The Air Conditioner Steals the Ice Mages' Jobs (4)
Since I was already out and about, I took the chance to survey the streets.
Back in the day, every shop on the block would throw its doors wide open to let the breeze through. Not anymore. Only a precious few of the shops lining the street still had their doors flung open; the rest had shut them tight, so the cool air from their air conditioners couldn't slip outside.
I hadn't expected the air conditioner to spread this fast. Then again, this was what you got when the desire to seize the market early combined with the terror of being left behind.
Satisfying, to say the least.
I was strolling along with a contented smile when a rich, nutty aroma of coffee beans hit my nose. My throat happened to be parched, so why not stop for a cup?
Whoa. So this is what it feels like to think like a bourgeois? A notion I could never have entertained back when my money pouch was light.
I stepped into a coffee house nearby. It sat close enough to the Academy that plenty of the patrons looked like students, and that lent the place a scene straight out of my university days in my previous life.
"It's on me. You girls go grab a seat."
Some well-heeled male student fished out his wallet and paid for the coffee, clearly angling to show off his wealth in front of a group of girls.
"Sure."
Wow, what half-hearted responses. The sad truth was written all over the girls' faces: no matter how he carried himself, they saw him as nothing more than a wallet. And the poor guy, completely oblivious to this, was wearing some inexplicable smile.
Well, I suppose he thinks he's making a good impression. You poor fool. She's bleeding you dry.
Feeling sorry for the boy and irritated at the girls, I made for an empty table—only for a group of female students to block my path without so much as yielding.
"Excuse me?"
The girls looked up, grumbling in full-voiced complaint, and the sight put me in mind of baby birds squawking at their mother for food. I simply stared down at them in silence, wearing a what do you expect me to do about it expression.
"……"
The girl at the front pressed her lips into a tight line and wound her hair around her finger. She exchanged a glance with the girls behind her, then they all turned sideways together, squeezed out, and slipped through the narrow gap between us and the wall.
Tsk tsk. I clicked my tongue as I watched them chatter away at the empty table. Vile creatures, freeloading off other people's kindness.
A little while later, my coffee arrived. I carried it—and the complimentary bread I hadn't ordered but received anyway—to an empty seat by the window, right next to where those girls were sitting. Resting my chin on my hand, I began studying the passersby outside with great attention.
After all, I was looking for a blacksmith capable of producing a high mana-conductivity alloy, or a mage who could grant souls.
"Hey, look at that girl."
The chatter from the next table drifted over.
"That beggar's at it again, sitting out on the street like that."
My eyes stayed on the window while I half-listened to their conversation. Not that it promised to be useful—it just happened to be interesting.
Are they talking about her?
In the shadowed alley between two buildings, a place the sunlight never reached, a girl in an outfit much like the gossips' sat hunched over. Golden hair cropped short, a braid draped over one shoulder and tied off with a ribbon at the end. Skin so pale it stood out even in the shade, paired with a tiny frame—together they made her look like a patient.
"A girl with no money scraping her way into the Academy. It's honestly hilarious."
I never attended the Academy myself, but I remembered Muriel telling me the tuition at the Imperial Capital's Academy was steep. Even so, since graduating was considered more or less a prerequisite for being scouted by the Mage Tower or landing a seat as an Imperial Mage, plenty of families scraped together money they didn't have to send a daughter there.
No doubt that girl was staying at the Academy for exactly that reason, swallowing insults like these along the way.
Not exactly cheerful listening. I'd eavesdropped for nothing and only soured my own mood. I tore off a piece of bread, popped it in my mouth, and tried to resume my search.
"They say she sells dolls over there too, all to cover her tuition."
But didn't I once say it myself? Ears aren't shutters you can open and close at will, picking and choosing what to hear—they make you listen to things you'd rather not.
Countess... why does it feel like everything I said to you keeps coming back around to me?
Anyway. As the girls at the next table kept piling on commentary about that girl, my gaze kept drifting, unbidden, toward the poor thing—once to the passersby, once to the girl in the alley, back and forth like that.
"Look at that. Her family's a nobody, and her magic's just as pathetic?"
I was mid-sip when my eyes bulged. I looked back at the unfortunate girl once more.
She had spread a cloth bundle on the bare ground: a puppy doll, a bear doll, a lion doll, and more. Stuffed animals lined up in a row—the work, I'd wager, of a Made-by-Poor-Girl brand. Then she picked up the puppy doll and murmured something to it.
