Chapter Text
Chan had misjudged the distance.
Honestly, that was really easy to do with a master-class spell like this. Traveling between dimensions required calculating motion using two entirely different quantifiable measures of distance under two entirely different laws of physics so, sometimes, his math could be a bit off. In layman’s terms, Chan was supposed to pop out of the fairy portal in the same place he'd gone into it; somewhere safe like the shop's front door. Instead, he'd popped out a good five or six feet in the air somewhere in his workshop.
“Great Big Blue,” he swore as gravity grabbed hold of him.
He fell through the air about as fast as a brick and landed on his work table with a terrible amount of noise. Pain shot up his back and he tumbled head over heels onto the floor. Everything went catastrophically wrong. His weight on the edge of the table flipped the entire piece of furniture over, sending a menagerie of glass bottles, beakers and vials flying through the air over his head and crashing against the stone floor. Chan held a hand over his face to keep glass bits out of his eyes. Thank the Big Blue Bird the bottles were empty! The world could have actually ended if the wrong potions got mixed together.
The door to his workshop flew open and tall, clumsy Hyunjin came charging into the back room. He shouted, “Hey! Channie-Chan! You're back. A little spun around and upside down but you’re back!”
Chan's ears were still ringing from the noise of all of the breaking glass. He hoped he'd only imagined the young witch's voice.
“Is this a new high score?” Hyunjin ran across the room, kicking glass pieces aside with his boots to clear a path to Chan. “You were only gone two and a half minutes! I saw you go in so I counted very carefully but then I lost count so I started over and counted again until I saw you.”
Two and a half minutes? Roughly? Thereabouts? Give or take a bit? Chan snorted with amusement. That was quite impressive. It felt like he had been in the fairy realm two and a half years but he’d gone and come back in a fraction of the time. Chan lowered his hands from his eyes and looked up at the giant of a boy leaning down over him. “What are you doing here?”
Hyunjin smiled wide. “I put a big ole pile of pillows for you to land on but I didn't think you'd pop back in the wrong room.”
“No. I mean, how did you get inside?” Hyunjin didn’t have a key. Or… he shouldn’t.
“I’m your apprentice!” Hyunjin said cheerily, as if that explained everything.
Chan scoffed and pushed himself to his feet, careful not to put his hands on any glass shards. “I have no apprentice. I told you already, Hyunjin. I'm not taking one in this year. Or next year. Or the year after. I don’t do apprentices.” He’d barely had the job half a year himself. How could he train anyone else?
“You'll change your mind,” Hyunjin confidently reassured him. “You’ll want to have me as an apprentice. I’m super duper positive. I can be quite helpful. All I do is help! Look.” He stooped down to pick up a few chunks of glass. He slotted them together so that it kind of looked like half a potion bottle. “I'll put this back together. It's such a simple spell.” He channeled a bit of magic. His fingers glowed like the last embers in a campfire.
Chan realized what was happening far too late. “No!” He rushed to the boy's side in an attempt to knock the glass from his hands. “You'll make it explode!”
“I can't make it explode.”
The glass bottle exploded.
Not just into pieces. It exploded. There was fire and smoke involved. Somehow. Both of the witches shrieked and jumped backwards away from the blast. The glass shards Hyunjin had been holding skittered across the floor, on fire. On. Fire. Chan blinked in disbelief. He just had to ask, “How do you even do that? How is that remotely possible?”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, Channing,” Hyunjin laughed the severity of the situation away. He stomped out the flames. “It’s first thing in the morning. I’m not warmed up yet.”
Chan grimaced. It didn’t matter what time of day it was. It didn’t matter how ‘warmed up’ Hyunjin was. Whenever the kid got too emotional or too excited or too eager or too scared, whatever he had immediately in front of him just… exploded. Calamity and destruction followed him everywhere he went yet, somehow, he had not discovered that he was the epicenter of the chaos. Ignorance was bliss but it was hell for everyone else.
“Your hat’s crooked, just so you know,” Hyunjin told him.
Chan raised a hand.
“Let me do it!” Hyunjin jumped at the chance.
“I can do it myself,” Chan objected. He was grown. He could fix his own hats!
“I’m your apprentice,” Hyunjin wailed.
“No you’re not!” Chan didn’t have an apprentice. Even if he had the knowledge, time and patience to teach a young witch, he did not have the available hours to put one on his payroll. He’d only had the shop fiveish months. He was still in his probationary period. The coven was breathing down his back making sure he crossed every t and dotted every i and signed every form in triplicate. Every tiny screw up was a possible point against him and hiring Hyunjin with his explosive tendencies was just asking for everything to go wrong. Chan needed this job and, yes, he struggled under the weight of running the shop all by himself but he’d manage if he pushed himself hard enough. Even if he wanted to risk taking on an apprentice, Hyunjin wouldn’t be his first choice. Hyunjin wouldn’t be any of his choices at all and Chan told him this but, everyday like clockwork, Hyunjin showed up bright and early at the shop in the all-black ensemble of a witch’s apprentice.
“Let me fix your hat,” Hyunjin pouted. “Pwease?”
Pwease? “Fine,” Chan gave in. He had a mountain of mail to go through and a conference call to sit in on but, now, he also had a workshop full of broken glass to clean up. “Be quick about it.”
