The sun crept through the window.

  I let go of the warmth pressed against me, the gentle rays of the sun disturbing my slumber.

  I rose slowly from the bed and looked out the window.

  The world was tinged with a pale golden hue as the sun rose above the horizon. Dense fields of twining trees descended down a mountain range, shyly letting the sun pass through tiny gaps between the tired leaves.

  And far out in the distance, seeming so tiny from this far up, was a large, circular city, bustling with life.

  I let myself smile.

  Cities weren’t so bad when I wasn’t stuck directly in them. Sure, the unending monotony and daily routine, the constant commute and traffic of business and commerce choked and unnerved me, but from a distance, when looking upon those establishments teeming with a million condensed lives, there was something almost comforting about it.

  They were just people in the end, just like me; doing their best to live, doing their best to find any small scrap of happiness, reaching out for any meagre connection with strangers, hoping to one day find friends and family.

  It wouldn’t all just be the footfall of tired workers and people trying to make ends meet.

  There would be children in parks, couples spending a day together, families laughing and playing, elderly gentlemen and ladies watching the youth pass them by; it wasn’t all bad when I finally drew some distance between myself and the constant hungering emptiness inside of me.

  It felt familiar, in a way. It was like I was coming back from a long trip overseas. I’d come back from many long, beautiful but lonely nights, and be happy to just see people around me, living their lives in nostalgic ways; people lining up for takeaway outside of restaurants, a flood of schoolchildren packing into fast food chains, traffic slowing as cars filled the streets.

  It was almost like home.

  Home…

  I hadn’t thought about that word in a long time, not since I arrived in this strange, new world.

  That shabby abandoned house that we had stayed in during the winter – I had probably only offhandedly referred to it as ‘home’ only a dozen times at most.

  It didn’t feel natural. It wasn’t a safe or comfortable place, it was just all we had.

  I wondered if I could eventually come to call this place home.

  I gently hopped out of the mattress so as to not disturb my sister.

  I changed out of the set of simple pajamas I was wearing for another plain hospital gown and made my way outside.

  The smell of sizzling eggs and bacon, fat popping and rendering, bursting into the air, drifted through the house.

  I made my way to the dining room, where Miss Symphonia was already waiting, her hands and attention occupied by the pan on the stove.

  A large, thin disk of batter flipped through the air.

  I scooted past her and peered into the large sink next to the kitchen.

  A large pile of unwashed plates and utensils were scattered inside of it haphazardly.

  I sighed. She had forgotten to clean up after dinner again.

  “Miss Symphonia, please remember to clean the dishes next time,” I frowned as I curled my sleeves up, turning the faucet on.

  “That’s what you’re here for,” she reached over with a spare hand to flick me on the head.

  How did this sloppy woman manage to live by herself in the mountains before we came here?

  Given her behaviour around her own home and even her cherished workspace, it was hard to believe that she was capable of caring for herself any more than just cooking.

  I rolled my eyes and scrubbed everything clean, going back to my usual musings to pass the time.

  It was rather counterintuitive as someone from 21st Century Earth, but it seemed witches weren’t nature-loving, backwards, superstitious hags in this world. They seemed to be the opposite, if anything, taking the place of philosophers, mathematicians and inventors as forerunners that led the advancement of humanity.

  Whereas most people in the city I spent the last several months or years of my life in still forced people to run to wells for water, witches apparently were advanced enough to understand and build plumbing systems, placing them way further ahead into the Industrial Revolution than I thought the world was in.

  In hindsight, it made several incongruous facts about the world make sense.

  The world’s architecture and culture were seemingly still stuck in the Middle Ages, taking from what I knew of Tudor England and France during the Hundred Years’ War, but the existence of magic apparently catapulted their industry far ahead into the mid 19th Century, advanced enough for yeast cultivation, sewing machines and plumbing.

  Thinking about it a bit more, I suppose it made sense. ‘Magic’ was not equal to ‘superstition’, unlike it was in my old world. It was just another part of how the world was, no different than a branch of science.

