Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 15 - Chapter 1.23

CHAPTER 1 STORY 23

Elaina’s Birthday

“Lady Witch. Today is your birthday, is it not?”

In the middle of my immigration inspection at the border of a certain country, the official working there put on a broad smile and looked straight at me. “Happy birthday. You are a very lucky person to have arrived in our country on your birthday.”

My, my.

“Just what do you mean by ‘lucky’?”

“In our country, we distribute these special tickets to visitors who arrive here on their birthdays.”

As he said that, the official handed me a single slip of paper. The paper, which was just about the right size to use for a bookmark, read: BIRTHDAY TICKET.

“…What is this thing?”

“It’s a Birthday Ticket.”

I mean, I can tell that by looking at it, but…

“Does it do something? Is it some sort of voucher?”

“Sure. Well, I guess you could call it a voucher.”

Then the official very casually disclosed something that was hard for me to believe.

He told me—

“If you present this coupon, you can exchange it to get one and only one of anything in this country.”

Frankly speaking, everything in town seemed to sparkle. The many tall buildings that lined the streets. The bread and fruit for sale at street stalls. Books that had just recently been released for sale, and clothes worn by proud-looking mannequins. Everything, every last thing seemed to sparkle.

“That, and this… It’s all…free?”

By the way, while I was holding my ticket, the officials all seemed to follow me around. Behind me, an official who had been waiting on standby put on the same kind of broad grin I had seen earlier and answered me. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

“Are you serious…?”

“Perfectly serious.”

The official nodded sharply.

Looking back and forth between my Birthday Ticket and the city around me, I got flustered and started to panic. The Birthday Ticket, which had been handed to me much too readily, apparently meant I could have anything I wanted in the whole city, just by presenting the ticket, and nobody would refuse me.

When it came down to it, did that mean if I were to, for example, act the part of an unthinkable villain and present my ticket to the king while saying something like “Heh-heh-heh, using this ticket, I take possession of this country!” he would simply hand over the country like “Ah, please go right ahead, allow me to transfer the country to you, my lady”? I wondered.

“…It really sounds too good to be true. I’ve never heard anything so implausible.”

I mean, really…

“Are you telling me all the people living in this country will just say ‘Here you go’ and hand over anything, just because someone presents them with one of these tickets? Or is there some kind of trick to it…?”

I tried heating the ticket over a flame and doing all sorts of other things to it, but no matter how I looked at it, the ticket was nothing more than a slip of paper, and it didn’t seem to have any kind of special magic applied to it.

“Please stop, Lady Witch. No invisible message is going to appear. Besides, if you burn it, that ticket will lose its value.” The official rushed to interrupt me. “Everyone in this country is a good person. So as long as you present your ticket, they will comply, without exception. No matter what kind of thing you want, I’m sure they will make the exchange.”

“Are you serious…?”

“Perfectly serious.”

But this ticket is a little bit too powerful, I think…

“I wonder what I should buy—?”

I was puzzled by this sudden development. For the time being, I wandered indecisively around town. But it didn’t matter how far I walked. I was simply a traveler, so I would have no way to use, for example, a house or a whole shop, even if I were to exchange my ticket for them.

But since I got the ticket, I ought to use it.

“How about I exchange this ticket for their most expensive bread—?”

I casually stopped by one of the street stalls, pointed out a piece of bread that looked well baked, and then—

“Excuse me, one piece of this bread, in exchange for this tick—”

—I was about to hand it over.

“……”

But just before I did, I suddenly had a thought.

Supposedly, all the people in this country are good people. No matter what kind of unreasonable request I make, if I hand over this ticket, they’ll grant it. I can acquire anything at all by exchanging this ticket.

……

By the way—

—where exactly does the ticket go once I’ve handed it over?

“Is something the matter, Lady Witch? Would you like to buy our most expensive bread?”

The worker popped her head out from behind the booth. Luckily, I hadn’t handed over my Birthday Ticket just yet.

“Could I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“These tickets—can they only be used by the person whose birthday it is?”

“No, no. That’s not how it works.”

“So then, in the event that I handed over my ticket here in exchange for some bread—”

“Of course, the right to use the ticket would pass to the owner of this stall.”

“……”

“The owner of this stall would get the ticket, the Birthday Ticket, that you can exchange to get one and only one of anything, as well as the right to use it. However, only good people live in our country, so probably, if you exchanged it for something as cheap as bread, he would relinquish the right to use the ticket. You would do that, right, Boss?”

The owner of the bread stall nodded in agreement with his employee.

Additionally, the worker clapped her hands together joyfully.

“I’m so happy, Lady Witch, to learn that you’re such a good person. If you were a bad person, then right about now, you would be headed straight for the king, getting ready to try to use the ticket to take possession of the whole country!”

“Well, now! Are there even people who would consider doing something so wicked? What a horrible thought.”

There stood a lone witch desperately suppressing the evil deed that had flashed through her mind earlier, as she forcibly willed herself to align with the good-natured worker.

Who could she be?

That’s right, it’s me.

“So in other words, to make a long story short, this ticket is used to distinguish between bad people and good people?”

And here I thought it was a Birthday Ticket. This is a ridiculously dangerous item, isn’t it?

“You’re exactly right. By the way, we also have a program where we give tickets to travelers when it’s not their birthday and tell them they’re our hundredth traveler!”

“Why do you do something so bothersome?”

When I asked her, the worker grinned again and said, “We do it, of course, so that the invisible will become visible.”

“So that’s my story about my birthday the other day.”

Later on, I ran into Saya on my journey and recounted the story of these events that had taken place in a strange country. It was another one of my traveling tales.

Saya nodded and agreed that “There sure are some strange countries out there. So then, in the end, what did you get with your ticket, Elaina? Based on what I’ve heard, I got the sense that as long as it wasn’t something overly expensive, they’d exchange it for anything.”

Exchanging it for something like the most expensive piece of bread wouldn’t have been any problem at all. Certainly, there would have been no issue getting any small thing in exchange for the ticket.

“Well, since it was a rare opportunity, I got one special thing to remember it by.”

“What was that?”

“This.”

As I spoke, I smoothly pulled a single piece of paper out from the book I had just been reading.

In my hand was a special slip of paper that read: BIRTHDAY TICKET.

[Publication Information] Twitter Post Story

[Author Comments]

Once again, we have a story about Elaina’s birthday. This one is a story that I put up on Twitter. By the way, I often get asked just how old Elaina is, but I think people would be shocked if I revealed the exact age of the character, so I’m intentionally keeping it a secret. The shock you feel when your own age passes the age of a character you always thought, ever since you were in elementary school, was older than you, is unfathomable, right? I experienced that with Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube.