Chapter 87: Fabrication
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 87: Fabrication
“Who gives a shit?”
Hearing Margaret's baffling response, Makina's entire body began to tremble.
Her expression shifted erratically, like a broken machine, until something seemed to snap inside her. Then, her face went completely blank, revealing no emotion at all.
“Fair enough.”
With that, she walked over to the coffee pot as if by habit, boiled water, and added coffee grounds. She poured the grounds straight into the hot water, then chugged the concoction before the beans had even properly dissolved. Then she turned back to the group.
“Welcome, once again. Come on in. Want some coffee?”
“...No.”
“Really? It's good.”
Having seen how she drank it, Yohan declined the offer and promptly plopped down on a nearby sofa.
Makina sat down across from him, crossing her legs as she looked at Yohan.
“Alright, human. What brings you here?”
“This... you can turn it on, right?”
“Hmm? Ah, why are you asking me? It's your thing, isn't it?”
“—She's being uncooperative. Yohan, how about we start by breaking her arms and legs?”
Seeing Makina's attitude, Evangeline flexed her fingers while staring at her. Hearing the threat, Makina frantically waved her hands and backed away slightly.
“No, no, broken limbs would interfere with my research, you know? Could you please refrain?”
“Then stop messing around and spit out what you know. I won't ask a second time, got it?”
“Umm... in the first place, why are you coming to me to charge this? It's yours, isn't it?”
Giving in to the threat, Makina scratched her cheek and asked Yohan for the reason. Yohan looked down at the smartphone, lost in thought for a moment, before realizing he wouldn't get her cooperation unless he explained.
After all, unless he planned on coming here every time the phone died, he had to tell her the full story and find a way to charge it himself.
“I don't have it.”
“Huh?”
“I don't have the charger.”
“Eh? Then how did you make this?”
“That's...”
Yohan glanced nervously at his teacher. She was implicitly aware that he was from another world, but he had never openly admitted it himself.
In fact, considering his unique constitution was a result of being from another world, hadn't she tried to keep that fact hidden?
He wondered if it was okay to just say it... but Evangeline smiled as if to say it was fine and gave him a nod.
“—This is a common item in my world. You can find a charger anywhere, so I don't carry one around.”
“‘My world,’ you say. Hmm. Right. I see. Okay. I'll show you how I charged it.”
With that, Makina took the smartphone, stuck her finger into the charging port for a moment, and then pulled it right out.
A moment later—just from the touch of her finger—the smartphone's screen lit up.
“...How?”
“Simple. I just converted magic power into electricity.”
“Right, but how exactly did you...”
“How? ...It's hard to explain. It's magic.”
Makina then began her introduction, which she had forgotten.
“I forgot. I'm the Witch of Machines. A confidant of this empire's emperor, to be precise.”
The one who laid the foundation for the emperor's rule over the empire.
“I'm the Minister of Science and Technology.”
She was the first witch to hold such a key position in the nation.
Hearing that Makina was the emperor's confidant, a stir went through the other witches. They already knew she was a minister from her business card, but they never imagined she was the emperor's right hand.
The other witches couldn't comprehend how a witch could earn so much trust from the nation's emperor.
“A confidant... you say?”
“Yep. That's right.”
“The emperor's confidant?”
“Confidant—I guess? We don't see each other as anything more than tools.”
Seeing her casually refer to the emperor as a tool, the witches realized that the woman before them truly did have a connection to him.
“But how?”
“What?”
“...I mean, how can a witch be working together with a human?”
“I told you. We're nothing more than tools to each other.”
Despite occupying the important position of the emperor's confidant, she was just an emotionless machine.
“Humans have now started using even witches.”
Just as they demoted the monsters that once threatened their lives to mere targets for a hunt.
Just as they reduced the natural phenomena once revered as gods to simple parts of nature.
Humans have finally begun to make use of witches.
The emperor is just the first, and in the future, more and more humans will employ witches.
Hearing this, Evangeline shook her head and retorted.
“—I don't think so. Witches are beings who can never connect with humans.”
“You say that, but you seem to be completely wrapped around one human's finger.”
“...Yohan is different. He's not an ordinary human.”
