Witch Loans
In the fairy tale world, witches were the race most fond of personal lending.
Even the most powerful witch couldn't conjure gold coins from thin air, so they had to run side businesses to barely cover the costs of potion research and daily living.
The lending process was usually simple and straightforward. If someone came to borrow something—a magic mirror, a rose in the dead of winter, or an out-of-season fresh lettuce—the witch would calculate the interest, quote a total repayment price, and that was that. Agree, and the loan was made. Disagree, and no deal.
Naturally, a contract had to be signed, and collateral had to be provided.
Theoretically, anything could serve as collateral—personal beauty, dreams, or lifespan all had established valuations, standardized across the industry. No fear of being cheated.
There was only one thing witches, as a rule, would not accept.
They refused to accept unborn children.
Before this consensus was formed, older generations of witches had accumulated too many lessons written in blood and tears.
Some borrowers had nothing to offer as collateral but their future firstborn child, and they signed contracts readily enough. But when collection time came and witches came knocking, those borrowers had a change of heart.
They refused to repay the debt and wouldn't surrender the child either.
Many witches ended up saddled with uncollectible bad debts, eating losses they had to absorb themselves. Occasionally a witch, too furious to let it go, would insist on seizing the child pledged as collateral—but then she'd either be killed by the child she'd raised with her own hands, or murdered by someone who'd fallen in love with the grown child. Either way, no good endings.
Over time, an unwritten rule formed in the witch lending trade: to protect practitioners' safety, never accept unborn children as collateral.
But since it was never codified as official regulation, occasionally someone insisted on making an exception.
Take the shepherd boy who lived on the edge of the grasslands. He'd used his future firstborn child as collateral with the young witch next door in the forest, in exchange for a bottle of good fortune potion.
This trade wasn't actually the shepherd boy's idea—it was the young witch who proposed it first.
Her motive was simple: she wanted to help the shepherd boy realize his dream.
They'd been friends for years, ever since they were both babbling toddlers smearing mud together. Back then, the little boy was still a noble little prince, and the little girl was the only daughter of the Grand Sorcerer. Their families would gather for parties, and the two little ones formed a deep friendship.
But even in the fairy tale world, there were always wars and upheavals, and lives were forcibly changed.
The little prince became a penniless shepherd boy, and the young lady became a witch's apprentice ordered around by everyone. The kingdom's new ruler was no benevolent sovereign, and everyone's lives were harder than before. The two orphaned children had no one but each other for support—whoever got bread would split it with the other, and whoever was wronged could only confide in the other. When they were happy, they'd climb to the rooftop together and make wishes upon shooting stars; when they were sad, having a friend to share the burden made even a deprived life bearable enough to scrape by.
As the years passed, the two children grew into teenagers. The young witch was still merely the lowest-ranking apprentice, but relying on her talent and a few precious ingredients and secret techniques left by her parents, she'd managed to create the world's only bottle of good fortune potion.
She wanted to give it to the shepherd boy, but a guild rule stood in the way: to protect the collective interests of all witches, all magic potions given to mortals must be exchanged for a corresponding price. No witch may undermine market pricing, under penalty of severe punishment from the Witch Lending Association.
So the young witch had to persuade the penniless shepherd boy to sign a contract with her, receiving the potion as a loan with the repayment set at ten gold coins.
"With this bottle of good fortune potion..." the young witch's eyes sparkled with hope. "Maybe you can achieve the wish you made upon that shooting star."
But as previously stated, the shepherd boy had nothing—even the sheep he tended belonged to his employer. He couldn't offer any decent collateral.
Without suitable collateral, the loan contract couldn't be formed.
"Then use your future first child as collateral," the young witch said, biting her lip—sneaking through a loophole in the rules.
Take the good fortune potion I'm giving you, go out and have adventures, achieve your dream, then one day meet a girl who likes you, marry her, and have a lovely baby. When the time comes, you'll definitely be able to afford the repayment price agreed in the contract.
Even if you can't afford it, it doesn't matter. The child pledged as collateral—she would never truly take away.
Of course, she couldn't say this last part out loud. Saying it would violate regulations and trigger instant punishment from the Witch Lending Association.
