The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Chapter 4 – Family

With her ability to disguise herself as a human established, Captain Fairchild was quickly able to arrange a compromise. She wouldn’t be in protective custody, but she would have a plainclothes police escort from the MCU. He also arranged for a hotel room for her at the Sheraton Grand Seattle.

Kaori was thankful for the last part. Sure, undead did not require sleep, but hotels weren’t just for sleeping. She was certain that there were people that were going to have quite a few questions for her, and a chat in a hotel room was preferable to sitting in a police interrogation room. More importantly, the hotel had a connection to the aethernet, which was apparently a successor to the internet.

That little surprise datapoint was just one of who knew how many things she had missed in the last forty years. Magic had, apparently, returned to the world when she was summoned. Instead of treating it as a mystic art, like the other world had, Earth treated it as another science, trying to figure out how it worked, and integrating it with existing technology, even as it completely shook up the political and social landscape.

Forty years of change was going to be tough to catch up on, and she needed to catch up, quick. Sure, she had the plunder she had taken from the treasuries of her otherworld conquests, but she needed a way to convert her treasures into this world’s money, preferably without crashing the economy or sparking a war. She couldn’t do anything until that happened. Even if she had her phone from when she was taken, it wouldn’t have service, much less connect to this aethernet, after all.

So, she spent the hours before dawn watching television in her room, trying to keep her mind off one meeting that she knew for certain was coming. Captain Fairchild said that they had reached out to her family before he came to speak to her. Thankfully, by the time he got through to my parents, it was only eight at night in Tokyo. Apparently, when he told them the news, they had set out for Seattle immediately.

She wasn’t surprised that her parents were still alive. As she recalled, her father would be eighty-six in the spring, and her mother was only a couple years younger. That was old, certainly, but even in the other world, magic could extend one’s lifespan, so that a noble’s natural life expectancy was one hundred and twenty years. Of course, peasants didn’t have it as good, and the number of nobles who actually lived to 120 were few, due to all kinds of ‘unnatural’ causes. But in a modern world, with magic and medicine? She wasn’t surprised that they were still alive.

What did surprise her was that she had younger siblings now! Tatsuo was thirty-nine, married with children, and being groomed to take over the family business. (She couldn’t believe that she was an aunt!) Eri, on the other hand, was thirty, and finishing up her thesis for her Doctorate of Thaumaturgy at the University of Seattle.

Eight o’clock rolled around, and Kaori was still watching the news channels. Much had changed in the last forty years, but twenty-four-hour news networks were still around. Though the Veritas Act under President Ocasio-Cortez had apparently gone a long way to reforming the networks. Just the fact that opinion pieces had to be clearly labeled, on screen, as opinions and editorials, had done wonders, it seemed. MSNBC and Fox News had been driven out of business before the start of the president’s second term, while outlets like CNN had focused more on facts, and less on interpretation, to survive.

A knock on the door to her two-bedroom suite shook her from her train of thought. Rising from the bed where she was lounging, she caressed her ‘wardrobe ankh’, as she called it, and changed out of her nightgown. The school uniform was fine for coming over here last night, but she’d never been entirely comfortable in it. Instead, she decided to go with the one of the traditional kimonos that she had had made from enchanted silks while she was in the other world, settling on the black one with the dara blossom pattern on it. She had always loved the dara blossoms in the other world, as they were almost exactly like cherry blossoms, except for their purple color.

She had just finished becoming decent for mortal eyes when she heard Sergeant Perkins, her current escort, knock on the door to her bedroom. Opening the door, she smiled at the female officer. “Good morning, Sergeant. I take it I have visitors. Are they official or unofficial?”

Perkins shook her head. “Personal, ma’am. Your family is here. And you have a meeting with the lawyers at ten.”

“What? I wasn’t expecting them so soon!”

That was the truth. After all, when she ‘left’, the flight from Tokyo to Seattle was nine hours on its own. Depending on circumstances, you could easily add another two hours or more on either end of that, just with getting to the airport, waiting for the flight, dealing with customs, and the rest. For them to get here in just five hours was, well, impossible!

Perkins just smiled, and stepped to the side of the door. “Would you like to see them?”

Trying to overcome a sudden bout of nerves, she forced herself to step forward, and saw eight people standing in the living area of the suite, staring at her. She only recognized two of them. But that was not surprising. Only two of them were even alive before the summoning.

Her parents were almost the same as she remembered them. There were a few signs of age. Mostly the eyes. The eyes looked older. And they recognized her face, the one she had when she was alive.

Suddenly, her feet felt like lead. Slowly, she moved in front of her parents. Her body may be covered in flesh, thanks to her ankh, but that did not mean she could tear up, even though she wanted to. Like she saw they were trying not to.

“Otōsan, Okāsan, tadaima.”

Her mother lost the battle against tears, and embraced her. “Okaeri, Kaori-chan. Osoi yo.”

“Gomenasai, ka-san. Gomenasai.”

Her father stepped forward, and hugged them both. “It is good to have you back, daughter.” He looked her in the eye, concerned. “Your skin is cold.”

