Reborn as a witch in another world [slice of life, isekai] (ch. 74)
Blurb:
What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!
I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.
But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?
Follow Elsa Grimly as she:
- Makes new friends and tries to save them and herself from getting burned
- Finds redemption from the deeds of her previous life
- Tries to get along with a cat who (like most cats) believes she runs the world
- Deals with other slice of life shenanigans.
--
Chapter 74. Death and Laughter
If the method of the ritual wasn't relevant to the intended result, the ritual would fail. That's what the axiom of relevance stated. And writing down the ritual in your hexonomicon reduced the chances of failure.
Based on what Lily had taught me about Dollmaker's Alchemy, I had come up with something that would be more effective than the curse channeling cards I had before. There was one problem, however.
I wasn't sure about the exact strength of the curse left behind in Doughtry Tech. If the curse had been limited to a single place in the school, which was the workshop, then it would've been fine. But what if what happened here had affected the rest of the school building?
We weren't sure how far the influence of this curse extended on the premises. If we relied on the rumors, the school had seen more than a few deaths of students.
One incident involved a girl jumping off the roof of the building. Another involved a boy strangling himself to death with a measuring tape. Another involved a girl shoving a pencil through her own eye and getting a brain injury, leading to death.
As the years passed, the deaths became more gruesome. And all these dead kids were the same age as that of the girl who had burned the workshop.
The parents of the other children had begun to feel unsafe to send their kids to the school even before that and started to withdraw them. The government stopped funding the place after the number of students depleted. And the school was shut down for good after that. This was just a few years before the dark magic hysteria had hit its peak in Orowen.
I held up the first paper cut out shaped like a doll. It had a pentacle with a flame at its center. “I want to make a trade,” I said.
The paper doll in my hand burned into a grey flame.
What the fuck?
Grey was the color of death. This curse wasn't even open to hear me out.
“Uh, Miss Elsa, I don't think we'll have much success here,” Lily said nervously.
That's when I heard someone giggle next to my ear. I jolted in my spot. “Did you hear that?” I said.
“Hear…what?” Lily said cautiously.
I grunted in annoyance. Of course, Lily wouldn't have been able to hear that. Just like she hadn't felt the other sensations that I did.
“Miss Elsa, we should really get going.” Lily's hands were twitching on her sides. “That doll just burned grey. The curse threatened your life.”
“And then it mocked me,” I said, throwing a glare at the walls of the workshop. “I heard a girl laughing next to my ear.”
Lily's lips parted and then she stopped as if refraining from saying the words that were about to escape her. “We really should get going then. A bruise to the pride is less painful in the long run than…well death.” She shrugged awkwardly.
She wasn't wrong. This curse, it may or may not have been strong. But it was certainly a lot more dangerous and not very good at listening to reason. So the fact that a teenager had left this curse on the place really tracked. (That also meant, its threat to my death was just the curse acting edgy.)
I grit my teeth and swallowed my pride. Then I sighed. “You're right. Bruised ego is better than death. Let's go,” I said in resignation.
Lily nodded and turned to the door…which swung fast and slammed shut. We heard the bolt on the other side sliding home.
I scoffed. “Really? Isn't that so mature of you? Lily, just break the door. Let the curse know it's not enough to–”
“Miss Elsa, lookout!” The girl tackled me in a blink of an eye, pushing me several feet away just before the rusty ceiling fan above my head could crash down on me.
The thing made a loud noise as it slammed on the floor, raising a small cloud of dust.
I heard the girl’s giggling again. I groaned. “She is really getting on my nerves now!” I pulled out another doll shaped parchment. “Do you want to make a trade or not? Be clear!”
There was silence. The paper didn't burn. Instead a window on the opposite wall exploded. Lily and I were both startled. I heard shuffling on the other side of the wall, footsteps running away.
I narrowed my eyes as I understood what was going on. “Lily, how would you respond if I said we should stick around and explore the place a bit more?” I said.
The girl looked at me, bewildered. “I would say that's the worst idea I heard all evening.” Then she grinned. “Let’s do it. I trust your judgement, Miss Elsa. Plus, I'll be right by you to make sure nothing harms you.”
I couldn't help but smile at her. Then I pointed at the broken window. “This curse may be bloodthirsty and dangerous but that window right there looks like an invitation. Or a trap. It depends.”
“But we won't know if we don't explore further,” Lily said, the grin still playing on her lips.
“And the curse won't let us leave before it shows us whatever it wants to,” I added and then I paused. “Wait, the curse is a ‘she’. I keep hearing a girl's giggling. So let's see what she is so eager to show.”
We climbed out of the broken window. But the footsteps couldn't be heard anymore. It didn't matter because I could see a smoky silhouette skipping merrily back towards the school building.
I led Lily inside the place. The silhouette disappeared at the entrance. Past the front door was a foyer where the plaster was falling off the walls and fungus bloomed everywhere. I had to cover my nose to avoid the sickly stench it left behind.
Lily didn't however, she was sniffing at the air like a dog instead. “This place certainly feels a lot more cursed than before.” She nodded. “That burnt hair-like smell is all too evident.”
Before I could respond, a sound tore through the haunted silence. A bell. This place certainly wasn’t being supplied with free electricity. That only meant one thing. “She wants us to follow the sound,” I said.
Lily followed me deeper into the school without hesitation. If I was to compare what I had experienced initially after entering the school to now, the first thing I would point out was the invisible presence.
The school felt a lot less empty than before. The feeling came from the constant dread of someone watching you and the fact that someone might whisper into your ear out of nowhere. Lily and I followed the sound of the school bell. It grew louder the closer we drew in.
Then it stopped. In the school hallway. I was hoping to hear another giggle. But there was silence.