Hyunjin stepped forward and happily adjusted the black, wide-brimmed witch’s hat that sat on top of Chan’s thick head of platinum curls. “Hats are so silly-looking and very, very uncomfy,” commented Hyunjin. Satisfied with his work, he stepped back. “Ribbons are so much easier. They don’t squeeze your head and they are very very pretty. The bigger the bow the better.” As if Chan could not see the thing with his own eyes, Hyunjin pointed to the plaid ribbon tied into his raven black hair. The obnoxiously large bow was cute and stylishly lopsided, if a little messy. Ribbons and hats and beanies and scarves weren’t just for aesthetics, they were an essential part of every witch’s uniform. The cloth they were made out of functioned as a magical antenna of sorts, letting witches easily draw on the omnipresent mana of the Big Blue Bird in the sky.
“The hat is classic,” Chan huffed, brushing past Hyunjin so he could stand in the center of the workroom. “Witches have been wearing them for centuries. Trends come and go, like capes did, but the hat is forever. The real hat, not all of these alternatives.”
“If you say so,” Hyunjin said, still fiddling with his ribbon.
Chan had to remember that Hyunjin was young and naive and probably did not care for the history of the craft. Maybe that was why he couldn’t cast a spell to save his life. “Stand back. I’m going to fix everything.”
“All at once?” Hyunjin made himself comfortable on a stool in the corner.
“Did you think I was going to do it one by one? There’s hundreds.” Chan searched the pockets of his witch’s uniform until he found his wand. It was long and narrow with a crescent moon curve. It was carved from petrified wood, white with striking black marbling with the faintest hints of aqua blue along the veins. For a spell this simple, he didn’t really need to plunge himself too deeply into the flow of mana but he decided to because his head was still spinning a little from the jump through the dimensional portal. Better safe than sorry.
“Should I take notes?” Hyunjin’s voice split Chan’s concentration wide open. “I should take notes.” He started to slide off of the stool.
“Don’t move,” Chan chastised him.
Hyunjin froze on the spot.
Chan shut his eyes. All it took was a bit of relaxation for him to be able to feel the magic in the air. It itched a bit on his skin like he had just walked through a spiderweb. He scrunched up his nose in confusion. “From the south? That’s weird.” He turned his body to better face the flow. There. Slowly, his body eased into the magic like he was getting into a nice hot bubble bath. The mana swept around his hat, swirling towards his body as if it was being funneled into him. “All of these broken vessels and shapes, repair them quickly so I won’t be late.” He held up his wand and guided the magic out into the room. There was a pop of light from the tip of his wand.
“Whoa,” Hyunjin exhaled in awe, his eyes big and wide. “Pretty.”
Around Chan, the glass bits were starting to float into the air, dancing around each other until they found their partners. They squeezed themselves back together with faint hissing noises, becoming whole once more with not even a line across the surface as evidence that they had been shattered. Chan formed another couplet in his head and spoke a new spell. “Now go back on the table where you belong, you remember the order you were in so don’t do it wrong.”
The large rectangular table righted itself in the center of the workshop and all of the repaired potion bottles and vials settled back on the wood, arranging themselves nice and neat.
Chan lowered his wand and sighed when his work was completed. He had exerted himself more than he expected to and now he was starving. What time was it? He checked his watch. It was later in the morning than he expected. In fact, it was right at opening time! Great Big Blue! Two and half minutes his foot! Chan had been in the fairy realm for nearly the entire night, not a few minutes! How badly had Hyunjin lost count? “Let’s open the shop, Hyunjin,” he said quickly, stashing his wand back in his pocket. “Don’t touch anything.” And then, to really prove he was serious, he repeated himself, “Don’t touch anything !”
“Okay,” Hyunjin sang out and leaped off of the stool only to trip over his own big feet and go careening into Chan’s favorite work chair which slid over the stone floor with a screech before hitting the floor. Fortunately, nothing else fell over. This time. Hyunjin laughed. “Sorry. I’ll get it!”
“Don’t touch it with your hands,” Chan shouted. He liked that chair. It was comfortable and didn’t make his butt ache when he was working. He didn’t want to watch it explode this early in the morning. “Don’t touch it at all.”
“But-” Hyunjin protested.
“I can get it,” Chan insisted. He sat the chair back on its legs and slid it in front of the workbench. He needed to get rid of Hyunjin. Preferably for several hours. He would not be able to focus on his work if he had a ticking time bomb wandering around the shop. “Do you remember where the bakery I like is?” He reached into the back pocket of his pants for his wallet. “Go get us a loaf of raisin bread.” He actually didn’t like that bakery all too much. He didn’t even like raisin bread but he always ordered it because there was never any out at the bakery so it always had to be made from scratch but the more time it took, the better. The longer Hyunjin was out of his hair, the better. Chan said, “Make that two loaves.” He almost handed the paper bill to Hyunjin directly but then hurriedly stuffed it into the boy’s shirt pocket instead.
“But it’s so far .” Hyunjin folded his arms across his chest and pouted. “I have to take three different trains.”
Exactly. “It’s worth it, though,” Chan told him, grinning. He softened his voice as if he were addressing a small child. “I’ll let you use the change to buy whatever you want.”
Hyunjin’s mood shifted immediately. “Okeydokey Chanachokie. I will be right back.”
