The Borderland.
Just before dawn.
A witch with long hair was glancing warily around at the bushes nearby.
Barefoot, she stepped over the soft earth, and whenever she caught sight of another wizard's figure, she hurried to hide herself.
"Ariana."
At that moment, a clear and lovely voice called out. A strikingly beautiful witch stood in front of a wooden hut by the sea, calling softly to the timid young witch and smiling as she invited her inside.
This was the fifth time Rita had seen Ariana.
Seeing the way the other woman's eyes had relaxed slightly, though the caution in them remained, Rita pressed her lips together.
"Would you like to stay here for a while? I made some candied quince and Devonshire pudding."
Rita coaxed her gently.
"No…"
Ariana refused. There was a kind of stubbornness in her hollow-looking eyes.
"You've been searching for so long, child. You need to let yourself rest for a little while."
After saying that, Rita lowered her own head.
Wandering souls lived to search.
Souls like that had no home in the Borderland.
There was a saying in the Borderland: wherever the heart found peace, a cottage would grow there.
But how could a lost, panicked heart have a home?
And so they could only keep searching, keep wandering, until one day, before their emotions and reason faded completely, fate would place good fortune in front of them.
Ariana turned away again, like some startled little animal, ready to vanish back into the depths of the woods.
A flicker of urgency crossed Rita's face.
"Ariana!"
she called out.
"You're looking for the lucky messenger, aren't you?"
The timid witch froze at once. Very carefully, very subtly, she stole a glance at the side of the hut's door.
There was not only a simple drawing of a black cat there, but also a mysterious black cat statue.
She quickly hid her hands behind her back so Rita wouldn't notice the simple, cute little black-cat sketch she was holding.
Only when Ariana stopped did Rita quietly let out a breath.
Chance meetings with wandering souls were never easy. In nearly seventy years, she had only seen Ariana five times.
That meant that even in the Borderland, where time itself was blurred, she had not run into the timid witch for more than a decade.
The next meeting, likely…
"At least have some Windsor stew, alright?"
Rita coaxed her the way an evil queen might tempt a princess with a poisoned apple, using the gentlest voice she could.
"I've met Mr. Good Fortune. Would you like to hear his story? The story of how he bridges life and death and brings eternal good fortune to wizards? Would you stop for him?"
In the end, Ariana did stop outside the hut.
But she still did not go in. She simply stared at Rita with those eyes, suddenly bright again like dying embers flaring back to life.
Rita knew this was the most she could do.
She looked at the timid witch. Ariana was so near that Rita could see the strands of her hair, yet she also seemed impossibly far away, to the point that her whole figure looked blurred.
In the Borderland, distance was decided by the distance between hearts.
Ariana was far from every heart, except the ones she was waiting for.
Except for the two people she had waited a hundred years for, two people who had failed her utterly… forgive Rita for putting it that way.
Because they truly had failed her.
Rita's gaze went unfocused.
How could they leave a girl who feared the world waiting alone for a hundred years?
She still believed they would come looking for her.
And if they didn't, she was willing to gather up her courage and go looking for them herself.
"Stay a little longer, alright? I still have plenty of stories to tell."
Rita brought out two little stools and a bowl of steaming hot soup.
This was Windsor stew.
Originally, it was a truly awful dish, full of meat paste cooked down into a dark brown sludge that looked like varnished floorboards. It was enough to kill anyone's appetite on sight.
But Rita had made some changes to it, and the result was a pot of white, fragrant stew so inviting that even Ariana's hollow, empty stomach gave a quiet signal of hunger.
"Besides the story of Mr. Good Fortune, I know lots of others too. Have you heard of Newt? He was Mr. Dumbledore's favorite student… I know that he was still wetting the bed at six…"
Rita smiled warmly.
Only when her gaze brushed past the mysterious black cat statue did she secretly pray.
Please be faster, Mr. Black Cat, faster…
Far away in the white expanse of the Borderland, the black cat's whiskers twitched. It glanced at a mist-thread that had suddenly grown thicker and grew thoughtful.
Rita was thinking about it again.
But that happened often enough. Threads thickened and thinned all the time, and the black cat guessed that was simply how a wizard's emotions naturally rose and fell.
Mist filled the air, and the black cat had already been walking through the Borderland for a long time.
