Miss Witch Doesn't Want to be a Diva

The heavy aircraft took off from within the valley, with azure streams of air jetting out and slowly lifting the fuselage.

Inside the cabin, Tilan sat next to the window seat, in front of her on the round table rested an insulated box, inside which five little birds huddled together for warmth, their pristine fluffy down making them look like five plush dumplings.

The roaring noise outside the window gradually weakened as the aircraft slowly climbed into the high altitude and began to accelerate.

As if she remembered something, Tilan took a small, delicate chip from her pocket, which was a bright deep pink with splashes of bright blue froth dots that looked quite new.

After looking at the chip, Tilan waved gently at an Autonomous Unit nearby and said something, after which it approached her with a player in its arms and placed the dark grey and wood-brown interlaced player on the table.

This player's exterior was designed to mimic the look of a vintage recorder, with a bit of a retro mechanical vibe.

Upon pressing a button on top, the card slot popped open. Tilan pressed the chip in with her finger and then closed it; soon after, the player's small screen displayed a series of changing color dot matrices, then they merged into a line of text.

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['Polka Dot Recorder' — May]

Then the text dissipated, the dots representing fluctuations in pitch appeared, and a somewhat lazy and lively singing voice filled the air, relaxing the listener like tipsy wine, like ambling through alleyways at night where lights twinkled and bright walls were covered in graffiti.

It was a gift from a Songstress from the right-angled frame Star Domain, whose full name was May·Fentini·Zennani. People generally referred to her as 'Polka Dot Recorder,' a nickname she favored and chose for herself.

May's rise to fame came late; she was discovered to have a talent for singing at 29, but prior to that, she lived and worked as an ordinary cashier.

The right-angled frame Star Domain is located south of the Federation territories, three Star Domains away from the Four-leaf Crystal Star Domain. It's one of the early Star Domains of the Federation, but it's not economically developed and is also rife with pollution, deadly toxins, radiation, and more, similar to the situation in the Four-leaf Crystal.

Unlike Four-leaf Crystal, however, the right-angled frame Star Domain is quite ancient; its earliest period of settlement dates back to the early phase of the Fourth Epoch.

Even to this day, remnants of ancient times remain there; heaps of discarded steel structures, enormous cross-continental engineering projects, submerged rust-corroded forests resembling labyrinths, and ancient mechanical factories shrouded in smoke and steam, to name a few.

And May grew up in that environment. Her father was a mechanical repairman, and her mother made ends meet by cooking simple meals in a steam oven.

May didn't go to middle school; after graduating from primary school, she dropped out to work. If she had been in a region governed by the Federation it might not have been the case, but she lived in an area that wasn't—one filled with radiation and rust—the Sea of Ruins in a small town most visited by treasure-hunting salvagers.

These salvagers drove modified submarines deep into the waters, brimming with corrosive radiation and mutated sea creatures, to retrieve goods or items from the Fourth or Fifth Epoch. Occasionally, if they were lucky, they would find decent antiques which they sold for money in the central bustling Star Domains.

As a child, without the means for music education, May's biggest hobby was probably listening to the tunes played on the old recorder at home.

It was an antique, said to be a product of the early Fourth Epoch, capable of playing music recorded on cassette tapes.

The recorder, fixed by her father who initially intended to sell it for money, became May's beloved possession as she wouldn't let it go as a child, leading her father, out of love for his daughter, to give up on the idea of selling it.

Accompanied by the recorder were only two tapes; May listened to the songs they contained repeatedly, memorizing not only each beat but also the noise, the blurs, and even the spots where the tape would jam, deeply engraving them into her mind.

This later became the style of her music.

At thirteen, May started helping her mother prepare meals to sell to the salvagers. Later on, as she grew older, she took a job as a cashier at a store in the small town.

Her town couldn't connect to the central bank network of the Federation; the store couldn't afford expensive card readers, so the currency used for transactions was coins cast from green copper, a common transcendent metal of modest value, which the locals used as an alternative to money.

Since it was an area outside the control of the Federation, the small town in the Sea of Ruins was quite chaotic. Fortunately, several local gangs maintained a semblance of order, making it somewhat habitable.

During her time as a cashier, May became accustomed to dealing with a variety of customers, from partially modified humans and salvagers with multiple mechanical arms, to well-dressed archaeologists and unruly mercenaries.

After several years of trepidation and adjustment, May had become completely comfortable with her job at the store, to the point where she could spare moments to fiddle with music, and her favorite thing to do was to toggle the tuning knob on the recorder, enjoying the novelty of a tune as its pitch shifted, an activity that had all but become her sole pleasure in life.

This was a region disconnected from the interstellar network, where the most entertainment people could get was from watching old recordings and films dug up from ancient ruins. As for the Federation's latest immersive films, sorry to say, they didn't have immersion pods for such experiences—too expensive. Besides, those pods required a connection to the interstellar network and a legal license to operate, which they couldn't have.

Thus, until the age of 28, nothing notable occurred until a traveler who came to the small town recorded the sound of music played by the neighboring cashier while drinking in a bar. Out of curiosity and novelty, he recorded this snippet of sound and then posed a few simple questions to May.