“Yes, father. It is because—"

He cut her off with a shake of his head. No one had cut her off in twenty years! The shock of it made her almost miss his words. “I will hear your excuses for missing curfew later. For now, come and meet your family.”

The former Lich Queen of Risen Arelia, helpless in front of her father’s smile, decided not to argue, and instead simply nodded. “Hai.”

Her father took that opportunity to make the introductions, starting with Tatsuo and his wife, Hiroko. They had apparently met through work. Hiroko had been an in-house counsel for a company that the Akagawa Company had been doing business with, and they had been smitten with each other ever since. Their eldest son, Genjo, was nineteen, and in university. Teika, the second son, was fifteen, and attended a private school. And then there was the youngest, their slightly sleepy daughter who was now wide awake, Kaori.

Looking up at her, the young girl grabbed the sleeve of her kimono. “Aunt Kaori? You have the same name as me!”

Smiling in spite of herself, the elder Kaori nodded as she kneeled down in front of the child, to be at the same height. “Yes, I do. And how old are you, Kaori-chan?”

“I’m five!” She said this like it was a momentous announcement. “My birthday was last week!”

“Oh, dear. I missed your birthday? Then I guess I ought to give you a present, hmm?” Without waiting for an answer, she reached into her storage, and pulled out a silver bracelet. It was a simple thing, not adorned in jewels or beautiful engravings. But she had kept it for forty years.

Offering the bracelet to the wide-eyed girl, she said, “This was one of the first bracelets I ever enchanted. It will help protect you, if you get in trouble.”

“Thank you, Aunt Kaori! It is so pretty!”

“That’s a very thoughtful gift, Kaori-san.” Hiroko smiled at me, before eyeing the two boys, who were looking slightly put out that they weren’t getting gifts, and were clearly about to say something. She quickly put an end to those thoughts before they could get rolling, and cause trouble at this first meeting. “Boys, Kaori’s birthday was last week, and Aunt Kaori wasn’t able to make it. You know your birthdays aren’t until later in the year!”

“Yes, mother.” The two boys replied dejectedly at having been caught before they could start asking about gifts.

The lich in human guise smiled. Kids were the same everywhere. She was glad to see it. Catching Hiroko’s eye again, she said, “Can I count on you to get me a full list of birthdays and other dates, when I get situated, Hiroko?” The mother smiled, and nodded, and a crisis was averted.

“Oh, my goodness! How did you do that? I’ve never seen magic like that! And without any chanting or gestures or even a casting aid device! You have to tell me everything! This could change everything we know about magic! Oh, gods, I am going to have to totally rewrite my entire thesis! The implications of this alone are massive!”

Of course, the moment the crisis had passed, the final person in the room was in her face, eyes wide and wild with passion, her words spewing out like water from a hydrant. The torrent only stopped when her mother not-entirely-playfully chopped the very, VERY enthusiastic woman on the head. “Eri, you’re being rude.”

Eri gaped like a fish out of water for a moment, and then managed to get ahold of herself. “Sorry, Kaori. It is just that I am studying magic, and have never seen magic like that portal thing you did. Can you explain how you did that? And what do you mean about an ‘enchantment’ on the bracelet?”

Kaori (the elder, as the younger one was too busy admiring her new jewelry) nodded. “Yes, it is good to meet you, too, Eri. The portal, as you call it, is a simple storage magic, an extension of the magics that allow a bag or room to be bigger on the inside than the outside, if this world has such things yet.

“And the bracelet is enchanted with a passive ‘armor’ spell, which reduces the damage the wearer takes.” She looked over Eri’s shoulder to Hiroko. “It isn’t that powerful, since it was my first piece, but you should see a reduction in the number of scraped knees, bruises, and other such things while she’s wearing the bracelet.”

“But how did you—”

She set a hand on Eri’s shoulder to cut her off. “We can speak about the technical details later, when it is just the two of us, perhaps. I am sure that there is much we can teach each other, since I have never heard of a ‘casting aid device’ before. I would be a poor archmage if I passed up the chance to learn new magics, after all.”

“Archmage? What’s that?”

“Ah, it was one of the classifications for magic-users in the other world.”

“Other world, you mean like one of those isekai novels?”

“Genjo, don’t interrupt!”

The archlich smiled at Hiroko as she tried to shush her son. “It’s all right, Hiroko.” Looking over to Genjo, she said, “Yes, though I didn’t meet Truck-kun, if that is still the normal method in those stories. My class was… summoned.”

Both the boys’ eyes went wide at that. “You mean, like summoned heroes, brought to save the world?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, exactly like that. Only, no one asked us if we wanted to go or not. None of us were asked. They just snatched us up with their ritual, and said we had to go and save the world.”

Her father cleared his throat. “Then, the others?” She shook her head, and he nodded. “I see. I know that the Museum is contacting the other families. To get closure. If you don’t want to speak, I understand.”

“No, they deserve better than that, papa. I will tell them everything. But no children. I would like to keep them innocent a while longer.”

“I’ll let them know.”