“Take your time. Please.”
Hyunjin did the exact opposite and ran out of the workroom. Chan was right on his heels to ensure none of the shop inventory combusted. They raced through the shop, past row after row after row of shelves filled to the brim with plants, cauldrons, potions, gemstones, teas, stone statues and animal bones. Hyunjin tripped over the pile of pillows that he himself had put by the entryway and it was only Chan’s speed that got him to the door before Hyunjin’s head went through the glass.
Hyunjin tumbled out onto the sidewalk in a tangle of limbs but he laughed it off and got back up. It didn’t seem like he was too badly injured. Then again, the boy made things explode with his hands so maybe he just didn’t get hurt.
“Get going,” said Chan, purposefully pointing up the sidewalk in the opposite direction of the train station. “And don’t run.” Loyally, Hyunjin skipped off in the indicated direction and Chan didn’t relax until the boy was out of sight without a single fire or smoke trail in his wake. Sending Hyunjin to get bread usually took four hours so Chan had about that much alone time before the destructive hurricane of clumsiness and painfully good intentions found its way back to his peaceful life.
“Good morning, Chan,” a young witch called out as she passed by on the sidewalk.
Chan returned the wave and then crammed his hands under his armpits for warmth.
It was quite the chilly morning. The feathers of the Big Blue Bird in the sky were orange and pink with the start of a new day. There was a scent to the air that reminded Chan of snow. He needed to salt the walkway in front of the shop before he forgot and, Great Big Blue, Hyunjin had left his coat on the hook by the door! “Felix,” Chan called out. “Felix?” He looked up the sidewalk in both directions. Even at such an early hour, and even this close to the outskirts, Seoul was alive and bustling. Commuters were on their way to work, bundled up against the cold in their scarves and coats. School kids trudged by in their uniforms and big bubble coats. There was an orange cat snuggled on the sill of the big window at the front of Chan’s store but it was not the cat Chan was looking for. “Felix,” he called again, louder. “Where’d you go, boy?”
There was no response. Not even the quietest of meows.
“Guess he’s not here today either,” mumbled Chan. It didn’t matter. Felix technically wasn’t his cat. He flipped the sign of his shop from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ and then shut the door against the cold.
He grabbed all of the decorative pillows Hyunjin had piled by the door and tossed them into the big basket by the front window, out of the way.
Mondays had their own special kind of dreariness. It took a lot of effort to shake off the comfy sleepiness of Sunday and get back into the grind of the work week. Add on a pretty wild and time-warping trip to the fairy realm into the mix and Chan legitimately felt like he hadn’t slept in days. “This calls for coffee.” He stretched his arms above his head, yawned and moved to the back of the shop. He reached the counter where his coffee machine shared space with his cash register. His two most prized possessions. Chan grabbed the coffee pot and was about to go down the hall for water when he heard the landline in his office ring. “Ugh,” he groaned, glancing at the massive grandfather clock behind the counter. “Can you at least wait until eight oh one?”
Coffee pot in hand, he trudged down the hall to his tiny little office. He unlocked the door and crossed the room to sink into his desk chair. He reached for the landline, picking it up on the seventh ring.
He started, “Thank you for calling Chan’s Tchotchkes. This is Chan. How may I-”
“District Witch 9,” came the sharp voice of the Regional Manager from the other end. “It’s time for your report.”
It was Monday. The store had been open all of fifty-eight seconds. Fifty-nine. Sixty. There was nothing to report.
Before Chan could politely say this, the government official’s voice cut in, “Not the store report. I already have access to that information. I’m asking for your District Witch report.”
It was the first week of the month, Chan realized. December was officially here. This was the start of his last month on probation! If he could keep the District he was responsible for from blowing up, if he could keep increasing the shop’s profits, if he could keep the coven satisfied, then he’d officially be District Witch! His name would be on all official Seoul coven documents. He’d get to attend regional meetings and government functions. The pay increase would be insane. “I’ve made multiple visits to the animal shelter,” Chan began, “and they have finally agreed to stop giving strays to thirsty vampires.”
“Acceptable,” said the Regional Manager. Chan vaguely recalled the man’s name as Woo-something. “The number of undead dogs in the District was appalling. Still is.”
“At the very least, the growth in population should stagnate. Over time, it will get more manageable.” Chan took a moment to flip through the log book on his desk. The entries were in his careful handwriting but it felt like someone else had written these things, describing events that had happened to some other witch. Really, being in the fairy realm had messed with Chan’s perception of time. Most of these events he skimmed over had happened only a few days ago but it genuinely felt like months had passed since he’d sat in this chair and flipped through this book. “I put a stop to the shenanigans of the trolls under the bridge. I handed the wand smugglers over to the downtown office for disciplinary action. I’ve also tracked down the seller of those spoiled potions and slapped them with a fee. And that god-tree in the park that’s been sapping the nutrients out of all of the other trees? It took some work but I’ve rerouted its roots and given all of the trees their own space. The park should be gorgeous come spring.” He had tried to only report the positive things from the last month. He needed to keep this job. He needed it. But-
“And the rogue magic?” Woo-something prompted in a serious tone.
