Chapter 39: A Little Magic Show
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Fun fact: The little dot over the letters 'i' and 'j' is called a 'tittle.'

Seraph is doing something weird today. Wait, let me rephrase that. Seraph is doing something especially weird today. He always does something weird when our Soleil De École1'Sun of the School.' Sol's title.leaves him unattended during the break between classes. I hold my notebook close to my face, pretending I'm going over my notes. I'm actually stealthily observing his actions from the corner of my eye. As soon as Sol left the room, he cleared his desk, reached into his pockets, and pulled out four silver coins and a packet of playing cards. He opened the deck of cards and picked out the four Aces. Then he placed the coins near each corner of his desk, with one card placed faced down next to each coin. After he had done that, he just... stared at his desk.

"Salutations Seraph, what are you doing?" Adelaide casually approached his desk and asked her question. It's baffling to me how she can just do that. Seraph gave a lazy response.

"Just visualizing this trick," he answered with his gravelly voice. Adelaide was visibly confused by his answer, but she as she thought about it some more, her face brightened up immensely.

"Is it a magic trick?" She eagerly asked. "Can you do magic tricks, Seraph?"

"Uh huh." Seraph nodded mindlessly, not paying attention to her. This excited Adelaide even further.

"Can you show me a trick? Can you? Can you please?" She begged Seraph and got right in his face, as if she were a child. This caused Seraph to snap out if his trance. He started stuttering in surprise, unfamiliar with Adelaide's hyperactive nature. 

"Uh, b-b, duhum... o-okay?" he awkwardly blurted out.

"Yes!" Adelaide exclaimed, giving a fist pump. Then she looked over her shoulder, trying to find her friend. "Hey Nina! Hey! Hey Nina! Get over here!" Hearing her name being called, Nina let out a long sigh and stood up from her desk. After slowly walking over to Adelaide, she looked between Seraph's flustered expression and Adelaide's excited behavior. "Watch! Seraph's going to perform a magic trick!" she told her in a hushed yet ecstatic voice. She had her fists clenched tight and held them up in front of her chest, practically hopping on the spot. Nina looked from Adelaide to Seraph.

"Look," Nina spoke to him. "You don't have to-"

"No, no," Seraph meekly cut her off and sighed. "I said I would do it, so I'm going to do it." Seraph took an exceedingly deep breath to calm his nerves and focused his eyes on the table.

He pulled the coins in closer together, but still had them form a square. "Here I have four identical coins," he explained to his audience. He was acting like an entirely different person, as if he had performed professionally in front of others before. "These two are especially identical. This one is almost as twice as identical as this one. That's how identical they are." Adelaide nodded fervently along with his explanation and Nina gave a small smirk. Seraph begun placing a card over each coin while continuing to talk. "These coins are going to magically appear and disappear, changing their positions around the square. For example, this coin is going to travel from here to here." Seraph started with the two cards closest to him, tapping just below the card on his right, then tapping just below the card on his left. "This coin will to travel from here to here." He tapped below the card on his left, then tapped below the card on his right. "And as you can see," Seraph lifted up the cards and smiled at his audience. "The coins have switched places." Adelaide gasped in shock, believing what Seraph had said actually happened. Nina chuckled and I giggled. What? It was funny. "It's the same with these two," Seraph lifted up the two cards farthest from him, showing the coins were underneath. Then he dropped the cards back onto the coins and repeated his act. "This one will travel from here to here. This one will travel from here to here. And as you can see," Seraph lifted up the cards. "They're gone." 

The three of us were stunned. All our eyes went wide and we all held our breath. My jaw dropped. Adelaide froze in shock. Nina uttered something in confusion. Seraph just smiled at them, happy with his performance.

The coins were gone. 

This just got real.


Seraph felt unexpectedly good about performing in front of some of his coevals, and their reactions inspired him to continue. He still had some time left before the next class started, so, in a burst of enthusiasm, he decided to keep going. "Now, it may look like the coins have vanished, but they didn't. They only moved." As he said that, he picked up the card in the bottom left corner, and revealed that there were three coins under it. Seeing their dumfounded looks motivated him to act further. He reset the trick and kept talking. "This is magic in its purest and simplest form: Sleight of hand. Four coins in a square. A card over each coin. Now watch closely, because this happens really fast. So fast in fact, I've already done it." Seraph flipped over the cards with the exception of the card in the top left. All the coins under the cards were gone. He looked up at the two and reveled in their confusion. "Was that too fast?" He mockingly asked them. "Don't worry, I'll do it again. Just let me reset the trick again." With his right hand, he grabbed the card he hadn't flipped. He waved both his arms over the desk as he removed the card, and all the coins were back in place. One coin in each corner. Seraph had a big, goofy grin on his face as he was entertaining the girls. He was really enjoying himself.

"I'll do it slowly and one by one, so you can see the coins travelling one at a time," Seraph said, placing the cards in place. He simultaneously lifted the card in the top left and flipped over the card in the top right. He picked up the coin on the right and clenched it in his fist and placed the card back down over the coin on the left. "Now watch this coin travel." He held his fist up in front of him, shook it a few times, and opened it, revealing nothing in his hand. With his other hand, he flipped the card in the top left, revealing two coins underneath it. "Now for the next one..." he said, flipping the card back over the two coins. He removed the card in the bottom left and placed the coin in his hand. He clenched the coin in his fist and hovered it above the top left card. Then he opened up his hand. Nothing fell out of it. He flipped over the top left card, revealing three coins underneath it. "Now, as for the last one..." he continued, covering the three coins with the card. Seraph flipped the card in the bottom right. There was nothing under it. "It seems the last one was a little impatient," he said, flipping over the top left card. All four coins were revealed. 

"Okay. This time I won't use cards. Just my bare hands." Seraph placed two cards on his left and two cards on his right. He quickly, but meticulously, arranged them facing horizontally. Sticking his fingers together, he moved the coins into a straight line using the tips of his three longest fingers, one at a time. As he moved the last coin into place, he lifted his hand and the coin had disappeared. He then started to arrange the coins into a triangle the same way, put when he slid the tip of the triangle into place and lifted his hand, the coin was gone. He then covered both coins with his hands and dragged his hands into the center of the desk. When lifted his hands, there was only one coin left. He picked up this coin in between his index finger and thumb and held it by its edges. He started to shake his wrist up and down slightly. After two soft shakes of his wrist, the coin was still visible in his hand. After one vigorous shake, the coin was gone. "And now for the finish!" Seraph declared with glee. He placed the cards sideways into a square. He did it one by one and with great focus and position, but he also did it in a way that would allow the audience to see that there was nothing being placed under the card. They could see beneath it until the very lost moment before it was placed flat. He placed one finger on one card each. With one finger steadily placed on their own card, Seraph dragged the cards outwards. Underneath those cards were the four coins, arranged into a perfect square.

Seraph had so much fun playing with coins that he didn't even notice an audience had gathered around his desk. Quickly enough, the dozen or so girls who stayed in class during this time had all started watching him. Even Katherine, the girl who sat next to him and cowered in fear behind her notebook to keep a watchful eye on him, forgot all about her fear and stood right next to his desk to witness him first hand. But Seraph noticed none of this. He had strained his eyes so hard to see what he wanted and expected to see that he ended up blinding himself to all that was around him. He didn't know he was performing for everyone. He had even forgotten the fact that he was performing for two. He thought nothing of the applause or the cries of amazement he received when he successfully pulled off a trick, because he didn't even hear them. He was just having fun, and that was all that mattered to him.

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