Editing Failing Witch:Volume2 Episode1 (section)

===Part 8===

The boy leaned back against the container door and stared up into the unreachable sky until it grew dark out.

He couldn’t let anyone see him like this. Viocia would have already left the prep school and returned to her room. And Yagoro needed to get back to his apartment and make a quiz for tomorrow.

He knew he had sat a nearly impossible goal for himself.

Still, he tore himself away from the container and stood up, ran his palm along the mossy metal door just once more, and then quietly left.

He was walking through the labyrinthine streets of the squatter’s district without any giant pumpkin lamps to light the way when he heard an exasperated voice.

“You sure are careless.”

It came from a delinquent girl wearing a red waitress uniform. She had a macaron look to her, but the toxic polka dot pattern and diagonal yellow and black sash made it clear this was a poisoned macaron.

Arbamini.

She was one of the three aces from Sassafras Cfa Prep School, famous (infamous?) for all its terrible delinquents. She had once clashed quite spectacularly with his student Viocia.

(Formula Broom – Glamis. She uses the witches that deceived Macbeth.)

Macbeth was a play by the world-famous playwright Shakespeare, but there were suspicions the depiction of the witches had been an addition by a later author. Since it was such a famous play it had unintentionally helped create the idea of the “wicked witch” leading to the witch hunts, the idea that a third party had wholly or partly added in that part was a chilling thought. Choosing someone like that as her partner showed this girl really was a true delinquent.

(That aside.)

Yagoro was honestly impressed. Even Temple School City’s patrol had ''decided for themselves'' that the squatter’s district was too dangerous and lawless for them to even visit.

And yet…

“You know how to sneak into the closed-off squatter’s district?”

“And you’re being really careless wandering around here without any kind of bodyguard. Or are you just that confident in your skills, Mr. Tutor?”

There were certainly some dangerous beasts out there, but there was one thing Arbamini couldn’t see from her perspective. Her very presence was proof that this city had a criminal underground targeting the exam students. The ability to detect those crimes in advance and nip them in the bud was crucial, so he wished he could borrow her nose for these things.

And.

He was grateful for Arbamini’s trio as powerful rivals who Viocia would (possibly) work hard to outdo.

“''Is something fishy going on in the city again''?”

“''What, you hadn’t noticed''?”

She made the question sound like a snort of laughter.

Still, it was a huge step forward that she was actually holding a conversation with him instead of snapping at him. He had to keep in mind that she had spoken to him and was giving him intel on a possible crime unprompted. Even if she was mocking him as she did it.

“So she’s masking her true feelings with the bad girl act…”

“Are you trying to piss me off? I swear, everything in the world just wants to piss me off lately, but you’re the worst in that regard. If you’re that confident in your strength, then how about a rematch? I have been studying invisible curses instead of powerful attack magic, so I was hoping to try them out.”

“I get that a lot of factors outside your control pushed you to be a delinquent, but you should really stop focusing so much on magic used for fighting. '''Trick Question Warning: We’re not talking about the Celtic sword Fragarach which, when drawn, would automatically take flight, cut down the enemy, and return to the wielder’s hand.'''”

For some reason, Arbamini blinked twice.

When the delinquent girl did speak, she sounded impressed.

“I guess you really are a top-rate tutor. Thanks for the great inspiration.”

“Wait. You really shouldn’t try to create revenge magic based on Fragarach! It’s a bad idea!!”

“Because then you’d have to defeat me again? Don’t assume you know everything I can do just cause you beat me once. I only need a single second to obliterate a tutor like you.”

“Huh?”

Yagoro looked puzzled as Arbamini took action.

She lazily reached her hands down to her short skirt and lifted it.

“There, now I can say you sexually harassed me.”

“Why would you jump straight to a self-destructive attack like that!?”