“To be honest, I don’t believe any of what the university told me,” Aunt Yohanna said, facing away from him as she laboured before a pot bubbling on the stove.

  He sat at the kitchen table, his eyes moving from the salt and pepper hair raining down the older woman’s back to the backyard seen through the open door. There were kids out there, playing in the grass and picking flowers. Magically gifted orphans like them were common in the world, as mages weren’t long-lived; their life expectancy was forty-nine years compared to eighty-eight years for a non-mage. Religious ritualists and ritual-bound entities also had grim numbers. Magical people of every sort tended to get themselves caught up in conflicts more often, dying in battles while young, leaving behind what played and danced and laughed beyond the back door. There were times when he wondered whether his parents, whoever they were, might also have suffered such a fate.

  “The wealthy of this city love to paint a pretty picture of themselves,” she continued, “preaching conservative values like they're giving a sermon to a godless crowd. But when we connect the dots, the lines always lead back to them—Saints during the day and sodomites at night. The Orions in particular are a foul brood, especially that serpent; the head of the business party, whatever his no-good name is.”

  Okimoto sighed. “I need to call my sponsors. They should be able to put me through to a memory investigator. Once that happens, I won’t just have my words to tell my story with.”

  The kids' faces were always new each time he came here. Many non-mage families, particularly in the middle class, jumped at the chance to adopt them, hoping they’d rake in the cash. Despite danger, being a mage meant automatically entering the upper class; a mage’s career was lucrative.

  How many children had he known here? Little Bethili, Molly with the scar on her forehead she always tried to cover with bangs, Nanahana with the red hair, Heliggan, Zetahanna, and there was also this one who shared the same name as him and the eldest Helldragon boy (apparently, Okimoto was a common name). The other Okimoto’s eyes were two different colours, one blue, the other amber, and a witch had slaughtered his parents. Of course, these were only a few names. He must have known over a hundred by now, most having slipped his mind, gone away like they were from here, gone and forgotten like he’d be if he didn’t deal with the Orions.

  He couldn’t help but ask himself that question, after all, he had just narrowly escaped death. After waking up and explaining himself, Yohanna told him that the black smoke produced by the shadow crawler could kill a person. Fortunately, he had only breathed in enough to knock him out for an hour.

  He was exhausted after waking up, having expended way too much ether while escaping the train station. He had broken an unspoken rule: only use door portals to get around within a building, never use them to travel great distances. The distance from the train station to here was less than a five-minute walk, yet the ether expenditure was disastrous. He wouldn’t recover until the day’s end, a problem he wouldn’t be dealing with had the sprite been with him.

  “You can call them later.” She said, then hushed an objection from him and continued, “Knowing you, you likely haven’t eaten. You might feel as if the world is crashing down on you, but that’s no excuse not to treat yourself with care. You can’t control what others do, whether it’s to stop them from plotting against you or to make them come around to your side. Understand that you should never lose that handsome smile of yours in the face of life’s challenges. The world will always try to take the joy out of our lives, so it’s up to us to protect it. Never deny a moment of relief amidst the chaos. Besides, they won’t try to mess with you here, not with an old vindictive woman like me here who’d jump at the chance to rip them a new one.”

  Okimoto’s eyes softened at her, her words having helped calm the storm brewing in his chest. “How’s it been here? For you?”

  “Same old same old. Some obvious scum mages came to visit the other day, eyeing the children like prizes to be won. They dressed themselves up in fancy clothes, but from how they spoke, moved, and the stink of them, it was clear what they actually were. Shenelly was petrified, hiding behind my shoulder when I told them to remove themselves from my doorstep or else.”

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  “They came all the way out here? I thought they just plucked the ones they could find off the streets when they needed recruits? Why’d they bother with the facade?”

  “Gods know, darling. I guess they don’t fear authority anymore. Ever since the new government got voted in, the lines between scum mages and actual mages have blurred far too much my liking.”

  “Where’s Shenelly now?”

  “She’s gone to school, and probably won’t be back until I’m already asleep.”

  “I never took her for the kind of girl to stay out at night.”

  “Trust me, she’s been full of surprises lately. After being out late for dozens of nights, she came home yesterday and stood jittering by the front door for minutes until I asked what was wrong, and you’ll never guess what happened next.”