Chan gritted his teeth and bit back a swear. “That’s finicky.” Something in his District was disrupting the flow of the Big Blue Bird’s mana, making the energy sweep through his part of the city in unusual directions. There were times when it surged like ocean waves. There were times when the flow of mana stopped completely, as if someone or something was casting terribly powerful spells. “I just came back from investigating the fairy realm. I spoke to their leaders and, even with all of their trickery and foolishness, I was able to determine that they aren’t the cause.”
Woo-something was quiet on the other end of the line for some time. Perhaps he was writing. Or perhaps he was just listening. Thinking. “Getting to the bottom of the mana disturbances needs to be priority number one this month,” the Regional Manager ordered. “The mana flow in your District is becoming so disrupted that it is affecting the neighboring zones. Two other District Witches have already filed formal complaints and it is my duty to follow up. If the problem isn’t resolved by the end of the week, I have to fine you, Chan. It’s going farther up the chain of command now and I can’t keep holding back with this many eyes on me.”
Chan cut in, “Yes, sir.”
“It has already been several weeks. If you can’t handle this, if you can’t prove that you can do this, the coven will find someone else for the position.”
Ouch. “Yes, sir,” Chan muttered again.
A long pause. “That is all,” Woo-something said. There was a click and then the call went dead.
Chan sat there in a daze, listening to the dial tone flood his ears. Many seconds passed before he snapped out of it and dropped the phone down onto its cradle. “I’ve been trying,” he mumbled under his breath. Discovering the root of the mana flow issue had been his number one priority since October! “I’ve asked the gumihos to keep an eye out. I almost got my hand bitten off by a werewolf asking questions. I asked the members of the traveling caravan if they knew of anything. I nearly broke my neck just now asking the fairies. No one knows what’s happening.” He knew Woo-something could not hear him, he knew he was alone in his office, but just expressing his frustrations out loud made him feel better. “This is something entirely new and probably really big and I don’t know who else to turn to for answers. I don’t know what to do.”
It had to have been a kind of magic he was unfamiliar with. Alchemy, volatile and a touch on the forbidden side, didn’t rely on mana at all so there was no way it could have such a negative impact on the flow even if it was being performed incorrectly. Spirits leaving the mortal realm and drifting up to the Big Blue Bird in the sky didn’t disrupt the mana flow like this. Not even Hyunjin’s biggest explosion (a poor florist’s work van) couldn’t stop the flow of magic like this. Something big was happening in Chan’s District but what was more worrying was that weeks had passed and he still did not know where to start in his search.
He did not know where to begin . Still.
There was a mirror hanging on the wall of his office. He stood up from his desk and looked into the glass, taking in the sight of the handsome but sleepy-eyed witch staring back at him. He looked at his dark eyes. At his big and floppy witch hat. At the curly gray hair that grew out of his head. He had a duty. He wore this hat and this uniform for a reason. He had been chosen . Chan was the District Witch and that meant he had a job to do. A responsibility. A purpose.
He straightened his shoulders and smiled. Brighter. Wider.
Today was Monday but he’d own it.
He grabbed a pile of envelopes off of his desk and carried them out of his office and back into the shop. He made himself comfortable on the stool behind the cash wrap. He tore open one of the envelopes and freed the letter inside of it.
It was a request from a District resident. They were being pestered by a hobgoblin. Every single day, they woke up to all of the furniture in their home meticulously rearranged. Nothing ever went missing, they had determined, but it was annoying trying to relearn their way around their own home every time they started a new day. The problem had been funny for the first two weeks but after waking up with their bed perched precariously on the edge of the roof, they feared the hobgoblin housed ill intent. Chan knew how to take care of that. He pulled out his wand and used a minor spell to rearrange the words on the page so that the alphabet spelled out his reply: “I have just the thing! I have a powder made from iron shavings which will keep all fairies and related entities away. Sprinkle it around every door and window of your home, including interior archways and closets. If the hobgoblin is outside your home, it will not be able to enter and your problem will be solved. If the hobgoblin is inside your home, it will not be able to leave the room you trapped it in. If you catch it, please call me and I will personally escort it off of your property. All the best, Bang Chan.”
He stood up and circled around the cash wrap. If he remembered correctly, that particular powder was in the big ceramic urn between the marigold seeds and the quartz necklaces.
Chan went to Aisle 3.
His shop wasn’t the largest or the most organized place in Seoul. It definitely wasn’t like the huge mega-mart out in District 2 where you could buy even high-level spell ingredients in bulk. It didn’t even quite possess the old-timey charm of the elderly couple’s shop five Districts over. But that didn’t matter because it was his and he loved it and treasured it. There was no rhyme or order to the items on the shelves, but that didn’t stop him from knowing where everything was and it definitely did not stop his patrons from walking into the store and finding the one thing they didn’t know they were looking for.
“There you are,” he chirped, finding the urn of iron shavings. He grabbed it off the shelf and carried it to his workshop. The letter didn’t specify how large the house was but he figured that if there were enough rooms for everything to get rearranged every day, it had to be relatively large. Perhaps a one gallon mason jar would be big enough? He got one off of the bottom shelf and slowly poured the powder into it with one hand and stirred it with his wand using the other. Every now and then, he whispered a minor protection spell over the granules. Iron shavings were heavier than he anticipated. It would cost an arm and a leg to ship the tub through the post but he’d have to eat the cost if he wanted this resolved today. The letter was from Friday, he recalled, so he was already a day behind in his self-imposed one business day letter-answering schedule. The return address on the letter was at the very edge of his District, close to the national park. He’d have to close the shop for far too long during the day to deliver it himself, even on his broom. He’d ask Hyunjin but he didn’t even trust the kid to tie his own shoes without screwing it up so his only other option of delivery was the post. Ugh. Maybe he should get an apprentice? A proper one with actual potential. Perhaps if he made it through his probationary period, he’d find a way to work the labor costs into his budget. He already had a creative idea for a ‘help wanted’ sign.