  It just rubbed me in an unnatural, wrong way, was all. It was hard to overcome the bias and strict scientific dogma ingrained in me by my previous life, made worse by the complicated history I had with religion, the divine, and the supernatural.

  My train of thought stopped when I ran out of dishes to clean.

  I turned the tap off and dried my hands.

  “Grab three plates and forks for me, will ya, girl?”

  It wasn’t long before the table was set up fully, just in time for my sister to come tumbling down the stairs, still rubbing her eyes sleepily.

  “G’morning sister…” she mumbled, yawning as she plopped herself down at her usual seat.

  Miss Symphonia walked over to her with her pan in her hand, sliding a flat, thin breakfast dish over the plate in front of her.

  A paper-thin, brown and crispy crepe folded over itself, struggling to stay closed atop the generous pile of toppings layered onto its base, its folded edges gently poking at the bright, bubbly orange yolk that wobbled back and forth as the plate was set down.

  Layers of thinly sliced potatoes roasted to a perfect golden brown soaked up the grease of shrivelled, smoky, well-cooked bacon, bright flecks of brown, caramelized onion poking through the gaps, topped off by a layer of two alternating melting cheeses – one a pale yellow and the other a rich gold – and a fried egg.

  It was a combination of two separate dishes; the tartiflette bake and the galette bretonne crepe.

  She slid down several more, serving generous portions for all three of us.

  Breakfast passed in comfortable silence, like it usually did.

  The three of us set the dishes aside after we finished eating, and split up to head to our respective destinations.

  “U-um…” my sister called out from the other side of the room.

  Miss Symphonia and I turned around.

  “S-Sister, will you be free today?”

  She squirmed around, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

  I smiled lightly in amusement at her expression, before looking up at the older woman with a neutral expression.

  She just clicked her tongue.

  “Dunno. She might be free after lunch, will have to see how everything goes. Fifty-fifty, really, depends on what the tests tell me. Don’t get your hopes up, ‘kay?”

  That was more than enough for my sister, apparently, as her eyes instantly lit up as she nodded rapidly.

  “Then, I’ll see you after lunch then, Sister!”

  She waved excitedly at me as she ran away, disappearing behind the corner as if the possibility was a certainty.

  Miss Symphonia just huffed, rolling her eyes at my sister’s attitude, making me giggle.

  We entered the workshop without any further interruptions, and set about my business.

  Upon seeing the dirty floor, covered from corner to corner in a thick layer of chalk dust, littered with adorned runic circles of all sizes and complexities, the witch groaned in annoyance.

  “Ah, shit.”

  I sighed.

  “Please remember to call for me before you go to bed if you need the workshop cleaned, Miss Symphonia.”

  This repetitive conversation was getting a bit tiring, honestly.

  It happened a lot when she was left to her own devices.

  Last night, she had dismissed me after dinner, leaving by herself to toil away at whatever she was doing in the workshop.

  I was thankful that she was letting me spend time with my sister, but a small part of me did worry about her terrible work habits from time to time, and it was tiresome having to clean everything up all at once, as opposed to being able to gradually do it over the course of the night if I was by her side.

  “Yeah, uh… please hurry up,” the witch shrugged helplessly, “I’m uh… gonna need the space open before lunch.”

  She scratched the back of her head, at least having the decency to be awkward.

  I just rolled my eyes, marching over to grab a mop and brush as I started the arduous task of cleaning the vast laboratory floor.

  Behind me, the witch just strolled to her desk, picking out several books before crashing down into her swivel chair, lazily flipping through their pages.

  “Ugh, fuck… never thought I’d be reading these pedagogy books after I turned that offer from that college again.”

  She mumbled something under her breath that I didn’t quite catch from the other side of the room.

  I continued brushing and mopping away, finishing the first half of the room without too much trouble, getting it all done fast enough for the floor to dry quickly, giving the witch space to start working.

  Eventually, I crossed over the centre of the room.

  I rubbed my eyes.

  They were getting itchy again.

  What was it with the centre of the room that liked to itch my eyes so much? Maybe there was just always more chalk floating around and getting into my eyes here or something.

