A Cohesive Team

Business at the Witch House started booming at eleven at night. It wasn't until around five in the morning that things gradually began to quiet down.

Only one or two tables of regulars playing cards remained, along with the late-night diners and a few servers sitting behind the bar. It felt like the regulars' hour had begun.

"Thanks for all your hard work," said the manager, Qin Shunying. She drew her wand and traced a simple, abstract symbol, summoning something invisible that automatically cleaned up the odds and ends and rubbish in the tavern.

As a witch who wasn't very skilled with spells, Jiang Han wasn't sure what spell it was. But judging by how simple the casting motion had been, it was probably a low-level spell—possibly the first-level spell Unseen Servant.

Unseen Servant didn't have the intelligence to clean up on its own, though, so the manager or some other witch must have modified it.

"Thanks for your hard work." "Mm, you too..." A jumble of voices rang out, some from the servers and some from the smiling regulars.

Besides Jiang Han and Chu Yujun at the bar, there had been six servers on shift today. Four had already gone home, including Du Ningzhuang, whom Jiang Han had met earlier in the break room. The two who remained were both rather lively.

One was Tang Wen, with her captivating ruby-red eyes. She had the air of a sweet girl next door, but was very energetic. Along with the other remaining server, a gray-eyed girl named Chai Ying, she formed the core of the staff's small social circle and had been very considerate toward Jiang Han. The two had also played the erhu at the Witch House before, and had developed a kind of twin-like rapport.

According to a witch named Lin Liwan, who had worked today, the two could also perform comic dialogue routines, and occasionally put on a show.

"What were the drinks of the day?" Tang Wen asked, looking at Chai Ying with those ruby-red eyes.

"Golden Rum, Golden Fort, Huaizhen, Absinthe, Green Fungus Grass, Mushroom Bubble, Spicy Sugar, Moon Sugar, Fatus, Dream Rum, Silver Rum, Dragon's Blood Rum, Platinum Rum, Magma Rum, Blood Fort, Green Vodka, White Vodka, Gold Coin Vodka..." Chai Ying rattled off more than twenty drink names at lightning speed.

"Good," Tang Wen said. Then she spread her arms and wrapped them around Chai Ying. The two witches embraced, radiating a very yuri-like vibe.

Jiang Han nearly burst out laughing. Those two lively characters really were a delight, and talented at all sorts of things, though they often complained that they'd signed a combination contract that amounted to selling themselves into servitude...

She glanced at the clock. It was past five; their shift didn't end until six. Even though they'd started at eleven tonight, the end time hadn't changed.

Still a while until the shift was over... Jiang Han returned to the break room, took her notebook out of her clothes, then went back behind the bar and opened it to read.

The long sofa didn't have much room, so Jiang Han and Chu Yujun sat fairly close together. When one person had her notebook on the table, it was hard for the other not to see it.

As she read and took notes, Jiang Han could also see what was in Chu Yujun's notebook. It was a second-level spell called Shift and Shadow. Chu Yujun's handwriting was graceful, and her English was written in beautiful English cursive.

Jiang Han glanced at the English script she used. She felt a little embarrassed thinking about it. In her previous life, she'd been obsessed for a while with Hannibal, the TV series adapted from The Silence of the Lambs. Besides the two male leads, who were practically flirting with each other, she'd liked the elegant handwriting of Hannibal Lecter—Uncle Hannibal—best. So she'd practiced a form of Eastern European, or Russian-style, cursive for a while.

Both styles were pretty, though English cursive could be a little more free-flowing.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Chu Yujun looking at her notebook too. Jiang Han lightly tapped her pen against the page, then wrote in Chinese:

—Life is nothing but waiting; the one you wait for will never come.

From the corner of her eye, Jiang Han saw Chu Yujun give a slight nod. She picked up her pen and began to write, the tip scratching softly against the page.

When she finished, Jiang Han looked at her notebook. In graceful handwriting, she'd written:

—Waiting for Godot, by Beckett

Jiang Han let out a soft laugh, then covered her face, feeling a little embarrassed.

It reminded her of being in elementary school, reading a classic and then getting caught by her deskmate writing one of its lines in her notebook. At first, it was exciting to find someone who shared her interests; then came a faint sense of embarrassment.

