Turning invisible is a very funny sort of magic. Once you use it, it’s perfect. However, you ‘cannot’ use it while you’re presently being observed. I don’t know exactly why, it has something to do with the observer principle of the quantum entanglement and wave function collapse. The basic idea is that if the wave function has collapsed, the ‘yes or no’ is a confirmed ‘yes’ through observation. Therefore it cannot be altered again in that single present. You have to find an unobserved state where you aren’t a ‘yes’ in someone else’s existence, and then use magic to make yourself into the ‘no’.

Once you do that, the wave function is collapsed in the opposite direction, and the observer effect is sustaining your invisibility in the opposite direction and is easy to sustain.

There’s some other magic gobbledygoop there that I don’t really get, but that’s my understanding of it.

Since swappers are the only species known to be able to actually use magic, nobody else can actually do anything to counter it, at least… not that I know of, and if it had happened, then I’d have probably heard of it.

Anyway, I cast my spell as soon as I was out of sight of cameras or people, [T’cefrep y’tilibisvni Kayobi] and just like that, I was not so much as a ghost.

I went back inside the hospital and found the nearest elevator, then took it up to the ninth floor.

I did feel a little bad about the security guard, if there was one, that might have been watching the cameras and wondering if the ghost of a patient was wandering the halls and using the elevators.

Could I have taken the stairs? Maybe. OK, yes, but that would be harder, and before you say ‘teleport, then’ do you have any idea how hard it is to teleport that precisely? What if I ended up in a restroom stall with somebody in there? No thank you.

So I took the easy way. It was after all… easy.

She was awake, I knew that right away, but trying very hard not to be. Without magic, humans have to turn to drugs, narcotics, gasses, things of that nature that will force sleep on someone unable to get it comfortably, and many of those are dangerous or addictive, as such, sometimes the pain is safer to endure.

“Hi there.” I said after going into the room and dispelling my magic.

She rolled over on her side, there was a persistent tremor to her body. I wore a smile on my face as if it was first thing in the morning and she was just out cleaning a mat by beating it over the side of the balcony.

Suki Toriyama was a slightly built woman in her late thirties who looked like a woman in her early twenties and acted like a woman in her early forties who had the wisdom and good sense of someone in her eighties… except for right now.

Right now she was a woman in her late thirties who looked like one in her nineties who had the worrisome tendencies of someone in their teens and the bodily control of either a toddler who hadn’t quite grasped how to use their limbs yet.

“Hi… Kayobi… nice to… see you. I thought. Visiting hours. Were over.” She was wincing with every word, the poor thing. Humans are so damn… fragile.

“Meh, I’m visiting, so obviously not, right?” I asked and grabbed a chair, I gave it a quick yank, a spin, and rolled it over to her bedside and flopped myself down on it. “So, what ails you?” I asked.

“Stuff. Also things. Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.” She said with a weak smile on her face that tried to look better than it could.

She wanted privacy… I can understand that, so I let it go and asked, “How’s Jin holding up?”

“He’s. Good boy.” She said. It wasn’t the best structured sentence I’ve ever heard.

“So… you will be fine, right? You’re sure about that?” I leaned over a little bit and reached out to cover her hand.

“He’ll… fine… be fine. I. I will be.” She corrected herself.

“What about the store… is that staying open?” I asked. “Your store is absolutely vital to my NEET life… if it doesn’t stay open, that’s a problem for me, you know…” I gave her hand a squeeze, and after she huffed, she coughed several times and rolled onto her back.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

It seemed to me she was gathering her strength to speak, and so I waited.

“The store… Jin offered to run it. Drop out of school… no. He… deserves a future… better one than I could give him…” Suki blinked her eyes hard and squeezed them shut.

“Shame. It’s a nice store. I like it. But… It’s only a store… I’ll sell it so he can afford to live on his own, till he graduates… then he can go to college…” Suki looked from the ceiling to the glass window, but not at me.

If I wasn’t sure she was going to be fine before, I was now sure that she was pretty well doomed.

‘I don’t want her to be doomed.’ I thought.

