Magic Trio x Reader ~Camigani's Corner~ 1

1: Undifferentiated

You didn’t know what to expect when you walked into the shop resting snuggly at the corner of the lonely block. Something about the place drew you inside like strings wrapping around your ankles, and before you knew it, you had already stepped inside the mystifying little shop.

The interior of the place couldn’t be called uninviting in the least. Bottles of broken stained glass and assorted herbs hung throughout the ceilings; when they hit the light at just the right angle, a rainbow of lights danced on your skin like a colorful spotlight giving you an opening to a stage. In turn, the opening announcement was equally as whimsical.

“Looks like someone managed to find the shop,” a voice called as if from nowhere.

Startled, you made a small squeak at the voice. The voice had no clear speaker or source. Where was—?

“It’s a girl, too.”

Oh. So it was the cashier speaking.

From behind a messy counter stuffed in the edge of the shop, there was a fair head of blonde hair poking out from a clumsy tower of card boxes. The sight was rather comical as you thought of a dusty old librarian who was eagerly guarding his precious textbooks.

But this was no librarian, and this person was definitely not dusty or old in the slightest. Not at all. Rather, the cashier was remarkably young—perhaps no older than twenty at the most—and his placid expression reminded you of a stingray.

Why a stingray, one might ask? Simply put, it was because his solemn blue eyes were dead like a fish’s, and the blank, flat line formed across his mouth fondly reminded you of a stingray’s flat gills on its “wings.”

“Stingray face!” you gasped and caught your breath. “Thank goodness it’s a human. I thought it was some sort of demon.”

“Demon?” the young man softly repeated from behind his towers of boxes. “I’m not a demon.”

“And he’s direct,” you added.

Along the lines of annoyed, the cashier wrinkled his brow and pursed his lips. “Who are you talking to?” he asked with a flat tone; it wasn’t too far off from his normal manner of speaking.

“Myself,” you replied. “Maybe you, too. What are you doing?”

“My job,” he told you.

You pouted. “You’re not doing a very good job at it. Aren’t you supposed to say something like ‘Welcome to Camigani’s Corner’ or ‘Hi, nice to see you?’”

The man wore an icy glare. He looked less than willing to take your question into consideration and change his aura—and that aura was uninvitingly cold.

“I’m not a salesman, girl,” he said, his voice as icy as the look he gave off. “I’m just supposed to sit here and wait for you to buy something—if you buy something.”

“Standoffish, indeed,” you huffed. “It’s no wonder I never see people coming over here. You’re about the gloomiest thing in this shop, you know that?” To make your point, you thought to look around for anything unsettling; there ended up being one thing too many that might have made you have second thoughts.

Over on the shelves, there were dried strings of little legs dangling out to dry like pieces of cured meat you might find at the old conventional grocery store. Not too far from the window, there were bottles of cloudy white marbles; each marble sported a differently colored circle in the middle similar to the iris of an eyeball, but you knew those had to be for decoration. Real eyeballs would have strings of reddening muscles attached, and that was only if they were fresh. Then, as you looked farther down the store to the back, you spotted a small rack of more dried herbs all singed black like they had been salvaged from a forest fire. However, these black plants gave off a feeling of desolation, not gloom. Truly the cashier was the gloomiest thing in the shop.

“I stand by my word,” you nodded and tapped your heels on the ground. “You are by far the gloomiest thing in the shop. Congratulations.”

“Does that come with a prize?” the man sarcastically asked. You could detect sarcasm when you heard it, and this man was full of it. You wondered just what he might have gone through on a daily basis to be riddled with so much of it. He needed to blow it off like steam. It would be good for him. It’d help relieve some of the pressure.

“Nope,” you answered. “But never mind the compliment. Can you tell me where I might find something suited for concentration?”

The man would have laughed if it weren’t because the boxes making up the towers were empty. One misguided breath would knock them down and expose him to the public.

“I’m not even sure what it is some of these things do,” he confessed. “I haven’t gotten the chance to try all of them.”

You tilted your head like a bird and batted your eyelashes. “I’m willing to buy something, you know. It’s all a matter of whether or not you have what I want.”

