Editing Failing Witch:Volume1 Episode2 (section)

===6===

After scoping out the area, it was nearly dawn.

Yagoro had learned the noisy partying in that club continued well into the early morning. The silhouette in the window was facing the desk, but she couldn’t study properly without getting used to the noise or coming up with another solution.

Melehe had faithfully stayed with him the entire time and she was looking sleepy. But she associated her yawns with a failure in her flash card memorization and redoubled her efforts there. It was honestly impressive.

“Do you think you can help her with that noise?”

“The club is only on the 1st floor, so the higher the floor, the more the building itself will block out the noise. Even something as simple as studying up on the roof would make a marked difference, don’tcha think?”

“I see. Yawwwn.”

Viocia’s room was apparently a mess since she couldn’t clean up, so that would kill two birds with one stone. She would need another solution for rainy days, though.

“Are you alright, Melehe? The Bealtaine is today. I know it’s not the official practice exam, but a bad performance still means restrictions on the prep school equipment and facilities you can use.”

“Mind your own business.”

The brown sky pirate girl suppressed another yawn and waved a hand toward the lightening night sky.

“Hey, elevator. Over here!”

“Wah!?”

A red metal beam resembling a giant’s scales gave a roar. The rotating scales passed above the stone buildings to come this way. The “elevator car” supported by a thick chain lowered onto the circle drawn on the street. Melehe boarded it and vanished into the gray sky.

“I had no idea anyone actually used those dangling thrill rides.”

He heard a new voice from overhead.

“Ha ha ha. Shy as ever, I see, milady. You could just tell him you’re relieved to find he is an honest tutor who cares about his student. C’mon, do it☆”

“Never speak again, Orpheus.”

Instead of riding the elevator somewhere, she must have joined her Formula Broom up in the air so she could ride it away. At the edge of the elevator car attached to the slowly rotating scales, a witch on a broom took flight into the near-dawn sky.

Myousou Yagoro had to get going too. He couldn’t afford to oversleep and force his student to wait on him. He had to get back to his apartment and take a nap.

The dark blue sky began to shine as dawn approached. The pumpkin lamps automatically switched off as the sunlight arrived. The unique chill of early morning caused him to straighten his spine while simply walking through the city.

“Huh?”

Someone called out to him. A girl of about his age with red pigtails emerged from a narrow side street. Her lovely but extremely fit body was contained in a maid outfit with a long skirt. Much like a track suit on Earth, that was considered a normal thing to wear when you were cleaning and didn’t want to get your regular clothes dirty. This city of swords and sorcery could be incredible at times.

“Wait, that sailor uniform and blond hair. Is that you, Yagoro!?”

Myousou Yagoro’s response to the surprised Benandanti elite was quite simple: he held his left index finger to his lips. Even a child would understand that gesture and the pigtails girl immediately fell silent.

“Don’t tell anyone about this, Nancy. I don’t want to bring any trouble to your peaceful life.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Nancy raised her hands in mock surrender and Yagoro asked her a question.

“So what are you doing out this early?”

“Hunting a Grade 7 Riot Hydra spotted at Lakeside. That isn’t a job for the Benandanti, but it is one of the monsters that escaped from our school.”

It was scary how casual she was about taking on a monster that would normally require a small group of knights to deal with.

Or did this just prove how abnormal that Voland had been?

Now, passing by a Benandanti on the street wasn’t exactly rare. Maleficium students did live in this city just like everyone else, after all. But they camouflaged themselves with disguises and anti-recognition spells so they could blend into the crowd and no one would notice they were there.

“Also, I suppose I should apologize. Yagoro…sorry about before.”

The boy tilted his head, unsure what she meant, so she childishly pouted her lips and continued.

“I’m a member of the Benandanti who protect this city under White Magic’s management, right? But we more or less left you all to die the other day.”

“Oh, that? I really don’t think you need to worry about it. Your personal conscience and guilt are trapped in an ''external'' mental cage when you wear the Hexenturm.”

“True, but still…” The girl’s voice trailed off.

Myousou Yagoro was impressed that yet another girl he knew had such a troublesome personality.

“So how many is it this year? I can’t believe you’re still doing this,” she said.

“I’m going to keep at it until I get some kind of result.”

“Hee hee. As one of the girls you helped pass the exam, I’m not sure if I should be happy or upset. Because I never did live up to your expectations.”

It all came down to that. You could make as many complicated relationships as there were people out there. Not everything could be placed in simple categories like friendship or love.

The maid outfit girl gave one final warning as she left.

“But I don’t think President Ulrike is going to let you have your way. No matter what.”

The air temperature seemed to plummet.

No one could defeat her. Not even Myousou Yagoro.

Everyone in White Magic (Maleficium’s student council) was a monster, but none as much as that ultimate witch who possessed nothing but the most destructive forms of magic imaginable. She had completely destroyed the being thought to ''break all the limits'' when it came to destruction and, no matter how great her power, she could never bring happiness to anyone. Yagoro understood how fearsome she was down to the very core of his being.

Wise Fencing.

Why had they needed to invent a term for magical swordplay in a world of swords and sorcery? Because a brand new category was necessary to properly describe that president who had mastered both of those categories.

“Remember what the president always says: ''you must not touch the edge of the world''. Even I can tell what you’re doing will violate that. So you shouldn’t be out alone on the border between day and night. You know all too well the ''abnormal things'' the witch seated in White Magic’s throne is capable of, don’t you? Don’t blame me if you wind up with a knife buried in your back.”

It was hard to tell if Nancy was joking or not.

But she had always had trouble making jokes, so she was probably serious.

“Also! You need to return the grimoires and otherworld maps you borrowed. Don’t tell them I told you, but the Glenstrae have their eye on you.”