“Look at that, Miss Elsa,” Lily said, pointing towards something on the floor. She picked it up and held it into the moonlight pouring in from the high window so I could see it more clearly. It was a pocket diary with leather binding that had almost come off. “I don't think this was here before when we came in.”
“Does it have a name?” I asked.
“There is,” Lily said, flipping open the book. “Martha Langsdale.”
“That name doesn't ring any bells.” I tapped my chin with a finger. “But the fact that it wasn't here when we came before must mean that the curse is introducing herself to us?”
Lily nodded. “That's possible.” She flipped through the pages of the small notebook. “Oh, there are some weird poems in here.
‘Empty rooms still hum.
Giggles echo where no one sits
Monsters can laugh too.’”
I frowned. That was certainly a haiku. A form of poem from my previous world. Seems like someone had invented that here too.
“That's a triplet verse,” Lily said.
Before either of us could say anything, a door slammed somewhere down the hallway. Once. Twice. And then thrice. And it just kept going.
This was the next clue apparently. Lily and my footsteps echoed through the corridor. Then that sound was joined by another chorus. Laughter. Distant and muffled. Slowly growing louder as we kept walking, interrupted by the slamming door like a snare drum cutting the singer's voice in a haunting rhythm.
Lily kicked the door to the classroom open. It was empty. I expected that much. But the laughing hadn't stopped.
It was much louder now. And it didn't sound cheerful. It wasn't the sound of joy. It sounded like disgust. It was the kind of laughter that cornered you, putting you in the kind of spotlight you always tried to avoid. But this sound dropped you right in the middle of it. It was inescapable.
I grabbed onto Lily's arm. She let me lean against her, letting me shelter myself behind her stern protectiveness. “Miss Elsa, there's another triplet verse here,” she said.
The laughter died down in an instant as Lily showed me the notebook. It was like someone had flicked off a switch.
“Are you sure this new poem wasn't in here before?” I asked, squinting at the page.
She shook her head and read the next triplet aloud.
“The wise walk unseen.
To be known is to be blamed.
Darkness can also be warm.”
We waited for another sound to go off somewhere. But nothing happened this time.
An eerie silence swept over the empty classroom.
Lily was the one who broke the quiet. “Miss Elsa, there are thirty desks in this classroom. But only twenty nine chairs.”
I realized what had happened. “She left the classroom,” I said. “Because others wouldn't stop laughing at her.”
A crease formed on Lily's forehead. “So, where did she go?” she said.
“Anywhere away from the laughter. And probably where the darkness is warm,” I twirled a strand of my hair as I thought about it. Then it dawned upon me, “It's the library.”
--
“That's it?” Lily said as she followed me down the winding hallways of the school. We had been walking for the past fifteen minutes and the corridors were starting to feel elongated, almost labyrinthine. “It was just laughter,” Lily said. “How could it drive someone to murder?”
“Laughter can be more than enough, Lily,” I said. “I've seen people kill other people for much less.”
“But they were just children.” Lily's voice was a bit more vehement now, as if she was trying to stop her prior views on children from crumbling to dust. “Madam calls us children. But Martha and others were much younger than us. How could a child hate another child so fiercely?”
“That's the thing.” I raised a finger. “It was because they were children they went as far as they did. For everyone else Martha was nothing more than a joke, something to scoff at. And for Martha, they were not people, just mouths that spat and laughed at her. They could separate each other's humanity without thinking twice. And from what I'm guessing, I don't think there was anyone who could have or even wanted to stop them from doing that. And what happened next is what we see now.” I spread my arms and gestured at the entire place. “A graveyard haunted by death and laughter.”
A frown overcame Lily's otherwise innocent features. She was quiet for the rest of the way to the library.
The door to the library was open, as if waiting for us to arrive. And it closed as soon as we entered. We were in the right place.
I was moving my gaze over the desolate reading area. Dusty desks, dusty shelves, same moldy walls and air that felt heavy when you breathed as if a ghost had just settled on your shoulders.
Another door began to slam like before. We followed its sound up a flight of creaky stairs to the second level of the library. A half torn poster of ‘please maintain silence’ was fluttering softly on a wall. I couldn't help but grin at the irony as we kept walking.
The sound of the slamming door brought us to a room at the deep end of the second level. The door at the end of the long aisle between shelves stopped slamming and slowly creaked open like an invisible hand beckoning us in.
I took the invitation and started walking towards it. Then I stopped. Lily's footsteps had ceased.
I turned to look at her. She was standing by the second level rail. “What happened?” I asked.
“She was in the wrong, Miss Elsa,” she said. “She killed people just so she wouldn't be laughed at? And she didn't just stop there. She cursed this place and killed other children too. Children that had nothing to do with her. Innocent people. And she killed them”
“No one said she was in the right,” I said. I was about to say something more when I noticed Lily’s hands. They were balled into fists. I frowned in the dark as I realized that I couldn’t hear any of her thoughts, even though I could see the shimmer of her abyss.
Then a doubt sparked in my head. Was the curse in this school affecting Lily somehow?
I discreetly pulled out my osteodial and focused on the question. Is Lily under the influence of the curse?
The golden bone spun a few times before stopping on the symbol that represented “no”. I slid the device back into my reticule.
“We need to get out of this place, Lily,” I said. “For that we need to follow the instructions of the curse. If we keep getting stalled by moral dilemmas we'll only make ourselves vulnerable targets for the curse to take down.” I held out my hand. “Let's get going.”
Lily looked at my hand, her strained expression slowly easing. Her fists unclenched. “You are right, Miss Elsa.” She took my hand and we walked into the room ahead of us. That's when I heard Lily think, “I almost let it come back to me.”
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Posted Sep 24, 2025, 2:22 PM UTC