Following Rita's thread of mist, it kept thinking about the witch Rita had spoken of, and time slipped away without its noticing.
Its paws stepped over the cloudlike ground of the Borderland as its thoughts kept circling.
By rights, the black cat felt it ought to be able to find anyone, so long as it had a strong enough impression of them in its mind.
The Borderland would follow its will and guide it onward.
But that did not mean the black cat could always find them.
Direction was one thing. Distance was another.
If the distance was too great, then the black cat might not reach them before it was forced to leave the Borderland.
Ariana was exactly like that.
The black cat had always felt that the distance between itself and her was incredibly vast, which was why it had asked Rita for help.
By the time it reached the cottage by the sea, the sky had already grown dim.
Dusk arrived in the Borderland draped in the veil of evening clouds.
Even the white expanse had been dyed orange-yellow.
"Six and a half hours…"
the black cat counted as it stepped into Gabriel's place.
Rita was standing outside the hut, looking toward the horizon over the sea, her face full of quiet disappointment.
"Miss Rita,"
the black cat called.
"You're late, honored god."
Rita said,
"And I couldn't keep her here."
A pained crease appeared between her brows, and her voice carried an unexpected trace of self-blame.
"She's searched for so long. All alone. With nowhere to belong…"
Rita looked at her god.
"Good fortune doesn't favor foolish children, does it?"
The black cat froze, as if it understood something.
"You…"
"Have some Windsor stew, honored messenger of fortune. Let me tell you the story of a foolish child."
Rita's blue eyes shimmered with light as she turned her head and quietly wiped away something bright and wet.
Inside Rita's cottage, the fire in the hearth was blazing.
The black cat's fluffy shape was outlined by the firelight.
From Rita's broken, halting telling, the black cat learned what kind of life the witch it was searching for had been living.
A witch who had fallen into the Borderland. A witch with nowhere to turn. Carrying her fear of the world, stubbornly wandering through the endless sea of mist.
Loneliness and timidity were constant companions, but her obsession shone on like stars in the night.
"She's always murmuring about her brothers. But where are they, sir? So-called brothers who let her suffer like that while she was alive, and still won't let her rest after death?"
Rita pressed her lips together.
The black cat fell silent.
It looked out at the dying dawn, at the gloomy dusk.
And for the first time, it felt the cruelty of the Borderland's laws.
"It's dark now…"
the black cat said, gazing into the night before saying goodbye to Rita.
"Master of dreams and mist, bridge between life and death, symbol of eternal good fortune…"
Rita watched the black cat's back vanish into the night and prayed with reverence,
"May you hear the rain of the human world. May you wipe away the tears of the departed…"
The black cat didn't really know what its existence meant to the souls of the Borderland, but Rita's words left it quiet.
It could imagine how a witch like Ariana, a timid, frightened witch, must have wandered through this unfamiliar Borderland.
And so it ran.
Under a sky blazing with stars, the distant constellations lit the way for the black cat.
It flew like the wind, rustling the sparse bushes as it passed.
But the distance was still too great, far too great.
Then, just as it lifted its head, something made it stop short.
[You observed the Borderland's night sky. Divination Magic Proficiency +100]
[Basic Divination Magic unlocked]
[Basic Divination Magic: Beginner (99/300)]
[A new Divination Magic title has been unlocked. Please review.]
[A wizard talent has been unlocked. Please review.]
So it was true.
What Dream Stories—or rather The Life of Merlin—had recorded was true.
The Borderland possessed the brightest night sky of all. Astronomy flourished here, and wizards could draw hints of the future from it.
The black cat paused.
Ariana was too far away.
Unless it could somehow directly identify where she was and turn that hazy guidance into something exact, it had no hope of finding her.
And for some reason, it felt that perhaps Divination Magic could reveal where she was.
[Title: Unmastered Seer]
[The Inner Eye has opened slightly]
What did that mean?
The Inner Eye had opened slightly?
That part, at least, the black cat had somewhat expected.
But where was its Inner Eye?
It carefully lifted a paw and touched its forehead.
As expected, there was nothing there.
The black cat recalled what the Hogwarts collection had said about the Inner Eye:
"The Inner Eye, also called the Sight, is a Divination term. It is an extremely rare gift that occasionally appears among true Seers.
