Fine has a boyfriend? I didn’t know she was seeing anybody. I’ve never dated anyone before, either. My friend’s becoming an adult…
“I don’t know what I expected. Fine is a student, and I am some old lady’s assistant…”
As I walked along with my shoulders slumped, my two familiars found their way to me.
“All I have is you two.”
I squatted down to pet them, and they both closed their eyes in happiness.
“The last thing I want to become, though, is some crazy cat lady, or familiar lady in my case.”
As soon as I said this, I watched as my two familiars quickly shifted to try and distance themselves. White-Owl managed to fly away, but Carbuncle wasn’t so fortunate. I picked him up by the scruff of his neck and brought his face close to mine, but he did everything he could to keep our eyes from meeting.
“I’m in the mood for meat for dinner tonight.”
I could feel through Carbuncle’s scruff that a shudder ran down his spine.
As I meandered down the street with nowhere in mind to go, I left Lapis’s residential area and entered downtown. Here, markets, restaurants, apparel stores, and other places to shop lined the streets. Even though it was the middle of a weekday, it was relatively busy, with a mix of housewives, elderly citizens, and businesspeople in suits.
“Hey, this was the spot where I got my last tear.”
I thought back to a few days earlier, when I’d visited the town square.
The man was young and dressed in a suit. He was hired by his company soon after graduating from college but had to work late into the night every night because of how tough the work was. I came across him just after his first major negotiation—one he had painstakingly managed to organize—had unfortunately fallen through. He was sitting on a bench, a picture of dejection, seemingly unable to muster the strength to return to his company. Seeing him sitting in the cold, I handed him a cup of coffee, heard him out, and then made him some incense to try and cheer him up.
Reflecting back on it, something I said to him made him shed a tear of joy at some point during the exchange.
“No one’s been kind to me in so long.”
I’m pretty sure it was something like that.
“He said something like that, right?” I asked Carbuncle, and he shook his head. His attitude suggested it wasn’t that he didn’t remember but that he didn’t know. He probably wasn’t listening when the man and I spoke.
“Hmm, well, for him to cry, I must’ve said something really touching. Maybe for a guy new to his company, having a young seventeen-year-old girl hear him out when he was at his lowest was enough to cheer him up.”
Carbuncle shook his head at this remark as well.
Well, what do you know?
Setting that aside, all I did was hear the man out. Nothing more, nothing less. I could hardly remember what he looked like, which made me feel sort of bad.
I needed to bring in more tears. I didn’t have time to pay attention to things like details or faces. Building relationships with people took time and energy, two things I was running short on.
“There’s a big difference between spending a bunch of time only to get one tear and banging ’em out one after another—a difference that could mean life or death for me. I don’t have time to be concerned more with the journey than the reward, right?”
“Squeak?”
I’d already wasted too much of what little time I had. Despite a need to find a way to make up for lost time, my teacher wasn’t going to let me use magic.
“Ugh… Maybe I should just use magic.”
Only a few days had passed since the end of the Celebration of Worlds. The reason I was able to accumulate so many tears so quickly was partially due to luck but mainly thanks to my talent as a mage. I was beginning to think that maybe I could get the tears I needed without my teacher. At the same time, a part of me knew this wasn’t the case.
“Hello there, Meg.”
I snapped out of my deep thoughts and looked up to find an old man I’d never met before standing before me. Actually, he did seem kind of familiar… Who was he again?
“Oh, hello.”
I returned his hello and continued walking. Not far from there, however, an old woman did the same and said, “Hello, Meg. Thank you for the other day.” I didn’t know who she was, either.
“Ah, ha-ha, don’t mention it.”
Once more, I hurried along to get away.
“Oh, if it isn’t Meg.”
“Hello, Miss Witch.”
“Meg, thanks for the other day.”
“Ah! Meg!”
“Meeeg, waaait!”
“It’s always good to see you doing well, Meg.”
What’s going on? It feels like I’m running into somebody I barely know every other block.
It wasn’t rare for people to greet me on my trips to the city, but it was starting to get weird today. This was already double the number of people who usually greeted me, an amount I’d never experienced before.
I had an idea what the reason could be, though: the parade Sophie and I held.
