It had actually worked.
Vincent's heart surged with disbelieving elation. Everything had gone exactly as he'd hoped.
By leveraging the contract signed with Klein in reality, and then exploiting the fact that Klein and Mr Fool were fundamentally the same person during the meeting above the grey fog, he had completed two transactions in succession — one an answered question, one an exchanged account.
The identity confusion between "Klein" and "the Fool" had been the key that unlocked the Shadow Merchant potion's digestion.
"What's wrong?"
Bernadette sensed the shift in his emotions. "The Shadow Merchant potion just fully digested."
"How did you manage that?"
"Simply... conducted a transaction with Mr Fool."
Bernadette was startled: He used a god's divine standing to digest a potion. Bold thinking. And bolder execution. But how exactly did he make a god feel like he had come out ahead in the deal?
"How much more is needed to bring the Scale into balance and advance to the next Sequence?"
"Roughly half."
"So the focus now shifts back to facilitating other people's deals and transactions?"
The next day and a half passed without incident.
This may have had something to do with the fact that Vincent spent most of it lying flat on the sofa — because on the second day, the abdominal pain intensified significantly.
The sensation was like having a meat grinder lodged somewhere inside, going off every half-minute or every few minutes, leaving both halves of their shared consciousness half-dead with every cycle.
"This genuinely cannot happen every month."
"..."
"After this is over, I am finding an Apothecary."
Bernadette was silent for a long time before saying: "I suspect the pain may not be physical in origin — but psychological, or spiritual."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. After my soul was split in two, the half that remained here is the part from before I reached Sequence 4 — before I gained divinity. The part that went to your world carries the spiritual half." She said: "The situation now may be a specific reaction between the residual spirituality in this body and my soul fragment."
Vincent blinked. "That explains why there's pain but no blood."
Bernadette: "..."
"So your point is — Apothecary remedies may not work."
"Correct."
"Then what do we do?"
"Advance in Sequence as quickly as possible."
Vincent collapsed back onto the sofa with a groan. "I know. I'm trying."
Two more visitors arrived at the Catch-All Agency that day — both with ordinary commissions, both gently turned away on grounds of indisposition. The Shadow Merchant potion had already digested; there was no urgent reason to take on every case.
And so Wednesday morning arrived, and the time for the next soul exchange.
"After this exchange I mainly want to determine what the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery is actually planning."
For the record: Bernadette hadn't originally cared much about the Church probing the Moses Ascetic Order's remnants or their apparent interest in the Delin affair. But the matter of the tomb changed everything. If the evil spirit's claim was true — if her father had really visited that place — then she couldn't afford not to care.
"Stay careful out there."
Vincent was serious. "And I'll wish you in advance good luck finding the leads you're looking for in Father's diary..."
"I will find them."
The clock reached eight.
In the world of Harry Potter.
For these past several days, Bernadette had been operating at full capacity. Apart from attending classes, she declined all social engagements, dedicating herself to studying Chinese and Ancient Runes.
Harry, meanwhile, was quietly having an identity crisis: Why does Professor Moriarty keep changing?
Time slipped by in focused busyness. The day of the soul exchange arrived.
To prevent another accident, Bernadette did not go to the sitting room in the Realm this time. She stayed in the bedroom and waited for the clock to reach eight.
Eight o'clock. The usual hour of the exchange.
Bernadette watched the clock's hands tick past eight and continue moving. The expected exchange did not come.
8:05...
8:10...
8:30... 9:00.
As the time crept further and further past the exchange window, Bernadette finally confirmed what she had come to suspect: for reasons unknown, the exchange had stopped.
She was staying in this world.
After a brief moment's thought, she entered the Realm's sitting room and recited the three-part honorific in prayer.
In the world of Lord of the Mysteries.
When the clock reached eight, the familiar blur of disorientation washed over him, and Vincent and Bernadette completed their soul exchange as usual. But when his consciousness cleared and he looked around, he froze.
I'm still in this room.
Did I get the time wrong?
But he had absolutely felt that brief dizziness. That was the distinctive sensation of every exchange.
The sensation of exchange, without the actual exchange completing — this is a genuine bug.
Before he could finish the thought, the body moved on its own.
"She" stretched languidly, then padded straight into the washroom. With a wave of her hand, clusters of peach blossoms bloomed on all sides, transforming the room into an enclosed, private space.
Then she undressed.
"..."
Fine.
I was in the Realm the moment it started. I saw nothing.
