.”

“Then what kind of divination should I do? I know! Financial fortune. Please, all-powerful cards, I want to earn a mountain of coins so I can go on the field trip, so do you have a good money-making plan for me?”

“C’mon, Viocia. Try to remember the actual method of using cards for divination. Eep.”

Dorothea could have just let her idiot rival continue full speed down that mistaken path, but her strange need to take care of others made another appearance. That may have come from being the oldest sibling of a large family.

“A black card means yes and a red one means no. Go!!”

Viocia drew the 8 of hearts.

The very red card meant no.

“Nooo!! D-does that mean I can’t go on the field trip!?”

“You can’t expect much accuracy from a failure’s divination, so you probably don’t have much to worry about.” Melehe averted her eyes and sighed as she made a comment that was equal parts comforting and insulting. “Besides, there are several fundamentally different ways to use playing cards for divination. You can have the cards correspond to the tarot minor arcana or you can have the 13 types, four suits, and jokers correspond to a 365 day calendar. Either way, you need to establish a foundation of logic first or you have nothing to divine.”

“'''(+1 point: You don’t want to be a phony necromancer who pops her joints in time with the questioner’s questions to mimic a rapping sound or poltergeist, but when performing divination for yourself, make sure you don’t grow overly self-focused or enter a trance. Always make sure to do this in a group so you can keep an eye on each other.)'''”

The tutor stared into the distance and muttered under his breath.

The prep school had a daytime group and a nighttime group, so there were a lot of students in the cafeteria during the evening.  And not just because it was mealtime. The exam students were all in different financial situations, so a lot of them simply didn’t have the spare money to eat out in the city.

(To be honest, the price of books is one of the major problems, don’tcha think? The lithographs are only disposable things used to create sample photos and there’s no real printing technology in this world, so they all have to be handwritten, which unavoidably brings up the price.)

Since this world did have Sketchgoats whose skin could be removed repeatedly, the price of parchment wasn’t all that high. That allowed for fliers to be passed out on the street.

“Gweh! The cafeteria really has upped its prices.”

“Is it true that the most cost-effective method is to buy the cheapest bread roll they have at the school store and then order a side of onion soup at the cafeteria? The roll is supposed to get a lot bigger as it soaks up the soup.”

Yagoro left the cafeteria with a glance toward the moving efforts of a succubus girl wearing fake wings and a tail and a yuki onna in an oiran-style kimono that left her pale shoulders bare. The students who lived on their own tended to find they had more than just their studies to worry about.

(The actual cheapest option is to grab some unsold side dishes from a food stand outside.)

When the students were making an attempt on their own, it could actually hurt their motivation if their tutor interrupted to correct them. So Yagoro decided to leave Viocia be for now and join in once she had discovered her own problem areas.

He walked through the tiered city on his own today.

A bipedal kangaroo familiar held a leather megaphone and called out to passersby while reaching a hand(?) into its pouch and passing out parchment fliers.

It spoke with an artificial feminine voice.

“The Spanish Fly Indulgence Bank is a reliable ally for all exam students. If you need money for your schooling, your daily necessities, or anything else, we offer several different types of loan. So please come down to the Spanish Fly Indulgence Bank! Our exchange is run by Accounting Witch Rayon Risoniphimil.”

The occasional squatter’s district kids he saw approaching and taking a flier probably weren’t interested in a loan – they only wanted to tie the fliers together to create a notebook. It was sad. That would be how the little witch-in-training named Roslynica had gotten her notebook. Since the familiar only acted out the simple command of “pass out fliers”, it must not have been able to determine a target demographic.

And…

“Whoa, whoa, oh, no- yikes!?”

“?”

A witch who had been handing out fliers alongside the familiar tumbled to the ground. She was a tall young woman with short hair dyed green, yet something about her reminded Yagoro of Viocia.

(The super clumsy part of her.)

“Owww.”

She was sprawled out on the ground with her fliers scattered across the road.

The kangaroo familiar could only perform simple tasks, yet this young woman was more of a klutz. And within the large category of “klutz”, she belonged to the smaller category of “busty and gentle klutz”.

The squatter’s district children swarmed around.

“Fliers!”

“Yes, I can finally make a drawing notebook!”