The cashier narrowed his eyes. “Well we must have it here, or the shop would not have appeared before you.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

So to compensate for lost time, you dropped your questions and began to explore around the store. The store was fairly small, about no larger than an average-sized classroom building at school. Despite the size, somehow the store managers had managed to squeeze two entire rows of shelves all stacked with oddities. Down the first aisles, you saw more bottles, all with appropriate labels and ingredients. What amused you the most was that when you checked the cardstock tags, you saw allergy warnings. For the light of you, you couldn’t bring yourself to imagine anyone being allergic to frog tongues.

Through your browsing, you discovered that the aisles were delightfully organized by emotions rather than by color. If you could sum up your voyage down the first aisle, you would have said the emotions progressed from absolute joy to downright distraught and despair.

“So many D words in the depressing dictionary…” you mumbled aloud. From the front, you thought you could heard the cashier shuffling, but the sound was as quickly gone as it came.

After browsing the first aisle of bottled mysteries, you stopped for a moment to look in the back. This was where the herbs had been stored, the ones that looked like they had been salvaged from a wildfire.

“What’s this?” you said aloud as you examined the name of a blackened branch. “Dragon’s root?”

“That’s from the edge of the dragon’s territory in Elia—”

“Gyyahhh!” In your shock, you flew back and crashed straight into the edge of the first series of shelves.

The supports on the shelves must have been looser than you had imagined because moments after gaining support on the shelf, your body began to lean to the side.

Everything after that happened like a slow-moving train wreck waiting to happen.

The bottles on the edge were the first to go. Some of the fancier trinkets balancing only on pointy glass ends tipped over their unbalanced platforms, falling straight to the blue-painted wooden floors. The other bottles followed until the entire shop was alive with a glass-breaking orchestra. Clink clank ker-plunk. Thank you for the lovely performance. That will be forty heta* each, please.

Ah, but you had forgotten the finale: the shelves went crashing down on top of the broken glass with a deafening explosion as the wooden racks and supports burst apart. Nails went scattering in all directions, rolling along the floors and disappearing underneath tables, cracks, and any other little spaces they could snuggly occupy.

No applause. But you did get a standing ovation.

“You idiot!”

You flinched as the cashier in the front shot up from his seat and slammed his hands down on the counter. The box towers went sailing off their rickety neighbors and toppled to the floor in turn to join their glass companions.

Now you could see the man for who he really was. The boxes and his hunched back had concealed most of his appearance, but now you could see he was fairly attractive—actually, “fairly” was a poor way to put it. He was godlike beautiful. His features were almost feminine as his jawline wasn’t as pronounced as most broad-shouldered men. That being said, his shoulders weren’t anything impressive, and you presumed he lacked upper body strength. It didn’t matter, though. His flawless creamy white skin complimented by his icy blue eyes and sweeping blonde hair were enough to get your blood flowing to your cheeks. Just looking at him like this made you feel embarrassed like you had seen him in the nude instead of standing up as he did.

“I-I…” You guiltily looked at the aftermath that was your sudden surprise. This store wasn’t one of those “You break it, you buy it” stores, was it?

“I’m really sorry about that, Ray-face,” you apologized. “It was an accident.”

The cashier clicked his tongue. “Accidents are only caused by careless people. Now I have to clean this up…”

“Ah, Lukas, wait.”

You flinched. There was the other voice, the one that had caused you to be surprised, and therefore caused you to back into the shelf. Curious to confront the culprit, you swiveled your head around until you were face-to-face with a mischievous-looking man with beaming red eyes and an interestingly toothy grin.

To call him young was an understatement since he was still a little taller than you; he also looked to be about the same age as the cashier, you thought. In contrast to his co-worker, he had an interesting set of reddish brown hair that fell to his shoulders. He certainly wasn’t a vampire. Vampires didn’t exist. He was too cute to be labeled a vampire bat, though. Those weren’t very attractive. Fruit bats were cute. He was a fruit bat.

“F-Fruit bat…” you said aloud.

The young man grinned. “Beats being a stingray,” he said. You smiled.

“Vlad, don’t just stand there,” Mr. Sting—the cashier seethed. “Help me with this.”

Fruit bat placed a finger on his lips and hummed a little tune. Then, he leapt over the broken glass and fallen shelf to his companion and whispered something into his ear.

“Absolutely not,” the cashier hissed. He gave you a brief look before returning to his bat-like co-worker. “Do you have any idea…? He’ll never allow this!”

