chapter2

  The warm afternoon sunlight beamed into the conference room of a red brick house, where it was decorated mainly in ivory with a fine long table and classy chairs. This place was Charlouette, one of the magic agencies under “Starmage” the magic association. 

  Two men were sitting on the chairs. The older one had a pair of friendly-looking small eyes with a gentle smile, who seemed like a nice person. He was Mephibo, a senior member of Charlouette.

  “You’re all good now,” said Mephibo to Enoch after bandaging him.

  “Thank you, Mephibo.” Enoch put on his clothes and looked around in nostalgia. 

  “This place never changed a bit. It reminds me of mother...Mother, where did you go?”

  Tawil, Enoch’s mother, was the owner of Charlouette, but she had gone missing. To secure the agency, Enoch, who had just graduated from the magic academy, had to take over. 

  “There must be a reason for mother’s departure. I trust her. I’ll secure Charlouette before she comes back!”

  Bang! All of a sudden, someone banged a tea cup on the table, startling Enoch.

  As Enoch looked up, his gaze met that of a furious youth, who was wearing a cute laced maid dress. The image of his muscular legs under the short dress was too spooky to look at.

  “MASTER! THIS IS YOUR BLACK TEA! ENJOY!” The youth Dagda roared.

  “Um...Thanks…”

  When Dagda was out of the room, Enoch leant over to whisper at Mephibo, “are you just gonna leave him be?”

  “This is his punishment for assaulting the principal. He should be grateful that we didn’t kick him out,” said Mephibo smiling, who was the one that had Dagda wear the dress.

  Earlier, Dagda had attacked Enoch out of his discontentment, trying to scare him away. The battle ended in Dagda’s defeat, who was now punished by Mephibo.

  “By the way, you’ve grown up, Enoch.” Mephibo scanned Enoch with a kind gaze.

  “But you haven’t changed too much, Mephibo. You’re still...special.”

  Sometimes Mephibo would come to Enoch’s house and report to Tawil about Charlouette, which was the reason for Enoch to have known Mephibo. For all these years, Enoch had been confused by Mephibo’s fashion sense. Taking today as an example, his outfit of the day was a robe with pig nose patterns. 

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect such a temper from Dagda. I was trying to stop him——

  “No you weren’t.”

  A female voice cut in as an oriental lady spoke, accompanied by a beautiful...boy?

  Enoch couldn’t tell his gender because of his overwhelming beauty, but he was more concerned about what the lady had said.

  “What...What do you mean?”

  “He let Dagda harass you on purpose,” the lady said, flipping her hair.

  “You caught me, Qingxia.” Mephibo didn’t panic but smiled.

  “Huh? Mephibo, why did you do that?” Enoch asked.

  “Although you’re the son of Tawil, we can’t just let a fresh graduate take Charlouette over. So I let Dagda test your strength. Consider that as a warm greeting. I don’t think you’d be mad, are you?”

  “That’s one hell of a greeting…” 

  While Enoch was complaining to himself, he pointed a shivering finger at Mephibo’s behind. 

  “I’m cool with it, but it seems he’s not…”

  “Mephibo! You tricked me again!” Dagda was vein-poppingly angry, but Mephibo was seemingly not taking his anger seriously.

  “I didn’t trick you. I just didn’t stop you. You should be happy about unlocking the achievement of attacking your new boss,” said Mephibo, smiling.

  “You——”

  “Xilocient.”

  Just when Dagda was about to lose his temper, Mephibo called a name softly, and Xilocient the beautiful teenager came over to subdue Dagda.

  “Let me go!” Dagda didn’t struggle fiercely as he didn’t want to hurt Xilocient.

  “No.” Xilocient answered calmly as if he had seen him through. Next second, he spoke to Mephibo, “everything is ready.”

  “Great. Let’s set off now.” Mephibo put his hand on Enoch’s shoulder.

  “Huh? To where?”

  “To finish a job of course. Xilocient and I just took it from Starmage,” said the oriental lady. She gave a look of remembering something and continued with a smile, “right. I almost forgot to introduce ourselves. I’m Qingxia. The one who’s grabbing Dagda is Xilocient. We’re both mages of Charlouette. Nice to meet you, boss.”

  “Wait a second.” Completely confused by everything that had happened so far, Enoch raised his arm and reorganized his mind.

  “So you’re asking a rookie who just took over the agency to lead you folks in a Starmage job.”

  “Exactly! You’re smart, Enoch.” Mephibo gave Enoch a thumbs up and a bright smile.

  “...Don’t you think it’s a bit too harsh for me?” Enoch was hopeless.

  At this moment, Mephibo leant close to Enoch with the same smile, but the whole thing became much more stressful.

  “You need to know that Charlouette was forced to shut down for three months because of Tawil’s absence. If this goes on, we won’t be able to pay the rent. So boss, please come with us.”

  Mephibo had Enoch compromised by taking out a stack of overdue bills.

  “Alright…”

  And that was the beginning of Enoch’s first job...