Alkimista (Alchemist)

As she lay unconscious on the grass, Noe’s face was much more peaceful than it had been a few minutes prior, but it was still perturbed. She winced, rolled her head to and fro, kneaded her brow; anyone could have guessed that she was having a bad dream.

Meanwhile, Justo, as we shall call him &c., was making a face similar to Noe’s while squinting at his phone, back slouched against the street lamp that he had filched the steel for the baseball bat from. Some messaging application was open, on the current screen of which one could see several messages from Justo himself.

>よっ
“hey”

>今、忙しい？
“you busy right now?”

>時間あったら電話してくれ
“call me when you have a sec”

The last of these was sent three minutes prior. Not even read. One could easily assume any kind of relationship from these messages, but it was worth noting that he was typing in Japanese, rather than Satsuman, as evidenced by the fact that there was not a single Latin letter to be seen here. And, whoever the recipient was, they were close enough to Justo that he could take a casual tone with them. A far-flung relative? A colleague? A long-distance relationship?

>ケース見つけたかも
“think i found us a case”

>怨霊のな
“an onryo case”

>たぶn|
“i thin|”

GASP!

Before Justo could finish this last message, the sound of Noe rousing herself awake brought him back to the so-called case at hand. She sat up, clutching her chest, trying to catch her breath. Justo noticed her free hand trembling. Whatever she had seen, it must have been terrifying.

“Wh—Where am I…? What time is—”

As she took inventory of her surroundings, she inevitably spotted Justo standing next to her. She jumped so far back she nearly collided with a tree nearby.

“Y—Y—YOU!” she cried out, while pointing at the boy. “What did you do to—“

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” exclaimed Justo, sticking his open hands out in an attempt to calm her down. “Easy, easy! You’re in the exact same place you were before.”

“Wha…?” Noe took a closer look. Off about ten meters or so she spotted those familiar benches, one of which she had been seated in until…

“…Did I pass out?”

“Yeah,” answered Justo, with a hint of remorse in his voice but a toothy grin on his face. “My fault for that, too. On second thought, maybe grabbing you like that was a bad call.”

Noe frowned upon being reminded of that fact.

“You’d better have had a good reason for doing that,” she chided him.

“Well,” said Justo. “I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. Which do you wanna hear first, donzera?”

“…Donzera?!”

“Well, you are a donzera, aren’tcha?”

(A note should be made here that, while the word that donzera was derived from had become a fossil in Portuguese, donzera was still in regular use here in Satsuma, alongside don, dona, and a few more titles. It was effectively the same as calling a young girl “miss” or “lady”; polite in most cases, but strange and a tad rude coming from the mouth of a boy around her age.)

“Unless you wanna be called somethin’ else?”

“…Noe. My name’s Noe.”

“Noe, huh? Like ol’ Noah in the Ark, taking the animals two-by-two?”

“That’s a nice thought,” Noe said with a sigh, “but my parents really wanted to name me Noel ‘cause I was born on Christmas Eve. They just dropped the ‘l’ ‘cause it was too difficult for them.”

And yes, that was the truth.

“Ha-ha!” guffawed Justo. “Well, if it’s any consolation, my name’s only Justo ‘cos I was born on his name day—November 10, by the way.”

“Justo…” echoed Noe. For a moment, she forgot that this was this same boy who had tailed her, pestered her about wanting to “help” with her “curse”, and then detained her when she tried to leave. Even his name did not seem to suit the reckless personality he had. But he did not give her the chance to linger in that moment.

“Right, so the good news is…you weren’t out for that long.”

Oh, right. I should probably check what time it is, thought Noe. She pulled out her phone, and…looked back up, terror painted across her face.

“You think twenty minutes isn’t ‘that long’?!” she burst out, frantically pointing at the lock screen.

“Easy, easy,” countered Justo. “That’s where the bad news comes in…you were right about having somethin’ up with your soul.”

“Oh, God…” said Noe, as the panic was replaced with a different, deeper kind of anxiety. “What did I do…?”

“Well, ah, first you… Actually, you just wanna watch the video?”

“Video?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve got a camera on me at all times, see,” said Justo as he took his shades off and tapped on a small reflective lens on the frame. “Just finished downloading the footage, too.”

“W—Why do you have a body cam…?” Noe asked.

“‘Cos, I…my line of work’s dangerous.”

“O—Okay…”

Noe finally got up to her feet. Justo shared his view of his phone with her and pressed the play button.

>“Kill you…”
>CHESUTOOOOOOOO!!!
>*running footsteps*
>CLANG!
>CHESUTOOOOO!!
>*more footsteps*
>CLANG!
>CHESUTO!
>CLANG CLANG CLANG!

“So, whatcha make of it? …Noe?” Justo turned to look at the girl, whose face was just as white now as it had been in that video and who was profusely crossing herself.

“Hailmaryfullofgracethelordiswiththee…”

“Noe? Snap out of it, Noe!” Justo exclaimed as he waved his hand in front of her face to bring her back from her trance.

“…Sorry,” said Noe. “But I believe it.”

“Really? Y’dont think I just faked it?”

