49 . Witch (1)
Ding-dong-daeng!
When the dull class hours end and the bell announcing dinner rings out, the students scatter toward their own destinations.
Some go to the dining hall to eat with friends, some head out into town, and some skip dinner altogether and go straight to evening study.
Eizel usually preferred eating normally with her friends.
No matter how obsessed she was with studying, she still made sure to eat her meals properly. Until recently, she had simply gone without food because she had no money, but if the circumstances allowed it, she believed one absolutely had to take care of one’s health.
Eizel managed her stamina through exercise whenever she had time, kept her schedule with rigorous precision, and enjoyed healthy food. When it came to self-discipline, she was stricter than anyone.
“Eizel! Want to go out and eat today?”
“…Yes?”
Even she had exactly two weaknesses, and one of them was a request from Marilen, one of the friends she had become closest to after coming to Stella.
“Ta-da!”
Marilen spread open a flyer with both hands and said. It looked a little too crude to feel like something officially produced.
“‘Witch Restaurant.’ You’ve heard of it too, right? It’s insanely famous around here these days.”
“Uh… I think I’ve heard of it.”
She felt like she had overheard students talking about it in passing.
“The weird thing about Witch Restaurant is that if you look for it normally, you can’t find it.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what I said. Even if you turn the entire magic city of Arcanium upside down, there’s no place called Witch Restaurant anywhere.”
“Then how do people eat there?”
“That’s the strange part too. They say that if you wander around the student district in Arcanium around sunset, at some point Witch Restaurant just suddenly appears. There are tons of firsthand accounts from people who actually went and ate there.”
“…Isn’t that just a ghost story?”
“No. You know Chailey from Class C, right? She said she ate there too. So anyway, want to go out tonight and try looking for it with us?”
“Hm…”
Teenagers’ interests had a strange tendency to explode over the oddest things, and bizarre trends would catch on like wildfire.
Witch Restaurant.
It didn’t particularly interest her, but she did not have anything specific to do that evening, so Eizel nodded.
Normally, eating out at all was such a luxury that she would never have gone, but recently she had begun to gain a little financial breathing room, and she had also found a way to reclaim part of her father’s property, so it was no longer a major issue.
“Okay. I’ll go too.”
“I knew it!”
“But what kind of menu do they even serve there?”
“From what I’ve heard, they sell all kinds of dishes. Apparently they’ve got everything from all over.”
Usually, when a restaurant became famous, it was for a few similar menu items. But this place called Witch Restaurant seemed unusual in that it handled an incredibly wide range of dishes, yet all of them were supposedly delicious.
“Alright then. Let’s hurry and go!”
So Eizel set out in a noisy little crowd with five friends, including Marilen.
The streets were packed with teenage students, and judging by how every one of them had a flyer in hand, they all seemed to be wandering around in search of Witch Restaurant too.
“There are so many people…”
It seemed the rumors about Witch Restaurant had already spread all over Arcanium, because students from the magic schools had poured out into the city in droves.
“You’d think there was a festival going on.”
Every autumn, when the five prestigious schools of Arcanium held their festivals, the city filled with crowds, but for this many people to gather when it wasn’t even festival season was very unusual.
“But! If it’s for delicious food, I can wait forever!”
…An hour passed like that.
By the time the sun had started to sink low in the sky—
The girls, tired of wandering around, were finally beginning to lose steam, and Eizel shook her head.
Searching for a restaurant might have been fun, but when you were hungry and still hadn’t eaten, there was only so much anyone could take.
If someone declared first that they should give up, it would feel like losing, so the girls all kept their lips tightly shut. But Eizel knew that if even one of them said they should stop, all the others would immediately nod along.
Eizel understood the psychology of teenage girls very well.
“It’s getting difficult now, so should we just find some nearby restaurant instead?”
“Uh… yeah. Should we?”
“It is getting late…”
The girls were just about to agree, all looking slightly disappointed, when Marilen suddenly lifted her head, lightly shook Eizel’s arm, and said,
“E-Eizel. Isn’t that it?”
“Huh?”
Only then did Eizel turn her gaze in that direction and spot a strange building with large orange letters reading Witch Restaurant.
“…It really is.”
She had never imagined it would be tucked away in such a gloomy, hidden alley.
On top of that, most buildings in Arcanium were brightly colored and prettily decorated, but Witch Restaurant was black, dull, and intensely eerie.
