So she gets a boyfriend and a potential marriage proposal? Why is it that all I get is a mystery cleaver lady?
I sat there in silence. Ripply Wave looked worried to see me so run-down. When I realized she was looking at me, I glanced up. She made a thoughtful “Hmm,” then leaned in close and whispered, “Hey… Maybe we could have a chat later? Just the two of us?”
What was the come-hither whisper all about? Well, not that I cared.
After lunch, Ripply Wave all but dragged me to the ladies’ room. She was careful to keep her voice down, but the first thing she said was “I’m really sorry…” And she did sound sincerely guilty. She even bowed to me.
I was utterly confused. Why was she apologizing to me? She hadn’t done anything. I gave her my most puzzled look. That was when she started to fill me in.
“That perfume… There’s still some left, right? How much, would you say?”
“Uh…” I took the bottle out of my pocket and held it up for her. We could hear a small splish from inside. Didn’t sound like a lot.
“Haah…” Ripply Wave sighed deeply. “Do you think you could give the perfume to someone else? I mean, right away?” She looked at me: Someone, anyone at all.
“Um… Why would I do that?” I asked, thrown off by the way she was suddenly so serious.
She sighed again, then apologized again, and then she told me something very important. Something I’m sure they’d all been meaning to keep secret from me.
“The perfume? You have to give it to someone else, or it will make you the unluckiest person alive.”
It had all started about a month ago.
“You there! The lovely young lady.”
Curly Hair was walking down the street in town when a mysterious woman sitting on the corner called out to her. Laid out at the woman’s feet was a weird collection of stuff—a bottle of perfume, a comb, a jar, shoes, a pair of glasses. If they had something in common, Curly Hair couldn’t tell what it was. Was this woman selling stuff?
She gave the woman a funny look, and the woman told her that this was her antiques shop, Antiques Carredura.
“Won’t you take one? I have the perfect thing in stock for a lovely young lady like yourself.”
“Perfect? For me?”
“I know what a girl like you wants. You want to meet your destiny!”
Curly Hair was struck dumb. As a matter of fact, she did want to get married. She spent every day at the office, with no hint of romance anywhere, but she never stopped hoping that her true love would come along one day.
The day “Antiques Carredura” stopped her on the street, she’d been nursing such worries. The mysterious woman sounded like she had seen straight through Curly Hair.
“If you want to meet just the right person, let me offer you this perfume. With but a puff on your wrist, you can reach the fateful encounter that’s coming to you that much faster.”
“You mean it?” Curly Hair asked. The woman had her complete attention.
Anyone born and raised in Cururunelvia was familiar with the power of sancta.
“I certainly do! You’ll be able to have the most wonderful, the most wonderful encounter!”
And it would only cost her two thousand lain, the woman informed her.
As a point of reference, if you converted two thousand lain into the cheapest bread at the bakery I went to (the stuff that makes you wish you could forget your life), it would work out to about twenty pieces, or ten days’ worth of meals for me back when I was looking for work. It’s enough to make a girl cry. Still, it was a lot cheaper than what perfume normally costs. The woman even told her she could return it for her money back within three days, no matter how much she’d used.
“Huh! That’s a pretty good deal. All right, I’ll take it,” Curly Hair said, and she purchased the perfume without a second thought.
“Heh! You won’t be disappointed. A pleasure doing business.”
Just as the woman had promised, Curly Hair’s life took a dramatic turn for the better the very next day. Men lined up to chat with her, practically fighting for the privilege of picking her up. She’d had no idea there were so many guys who were head over heels for her. Curly Hair evaluated them carefully, going on dates and letting them treat her to meals, making herself ever more beautiful and being heaped with more and more lavish praise.
It was bliss. She couldn’t stop smiling.
Eventually, she ended up going out with the most successful guy in the sales division. Now she really couldn’t stop smiling.
A few days later, though, things began to change.
She was walking down the street when she suddenly felt someone watching her, but when she turned around, there was no one there. Just an eerie darkness.
“Is someone…watching me?”
She started to get really scared. A mysterious presence creeping closer and closer to her. Her body began to shiver. She could think of one thing that might be behind this: the perfume.
“Well, that’s destiny, isn’t it, young lady?” the antiques dealer said when Curly Hair rushed up to her. She was selling her junk on the street corner just like always. Curly Hair could almost hear the smirk in her voice as she said, “Fate doesn’t have to be good. It can be bad, too.” She didn’t exactly sound like she felt guilty.
Curly Hair was understandably upset. “Excuse me? You didn’t say anything about that! This isn’t what I signed up for!”