"What's she doing?"
"Oh, that? She's talking to her dolls. She's a total lunatic with no friends, so she talks to stuffed animals."
That had been my question, actually. Thanks so much for the helpful explanation.
The moment the girl finished her explanation—
Woof—!
Faintly, through the glass, came the sound of a dog barking. Had a dog wandered past? I glanced around, but at least within my field of view, there was no dog to be seen.
Woof—!
The bark came again. This time I traced it to its source. That puppy. The spotted puppy doll the poor girl had been holding and murmuring to.
"Huh?"
I set down my coffee and focused all my attention on the doll.
Woof woof—!
The puppy doll barked cheerfully at the passersby. At the same time, it toddled back and forth across the bundle on wobbly, unnatural little legs, like one of those robot dogs sold at highway rest stops.
Doll magic... no, calling it that doesn't feel right. It's strikingly different from ordinary doll craft. For one thing, that barking. It wasn't the poor girl making the sound, and there was no playback device anywhere—it came from the muzzle of the puppy doll prancing atop the bundle. In other words, the doll itself was barking.
And the expression. Hard to believe, but that puppy doll changed its expression as it looked at the passersby. The way the black button thing nestled in the wad of cotton seemed to curve ever so slightly into a smile—surely that wasn't just my imagination.
That puppy doll. Doesn't it look exactly like a living dog?
Could it be? A mage who can grant souls—the very one I've been searching for?
"Hey, hold on a second."
One of the girls at the next table abruptly rose from her seat. Moments later she appeared beyond the glass and marched toward the poor girl, low-shouldered and stomping like an angry bull. She inflated her chest with a huge breath, and then—
"Hey!!"
—she bellowed loud enough to turn every passing head.
"Make that dog stop barking!!!"
Is she insane? Why the hell is she making a scene out of nowhere?
Every eye on the street converged. Not on the girl throwing the tantrum, mind you, but toward the source of the barking—in other words, toward the poor girl selling her puppy dolls.
"……"
Red crept slowly up the girl's pale face. Shame and humiliation soon swallowed her features whole. Hyper-aware of every gaze, she looked around frantically, then hurriedly gathered up her spread-out bundle. Slinging it over her shoulder, she fled into the dark alley like a rabbit bolting for its burrow.
...And just like that, my chance to confirm whether the magic she'd just used was truly a life-granting spell vanished with her.
"Drove her off."
The girl who'd marched out to the street and delivered her tirade came strutting back into the coffee house, chest puffed with triumph.
"Gyahahaha! What a lunatic!"
"Did you see her face just now? I was embarrassed for her."
"Can't she just drop out of the Academy already? It's humiliating sitting in the same lectures as someone like that."
Now I was angry. I'd been planning to buy that poor girl a coffee and ask if she had a moment to talk. To be fair, I'd only thought about it instead of going out right away—that part's on me—but driving the girl off with an insult? Really?
"Excuse me."
I turned to the students at the next table. Every head snapped toward me in unison.
"You're the louder ones here, so kindly quiet down. Let's all try to have a little class."
"What did you say?"
The one who flared up was the male student sitting among the girls. I'd nudged them, so he must have figured that jumping in to put me in my place would score him some points.
"I thought you were just rude, but you're oblivious on top of it. This isn't the moment to throw a fit—it's the moment to apologize, isn't it?"
Veins standing out on his neck, the boy rose and made to come around at me, but the girl beside him grabbed his arm and tried to hold him back. Of course, nothing makes a male want to protect his pride more than exactly this kind of moment. He shook off the girls' protests, planted himself in front of me, and growled:
"Hey. Get up. Outside. Now."
I'm not the type to run from a fight that walks up to my face, so I shoved back my chair and stood as well. I looked down at the boy, who stood a good head shorter than me. Maybe craning his neck upward wounded his pride, because he kept his head locked dead ahead and only rolled his eyes up at me in the creepiest way possible. She's not even a girl acting cute—why is he being so grotesque about it?
It was all so pathetic that a snort of laughter burst out of me.
"So you do have some pride after all. Very well. Shall we, then?"
On my way out, I made a point of telling the staff:
"Ah, please don't clear our table. I'll be back before the coffee gets cold."