Interlude 2
As I walk upstairs, my thoughts about the boy are a complete mess. I take a seat and look around the room, which is stripped down to its bare necessities: a single bed, an old wardrobe, and a rocking chair. It has been a long time since I felt this tense, so I pull out my old pipe—a gift from someone I can no longer remember. As I take a deep breath of the smoke, the tension finally leaves my body, and old memories start to come back.
If anyone could find a single emotion to define my life, it would be abandonment. So far, everyone who has ever entered my life has abandoned me. My mother died of an illness when I was young, and my father apparently had better things to do than spend time with his grieving son. As for my siblings, I never even existed to them. The only one who has been with me the entire time is Betty. I put down the pipe, tapping out the ash; it is making me remember things I desperately want to forget.
I still remember the first time I saw that boy. It was all because of a damn merchant who made a massive fuss about buying Betty. By the time I dealt with him, we reached the city much later than expected, leaving me with no choice but to stay at a run-down inn—the only place with an available room. The next morning, I stepped outside and saw a kid barely older than five wearing rough sandals and patched-up clothes, completely lost in thought as he gawked at my Betty.
He was surprisingly easy to talk to, nothing like those miserable merchants I dealt with the day before who made a massive fuss about every little thing. Surprisingly, Betty actually liked him. To be honest, I would have never remembered the kid if we hadn't met again later on.
Back then, finally being so far away from my family, I decided to settle down in this city and open an apothecary shop. But establishing the business wasn't easy, all because of that pig-faced fool of a head clerk. The bastard wanted me to keep him constantly supplied with Vigor Potions, and he kept interfering with my business permit until I finally gave in and agreed to brew them for him. I always felt sorry for the poor women in this city who had to suffer because of it.
Hiring assistants for the shop became another headache, as they were all rejected by Betty. Some managed to work for a few months, while others barely lasted a week before she scared them off. I kept hiring different recruitment agencies, but I could never find anyone Betty approved of—and I trusted her completely. She had always been an impeccable judge of character.
Then, one day, I met the boy again. He was standing right in front of my shop, looking around helplessly like a lost pigeon. At the time, I figured he was just another worker sent over by the recruitment company. But Betty recognized him instantly from three years ago, and so did he. After talking with him for a bit, I found out he wasn't even looking for a job; he was just trying to find something to eat. To be honest, it was still a little funny when I thought about it. Out of pure guilt, I invited him inside for a proper meal.
During the meal, I found out that his whole village, along with several others, was being forcefully relocated by the baron's decree. The news didn't really surprise me; I had seen and heard of such things too many times before. The reason could have been genuine, or it could have just been that some noble didn't like the names of the villages and decided to wipe them off the map. You could never truly understand the whims of those in power.
Seeing my chance, I presented the job opportunity to the boy, offering him a position in the shop with lodging and food included. It wasn't a big deal on my part—I had an unused storage shed out back, and cooking for another person wasn't much extra trouble. Convincing the boy's aunt and uncle would likely be a problem, but it was entirely worth the effort if Betty wanted him around.
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A few days later, I met the boy's aunt. Even though I expected a difficult encounter, the sheer look in her eyes sent shivers down my spine and instantly wiped away my lingering sleepiness. After sending the boy out to work in the stables, I turned back to face her. Her eyes fixated on me, staring as if I were a thief who had just stolen her own children.
After a long, tense talk, I finally managed to convince his aunt and uncle to let him work for me. To do it, though, I had to share things about my own past. I never liked talking about those years, but I could understand her suspicion. Thankfully, I didn't have to tell her anything I wanted to keep hidden. In the end, I didn't hate the interaction at all. If anything, I was just glad to see the boy getting the care and love that every child deserved—a stark contrast to my own childhood.
After that, the boy started working for me. He was a hard worker who never complained about his chores. But after a week of working, he quietly admitted to me that he didn't know how to read. It was an oversight on my part—I had forgotten that out in those isolated forest villages, not even the adults knew how to read, let alone a young kid. I decided to teach him the fundamentals so he could at least help me retrieve labeled jars from the shop shelves.
However, once we began, the boy's mind proved to be like dry parchment, drinking up every drop of ink. Watching the sheer joy and desperate hunger he had for learning made me want to keep teaching him far past the basics.
Then came the day everything shifted. He returned one evening after visiting his family and asked me a question I never expected. He asked about the existence of magic.
Magic.!!!
How did a kid like him even get such a thought in his head? To most of the world, magic was just a fantasy reserved for children's bedtime tales. But looking at the boy in that moment, I could see the burning intensity in his eyes. He wasn't talking about fairy tales; he was entirely serious.
After scaring the boy off to bed with a sharp threat, the next day I went out and asked his friend John about this sudden obsession with magic. That was when I first learned about the "Rain Man."
The story was about as believable as any other children's fairy tale: a grand magician stumbling into a village suffering from a drought, summoning a rainstorm just to pay a child back for a bitter tuber. It sounded completely ridiculous. Yet, from the conviction in the boy's eyes, I could tell that to him, it was entirely real. He truly believed it had happened.
For the next few months, he kept trying to find answers. Whenever customers came into the shop, he dropped subtle hints, cautiously asking them about magic or if they had ever witnessed anything unusual. Eventually, I simply began to ignore his hints and questions altogether. When he started probing a customer like that, I just looked the other way and pretended not to hear a thing.
Then, great news finally made my whole year: that pig-faced bastard was arrested for embezzlement. Everyone who had ever met the man, or even heard of him, knew he was absolutely drowning in corruption; the only real surprise was that he actually got arrested for it. Apparently, his friends in higher places were pinning all the blame on him to save their own damn skins. But I didn't care about their politics; all that mattered was that, at long last, the world was safe from that pig.
Then, the last stretch of winter came, bringing with it a surge of customers that flooded the shop. The spike in business made me far too busy to manage every single task on my own. Out of necessity, I finally asked the boy to help me with the simpler preparations—chores like chopping dry stems, grinding pastes with the mortar and pestle, and boiling down plant parts to make basic decoctions.
During that busy season, I noticed that, knowingly or unknowingly, the kid had managed to pick up a few skills just by watching me. After a long and serious period of contemplation, I decided to offer him the chance to become my apprentice.
However, I warned him that he had to make this choice entirely on his own. If he agreed, he would be learning the craft from me for the foreseeable future. I never told him that he had to leave his obsession with magic; I simply offered him a safe, stable, and secure path. But if he chose to chase after his obsession instead,it would finally be time for the kid to learn a bit of truth about the world.