Shota Isekai (6) - Don't Take Candy From Strangers (Patreon)

"I didn't realize the elixir's ingredients could be so unappetizing." Cassandra seemed almost offended by the grimace on Raven's face, which would've been almost laughably cute if she hadn't been about as soft and warm as the rock under his shoe.

She lifted an inquiring brow. "No adverse effects thus far. Do let me know when and if that changes. You'd better not pass out."

The way she stared down at him had all the weight of a command.

'As if it were that easy...'

This wasn't a clinical trial involving common drugs, in which you were likely to find some nausea and minor symptoms for the first time using a medicinal substance, before everything evened out after a week.

There was an entire slew of unnameable side-effects that could come at once. For all he knew, his hair could start to fall right this moment, his insides could be dissolving, his toes might even be on fire, and he'd be none the wiser.

Still, his entire being felt as normal as it could have ever been, with a twinge of hope mixed between a little bit of surprise and expectation. After all, it was supposed to be an elixir that'd make him capable of casting magical spells... if it hadn't blown him to bits yet, Raven could at least expect a surge of magical energy—no matter how minor—to course through his veins soon.

For someone in the pursuit of power, the slightest degree of control over the arcane was an immense blessing.

Then again, how would magic even feel like?

The fantasy stories he'd read, while entertaining and worth reading, rarely covered the actual detail of how the phenomenon came to pass. Rarely did they detail a comprehensible experience that could possibly work in real life.

There was no text that Raven could recall that said 'spells make you feel this way, they feel that way', that sort of thing. Not that he expected his world's fantasy works to suddenly be relevant within such a foreign realm, but for the sake of survival, the smallest sliver of knowledge was always worth treasuring.

Cassandra placed one of her gloved hands below Raven's chin. She tilted his head up and observed his reaction keenly.

And so, the two waited together in that quiet moment.

The silence stretched. Seconds passed by slowly like hours. Then, maybe a minute had gone by.

Still, he showed no change.

"Hey. Nothing." Raven's stomach grumbled. He licked his dry lips.

Cassandra seemed slightly disappointed. Her lavender eyes narrowed on him. "Fascinating."

"Um, fascinating?"

"Perhaps, your innate talent with magic has such low levels that no change would be able to be noticed by a cursory examination, regardless of the elixir you'd taken."

That would be sad. A street rat with the talents of an actual rat. Oh, the irony...

"Oh. Wouldn't that just be perfect." He could do with some luck. "So, what does this mean to me, or you?"

Cassandra shrugged. "This result suggests either my understanding of the ingredients is insufficient to activate the effect I desired, or... no magical aptitude. Even the lowest level of affinity would've reacted within three minutes. There are many more samples to try, many other elixirs to create. The study is a lengthy process."

Her fingers trailed along the lines of a vial that seemed as black and lifeless as a jar containing the organs of a deceased monster.

"Three minutes? As in, just right now, the elixir's effects haven't actually started working?" Raven asked. "Or... is this like those weird delayed-reaction type of medicines that seem to do nothing the first few days of consumption?"

"Who knows..." Cassandra muttered, already staring at a book with an attention rivaling an eagle's. Her free hand lifted another book from beneath the desk, flipping a couple of pages.

Her thoughts had completely lost their prior curiosity, Raven could tell, as if she had already completely switched subjects in a heartbeat.

So, Cassandra really did treat the experiments as an overall source of personal interest rather than the individual lives and the fates of her unfortunate volunteers...

She could've just forgotten he existed.

So, he really had no talent for magic or whatever it was she was looking for. That was kind of a bummer, despite never expecting for magic to actually exist, learning that he wouldn't even have access to that ability made him more depressed than anything.

"Hmm... may I ask, if all the potions fail to produce results, how will you still go about paying me fifteen golds as per your previous words?"

"I'm paying you upon completion. Success or failure." The alchemist replied without looking up. "One might get the impression you lack trust."

"Just a bit, yeah." Raven pinched two fingers together to actually show how much trust he had in people.

"Heh." It could've been a cough, could've been a laugh. "Well, don't worry, rat-child. I'll keep my word. You'd better keep yours."

Rat-child...

He wondered if she'd ever call him by his name, or if this was how their relationship was always going to be like.

His stomach growled louder this time. It made his innards twist in protest. He put a hand on his stomach to calm his body down.

"Umh, is it too much to ask if you happen to have some extra food left around?" Raven asked, feeling a whole lot self-conscious doing so, especially to what was a beautiful young woman, but pride, or whatever he had remaining of it, wasn't as strong of a motive as was his growling, empty stomach. "I did skip quite a few meals."

Just today alone. 

Cassandra's gaze dropped from her books and back onto him. It was an appraising sort of stare.

"Pretty please...?" A man thirty-seven years deep into life shouldn't know a child's puppy look by anything other than memory. But a starving twelve-year-old Raven was still a hungry child, with that damned, innate cuteness.

Was he even considered cute?

And God have mercy, by the looks of it, it was a complete disaster. His attempts at droopy, sorrowful eyes were wasted effort through layers of alley grime.

"Awww..." Cassandra grinned.

Creepy...

But hot.

Fuck.

Raven didn't know why he found that creepy, slightly sociopathic smile hot. Hell, even in life, he didn't consider himself someone whose tastes lied beyond the boundary of a regular person.

