After having a nice lunch at the buzzing new restaurant, we were out on the streets again.
“That place was delicious,” I said.
“Enough to warrant the popularity it has garnered in the short time since its opening,” Eleonora added.
“Apparently the chef there studied in a very famous restaurant. Just when they were thinking of opening their own place, they heard that Gimul was thriving and came here,” Hudom supplied.
“Interesting... I’m sure they’d researched Gimul before moving, but it still takes a lot of courage to drop everything and start in a new city.” As someone still new to Gimul, I wouldn’t mind speaking to the new chef if the opportunity arose. Speaking of... “Let’s go see Carme and the crew.”
“By the time we get there, the laundry shop shouldn’t be too busy,” Hudom agreed.
We went straight to our laundry shop’s original location, where we encountered a trio of regulars—housewives engaged in their usual fence-side chat.
“My husband is just such a slob!”
“Mine too! I keep telling him the kids will take after him, but he won’t listen.”
“Husbands are just adult-sized children, aren’t they? Oh?”
They noticed us approaching and waved. Ignoring them wasn’t an option, so we walked past the front of the laundry shop to meet them.
“Hello. How are you all?” I greeted them.
“We’re doing well, honey. How about you, Ryoma?”
“We haven’t seen you around lately. Were you doing your adventurer work?”
“Engineer work, this time—for the duke. I was out of town for a week and just got back.” I glanced back to my companions, who’d just given the ladies a nod. Eleonora looked a little stiff but dignified, and Hudom wore his friendly smile. They were both easy on the eyes, which the ladies noticed immediately.
“My, what a treat.”
“Were you both out with Ryoma? Welcome back to the city.”
“I think it’s a great accomplishment that His Grace trusted you with a big project.”
Taking this as a prelude to an extended concerto by the wives, I got Eleonora out of there under the pretense of having her speak to Carme. Hudom could handle himself in these waters, but I could too easily imagine Eleonora becoming tongue-tied and frozen, knowing what fierce conversationalists these ladies were.
“What kind of project was it?”
“Kiara. I’m sure we can’t pry him for details about an important job His Grace put him to.”
“I can share a little,” I said. The cursed land itself and my studying hexology wasn’t confidential, so I gave them a quick summary of that process.
The ladies seemed to knot their brows.
“You were on that mountain for a whole week?”
“I’ve heard of the place before, just in the sense that it was someplace scary. No one’s ever told me more.”
“Cursed energy... How scary.”
“It can be dangerous when misused, but as long as it’s treated properly, it’s nothing you need to worry about. In cities like Gimul, there are procedures in place to make sure cursed energy doesn’t leak out into the city, or if it does, it’s found and dealt with quickly. Right?”
“Hudom’s spot-on,” I said. “When I took over managing the cursed land, my hexology tutor taught me how to find cursed energy and things I need to look out for. He’s given me a stamp of approval on how I’d managed the place, and I can now contain the curse on myself.”
“Oh! That’s the curse everyone was talking about!” one of the ladies exclaimed.
“It’s not broken, but this bracelet keeps it in check enough that I can live a normal life in the city.”
“Uh-huh. What’s so special about your bracelet?” a child’s voice asked out of the blue. Pauline’s daughter had poked her head out of the flower shop next door.
“Hi, Renny. I didn’t see you there.”
“I was helping out in the store. I finished my part, so I came out. It’s so hot in there. You said there’s something special about that bracelet?” Renny asked again.
I relayed how I had hexed the bracelet, borrowing Rosenberg’s words. Even though casting curses was pretty intuitive to me, having to explain it to someone else posed a new challenge.
“So the material isn’t special—the shape is,” Renny said.
“Exactly. Back home, it was a popular trend with kids to wear a bracelet like this until it naturally broke, and their wish would supposedly come true, whether it be succeeding in school or athletics or that sort of thing,” I explained.
“I remember those trends,” one of the ladies chimed in.
