Lucky Charm

"Changing Stage, activate!"

Light bloomed around Huo Lin. About three seconds later, her school uniform shirt and trousers had vanished, replaced by her gym clothes.

That burst of light was absolutely essential to the changing process. The clothes-changing magic recorded in the grimoire specifically emphasized it as a crucial step; it was even a higher-order spell capable of blocking observation.

That was because clothes-changing magic essentially removed all the clothes on the wearer first, then replaced them with clothing stored in the Device.

In other words, for a second or two, she really was completely naked.

That made the "visual shielding" component of clothes-changing magic absolutely indispensable. It was not a simple flash of light, but an actual information-level barrier.

An observer could not get around it with sunglasses, for example. Even detection magic would be blocked.

The Device named "Changing Stage" had been made into a keychain. At present, it held only one set of gym clothes.

But true to its name, there was enough space inside for many more changes of clothes. Besides its "one-click changing" function, it could serve as an enormous wardrobe.

Now that the experiment had succeeded, Huo Lin could fill it with all kinds of men's and women's clothing suitable for any occasion.

Having successfully made her first Device, Huo Lin had finally finished the task that had been weighing on her mind lately, and she felt much more relaxed. Next stop, the infirmary. She could not let her teacher's kindness go to waste; she was going to sleep all day.

When she opened her eyes again, the setting sun had dyed the sky red.

She had closed her eyes, opened them again, and an entire day really had passed.

"Yagami, you're not sick at all. You came here to catch up on sleep, didn't you?"

Sure enough, she could not fool the school nurse. She had not expected to, either.

"Yeah, I've been staying up late lately."

"Playing games?"

"I don't play games. I've been working on a design project that requires some math and physics, including things like ultralarge-scale optical tweezer arrays for atoms. It was pretty troublesome, so I pulled three or four all-nighters."

That was a subject Ms. Kuriyama had never encountered, and from what she knew of Huo Lin, it probably was not something she had made up.

This academic superstar was famous throughout the school.

"...If possible, you really should avoid staying up all night," Ms. Kuriyama said quietly.

She was the teacher, yet faced with such an overwhelming gap in knowledge, she could not help feeling small.

"Yeah, it's finished now. I won't need to stay up anymore." Huo Lin put on her shoes and straightened her gym clothes. "Sorry for keeping you past your shift, Ms. Kuriyama. You could have woken me."

It was already past five, well beyond the end of the school nurse's working hours.

"You were sleeping so soundly, and I wasn't in a hurry to go anywhere."

Huo Lin glanced at Ms. Kuriyama. Having nothing to do after work at twenty was not a great sign-it meant she was single. And she was pretty cute, too.

"Ma'am, here's a present for you."

"Huh? What is it?"

Huo Lin slipped a card into her palm, then pulled open the infirmary door.

"Just think of it as a lucky charm. Sorry for the trouble. Goodbye, ma'am."

It was a tarot card.

After unexpectedly obtaining a magic card a few days earlier, Huo Lin had become interested in such things. Consulting the Book of the Night Sky, she had discovered that similar magic did indeed exist.

So she had picked a card at random from the tarot deck she had previously bought for fun and fixed a simple Luck Spell onto it as an experiment.

She had done it on a whim when making her Device had left her exhausted, as a way to take her mind off things and rest a little. She had not given it much thought.

It made a perfectly good gift. A Luck Spell could not hurt, anyway. Maybe it would even bring Ms. Kuriyama some luck in romance?

Over the next three days, Aiko Kuriyama felt that the world around her had become utterly baffling.

She found five wallets, and every time, the owner denied owning them. The police said that if no one claimed them after the three-month public notice period, the wallets would belong to her. She won the grand prize on two consecutive shopping trips to the supermarket. Every soda bottle cap she opened said "One more bottle." For the price of a single soda, she had already drunk seven bottles over the past few days, and the streak showed every sign of continuing.

Incidentally, she had not encountered a single red light on the road in those days. Even on Tokyo trains during rush hour, there always happened to be an empty seat.

This... abnormal state of affairs was beginning to frighten her.

Had she been chosen as the target of some variety show's prank? Was someone among the passersby filming her with a camera?

Then she noticed another wallet had fallen right in front of her.

She had seen it drop from the boy ahead of her just a few seconds earlier.

"Excuse me! Hello, did you drop your wallet?"

The boy turned around and paused.

"Yes, that's my wallet. Thank you."

My wallet fell out, and I didn't even notice? Interesting.

After three whole days, someone had finally claimed their own wallet! Kuriyama heaved a huge sigh of relief.

"Here you go. Keep it somewhere safe!"

The boy opened his wallet. Inside was a thick stack of banknotes, and they were pounds, not yen.

Eriol took out four fifty-pound notes and offered them to her.

"Thank you. Please accept this as a token of my gratitude."

"No, I couldn't!" She was a teacher. How could she take money from a child?

The boy looked foreign, wore glasses, and appeared to be around fourth or fifth grade.

"Please take it. Also, could you let me see the card you're carrying?"

"Card?" Kuriyama froze for a moment. She did have a card on her, but how did this boy know?

After a moment's hesitation, she took the tarot card out of her jacket pocket.

"Did someone give this to you?"

"Yes. They said it was a lucky charm."

A lucky charm. It certainly is one. Eriol could tell at a glance. As an archmage from the Age of Gods, he found magic like this rather crude.

The sort a beginner might scribble down on a whim.

But however crude a spell might be, once the entire magical reserves of an AAA-class Mage were poured into it, sheer quantity would bring about a qualitative change.

No, it might even be an S-class Mage's entire magical reserves.

With a slight alteration to the form of its magic, this thing could cause dimensional tremors.

A nasty joke? Or did they genuinely just want to give someone a little good fortune? An ordinary person couldn't withstand luck like this.

It's a card, too. Could this be aimed at me?

Could the Mage who turned Tokyo into their workshop be warning me, an outsider?

That would make sense. After all, he had made quite a stir here a few days earlier by initiating the Clow Card Trial. Although he had notified the Time-Space Administration Bureau in advance, any local archmage might well have viewed it as a provocation.

But he really had only wanted to choose a successor. He had never intended to offend anyone.

Eriol scratched his head helplessly. Neither his former self, Clow Reed, nor his current self, Eriol, had ever been very good at navigating social niceties. Yuko had even called him an idiot before.

"Sorry, but could you give me this card?" Eriol asked. Now that he knew it might be a reminder from the other party, he could hardly ignore it.

Paying them a visit to apologize was only proper.

Even a powerful outsider should not challenge the local authority. The trial he was conducting in Tokyo would continue for several months, so he ought to pay a visit.

If even a little trinket starts at AAA-class magical power, they must be at least an S+-class archmage.

Or could they be from the Age of Gods, at SS-class, just like me before I reincarnated?

There were very few archmages of that caliber. He ought to know them. Which old acquaintance could it be?