Chapter23
“Fairy Accessories”
“Hey, Fosu. How did you find the magic wand?”
“Grandma said it was over there,”
Fosu replied, pointing toward the cabinet.
“Eh? Your grandma’s still around?”
Ruri looked around the room.
“Is Grandma still here?”
“No. She’s gone now,” Fosu said, glancing at Ruri.
Then why didn’t she move on after telling us where the compact was?
Ruri sighed.
“Make sure you keep altering the video feed from this place from time to time, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because of Fosu… and because it would be a problem if people ever found out about you all.”
“For now, since we come from the Fairy Stone, humans shouldn’t be able to see us. But since Fosu’s human, we’ve covered him with a concealment veil.”
“Then for Fosu’s safety, keep it that way.”
“…If that’s how it is, I suppose we have no choice,”
Morga said, munching on sweets.
Exhausted from thinking, Ruri crawled over to the tatami room and lay down on her back.
Ishibashi watched the fake surveillance footage and muttered,
“Come to think of it, that woman was talking to herself, wasn’t she? Last time, she jumped into the tatami room and just rolled around. Even now—look—she’s holding chopsticks and pretending to eat, but there’s nothing on them. Drinking beer and chatting with the air, laughing all alone… creepy, right?”
He gave Takagi a wary look.
The current footage showed Ruri sitting in front of the TV.
“Guess you start going a little crazy after living alone for so long,” Takagi said.
“So you’re the same, huh, Takagi-san? Divorced and all—do you talk and laugh to yourself at home too?”
“Don’t act so smug, Ishibashi-kun. You’re single as well, aren’t you?”
“I have a girlfriend, actually,” Ishibashi said proudly and bit into a slice of delivery pizza.
“Still, where do you think those ‘Three Sacred Treasures’ are?”
“No idea. We don’t even know what they look like. But according to the higher-ups, the old man used them for fortune-telling.”
“Fortune-telling? Like with a crystal ball?” Ishibashi leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling.
“They say he used some kind of gem—something like a precious stone. Supposedly, even the minister got his current position thanks to her divinations. That’s why everyone’s after those Three Sacred Treasures.”
“But even if someone found them, they’d be useless unless they knew how to use them. Unless they’re, like, magic stones or something. In that case, it’s not just the minister—everyone would want them. I sure do; I’d love to be rich!”
Ishibashi laughed loudly, washing down his pizza with cola.
On her next day off, Ruri had the fairies make gemstone accessories.
Since gems could pop out endlessly from her magic wand, she could produce as many as she wanted—real treasures from the Kingdom of Jewels.
Because of traceability issues, they couldn’t make fine jewelry for sale, but accessories would be perfectly marketable as soon as they were finished.
The first thing Flare made was a crown.
“This is impossible! That’s like a national treasure-level piece!”
Ruri stared, dazzled by the sparkling crown. Flare smiled and showed her an image on a smartphone.
