Six days had passed since I was turned into an old lady. In other words, I thought to myself as I sat around in the dining room once more, I would theoretically be going back to normal before much longer.
I didn’t want rumors to start spreading about my condition, so my plan was to avoid Flatta until I’d recovered. Even if I hadn’t been avoiding the town, though, I didn’t end up feeling any desire to walk around. I figured I’d spend the remaining one, three, or however many days it took taking it easy, just like I’d done up to that point.
That said, there wasn’t anything I could do about people who came to visit the house in the highlands—which was exactly what happened. A knock rang out on the door, Rosalie happened to be nearby and went to see who it was, and Eno, the Witch of the Grotto, walked inside.
“Hello! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Is Miss Azusa— Gaaaaaaaaah!” Eno shrieked, to no one’s surprise.
Yeah, that makes sense. This really does raise a ton of questions, huh?
“What in the world happened to you?” asked Eno. “Does this mean when I pretended to be the Witch of the Highlands back in the day, I actually looked closer to your true form than I realized…?”
Quite some time ago, Eno had traveled around the countryside pretending to be me. That was before we’d met, and she hadn’t known what I looked like, so she’d disguised herself as the old, wizened crone you’d expect a veteran witch to be.
“No, that’s totally wrong! I just got hit by a spell that made me look this way! It’s temporary!” I said, then launched into a detailed explanation of what had happened.
“Oh, I see… There really are all sorts of spells just waiting to be discovered, aren’t there…?” Eno said after I’d finished my explanation. She’d listened to the whole thing with such seriousness, you’d almost think she was the one who’d been artificially aged.
That’s when Eno said something that caught me completely by surprise.
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“But you know, that isn’t a bad look for you at all! It’s dignified, somehow. It makes you look like a really respectable, influential sort of figure!”
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“Huh? Wait—are you jealous of how I look right now?” I asked. She was the first person to react that way, and I was a little taken aback.
“Well, I don’t want to look like an old woman right away, but I’m aiming to be a veteran witch in the future, and that’s exactly the right look for the job!” said Eno. “You could totally be a leading figure in the witching world! Looking old doesn’t mean you can’t look impressive, in my book—in fact, sometimes the two are connected! That’s exactly why I went with the appearance I did back when I was impersonating you.”
“I guess that makes sense, when you put it that way.”
Eno really had gone with a pretty elderly disguise back when she went around pretending to be the Witch of the Highlands. There hadn’t been any rumors about me looking like an old woman floating around at the time, either. Eno had pulled her image of me out of thin air, presumably because to her, appearing old and wizened was natural and desirable for witches.
“Y-yeah, okay, maybe I can take the compliment at face value after all,” I said. The funny thing about people is that all it takes is a single compliment to make us change our minds on a dime sometimes, even when that compliment is half-baked.
“Anyway, I brought a few samples with me that I thought I’d share with you,” Eno said as she lined up a series of small bottles on my table. She made her living selling medicine and tended to bring some of her products along whenever she stopped by for a visit. “But,” she continued, “before that, there’s something I’d like to suggest to you!”
“What’s that?” I asked.
Does she want me to collaborate with her to develop a new product, maybe? I’d be fine with that, though I think Halkara would throw a fit about it, considering those two are business rivals.
Eno’s proposal, however, turned out to be something completely different from what I’d been expecting.