Chapter 102: Disaster
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 102: Disaster
A beauty with purple hair leaned against Yohan.
Watching this, the woman sitting in front of Yohan’s face stiffened.
“……Darling?”
“What’s with this woman? Were you playing around with someone else behind my back?”
Margaret spoke, her hand tracing a line from Yohan’s chin down to his collarbone. The gesture was almost sensual, and Yohan shuddered, looking at her.
“I told you not to come find me…”
“How could I not? My darling is so charming that if I leave you alone, women just keep flocking to you. Look, even now. Like this…”
Margaret’s purple eyes swept over the woman sitting across from Yohan. She let out a low, amused hum, and the woman couldn't help but swallow hard.
“How ugly.”
“...Excuse me, I don’t know who you are, but to just show up and comment on someone’s face─”
“You don’t know who I am? Really? Then you’re not just ugly, you’re stupid too?”
“You—what do you think you’re doing, appearing out of nowhere…!”
“I already told you. He’s my darling. That means I’m his lover. Don’t you even get that?”
Her logic was sound, so the woman clamped her mouth shut. However, being logically correct didn't necessarily make it morally right.
“Hey! I didn’t know this man had a lover, and he hasn’t said you’re his lover, either! Isn’t it rude to interrupt when two people are having a conversation?”
“Rude? Manners, you say─ I like that. I’m fond of well-mannered children. In that sense, little girl, screaming like that doesn’t seem very polite, does it?”
“Little girl? Just how old are you to…!”
“Hmph.”
Margaret waved her hand dismissively, as if the woman were an eyesore. In an instant, the woman who had been shouting in front of them vanished.
Seeing this, Yohan’s eyes shot open in surprise. He began to glare at Margaret with a look of disbelief.
“Where did you send her!?”
“Hm? Oh, don’t worry. I just sent her home.”
“...Are you sure?”
“I swear on your master’s name.”
He had no idea why she was swearing on Evangeline’s name when she wasn’t even here, but Margaret said it nonetheless and moved to sit in the chair across from Yohan, where the other woman had been.
Resting her arms on the table, she faced Yohan with a wide grin and began to twirl her finger in the air.
“What are you doing now…”
“So you can’t run away. I’m setting a trap.”
“A trap…?”
“That’s right, a trap. I’m making a mess of the space around here so my dear disciple can’t run away again.”
Yohan’s expression hardened as Margaret explained that if he tried to teleport now, the twisted spatial axis would just drop him back where he started, and that if he wanted to escape, he’d have to outrun her on his own two feet.
“...I believe I told you that I wanted a vacation and asked you not to look for me.”
“To Evangeline? I heard. But I don’t think she even knows what a vacation is. You have no idea how much she was whining about how her disciple abandoned her… My ears nearly fell off.”
“She was crying? My master?”
When Yohan reacted to the news of Evangeline crying, Margaret’s brow furrowed slightly. But she quickly returned to her cheerful smile, pointed a finger at Yohan, and spoke.
“You.”
She turned her finger to point at herself.
“While I’m right in front of you.”
Clap─!
The moment she clapped her hands, the surrounding space began to recede with a whoosh. A fractal of hyperspace, incomprehensible to the human mind, filled his vision.
Here, only the Witch of Space could move. Only the Witch of Space, who could perceive herself as a 4-dimensional being, was free in this world.
While Yohan could only stare blankly at the warping space, not even knowing how to move forward, Margaret grabbed him and leaped across dimensions.
Thud-!
Yohan, who had been dropped onto a bed, belatedly recovered from the shock of his 4-dimensional experience and met the eyes of Margaret, who was pinning him down.
“Is someone like Evangeline really that important?”
Margaret licked her lips as she looked down at him.
But Yohan just let out a sound of admiration as he looked back at her.
“Oh, how did you do that just now?”
“...Are you not focusing on me?”
“Like this?”
Yohan spoke as he infused mana into a magic scroll he had in his pocket. She had said something about crushing the space, but she had already shown him that the restriction was gone by using her own spatial magic.
Space twisted haphazardly. Just as Margaret had done—the hyperspace fractal of a 4-dimensional space flickered in his vision.
