Chapter Forty-Three

“...So then the rabbit said, ‘I’m glad that all worked out so nicely’, and they lived happily ever after.” I finished, but added in my head… “Save of course, for I, Kayobi Taida, who had just told the worst, most hackneyed, yankee, cornball fairy tale in the history of fairy tales, and never did live it down.” I then held out a hand over each of them and said [gnol peels] and their eyes shut as slow as the setting sun.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and flicked my long hair back with one hand with my mouth stretching out into a grin, “Alright ‘Dr. Stone’ time to get to work.” I told myself, and withdrawing the thingy from my magic storage, I put it over Shugo’s forehead. It adjusted itself easily enough. I didn’t have to worry about them waking up, I’d used the long sleep spell as a means of assassination in the past, so I knew how it worked.

How do you use sleep to assassinate someone? Well, you’re not waking somebody out of a spell induced sleep. So I would just add in a countdown. Of course most of the time I did have to do a paint job. But, every now and then somebody else had to go who wasn’t as important, but would be a problem if left alone. So they’d just be induced to sleep for a duration of the known life limits of their species. If they ever woke up, they’d be irrelevant and old and near death anyway, most though? They just slept to death.

I hadn’t specified a time here, but a long sleep without a countdown to it would last for at least three days. I’d recast the spell on the third day if I needed to.

“Celia, bring me a snack, would you, and my device so I can watch something while I work?” I called out through the closed door. She’d been out on a snack run when Asahi had been here, but I heard the click of the door when she came in, and a moment later I heard her confirmation.

“Will do!” She shouted, and I began to feed mana into the thingy.

Mana is a funny thing, some spells have a blue glow, some red, some black, some yellow or green… and it can have many funny patterns to it too, circles, ouroboros, spirals, and designs that are so myriad and complex that if there’s a word to describe them, I don’t know it. And that is saying something.

Not to belabor my prodigy status too much, but because I am who I am, I had ample mana to spare, but even so? This was taking a toll, and it was doing so in short order.

Sweat began to bead on my brow within the first hour. “Wow, so you really haven’t ever used one of these things, have you?” Celia asked rhetorically while my hand wavered over the thingy.

“Ugh, didn’t I make that clear before?” I said, I admit, I was a bit waspish, and regretted it immediately. “I’m sorry I snapped, it’s just…”

“It does that.” Celia explained. “It’s strange to think I have more experience than you at something, though. Maybe you should call me senpai!” She actually smiled about that, and I let out a gruff…

“Harumpf.”

Well, she wasn’t wrong, I was not ready for this.

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But my mood perked up as I watched the little number go from zero, to one. “Only one hundred and ninety-nine percent more to go!” I forced myself to smile even though, if I’m being honest, it felt more like mana was being pulled out of me. It’s hard to describe something like this to someone who hasn’t experienced it. The closest equivalent is like… a really painful time on the toilet that you know is going to be painful until it finally ends.

Not a pleasant analogy, I know, but imagine that, but over your whole body, that’s what it was for me to have this mana drawn out like it just had to leave.

Celia however was a big help. “Genre?” She asked.

“Isekai.” I answered.

“Specific details or subgenre?” Celia refined her search, tapping away on my mobile.

“I think something medical would be good.” I answered.

“How about this one about a medical student who dies and opens a pharmacy in a parallel world?” She suggested.

“Good choice.” I answered, and when she handed me the device, she was even kind enough to push ‘play’ for me. I then settled in to binge watch the series while Celia, much to my surprise, began to feed me snacks.

“Open.” She said, and when my mouth opened at her request, she put a piece of jerked meat on my tongue. “You may have a lot of mana, but even for you it isn’t unlimited. You need to keep your calories up to keep your supply replenishing, and the faster this is over with, the better.”

Celia had a very practical attitude about this kind of thing, and though I found it odd that she was feeding me by hand, it was not an unpleasant thing, and despite the sour mood this thing was putting me in, I was grateful.

Still though? I hated feeling sour. I like feeling happy, or more importantly, I like feeling content. Like things are where they’re supposed to be, and the simpler that is, the easier it is to make it so. For me, ‘content’ was no chores and lying on the couch with a friend or two watching my favorite shows and eating my favorite snacks.

This did not make me content, and I did not like it.

Except for the feeding me part. That was actually…

Sweet.

I crunched down on a melon chip and watched the two become a three.

Shugo was sleeping so peacefully, he was oblivious to what was happening. Of course he didn’t have to be asleep for this to work, but when his brain was fixed, I didn’t want him wondering why he was here or what I was doing or, if I lost my swap, why an alien was in front of him.

“More please. Just kind of stuff my mouth, if that’s okay?” I asked Celia, who got up from where she sat with her bag of chips.

“Can do!” She said and after tilting my head back, she stood up on a chair so that she was over me, and dumped the bag of chips over my wide open maw, the noise of avalanching chips and crinkling plastic was enough to drown out the episode dialogue, so I rewound by ten seconds to hear it again after my cheeks were bulging.

“Phank you.” I answered with my muffled voice as I crunched and chewed as much as I could at a time.

“I’ll… get another bag. You just… stand there.” She chuckled, and left me alone to go pick something out.