The Magical Holy Woman Seraphina - Chapter 9

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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
Episode 9
A black-and-white photograph plastered across the front page of the newspaper.
In front of the familiar Atelier, people in sleeping caps murmuring in the background.
In the center, an unfaithful man crying miserably, tears and snot streaming down his face.
Clear mucus hanging all the way down to his chin, buttons burst open from his collapsed posture, the soft belly bulging through the gaps……
Ugh!
Since the camera had only recently been invented, the photograph was in black and white and terribly blurred—you could barely make out that this was even a person.
Yet in that hazy image, the unfaithful man’s protruding belly alone remained disturbingly sharp.
Ugh again!
“What are you looking at, Seraphina?”
“Ellie.”
I folded the newspaper I’d been holding in half and turned around. Ellie, dressed in her uniform of a black shirt, white skirt, and white scarf, was bouncing in place.
Ellie pulled a familiar letter from her skirt pocket and launched into a story she’d already told at least ten times today.
“My eyes opened at six this morning as usual, and—would you believe it—there was this letter in our mailbox! When I opened it, it was correspondence between those two unfaithful lovers!”
Right, yes. I’d had quite a time of it last night, making that delivery to your house.
“And when morning came, I got a call from someone named Mrs. Oblonski. She’d seen the article. Told me to come back to work.”
Mrs. Oblonski is the unfaithful man’s wife. The merchant house owner’s daughter.
She became the new owner of the Atelier when Mrs. Scrooge handed it over to the Oblonski Merchant House, and she was also the one who rescued Ellie from the chaos of the affair.
“Mrs. Scrooge got charged with the Adultery Crime.”
Other coworkers chimed in as they sat down nearby.
“Of course she did. There’s no way out of it. There were too many witnesses to yesterday’s spectacle.”
“If Mrs. Scrooge had kept trying to hold on and stay at the Atelier, all those Spring Ball dress reservations would have been canceled one after another.”
“Naturally. What lady would trust her gown to a designer who might be unfaithful with her own husband?”
“So she just accepted it?”
“Mrs. Scrooge took out a lot of loans when she bought this building. So she didn’t have the means to pay the fines and alimony. They agreed to let the Atelier serve as compensation instead.”
“And that’s why I got rehired in just one day!”
“So Ellie gets her job back, and the corrupt owner Mrs. Scrooge gets thrown out.”
“Even the Manager who played Mrs. Scrooge’s lackey got fired. It all worked out perfectly.”
One coworker said this while glancing at the Manager, who was trudging away alone to gather his belongings, as the rest of us sat back enjoying our Tea Time.
Every business establishment in the Empire is required to give employees fifteen minutes of Tea Time around three in the afternoon.
For all this time, no one here had honored that rule—but now that the ownership had changed, we could finally take a proper Tea Time.
“So the unfaithful man gets divorced empty-handed, Mrs. Scrooge loses the Atelier… what about the Unfaithful Woman?”
“She’s already in prison.”
“Why?”
“Apparently she slapped a maid at the Oblonski Mansion. Said she was going to be the lady of that house.”
“And it turned out the pregnancy was a lie?”
“Adultery, assault, fraud……”
“And the unfaithful man dumped her too. He said he only approached her for her money, and that Mrs. Scrooge was the one he really loved.”
“I mean, really.”
“Anyway, we owe all of this to the Magic Saint!”
Ellie clasped her hands together and shouted.
Ellie took the newspaper from my hands and opened the front page.
[The Appearance of the Magic Saint?]
[According to reports of a person claiming to be ‘Magic Saint Sena’…]
“What is this Magic Saint business?”
“It says here. Nine hundred fifty years ago……”
“But is that story actually true? A saint, maybe, but magicians don’t exist anymore.”
“She could be a fraud impersonating the Magic Saint.”
“Yesterday was pretty chaotic here. Someone might have played a prank in all that confusion.”
“But it’s true that a letter fell from the sky, isn’t it?”
“And someone actually delivered a letter to Ellie’s house.”
“And there was a letter that went to the Oblonski Mansion too.”
“How many letters did those people end up exchanging, anyway?”
“But one thing is absolutely clear!”
Amid the swirl of opinions, Ellie’s eyes sparkled as she cried out.
“I don’t know who she is, but she helped me. From now on, I’m going to be a fan of the Magic Saint!”
“That’s right, me too.”
