Uncle Graham

[Hayate, aren't you a magical girl yourself?]

Hayate tossed and turned in her bedroom bed. What Huo Lin had told her at school that day had truly shocked her.

She was a magical girl too?

According to Huo Lin, the reason the Book of the Night Sky had chosen her in the first place was that Hayate herself possessed magic power.

But as a child, she couldn't have had much magic power. The Book of the Night Sky had constantly drained it, until eventually there wasn't enough left and it began absorbing her life force instead. That was why Hayate had become paralyzed a few months ago.

Now Huo Lin had forcibly sealed the Book of the Night Sky and carried it with her every day, leaving it no chance to cause trouble. As a result, Hayate's magic power was gradually recovering.

Did that mean I could use magic like Huo Lin, too?

That realization had left Hayate in a daze for the rest of the day.

Huo Lin said she could teach her magic, but Hayate would need to study foundational subjects such as advanced mathematics, fluid mechanics, and quantum mechanics. They were needed for drawing magic circles, constructing magical models, and so on.

Alternatively, she could wait a while and let Huo Lin figure out whether she could cobble together a Device. Then she could use magic without having to think. All she would need to do was feed it magic power, without worrying about how to construct magic circles.

Hayate chose the latter. Although making a Device from scratch didn't sound easy, she figured it would probably take less time than learning advanced mathematics, fluid mechanics, and quantum mechanics herself.

After all, she already couldn't understand fourth-grade equations. Back in third grade, having just an X had been troublesome enough, and now there was a Y too.

She and Huo Lin had clearly been born together from the same mother's womb, yet she hadn't inherited any of Huo Lin's intelligence.

While a Device was still nowhere in sight, Huo Lin received some good news from Nohara, her editor at the publishing house.

Her Baron of the Night had begun serialization in this month's issue of Tokyo Mystery, and the response so far was quite good.

That meant she would soon receive her first payment. As long as the series wasn't canceled, she would receive a corresponding payment every month until it ended.

As stipulated in the contract she'd signed, if it performed well enough to be published in book form after completion, she would receive additional royalties.

Huo Lin never doubted the quality of Baron of the Night. Countless fans of detective fiction in her previous world had vouched for it.

It was a landmark masterpiece.

Even in this world, with its different market, famous authors, and classic novels, it could at least hold its own, even if it couldn't outshine all the competition.

Futaba Trading Company was remarkably generous. Perhaps it wanted to build a reputation among authors by making a lavish show of valuing talent. The payment was originally supposed to arrive a month later, but in the second week after the magazine's publication, Huo Lin received a notification that the money had reached her bank account.

Her first month's payment had arrived!

Twenty thousand characters had been serialized that month. At 7,000 yen per 400 characters, her payment came to a full 350,000 yen!

In those days, a monthly salary of 300,000 yen was already considered high. Earning 350,000 yen a month put her on par with a civil servant working at the National Tax Agency.

At any rate, it was far more than Editor Nohara himself earned, with his family of four to support and his thirty-two-year mortgage.

It also went a long way toward relieving the Yagami House's immediate financial crisis!

"By the way, Huo Lin, do you still remember Uncle Graham?"

"Who?"

"Uncle Graham, the British man who contacted us two years ago."

"Oh." Put that way, Huo Lin remembered him.

Not long after their parents passed away, when the two of them were seven, a middle-aged man named Gil Graham, who said he was from Britain, had come to see them.

He said he was a distant relative of their father's and wanted to raise them.

Huo Lin had immediately turned down this supposed relative with such a tenuous connection. Her memories of being an adult in her previous life made it hard not to suspect that the old man was a scammer.

Rather than rely on an old man from Britain, they were better off relying on their uncle in Haiming City.

Uncle Graham hadn't pressed the matter. He had said he respected their choice, then left.

"What, is he here again?"

"He hasn't come, but he sent us a present."

"A present?"

That was unusual. If Hayate hadn't mentioned him, Huo Lin would have almost forgotten he existed. Yet he'd actually sent them a present. Could he really be their relative?

"What's the present?"

"I haven't opened it yet."

Hayate moved the cardboard box the courier had just delivered from the entryway to the living room table. It was a little heavy. It had come through Black Cat Express, which generally transported fresh fruit, agricultural products, and the like.

So had Uncle Graham sent them some local specialties from back home? Hayate cut through the tape with a utility knife, but when she opened the box, she found things she had never seen before and couldn't identify.

"Huh?" Huo Lin exclaimed.

"Do you know what these are, Huo Lin?"

"Yes, I do. They're mithril and magic crystals."

Huo Lin took out one of the completely colorless, transparent crystals. At first glance, it looked much like glass or a natural crystal, but it was indeed a magic crystal.

It was exactly like the ones described in the Book of the Night Sky.

As for the silver ingots, they weren't ordinary silver either. Huo Lin fed magic power into them and found that it flowed through them effortlessly. This was high-quality mithril that could conduct magic power without resistance!

She now knew that Uncle Graham had to be a Mage too.

Moreover, he was somewhere nearby, keeping an eye on them through some means. That was how he knew she had recently been researching Devices and needed mithril and magic crystals.

Whether his intentions toward them were good or bad remained unknown.

Most likely, he wasn't after their lives. Otherwise, when they first met him at seven, neither she nor Hayate would have had any ability to resist.

Hayate, too, gradually began to realize something.

"What should we do, Huo Lin?"

"Nothing. If he's willing to send them, I'm willing to accept them. Now I have a way to make a Device!"

Of course, it wouldn't be a complete Device, but an experimental prototype with a single function.

Whatever the case, being able to increase her strength was always a good thing. Her trait of having infinite magic power gave Huo Lin enough confidence to handle trouble, so she wasn't particularly worried.

If all else failed, she could simply hurl the Book of the Night Sky at the problem. Without her seal keeping it dormant, the book, with all 666 pages already filled and brimming with magic power, was an outrageously powerful self-destructing bomb.

"All right, let's forget about that. We can celebrate today."

The celebration was for her payment arriving, of course.

"How about we go out for barbecue?"

"Barbecue? Yes, yes!" Hayate was all for it. "And today's Saturday, so we have tomorrow off. We can go somewhere farther away."

What child didn't like eating meat?

Huo Lin also understood what Hayate was thinking.

If they went somewhere farther away, they wouldn't run into any classmates. Huo Lin wouldn't need to disguise herself.

Huo Lin herself found it hard to say whether she liked disguising herself that way. She was Huo Lin, yet she had to change her appearance and voice just to prove she was herself.

She admitted that the feeling could sometimes be rather stifling.

It would be nice to relax once in a while.

"All right, let's go back to Haiming City, then."

Haiming City was over forty kilometers away, about an hour by train. It was the city where they had previously spent a year living with their uncle.