“When we were children... What was it again? Didn’t we write our crush on a slip of paper and burn it in the fireplace?”
“Yes, yes! My parents yelled at me for wasting paper and ink.”
“You really did that stuff, mom?”
“Don’t kids have these superstitions nowadays?”
“Yeah, we do some stuff, but I’ve never heard of that one.”
Given how curses were real in this world, I couldn’t deny that those superstitions could produce some effect if the person wished for it hard enough. Just like on Earth, kids of this world came up with superstitions and rituals that seemed unique to each generation.
“A-Anywho, I made the bracelet because I like the mental image of that superstition, and because it’s easy to keep on my person. To be honest, even if a child weaves one, it won’t break that easily. And practicing something the whole time the bracelet is on your wrist would make you better at that skill, regardless of any superstition. I think that’s the rational explanation behind it.”
There’s something called the ten-thousand hour theory. No matter the type of skill, it supposedly took ten thousand hours of practice to master. Practicing for one hour a day would take ten thousand days, and practicing for ten hours a day would take a thousand days. Persistence was key to mastering anything.
“Come to think of it, the superstitions we did as kids didn’t just take one try. We had to do it over and over again, or until our wish came true, basically. If you stopped doing it, your wish wouldn’t come true.”
“You’re right. I was burning the paper every day. That’s why my parents thought I was wasting paper. I used to do it when my mother was cooking, so I wasn’t wasting any firewood, at least.”
“If you keep it up until your wish comes true, you think the ritual worked. Otherwise, you blame yourself for quitting halfway through. That’s kind of a scam, isn’t it?”
“Sure enough, it is!” Pauline exclaimed, drawing laughter from the group.
“Those superstitions are harmless. It’s nice. All part of a child’s imagination, it seems like,” Hudom remarked.
“You’re right. It feels like there could be more sinister curses out there,” I said.
“Well... Not to sidetrack our conversation, but there are students who use hexes to get better grades. Bad grades can haunt a noble for the rest of their life. Sketchy warlocks can show up on campus subtly advertising their services, and some students seek out warlocks for that purpose. Especially before exams. Most of them don’t work out as intended.”
“You are noble-born, aren’t you, Hudom?”
“You’re so down-to-earth I almost forgot.”
“How was it growing up in high society? Is it as ugly and dramatic as the rumors?”
The ladies asked their questions, their slight hesitation washed away by curiosity. They already knew that Hudom was the third son of his house. Despite his intimidating status, Hudom had charmed them into trusting him as a friend.
With a bitter expression, Hudom elaborated on what he had witnessed about using curses in the academy. He began by saying that a student seeking out a curse to improve their grades or confidence wasn’t as bad—it was their own choice. Things got far uglier when the curse was cast on someone else.
“Most of the time, a parent will ask for their child to be hexed, I imagine. The parent thinks they’re doing what’s best for their kid...without understanding the risks. In the end, the kid is left with a scar—physical or mental—that damages them far worse than bad grades ever would have. Most of the time, a parent would curse their child to feel visceral fear or anxiety if they took specific actions or deviated from a certain area. They would force the child to their desk, scaring them into studying. I’d even heard of parents that would make it so the kid would be frozen to the spot unless they were sitting at their desk.”
“Ugh... Why do I feel like you haven’t told me the worst of it?” I asked.
“Those are the kind of curses cast on prisoners. They’re allowed only under complicated restrictions. You’d think any sane parent should know that cursing a child into studying would do nothing but harm in the long run. One time, a classmate of mine had a warlock appointed to him by his parents, who were worried about his grades dropping. They cast a curse on him that made it so he’d be racked with anxiety except when doing the provided workbooks. The fear of fear itself drove him to those workbooks, so much so that he hardly ate or slept. His behavior was so strange that the curse was discovered and broken pretty much immediately...leaving the fearful memory with him. In the end, he became triggered by any form of studying. He dropped out and had to start rehabilitation.”