The fact that people had actually come into a place like that and eaten there felt even stranger. There were plenty of much nicer-looking popular restaurants just a little farther out.
“Well, we found it, so let’s go in.”
“Alright! See? Happiness really does come after hardship!”
The girls headed toward Witch Restaurant and cautiously peered inside.
“Ooh…”
“They decorated it nicely.”
People said these days interior design accounted for more than half a restaurant’s image, and this place was exactly like that.
It fit the name Witch, with a slightly dark and dreary atmosphere, yet the purple and orange lights gave it a dreamy feeling, and the beautifully inscribed magical phrase on the wall added an air of mystery.
“If you lived through today without feeling a lack of anything, then you are still fortunate.”
It was a very old language.
Probably one used in ancient Christon around four hundred years ago. Since Eizel had studied a wide range of disciplines, she could interpret it at a glance, but most… no, all of the students here would be unable to read it.
“What does that phrase mean?”
“Isn’t it like some witch’s magic incantation?”
“No way. I heard witches don’t use incantations like that.”
“Really? I heard witches invented them.”
Even though Stella students studied witches, that did not mean they truly knew them well.
In other words, if even Stella students did not know witches well, then that showed just how veiled and mysterious witches were to most of the magic world.
Witches were mysterious, but dangerous, and so full of secrets that there was more people did not know about them than what they did know.
And now, with most of them vanished from sight, there was no longer any real way to learn more about them…
“Are there no other customers?”
The restaurant was quite large, but aside from the girls, there was no one else there.
“We’d like to order!”
When Marilen suddenly took a seat and called out loudly, Eizel, feeling deeply embarrassed, quietly said,
“There’s a bell…”
“Oh, right.”
Only then did they find the bell and ring it, whereupon a female server in the kind of witch outfit that looked like it had come straight out of a comic walked over.
“Would you like to order?”
The server smiled brightly…
Something about it—something about her—had an oddly captivating charm.
‘Why are the menu names like this?’
Eizel frowned.
Fantasy Witch Curry.
Fantasy Witch Hamburger.
Fantasy Witch Spaghetti, and so on.
They really did have everything, but every single menu item just had “Fantasy” attached to it and otherwise showed no particular originality at all.
“I’ll have this one.”
“I want the hamburger!”
After her friends finished ordering, the server smiled sweetly and met Eizel’s eyes.
“And for the young lady?”
Eizel quietly stared at the menu for a moment, then pointed a finger at Fantasy Witch Pork Gukbap.
“This…”
The last time she had eaten it, she had found it truly unpleasant, but perhaps this restaurant, famous for making everything taste good, would be different.
“Yes. I’ve got it.”
After the server left, the girls leaned their heads together and began whispering quietly.
“Hey, hey, what was with that older sister just now?”
“Why is she so pretty?”
“Seriously, that was insane. She was almost on Eizel’s level.”
“…Why does my name keep coming up?”
But Eizel felt that something was strangely off.
There had definitely been something charming about the server, but she was not so beautiful that it warranted this kind of exaggerated reaction from her friends.
She had an ordinary face, but when she smiled, she drew you in…
That was about the extent of it.
Still, since everyone was drawn to different kinds of charm, Eizel figured she was simply a little unusual and let it pass.
After a short wait, the food came out, and before even eating, her friends first took pictures of it with high-performance cameras.
Probably to show off to their school friends. Eizel herself did not particularly care to show it off, but since her friends were taking pictures, she just let them.
“Eizel. But what is this dish? Rice in broth?”
“I don’t know either.”
She did not know, but she intended to eat it anyway.
Once her friends finished taking pictures, they each picked up their knives and forks and began eating, reacting loudly at once.
“Th-This is insane!”
“This is paradise…”
It really seemed to be that delicious.
Eizel too picked up her spoon and tried a spoonful of the pork gukbap broth, but…
“Hmm…”
It still did not suit her taste.
It honestly did not feel all that different from the restaurant she had gone to with Baek Yuseol before.
Wondering if maybe pork gukbap as a dish was simply limited to this level, she tried one bite each of her friends’ food as well.
‘…They’re all ordinary, though?’
Eizel did not have refined tastes.
After losing her father, she had gotten by on the cheapest, most efficient meals possible, which made that even more true.