With the mason jar filled, he screwed on the lid as tight as he could manage and carried it and the heavy ceramic urn back into the shop. The jar was heavy. Ooh, it would definitely cost a ton to have it shipped. That reminded him. He needed to make a label for the jar and write clear instructions to go with his reply letter.
“Maybe I can float it there,” Chan pondered. It wouldn’t be too tough of a spell. Levitate it just enough and hope it could follow simple directions. There was risk to that, though. With the flow of mana so backwards lately, it would probably wind up out to sea. “Or maybe I can just shot put it. I’ve been working out.” He laughed at his own poor attempt at a joke and then sat the ceramic urn back on its shelf. Then he carried the mason jar to the cash wrap. “Or… Or… I don’t know…”
“Or…” Came a voice from very close by.
Chan nearly jumped out of his skin. A high-pitched shriek left his mouth. The tub nearly leaped out of his hands. “Great Big Blue,” he swore. He thought he’d been alone in the shop this whole time!
“Or,” the voice tried again patiently, “you can call a courier. One flat rate per package. Probably faster and cheaper than the post.”
“Where are you?” Chan glanced around. He knew who it was but where were they? He saw no one among the aisles.
“Top shelf,” came the voice.
“Top shelf?” Chan looked up. Almost directly above his head, lying prone on the shelf with his hand under his chin, was a scrawny black-haired boy, his face dotted with freckles and his eyes slightly yellowish like the Big Blue Bird’s feathers at the end of a day. “Yongbok,” Chan exhaled, calming down. “You’re not wearing a coat in this weather?”
“I’ve got one. Somewhere.”
“How did you get up there?”
“Very carefully,” Yongbok replied with a smirk.
“How did I not hear you?”
“Because I was very careful.”
“How did you not knock anything over?”
“Because I didn’t do this.” Yongbok swatted at a book that was on the shelf near his head. It toppled over the edge and fell.
Chan watched it hit the floor and fall open. He was not as upset about that as he probably should have been. It was a book about coffee and the full-page spread it had opened to reminded him of something. He stooped down to pick it up, snapping it closed. “You want coffee?”
“You know how I like mine,” Yongbok accepted the offer. “More cream than coffee. Plenty of sugar.”
“Gotcha.” Chan put the book back on the top shelf, standing on his tiptoes to reach it and being careful not to swipe Yongbok in the head with it. Everything back in its place, he went to the back of the shop and sat the jar of iron powder on the wooden table next to all of the other things he’d yet to get delivered because the post didn’t run on Sundays. Where did he leave the coffee pot? Oh yeah. His office. He retrieved it and went down the hall to the fountain and filled it with water. When he was back in the shop, Yongbok was still stretched out on the top shelf, his eyes closed like he was dozing. It always surprised Chan how none of his rinky-dink shelves had toppled beneath the boy’s weight by now. Whenever Yongbok showed up, he was in some entirely impossible spot, hanging out as casually as can be. There was this one time where he’d gotten all the way up onto the rafters yet had almost been too scared to jump down onto the magical net Chan had constructed beneath him.
Yongbok also liked to break things. Where Hyunjin’s explosive talents seemed to be entirely accidental, Yongbok’s habit of knocking things over and tearing holes in things was extremely purposeful yet, somehow, wasn’t a hostile act. The only reason Chan put up with the boy’s eccentricity was because Yongbok was a regular customer and bought something nearly every day. “Yongbok,” Chan called out as he poured the water into the coffee maker.
“Hmm?” Yongbok hummed.
“Have you been in tune with the weird mana flow lately?”
“Of course,” the boy replied. “Can never sleep through the night because I can feel the flow flip-flopping every which way. Where’s the demolitionist?”
It took Chan a second to figure out who Yongbok was referring to. “I sent Hyunjin out for raisin bread.”
“Ahh.” Yongbok opened his yellowish eyes and glanced at the grandfather clock. He shut his eyes again. “Three and a half hours of peace left.” He sighed as if living the dream.
Chan searched under the counter for the bag of his favorite coffee roast. He got their conversation back on track. “Yongbok, do you know what can cause such harsh changes in the flow?”
“Nope.”
“You don’t even have a clue?”
“Nope.”
“Just take a wild guess. Do you know any witches that dabble in the dark arts?”
“Nope.”
This was getting nowhere. Yongbok could be so stubborn for absolutely no reason. Chan was making him coffee for crying out loud! “Will you let me know if you hear anything?”
Yongbok scratched at his nose.
Chan sighed and finished preparing the coffee maker.
“I’ll tell you,” Yongbok agreed at long last.
“Thank you,” said Chan. He felt a bit odd. He was the District Witch. Everyone should be able to come to him for answers. He shouldn’t be out begging everyone else for them! No wonder Woo-something was so willing to replace him over this. He wasn’t good enough.
