*
He breaths out in relief as he finishes another batch of decent quality products. His hands trembled under the weight of his heated tongs as he gently sits it down by the side, wiping the sweat off his temples from a good day's worth of hardwork. He had work on making some metal tools before The Great Disaster as an amateur hobby, not expecting it to have become his full time occupation.
It was even lucrative due to its constant high demand. Someone out there is always breaking their eating utensils and yearning to buy the next one. He had even gotten used to watching the wistful expressions of customers looking to replace their modern utensil, only for them to find his beautiful works of art and widen their smiles in satisfaction.
As he carried his tools to the back of his shop, walking past his countless cooking pans that hung like sleeping bat's, they resided over tables holding large straw baskets, similarly containing tools like knives and soup ladles, he sheepishly placed his new basket of chopsticks down. Despite the post apocalyptic situation, he felt that now that more than a year had passed since The Great Disaster, perhaps there would be some customers who want to use proper metal chopsticks again.
Sometimes he would look outside to see The Rising Knight Order members patrolling the streets in their casual get up. No matter how many times they pass by, he would recognise them at a glance. Even with civilian clothing meant to blend a person into the general public, their eye catching hair colours and stunning looks were a surefire way to give them away.
It sometimes overlapped with his very first impression, stepping over the rough gravel floor with almost no sound with as much grace as a feather, but carrying strength that brought an unfathomable burden in their fist. From those who brought rays of hope during The Great Disaster, to those that work tirelessly to maintain the peace after. It would take perhaps a century to reestablish the law back to its original state from modern times and build a force capable of enforcing it. But for now, the duty falls onto the magical girls to maintain order.
After The Great Disaster, there was a massive outbreak of monsters. The previous generation of magical girls practically dropped like flies until the next generation awakened stronger, out of a necessity to defend humanity. The S grades and God magical girls also came out of hiding then, saving entire cities and building loyalty.
It was a crazy nightmare that was blanketed with a new hope. Today, most others wouldn't acknowledge the outbreak. Rather, who would want to remember such a horrifying thing anyway? The grotesque sight of magical girls being torn apart by monsters, eaten atrociously with their flesh peeled off into vivid pink strips, then abandoned like garbage.
"Anyone in there?" (?)
Catching the demanding calls of a regular customer, he puts away his hammer into his apron at once and steps out of his workshop. His temples coated with sweat, his cheeks stretch to present his greedy business face.
" Coming!" (Harald)
Arriving at the counter, he comes face to face with the regular, Willen. She frequently arrives to place orders for weapons. That was the hidden side of his shop, only revealed to those with connections. Her chilly expression looks on blankly at his, there was no smile in sight. Sometimes this disposition of hers combined with her beauty had induced an urge in others to see her smile.
It was akin to grasping at the moon's reflection in a body of water, an unattainable gem, it's status only making it more desired after. As she opened her lips, pursed and ready to voice her order, it felt like the air got chillier. Herald had seen her enough times that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that they were well accounted and highly amicable to each other. Though, in another perspective it was purely a business relationship.
"I need to replenish my stock of daggers, I'll buy a single box of 10 and be on my way." (Willen)
"So the usual type then?" (Harald)
"Yep." (Willen)
Their transaction was flawless, who knew how many times they've done this already. It was not an exaggeration to say that she kept his income afloat during some months. When everyone was going through a bad harvest, he would inevitably be affected as well. That was the kind of life that people led here, even in this dense urban jungle everyone's livelihoods were interlinked like a village's.
She had time to kill, so she made some small talk. They've met years before The Great Disaster started and simply reunited after.
"You seem quite used to Sanctuarian now. I remember when you first struggled, fufu." (Willen)
"Someone had to tend to the shop... Also, don't magical girls have a higher learning speed?" (Harald)
She raised her eyebrows in a rare show of expression, breaking the time streak of her pokerface for a miniscule transient moment. Regaining her composure, she decides to inquire on it anyway. Rumours on magical girls weren't exactly rare, fear does a really big number on anyone's senses. She was once a human, so she would naturally sympathise.
"...Where did you hear that from?" (Willen)
"...? I asked one of the other magical girls. Back when the disaster was still recent and chunks of earth rose out of the ground like spikes, one of the magical girls helping with the refugees told me so when I asked. " (Harald)
"... I see. Well, I'll be going now. " (Willen)
She left promptly, turning on her imaginary heels as she slipped out of the forging shop. The exterior was a plain grey wall with a wooden front door. On the upper half of the door, glass has been fixed in with a black checkered frame and a sign that indicated the shop's opening status. Above the door was a huge sign that brandished his name and wares.
The inside had poor ventilation much like the other shops, despite the increasing accessibility of cheaper windows and how it is being produced more each day than the day before, most shopowners tend to avoid windows entirely or had built extremely small ones to avoid robbers from breaking in. His shop was no different, but he could never goet used to the conditions, but he endured through it with his forged fortitude as his living depended on it.
