The Auction

The wand I made for the auction, the "Golden Rule Wand," was delivered one month before the auction. It came with a certificate of authenticity issued under Hiyori's name as the Blue Witch.

Wands by 0933 are counterfeited fairly often. It's like paintings by Picasso or Van Gogh: there have been cases where a wand made by imitating my quirks was mistaken for the real thing and sold for several hundred million yen. Certificates of appraisal and authenticity are indispensable.

My wands are high-performance, and even the ones I made in the earliest days, before I had achieved high performance, have antique value. They're luxury goods that are good for displaying and good for using.

What's more, Kyanos, the flagship example of one of my wands, remained in active use for eighty years. It's like driving an eighty-year-old luxury car all the way into the present day, and that has also helped raise the reputation of 0933's products.

Are there any other wands that can go eighty years without a single breakdown? Any wands that remain in active use without becoming obsolete?

No.

I'm the one who made a wand good enough not to break down for eighty years, so I'm amazing in the first place. Hiyori, who carefully used it without breaking it all that time, is just as amazing.

High performance, durability, and historical value.

The wands of the 0933 brand aren't merely expensive.

The Golden Rule Wand in particular even features a spell-free mechanism making its official debut. The auction organizers informed me that they would raise the minimum bid I had proposed—100 million yen—to five billion yen. In the currency of the previous era, that was equivalent to ten billion yen.

Well, I should probably trust the judgment of an auctioneer far more skilled at counting money than I am. But isn't that too expensive? I'll cry if nobody buys it.

I was reluctant, worried it might go unsold, but the auction organizers insisted that it was necessary to keep the schedule on track.

My Golden Rule Wand was inserted into the auction as a last-minute addition, squeezing in among the lots on the original schedule.

If we started bidding in tiny increments from 100 million yen, it would take an enormous amount of time. The auction organizers and participants had their own schedules to worry about. It wouldn't do for the event to run too far past its scheduled end time.

They promised that the organizers would buy it themselves if it somehow went unsold, so after taking their circumstances into consideration, I was ultimately persuaded to accept a minimum bid of five billion yen.

Looking back, maybe I was the one in the wrong for still being stuck in the mindset of the online-auction days, when I set the minimum bid at one yen.

The people attending this auction were tycoons from all over the world. Their sense of money was different from that of ordinary people. Surely five billion yen wouldn't result in zero bidders. I hoped not.

Well then.

Early on the morning of the auction, I entered the venue through the back entrance of Takamine Cultural Hall in Minato Ward. Hiyori and Mokutan came with me, Mokutan out of sheer curiosity. Since Mokutan's face was identical to Hiyori's, Mokutan was wearing a mask to avoid causing confusion.

The Takamine in Takamine Cultural Hall came from the true name of the Vampire Wizard. Local volunteers and witches who had known him while he was alive had built it to commemorate him.

Its place in society was similar to that of the Nippon Budokan in the previous era. Various major events were held there every month, including concerts, magic performances, and premiere screenings of blockbuster films.

On the top floor of Takamine Cultural Hall was a VIP room with a magic mirror covering its entire front, allowing us to look down over the venue. We were scheduled to watch the auction from there. The fact that we had exclusive use of the VIP room, ahead of oil tycoons and ranch kings alike, was proof of how highly the Golden Rule Wand was valued as the auction's star attraction.

When we reached the VIP room, Hiyori unpacked the wooden crate and let me out, then tossed me the auction catalog.

"Here. You should hold on to this, Oori."

"Oh. Have you read it already?"

"For the most part."

As she spoke, Hiyori checked behind the paintings hanging on the walls, lifted the sofa to look underneath, and tapped the carpet with the soles of her feet to check the sound. She was completely absorbed in her security inspection.

Mokutan stuck their head into the refrigerator provided in the room and cheerfully tossed out wine bottles, expensive-looking cakes, and fresh fruit. They looked like an elementary school student checking the amenities in a hotel room. Cute.

"Mii! I know this one. Roast beef. Spider-san likes it. I'll take it home as a souvenir."

"Seriously? They even stocked that? Even though they don't know whether anyone will eat it?"

While Mokutan and I enjoyed the absurdly expensive amenities in the VIP room, people began trickling into the venue. Almost all of them were dressed in suits or gowns.

Hmm. Nothing but humans, huh? Are transcendent beings not interested in auctions? Then again, maybe some transcendent beings who look just like humans had come.

"I thought the Dragon Witch might show up."

"Hm? No, she should be here."

"Huh? Where?"

"Front row. Next to Jemmy... the girl with the colorful hair."

I stood in front of the magic mirror and followed Hiyori's pointing finger with my eyes. Sure enough, there was a person with brilliantly multicolored hair in the front row. She was a fairly elderly woman, and a red-haired woman was sitting beside her, sprawled arrogantly in her seat.