“I don’t recall saying only good things would happen to you.” The woman chuckled: Silly girl; didn’t she know the risks of making assumptions?
The antiques dealer went on kindly, “There’s no need to fret, young lady. There’s a perfectly good solution when unpleasant fates come calling…”
Scene: the next day.
“Hey, listen to this! I’ve got a little secret. I’ve been going out with this guy in Sales for a while now…”
At lunchtime, Curly Hair opened up to her colleague Short Hair about how her life had been going. Short Hair was pretty surprised when Curly Hair told her exactly who she was seeing: He was one of the most popular men in the firm. Naturally, Short Hair wanted to know all the details. How had this happened? How had Curly Hair wound up dating this guy?
So Curly Hair leaned in close and said, “Well, just between you and me, I’ve got this little thing I call the Perfume of Destiny…”
The antiques dealer had told Curly Hair that when bad fate started coming along, she simply had to give the perfume to someone else, and Curly Hair would escape its clutches.
So, the “Perfume of Destiny” passed from Curly Hair to Short Hair, and not long after, from Short Hair to Ripply Wave.
And then, about a week later, I showed up.
I remembered Curly Hair saying “You’ve had your week” when Ripply Wave didn’t want to give up the perfume. Curly Hair had practically had to pry it out of her hands.
It was about three days after that that I’d started to feel the mysterious eyes on me—well, they weren’t that mysterious. They belonged to the stalker from Riviere Antiques.
“So I guess… This woman MacMillia’s been talking about, she must be her bad fate… Right?”
The moment she got back from her day off, Ripply Wave had told Curly Hair and Short Hair about my situation. She was really worried that they hadn’t warned me what would happen.
The other two looked surprised, though. “No, it’s too soon for that. Let her enjoy the perfume a little longer.”
Time passed: four days, five. Each time the red-haired woman came out of her shop, stood in front of me, and talked to me, she was a little bit closer. Finally, it had been nearly a week, and the bottle was practically empty.
“Um… At this rate, MacMillia’s going to use up the perfume…”
What would happen then? Was there another bottle somewhere? Where had this perfume come from anyway? Ripply Wave had hesitantly asked all these questions when I wasn’t there.
That was when Curly Hair had given her the whole story. The creepy antiques dealer. The fact that this sancta was unique—there was no other bottle.
“So when MacMillia runs out of perfume…”
She won’t be able to escape her fate?
None of them knew what exactly that would mean. Anything could happen.
“What do you care? Sounds like it can’t make the kid’s life any worse,” Curly Hair said.
“But—”
“Besides,” Curly Hair went on, coldly interrupting Ripply Wave, “doesn’t she seem a little too…eager? She’s been friendlier than a puppy since the day she showed up.”
It would be easier for all of them if I were to disappear, she suggested. Why not let me use up the perfume? And the whole time she said this, she smiled as innocently as anything.
I’m sure it was the same smile that had been on the face of the dealer at Antiques Carredura.
“Sigh…”
I had overtime that day. The light at my desk was the last one on in the entire office.
Sure, it was a little sad being all by myself in that big room, but it was better than walking home, where I knew a bad destiny would be waiting for me on the road.
“Do you think you can give the perfume to someone else? I mean, right away? Otherwise, who knows what will happen to you?” Ripply Wave had said to me in her ripply way, adding that she didn’t want anything bad to happen to me. It turned out my efforts to fit in had backfired, but apparently, Ripply Wave was still on my side. That made me happier than anything.
“What am I gonna do?”
I gave the perfume bottle a shake and listened to the sad splish from inside. If I gave it to someone else, that would only mean they would suffer instead. And there was hardly any of it left—whoever I gave it to would definitely be the last person to use it.
“I’m supposed to make someone else unhappy?” I muttered. I was way too much of a coward to do that. It didn’t help that I didn’t actually know anyone I could give the perfume to. Heck, I didn’t even want to do that to anybody.
So I didn’t mind just suffering a terrible fate, then? No, I definitely had complicated feelings about that outcome. A young maiden’s heart is a difficult thing to comprehend.
I sat at my desk, confronted with both my worries and my unfinished work and getting nowhere with either of them, when someone behind me said, “Staying late? What a hard worker.”
“Eeyikes!” I yelped—highly embarrassing—and turned around.
Who should it be but the floofy beast-person who owned the place.
“O-oh, uh, yes, sir! Uh, thank you, sir!” I automatically straightened up when facing my savior, the one who had hired me. I was still grateful for that, even if it had led to me being stuck in this whole perfume situation.