My life as a janitor had a certain zen-like quality to it. The repetitive swish of the mop, the scent of clean stone, the satisfying gleam of a well-polished floor. It was meditative. And it provided the perfect cover to observe the intricate, often ridiculous, social ecosystem of the Astral Kingdoms Academy.
The East Wing was my domain, and its inhabitants were my unwitting subjects. Derek, the wind mage, was their arrogant king. His court consisted of a fire mage with a terrible temper and a water mage who followed him with the devotion of a lost puppy. Their favorite pastime, aside from preening, was making life difficult for anyone they deemed beneath them. Which was almost everyone.
My plan was simple: administer small, untraceable doses of cosmic justice. Not to be a hero—gods, no—but to maintain my peaceful work environment. A janitor's peace is a fragile thing, easily disrupted by spilled potions or arrogant winds.
It began with Derek's signet ring. As he strutted down the hall, bragging about his family's ancient lineage, I focused on the ring on his finger. With a mental click, I isolated the ring and the tiny patch of air around it. Then, I fast-forwarded that specific patch of air at an incredible rate, creating a micro-cyclone around his finger. To anyone watching, it was a sudden, bizarre gust of wind that came from nowhere, twisted around his hand, and plucked the ring right off his finger. It flew in a perfect arc, out the open window, and landed with a soft plop in the murky waters of the academy moat.
Derek stared at his empty finger, his jaw slack with confusion. His friends looked around, trying to find the source of the wind. There was none.
"A… a localized atmospheric anomaly," the water mage stammered, trying to sound intelligent.
Derek scowled, his face a delightful shade of purple. "My father's ring!"
I was already mopping a nearby stretch of floor, my face a blank canvas of indifference.
The next day, it was the fire mage's turn. He was practicing a flashy, if inefficient, flame-fist technique in the courtyard. As he pulled his arm back for a powerful strike, I paused time. I carefully took the small, concealed love letter he had in his pocket—addressed to a senior student he was infatuated with—and placed it gently on the ground, right where his foot was about to land when time resumed. I also slightly adjusted the trajectory of his fist.
Click.
He threw his punch. His foot came down squarely on the letter. At the same time, his misaligned fist sent a jet of flame straight into the posterior of the water mage, who had been bending over to tie his shoe.
The resulting scene was pure chaos: the fire mage yelping as he slipped on the parchment, the water mage screaming with a smoldering backside, and the love letter, now with a perfect footprint, fluttering into the hands of a passing group of giggling students.
The fire mage's humiliation was legendary and instantaneous.
These "accidents" became a quiet routine for me. A noble girl who enjoyed hexing the cleaning staff suddenly found all the laces on her expensive boots permanently tied together. A boy who tossed his trash on the floor I'd just cleaned would, moments later, find his bag inexplicably open, its contents scattered to the four winds.
The East Wing became known as a place of strange fortunes. The arrogant were humbled by bizarre, inexplicable misfortunes, while the quiet and kind-hearted often found small strokes of luck—a lost textbook reappearing just when needed, a spilled inkwell reversing its flow before ruining an assignment.
They started calling it the "Prankster Ghost." They whispered about a restless spirit of a former student haunting the halls. They set up magical traps and detection spells, all of which found nothing. Because I wasn't using magic. I was simply editing reality, frame by frame.
I was in the middle of one such edit—reversing a puddle of sticky potion a clumsy student had dropped before it could stain the marble—when I heard her voice.
"It's you, isn't it?"
I froze, my heart performing a rare, genuine lurch. I turned slowly, my mop held like a shield.
It was Elara. She stood there, her arms crossed, a knowing look in her eyes. Not an accusing one, but a curious, intelligent gleam.
"I don't know what you mean," I said, layering my voice with confusion. "Did you spill something, Miss Elara? I can clean it."
She took a step closer, lowering her voice. "Don't play dumb, Leo. I've been watching. Derek's ring. Liam's love letter. That puddle of Professor Halgren's paralysis potion that somehow un-spilled itself yesterday before anyone noticed. These strange things… they never happened in Oakhaven. They started when you arrived."
This was a problem. Elara was observant. And her Life affinity gave her a sensitivity to the flow of energy, even if she couldn't perceive time itself.
