138th Spell: New Director
"Do you want to end up dead, Haru?" Rui said sternly to Haru as she closed Aka's bathroom stall door. "Not many people have gone in there and LIVED!"
"Then someone died?" Haru assumed.
"Yes, according to the story I heard. There was a young girl who needed to use the bathroom, but the other stalls were taken. And so she went into Aka's stall, but there was no toilet paper. He then offered her red or blue paper. She picked red paper and was cut to ribbons."
Haru's mind envisioned what the girl's body must have looked like afterwards and it was not a pretty image.
"After the girl's body was found, the Headmaster of the school at the time tried to get rid of Aka Manto by hiring an Onmyōji from the Imperial Palace," Rui continued. "But the Onmyōji couldn't remove Aka because of his unusually strong ties to the land of the living, so the Headmaster had no choice but to shut down this bathroom permanently. Then sometime later, a group of girls came here late at night on a dare to see if they could summon Aka.
"He gave the girl who went into his stall the same choice of paper, so she chose blue paper thinking she would be safe. But instead of bleeding to death, all the blood was drained from her body with no external wounds. Fortunately, the other girls managed to get the school's Healer in time to save her before she died."
"So how did Aka's weakness get found out?" asked Haru.
"Basically another group of kids came in here on a dare and one of them decided not to ask for paper, which foiled Aka," Hikari spoke up, having finished shaving the hairs of the Tanuki sacks she was working on. "I heard this group called themselves the Suriko, and they were real troublemakers back in the day."
Later that day, Haru and Hikari went to the Mabuki Theater as Otoma Wan had called for a club meeting via crow. Everyone was present including Muni Māru, Reika Kishi, Akaji Juro, Phāph and Phlang Prasert, and Riniri Ushū.
"How's the hair going?" Riniri teased.
"Fine, no thanks to you," Hikari said bitterly, though she quickly noticed white lines on Riniri's kimono sleeves. "But it seems like you got punished."
Folding her sleeves under her arms, Riniri said, "While Koi and Gumo had to serve detention last night, I had to make a counter-ointment to the kind I gave you. So here!"
Riniri threw a glass jar with brown stuff inside at Hikari, who caught it.
"Just rub that stuff in your hair every night for about a month, and your hair will go back to its normal color," advised Riniri. "But if you don't do that, the ointment will take longer to affect your hair."
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" Hikari asked skeptically.
"I have the recipe for it, which you can check for yourself to see that it's valid," said Riniri as she also gave Hikari a folded paper.
So Hikari looked at the recipe and briefly consulted her copy of Advanced Kampo Herbs and Spices. After checking each counter-ointment ingredient and their effects, she seemed satisfied.
"Looks legitimate," Hikari noted. "Thank you, Ushū-chan."
Feeling all eyes on her, Riniri bowed her head low. "You're welcome, Genma, and I'm sorry for what I did."
Though the white lines on Riniri's sleeves did fade, they were still visible.
"Darn it!" Riniri cursed. "I thought I could get rid of them quickly the same way that Daizō was able to."
"Maybe you lacked conviction in your words," Muni abruptly said. "Because the best liars always speak with strong conviction."
"Are you calling Daizō a liar, Muni?" Riniri demanded.
"I'm not calling anyone a liar," claimed Muni.
Before an argument could break out, Otoma slammed her Harisen Fan down as she sat crosslegged onstage.
"Okay, time to start our meeting!" Otoma announced, forcing the students to join her. After they all sat in a circle around her, she said, "Now as you all know, I'm going to be graduating Mahoutokoro by the end of the school year. So I need to pick someone who will succeed me as director for the Mabuki Theater Club when I'm gone."
"Who did you have in mind?" asked Hikari.
"Normally, we would vote for a Third-Year Secondary School student to replace me. Though none of the Third-Years in our club were interested in becoming a director."
"So I've volunteered to direct the new play we're doing as a test-run to see if I would make for a good replacement director," Akaji said.
"But aren't you graduating this year too?" said Haru.
"I would have, but my grades weren't all that great last year," replied Akaji. "So Dōmeki-sama decided to hold me back a year. Plus I still haven't decided if theater or Quidditch should be my ultimate career."
"Can't you do both?" Reika suggested.
"That's easier said than done, I'm afraid," said Akaji. "It was because I struggled to maintain both things that my grades slipped. And so now I have to decide which one I should prioritize more as a career than a hobby."
Haru could barely wrap his head around all this talk about careers and graduation since it all seemed far away from his perspective. And when he glanced at the other students that were his age, they had confused expressions as well.
"So now you know what my decision is," Otoma said as she got everyone's attention again. "As for the play Akaji is directing, it will be called The War of the Dragons."
"Wait, isn't that also the name of a major historical event in Japanese Wizarding History?" Hikari realized. "The one where two Wizarding Clans fought a big battle and a lot of wizards died?"
"Yep, the same one," Akaji confirmed. "And a descendant from one of these Wizarding Clans happens to be in the same room with us."
Suddenly, everyone looked at Haru making him feel both confused and nervous.
To be continued…