More Questions

My sprint out of the school was a blur, and before I knew it, I was sitting on the bus on the way home, breathing heavily. My erection had subsided by this point, but the memory of Aoife’s lips on mine was still very vivid. As was the image of her standing on the desk wearing only her underwear.

The thing that was taking up the most space in my mind, however, was how close I had been to doing something I would have regretted. Despite justifying to myself that having sex with Aoife was the right thing to do, I knew in my heart that it was not. I was scared, lonely, and frustrated; sex with Aoife would have solved all these problems, and more besides. The critical thing though was that it couldn’t be taken back. That moment of weakness would have lost me any chance of gaining magic powers for the rest of my life. I had aspired to be a wizard for the past seven years, and yet just after confirming that such a thing was actually possible, I had nearly thrown it all away.

I hated myself. Or maybe that wasn’t it. I was disappointed in myself. I had taken pride in my strength of will, and my independence. After all, it was kind of all I had, given my lack of friends or any future prospects. Then all it took was one scary situation with a Japanese school girl, some dickheads from the rugby team threatening to beat me up, and a hot teacher in her pants to make me throw in the towel.

Even if giving up on magic was what I wanted to do, I knew I shouldn’t be making that decision with a hard penis. It was like going food shopping with an empty stomach, if the empty stomach was an erection, and the food was an Irish woman with huge tits. In short, I needed to consider things a lot more carefully.

That was what I was thinking as I arrived home and unlocked the door.

“JAMES, LOOK AT THIS!” The sound of Hayley’s voice hit me like a forcefield as soon as I stepped inside. I reckoned that she would be a good fit for Aoife’s coven, Cappella or whatever it was called. Hayley had the ear-bleedingly loud shout mastered without needing any magic.

“Hayley, shut up.”

It sounded harsher than I meant it to, and I almost winced as I heard the words come out of my mouth, and saw my sister hang her head. She was just a hyperactive 12 year old, and it wasn’t her fault that I had a shitty day.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t need you screaming at me the second I come in the door. Give me some space.”

I had intended to sincerely apologise, but the rest of it just kind of followed.

“Okay…” Hayley walked off, holding what looked like a canvas under her arm. I guessed that was what she wanted to show me, but I had more important things to worry about. I could make it up to her later after all the current craziness had died down.

I went upstairs and shut myself in my room, where I could finally think through everything in peace. My first conclusion was that things had gotten past the point where I could handle them alone. I had been thinking a lot in the past few hours about my lack of friends, but there was still one person I could talk to. I pulled out my phone and started to type.

"Hey man, you won't believe this. I don't believe it. I've had TWO women try to have sex with me. Reiko, but she's disappeared now. And then Miss Byrne, the fit new Biology teacher. Hope you're back at school soon. I think I'm going insane and I need someone to talk to."

I sent the message to Dan, and plopped down onto my bed. Until I heard back from him, I would have to think through this situation by myself.

It was still very tempting to transfer all my magic potential to Aoife, and not least because of the means of transferring it. Was that a decision I could make now? The main reason to do it was to avoid danger from other witches who would try to steal magic from me in an aggressive way, as Reiko tried to. Other witches, and possibly wizards? Aoife had described male magic-users as exceptionally rare, which gave me some comfort, but never specified whether they could also take my potential using the same method… If so, that definitely swayed me towards just doing the deed with Aoife and being done with it.

However, I had only learnt today from Aoife about the existence of covens and an apparently worldwide community of magic-users. Aoife seemed like, on the whole, a good sort of person. Or at least, not a bad one. Then there was the person who had saved me from Reiko, whose identity was once again a mystery now that I had found out that it wasn’t Aoife. I guess there are bad people and good people, and it therefore follows that there would be bad magic-users and good magic-users. I needed to find out what that ratio was to help inform my decision.

The other big consideration was my own abilities. How feasible was it for me to turn my magic potential into actual powers that I could use? I hadn’t thought about it much so far, but Aoife had told me that I wouldn’t just wake up with incredible powers on my 30th birthday. This had initially upset me; the fundamental thing that I had believed and been aiming towards was not true. On the other hand, this opened up a lot of possibilities. Since it wasn’t just a matter of waiting for the next thirteen years, I could theoretically start learning magic now, just as Dad had done when he studied at the priory as a teenager. This was massive. It was feasible for me to use magic, not in years, but now!