Maybe the head trauma had been more serious than he originally anticipated. He sure as hell hoped the accident didn't make him forget things about himself. Like a preference for butts.

Now that, was a shame.

He blinked as he saw a hand waving in front of him, which he would've missed if he'd had that slightly out of it, distant gaze a second longer.

He shook his head. "Sorry, what did you say?"

Cassandra's smile stretched farther than the length that the laws of physics should allow.

Raven cringed.

"Would you eat... a candy? " She dangled a weird looking ball from a transparent wrapper, except this candy was white, small enough to fit inside his mouth, and it had these peculiar stripes of a darker shade.

It was as pretty as it smelled nice, not to mention it felt unusually cold to the touch when his small fingers wrapped themselves around the little object.

"Yes please."

"Be careful not to choke or bite your tongue." Her grin was back again. She must've gotten really fond of smiling in a very creepy and frightening way, he thought.

He wondered if she just hated kids and wanted them gone, and thus made her most disturbing expressions around them, while around adults her looks had to be socially acceptable.

That didn't seem probable though...

He, too, found the entire thing comical. It was the good kind of ridiculousness, the kind that made a snicker crawl from his chest.

In that way, for the first time, his grimy and filthy mouth touched that delectable looking, little candy and, as soon as it got past his lips, the flavour and sensation of the foreign food quickly spread.

"Better?"

Cassandra cocked her head.

Raven licked his lips. Of course, that little candy couldn't possibly fill his hollow belly. And at his age, hunger never satiated him for long.

"Yes, thank you... do I owe you something for that, though?"

"For something so insignificant? No." She laughed. She sounded oddly innocent, earnest. No trace of condescension or superiority. "You don't need to pay."

He nodded slowly, savoring the fading traces of sweetness.

"Alright, then. Just how often would you have me drink your experiment?"

He decided to move away from the food conversation.

"Every day. That is, if I have the supplies prepared for it. The process takes time. And sometimes, the herbs don't grow as naturally and readily as I want them to, making the ingredients for some elixirs exceedingly hard to get."

Her voice was raised in a clear note of frustration. Then she sighed, and waved him off. "Anyway, come back again tomorrow afternoon. Look out for any unusual changes within yourself."

"Anything in particular? Drowsy spells? Abdominal cramping? Metallic taste in the mouth?"

Cassandra rolled her eyes.

"All of them. Every odd symptom. Any discomfort. I must note and study the results. That is all I need from you, for now."

Ah. It was done then. This must be the signal that it was high-time for him to skedaddle.

"Right, then..."

Just as he was about to bid goodbye and leave the stuffy dungeon, the woman turned around.

"Wait."

Raven stopped right at the spot he stood.

"Hmm?"

"Here." Cassandra threw one shiny object toward his direction.

Catching the tiny projectile—a gold—wasn't difficult. But he felt slightly less comfortable holding something worth more than anything else he'd ever possessed combined.

"......?"

"Take it." She raised her eyebrows, frowning. "It's today's payment. You're so malnourished and pitiful that you could drop dead and rot in a day. Find food and shelter, clothe yourself before you infect this town with some disease."

'That's unexpectedly kind and brutal at the same time.'

"Thank you..."

Cassandra turned around, waving a hand. "Now begone."

Raven wasn't about to fight that wish. With an obedient nod, the dirty boy slowly made his way out, a coin clenched tightly in his fist as though its shine could lighten up the entire city if he wasn't careful.

Now, with some money, some luck and maybe, some hope for the future, Raven left the shop in a relatively better mood and with the feeling of an unexpected good omen that could turn things around for him.

That, at least, was more likely to be true than any crap fate could toss his way.

He thought about all the food he could eat with that, or even a warm bed in some nice inn. His smile was as quick to rise as it was to die.

Who was he kidding?

Woody was still on the prowl and Raven was still a mere child. One without even the basic tools he needed to defend himself with, nor a place in the world, nor friends to cover his back. A gold coin may not be a lot to an adventurer, but an easy steal for those that are desperate to survive the day.

A street urchin was an easy target. A street urchin with one gold coin in his pocket?

Fucking suicidal.

"I need... power."

Forget magic, this wasn't some story in which people randomly become badasses just after they discovered their magical abilities, was it? 

Raven was neither the chosen protagonist, nor did this world seem to possess the type of magic in which you could instantly cast fireballs after reading a 'how-to-do' guide in some 'Arcane Howitzer' magazine, and not have to invest years learning to do a small flame. At least, he thought so, because—fuck—what magical knowledge did he have to make such assumption? 

Still, Cassandra said he had bottom levels of magical talent. Cross that off. 

So what did that leave?

Nothing. Just some half-baked, bullcrap methods with no reliable powerup or a sure route to strength that could turn him into the powerhouse he desired in such a short time frame, before Woody, and others like him, could pounce on his neck.

Still, not all was lost. Raven briefly recalled a dojo on a certain street that wasn't all that far from here…

It was worth checking out.

After all, a weak blade cannot cut, no matter how shiny. And the irony here was that he didn’t even have a blade. 

Raven stared at the small gold coin in his palms again.

What a sad story the gold was telling... it wasn't supposed to end up in the hands of someone like him.

He smiled. 

Food was urgent, survival was non-negotiable, but power was absolute. 

Everything else was just a means to get it. 

He curled his fingers tight around the coin, eyes glowing brighter. 

‘Oh, Ashley… you’d love to see me now.’

He laughed all the way there.