The coffee maker began to bubble and brew and the shop slowly filled with the pleasant, earthy scent of good coffee.
Chan sat back down at the cash wrap and worked his way through more resident letters.
Someone was having issues with the plumbing in their kitchen. Chan prescribed a small wooden statue of a woman with a jar that would make the water drinkable if it was sat close to the faucet.
A man wanted a spell to make a woman he met at a bar fall in love with him. Chan suggested he try some good ole flirting first. Maybe some flowers. Primroses. They weren’t in season but Chan knew a great greenhouse all the way down in District 45.
An old woman was having difficulty remembering things. She couldn’t quite work out how to take notes with the app on her cell phone and she felt burdened and embarrassed scribbling things down with a pad and paper while she was out doing errands. Chan had just the gemstone for her. It could improve concentration so long as she kept it near her head, such as on her nightstand while she slept or on a necklace during the day. He recommended a craftsman in northern Seoul, up in District 18, who did good work with gems.
The gurgling of the coffee maker stopped. Chan took a break from his duties to pour himself a mug. As exhausted as he was from his trip to the fairy realm, he needed to have his black.
Yongbok, for a reason that Chan could not figure out no matter how hard he tried, liked to drink his super sweet and creamy coffee out of a round, flat-bottomed dish. Yongbok had brought it from home specifically to keep at the shop to drink out of while he was here. Chan prepared the coffee the way Yongbok liked and carried the bowl around the counter only to discover that Yongbok had left his spot on the top shelf of Aisle 3. It wasn’t but a short distance from the cash wrap. Chan had been concentrating but he hadn’t been so zoned out that he couldn’t hear a man almost as tall as he was climb off of a metal shelf. “How does he not knock anything over?” Chan mused. He looked up and down each aisle. He groaned. Perhaps Yongbok had gotten bored and left the shop entirely. Oh wait. No. There he was. Stretched out on the floor at the end of Aisle 10, his shirt raised up to his chest so that he could catch the light of the Big Blue Bird coming through the window on his belly. Chan sat the dish of coffee next to the boy, certain he was asleep, but as soon as he stepped back, Yongbok grabbed the dish and raised it to his mouth, taking slow sips. “You okay,” Chan asked him. Yongbok was so weird .
“Perfect,” the boy replied. It wasn’t clear if he was answering Chan’s question or making a comment about the coffee. He said nothing else.
Chan turned away and went back to work. In less than an hour, he’d finished replying to all of the letters and had sipped his way through two and a half mugs of coffee, the buzz of the caffeine like bees taking over his brain. He was starving something fierce now and, for once, he wished he hadn’t sent Hyunjin so far away. Should he order a sandwich from the deli at the end of the block? They’d walk it up the street for him if they weren’t too busy and they’d definitely be here faster than Hyunjin.
He checked the grandfather clock. It was nearly eleven in the morning. He had that conference call with the coven to sit through. Conference calls had to be his least favorite part about Mondays. All those government folks talked about was profit margins, law amendments and the extremely miniscule ways in which one District was superior to another District. Technically, Chan was a ‘government folk’ now, too, but he was different. He was a cool government folk. Or so he liked to think.
“You know,” Yongbok spoke up.
Chan shrieked and whirled around.
Yongbok was standing next to Chan’s stool. His empty coffee dish sat on the counter in front of him. “You know,” he began again, “I’ve always wondered why you open shop so early. Why not open at ten like every other shop on the block? It’s not like anyone comes in until brunch time.”
“I thought that, too,” Chan squeaked out. He’d catch a heart attack one of these days because of Yongbok. He wondered if he could put a bell on the dude. Maybe Hyunjin could tell him where to get a cute ribbon. “But since I am acting District Witch, this shop’s technically a government building and government buildings open at eight.”
“Oh well.” Yongbok pawed at his nose as if such an answer smelled bad.
“Why do you care?” Chan asked, but not unkindly. “It’s not like you work here and have to get up early.”
“I guess I do appreciate the quiet hours,” Yongbok mumbled sleepily. “I can nap to my heart’s content. More coffee.” He didn’t even say please. Not even pwease .
Chan frowned. He couldn’t even call Yongbok a freeloader because he actually did buy things! Speaking of which. “You know you can’t be behind the counter.”
“Whatever.” Yongbok stepped sideways and then plopped himself down on the floor a mere whisker’s length from behind the cash wrap. “You need to put a chair right here. That would be nice.” He scooted over a microscopic amount. “Or here. Right here.”
“It would block the hall to my office if I put it there.”
“You need to put it right here then.” Yongbok turned ever so slightly.
“And you need to buy something,” Chan reminded him. He poured fresh coffee into the dish and then stirred in a ridiculous amount of cream and sugar, turning the dark brown liquid almost entirely white.
Yongbok ignored him. “I can see through the window from here. And the heating vent is… good, it’s right there. Yes. I can have the most amazing naps if you put a chair here.”
“I’m not buying a chair and if I did I’m not putting it there.”
“You should,” Yongbok insisted.
“Just for you to nap in?”
“Yes.”
“You gonna buy something?” Chan sat the dish near Yongbok’s feet.
“I’ll take one of those.” Yongbok waved a hand in a seemingly random direction.