The major limiting factor there, of course, was the tomes. I already suspected that they were used for learning magic, based on the entries in my dad’s journal, and Aoife had confirmed it for me. How could I get my hands on one of these tomes? I would only need it for a short time, based on what Aoife said: ‘Something that would take a witch years to learn through dedicated study, you could pick up in a couple of hours if you had the right tome to skim through.’ Perhaps I could even convince my fake teacher to lend me one from the Cappella coven, and I could learn some voice magic of my own. It didn’t seem likely that things would go that smoothly, especially if tomes were as precious as Aoife had said, but it was worth a shot, at least.

That led me to something else. All this time I had been building up to my thirtieth birthday, based on Dad’s notebooks, but now knew I could already learn magic. So then, what was the significance of turning 30?

I checked the notebooks again and started to have a different interpretation of what was written there. Dad had written very clearly that 30 is the age that a male magic-user becomes a wizard, but that if a man with the potential to be a wizard had sex before that age, then all of their powers would be lost. Looking at it another way, 30 seemed to be the age at which one could have sex without losing their powers. It made sense, as my Dad had been in his forties when he died, and I was ten. I’m not necessarily saying that the first time my dad had sex was to get my mum pregnant with me, and nor was that a topic I wanted to dwell on too much, but it seemed to add up.

The other thing Dad mentioned in his journal about turning 30 is that it would ‘unlock one’s true potential’. It was hard to know what exactly that meant, and flicking through the journal and other notebooks didn’t give me any hints. Perhaps it meant that the spells one already knew got an upgrade, like levelling up from Fire to Firaga in a JRPG?

I realised that all the information I'd gotten from Aoife prompted so many questions in different directions. Adding to that, there were still the unanswered questions that I’d already had since Friday. One key question was: Who had saved me on Friday if it wasn’t Aoife? She hadn’t given any indication of knowing the answer, and the whole Reiko situation had seemingly been news to her. Still, maybe she would have a clue of who it could be.

On the topic of Friday, I still had no idea why Reiko had waited for me to wake up, rather than taking the easier option of hopping on my penis whilst I was unconscious. I assumed there had to be some reason for it. Perhaps my magic potential could only be transferred whilst I was conscious. Did that mean that I only had to worry about being targeted when awake? That would also be useful to know, in terms of better assessing the danger I was dealing with.

The final question that I kept coming back to was, ‘Why now?’ Until last Monday my life had been very dull, and I was fine with that. Then both Reiko and Aoife had somehow found out about my magic potential and appeared in my life at around the same time. Was this an isolated thing, or was the news already out there that, ‘Hey, this British kid’s virginity is up for grabs, get it while it’s hot!’? Would many more witches be on their way?

I needed answers to all these questions, and the only person who could give them to me was Aoife. That meant that I had to go into school tomorrow, as unpleasant as the prospect was. I didn’t think that Cameron and his goons would try anything again after the embarrassment they got from Aoife. Particularly as if I did get beaten up, they would be the number one suspects based on what she saw yesterday. Even so, I was still going to have to endure the gossip and insults from the rest of the school, who all seemed to believe that I had somehow molested Reiko back to Japan.

And Lawrence! I had nearly forgotten about his sudden appearance in the biology lab at that most critical moment. If his usual ability at spreading rumours involving hot women was anything to go by, then by tomorrow morning the entire school would have a lot more to talk about. I couldn’t imagine that it would improve my popularity either…

In the end, I made the same decision as I had done the previous evening. I would go to school, but I would go straight to Aoife to ask my questions. In the meantime, I would keep my head down, but would continue to avoid being alone for the sake of my safety.

After dinner, and some other activities involving my right hand and a particular part of my lower body, I eventually drifted off to an uneasy sleep.

I woke up several times from strange dreams of battlefields, beams of light and naked women. Naked women had been a regular feature in my dreams over the past five years, but the battlefields had only started appearing about a week ago. I had been having these dreams a lot recently, but could never recollect the details after waking up. I just knew that I woke up feeling a strange combination of arousal and fear.

*

Author’s note: Yesterday was the funeral of my friend James Light, whom the main character in this story was named after. I didn’t name the character after him in his memory or anything - after all, it’s not like a whiny virgin wannabe-wizard is a particularly nice tribute for someone to have! I named the character after him long before he died, and I did it because he was one of the few friends I told about writing this story, and one of the even fewer friends who then showed an interest in reading it. So, I thought it would be a funny joke to give the main character his name, and then wait to see whether he noticed it - as a test to see if he really was serious about reading it! Unfortunately, he died before getting the chance.

I considered changing the name of my character, as in the context of James's death, it felt a bit frivolous and insensitive. Also, I find it hard to write at the best of times, and having his name there to remind me of sad things does make the process more difficult. On reflection, I decided to keep it as it is. James loved anime and general nerdy stuff, so I like to think that he would appreciate a part of him being in this story.