Chapter 1 Divination
The Great Witch adjusted her glasses with trembling hands; sheer excitement permeated her demeanor. After all, ever since she had miscalculated the egg-laying date of the Governor’s beloved chicken, nearly two months had passed since anyone had ventured into her Divination House.
The young man standing before her was striking. His angular face, with its bright, lively, dark eyes, didn’t suggest a fool. And his physique—a well-proportioned torso and robust limbs—made him look strong and hardly reckless.
The Great Witch’s dull grey eyes rolled thoughtfully in their deep sockets a few times before she arrived at a conclusion in her rather imaginative mind: This young man is either lost or illiterate.
With this conclusion reached, the Great Witch’s initial excitement gradually faded. She quickly resumed her usual slovenly demeanor, hunching over the divination table and staring blankly at the dust-covered crystal ball, lost in an endless daze.
"Uh, hello there!" the young man stuttered, seeming ill at ease in the gloomy Divination House as he greeted her.
"HMPH," the Great Witch responded faintly.
This "HMPH" contained both her past arrogance and her current desolate loneliness, but the young man, continuing to approach cautiously, couldn’t decipher any of it.
"If you want to ask for directions for free, go to the village up ahead. Here, I charge a fee," the Great Witch said, growing a tad irritated. The young man’s silence had unintentionally disrupted her customary "serenity."
"Uh, doesn’t the sign at the door say Divination?" the young man asked.
Hearing the long-unheard word "divination," the Great Witch’s hunched figure began to tremble slightly, causing her to readjust her glasses again. When she saw the young man scratching his head in confusion and foolishly stepping outside to confirm the sign, the conclusion she had just formed was immediately overturned.