Chapter Twenty-Five

“How did I get stuck?!” Celia shouted as panic set in an hour later after she was still not unstuck. She slumped, defeated, clutching her head in her hands, “Gwaaaahhh! How could this happen to me?! How?!” She hunched forward so that her forehead was almost to her knees, hiding her face.

The shame she felt right now, I definitely did not envy it. But I wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it, that was really the best I could do, especially since she felt all the worse ‘because’ she was in a human form, and a human child no less, and those are hyperemotional times two. Or ten, depending on the person.

“Listen, I do still have to go open up Toriyama’s, but it’ll be a short day for me so I won’t be gone long. Just don’t think about it for now, eat some snacks, watch some television, I’ll be back before you know it.” I promised, and she could only nod mutely after that.

The truth was that I didn’t have to go down there for at least another half hour. But, I figured she wanted some privacy, even if she didn’t know quite how to ask for it.

So I left early, did my usual round with the mop, checked the inventory, got the register turned on, and made the bento boxes for the day. There wasn’t really much business first thing in the mornings anyway, so after borrowing a magazine from the rack, I sat down and started to read. I had a cocky grin on my face the whole morning, you know the look.

That ‘I know something you don’t know’ look like when you know a secret. I had to thank my lucky stars that Jin didn’t show up. There was no school that morning of course, so it was possible he might appear and say, ‘I’ll do the work, you go home’ or something like that. I did see other boys and girls heading out, but Jin didn’t show.

I could only assume he was either sleeping in, or he was heading straight for the hospital to see Suki. It would have been fun to be a fly on the wall during that moment.

I looked up from my magazine and tapped my cheek while I did the math in my head. If I was right, she’d have achieved a one hundred percent recovery in a day. The thing about those potion doodads is that they have a diminishing return over time. Fifty percent recovery almost immediately, followed by half of the remainder, followed by half of that remainder… and it would take longer with each iteration of recovery. Eventually the body would just ‘fix itself’ but it would take most of last night to work before her body inched her over the finish line on its own.

“I suppose… either way, whether they come back early or not, I’ll have a short day…” I enjoyed that thought, but that turned my thoughts back toward the human child shaped swapper in my apartment. How to get her back to normal was a very different question.

‘The hard part here is finding her trigger… it would be so much easier if I knew her better.’ I thought, but that was just part of the problem. There was no ‘one way’ to get a swapper out of something they’re ‘stuck’ in.

I had to find the ‘trigger’ that would let her come unstuck, and triggers could be any damn fool thing. ‘There was Yanyin, their trigger was the first sensation they had before an assignment. My trigger, that one time, it was just feeling ‘warmth’.’ She shook her head.

‘The damn trouble is, nobody talks about this stuff, nobody even really wants to study it… gods of humanity, give us some sense…’ She rolled her eyes, and then gave that a second thought.

“You know, Kayobi, you might be spending too much time off as a human, you’re starting to lose all sense of dignity and shame and…” I was talking to myself, and closed my mouth when a few people walked in.

I turned to see who it was, only to find it was Asahi with his cousins in tow. He had his head down when he approached the register. His hand was shaking, but he extended a few bills to me that flapped a little when he did so. “Three bento boxes, if that’s okay, Miss Kayobi?” He asked, his cousins had vague looks on their faces. Distant, kind of.

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Honestly it is hard to describe that expression on humans, that almost vacant look that is ‘seeing’ the world, but not really understanding very much of it. They looked at me with suspicion, hanging back behind Asahi as if they weren’t sure what to do.

‘They’re probably used to him having them steal, and don’t know what to do now that they’re not doing that.’ I thought, and did my best to keep my face from becoming grim. I forced a cheerful smile, took the bills and slipped them into the register. “There are a few leftover ones that haven’t sold today, I’m going to have to throw them out in a few hours and…” I looked toward the door.

“It looks like I won’t have many customers today. Why don’t you take the ones from yesterday.” I suggested.

“N-No, I’ll take the good ones.” Asahi protested.

“I mean ‘also’. No charge. I need to throw them away soon and wasting food is just… criminal, you know?” I asked, “Call it a bonus for being the first and only customers so far today.” I winked at him, and his jaw dropped.

“Wait… really?” He asked.

“Sure.” I said and tilted my head toward the rack. “Might as well, besides… you know how I hate doing extra work.” I made a visible shudder and added an audible accompanying noise of disgust at the very idea of doing more work than absolutely necessary, and his disbelieving face became a very slight smile.

“Uh, can I have a bag to carry those?” He asked, and I slid a plastic bag over to him.

I watched as he and his cousins hastened over to the rack. I hadn’t thought about it before but… ‘Could one of those healing doodads work on those two?’ I honestly had no idea. They weren’t ‘sick’ for one thing, it was an injury, and to their brains no less, you never knew what could go wrong with that.

Brains are funny about magic, something about intelligence and reason seems to make magic go all… funky. Maybe it works, maybe it makes things worse.

I chewed on my lip while I thought about it and watched the trio leave before swiping my debit card and covering the old bento box costs.

They were the only customers I had until it was nearly time to close when Jin rushed in with his mother in tow. “She’s fine! She’s all right! She’s home! My mom is home!” He shouted for the entire store population… me… to hear, like I couldn’t see her with my own two eyes.

I took off my apron, went out from behind the register, and approached the pair. I tossed it lightly over to Jin, and it landed draped over his head. “Great. Then I quit.” I said, grinned, and let Suki come in for a hug.

“No, you can’t quit, you’re fired.” She said and laughed while Jin stood there confused for a moment. “Thank you for taking care of the place for me while I was gone, I really thought that was it, but the angel cured me.”

“Oh, come on mom… an angel?” Jin said, he’d probably heard enough about that while at the hospital, but he was hardly a superstitious boy.

“Did this ‘angel’ say anything about maybe… making sure you cooked an extra serving or two for me now and then?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. She was definitely at her best, her grip was strong, her hands and arms were warm and when she hugged me I could feel her heartbeat in a strong, steady rhythm.

“Actually yes, but first I have a store to run, now that I’ve fired you, turn in your key.” Suki winked at me, and I took the key out to hand over to her.

When I put it into her hand, I was just about to pull back when her other hand covered mine and her fingers came up to touch my palm rather than close over the key. I stopped, she lifted her eyes to look at me. “Thank you.” She hesitated, then finished, “Thank you for everything.”

“Sure, don’t worry about it, you know, a NEET’s gotta eat and I can’t very well eat if my primary source of snacks is just closed up and gone away now, can I? Plus then I’d have to do my own laundry and god knows what else, and I can’t have that so… I was very happy to help, almost as happy as I am to quit, you know.” I blushed a little, and she took the key, breaking that brief contact.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get going and see a girl about a body problem.” I blinked, waved my hands back and forth as fast as I could and proclaimed, “No, it’s not like that! Ah, everything is fine, just… let me leave you to your store, see you later!” I exclaimed, and rushed out of the store as fast as I could move, teleporting back as soon as I was out of sight just so I would get away faster.

“You talk too much, Kayobi.” I rebuked myself and exhaled heavily before opening my door to get started on my next shenanigan.