In the early afternoon, Milan sat in her lab with a newspaper in her hands. Her expression became unsettling as she shifted the pages and read the newspaper. In the end, she sighed and placed the newspaper back on the table. 'How hard is finding a job nowadays…' she sighed as she thought about finding a job. Lack of money in her life had caused her to stop some of the experiments she was doing. She was frugal to the point where she only had enough money to eat once a day, and now she was starting to get worried about her health as she looked at her thin arms.
'This cannot go on; I must open up more…' she made up her mind.
Finding or getting a job in Aurora city was relatively easy; you had to look up open jobs in newspapers and meet with the employer, but the problem was for mystic beings, most jobs were low paying and not enough for them to waste their time on, and the higher paying jobs were not easy to find. Just now, all the jobs Milan found in newspapers were posted by mortals, where pay was relatively low, lower than the payment paid by the Academy to give lectures to students once every month, which was quite good.
Still, she discovered some jobs which paid high enough for her to continue some of her experiments and eat three times a day.
When Milan started her mystic journey, she chose to practice the Seeker pathway. The seeker pathway promoted search and research for the truth behind the mysteries and unknown. She chose this pathway because she wanted to find out who cursed her family, but she did not advance to that height in her pathway yet. Milan was currently at Sequence 7, 'The Pathfinder, ' and finding someone without any clue. She did not have any ability like that, not yet.
After advancing from Sequence 9 'Seeker,' Sequence 8 'Hunter' to Sequence 7 'Pathfinder,' the innate abilities Milan gained was the ability to locate or find out anything with a little amount of knowledge, Search, Research, Teleportation if she has enough magic, and knew the location, Scanning, Appraise, Enhanced senses at superhuman levels, Superhuman strength, Powerful Conscious, Prediction, Premonition, Psychic Link, Remote Viewing, and Clairvoyance.
'People who follow Mystic Path can also use magic like any other being like Cultivator, Wizard, Witch, Sorcerer, and Mages, but not at their level.'
For Milan, It was also not hard for her to earn money by simply relying on her mystic skills but to do that, she needed a license, which was expensive and took a long time to approve. The second reason was the properties in the city were too expensive to buy even a small stroller, let alone open a shop where she could sell her skills. So she completely gave up on that idea.
Finishing her work early today, Milan walked outside of the lab. She first entered the library room where Haze was sitting on the floor surrounded by mountains of books, her hair was messy, and her expression was serious. After spending some time in the room alone, Haze gradually got used to the dark environment. Milan was quite happy with her new student, maybe because she was too small or maybe she was afraid of her Haze rarely disturbed Milan, but Milan never let her sit here alone. She would come here every hour and talk with her and solve any problem she had while studying.
Informing Haze she was leaving, Milan opened a red door with the nexus cube and exited the Academy; she stood on a streetcar platform, which was situated underground on the main road outside of the 'Hall of Doors,' and waited for a streetcar to come. Streetcars were the most suitable options to travel between the city sectors as the streetcars on Floating World traveled faster than supersonic speed.
After a few minutes, Milan boarded the train and made her journey towards sector 17, 'The Common Fair Zone.' The train inside was quite bright and spacious. It had a row of seats on both sides, and because of its first stop being at the 'Hall of Doors,' it was filled with people. Milan looked around for a second and found an empty seat, and she sat with her leather handbag on her lap.
The underground streetcar took fifteen minutes before reaching sector 17 Streetcar station. Picking up her handbag, Milan got off the train and made her way outside the station. Standing on the side of the road where carriages waited to pick up people, she waved her hand toward one of the empty carriages. After getting onto the carriage, she made her way to the first job listing.
She had a total of two job posts to check. Unfortunately, after shuffling through two days of newspapers, she was only able to find two jobs. Taking a carriage, she arrived at an unknown street and walked the rest of the way to the first job.
Milan made her way into unknown streets; she walked by old shops that looked like they were made quite a few years ago when she saw the moss covering most of the shop walls. All shops in the unknown deep alley looked old; Milan believed these shops might be illegal. After taking a lot of twists and turns in a dark alleyway and still being unable to find the shop location, she felt a little annoyed. Tired of walking too much, she finally used her Pathfinder 'Locate' ability.
'Even people look sketchy here,' she thought as she saw a few alcoholic men standing in corners.
However, after using her locate ability, she still had to take quite a few turns, and entering deep inside sector 17, she finally found the shop. "The witch cave," Milan muttered as she stood in front of an old cave-like shop; she was not entirely sure if this place could be called a shop as she looked at the broken board at the top. Milan walked inside; the situation inside was the same. The shop inside was dark, and the only light source was a lantern hung on the wall. The whole room smelled terrible, like an old wet carpet that did not dry after spilling water on it. There were multiple glass bottles and jars on side wall shelves filled with different animal and plant body parts. Milan was already hesitating, 'Do I really want to work at this place…' she thought, changing her mind at the last minute she started to walk back, but as she turned back to leave a voice rang from inside.
"You must buy something before you leave; no one is allowed to leave empty-handed," an old witch's voice resounded from inside; the voice scared Milan, and unconsciously she tightened her grip on her handbag. She would not be scared if she had to fight a ghost or supernatural entity, but the old women's voice sounded off, and the area was too shady for her to run, 'Why did I come here…' Milan almost cried. Holding herself, she calmed down; at that time, an older woman who looked in her maybe 80s came from inside the room; she wore baggy old clothes and had messy white hair. She looked at Milan, who looked like a wealthy lady. Well dressed, a fancy handbag, fancy platform black boots, a black & white knee-length dress, and a black trench coat. 'A fat goat…' old woman ticked all the marks inside her book in her head as she observed Milan, 'if I can't rip off a rich customer who is going to call me old witch, how I'm going to fill my stomach…' she thought while grinning ear to ear evilly.