“No. That scream I made there…I don’t know what it means, but it’s the same one I’ve heard in my dreams. And, er, glad I didn’t hurt you, but what kind of demon would just make me randomly attack people? And…where did I even get that sword from?!”

“You tell me,” said Justo with a shrug. “Looked to me like you just pulled it outta nowhere.”

Noe grew all the more perplexed, but also curious as to where this sword was now, if it was still around. She looked all about her before spotting, on the other side of the street lamp, a chunk of concrete that looked suspiciously sword-shaped and sword-sized. She pointed it out to Justo.

“Is that…?”

“Ahh, yeah,” replied Justo. He walked over towards the slab, and Noe tagged behind him. “This…is what happens when I don’t wanna touch something.”

“You…You pour concrete over it…?!”

“Even better.”

He squatted down again, rested his palm against the unpolished surface, and—CRRRRIK! The concrete fissured, and then disintegrated completely. Though still covered in dust, one could see the saber’s gleam poking through.

“H—How’d you do that?!” exclaimed Noe.

“Well,” said Justo, getting back up on his feet, “since I’ve already used it on you, I figured I’d be obliged to say this, but…I’m an alchemist.”

“An…alchemist?”

“Uh-huh. Ever heard of us before?”

“Sort of…but isn’t alchemy really old and outdated?”

Justo coughed once, twice, three times.

“I might say obscure’s a better choice of words,” he replied, “but you’ve just seen what it can do, haven’tcha? Plain ol’ chemistry can do a lot, but the real deal shines when you’re in a pinch. I wouldn’t ‘a been able to trip you up without changin’ the balance of water between the air and the soil, for example. Oh, and—” he pointed to two lumps of steel laying on the brick, once part of his impromptu bat. “Improvised weapons. ‘Borrowed’ some steel from that street lamp back there.”

“…Right,” said Noe. “So alchemists…magically control elements and stuff?”

“If that’s how you wanna think about it. You’re takin’ this with an awful lotta stoicism, by the way.”

“Not the weirdest thing I’ve learned today, I guess. So, what about this sword?”

Noe bent down to pick this up.

“…WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT!”

As she went to take it, much to her surprise, the boy hollered at her to stop, waving his arms out in front of her. But he was too late; by the time Noe had noticed these, her hand was already wrapped around the saber’s hilt. Once he saw this, he arrested himself and loudly cleared his throat again, while Noe held the thing up to examine it.

“‘Scuse me. I thought you might, ah, hurt yourself with that. Not from cutting yourself, but from that thing’s composition. For whatever reason, it’s got a lot of fire and sulfur in its makeup.”

“…Fire and sulfur?!”

“Yeah. Not the kind of fire and sulfur you’d think of, I mean, but substances we classify as fire and sulfur—destructive and corrosive matter. I nearly burned my hand on that thing myself, just by touching it. Also why that concrete disintegrated so easily.”

“Hmm…”

Seemingly not satisfied with that explanation, Noe looked back at Justo for a moment.

“‘Ey, what’re you do—YEOWWWW!!!”

She had taken Justo by the wrist and stuck the sword’s handle into his hand, to achieve the result he had just described. Noe even saw his palm turn a scalded red.

“Hooooh!”

“Thanks,” said Justo, rubbing his hand. “Now, as for why that imbalance don’t affect you…”

“…My demon?” Noe answered, returning them to the heart of her problem.

“I think so. But I wouldn’t exactly call what you’ve got a demon, either. I think it’s more likely to be just an angry, vengeful spirit—an onryo. They tend to do nasty things to the living sometimes, too.”

“As in…a ghost?”

“In most cases, yeah.”

“Okay, so how is alchemy supposed to—“

VVVVVVT! VVVVVVT!

Justo’s phone could be heard buzzing again. He pulled it out of one of his pants' many pockets, glanced at the screen, and spoke to answer.

“Sachiiii!” he greeted his caller. “What’s good? How’s it hangin’? …Hm? Right, sorry, Godoh. …Godoh Senpai? Eesh, talk about a mouthful. …Fiiiiine. Anyways, what were you up to? …Ahh. ‘Nother meeting with your manager, huh? …Nah, I just figured you’d be in class or something—oh, right, the case. It’s a girl, about our age. Goes to the same school as me, pretty sure. That app y’all made for us picked up her curse first. She got freaked the hell out when I tried to question her, which prolly made her more vulnerable to gettin’ possessed. She summoned this huge-ass sword outta nowhere and got this crazy inhuman strength all of a sudden; started screaming her head off too. …Yeah, prolly pumped her full of adrenaline or something. Anyways, she’s better now. Yeah, not hurt or anything. …The sword? Oh, yeah, it’s still here. I’ll send you the analysis later. Anyways, I just wanted to see if you were… Oh? Y’all are coming out here next? Right, right, sorry for forgettin’. Monday? Monday night? Works for me, I’ll get back to you on what she says. All right, see ya. Yeah. Adeus!”

Justo hung up the call.

“Wh—Who was that you were talking to?” asked Noe. “Some kind of psychic? Can they help me?”

“Sorta, but better,” said Justo. “She’s an onmyoji.”

Noe’s head was now becoming quite full with all these new concepts she had to remember.