The redhead was a woman in her thirties with a slovenly figure. Despite wearing a tracksuit top and bottoms, she had piled on glittering necklaces and rings, making her entire body shine. She rudely called over an employee, said something to them, and then had her mouth covered by the colorful-haired old woman beside her.

The atmosphere she gave off was incredibly Dragon Witch-like. But she was human. Huh?

"That's her? Why is she human?"

"Because a dragon's bulk wouldn't fit through the entrance. Didn't you know? That's the Dragon Witch's natural form. Her Race was probably Shapeshifter. She merely turns into a dragon all the time. Her original form is that one."

"Ah... I kind of remember that. Or maybe I don't."

Come to think of it, when that woman kidnapped me long ago, I vaguely remembered her turning into a human and then into a dragon. The Dragon Witch wasn't even a dragon, despite having that name. Then again, the Blue Witch's skin wasn't blue either.

Zaizen-san, her adjutant back then, must have passed away by now. I wonder if that colorful old lady is her current adjutant. I was a little worried about whether she had the Dragon Witch under control.

"Hey, Hiyori."

"I understand your concern, Oori. Jemmy is with her, and I don't think she'll try to rob the place in broad daylight. Shall I apply a little pressure?"

"Please do."

Hiyori aimed Kyanos at the Dragon Witch through the magic mirror, and the Dragon Witch immediately toppled backward out of her chair.

She scrambled across the floor, hid by the old woman's feet, and looked up at us while loudly complaining about something. Hiyori snorted and shrugged.

"She says, 'Don't scare me! Pay damages!'"

"She can hear us from this distance? Lip-reading?"

"No. I can generally understand what the Dragon Witch is saying. These days, she's been staging accidents and shaking people down for their treasure. 'Pay damages!' is her favorite catchphrase lately."

"That's the absolute worst. She hasn't progressed at all."

As people I'd known from long ago passed away and so much of the world I remembered changed, the Dragon Witch's total lack of progress had come full circle and become reassuring.

You lousy lizard. You're supposed to be strong, so why are you such a small-timer?

As I watched the venue from above, the seats gradually filled.

In the spacious main hall of the cultural center, chairs had been arranged in neat rows, and famous tycoons were taking their seats.

Terrifyingly, they were all chatting away with nearby participants, drinks in hand.

There wasn't a single person sitting silently by themselves without talking to anyone. It wasn't as if they were all friends, but every last one of them wore a smile and chattered away. This was what they called "socializing."

Yikes. What kind of hell is that? Good thing we're in the VIP room. If I went down into the audience, I wouldn't have enough lives to survive it.

While I watched the humans out of a morbid curiosity, the venue eventually filled completely, and the auction began soon afterward. After a brief greeting from the organizer onstage, the first lot was immediately brought in on a cart, and the bidding began.

According to the catalog in my hands, the first lot was the original first printing of "Shooting Star Stair," the first collection of magic-language poetry by Walt Myers, the poet who represented the twenty-first century.

Walt Myers was a magic linguist, a historian, and a poet.

He used the magic language to lyrically sing of historical events after the Gremlin Disaster, great figures, and changes in culture and customs.

His influence on theater and film was also immense, and Walt Myers's accomplishments played a major role in magic language being adopted as the universal language. The Transcendent Certificate Hiyori carried was written at length in magic language as well as Japanese, which could also be called an influence of that poet.

He was one of the many great figures who had been born and died while I was dead.

The bidding started at ten million yen and gradually climbed, quickly surpassing fifty million.

Hmm. So it immediately goes to about five times the minimum bid?

Of course, it depends on the item, but if the Golden Rule Wand's minimum bid was five billion yen, then by simple calculation it would reach twenty-five billion. That's on the scale of a small country's national budget.

Could a single wand really acquire enough value to buy a country...? It might not be a dream after all.

The tycoons offered obscene amounts of money for a single book, and the first lot of the auction—the original first printing of Walt Myers's first magic-language poetry collection, 'Shooting Star Stair'—sold for 81.5 million yen.

That's not a price any book should command. If this is the price they're paying for the appetizer at a restaurant, I can only look forward to the price they'll put on the Golden Rule Wand that will bring down the curtain.

The next lot was another book: the first edition of a collection of fragments of obscure epic poems, published in '35.

The third lot, the Dragon Witch's leg bone, was purchased by the Dragon Witch herself without regard for the price.

The lots were broadly grouped together as curiosities, and the catalog included such items as an "unopened iPhone 15 with warranty" and a "complete collection of old and new Japanese and American currency." It was fairly interesting just looking through it.

The bidding war over the "complete signed transcript of the '24 Tokyo Witches' Gathering" grew heated enough to make Hiyori half-rise from her seat. By contrast, the ice cream from the previous era excavated from an Antarctic base fetched a rather unimpressive price.

There were plenty of things whose value I didn't really understand.

The albino female Dun was sold for what seemed to me an absurdly high price, and I didn't even know what Nectar was, so the bidding ended while Hiyori was explaining it to me. Apparently, aging a magic-power recovery potion until its addictive properties and restorative power disappear turns it into a high-end liquor with a distinctive flavor called Nectar. That was news to me.

