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After another round of pointless and weary “negotiations”, we finally managed to sketch out the store opening details.
Our business would be operated as an online store, where Kou and I were in charge. Per our agreement, Kou would be responsible for managing the website’s daily operation and liaising with clients, while I would be dealing with the incoming requests. In terms of profits, it would be shared between me and Kou in the ratio of seven to three.
I initially wished to go for the ratio of eight to two. However, as Kou insisted relentlessly that liaising with clients was a very important task which would not go smoothly without her assistance, and taking into consideration that she was in charge of the production and management of the website, it would make more sense to settle at seven to three. On the other hand, she also agreed to reduce thirty per cent of my rent payment - of course, I was not living at her place rent-free. I therefore compromised with the ratio which seemingly leaned towards benefitting her more.
Although we had kick-started the business, I had yet to quit my day job. Despite Kou’s repeated persuasion and reasoning on not to overwork myself with requests coming in, I decided to stay put.
I mean, it’s still the start of a business where we’ve yet to secure a stable customer base. Won’t that mean there’ll be no income at all on days without a single client? Nope, that can’t happen.
It was understandable for her to be concerned about me getting fatigued. Fully acknowledging the challenges that awaited, I reassured her it would be fine.
And that was the start of my “clerk by day, mageka by night” life - I would work as a clerk at the office on weekdays’ daytime, and deal with requests as a mageka on weekday evenings and weekends.
Needless to say, to avoid any unnecessary risks, I did not go by the name “Sakura Minazuki” for this side business of ours. Instead, after discussing with Kou, I went for “Luminosa”, the name which I was commonly called by back in the days in Glace. As for her, she created a name for herself - “Eternity”.
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Time slipped by real fast. It had been half a year since the start of our business. So far, the incoming requests were mostly miscellaneous tasks associated with lost-and-found, exorcism, blessings, etc. There was even a primary school kid looking for our help last month, in hopes of scoring at least ninety marks for his upcoming Maths test, which I ended up being his temporary tutor for two weeks.
Magic was not all-powerful in everything, but the deed must be done for whatever request we got. And this - was professionalism.
Although not much profit had been made, we were performing much better than what I had expected. Even Kou was somehow surprised by this outcome as she did not foresee the proposal she drafted would actually work. Nonetheless, these requests we had been receiving were far less challenging compared to those I had in Glace - I was unable to unleash my true powers.
From time to time, I would feel dispirited by this, but never actually bothered. The thing was I did not mind taking these small steps as long as the business could operate successfully, and I got to do something I genuinely enjoy besides my full-time job. This alone could already fill me with a sense of satisfaction.
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One day, when I was tidying up my room at home as usual, Kou asked me to get to the living room out of the blue.
“Sakura, come take a look! Someone sent us an email and said they hope we can help fix an issue for them.”
It should be just another one of those mundane requests, right? I did not hold any particular expectations at that moment.
“Oh yeah? I’ll be there in a minute.”
But after going through the email content, I simply could not hold my grin.
“Now this - is the real deal.”
Finally, six months in, the long-awaited opportunity has arrived. The email title read: “Request for Eliminating Vampires in the City”.
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