Chapter 185: Take It to Heart
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 185: Take It to Heart
“My goodness, sir. I’m so envious. Your wife is such a beauty…”
“Ahaha, thank you.”
Yohan was speaking with the architect in charge of the construction, explaining how the building should be built.
Like a true expert, the man had a knack for understanding Yohan perfectly, no matter how poorly he explained things.
If there was a problem, it was—
“Why is this part being built like this?”
“Huh? But your wife asked for it to be done this way just a moment ago…”
“Never mind that. Do it like this.”
—the fact that the ten witches were demanding conflicting features for the building. The bigger problem was that, to avoid the trouble that would come from revealing he was living with ten beautiful women, he had hypnotized everyone into believing all ten witches were the same person.
To the architect and the construction workers, she must have looked like a crazy bitch who would demand something and then come back five minutes later to cancel it.
In the end, it was Yohan’s job to endure the glares from the workers.
“…Married life must be exhausting.”
“Ahaha.”
Yohan laughed off the architect’s comment and gave a slight nod. Just as he said, his married life seemed disastrous.
Oh, and speaking of marriage—Yohan had ended up marrying the witches.
Using Makina’s magic to create fake identities, he had used every trick in the book to marry all of them at the same time.
He now realized there was nothing you couldn’t do if you really tried.
“Yohaaan-!”
Evangeline, who had been watching the frame of the house go up from a distance, sidled up and clung to him.
Ignoring the envious gazes of the workers, Yohan turned to face her.
“What is it, Teacher?”
“Come here!”
“Huh? Why all of a sudden…”
Led by Evangeline’s hand, Yohan was dragged to where the garden would be. The sunset, which was beginning to fill the twilight sky, came into full view.
It was a magnificent scene, the kind that if you took a picture and posted it on SNS, it would instantly spread across the world and end up as the wallpaper on tens of thousands of smartphones.
Evangeline pointed and spoke.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s a relief. I’m glad I used magic to bring it here.”
“…Excuse me? Wait a minute, Teacher. What did you just say?”
“I said I brought it here with magic?”
Hearing his teacher’s words, Yohan clutched his forehead and stared at her blankly. He had hoped he’d misheard, but it seemed that wasn’t the case.
Just like the great witch who had casually done whatever she pleased in the fantasy world, she had once again molded this world to her whims.
‘Then again, if this spot had a view like this every day, I wouldn’t have gotten it so cheap…’
He didn’t know whether to be happy or upset. Yohan looked at her with an indescribable expression.
Evangeline simply tilted her head, looking at Yohan as if to ask what the problem was.
A witch’s sensibilities, developed over a lifetime, weren’t something that could be easily changed with just a few days of conversation.
‘I can only hope nothing goes wrong…’
He was quite worried, but the thought that, if things went south, he could just ditch Earth and flee to the other world dominated his mind.
*
Korea Aerospace Observatory.
An institution that observes the sky and the stars beyond.
It was this very organization that was the first to realize something strange had happened to the Earth.
“What is this?”
“The sky… moved?”
It was an abnormal phenomenon that could only be described that way. The scientists were flabbergasted as they looked at the 3D map rendered by the computer. The sky moving was, of course, common sense, but the speed was not.
Stars that should have only been visible from Earth after thousands of years began to appear one by one, and the sun began to shine on the planet from an angle that should have been impossible.
“What’s happening all of a sudden?!”
“I-I don’t know! Did aliens invade or something…?”
“If aliens capable of moving Earth’s axis showed up, wouldn’t we all be dead already?”
“Well, that’s true, but…”
The scientists began to analyze the current situation while also preparing to announce it to the world. It was in their nature as scientists to become curious whenever they discovered something new and unknown.
As they analyzed, the scientists realized one thing.
That the phenomenon currently happening was absolutely impossible to explain physically.
“What is this, a wizard jumping out of a Netflix show?”
Could someone like Doctor Strange, who deals with the multiverse, pull something like this off? The scientists put their heads together, trying to explain this ridiculous phenomenon.
