"I thought you were joking. You dressed up in all medieval for real?!"

My little sister sounds surprised.

I planned to jump in her neck, but things happened too fast.

"Show me the new phone." She demands too, and I don't know what magic Alex used to blind her to the obvious details, but she doesn't freak out.

No. She said my world has no mana.

Then what is her trick?

She's a stunning hot woman who met my sister before and disappeared on her.

Well, okay. I was the one doing that, but she had no idea.

But it's almost like she's invisible to Emi.

She makes no snarky comments on her either, and most of all, she doesn't seem to worry about me.

Ah, sure. It was only three days for her.

"So where was this event? And when? Why didn't you call me?"

"Ugh, it was tod... yesterday night."

My tone is shaky, it could be a question too, and I glance at Alex for help.

"I didn't want to, but I broke my phone, and you could win one with this."

The Goddess nods in the background, slipping away.

It's a strange situation, I wanted to meet my sister but I don't want her to leave.

We'll have our classes together later but where?

"Alex convinced me to go in the end, and I slept in her apartment, forgetting to pack a change of clothes." There, my thousand IQ explanation that involves the Goddess too, so she can't go.

"Oh, her." The way Emi steals a glance freezes my blood.

Yeah. She remembers her.

Then involving Alex in our conversation might have been a bad idea. Whoops. Too late now.

"Yeah, we're in the same group, and she's so cool." I try to gush about her, blushing when I realize she looks at me. "She dragged me out of my comfort zone, and I'm thankful."

That's an understatement, but it doesn't sit well with my sister.

"Yeah, that's strange. It's been only three days but you disappeared, and not even your roommate knew where you went. So you were sleeping with her?" Phrasing, Emi!

I wish I did, but it's way more complicated than that.

What do I say though?

I don't want her to think I'm a lunatic, and we didn't discuss with it Alex, if it's okay to tell her about the other world.

Time is ticking.

I only manage to steal a short hug from her, change clothes, and shoo her away before she's late for school. We go to classes with the Goddess too, and returning to the 'real' world feels surreal.

This is normal. I have a phone and can drink from a tap or a vending machine, rather than a river.

I'm going to school and having panic attacks because of the huge crowd.

I thought the village was getting busy but that's nothing. Five hundred Orcs live in the camp now.

This uni has ten thousand students. And it's way larger too.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

A single building stretches farther than the cozy little clearing in those woods.

I'll need a week to readjust, but I'll be only here for a day. I'm not going to get used to this.

And why bother? What am I ever going to do with programming?

It's not like I plan to live here anymore. I'd come home to visit my family but won't work in IT.

This reminds me of the question I had already a month ago too. It's time I ask this during one of the more boring classes. I bump my shoulder into Alex and whisper into her ears.

"Why did you start programming?"

She doesn't answer right away, there is a long silence between us.

It's like she's asleep, or doesn't want to talk about it.

I'm too shy to force the issue, but she responds minutes later.

"Magic is crazy. It's so complex that it remains out of reach even with the right affinity for most people. They go to an academy, or follow a lone master, and spend half their life learning."

I can't comment on that. The System gave me magic in sticky situations, but the casting came from Alexandra's power. I couldn't even comprehend how spells work in that place.

"Many won't be able to cast spells even after that. The lucky ones might become a priest, shaman, or druid if they find harmony and peace with nature."

"What does it have to do with programming?" I furrow my eyebrows. It's strange to be in my old body again, it acts as I'd expect from it, but that doesn't mean anything good.

"Well, this is the closest thing I found in your world to magic." She says it with a straight face.

"You are joking." I shake my head.

I don't have anything against programmers, I aimed to be one as well.

But they aren't magicians. These are the most repetitive, mundane tasks a human can perform.

Sure, if they do it long enough and find all the mistakes, it can create something cool, but it's still far from magic.

"It's the same thing. You work with a binary machine, and it does your bidding if you get everything right." She sticks to the comparison. "I work with mana, but bound by similar restraints."

"So you're telling me, you write code with your spells and run it on the mana?"

Without debugging, and live, every time she needs to use magic?

She nods. Well, that is crazy.

"Can I also learn it if I become the best in the programming class?"

"Haha. Well, you have the potential." She laughs a little louder, and the professor glances at us. If it were me, he would have expelled me from the class, but his face softens when he sees Alex.

Not fair. But now I have a goal to return to this place too. I want to learn the magic of programming, as cringeworthy as it sounds.

Will it let me stand on an equal footing with the Goddess of Luck? Will that impress her? I don't know yet, but I need every chance.