Those who possess it can glimpse the future.
Only Cassandra Trelawney and her great-great-granddaughter Sybill Trelawney have ever been confirmed to possess this ability.
However, Sybill Trelawney has never been very adept at using the Sight, and most of the prophecies she makes are not genuine."
So the black cat quietly looked back at the panel.
[Name: Sean Green]
[Unlocked special forms: Kneazle, Cat Leopard
Locked: Unknown]
[Unlocked special ability: Slightly Opened Inner Eye]
[Slightly Opened Inner Eye: In special realms, the slightly opened Inner Eye can grant you the revelation you seek]
The black cat froze.
Special realms… aside from the Borderland, what else could that possibly mean?
But how was it supposed to use it?
Before the black cat could fully think it through, darkness filled its vision.
It collapsed in the Borderland forest, eyes unfocused, whiskers trembling.
It was as if Sean were falling, falling without end. Countless images flashed before his eyes, and he vaguely understood that they were glimpses of the future—but he couldn't make them out.
He was like a drowning child, and seeing clearly was the only thing that could save him.
But he couldn't do it.
So he could only force his eyes wider and wider, hoping to seize even the faintest scrap of revelation from the future.
He didn't know how long it lasted.
At last, he saw something.
He saw a girl with long hair walking barefoot through a marsh, her shadow stretched long by the moonlight.
Her face was full of fear and unease, but she kept walking stubbornly anyway.
Every so often, she glanced toward a little hut not far away, one with a black cat painted on it.
And so all she could do was grip the little scrap of paper in her hand a bit tighter.
"Master of dreams and mist, bridge between life and death, symbol of eternal good fortune…"
she whispered blankly, repeating words she must have heard from somewhere.
When the black cat began running again, the night had already grown deep.
Now and then, faint sounds came from somewhere, but it paid them no mind.
It crossed hills, passed through valleys, leapt over streams, and ran across the fields.
At last, in that muddy marshland, it found the timid witch.
She was curled up in a patch of grass, with nothing but tender green blades as her blanket.
Whenever the cold wind brushed over her, she shivered slightly.
"She's a witch without a home, sir. She will only enter a cottage for the one she wants to find.
That isn't the Borderland being cruel. It's just that only loneliness can keep obsession alive.
Forgetting always has a way of making everything beautiful, so pain becomes the law that resists forgetting."
Rita's words echoed in the black cat's mind.
It walked toward the witch step by step, and with each step its body grew a little larger.
Soon, it had become an impressively magnificent great cat.
With a sweep of its tail, it wrapped Ariana up completely.
The wind was cut off. Warmth took its place.
The great cat, dark as ink-stained cloud, heard the witch give a faint little sound, and after a moment she slowly opened her eyes.
The great cat was gone.
In its place was the black cat she had long dreamed of.
Its tail was so large that it could wrap her whole body inside it.
"Good evening, dear Miss Ariana,"
said the black cat.
"Ah…"
Ariana froze. Her small nose trembled. She stared blankly at the black cat, and something came from her throat that sounded halfway between a cry and a sob, terribly faint.
And the black cat understood.
In her heart, all the pain of separation and disappointment had long ago lost the ability to become sound.
"You are the first witch I've met tonight. Make a wish to me, Miss Ariana, and I will help you fulfill it."
The black cat's voice was warm, like an old song being softly hummed, carrying a beautiful melody.
It knew Ariana had been only fourteen when she died, and because of that, the black cat wanted to tell her a gentler story.
Let him be the god of eternal good fortune, just this once. He had seen a witch's wish, and so he was willing to help her fulfill it.
Never had the Borderland seemed so beautiful.
Ariana felt like the luckiest witch in the world.
The starlight poured down through the night as if the heavens themselves were celebrating her—celebrating the fact that after a hundred years of wandering, she had finally reached a place where she could rest.
And yet, at a moment so happy, why was she crying?
Her tears soaked into Mr. Black Cat's fur. Panicked, she tried to pull away, but the black cat only lifted a paw and gently brushed the tears away.
She wanted to speak, but all that came out was a sound no one could have understood.
The black cat did not mind.
The world had always been a place where countless people lived alone.
So talking to a black cat was hardly strange at all.