  My eyes drifted down to the stone tiling beneath me, pointed directly beneath the floor.

  There was one of those runed rings, a ‘magic circle’, under there, right?

  There was probably a whole complex network or something right underneath my feet; the witch would do something that activated something underneath the floor and open up a ‘white hole’ as she called it in the centre of the room.

  That was the mechanism by which we jumped across the entire world, from winter to summer, I think.

  I-...

  …

  I blinked, finding myself on the other side of the room, having finished cleaning the centre already.

  What was I thinking about, again?

  It probably wasn’t important.

  I shrugged and went about clearing off the rest of the chalk.

  It was fairly uneventful, and before too long, and I found my hands free. I was once again on standby until I needed to do an errand for her.

  “Oi, girl, get over here.”

  I didn’t have to wait long, luckily, as the witch finished the setup for her ritual not long afterwards.

  There was a medium-sized magic circle on the floor, four very conspicuous smaller circles engraved into it at each cardinal direction.

  I think I even vaguely recognised some of the shapes and characters.

  I’m not sure why, but something about it started to seem… familiar?

  The witch was starting to rub off on me, maybe.

  The formation to the south was wild and expansive, struggling to be contained, reminiscent of fire.

  The one to the west was solid and rigorous, keeping itself in a strict natural order, reminiscent of earth.

  The one to north flowed elegantly, curving upon itself softly like a tide or whirlpool of water.

  And the final engraving on the east flew freely, stretching across its small corner of the world, like the breeze in spring.

  I blinked.

  Had my parents taught me about this?

  This was the Five Elements, wasn’t it?

  Well, no, not exactly, I suppose. There were more than a few differences, given that I was in a different world with different rules, physics, cultures and mythologies.

  There were only four of them here to start with, obviously, but the East was supposed to be ‘Wood’, not ‘Wind’, and the West was supposed to be ‘Metal’, not ‘Earth’ – that last one was meant to be housed in the centre.

  The witch finished off the final runes on the circle and reached for a box she had lazily thrown onto her desk, taking out what seemed to be four separate types of dust or something and sprinkling them onto each of the cardinal directions.

  I squirmed lightly.

  “Am I going to have to stand in there again?”

  It wasn’t another one of those scan things again, was it?

  Those always made me feel rather uncomfortable.

  “No, not this time,” the witch lazily closed the box and fumbled around on her desk, taking out another one and picking out a small needle from it.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  “I’ll just need to prick you and get two blood samples.”

  I blinked.

  Was that all?

  Well, that was much more like a witch according to my previous life, at least.

  “You won’t need saliva or hair or anything else as well?” I tilted my head.

  “Huh?” the witch just gave me a strange look as she furrowed her brow, “The fuck? No? Why would I need that?”

  She frowned, pushing herself closer to me as she wrapped two vials around her fingers in her other hand.

  She gently nudged my finger over the opening of the glass cylinders.

  After pausing for a moment, her head tilted up to look at me with wary, concerned eyes.

  “By the way, if you ever meet another witch, please don’t say that. It’s kind of offensive, we haven’t really been doing that for like two hundred years. There are some folks who will absolutely lose their shit if you insinuate they’re that backwards.”

  I bristled.

  Oops.

  I mean, it made sense, thinking about it. I would probably be really offended too if someone threw medieval stereotypes at my culture and history.

  The witch took advantage of me being distracted by my shame to quickly prick me with the needle, tipping small globules of blood into the vials.

  “Ow,” I flinched lightly after a small delay, the tiny amount of sharp pain taking a bit to break through my embarrassment.

  “S-sorry,” I grumbled.

  “Eh, it’s whatever,” she shrugged, “I don’t really care. I deal with a lot of shit already from other witches and wizards and whoever else, I can take a bit of ignorance from a kid.”

  “Huh?” I blinked.

  Her crass language and sloppy lifestyle aside, she seemed like a perfectly fine practitioner of magic.

  Granted, I didn’t have much to compare her to; only the fictitious – I think? Magic was real, but the stories seemed to still be mythological as opposed to historical – Eternal Voice, who was capable of all sorts of god-like feats.