Naturally, there was no way a scientist could explain a physically impossible event. To explain something like this, you’d have to bring in a wizard.
And just then.
“Excuse me, Chief?”
“What is it?”
“Could you take a look at this?”
One of the new researchers studying the incident spoke up, showing a photo posted on SNS.
“Did you take this? It’s a good shot.”
“Doesn’t this photo seem a little strange?”
“What about it? It’s beautiful.”
“Let me show you another picture.”
The new researcher said, pulling up another photo he had found earlier. It was from a blog post about a popular restaurant in the same neighborhood.
The scenery was captured between the buildings, and even though it was also a sunset photo, the angle was strangely different.
“And this is?”
“It’s from three years ago, so it won’t be perfectly identical… but it’s strange for there to be such a phase difference in just three years.”
“What’s your point?”
“Well, what’s happening right now is physically impossible, right? What if there’s a wizard-like being who could do this, and if we were to look for a reason why such a being would do it…”
“…They twisted the Earth’s orbit just to see a pretty view?”
Logically.
Physically.
Ethically.
No matter how you looked at it, it was absurd. But the reason was so preposterous that it paradoxically began to seem plausible.
Isn’t it human nature to become corrupt when they gain power, not through their own strength, but through other means? It was easy to imagine what kind of thoughts a being with the absurd power to twist a planet’s orbit might have.
They probably wouldn’t even see humans as fellow humans, but more like ants.
If so, it was plausible that they would commit an orbital deviation, with all its unknown consequences, just to see a ‘pretty view.’
“Okay, fine. Let’s say that’s it. Then where is this place?”
“It’s Siheung.”
“In Gyeonggi Province?”
“Yes.”
Hearing the rookie’s words, the senior researcher scratched his head furiously and sighed. Just thinking about how to write their deductions in the report made his head throb.
A wizard-like being altered the planet’s orbit, and their purpose was simply to see a pretty sky?
No one would believe it, and it would be a problem even if they did.
‘Ah, screw it.’
We’ve done all we can. The police or the government can handle the rest.
With that thought, the chief researcher wrote up the report.
*
The magic Evangeline had cast immediately became the top story on the 9 O’Clock News.
No matter which channel you turned to, or even if you searched the internet instead of watching TV, everyone was reporting on this unbelievable phenomenon.
—At around 5 PM today, the sky suddenly began to move.
Perhaps because some people happened to be filming the sky at that moment, the TV was broadcasting how Evangeline had moved it.
It looked like a time-lapse video, shot over dozens of days, being played on fast-forward. The clouds and constellations floating in the sky twisted around frantically before coming to a stop.
It was astonishing that despite such a global-scale event, no problems had occurred on Earth.
“Teacher. How did you do that?”
“Hm? Do what?”
“No, I mean, how is everything fine after you turned the sky upside down like that?”
“Oh, that? I actually failed a few times.”
“…Excuse me?”
Hearing Evangeline’s words, Yohan tilted his head as if to ask what she meant. Failed? Does that mean the Earth is in danger right now?
But Evangeline just giggled and replied as if there was no need to worry.
“I borrowed a little of Agapeite’s power.”
“…Did you use Regression or something?”
“Huh? Not really. I used her future-sight ability.”
True, if she had used Regression, his magic-nullifying constitution would have surely detected it. Evangeline explained why everything was fine despite her altering the atmosphere.
“Agapeite foresaw the future that would result from my magic. That way, I could know in advance what would happen when I cast the spell.”
“In other words…”
“Yep. In a few futures, it was destroyed several times.”
She said it so casually, so matter-of-factly—but Yohan couldn’t stop the shiver that ran down his entire body.
Destroyed several times… in other words…
‘It means she can destroy the Earth whenever she wants…’
And she wasn’t the only witch capable of it.
There were ten witches with Yohan in total.
Each and every one of them was a witch who could use abilities similar to Evangeline’s.
‘This is insane.’
If he ever upset them, he had no idea when the Earth might be destroyed.
Yohan engraved that fact deep in his heart.