Willen's look of surprise stayed fresh in his mind, retained by his own sense of shock. She had never moved her eyebrows or lose her composure tot hat extent before. He knew that it had something to do with what he said. In other words, something he mentioned had induced it. It was hard to notice while in the middle of the flow of a conversation, as if he was washed downstream in a river, and identifying it would involve being upstream.
His memories fade away like ash blown by the wind, dispersing away into the distant clouds. Dismissing his fickle thoughts, he brushes away the meaningless queries in his mind with his rough hand, his skin riddled with the calluses of hard work. There was no file or skin care to take care of those, not that he would be bothered to clean up his hands. After all, he would be hammering away at his anvil everyday, if he shed off the calluses he could shave off another layer of skin and injure himself during work.
He closes up his shop and heads upstairs, taking out keys that he had immaculately crafted on his own to unlock the entrance to his apartment. He lived on the second floor of his shop, so his commute was instant and there wouldn't be any worries like safety or restroom needs. A day passes, and before long, months passed as well and a new checkpoint has been reached. It was the new year of the new calendar. 1 year had passed since The Great Disaster.
There were those that still used the old calendar, but the majority of people used the new one to distance themselves from The Great Disaster. Their fear ran deep. Enough to justify the irrationality in thinking the old calendar would cause another disaster to occur.
"From fear, new things are born." (Willen)
Back then, she understood why the stranger magical girl told Harald that magical girls could learn Sanctuarian faster. It was the new common language, brought about for a similar reason to the new calendar. It also helped sped up administrative processes in the sanctuary. Practically everyone had become displaced from their country, making The Sanctuary of The Eye God a continental mishmash of many races, religions and languages.
It was used to instill a simple but effective emotion in the despairing survivors of The Great Disaster. If one didn't lose a single of one their family members to that disaster, they would be the odd one out. Along with the loss of many other things, a deluge of grief had engulfed the entire human race. Hope was then important in reviving civilisation. So the make-shift government formed by surviving ex-politicians and high ranking magical girls, with The Eye God at the helm, made as many things up to maintain hope.
A new calendar, a new language, a new name for their geographical boundaries, new customs, new culture, anything that held a semblance to the societies of the past. As long as it worked. Even the underworld organisations and black market was controlled to some extent to resemble what existed in the past. So if the economy and civilisation on the surface ever failed, the black economy and illegal traders would form the new society. It wouldn't be the ideal society considering the moral blackness that ran through all of their veins, but it was still a form of survival for humanity.
In any case, the situation was brought about because Harald asked the unknown magical girl about how she learned the new language so quickly. It was barely a week after The Great Disaster, death was more rampant than life and the stench of rotting flesh became commonplace. It would be harder to find city ruins without any dead bodies littered around. Willen wondered about what face did Harald make back then?
Because the answer that the magical girl saviour gave was a clear lie. One could say that magical girls learn faster due to their age, but that could be attributed to their magical girl transformation regressing their age or adjusting it into the late teens to early twenties. If they were compared to normal individuals around those ages, their learning speed would seem normal. But with schools collapsed and the education system annihilated by The Great Disaster, it wasn't even possible to verify it.
In other words, that girl had simply worked hard to learn it as fast as possible. Magical girls had faster reaction and processing speed than humans, but to them, their perception of time is still the same. What might feel like 5 minutes to a normal person could feel like 500 minutes to them. But if they experience the entire 500 minutes, even if it gave them a headstart above normal people, could it be considered that they learn faster?
Willen would reply with a hard no. They learn at the same speed, they were simply given more time. And time was not an expendable resource during The Great Disaster, not even for magical girls. Willen had thought plenty about it, what it meant to be a magical girl. She sits over one of the roofs along her route. It's been exactly a year since The Great Disaster, celebration was aplenty around the city. There was no need to remind herself about it since everyone's decorations did it for her.
She was in a casual attire, unlike what anyone would expect of a magical girl. A plain sky blue jacket, white shirt and short jeans. The golden glow of the setting sun layed over everything below like a gentle blanket, its last few rays left along with it's warmth as the sun recedes into the horizon. She traced her left palm with her right fingers before laying them on her exposed thighs.
The softness subtly bounced against the skin of her palm, overshadowed by the chaotic swirling of her thoughts. Her fingers tighten around her thighs, the tension escaping the boundaries of her mind and exerted into the physical world as stress.
Harald was simply one of many others that she will meet and leave. She was a magical girl, an immortal being. Unless she untransforms and dies of old age, she would never die of natural causes. It presents a choice, an unprecedentedly heavy choice. She was scared of dying, yet she didn't want to lose the meaning of the present. If one knew that they would live forever, they could put off the things that they want to accomplish to a time infinitely later. Or they could accomplish everything that they wanted and lose any desire for anything.
Her ideas, her beliefs of what was right and wrong, points for and against, everything clashed together in a storm, bashed against one another like the strongest hurricane. As if it was a routine, that hurricane came to a quiet end. She picks her body back up, lifting herself off the ground and walked back. Making the last trip of the day to the office, then home.