  But still, she was capable of summoning fucking black holes in her basement at will without so much as blinking. There was no way that was simpler than what my previous life would lead me to believe, right?

  “Why is that?” I frowned, puzzled.

  Miss Symphonia just gestured vaguely to the chalk-covered floor, “This stuff.”

  I looked at the intricate writing around me, still not getting it.

  “I’m a ritual mage. Have to spend hours preparing catalysts, deriving formulas, formatting and sequencing functions, need a fucking mental encyclopedia of runic syntax, and depending on the spell I need to meet a whole of bunch obtuse, arbitrary conditions.”

  “Is…” I swallowed, “is it still not incredibly difficult and demanding of intelligence? It seems respectable either way.”

  “It is,” she nodded nonchalantly, “but it’s also incredibly slow and tedious, compared to normal mental and arcane-focus based magics. If a normal witch wanted to cast a spell, she’d just click her fingers and…”

  She snapped her fingers to emphasize her words, a bright flash of heat and light blinding me for a moment, sending me reeling.

  “Be done with the spell. You want me to cast a spell? I have to set up all this nonsense,” she gestured at the chalk scrawls.

  “Employers don’t like us either. We’re expensive, requiring a shit ton of materials to do anything, and we also have really long turnarounds. Even if they want to do a complicated job that a regular mage can’t handle, they’d rather just cut costs and find a mundane solution so they don’t have to burn gold bars on us.”

  The witch lightly tapped the bottom of one of the vials, a small puff of light bursting through it from the bottom, draining out a trail of smoky impurities from the blood.

  “Also, not my situation, but generally, most people become ritual mages because their mana capacity is kinda shit. Their own mana isn’t enough to do what they want, so they have to interface with magic circles and carry around dusty grimoires that are compromisable and fragile, and carve and pre-prepare all the spells they want to cast in there.”

  She swirled the blood around, the motion breathing air into the liquid as the last of whatever strange, mystical impurities she was burning away left the blood, leaving behind an uncomfortably bright red substance.

  “Yeah, that’ll do, good enough to jumpstart it. Should be sensitive enough after that,” she mumbled to herself.

  “Then, why do you use magic like this?” I called out to her as she spun away from me on her swivel chair, getting close to the circle without smudging it.

  The witch put her foot on the ground, stopping the momentum of her wheeled seat.

  She lazily looked over at her shoulder, glancing at me.

  “Kinda just have to. The energy I’m trying to interface with isn’t something that’s fit to take into the body of mortals. Anyone who’s ever tried to accept it and cast spells through it with their own personal supply and circuits of mana has gone mad or exploded. Like literally exploded. Non-sentient matter is the only interface that keeps the shit I deal with from collapsing on itself.”

  She looked back towards the circle, flicking her wrist casually, sending the blood inside one of the vials flying outwards, where it then landed perfectly in the central ring.

  “Oh, hey,” she remarked flatly as the circle lit up, “still got my aim. Neat, I guess.”

  The dust she sprinkled onto the circle started to react.

  Well, no, actually, looking closer, that wasn’t dust.

  On the two quadrants that were activating, the west and the south ones, it was actually dirt and ash respectively.

  Something strange started to happen.

  Well, I guess that was to be expected, considering it was magic and all.

  The ash suddenly burst into a giant blaze, almost reaching the ceiling, and life jumped up from the soil, giant green tangles of plant life twisting and coiling into the world.

  Eventually, it started to settle down. Most of the chalk she had prepared had either been blown away or burned by the fire, or it had simply been shoved aside by the thorny vines.

  “Is-...” I stuttered, “is that good?”

  The witch just frowned, furrowing her brow as she grabbed a book from behind her and flipped through it.

  One thing that I had learned was that apparently every ritual she prepared was also connected to a book, like books were somehow also computers to witches like her.

  “Well, good for you, I think. Bad for me though, I don’t think I learn shit from this.”

  She clicked her tongue.