The corners of Chu Yujun's mouth lifted slightly. She lowered her head and wrote:

—Tang Wen and Chai Ying are so noisy.

The sharp hooks in her handwriting conveyed the quiet-loving witch's frustration... Jiang Han didn't dislike lively witches like Tang Wen and Chai Ying. Or rather, perhaps it was because she wasn't very noisy herself that she liked people with more outgoing personalities.

Jiang Han wrote:

—You don't like them?

Chu Yujun replied:

—They're just noisy. Sometimes it gives me a headache, but I don't dislike them.

Chu Yujun fell silent for a moment, then added a period at the end of the sentence.

It was like suddenly discovering that she got along with her new deskmate at school and wanting to talk about everything. They could have simply lowered their voices and whispered, but instead they had to write notes. It felt childish when they were students, but romantic when they were grown up. The pen tips scratched lightly over the paper, delicate and graceful, hazy yet clear.

As they wrote, Jiang Han suddenly felt the back of her right hand brush against something warm.

She looked over and saw that it had touched Chu Yujun's left hand, the one holding her pen.

A left-handed girl... Jiang Han gave her a polite smile. Chu Yujun nodded slightly, and without a word, they both shifted farther apart. Somehow, it felt as though that broke a spell, and the sounds of the world returned.

"Are you studying Dispel Magic?" Chu Yujun asked.

"Yeah, it's an assignment from my tutoring class..." Jiang Han had revised the model for Dispel Magic again and again. A spell model had to match one's own magical traits. Learning a spell meant studying its theory and fundamentals, then modifying its fixed model, and finally brewing a potion to store the model.

Chu Yujun turned her head toward her and said,

"This spell is rare, but versatile. Any witch dedicated to dueling has to learn it."

The duels on TV had made that clear too... Jiang Han had finally seen just how useful Dispel Magic was. Almost every witch began her killing move with it, using it to cancel an opponent's shield spell or simply as a feint to bait out a high-level spell.

It was like ball control in soccer or dribbling in basketball: a basic skill, but one that could be used in all sorts of ways by an expert.

Jiang Han nodded, chatted with Chu Yujun a little longer, and drank two of the beverages the Witch House provided for its employees. Then the end of the shift finally arrived.

She went into the break room and changed out of her work clothes, back into her black-ice-colored witch's short robe, then came out of the changing room.

Outside, Qin Shunying stood in an ornate dress, a several-hundred-piece Rubik's Cube floating in the palm of her hand. She gave Jiang Han a reserved smile tinged with a hint of madness, then greeted her:

"You can take your uniform home. Consider it an employee... benefit?"

"Mm-hmm." Jiang Han didn't think she'd ever wear a qipao in her everyday life, but free was free. She went back into the changing room, put the qipao uniform in a Witch House paper bag, and carried it out.

In the break room, Qin Shunying sat at the round table, counting the huge pile of gold coins on it.

Gold was worth quite a bit less now than it had in Jiang Han's previous life. It was easy for witches to mine gold, and Folded Spaces were rich in gold and silver ore. Some small countries might still be short on precious metals, but the major powers certainly weren't. The larger a country's territory, the more likely it was to have Folded Spaces—in fact, the only major country on Earth currently short on gold was Cannabis Canada...

"Even though we have bank drafts and paper money now, I still trust these golden coins more," Qin Shunying explained.

Just then, the break room door opened, and Chai Ying came in. The woman, with dark gray hair and a pair of deep gray eyes, smiled at them.

"Is anyone using the changing room?"

"No." "She just finished using it," Jiang Han and Qin Shunying said at the same time.

Chai Ying tugged at the collar of her qipao and asked Qin Shunying with a breathless sigh, "Manager, could I get my uniform remade? It's tight across the chest."

...Tight across the chest. Jiang Han's gaze instinctively dipped, then rose again. She saw Chai Ying's amused expression, flushed, and hurried out with the bag of clothes in her arms.

"See you tomorrow..."

"See you tomorrow, Miss Jiang Han." "Goodbye, ma'am." After Qin Shunying and Chai Ying said their goodbyes, they continued discussing the uniforms.

Jiang Han made it to the door too. After exchanging a few pleasantries with Tang Wen, who hadn't left yet, she headed out to pick up a broom from the storage room and take it home.