“Oh, is that all? I should be fine until their head librarian sends her highlander unit after me, don’tcha think?”

“That’s a bad habit,” sighed Nancy before leaving.

(I should get home too.)

“Huff, puff.”

Or so he thought until he spotted another familiar face.

But this was not the wonderful homemaker of a president heading out with a one-shot-kill icepick and an apron to keep the blood off of her clothes.

“Pant, gasp. Huff, puff.”

“Dorothea?”

Dorothea Rockpool, the zombie girl with white bandages wrapped around her curvy body, was running this way. She looked calm for someone running, so she probably wasn’t attempting a desperate flight from some kind of threat. So did she have a habit of going for an early morning jog? He had thought she was more the indoors type, so this came as a surprise. Especially in this tiered city of stairs that was the bane of movers and bicycle delivery workers who made use of carrier pigeons.

She apparently placed her head bandage over the temples of her glasses to keep them from slipping out of place when she jogged. Clever.

(But since those bandages don’t leave much to the imagination, I never know where to look.)

When he called out to the girl whose bandages looked dangerously close to coming undone, she came to a stop. She smiled at him while wiping the seat from her brow with a light-colored towel.

“Oh, Mr. Tutor. <span style="font-size:75%">G-good morning.</span>”

“Good morning. Oh, now I get it. Damn, is it morning already?”

“?”

The no-bake cheesecake bandage girl tilted her blonde head in confusion. A cow familiar used its legs – which were more suited to all the stairs than wheels – to lazily walk past them with plenty of newspapers and milk bottles loaded on its back. It was already time for the morning deliveries.

“It is important to keep up your health so you don’t get sick, but can you really afford to give up study time for this?”

“Ha ha. This towel h-has herb names and ATU numbers sewn into it. Eep. That may not actually help much, though.”

She wiped off her fogged-up glasses and smiled. Yagoro really wished his dunce of a student could learn a thing or two from Dorothea. Was she focused on the Bealtaine right now? And how useful it was to have study materials sewn into the towel ''didn’t really matter''. The simple act of sewing them into the towel associated that knowledge with a special event, which would help it stick in her mind. Dorothea’s efforts would remain in her memory as part of that event.

“Do you always use this course?”

“I don’t really have a course in mind. I-if I decide to jog a long distance in advance, I lose my nerve, so instead I focus on running to the next elevator pillar I can see and then keep doing that as long as I can.”

So like how a small child on the way to the dentist or a lesson they didn’t want to do would kick a rock down the road from streetlight to streetlight?

“I can still focus on the exam race thanks to you, b-but I still want to do something about how weak I am. And I don’t mean academically or physically. If I was stronger on the inside – eep – I don’t think I would have relied on that back-alley recipe.”

It would be crass to say anything here.

Exam students needed to study as much as possible even if it meant tying themselves to their desks, but that wasn’t the only problem they faced. They were all fighting their worries about the future to some extent. Everyone had to find their own way to conquer those fears. These early morning jogs were Dorothea’s strategy and that gave her a vision of victory in her mind. If jogging was a calculated part of her daily routine, then Yagoro had no right to stop her.

Some might call it irresponsible, but he knew what Dorothea needed to hear most right now.

“Keep at it.”

“Hee hee. Should you really be saying that when you’re Viocia’s tutor?”

Yagoro smiled bitterly after they parted ways.

She was right. But he had no real intention of taking back his words at this point.

After walking up all the stairs back to his inconvenient top-level apartment, he saw the aproned bookseller doing something in front of the building first thing in the morning. Much like with the magic ice, she was carrying a bunch of the firewood that was stockpiled as shared materials for the neighborhood. Was she also exercising for her health and beauty? She tended to be upset when he took a job from her in an attempt at being a gentleman, so he simply greeted her and walked on past.

“Now, now, Yagoro. When you see a lady with her hands full, a man is supposed to take the burden from her without even needing to ask☆”

“…”

The silver-haired young woman was even smiling. The mystery of how to act around her continued to grow. Maybe it wasn’t a set ideology or rule and he had to determine what kind of mood she was in that day.

Firewood was an important fuel in this world where electricity was not yet commonplace. It was used in the kitchen, the bath, the heater, and so much more. Sunlight seals only provided light, so they couldn’t heat a frying pan and Myousou Yagoro was the only person in the world who could use a microwave oven or air conditioner.

“By the way, the children in the squatters district wanted to see you,” she said.

“I see.”

“That district is less developed so you can find a lot more greenery growing there than anywhere else around here. It’s the only place in this city of white and black stone you can get firewood. Those children have found a good business to run. And it’s cheaper than buying fuel from outside the city because there are no transport or security costs.”

You could say his tutor’s nature had gotten the better of him. He had simply given some advice to the neighborhood kids who seemed to have intentionally chosen a harder life by living back behind the apartment. Of course, getting them to listen to the advice had required a bit of brawling with some brats who had a learned mistrust of other people and were armed with rusty blades.

“Those children have calmed down a lot since you arrived. They even smile happily now.”

“I hope you’re right.”

The young woman smiled and made a suggestion after he finished helping her.

“To thank you for helping, I will bring you a little something later on. Hee hee. I was already planning to cook a vegetable stew tonight, so making a little more won’t be much trouble.”

“Ugh.”

“Yagoro?”

The jiggly young woman looked legitimately puzzled.

If it was a vegetable stew, then the vegetables were the main ingredient, not beef or chicken. This was the fly in the ointment with a young woman who was picky about health and beauty. A 17-year-old boy’s body demanded thick bacon, sausage, or something equally greasy that would immediately fill the stomach.

After parting ways with the bookseller, his pleasant exhaustion had grown to actual drowsiness. He decided a shower could wait until he next woke. Right now, he collapsed into bed to make use of that drowsiness.