  “Ugh, let’s see. Resonance, normal, wavelengths, normal. No unidentified signals, no weird, secret, hidden fifth element it reached out to. Stability… small bit of decay but the calculation works out, that’s the expected feedback from the supercharge I gave it. All just completely normal data, would’ve thought I took it off some random guy on the street if I didn’t know any better.”

  She sighed, rolling her eyes in annoyance as she tossed the book over her shoulder, sending it sliding across her desk.

  “Well, shit, there goes the theory that it was something in your mana that was reacting weirdly to the Azybantum jump.”

  It was only then that she finally decided to look at me, clapping boredly.

  “Congratulations, girl. If you ever want to learn magic, you have a bright future in the elements of Fire and Earth.”

  She paused, shrugging after a bit.

  “Eh, maybe. Your mana density wasn’t the best. Your capacity is probably just average.”

  “What does that mean exactly?” I fidgeted uncomfortably.

  The concept of learning magic probably would have been exciting to most people, but all it did for me was make me feel unnerved.

  It just felt strange to just accept its existence again after so much of my life, even my adult years, was spent struggling with the realisation that there wasn’t something ‘greater’ out there.

  “Will I be able to like… throw fireballs, or something?”

  The witch just scoffed, “I mean, that’s lame and basic, but if you want, yeah.”

  She then shrugged again, “Well, elements are more complicated than just ‘Fire’, ‘Water’, ‘Wind’ and ‘Earth’. Your mana resonance is just one part of the story. Your soul is the other.”

  “M-my soul?” I blinked warily.

  Now that was definitely a bit too spiritual and superstitious for my liking.

  “Eh, you know,” the witch waved offhandedly, “you don’t really seem like the angry or selfish kind. I doubt there’s anything in your soul that burns ferociously enough to the point where you willingly would want to harm another person. I doubt you could even manage the malice to burn a fly.”

  I flinched.

  I wasn’t really sure whether she was insulting me or complimenting me, to be honest.

  “Again, elements aren’t just as simple as conjuring their namesakes,” she continued to ramble on, ignoring my reaction, “Fire’s not just about burning stuff with flame. It’s a bunch of other stuff too. You can abstract it into ‘energy’, and combine it with Wind to make lightning. You can separate it out into ‘light’, too.”

  She winced a bit at the latter prospect.

  “A lot of the Templar freaks who wield ‘holy light’ or whatever are just raging assholes with an attunement to Fire. But also a lot of the kinder ones too. They take Fire and extract ‘light’, ‘warmth’ and ‘growth’ from it, using their ‘holy light’ as a way to heal others, rather than trying to smite others or whatever.”

  The witch sighed as she continued on.

  “Same goes for Earth. You can make bricks or whatever if you want, I guess. Will get you guaranteed labour. Could also get a job working and manipulating metal. But you could also use it to grow and command plant life,”

  She waved vaguely at the mass of vines and roots that cluttered the workshop.

  “I-I see…” I nodded hesitantly.

  I didn’t care all that much about the prospect of shooting fire or lightning at people, to be honest.

  But…

  Being able to heal my sister’s injuries, being able to make medicines and remedies from plants and growing food to nourish her…

  It wouldn’t be that bad, to be honest.

  A soft smile grew on my face as I imagined a scene where I hovered over a cut on my sister’s finger, before magically making it vanish as I swiped my palm across it.

  My eyes ended up trailing back upwards, meeting Miss Symphonia’s face.

  I paused.

  There was a strange, considering frown on her lips.

  “Is something wrong?” A worried frown grew on my own lips.

  She just looked at me strangely.

  “I didn’t think when I picked you up that you’d stick around long enough for me to have to consider teaching you magic.”

  To be honest, I didn’t think so either.

  I thought I would have been ripped apart and had my organs harvested to be offered for some strange voodoo ritual or something.

  “Hey, kid…” her voice tapered off, a flicker of concern, sorrow and longing entering her voice, “do you have a name?”

  My eyes widened.

  “I-...”

  My jaw fell open.

  Out of all the possible questions she could have asked, that was not one I expected from her.