Sophie Hayter. One of the Seven Sages and a young genius who shook the world. With her captivating beauty and unfathomable magical prowess, the public loved her—and I’d had the chance to hold a parade here in Lapis with her.
The parade was enough for our town to be all over the news, so it made sense that people I didn’t know now recognized me.
“I didn’t realize everyone was so in the loop with the latest news. I guess people are more easily starstruck than I thought. Most of these people wouldn’t talk to me had I not been a part of the parade.”
“Squeak?”
This comment seemed to confuse Carbuncle, who cocked his head to the side. He looked like he wanted to say something.
What do you know?
We left the market area and continued down the street to where the train station was. This was the only railroad in Lapis, and it connected to the neighboring big cities. With the trains being easily subject to inclement weather, there were already plans to create a subway system, but it was going to take a long time before they finished. Certainly not in my lifetime.
My aimless meandering brought me there. Usually, I would be running errands, taking care of the plants, or studying magic around this time, but I didn’t have any motivation.
This was when I caught sight of a woman pushing a stroller. She seemed young and was the type of person I usually profiled for my tear-jerking shenanigans as of late. I’d watch to see when she might need help, then swoop in when the chance presented itself.
While I thought this, our eyes met, and she appeared to smile at me.
Who’s she smiling at? Me?
I was so caught off guard by this that I looked around for someone else. I didn’t want to wave at her only for someone she knew to pop up from behind me—that’d be embarrassing.
It wasn’t the case, though, because I was the only person there. She seemed to be smiling at me.
There’s no way that smile’s for me, though, right?
C’mon, Meg, we need to remember. I bet we know her.
We definitely do not. I have no memory of her.
Way to sound like a corrupt politician feigning ignorance in court.
Yeah right. We were never the sharpest tool in the shed.
Hey, don’t be mean.
The Megs in my mind held an emergency meeting.
While the many iterations of me in my mind bickered among themselves, the woman approached me. When I took notice of this, the Megs from the meeting all screamed and started running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
“Miss Witch! I’m glad to see you again! Thank you so much for the other day.”
The woman grabbed my hand and gave me a big smile.
“Yeah, nooo. It’s fiiine, ha-ha-ha,” I replied, trying to play it cool despite my confusion. What was she talking about? Maybe she was mistaking me for a different witch? The only two witches in town were my teacher and I…
“You really saved me.”
“Mm-hmm, always glad to help when I can.”
“Do you have a minute? I’d really like to thank you, maybe buy you a cup of tea.”
“Ah, uh…”
I tried to say no but couldn’t quite find the words. My muddled brain couldn’t come up with a reason to reject her offer.
“I’ve actually been looking for you, so I’m glad I finally found you.”
“Oh… Thanks.”
The two of us entered a nice little café near the station. It was a bit awkward to be drinking tea with someone I didn’t know.
“I’m so thankful you came when you did. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
“I-is that right?”
It looked like I was going to have to go all in on this. I would talk to her and try to fish for details to help me remember who she was.
You got this, Meg Raspberry.
“That was a doozy… About your baby…”
“Ah yes. The little one can be such a ball of energy.”
“But it’s a good thing we found her.”
“I’m sorry? Found her?”
“No, I mean you found me! I actually wanted to see you again, after all! Ah-ha-ha!”
“Yes, me too. I’m happy that Lapis has a witch like you, because were it not for you, my husband and I would’ve gotten into a big fight.”
“Family first, eh?”
“I agree. So many couples nowadays break up over the tiniest of things, so I was really worried.”
“Well, you know men. They have their little stints with women here and there…”
“Women?
“Not that your husband did!”
This is hell. Somebody, please save me.
A cold sweat began running down my back, when the woman suddenly took a familiar-looking pocket watch out of her pocket and set it on the table.
“Here it is, by the way. The watch you fixed. It still works.”
This helped me remember who she was: the watch lady from the other day.
Her baby accidentally broke the watch, which was a gift from the woman’s mother-in-law. It wasn’t the baby who broke the watch, though, but simply that the Spirits within had disappeared.
She seemed distraught over it, so I approached her and replaced the watch’s Spirits, allowing it to start working again.