“If the store stayed open, and he could go to school still, could he go to college then?” I asked.

“Yes… but… I can’t… hire anyone. Profit is… just enough.” She said, then darted her eyes to me as I pulled my hand away from hers and put it to my chest.

“I’ll do it.” I said. “Your store is absolutely vital to my NEET lifestyle, if your store isn’t there, it’ll mean that… chores,” I shivered, “will get harder to do, take longer, I might even have to shop in more than one place.” I gave my head a vigorous shake, casting my hair around behind my head like a fiery tornado.

“Absolutely unacceptable. More shopping? More time on chores? Nope. No way, lady. I’ll handle the store, and I’ll keep it open.”

“But… I can’t pay you.” She said and looked at me, dumbfounded.

“Did I ask for money? I swear, did this affect your hearing?” I waved my hand at the machine she was hooked up to. Thankfully the tube in her mouth wasn’t so big she couldn’t talk, I didn’t even want to think what was in that thing, whether it was stuff going in or out or… what. Plus her voice was now weird… didn’t like that either, not one bit.

She still didn’t answer, but she was at least looking at me.

“Listen, let me do it for a week, Jin can bring you the books, if you’re not happy or if I bow out, you can sell it just as well a week from now as you can today. Then after you’re better, you come back, and maybe… do my laundry for me and cook some meals for a few months and we call it even. Oh and if you could clean my place a few times for me too… that’d be great.”

She smiled around the tube in her mouth, a little of who she was slipped back into place, and Suki nodded. “Alright… my purse… there.” She tilted her head toward the bed. “Key… third pocket. Right side. Open it tomorrow. But… problem… there’s-”

“Can do.” I said. I had to cut her off before she could change her mind, so I snatched up the oversized black purse and began rifling through it, rustling the myriad of nonsense that human women carried around all the time until I found the pocket and the set of keys.

I pulled out the one I’d need, held it up, and when she winked, I dropped her purse unceremoniously back where it was and said, “Relax, it’s in good hands. I won’t let anyone threaten my nearly choreless existence.” I said and gave her an encouraging smile, “And then when you get back, I can’t wait to have your cooking.”

I licked my lips at the very thought, Suki Toriyama was an amazing cook, so… I had a delightful time ahead of me. She was about to say more, but I held my hand over her and said, “Why don’t you just get some sleep now, and then I’m sure you’ll feel better.” I then cast a quick spell, [G’nol peels eno h’tnom Suki Toriyama] That would keep her out for a good long while. It was probably for the best that she was smiling when she fell asleep, generally speaking, when it came to magic, the mood of the receiver impacted their experience with it. Basically this way, she’d probably have good dreams.

The white flash of light however, had clearly drawn somebody’s attention, I could hear voices in the hallway.

“I heard voices… but nobody should be visiting at this hour… then there’s that flash of light… we should at least check. Poor woman doesn’t have long, we can’t let anything stress her out.”

They were getting closer.

The problem with invisibility is, it takes a few seconds to completely vanish, I mean, not long, maybe thirty seconds or so, but they were closer and this was going to get awkward fast.

So I thought on my feet, I shifted my body into the form of an angel out of their mythology, white wings, white robe, gold hair and I even improvised a halo.

Then I cast my invisibility spell.

By the time a doctor and nurse rounded the corner of the hall and looked into the room, I’d gone from solid to translucent, and all they saw was a mythical being holding a hand over a dying woman, reflected in the glass window, while the actual me stood behind a screen and finished disappearing.

Thankfully the wave function collapse went my way and I was back to being invisible.

They rushed over to the screen and slid it open to find… nobody there. “Did you see…?” An old man in a white coat and glasses asked and looked at the young nurse at his side.

“I did… but it couldn’t be… could it?” She asked the doctor, and looked down at the sleeping patient while I walked past them and out of the room, left the hall and the building, and when I was outside again, I teleported outside of my apartment, turned back into my usual disguise, and headed for bed.

Avoiding chores was going to take a lot of work on my part, so I’d need a good night’s sleep.