Chan followed the gesture with his eyes. There were about a million things in the vicinity but Chan’s eyes landed on the big woven rug hanging on the wall. Maroon and gold. Damask. Possibly magic. Chan couldn’t remember. “That’s expensive.”
“I’ll take two.” Yongbok didn’t even look up as he sipped from his dish.
“I’ll roll those right up for you.” Chan stepped over Yongbok’s body and crossed the shop to the hanging rugs. He’d better get them rung up fast before Yongbok changed his mind. He’d make his sales goal for the day in a single transaction if Yongbok was really going to drop cash on the things. That was another reason why Yongbok was so weird. His hair was always disheveled and a little dirty and his clothes were well-loved and worn out, but not once in the last few months had his card ever been declined for insufficient funds, despite his wild spending habits.
Chan pulled one rug down from the wall, rolled it up and then repeated the action with the second. Blue and off-white stripes. Possibly magic at one point but definitely not anymore. It took all of his strength to drag the things across the shop floor to the register in order to ring them up. He told Yongbok the rather exorbitant total and the boy handed over his card without interrupting his coffee drinking.
“How are you going to get these home?” Chan definitely didn’t want to send these through the post. The weight fees would eat his bank account alive.
“Courier service,” Yongbok mumbled. Even more cash. Did he not have a care in the world?
His nonchalance was a bit worrying but Chan wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Yongbok’s purchases kept his bills paid and his daily sales plan met, he was not about to ask too many prying questions. “More coffee?”
“No. I want a nap.” Yongbok yawned and flopped onto his back right in the middle of the floor.
Maybe Chan did need a chair. A recliner . One that he could stretch out on and relax in. He didn’t have a single place to rest in the whole shop, he realized sadly. Every room was for work. “I’ve got a conference call,” he said after several seconds of staring at Yongbok curled into the fetal position. “Shout if there’s a customer.”
Yongbok made a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat.
Taking his chances leaving the shop unattended, Chan made his way to his office. It was a small room. Smaller than the workshop down the hall. Probably not even all that much larger than the employee’s only bathroom across the way. He tried his best to keep the shelves neat but there was just more paper and reports to keep track of than he had space for so everything was in piles. The process of making digital copies of all of the files was slow and tedious with his abysmal typing speed so it was easiest to just continue to let papers and books pile up.
Chan dialed into the conference call, put it on speaker and was surprised but not surprised to hear Woo-something’s voice taking command.
The Regional Manager was in the middle of giving out accolades, “-have increased sales by a whopping 58% to last year’s numbers. That’s almost unheard of. I’d like to congratulate District 24. You’re the number one District in the Region.”
Chan groaned. “Again?” The call was muted on his end so he knew Woo-something and the dozens and dozens of other District Witches in the call could not hear him. Oh. What he would give to be number one in the Region and be praised for all of his hard work! He probably couldn’t make it, though. Not with his middle-of-the-road sales and below average conversion growth but definitely not with this mana flow problem. “Will District 9 ever be number one?”
“I have to ask myself the same question,” someone sneered.
Chan sat upright in his chair like he was snapping out of a daydream. He was alone in his office but the voice had sounded like it was coming from inside the room. Right across from him. It sounded familiar. Exactly like Woo-something. But that couldn’t be right because the man was still in the middle of the conference call.
“-would like to push the rebranding of our spell ingredient products in the new year,” Woo-something was saying over the phone. “Test shops will start seeing inventory with the new designs on the labels delivered by or before the fourteenth. Please refer to your plan-o-grams on how to display the new merchandise. We already have deep sale events planned for over the Winter Solstice festivities so use those opportunities to inform customers about the quality changes. If the test stores meet the goal by spring, we’ll push products out to other promising shops in waves. Lower performing Districts may not get the new products at all.”
“You talking about me?” Chan couldn’t shake the feeling Woo-something was speaking to him directly.
“Are you really going to be this boring today?” The voice that sounded like Woo-something said.
Chan shook his head aggressively. It had to be the coffee buzzing in his brain and messing with his senses. He stood up and checked the hallway outside of his office. Yongbok was still in the same spot at the end of the hall. The black-haired boy didn’t seem to be asleep but he was lying very still. Very stiffly. Chan sat back down in his chair and let his mind wander. What was a good courier service? If it was a flat rate per package, how high would the total price be if he tried sending all of his weekend deliveries? Would it be easier and cheaper to just send it through the post? Even with the extra fees? Or maybe he could stay up half the night delivering all of the things by broom himself. That sounded like work he wasn’t cut out for. He could only carry so much at a time. He’d be in and out of the shop until the Big Blue Bird turned orange.
“If you’re being this unfun to observe, I’ll go then,” Woo-something’s voice said.
Chan startled. This was getting to be too much. He was hallucinating. Had he spent too long in the fairy realm and lost his grip on reality a bit? That was supposed to be a side effect of extended stays, he knew. He’d only been in there two and a half minutes… roughly… thereabouts… but time flowed so differently in the fairy realm. He smacked himself on the cheek in a bid to wake himself up. No. He wasn’t losing his mind. Too much caffeine. Not enough sleep. That’s all it was.
There was a loud noise out in the shop. A surprised yelp, a different surprised yelp, and then squeaky shoes on the hardwood floor.