  And out of all the possible questions I could have possibly been asked, that was the one I was least prepared to deal with.

  My name… that-...

  That was complicated.

  Miss Symphonia scratched her head and sighed, seeing the conflict and reluctance on my face.

  “I figure your sister doesn’t. The way she clings to you, her physical age, your attitude… I get the impression that she’s always been a nameless orphan, but the same definitely can’t be said for you.”

  She looked straight into my eyes, staring deep into my soul.

  “You don’t have those eyes. You don’t have the demeanour or mannerisms either. You’re smart as well, but not the kind of ‘street smart’ I’d expect from a gutter rat. You knew what ‘radioactivity’ was. Even a lot of witches nowadays don’t know that word. You had an education, maybe it was home-schooling from your parents or something, or you had a tutor. Either way, the point’s the same. You at one point knew your parents, and they definitely gave you a name.”

  She sighed, a wistful gloominess flickering across her eyes; the kind tinged with long forgotten memories, buried by time and weathered by tears.

  “I didn’t ask because I figured it wasn’t my place, and you would tell me if you’re comfortable, but… I can’t exactly call keep calling you ‘kid’ and ‘girl’ forever now, can I?”

  She was right.

  I couldn’t exactly just keep going around calling my sister ‘Sister’ and vice versa until we were adults.

  At one point, I needed to give her a name.

  And consequently, that would mean I had to give myself a name for her to call in return.

  But doing so meant that I had to finally confront everything that would entail.

  It meant staring into the face of what it meant to have died, and to be living two lives.

  I looked down, not willing to meet Miss Symphonia’s eyes anymore, instead choosing to bury myself in those complicated feelings and memories.

  “S-sorry, give me a moment, i-it’s… complicated.”

  My voice immediately died into nothing more than a whisper.

  Miss Symphonia just smiled comfortingly; a rare expression.

  “Take all the time you need.”

  Her voice was uncharacteristically gentle.

  Where… where did I start?

  “I-... I have a name, or, well… I had a name.”

  I could feel the confusion radiate from the woman in front of me, even without looking into her eyes, but she stayed silent, giving me the space to tell my story and vent my feelings.

  “My parents… they did love me. They cherished me with all their heart, and the name they gave me was proof of that. It was important to me too, at one point.”

  I started to tremble, biting my lip.

  “But that love… it’s not mine to take anymore. I can’t take it. I squandered my chance, and my parents… they’re gone now. Far away, somewhere where I can never reach them again. That love… I already wasted it once, it’s not something I deserve anymore.”

  I felt her eyes soften.

  Her voice dropped to a soft, melancholic whisper.

  “I can tell you for certain that if your parents saw you as you were now, they would tell you they don’t care, and they never will. A mother or father doesn’t care about anything like that. They just want to know that their child is fed well, sleeps in a warm blanket, and is happy.”

  “It’s-... it’s not that simple.”

  I shook my head.

  I knew that. Of course, I knew that. I had spent over two decades in their loving embrace. I could see the scene in my mind; if they saw me now, they wouldn’t care that I was now some strange blonde little girl, they’d hear my nonsense about being guilty about wasting the love they put into my name and slap me silly, then warm me up with the hot pot we never got to eat, but…

  It just wasn’t that simple.

  That could never happen again.

  I died.

  The person that name belonged to died.

  “That child… the one with the name my parents gave them, they’re gone too.”

  That pitiful, ungrateful son was gone. He could never return.

  He would never get to make amends with his parents. He would never get to brush up on his Mandarin and talk to them about their history again. He would never get to eat hot pot with his family like he did in his childhood.

  There was only me.

  “I can’t be that person again. They were from a different life. Their parents loved them, they were happy, they had wishes and dreams, and… none of that is mine anymore. I don’t have any of those things. I’m just a walking, shambling corpse, the dredged up remains of what that person left behind.”

  I felt my vision grow misty.

  “All that I’m left with is the pain. All that name tells me is that I can never have those things again. I cannot dream of the things that person did, I cannot receive the love that person did. That life is no longer mine to live… it’s lost. It’s not my name anymore… it can’t be. That child died, they’re somewhere else now, lost along with their parents… I’m someone else now.”