"As I said, you must buy something before leaving the shop." Old witch voices sounded more like a threat, which only made Milan complain about her luck; she prayed to the Lord of Mysteries that if she walked out alive from here, she would surely donate some money to his church on Monday.
'I added Lord of mysteries just for a small pun, as he also represented luck. He does not have anything to do with the story.'
Milan randomly picked a jar with a plant inside, she placed it on the counter and proceeded to ask the price, but before she could say anything, the old witch raised her cloudy eyes and spoke, "What! only one?" the voice again sounded like a threat. With a heavy heart, Milan picked another jar and placed it beside the first one, but the old witch's eyes remained sharp like an eagle ready to eat her prey. Finally, after placing five bottles on the counter 'I don't have much money…' Milan's eyes started to turn wet, the mental pressure the old witch gave was enough for her mind to break down, and secondly, she did not have enough money in her account for this month. When the old woman saw this, she finally stopped, 'She should already know inexperienced young ladies should not enter these areas…' she had some pity thoughts in her mind, but only in her mind, not in her heart.
"Fifty gold coins" Milan heavy hearted took fifty gold coins bank card from her bag and placed it on the front counter. Then, picking up five small bottles filled with unknown stuff and liquid, she put them in her bag. While sobbing, she walked out of the shop and decided never to enter this alley again in her life.
Wiping her eyes, she hurriedly made her way out of the dark valley; she was in no mood to visit any other place for the job. 'I'll just stay hungry…' she made up her mind. As she was walking toward the carriage to go home, something stopped her on track; lifting her spirit, she clutched her fist and decided to visit another job posting also. 'I finally took a step out of my comfort zone. I cannot go back…' thinking that Milan entered the carriage and instructed him to move toward Orchid Street. The carriage moved and made its way toward Orchid street, and after moving a little, it disappeared from the road.
"Fate & Flowers - Sells all kinds of flowers and ornamental plants," a wooden board hung above the shop. The shop looked new from the outside, but Milan saw an empty shop through the glass window in front. Milan felt relatively safe in this area, it was sunny outside, and a lot of people were walking and shopping on the streets.
"Tinkle!" a ring rang as Milan opened the door and walked inside; she looked around the empty shop, which had a few hollow wooden shelves to place plants in, but right now, all of them were empty. She walked up to the counter and waited for the shopkeeper to come.
Second and Eon, who was on the shop's second floor and suddenly heard the bell.
"A customer entered the shop. Go take a look," Eon said to Second, who sat on the other side of the sofa.
Second walked downstairs, but what he saw made his expression confused. 'How and why did Haze's teacher find and enter the shop…' outside the shop, a small board that hung on the glass window said closed. But Milan still entered even with the closed shop sign. 'Is she here for the job…' Not trying to guess anything, he made his way down.
Seeing Second walking down the stairs, Milan's expression turned weird; she tried her best to control her emotions, 'I don't have to feel ashamed…', 'it's just a job, just a job…' she repeated these words in her head.
How would Milan know the shop belonged to her student's brother, and she would have to ask for a job from her student's brother? She felt embarrassed. On second thought, she did not want to leave the shop without even asking for a job like before.
"Miss Milan, Good to see you, and How are you" Second greeted Milan with a happy smile.
"Mr. Midnight, Good to see you too," Milan greeted back with a smile; she did not show any abnormalities or embarrassment she was feeling in her heart on her face.
"What brought you to our shop today? Haze did not do anything naughty, right." Second asked a little suspiciously.
"No! No, everything is fine; Haze is a brilliant student. I have been quite free lately at the Academy and saw your job ad in the paper and wanted to try; I did not have any idea it was your shop," she made up a lie while trying to maintain a serious expression on her face.
"Oh, that's how this is" Seconded nodded and sounded normal as he did not find her words a little bit suspicious.
"Well, we have an open position here, but as you see, we are in a little mess. We were supposed to open the shop this week, but the young master suddenly broke his leg, and we could not finish the job, so we had to post an ad on paper, as we needed a helper handling the customer. So what do you think? Do you want to join our team," Second said as he sounded sad.
"Oh! my apologies, something like that happened," Milan said. She had a thought, in today's advanced world, healing a broken bone in a day should not be much problem, but she did not let her mind wander.
"I... I would love to" Milan's smile bloomed like spring flowers. She instantly replied, hearing the offer; she even forgot about her embarrassment.
"My apologies for losing my manners."
"No problem, you should already know the pay we are offering; it's a small flower shop, so we cannot offer you much."
"It's fine," She said. 'With this money, I should be able to cover the extra expenses I have…' Milan thought.
After half an hour, Milan walked out of the shop. Her face showed a happy expression; she was filled with joy. Officially this would be her first ever job, which she will start. Until now, all the money she had spent was the money her father sent to her bank account every month, and now being able to do something herself made her quite proud of herself.
"Getting a job was a big problem in the mystic people community as sometimes they would practice weird pathways and professions, in which finding jobs were hard. For them, there were only two options: seek someone to work for or open their shop, which required money, time, and license, and building customers also took time."