“They all look the same to me. Eventually, humans will conquer even witches and magic. The long, long era of persecution will finally come to an end.”
Isn't this something to be happy about? Makina looked at the other witches, wondering why they were so lukewarm.
But the witches present could never agree with that.
Collaborate with humans? Humans will one day conquer even witches?
'Impossible.'
Witches are cursed beings, and magic is a part of that curse.
A curse bestowed by God. The humans of this world can never make a witch happy.
“Right now, all of us here are witches who bear curses that humans cannot overcome. We're unconditionally hated, completely invisible, treated as objects of fear, or unable to even converse with humans...”
“...You all seem fine to me.”
“That's right. Because we weren't saved by some mere human.”
Evangeline said, pulling Yohan in front of her.
“Not by a mere human, but by our savior...”
“T-Teacher? What are you talking about...”
“...Wow. Are you guys some kind of cult or something?”
While Makina looked on, dumbfounded, the smartphone in Yohan's hand finished booting up.
Seeing this familiar sight of civilization for the first time in a long while, Yohan immediately unlocked it.
And there, a picture of a half-naked woman filled the screen.
“—Ah.”
“...Yohan?”
The gazes of the witches who had been peering at the phone right next to him began to turn icy cold. In Evangeline's case, who was hugging him, her fists even clenched tightly.
Yohan only now remembered that he had set his smartphone's wallpaper to a swimsuit picture of a gravure idol he'd found on the internet.
Since he was usually the only one who saw his phone, he hadn't thought anything of it...
'I'm so fucked.'
Creeak—.
He turned his head to look at his teacher.
Her eyes were dyed black.
“What... is this?”
A simple question.
But it didn't feel like a question at all.
A single question.
Yohan deleted the wallpaper, holding back tears.
Bidding farewell to the woman he would never see again...
“So, this thing needs electricity—and since you don't have any, you couldn't charge it?”
“Actually, even with electricity, it has to be 220V, and I also need a charger to convert it to the right voltage.”
“220V... about how much is that?”
“...220 volts is 220 volts. What do you mean, 'how much'?”
“I mean, how much energy is that! Is it the equivalent of one horse-drawn carriage, or the energy produced when one liter of water falls one meter? That's what I'm asking.”
Faced with a question requiring expert scientific knowledge, Yohan couldn't answer. How much is one volt, roughly?
That was a universally agreed-upon standard, not something you memorized the definition of.
Just like how most people don't use the second knowing its definition is the time it takes for a cesium atom to oscillate roughly 9.192 billion times, but just intuitively know what a second is.
Just like how they don't memorize that a meter is the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 of a second, but just remember it as about three and a half steps.
Yohan had no confidence he could explain the standard. His knowledge of electricity was at a middle-school level, amounting to V=IR.
“I don't know.”
“Then I'll just whip something up?”
“...If you could just make it yourself, why did you ask?”
“You're the one who said it had to be 220 volts.”
Hearing her words, Yohan recalled that he had indeed been the one to mention 220 volts, and he clapped his hands and nodded.
Makina, who had been looking at Yohan as if he were pathetic, stood up and headed to the workshop behind her.
There, she grabbed various materials, closed her eyes, and immediately used her magic.
“「Fabrication.」”
Magic power seeped into the materials. Imbued with the Witch of Machines' magic, the parts began to move as if they were living machines, assembling themselves with the other components.
Kkirik, kkirik. Assembling like machines from an SF blockbuster, the materials transformed into a single device.
“There, done.”
Having created a charger in an instant, Makina walked over to Yohan with the object. Yohan took the charger, inserted the plug into the port, and looked at Makina.
“Now what do I do?”
“Pour your magic power into it. It'll automatically convert it into electricity.”
“Ooh, high technology.”
As he charged his smartphone with this paradoxical device—a scientific instrument made with magic—Yohan sneakily turned on the camera and took a picture of his teacher.
Click. After the shutter sound, a cute picture of his teacher was saved to the phone.
“What was that sound just now!?”
Makina and the other witches approached with interest, and as Yohan showed them the picture he'd taken, he thought to himself.
'The camera works fine, too... In that case...'
Now he could film it.
A sex tape with his teacher.