The red-eyed one whispered back. “But she’s…How often do people come in here, anyway?”

“No.” The stingray shook his head. “I won’t allow it.”

“Think of this as a chance to get to know new people.”

“Nope.”

You furrowed your eyebrows. How stubborn.

Just then, a new set of footsteps entered the premise. From behind a curtain a little ways next to the cashier, you saw another young man emerge from the beads and silken lilac ribbons. “What’s going on here?” he asked.

You held your breath when you noticed his features. His hair was beyond messy and a lovely shade of gold. His green eyes weren’t anything too impressive, but in a different situation, you might have laughed at his eyebrows.

“Ah. So it’s a woolly bear caterpillar,” you giggled. That caught the man’s attention. He quickly gave the state of the store a quick overview before letting out a sigh.

“Vlad, Lukas, what happened?” he asked. Smooth accent. English, you presumed. The other two were harder to figure out.

“Ah, Arthur, I can explain…” Vladimir spoke up, but an unseen force silenced him. Like a telepathic conversation, he and the cashier silently nodded and withdrew from their positions.

The employees wasted no time retreated behind the beaded curtains and ribbons. As for you, you didn’t know if you were in any trouble or not. They didn’t tell you to stay put. You could have run. But you didn’t. You were almost curious to hear what they were going to say to you, and you secretly hoped it would have to do with the fish face yelling at you.

No, you weren’t a masochist, but it would be amusing to see him upset again, you thought.

~~~~~

“What the bloody hell happened out there?” Arthur whispered. “I go out to make a call for a few minutes, and I come back to a…a girl! Why is there a girl in the shop?”

Vladimir shrugged. “You’ve got me. She has nice taste, though.” He snickered and bumped Lukas’ shoulder. “Right, Ray-face?”

“Shut it,” Lukas hissed and quickly regained his composure. “She just came in. I’m pretty sure the charms were still up when she entered, too. I really didn’t expect her.”

Arthur cursed and scratched his untamed blonde hair. His brothers were going to be furious to know that a regular human had broken the seal on the shop. It was supposed to have lasted for another six months, but somehow that girl had come through.

“You know what? I think we should let her stay,” Vladimir suddenly piped up.

The temporary manager of the shop stopped. “Why are you suggesting that?”

“She was already able to pass through the seal, right? That means she must have had some magic powers inside of her. I was able to smell it, too.”

Lukas wrinkled his nose. “I wasn’t able to.”

Vladimir rolled his eyes. “That’s because you were too busy playing with your little tarot card decks. The dust must’ve messed with your senses.”

“Ah, wait a minute,” Lukas spoke up. “Is this why you didn’t want to help me repair the shelves?”

“You got it, Ray-face,” Vladimir grinned.

Lukas shook his head. “She’s already growing on you…”

“Can’t I get attached to a normal human?”

Arthur pursed his lips. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. This is only going to be for six months, right? It might be nice to have someone from the Hither.” He wistfully sighed. “I can’t remember the last time I had some decent tea.”

The others could agree. There were conveniences they had missed from the other side. In any case, maybe this accidental encounter was a good thing.

“Fair enough,” Lukas finally consented. “And how exactly are we going to convince her to stay?”

Arthur scratched his head again. “That’s right. She has to stay in the Yonder for a day to get adjusted. Erm, let me think…”

He snapped his fingers.

“I’ve got it! We’ll put an affection spell on her, and we’ll double the reinforcement by saying she owes us a lot of money for the ‘damages.’ It’s foolproof!”

Vladimir raised an eyebrow. “That’s great and all, but one of us has to be on the receiving end of that affection spell, right?”

Arthur waved his hand. “Lukas will be the one to do it.”

Lukas grunted. “Why me?”

“Because frankly you’ve got the tidiest house and the least amount of urges,” Arthur told him. “Vlad’s housekeeping is decent, but there’s no telling what sorts of things he’ll pull with her.”

“I’m starting to regret this already,” Lukas grumbled.

Vladimir gave his friend a short pat on the back. “Don’t worry about it, Lukas,” he chuckled. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Ray-face clicked his tongue and let out a steamed breath of air through his teeth. Whenever someone asked him that, only the worst could hope to occur.