  “What happened?”

  Aunt Yohanna laughed to herself and then said. “That girl's a flipping queer. She had a girlfriend, some Viriticilian girl waiting on the street, too scared to come inside.”

  Okimoto stretched in his chair and yawned. “Crikey.”

  “You never would’ve expected that of her, would you? To tell me of such a thing when others would keep the relationship strictly in the realm of nightlife. My first thought was thank the gods mother isn’t around anymore, that rotten old cow would’ve kicked the poor thing out on the spot.”

  “Don’t call your mother a rotten old cow. Bless her soul. She might come back and haunt you, knowing how needlessly uptight she was.”

  Continuing to laugh, she revealed. “Shenelly‘s new lover attends Toaddor University too y’know. Her name is Lanalisa. The two of you might have run into each other.”

  Okimoto placed a finger to his lip. “Lanalisa?”

  He had never heard of such a girl, probably a first-year.

  “How old is she?”

  “She looked about the same age as Shenelly. Seventeen or eighteen, I’d say.”

  . People like himself who got accepted into Toaddor below the age of eighteen were rare. He had been the only one for quite some time, from what he’d heard.

  He said, “I’d like to have a word with her.”

  “Why? Do you disagree with Shenelly’s newfound sapphic persuasion? Do you intend to chase her nightly lover away?”

  “Auntie I'm far too metropolitan to have such attitudes. I just want to ask her to collect my belongings and bring them here. I’m not too keen on going back there. At least not before my name is cleared. Whenever you see her, tell her I’ll pay her one hundred shingles to get me my things back.”

  “Now listen here, they have no right to hassle you if you go back. Those are your belongings and you-“

  The phone rang from the living room.

  “Keep an eye on the food for me.”

  Okimoto nodded.

  She left, and he got up, moving to hover over the pot.

  Chicken soup? Nice. Aunt Yohanna’s chicken soup was just what he needed.

  She called out to him. “It’s your friend, kariggan!”

  Okimoto entered the living room, careful to avoid brushing the hips of the Neafuma statue she’d always go crazy over when touched.

  “I knew it,” she said. “I didn’t believe a word of it either. He’s coming now.”

  He took the phone from her, and she winked at him.

  “I always knew that Kariggan boy was different; a rotten tree is bound to have at least one good fruit.”

  She pranced back off towards the kitchen, her big bum knocking the statue unstable.

  She panicked before holding it still.

  “Hey, Okimoto,” Kariggan yelled. “I can’t talk for long. The security’s been following me around, thwarting my efforts to contact you. Luckily, I was able to visit Joyggan in the medical unit and use the nurse’s phone. Joygann, Dolly, Iomy, and I are on your side. Yesterday, my mom held us back from seeing what happened between you and Odiggan. The security didn’t even let us inside your room. Obviously, we still have our own studies to worry about, but we’ll do everything we can to help you on the side.”

  “Thank you,” Okimoto said.

  In the background, Zenith was heard cursing.

  “If I want to call him, then I can; you don’t have any legal authority to stop me.”Kariggan said, then hung up.

  “Auntie, I’m going to phone my sponsors now,” Okimoto yelled.

  “Do eat first, darling.”

  “I’ll eat afterwards, it’ll be quick.”

  After spinning the dial and ringing them several times, someone finally picked up. “Good morning, you’re speaking with the State Treasury for Magically Gifted Youth.”

  “Good morning, this is Okimoto D. Cheffei.”

  “Ah, yes. We’ve already sent you a letter for an appointment. It should arrive on the two hundred and eleventh, which is tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to request an appointment for later today. It’s of utmost importance, as I suspect I’ve been a victim of magical fraud.”

  “Please state the reason for this?”

  The conversation dragged on until the food had finished cooking, ending with him finally securing a meeting with a memory investigator the next day at thirty past the tenth hour. It wasn’t optimal, but still better than nothing.

  Returning to the kitchen, he found that the children had taken up all the seats, displaying shambolic table manners as they gorged themselves like little piglets.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve set aside an extra-large portion for you.” Aunt Yohanna said, smiling warmly, as she put the half-empty pot in a brand new refrigerator.