An odd thought crossed his mind: when Bernadette had been in this same situation, trapped as the powerless observer, he had at least been clothed while going about his business. Now, in a display of precise and poetic cosmic justice—
He pushed the thought firmly away.
This confirmed it: the exchange had happened between the two of them — both of them in this world. With nowhere to go, it had simply swapped their roles.
At least she'd know something was wrong fairly quickly.
"Bernadette," she announced, settling into the warm water with an audible sigh of relief, "I've finally had a proper bath. Not having Vivian around has its compensations."
She laid her head back. "Finally. I've been patient about him bathing in my body. But watching it happen right in front of me was another matter entirely."
Vincent: "..."
Is that an apology I owe you?
Because if so, I'm doing the same thing right now.
He tried to think practical thoughts.
What now? What was his situation, compared to Bernadette's when she was the observer?
The first thing that came to mind: Bernadette had been unable to enter the Realm of Chaos at all. What about him?
"Enter the Realm of Chaos."
He stepped in immediately, clean and unobstructed, arriving on the stone platform of the Thirty-Third Heaven. Good. The constraints on me are less severe than hers.
But staying here consumed spirituality continuously. He couldn't remain long.
He found a collapsed stone pillar nearby, sat down, and looked out at the pale blue light of the Thirty-Third Heaven in the distance. He exhaled.
"This is genuinely complicated."
Would I be stuck like this forever? Never returning to the Hogwarts world? Bernadette permanently half a soul?
We'd be two of a kind, actually — each of us missing something, never quite a full person between us.
It was supposed to be a harmless joke I told Klein. And now it's come true — in the most improbably literal way possible.
Well done, Mr Fool. I suppose you really do bear every name you're given.
He was still shaking his head when a low murmur reached his ear. The Scale above began to pour out its golden mist, and a silhouette wavered within it.
Vincent stepped forward quickly, channelling his spirituality into the mist to form his own image — specifically, of Bernadette in the Harry Potter world.
The two of them regarded each other across the space for a moment.
Bernadette spoke first, softly: "You and she didn't exchange?"
"We did. She's in control now. I'm the observer."
A quiet "mm." Then: "At least things didn't go the worst way."
"What?"
"At least you're not confined to the body the way she was — unable to enter the Realm at all. Otherwise our communication would be much more complicated."
"True enough," Vincent said. "I still could have left a note in the sitting room, and she could have read it there."
Bernadette tilted her head in thought. "So — it seems the exchange did happen, but since we were both in the same world, it simply swapped our roles in the body."
"That's how it looks."
"What's her thought on this?"
Vincent paused, then told her honestly: "She considered the idea of both of you entering the Realm sitting room at the same time. The hope was that the two soul fragments might fuse. But I talked her out of it — we don't know whether the fusion would return you both here or to the other world."
Bernadette shook her head. "That thought is off the table. When I realised I hadn't inherited her memories after the supposed exchange, I immediately tried to enter the Realm. I couldn't. Same as before."
"Which means when one of us is in the sitting room, the other cannot enter."
A frown. "So we're just... waiting for the next exchange?"
"Do you have a better idea?"
"What if the next exchange swaps us again?"
Her question left him silent. That was the worst possible outcome. It would mean he was permanently cut off from the Harry Potter world, and she would remain forever with half a soul.
For me, not returning there isn't the greatest tragedy. What I truly can't accept is being a rootless ghost in this world forever — either wearing a woman's body, or sitting on the sidelines as a powerless observer.
If Bernadette advances to become an angel, this could go on for millennia — until her lifespan finally ends.
And if she somehow manages to advance to Sequence 0... then there is no end.
"I do have some thoughts," Bernadette said.
She tapped her fingers on an invisible surface. "Have you forgotten — two souls sharing one body is not actually uncommon in my world? Possession, parasitism, certain Beyonder abilities — all of these create that situation."
"Perhaps... there's a way to let your soul leave my body and occupy one of your own. The Earth Mother Church's Human Alchemy, for instance."
She continued: "The difficulty, of course, is figuring out how your soul separates from my body at all. Because you're not attached through possession or a parasite — you're fully merged with the body itself."
Vincent raised a question: "If I do end up with my own body — would we still exchange souls?"
"...Who can say? But anything is better than where we are now."
After a long silence: "There's another possibility. We find the root cause of our soul exchanges and solve the problem at its source."
Bernadette said, evenly: "The Realm of Chaos."
To be continued…
Advacne 100 Chapters are up on my Patreon!
pat reon.com/AlphaSenatus