“Yeah. When you think about it, we’re only getting to enjoy this Tea Time because of the Magic Saint’s help, aren’t we?”
“Right. And now our quitting time will be earlier, and there’ll be no more unpaid overtime……”
“It’s all thanks to the Magic Saint. …But Seraphina, why do you keep dozing off?”
“Oh, sorry.”
I stretched with a long yawn.
“I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Good grief. You stayed up all night reading again, didn’t you?”
“Well, something like that….”
Strictly speaking, I’d been awake all night dodging bullets, but I wasn’t about to say that.
“Wipe your chin.”
I rubbed my jaw sheepishly, avoiding the eyes of my giggling coworkers.
—Question: Will you continue working at the Atelier? Now that you’re doing Magic Saint work too.
—Answer: Yes. If I don’t work anywhere, people might start suspecting where my money comes from.
Besides, it’s better to keep working at the Atelier to gather rumors circulating around.
You haven’t forgotten, right? Customers treat us staff like inanimate objects with no ears and no eyes.
This is the best place to pick up gossip.
And Magic Saint work is unstable anyway. I never know when I’ll have to quit, so I need steady income.
“But who’s that man over there?”
To escape my coworkers who were busy praising the Magic Saint and teasing my swollen face, I changed the subject and pointed with my eyes at the man who’d been going up and down to the third floor all morning, stacking several boxes at a time.
“A new hire who came in today.”
“A new hire?”
“Yeah. Well, not exactly our new hire… You know those tea leaves the Temple supplies?”
“Oh, the expensive ones?”
“Right. Mrs. Scrooge wanted to bring those tea leaves into our Atelier’s tea house, but no matter how hard she pushed, she couldn’t make it happen. Starting today, they’re supplying us too.”
“You don’t say.”
“I know, right? Funny thing is, Mrs. Scrooge probably wanted them in the first place to feed her boyfriend, not for customers.”
Anyway, so from now on that man will be going back and forth between the Temple and our Atelier supplying tea leaves.
“And he’ll do odd jobs for us when things get busy.”
“Hmm.”
I rested my chin on my hand, studying the man.
At that moment, the man turned his head toward me, and our eyes met.
Silver hair, bright sky-blue eyes. Features so refined they seemed almost saintly, yet his gaze held something defiant and wild.
He had the air of a street tough, but his bearing was aristocratic.
‘He doesn’t look like a mere errand boy.’
Look at him—just standing there doing nothing, yet he carries such grace. Like someone who’d practiced standing a thousand times over.
Arden’s like that sometimes.
‘Didn’t the man I ran into in that alley yesterday have sky-blue eyes too? Is that color that common?’
“I was so disappointed when I realized I wouldn’t see the Handkerchief Customer anymore!”
“Oh, that junior of yours, Seraphina?”
“That handsome one?”
“But he seemed pretty cold, didn’t he? The day Seraphina went on an errand for him, he was just standing there alone, so I asked if he was looking for something. But he just bowed his head and left without a word.”
“Really?”
I wonder why he did that.
I answered while still holding the man’s gaze.
I’d lost the natural moment to look away.
‘Never mind me—why isn’t he breaking eye contact either?’
I grumbled inwardly.
The man who’d been staring at me slowly smiled, one corner of his mouth lifting.
Without thinking, I clenched my fists.
‘Why is he smiling at a woman he doesn’t even….’
“But you know, sisters, the Handkerchief Customer is one thing, but this new employee is also quite…”
That’s when it happened.
“Pant-pant-pant-pant.”
Huh?
I looked down beneath the chair I’d been sitting in.
Tofu, wearing a yellow bag, was looking up at me, his eyes sparkling.
Warm paws pressed against my shin.
What the—!
“Seraphina, where are you going?”
“Just to the restroom for a second!”
Before anyone could see, I quickly scooped up the dog and scrambled up the stairs.
I ducked into the second-floor changing room where no one was around and shut the door.
“Tofu, what are you doing here!”
“I flew!”
“That’s not—!”
Not that part!
“Why! Why did you come!”
Don’t you realize how rude it is to show up unannounced at someone’s workplace like this!
But the dog, knowing nothing of propriety, was simply overjoyed.
What’s this? What’s that? Tofu fluttered his ears on both sides and sniffed about, whispering.
“Magic Saint Seraphina!”
“What….”
“There’s a new mission for you!”
Already?!

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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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