Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Morning light poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows, flooding the open-plan penthouse living-room with warm, shifting coins of gold. The air smelled of a virtuous breakfast—unsweetened oatmeal and blueberries the girl had kept alive with her newly-acquired, fruit-saving spell Everfresh Touch—and, faintly, of something burning.
“Waaah... s-sorry! Senior Yun Xi!”
Milu’s choked wail drifted from the kitchen, accompanied by the clatter of frantic cutlery.
Yun Xi lay sprawled in the oversized reading chair, cherry-white hair sticking out like dandelion fluff, clothed in baggy loungewear the colour of resignation. Clear blue eyes stared at nothing; bruise-coloured shadows underneath testified to yesterday’s battle fatigue—and to the decibel level of the soft, sticky creature she’d brought home on a bubble-tea whim.
The apprentice witch she’d rescued was basically a walking, weeping, magically-accident-prone marshmallow.
“What now?” Yun Xi croaked, too tired to move; she only tilted her head far enough to peer over the sofa-back toward the kitchen.
There, Milu flapped a brand-new dish-cloth at a floating, crackling... campfire? On closer inspection it was several slices of charcoal-black toast, still stubbornly aflame. Her indigo apprentice sleeves were streaked with soot, her pointed hat askew, silver hair frizzed into a dandelion of its own. Soot-stripes crossed her cheeks; tears the size of green grapes rolled down to her chin. She clutched her oak staff like a life raft.
“Milu... Milu only wanted to make breakfast...” she sniffled. “The Apprentice Witch Life Guide says you can heat food with Guiding Glimmer’s stable core. Milu used just a tiny bit of stardust radiation...”
She pointed at the hovering inferno; toast crumbs popped like fireworks.
“But it went poof and burned! Uwaaah... Milu is useless! Can’t even toast bread! Always causing trouble!”
Yun Xi watched the carbonised relics drift downward and felt her temples throb. Using Guiding Glimmer as a toaster-oven? The handbook Ancestor had crammed into her skull had definitely skipped that chapter.
“Star Indigo, extinguish.” She massaged her forehead; if she left it to Milu they’d be renovating by lunch.
“Affirmative!” The indigo orb zipped overhead, flashed once, and the fire vanished—leaving only black crumbs and the sharper stench of burnt bread.
“Mrrrow. Energy imbalance, heat-ray misfire, basic control grade: F.” Moon Crimson, perched on the chair-back, delivered the verdict with feline precision.
Milu shrank further, a soggy, sniffling ball.
Yun Xi hauled herself up, trudged into the war-zone kitchen: flour avalanching off counters, milk pooling around her bare feet, blueberries rolling like tiny cannonballs. Raising an apprentice witch, she decided, was more exhausting than last night’s filth-aggregate boss fight.
“Enough tears. Wash your face. Breakfast is officially mine.” She prized the sooty rag from Milu’s fingers, opened the fridge, and began cracking eggs with the mechanical efficiency of a former wage-slave mourning her lost slow morning.
“B-but Milu wants to help...”
“Your help, for now, is standing at a safe distance and providing moral support.”
Milu’s lips puckered, but she shuffled to the doorway, hugging her staff and staring wide-eyed while Yun Xi whisked, flipped, and plated. The admiration in those green irises suggested that frying an egg was a higher form of sorcery than laser-blasting monsters.
They ate in relative quiet—relative because Milu treated every bite like a sacred rite, tiny hums of bliss punctuating the silence. Yun Xi’s brain, meanwhile, opened a spreadsheet nobody could see.
Reasons to keep her:
1. She’d be kidnapped or eaten within three days out there.
2. Those eyes.
3. Ancestor’s penthouse had spare rooms.
Counter-argument:
Can I afford her?
She opened her banking app beneath the table. Numbers glowed cold and merciless.
Food: Milu had demolished three eggs, two slices of toast, a pint of milk and half the blueberries. Growing (?) witch metabolism? +¥2,000/month minimum.