“Miss Rayon, we’ll take all these fliers, which means you’re done with your job for the day. So will you play with us now?”

“Wait, please just one flier per person,” tearfully pleaded the young woman, but the children showed no mercy as they tugged on her arms and clothing.

Miss Rayon.

Yagoro recalled what Raynold and Roslynica had said. So was this the person who used her spare time to teach the back alley children about witchcraft?

Instead of entering his apartment on the top level of Temple School City, Yagoro entered the narrow street next to it.

That brought him to the squatter’s district.

After a failed redevelopment project, the area had been left to rot, so countless unauthorized additions had been made and a lot of greenery had encroached from the flower beds and roadside trees that had been made for the redevelopment. Rent and land rights meant nothing to the dangerous armed residents who had illegally taken over the uncompleted buildings and the district around them. Exam students who lived ordinary lives were advised to stay far away from there.

“Teacher.”

A middle-aged man spoke to Yagoro while sharpening a long metal pole into a blade by scraping it against an old stone wall. His head was shaved, he wore an eyepatch, and he was both scarred and muscular. The bandit look would cause an ordinary person to jump and flee, but he was just another neighbor to Yagoro.

“You here to take a look at thing again?”

“Ha ha.”

“You don’t need to laugh it off. I dunno what’s in there, but everyone’s got their issues that rational thinking can’t solve. Especially anyone who winds up in the squatter’s district. There’s nothing but secrets and checkered pasts here.”

Maybe so.

Yagoro may have found the squatter’s district comfortable enough to visit fairly regularly because he fit in well there.

“I saw Raynold earlier. And a girl called Roslynica.”

“Oh, the smart little girl? Even when us adults all work together we still can’t beat her at chess or reversi. I dunno where she came from, but she reminds me a lot of you. Lotta brains in that one.”

Unlike Raynold, it sounded like Roslynica hadn’t been born into the squatter’s district. That was curious, but it wasn’t something he needed to dig into.

“I hear she wants to get into Maleficium.”

“If she uses those brains and keeps on studying, I doubt she’ll wind up in the worst parts of this city. And having a dream is a great way of keeping yourself from taking the wrong path in life.”

The middle-aged man framed it like that, but he sounded proud. Almost like her accomplishments were his own. It was true the people here were working together to save what little money they could. Most people had more or less forgotten the squatter’s district even existed, so it would probably feel great for its residents if someone from there got into that elite school.

Board games like chess and reversi didn’t really fit in here. When it came to games, the rough-and-tumble squatter’s district was more into betting on fights and darts. The people here weren’t just supporting Roslynica, they were gradually changing themselves.

“Hey, teacher. Can a girl like Roslynica really get into a place at the very top like Maleficium?”

“Anyone can if they do the necessary work.”

Yagoro said goodbye and then made his way deeper in.

He arrived at an open space at the base of a giant tree.

The squatter’s district was mostly half-crumbled stone buildings, so the thing half-fused with green moss here really stood out.

It was a metal container.

Just like his baton, Yagoro had asked his usual blacksmith to create the extra-large box.

It was was still affected by rust, but the lock attached to thick chains was doing its job. Yagoro had locked it himself, but not even he was sure if the day would come when it was once more unlocked.

He had needed to seal way his ''crashed craft''.

He couldn’t allow any cultural contamination in this fantasy world.

The squatter’s district had been convenient for his needs. The ordinary citizens and even the Maleficium witches rarely delved so deep into this dangerous level.

And with all that in mind, Yagoro shook his head.

(That’s all an excuse.)

He pressed his forehead against the container buried in green, rested his weight on it, and then leaned his back against it.

Then he let his hips slide down to the ground.

(If I was really afraid of contamination, I would destroy it to erase it from this world, not just seal it away. I still can’t bring myself to fully let it go, don’tcha think?)

Still seated on the ground, he looked up into the sky.

The burning red of the sunset formed an endless expanse there.

It wasn’t that he still wanted to return to Earth.

Or so he wanted to believe.

“Yeah…”

But.

A much more simple concept was hidden behind all those grand and complex ideas.

There was one thing not even a tutor who had mastered witchcraft could do.

Simply put…

“I wish I could soar through the sky like I used to.”