“Yooouuu… Whaaaat iiiiis thiiis…”
As space stretched, so did the sound of her words. Watching Margaret begin to speak in a bizarre, drawn-out voice, Yohan let out a sly grin.
Snap- With a flick of his fingers, the two of them were back in the restaurant from before. As if he had gotten the hang of it, Yohan snapped his fingers once more.
This time, Margaret herself vanished. Yohan had no idea where he’d sent her, but he wasn’t particularly concerned.
Wasn’t she the Witch of Space? A witch who could return to her original spot unharmed, no matter where she was dropped.
And so, just as Margaret had done earlier, Yohan crushed and distorted the space around him before standing up from his seat.
“So much for my vacation. Honestly…”
He couldn’t just enjoy a vacation after hearing that his master was crying. Yohan looked around and, realizing the person he was looking for was nearby, headed in that direction.
Linne, who had been sitting alone enjoying the Empire’s cuisine, flinched and began to tremble when she saw Yohan approach.
“...It wasn’t me.”
“What wasn’t?”
“...I didn’t do it.”
“I haven’t said anything yet.”
Yohan chuckled and took the seat across from Linne. He casually raised his hand to call a waiter and ordered a cup of coffee.
When the coffee arrived promptly, he took a sip and looked at Linne. She was trembling as if she had done something wrong.
“What’s wrong?”
“...It’s, it’s nothing.”
“You know? You seem to have this whole concept about not being able to talk much because of magic and curses. But that’s not really it, is it? You just don’t like talking and find it a hassle, so you use that as an excuse, right?”
“...Why, do you think, that?”
“Because you’re still speaking in short sentences even now that the magic and curses are sealed, right? According to what you said back then, there’s no reason for magic to unconsciously activate.”
At Yohan’s words, Linne hung her head low and just mumbled at her food. He was right; her reluctance to speak was a matter of personality.
She had been born timid, and not speaking often due to magical reasons had only amplified her outsider tendencies day by day.
Even now that the magic and curses were sealed, she was honestly afraid to speak.
“What, you’re—saying, is correct.”
“Right?”
“So… I’d appreciate it if you’d, just leave me alone.”
Talking was scary. Before, it was because of magic; now, she was just afraid of dealing with people. It was terrifying to have to imagine what the other person might say, and she grew tense, not knowing how they would react to her words.
She hated that fear and tension. She didn’t want to feel such emotions.
“Alright, then to make sure our timid little witch can keep her mouth shut and do nothing… I’ll have to give you something to do, won’t I?”
“...I don’t want to work.”
“Now, now, that won’t do. He who does not work, neither shall he eat. Haven’t you heard that?”
As if she’d never heard such a thing, Linne cautiously began to hide the plate she was eating from behind her back.
Smiling slyly, as if to say he had no intention of taking it, Yohan made his request.
“Alright, that thing you used when you came to find me—you can make one, right? Use it to find my master for me.”
“Uh… this… thing?”
Linne cautiously held out the tracker. Yohan quickly took it and tried to find his master’s location.
But no matter how he turned the tracker over, Evangeline’s current location wouldn’t appear.
“What’s wrong with this thing?”
“Well… it was made with you as the standard, so… it can’t track other people…”
“...So it’s useless.”
“I-It’s not useless! I can just make trackers for other people, but…”
“Then make one.”
“To make it, I need ingredients…”
Yohan asked what kind of ingredients.
She said she needed something containing the target’s genetic information, like a strand of hair or a drop of blood.
In other words, things that were absolutely impossible to obtain right now.
*
“Yohan, where are you… hic, Yohan…”
Tears streamed down Evangeline’s face as she walked resolutely in the direction she believed Yohan to be.
One by one, people began to approach, drawn by her beautiful appearance. A beauty walking down the street in tears—it was a scene so captivating that any man would want to reach out to her.
However.
“Yohaaan…”
“Miss, why are you crying so sorrowfully─”
“Yohaaaaan…!”
“Wh-Wha—!?”
The men who approached her cried out in pain, clutching their twisting hands and feet. The moment they tried to touch her, their own limbs contorted as if rejecting her.
“Gyaaaaaah—!”
At the appearance of the witch who created disaster simply by walking, people screamed and fled.
“Yo, han…”
There was no one here, at least, who did not know that she was a witch.