  I wondered what my funeral was like.

  Did I have an obituary? Did my parents cry? Who else attended?

  I hoped my parents wouldn’t be sad for too long. I would have wanted them to be happy.

  Either way, I could not know.

  It was too late to go back to who I once was.

  That little boy who never got to have a little sister was long gone.

  For his sake, I had to move on and take care of my sister.

  It was the only way to honour his memory and respect the dreams he could never fulfil.

  “I see…” Miss Symphonia trailed off sadly.

  It felt like the two of us remained still in silence for over a minute.

  “We’ll talk about this later.”

  Eventually, she broke the silence, kicking away and rolling back towards her desk.

  She clicked her fingers as she rolled by, flame momentarily flashing on the wild roots and vines before contracting inwards, making the whole organism just disappear from the world.

  “Just clean this up for now.”

  It was tense and awkward, a dreadful cloud of sullenness hanging over us.

  With nothing else to do, and desperate to take my mind off those terrifying thoughts, I followed along with her orders, brushing and scrubbing away the deeply ingrained chalk.

  Every once in a while, I looked over towards the older woman.

  She sat there listlessly, just staring at the book in front of her without turning a page.

  It wasn’t my business what she was feeling, so I turned away from her and continued to clean again.

  It took a while for me to finish. The magical soot, dust and ash that remained were more painful to clean than I anticipated.

  After maybe an hour though, I managed it.

  Expecting her to give me something else to do, I stood off to the side for a while and just waited for her voice to call out to me with some other tiresome errand, like she usually did.

  Nothing came.

  Instead, all she did after a while was sigh, reaching out for a somewhat familiar, heavily worn and weathered, thick tome, flipping through it with a melancholic sag weighing down her shoulders.

  I got a brief glance of the book’s cover.

  It read ‘Symphonia Sonata’.

  Was it some kind of personal memoir or diary?

  It wasn’t my place to poke around, so I just turned around and left her to her own business.

  There were still some things I could clean. I only got around to wiping the floor that she used last night.

  A few of the drills and saws seemed quite dirty.

  I lost myself in the routine of cleaning, letting the thoughts just drain away as the hours passed.

  “It’s lunchtime.”

  My trance was eventually broken when I heard the heavy book shut, followed by the call for a break.

  I turned around to find yellow eyes like my sister’s beckoning me to the door.

  I followed her wordlessly, the earlier awkwardness still not fading between the two of us.

  We went through the usual routine. I greeted my sister as she came running down the stairs, we talked about what she read while lunch was being made. We enjoyed the food in silence, and I bid farewell to her as we turned to walk back to the workshop.

  I stepped past the dining room, only to find that I was walking alone.

  That was strange. Usually, Miss Symphonia was several paces ahead of me, given that she was an adult and had longer legs than me.

  I turned around, only to see her watching as my sister disappeared around the corner, instead of myself.

  “Miss Symphonia?” I stepped closer to her, lightly tugging on the sleeve of her loose robe.

  She slowly turned to meet my gaze with an indescribable look.

  “I’ll need some space to run some tests on the other blood sample I took from you. Go play with your sister. You’ll probably have to make dinner by yourself too. I’ll call you to clean up before the night’s finished.”

  She marched past me, brooding silently as she walked away.

  I wasn’t going to complain about getting to spend more time with my sister, but…

  I wondered, why was there such a sad look on her face?

  I tried to be consistent with the context and thoughts Estelle is having when she chooses to mentally refer to Belle as either ‘Miss Symphonia’ or ‘the witch’, but I’m not sure I got it right or applied it consistently. If you did notice that, I guess I did my job right. If you didn’t, it's not important, so don't worry about it.

  Also, the fact that every part besides 1-4 has been exactly 3 chapters long was just a coincidence. This one will go to part 4.

  2-4 will probably only be 2 chapters long? Kinda? It's weird and hard to explain. I'll talk about it when we get there.