The auction continued through one lot after another, and when the offerings reached the halfway point, I started to feel like going to the bathroom.

It looked like there was still a long time to go before my wand came up, so I got to my feet to use the restroom for a moment.

Hiyori stood up with me.

"Ah, stay seated. I'm just going to the bathroom for a minute."

"I'll escort you."

"To the restroom...?"

So going to the bathroom together wasn't just a thing girls did.

Was this a, "I'll come to the bathroom with you, Oori-kun!" situation?

No, thank you. How old did she think I was?

"I can go to the bathroom by myself. Do you really think kidnappers are going to attack this venue?"

"I don't think it will go that far. However, caution is never a bad thing."

"I really don't want you following me to the bathroom. You wouldn't want me following you to the bathroom either, Hiyori."

"That... well, no."

While I searched for words to persuade the reluctant Hiyori, Mokutan crawled out of the classic fireplace at the edge of the room, where they had squeezed themselves in and curled up, and spoke energetically.

"If you're going to the bathroom, I'll come too!"

"Taking a pet to the bathroom too...?"

"I'm collecting toilet-paper tubes. One more and I'll have ten. I want to show Fuyou."

Mokutan's sparkling eyes and extreme elementary-school-student energy warmed my heart.

They absolutely just wanted to collect them and had no plans whatsoever for what to do with them afterward. Mokutan was so cute!

"All right, all right. Then let's go together. Mokutan, you're infiltrating the women's restroom. If there are any tubes in the men's room, I'll give them to you."

"Mimimi!"

"Hiyori, that's okay, right?"

"...Mokutan, make sure you protect Oori properly. And come right back. If you're not back in ten minutes, I'll come looking for you."

With worried Hiyori-mom watching us go, we left the room and set out down the corridor.

Even from the corridor, we could hear the rumble and cheers from the auction hall, which gave the place quite an atmosphere. We hurried to the restroom so we wouldn't run into anyone, and when we came back out, Mokutan emerged from the women's restroom happily holding two toilet-paper tubes.

"Oori, I found two! A great haul. Two plus nine makes eleven!"

"Mokutan can do addition! You're so clever!"

"Mimimi. I'm cute, but I'm clever too. I can do column arithmetic."

"Seriously? Good for you."

As I patted Mokutan's head, impressed by how much smarter they were than I'd expected, I suddenly noticed a moving shadow at the edge of my vision.

I looked over and saw a single white stoat scampering down the T-junction at the end of the corridor.

"Professor? Professor!"

I called out and waved, but there was no reply. The stoat didn't turn back, either.

Hmm?

Professor had said he wasn't going to attend the auction. Had he changed his mind?

Well, Professor had entered a book too, so perhaps, like me, he had come to see what price it would fetch.

Thinking we'd have a quick chat, I took Mokutan to the end of the corridor and peeked around the corner to see where the stoat had gone. It was a dead end.

Well, strictly speaking, it wasn't a dead end. A massive, heavy metal door with a sign reading "Storage" stood at the end of the corridor, with a signboard beside it reading "No entry except for authorized personnel."

But the stoat was nowhere to be seen.

That's odd.

It seemed impossible for a stoat to open and enter through such an enormous, heavy-looking door...

Where on earth had it disappeared to?

"Professor? Hellooo."

I lifted the carpet laid across the corridor, but the stoat wasn't hiding underneath it.

As Mokutan and I tilted our heads in confusion, voices came from beyond the storage-room door.

It wasn't just one voice. They were talking.

Could it be...? A secret rendezvous between a kappa and a stoat...?

Then again, they might simply be talking with an auction employee.

"Mokutan. Shh."

"Mimimi. Shh."

I signaled to Mokutan to be quiet, pressed my ear to the door, and listened closely to the conversation inside.

Then I heard three voices that sounded like those of young boys.

"You're late, Ode-cchi. Nobody saw you, right?"

"S-sorry. I've never run down such a long corridor before."

"Come on, Acchan. You almost got spotted by a security guard too."

"Don't underestimate my legs. They're fast. Even if they spot me, I'll leave them in the dust. But you, Bokkunn—what's taking you so long? The auction's going to end!"

"We're picking out treasures small enough for us to steal. We can't steal something too big and carry it away in these bodies, can we?"

The three boyish voices chatted away as they made rustling noises inside the storage room.

I kept my ear pressed to the door and stared with my eyes wide in shock.

The one inside didn't seem to be Professor Ohinata.

Judging by the conversation, there were probably three stoats inside.

What's more, the three of them seemed to be attempting to steal the treasures, despite being reckless enough to risk it.

Professor wasn't the only one who could transform into a stoat. It was certainly possible.

But I never imagined something like this would actually happen.

Oh, crap.

Three stoat thieves have infiltrated the storage room of the auction venue!!