Chan ignored it. Or tried to. Then there was the front door swinging open, the bell above it jangling loudly. There was a deep shout and heavy footsteps.
“Just great,” Chan groaned. “Of course I get rowdy customers now.” He stood up and left his office.
Yongbok had left his spot at the end of the hall. Perhaps it had been him that had made all of that racket? He was usually so quiet, though. Eerily so. The only person he knew that made that much noise was- “Hyunjin!” Chan shouted. How was he back this early? Chan should still have an hour of freedom left!
“Look!” Hyunjin came thundering down one of the aisles, his big boots tracking the grime of the city across the floor. “I’m back, Chan. I missed you. I missed you so so so much but I’m back and you’re here so now I don’t miss you because you’re here.” He swung an arm around Chan’s torso and hugged him tight.
Chan wheezed from the pressure around his middle and then wrenched himself free of the boy’s hold. Why was Hyunjin back so early? He checked the boy’s forehead with his palm. “You left without a coat. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m peachy. No, wait. I’m Hyunjin.”
Certain that Hyunjin wasn’t feverish. Chan lowered his hand from the boy’s forehead. “How was your walk?”
“I got lost on my way to the train station. I usually never get lost. I don’t know what happened.”
Chan wondered where Yongbok went. He started peeking into the corners for him.
“And then,” Hyunjin continued, “I fell asleep on the train and missed my transfer but after doing a lot of walking, I found another bakery.” He lifted the plastic bag in his hand. “Isn’t their logo cute? Look. Look! It’s a duck! You’re not looking, Chanikins. You have to look.”
Distractedly, Chan wandered up and down the aisles in search of Yongbok. He was nowhere to be seen. The boy hadn’t gotten on one of the shelves and nor was he tucked away in one of the shop’s many nooks and crannies. Hyunjin followed behind Chan, right on his heels, tapping on his shoulder and begging for attention.
Hyunjin said, “They had banana bread, too! Now I don’t have to go all the way to the other side of Seoul. If I can just remember my way back to that place… I think there was a lion outside. He had a face like this. Look, Chan! Look. You have to watch me make the face!”
Chan stopped walking. Hyunjin ran into him and giggled at the impact. “I wanted raisin bread,” Chan corrected him, still not paying the boy much attention. He had circumnavigated the shop in its entirety but had not seen the freckled boy. Then he noticed that the rolled-up rugs leaning against the counter were gone. Chan relaxed. Couriers. “You should have gotten raisin bread.”
“Raisin bread?” Hyunjin parroted. “I thought you said banana bread. I was thinking banana bread the whole time. Aren’t they the same thing?”
“No.”
“Silly me, Chaisin Raisin.”
Chan could still hear Woojin’s nasally voice droning on from the conference call. He needed to get back to his office. Something actually important might be being discussed. He said, “That’s why I sent you to that particular bakery. They know I send you there quite often. They’d give you raisin bread even if you mess up the order.” He finally looked Hyunjin in the eye.
“Well,” Hyunjin reached into the plastic bag he was carrying and pulled out one of the loaves. It was wrapped in pretty brown paper and smelled delicious. “This is just as good, right?”
“Not really. I’m allergic to bananas.”
This made Hyunjin frown so bad that it looked like he was about to tear up. “I’m sorry, Chan. I was just trying to be helpful. I’m helpful all of the time! I didn’t mean to-”
“I’m not… really allergic,” Chan gave in quickly, patting the boy on the shoulder. “I just want you to pay more attention. To everything.” He wondered if Hyunjin was aware of the power that his pouting face held. Perhaps that’s how he got away with so much. Perhaps that’s how he wound up worming his way into Chan’s heart. “Tell me about this banana bread.” He leaned back against the counter.
Hyunjin smiled, his mood changing instantly. “This will go great with peanut butter! That’s what the girl at the counter said. She was very nice. She complimented me on my ribbon. Said I should try… What did she say? What did she say? Cerulean . What does that mean? Is it a snack? Is it a snack better than peanut butter? It can’t be a snack better than peanut butter. There’s no such thing.” Hyunjin walked up to the counter and began to take the loaf of bread out of it’s brown wrapper. “Oh no. It got kind of cold from the walk over here. Should I heat it up?”
Wait.
Chan almost didn’t catch it. There wasn’t a microwave or oven in the shop. How was he going to…
Wait!
“I know a spell. I can cast them like you do, Chan. I watch you all of the time so I know exactly what to do. Just let me…” Hyunjin trailed off. His fingers began to glow.
“Hyunjin!” Chan lunged towards him, trying to stop the inevitable.
The banana bread exploded. The noise was like a car crash. The force of the blast knocked Chan clear off of his feet, through the air and straight into the counter behind him. He landed on the floor in a heap. His witch hat fell off of his head and flopped to the floor at his side. Fiery bits of charred bread flew everywhere, sailing through the air in clusters like a flaming meteor shower. Smoke filled the shop to the point that the fire alarm went off.
“Chan!” Hyunjin shouted in a panic as the smoke thickened. “Where did you go? I can’t see you. I can’t see you, Chan! Where are you?”
“I’m right here,” Chan said. Or thought he said. His throat was so scratchy and he was very dizzy. Chan must have hit his head. His vision was even going dark around the edges. “I’m right here!”
Hyunjin screaming “Chan!” was the last thing that he heard before he blacked out.