But the food at Witch Restaurant…
Honestly, it was ordinary to the point of being below ordinary. Eizel happened to be someone who could eat almost anything, but if a noble-born student had come here, they probably would have spat it right back out the moment it touched their tongue.
“This is insane. Seriously!”
And yet her friends were stuffing the food into their mouths as if they had been bewitched by something.
“…Is it really that good?”
“Yeah, yeah. Was it not great for you?”
“It was just… ordinary.”
“I’ve honestly never had food like this in my life…”
“I’ve never even tasted something like this at a star chef’s restaurant.”
Was it really that good?
She honestly could not tell.
Were her tastes so cheap that even when she ate truly delicious food, she could not recognize it?
While Eizel sat there puzzled, the meal ended, and the girls leaned back with satisfied looks, patting their full stomachs.
“Ahh~ Let’s come again next time.”
“I want to come here every day.”
“Should we ask the server how we can find this place again?”
“Should we?”
The girls went to the counter to pay and casually asked the server,
“How do you get here?”
But the server smiled brightly and shook her head.
“Well now. I do not know the map very well myself. But if you truly wish to come, you can always find your way here, so don’t worry.”
What kind of vague answer was that?
And yet the girls quickly accepted it and left the restaurant.
It all felt strangely unsettling, as though they had really been enchanted by a witch’s spell.
Eizel too was about to follow her friends out, when suddenly the server stopped her.
“One moment, please.”
“Yes?”
“You are… like me, aren’t you?”
What on earth was that supposed to mean, all of a sudden?
“You are, aren’t you? I can feel the clear aura of a witch from you.”
“That’s a real relief.”
And then the server smiled brightly, radiantly. What exactly was supposed to be such a relief?
Eizel could not understand at all, but the woman merely bowed as if it did not matter.
“Then please get back safely. I hope we get to meet again next time.”
“…Yes. I’ll be going.”
Something about it all left a deeply unpleasant feeling, but for now all Eizel wanted was to get out of there as quickly as possible, even a moment sooner, so she hurried away.
“Phew…”
She realized only then that her back was damp with cold sweat.
“What on earth was that…?”
It gave her a very ominous feeling, but as long as she did not come back here again, surely nothing serious would happen.
…Late evening.
At Stella Academy’s teaching materials warehouse.
A strange commotion had broken out in Wand Storage Room 11097.
“Professor Valenteina. Even if you are the supervising professor in charge of the wands, how can you order all the wands to be taken out?”
“Well, what do you expect? I told you I lost an important wand in here.”
“So we spent ages looking for the wand you described. But there was no such wand here.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You people just couldn’t find it. How could you miss something that noticeable?”
Professor Valenteina.
She was the professor for the course Efficient Use of Wands, and at the same time the custodian responsible for managing all the wands used by students at Stella Academy. But even so, ordering all unused wands to be taken out and lined up was not something the staff could simply accept.
A wand that was not in resonance with a mage was in an extremely sensitive state, and some wands could even go into convulsions merely from being exposed to open air.
“Ugh, you’re all so frustrating.”
Valenteina, with her lively bronze-toned skin, ran her hands wildly through her reddish curly hair.
The sluggishness of the work was maddening enough, but what really made her want to tear her hair out was that the wand she had lost was both very dangerous and very precious.
‘Where the hell did I lose that thing?’
A few days earlier, while helping Instructor Lee Hanwol set up the environment in the Stella Dome for the cadets’ practical training, she had secretly used that broom wand—
But that day, of all days, she had been absolutely plastered, so she could not remember where she had left it.
‘Even after the training ended, I looked for it, but it was nowhere in sight…’
She normally kept her wands in storage, so she had searched this place from top to bottom, but there was not the faintest trace of it.
‘Did someone pick it up?’
The thought sent a sudden chill down her spine. If someone really had picked up that wand…
‘…No! Still, no one would be able to recognize what it is anyway.’
Valenteina waved a hand dismissively at the staff member and said,
“Forget it. I’m going back. If you happen to find it, let me know.”
“Yes, yes. Understood.”
She really wanted to burst that man’s head open like a pumpkin for answering so lazily, but she held herself back.
Did that idiot even realize how important this was?
“Ugh~ what a life~”
Getting the lost wand back was only a matter of time anyway.
The problem was just that…
Please, for the love of everything, let no one touch it and cause some pointless trouble in the meantime.
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