I gave her my most pathetic, wounded look. "You think I…? Elara, I'm a null. The orbs said so. I mop floors for a living. How could I possibly do any of that? It's just… bad luck for them. Or a ghost, like everyone says."
I poured every ounce of my sixteen years of acting into my performance, making my eyes wide and innocent, my posture defensive and slightly hurt.
She studied my face for a long, uncomfortable moment. The knowing look in her eyes didn't vanish, but it softened into something else—amusement, perhaps, mixed with pity.
"Alright, Leo," she said softly, a small smile playing on her lips. "A ghost, then. A very convenient one."
She turned to leave but paused. "For what it's worth… this 'ghost' has been helping people. The little ones, the ones who get picked on. They're starting to feel safer in this wing. That's a good thing."
She walked away, leaving me with my mop and a racing mind. She knew. Or at least, she strongly suspected. But she wasn't going to expose me. Why? Because she was kind. And because, on some level, she approved.
This changed the calculus. I had an unwitting, and perhaps willing, accomplice. Or at least a silent observer. It was a vulnerability, but a manageable one.
Later that night, as I was finishing my rounds, I sensed a different kind of disturbance. Not the petty squabbles of students, but a ripple of genuine malice. Following the feeling, I turned a corner into a deserted lecture hall.
And I saw him. The mousy-haired boy with glasses from the first day. He was backed into a corner, his glasses cracked on the floor. Standing over him were Derek and his two lackeys. Derek's face was twisted with rage.
"You think you're clever, worm?" Derek hissed, a ball of crackling wind energy spinning in his palm. "Sending those notes to the council about my 'conduct'?"
"I-I didn't—" the boy stammered.
"Don't lie! Your handwriting is all over them!" Derek raised his hand, the wind spell humming with destructive potential. It was far more powerful than a simple tripping spell. This could seriously injure, or even kill, the boy.
This wasn't a prank anymore. This was an atrocity in the making.
I couldn't rewind this without Derek knowing something was wrong. I couldn't just make him trip. This required a statement. A message.
I clicked.
The world froze. Derek was a statue of fury, the lethal spell inches from the terrified boy's face.
I walked into the scene. I plucked the wind spell from Derek's hand. It was a complex, nasty little knot of energy. With a thought, I unwove it, dissipating it into harmless air. Then, I looked at Derek.
An idea, deliciously petty and perfectly fitting, came to mind.
I spent the next ten minutes of frozen time meticulously editing Derek's appearance. I unbuttoned his robe and rearranged his fine clothes so he was wearing his tunic inside out and his trousers backwards. I used a bit of wax from a candle on the wall to style his perfectly coiffed hair into two ridiculous, lopsided pigtails. Finally, I took a piece of charcoal from the lecture hall floor and wrote on his forehead, in clear, bold letters: BULLY.
Then, for the pièce de résistance, I positioned him. I placed him on his knees, directly in front of the mousy boy, his hands clasped together in a pleading gesture.
Satisfied, I returned to the doorway, leaned on my mop, and clicked.
The world snapped back into motion.
Derek, suddenly finding himself on his knees, his clothes a mess, his spell gone, and his face inches from his victim's, let out a confused squawk. The mousy boy stared, his terror replaced by utter bewilderment.
"Wh-what? How did you—?" Derek stammered, trying to get up and stumbling because his trousers were on backwards. His lackeys stared, their brains struggling to process the scene.
The mousy boy, seeing his tormentor disarmed and humiliated beyond comprehension, found a spark of courage. He pointed a trembling finger at the word written on Derek's forehead.
"B-Bully?" he read aloud.
Derek's hands flew to his face, feeling the charcoal. He let out a scream of pure, unadulterated rage and humiliation, scrambling backwards and fleeing the hall, his lackeys stumbling after him.
The mousy boy looked around the empty hall, his eyes finally landing on me, standing in the doorway with my mop.
"Did you… see what happened?" he asked, his voice shaky.
I shrugged, my face the picture of janitorial ignorance. "I just got here. Looked like he was apologizing to you. Weird."
I turned and walked away, the sound of the boy's disbelieving laughter echoing behind me.
The "Prankster Ghost" had just leveled up. And as I walked back to my basement room, I realized the game was getting more interesting. Elara was watching. The victims were becoming grateful. And the bullies were becoming terrified.
My peaceful, anonymous life was getting a little noisy. But for the first time, the noise wasn't entirely unpleasant.