The Magical Holy Woman Seraphina - Chapter 25

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Magic Saint Seraphina
Chapter 25
Two days later.
“Ready, Seraphina?”
“Yeah.”
Let’s go.
I wrapped both hands around the Transformation Mirror hanging from my neck.
Closing my eyes, I recited.
“Money, fame, health, retirement savings, short commute, real estate, a carriage of my own, fifty billion gold free of tax complications…”
★★★★★
Magic Saint Seraphina!
Transformation!
★★★★★
In an instant, brilliant rainbow light burst forth, and my body spun in place.
After striking a few painfully contorted poses.
“How does it look?”
I checked my nails—painted a deep pink without my having done it—and ran my fingers through the golden hair that fell past my shoulders.
Good enough.
The flower petals on the floor could wait; I’d sweep them up when I got back.
“Transformation complete!”
I scooped up Tofu, who was bouncing in place, and tucked him against my hip.
“Third mission already! Seraphina! Aren’t you nervous?”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”
Still, this job was simple enough.
Break into the journalist’s house, steal the film, and leave.
Skitter’s place wouldn’t have the kind of Ancient Protective Spell that guarded Ingrid’s manor, and Skitter himself was too busy to spend much time at home, or so Rozena had said.
“According to what Rozena told me, he’s been keeping the film at his house until just before he develops it. Can’t risk the information leaking early, or he’ll lose the scoop.”
I muttered what I’d learned, moving toward the door. Tofu tilted his head from where he nestled at my side.
“But why are you going out the door?”
“Where else would I go?”
“The window!”
“…Is that a rule? Magic Saints have to travel by window?”
“I don’t know! But I always use the window!”
Cassian uses the window almost every time!
“…Thanks for the tip, but I’m walking right out the front door, noooow—”
Click.
I shut the half-open door again.
I’d almost collided head-on with Arden, who was coming up from below.
He must have been heading home from work.
“Seraphina?”
I scratched between Tofu’s eyes as he looked up at me with dark, questioning pupils.
“Okay, we’ll use the window.”
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The streetlamps were nearly all dark.
Only the full moon hanging in the night sky lit the streets as I bounded through this late hour…
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The rush of leaping across rooftops.
It felt like being a thief. I rather liked it.
Why take the normal route when rooftops would do?
How else could I move about dressed like this?
“…Here.”
I landed in a crouch on the roof across from Skitter’s house.
‘This neighborhood has nothing going for it except its proximity to the nobles’ estates.’
The fact that he lived alone, without servants, in a townhouse here spoke volumes about the size of his ambitions.
Fearless—he’d even made his home address public, asking informants to go directly to him rather than through the newspaper company.
That newspaper Cassian had given me carried it.
‘Which makes my job easier.’
Address in hand, no servants in sight.
I waited for a gap in foot traffic, then broke the window latch and slipped inside.
“So this is what he meant by ‘being prepared.'”
The lock was made of cast iron as thick as an adult man’s forearm.
But that meant nothing to me. ☆
“Let’s see. Kitchen over there, bathroom here, and that would be… ah, there it is.”
The moment I stepped into the study, I spotted a small safe displayed prominently on the desk and snatched it up.
It was supposed to require a sixteen-digit password.
I simply crushed it.
From the mangled safe, I pulled out the film.
“Easy.”
And they call this security.
Security:
There wasn’t any to speak of.
“Hmm.”
I examined the worn film canister, scuffed and scratched all over.
This little roll of film had made Rozena, an actress born for the stage, regret her very debut.
“Is this all there is…?”
It would be a disaster if she’d had prints made for a test, or if someone as lawless as me breaking through security was exactly what she’d anticipated—so she hid the real film and left out a fake one on display.
“Better search around, just in case.”
I scratched Tofu’s crown as he hung from my shoulder, then opened the desk drawer.
“Oh. She’s got ambitions.”
It was clear she’d been working the social circuit—attending social clubs and salons to build connections—and had submitted applications to several different social clubs, hoping to join the aristocratic world herself.
The results? All rejected.
Some were outright refusals; others were couched in polite language.
“The Central Men? Where have I heard that name before?”
Hearing it again, it reeked of self-importance.
I scratched out the name on the rejection letter and rewrote it.
Central
Tedious Men.
“Nothing better to do than summon reporters and gossip about celebrities, and they call themselves ‘central’… what is this?”
The drawer below the applications looked odd.
“Looks like there’s a hidden compartment.”
Hmm. I tapped lightly with the tip of my index finger.
Crack! I forced my hand through the gap in the wooden panel and pried it open entirely.
And what I found
was a bundle of letters.
“…….”
I should say, I’m not normally the sort of person who pries into other people’s letters or their private affairs.
But Skitter said it first, didn’t he?
The Right to Know. ☆
By Skitter’s logic, wouldn’t reading these letters to verify whether this reporter, who works tirelessly day and night for the public’s Right to Know, is truly an honorable person—or harbors some other agenda—fall within the scope of that very right?
I unfolded the letters one by one, arranged in chronological order.
“…Oh ho.”
“What, what, what? What is it?”
“The Anonymous Social Club assigned tasks to Skitter as a condition for joining their club.”
“Tasks?”
“Yeah. They’re planning to forcibly demolish a slum in District 10 soon……”
The club members had invested in land nearby, and apparently they thought the slum next door was an eyesore, so they wanted it cleared. But the residents refused to leave without proper compensation. So the club decided to just bulldoze them out anyway.
Yet they didn’t want to waste money on compensating so many people.
They chose to push through by force.
“No matter how aristocratic they are, if it became public knowledge that they did this, there’d be an uproar, right? So they planned to break the Rozena story at just the right time to bury it.”
A forced eviction of a slum I had nothing to do with, and the public exposure of an embarrassing secret from a popular actress.
If both broke at the same time, everyone’s attention would be on Rozena, and the slum demolition would be forgotten in the noise.
“That’s also why Skitter insisted on publishing the Rozena story specifically next Wednesday.”
That’s the demolition date.
“The aristocrats get their slum cleared without complications, and in return, Skitter gets his club membership credentials.”
“Grrr…”
“And that was Skitter’s justice.”
The frustrating part is, I have no idea which social club this is……
“Quite the detective work, Magic Saint.”
“!”
I spun around.
A man with his back against the dark wall in the corner of the study slowly stepped forward.
……
He had crimson eyes.
Strikingly handsome……
But who was he?
“Who?”
“I can’t allow you to interfere with the master’s affairs any longer.”
“How long have you been standing there?”
“Unfortunately, you’ll have to disappear here.”
“How did you know this place and track me?”
“Don’t blame me for this.”
The man’s mouth twisted into a thin smile as he reached out his hand toward me.
“I’ll send you off gently, Magic Saint——”
Crack!
“Wait, this bastard won’t even answer when the Saint is asking him a question!”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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