Magical-accident depreciation: new toaster-in-spirit already murdered, floor scorched. Repair reserve ¥5,000.
Consumables: staff crystal recharges, stardust powder, custom robe laundry... ¥1,000.
Emergency buffer: neighbour compensation, medical, Dreamloop fines... ¥1,000.
Total: ¥9,000+ a month—before her own bubble-tea budget.
The interest that once paid for blissful indolence was about to be devoured by a single marshmallow. The old salary-man panic clawed its way up her throat.
Open-source income? Day-trade? Risky. Part-time job? Witch on a broom delivering noodles? Headline: “Mystic Girl Moonlights for Meituan—Photos Inside!”
Cut expenses? She looked at Milu licking the last milk moustache from her lips and deleted “reduce food” from the mental list. Bubble tea... maybe five cups a week instead of seven. The sacrifice stung.
“Senior Yun Xi?” Milu whispered. “Was... was Milu too expensive?”
“Nothing.” Yun Xi locked the screen. “Checking the weather. Lovely day.” She cleared her throat. “Plans? You lost the stardust and the imp—what happens when you report failure?”
Milu’s face crumpled. “Milu dares not go back... Mentor will be furious. Might revoke apprentice status... Milu has nowhere...” Tears gathered like incoming tide.
Yun Xi felt the ¥9,000 counter in her skull flip to zero, overridden by a giant “KEEP HER.”
“Fine. Failure’s better than death. You can stay—three rules.”
Milu’s head bobbed so hard her hat almost took flight.
“One: no offensive or large-scale magic inside. No using Eternal Dream: Prime Abyss or Star Indigo / Moon Crimson to toast bread, boil water, do laundry, or clean floors.”
“Milu understands!”
“Two: everyday spells only under my supervision, target limited to—” She pointed at the corner pot plant. “Pothos Bro. Or other cheap, replaceable objects.”
The plant’s leaves shivered in the breezeless room.
“Three: my secrets—my power, my past, my artifacts, my gender swap—never leave this apartment. Not to mentors, cats, strangers, anyone. Swear it.”
Milu raised a trembling finger. “Milu swears! Even if eaten by dogs—silence!”
Yun Xi exhaled, turned to the window. Far below, the city carried on, oblivious. Somewhere out there lurked Dreamloop Spire, the bureaucratic bogeyman that registered every supernatural. Her own file would read like science-fiction: adult male → dream-tyrant loli dragon, carrying a sovereign-class artifact with twin snarky AIs. Probability of vivisection: 99.999 %.
She dragged her gaze back. Milu sat on the balcony, nose deep in the Life Guide, lisping spell-pronunciations, sunlight polishing her silver hair. An innocent data-mine on Dreamloop procedures, if Yun Xi could bring herself to mine her.
“Star Indigo, Moon Crimson... we’re in deep, aren’t we?”
“Master, I’ll blast anyone who tries to slice you!” the orb crackled.
“Idiot. Violence is last-resort. Hide, learn, find leverage,” the cat purred. “Also, master needs a non-artifact deterrent. Right now you’re either decor or doomsday—nothing in between.”
Yun Xi stared at her own soft palms. Non-artifact deterrent? She could barely light a bulb without collateral dragon-roar.
“And,” Moon Crimson added, tail flicking toward the balcony, “that apprentice’s academy is your nearest intel source. Use her.”
Use her. Yun Xi watched Milu wrestle with a tongue-twister hexline, cheeks puffed in concentration. Felt more like adopting a puppy that might accidentally blow up the dog park.
Her phone pinged: delivery rider approaching. One cup, full sugar with boba. She winced at the ¥18 deduction.
She slumped back, cherry-white hair fanning across the leather, Star Indigo doodling anxious spirals in the air, Moon Crimson a warm weight on her lap, Milu’s murmur drifting in:
“Gui-ding Glim-mer, gen-tle and bright...”
Yeah. Loaded, hunted, broke—and still the best morning she’d had in years.
At least the tea was paid for. For now.