Chapter 20: A Good Day’s Work

Chapter 20: A Good Day’s Work Three hours later Misha stood in the kitchen fighting the impulse to dunk out the half-cooked noodles and just eat them straight. He forced himself to look out the little window above the sink. There wasn’t much to see there, just some grimy pipes, and it didn’t do much to help curb his hunger. He sighed, counted to ten, then picked up his cooking chopsticks again and pinched out a few noodle bits. It was okay, mostly cooked. It was good enough he decided and began serving. Out in the living room Bran was going over his notes again, marking down the different shop locations on a map Misha had drawn up earlier. As it turned out, every single one of the wishes had to do with various shop keepers of various shops wishing for improved business. "Careful," Misha warned as he approached with two boils of piping hot noodles and soup. "Huh?" Bran turned then quickly shuffled his notebook and papers away to make room for a very late lunch. "Did your aunt teach you to make money this way?" Misha asked after he’d finished off the noodles and got ready to take on the soup. "I guess you could say that," replied Bran. "I figured out the luck harvesting bit, but the other stuff’s from her." "Why though?" "Why what?" "Why did your aunt teach you how to make a Wishing Box and all that?" asked Misha. "Because..." Bran hesitated a moment, then went on. "It’s not so convenient for me to deal directly with people. You may look at me now and think that I can speak Cantonese fluently, well, I actually can’t, not even now, and back then, well..." "So, your aunt taught you this so you wouldn’t need to deal face-to-face with people. That’s smart." Misha meant it but he also felt a measure of embarrassment from Bran about all this and he wanted to reinforce the good. "Uh, she actually taught me the Wishing Box stuff because my first business idea was to set up a booth to curse people." "A what?!" "A booth to curse people. You know those little old ladies under the bridge who curse people with their shoe heels?" "Bran, I have no idea what you’re talking about." "Okay, so there’s this overpass, I’ll bring you there some day," said Bran, "and there are these little old ladies who sit there, and you can pay them to curse someone by bringing a photo of the target and having them whack the picture with their shoes. I was originally going to do that." "Why can’t someone just do that themselves?" asked Misha after deciding that he’d leave Bran’s motivations to set up a ’curse booth’ for another day. "Rebound," said Bran, "Or karma, or call it what you like. The world has a way of making things even." "Ah..." Misha took a big drink of his soup. "That’s the other reason why my aunt taught me about Wishing Boxes. She said, there’s already enough darkness in the world, why not bring in a little light." Misha set down his bowl. "I like your aunt," he said. "Wait until you meet her..." Bran said conspiratorially. Misha polished off the rest of his meal then waited patiently for Bran to finish his. Bran was a slow eater and never seemed to have much of an appetite but that didn’t bother Misha too much. Amethyst and Helen praised him enough for his cooking that he didn’t doubt his own skills. Bran probably just had a problem. Misha suddenly remembered how Bran had collapsed on the train then admitted to being ’unwell’. Were his eating habits related to that? he wondered, but didn’t voice. He still felt bad about nosying into Bran’s business about his ’demon blade’. When Bran finished eating, Misha took both their bowls to the kitchen to wash, and Bran joined him to help dry. It was a warm afternoon with a nice breeze that meant the aircon could stay off while they went about their business. "What happens next?" Misha asked as he put the last bowl onto the drying rack. Bran took the bowl and dried it off. He knew Misha meant the Wishing Box business. "I’ve finished plotting out the shops on that map of yours so next we can have a look in the real world and see where best to put the cannister." "But what if the shop’s competitor is nearer the cannister? Won’t they get more luck instead?" "Don’t worry. I’ve got talisman to direct the flow of luck." Misha laughed. "That’s so cool! It’s like your own little electrical system." "I actually borrowed some books from the library about electrical systems when I was figuring all this out the first time." "No kidding." "Library’s a great." Misha didn’t doubt him, though he’d not spent much time in them. He preferred to be out and about. "How’d you get so good at orienteering anyway?" asked Bran as he put away the last of the bowls and cutlery. "Orienteering? What’s that?" asked Misha. "Knowing where you are, figuring out maps, not getting lost." Misha shrugged. "Dunno. It’s never been a problem for me." Bran couldn’t help but look enviously at him. Misha blinked. "What?" "...Nothing." -- Five of the nine shops that had wished for better business luck were on the same level with the remaining four being scattered around the rest of the Walled City. To avoid him getting lost, Misha volunteered to set up the luck dispensers for the latter group after watching Bran give a quick demo of how exactly to apply the talisman. "See?" said Bran as he completed the connection. It involved peeling back half of the talisman, holding it to one particular area of the cannister to get an imprint (not too dark, but not too light), then putting it back together and tying it into a round knot without creases. Misha nodded. "Seems simple enough," he said. It was not simple. After ten minutes of uninterrupted fiddling with the unmarked talisman paper, Misha finally managed to, somehow, form a connection between it and the luck cannister though he had doubts about how steady the connection was. Unlike Wi-Fi on a phone, there didn’t seem to be a way to straight up measure the connection strength. Perhaps he should call Bran to ask if... Hold on. Misha did not have a phone, and he didn’t know Bran’s phone number. The human dragon buried his face in his hands at his lapse in planning. He’d been so wrapped up in everything magic that he’d forgotten the very basic human magic of the smartphone. Then a thought occurred to him. In all the time they’d spent together, he’d never once seen the guy pull out a phone for a quick scroll or to look something up. Did Bran, perhaps, ... not have a phone? Misha crouched next to the cannister he’d just stealthily wedged between two pipes, hands frozen as he suddenly considered the shocking possibility of Bran’s phonelessness. He’d have to ask him he decided after a moment. Misha tied a small wooden charm, one nearly identical to the one on his tail, onto one of the spindly arms of the luck cannister then stood up and stretched. He’d made one talisman that needed to be deployed, and three more yet to be connected but he’d think about those once he’d finished the first. Across the passageway from him, and down a metre or two was a small bookshop that sold everything from imported manga to yearly horoscope books as well as primary level textbooks. From the looks of things, however, they would be needing some strong luck quickish: everything was on a fifty percent sale and there was a bargain bin out the front. If there was anything that screamed ’we’re about to go out of business’ it was that. Misha sidled over casually to the shop and stepped inside, acting like he was browsing for books while what he was really doing was browsing for a good spot to slip a talisman. He was wary about putting anything on the shelves - they were all on castor wheels and thus liable to make valiant journeys all over the shop - so he decided to see if he could stick it somewhere more permanent. Some people went in and out of the shop while Misha was looking around and he moved out of the way to let a pair past. "Misha?" He turned and found a pair of girls standing behind him. "Coral?" The girl, Coral, beamed. "It is you! I thought you looked familiar." She turned to her companion. "Remember I told you about the guy I played basketball with the other day up on the roof?" The other girl, a more quiet looking soul, nodded. "Hello," she said shyly. "You looking for books?" Coral asked Misha, walking beside him to check the books he was standing by. "I was just passing by," he said. "Oh, pity..." Coral said. "How so?" Coral gave a tired smile. "This shop’s run by Melody’s family." She put an arm around her friend’s shoulders. "They could really do with some customers." Melody blushed. "We’re not doing that badly..." she muttered. "Shush! I’m helping you do business." "Actually," Misha said, interrupting Melody’s protests, "I have this talisman that can bring good luck for business. You can have it if you want."