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Mystery creatures that hide in the city, appear only at night thirsting for human blood, and are under suspicion for the occurrence of multiple peculiar cases… Even if they aren't actually some sort of mysterious creatures in their true form, it’s still worth investigating for the thrill…I mean the value.
“Good,” Kou said, brimming with joy upon my utterance, as if she had been expecting this moment for some time, “by the way, how much can we earn from this job?”
“That can only be confirmed after we meet up with our client. But for now, from what I estimate, it should be at least double the sum of our earnings from all the requests accomplished so far,” I answered with certainty. Speaking of which, we’d earned about $100K (~ USD 12,800) from all that mageka work within the half-year span.
“Wowie! That’s a lot!” I could see a swarm of gold coins shining and shimmering in her eyes.
“Though that would require a month-long grinding at minimum.” I stretched and laid down on the couch. From my own experience throughout the years, requests that were paid handsomely usually took much more time and effort to accomplish.
Guess the same applies to every other job in the world huh. “No pain, no gain”, isn’t that right?
That was why I never complained about rewards that required an equivalent amount of input, yet despised clerical jobs so much, as those were most certainly exploitation.
“I’m good even if it takes a year. Money’s all that matters,” Kou looked me in the eye and said while lying on the other side of the couch.
“Do you really like money that much!?” Hearing what she said, I almost could not hold myself back from spilling out the phrase ‘gold digger’.
“Well, that’s only your personal judgement. I didn’t say anything.” She gave me an innocent wink.
“I myself don’t like it anyways.” That was my honest opinion.
“Could anyone not like money in this world?” It seemed to her that everyone must be a fan of money.
“Hmm…let’s put it this way: I do agree that money is indispensable for mankind’s livelihood. I just don’t appreciate the fact that the word is always on everyone’s lips. Given that ‘money’ is a system created by us, from my point of view, we should be its owners, not its slaves.”
The same went for the female colleagues at my company who would not stop babbling every day about money, from gossiping about which millionaire was the wealthiest in town, which brainless female artists hit the jackpot by marrying a rich guy, and making a fuss about themselves not hanging out with a rich boyfriend despite having more attractive appearances, to discussing which designer label dropped a sale on their bags and making up a million reasons to purchase one.
Is there really a point in living a life that revolves around the word “money”?
“Just like the relationship between magekas and familiars, right?” In this regard, Kou raised an intriguing example.
“Yeah, fair enough.” I sat up straight. “Hmm, you seem like quite a savvy one about these, you know, magical trivia.”
“Is that so? I believe my knowledge could just be a skosh of what you already know.”
“That’s for sure, for I’m a legit mageka. But to be frank, you know a remarkable amount by mundane standards. Did your grandmother tell you about this all when you were little?” I finally spoke up about this doubt that had been residing in my head for quite some time.
When I first came to this world, the only person I knew was Kou. With her extensive comprehension of mysterious creatures and magic, I had been under the impression that everyone else here was just like her, and those who were not equipped with such knowledge were the outcasts. It wasn’t until I got to know some other people from this world that I came to realise that the abnormal one was Kou instead.
Her vast amount of knowledge covered lore which could not be located in public sources, like magicae attributes and philosophies, not mentioning those rumours about mysterious creatures. I had been contemplating this for some time, and the only logical explanation I was able to come up with was that she, as the legacy of a ‘Shake’, obtained such intel from her grandmother, the last miko of the ‘Shake’, thou“Nope.” To my surprise, Kou dropped quite the bomb. “I’ve never even met my grandparents, and I didn’t hear from my parents about these things either.”
“But if that’s the case, why…”
If it wasn’t from her family, then where in the world did she learn about these things?
“Personal interest,” she replied lightly.
“What?”
Personal interest? Is she being serious? That much unreachable intel in both quality and quantity couldn’t be explained by simply ‘personal interest’, could it?
“This supernatural stuff has always appealed to me since I was little, and hence the devotion in researching and gathering information on it over the years. That’s it,” she said affirmatively.
“And also… I can see them.” She dropped yet another bomb in a calm manner.
Huh? What does she mean by ‘them’? Is she referring to spirits? Oh that’s right, I’ve never actually asked her about this…
Logically speaking, beings without magical powers were unable to see creatures made of magical energy, such as spirits. While she had been following me in exorcising malicious spirits over the past six months, I had always assumed that she could not see them, though I’d never confirmed it.
She said she could see them…yet how does she do that without magical powers?
“Kou, by ‘see them’ do you mean…”
As I was about to verify with Kou what she meant, she immediately looked away. “Ah, Mr. Chong just replied to my email!”
“Hey! Answer my question!”
I won’t fall for it that easily!
“He said he can do 3PM tomorrow. What do you think?” Yet Kou ignored me.
“Sigh…yeah sure it works for me. I don’t have to work overtime tomorrow, and plus it’s a Saturday. The question should be: ‘What do YOU think?’”
Ugh fine, we’ll get down to business first. But I’ll be sure to have her answer afterwards!
Talking about business, wasn’t it just ten minutes ago that I asked her to arrange a meeting? How was she able to draft and send the email to our client in such a short amount of time and receive a response?
Could this be another ‘superpower’ of the Assistant Manager? If this mageka work unfortunately comes to a failure, I must learn from her and get promoted as soon as possible with this skill so that I don’t have to keep being a sandbag suffering at the bottom of the food chain.
“It’s a ‘yes’, definitely. Let’s do this.” She gave a straightforward response.
“Okay then, back to my question.” I grasped the opportunity and drove her back on track.
“Question? What question?” She tilted her head as if she had no idea what I was talking about, though it seemed to me that she was only pretending.
“You said you could see them. What are ‘they’?” I re-emphasised.
“Oh? Did I say so?” she kept asking doubtfully.
“Yes of course! I heard it with my own two ears!” I shouted.
“But I have no memory of that, and what I just said as well.” Corresponding to her statement, she pulled a face of distress.
“You’ve got to be joking…” Nonetheless, I could do nothing about it if she chose not to answer.
“You should hit the hay now! We’ve got an appointment with a client tomorrow.” Not only did she not respond to my question, but she also tried to push me back from the living room to the bedroom on the second floor with her ‘eviction order’,”Our mageka is about to be the ally of justice and punish the bad guys!”
While I planned on nudging her more about the spirit situation, my mind cooled down at once after hearing what she said.
In a solemn tone, I turned around and asked, “Why would you think banishing and killing ‘vampires’ is a thing of justice?"
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