But the shepherd boy initially refused. This boy with his messy wheat-colored short hair pushed the precious potion back toward the young witch. "You have your own dream to achieve too."
"I can't. Potions made by witches can't affect themselves." The young witch smiled and shook her head, pushing the potion back. "These are precious heirlooms from my parents. I wouldn't give them to anyone but you. If you don't accept, all my work will have been for nothing."
The shepherd boy couldn't outlast her persistence. He took the potion, signed the contract, shouldered his meager bundle, waved goodbye to the young witch, and set off on his journey to realize his dream.
"Goodbye," the young witch said, watching his retreating figure, finally letting her tears fall.
The truth was, the claim that witches' potions couldn't affect themselves was a lie she'd fabricated—the first lie she'd ever told him in all their years together.
Wait—not entirely a lie.
The good fortune potion truly couldn't directly fulfill the young witch's wish, because her greatest wish—the one she could never bring herself to say aloud even when shooting star after shooting star streaked across the sky—was for that boy whose smile was always as warm as sunshine to achieve his dream of reclaiming the throne, so that everyone could have a better life, and so that he himself could be happy.
Even if that happiness didn't include her, it didn't matter.
After that, they were separated for many years. The young witch continued her apprenticeship, while the boy adventured across this magical continent.
His journey sounded romantic and wonderful, but in reality it was fraught with trouble and danger. One small bottle of fortune potion wasn't enough to solve all his problems—there were many times he had to rely on his own strength to face terrifying ghosts, cunning demons, and ferocious fire-breathing dragons. He suffered greatly, was wounded often, and came close to dying more than once.
But he never mentioned any of this in the letters he sent the young witch.
He only wrote about how vast the world was, how magnificent the scenery was, and he'd tuck a small pressed flower or red leaf into each letter.
The young witch wrote back often too—congratulating him on becoming a respected hero, and occasionally mentioning, shyly, her own small progress in magical research.
But the world remained turbulent. While the boy roamed fighting dragons and vanquishing evil, the young witch was also tossed about by circumstance, moving from place to place. Their letters gradually stopped reaching each other, and they lost contact for years.
When she next heard concrete news of the boy, the young witch had long since come of age, a fully licensed witch in her own right.
She heard that the once-weak shepherd boy had first become a valiant dragon-slaying warrior, then—by virtue of his royal blood—gathered a group of loyal followers willing to join him in overthrowing the tyrannical ruler and reclaiming his rightful castle and territory.
The story sounded almost too fantastic to be true, but that was how legends worked in the fairy tale world—no matter how epic the adventure, there would always be a hot-blooded protagonist stepping onto the journey.
And they always succeeded in the end.
This part wasn't fiction but fact—though legends always glossed over the actual hardships the hero endured, and the common folk preferred to attribute his success to something more mystical.
Like a bottle of good fortune potion that could overcome any obstacle.
So the young man's eventual defeat of the evil ruler and reclamation of his throne came as no surprise. After all, the good fortune potion had been made by the young witch who'd just won the latest Potions Championship—surely it must be extraordinarily effective.
With the throne settled, and ordinary people's lives gradually improving under the new benevolent rule, everyone had more idle time to discuss the obviously more popular gossip topic in the fairy tale world.
Such as: which noble house's daughter would the bachelor king marry as his queen?
Royal romance gossip was always the hottest topic in the fairy tale world, and rumors flew everywhere. Even the young witch living on her fog-shrouded mountain peak heard eight hundred versions a day.
She'd thought she'd chosen a quiet place to live, but ever since the new king's success with her good fortune potion became known, people seeking to make deals lined up from her mountaintop door all the way down to the foothills.
So amid a thriving lending business, she also had to endure visitors gossiping through every version of the new king's love life. The witch took it well—she didn't cast a silencing charm on any of them. Sometimes, hearing a story too absurd, she'd even laugh along.
No one noticed that her laughter always carried a trace of melancholy.
More time passed. One day, when the witch was sitting at her table reviewing a new stack of contracts, someone walked up to her.
"What would you like to borrow today?" The witch didn't look up, asking out of habit.
"I'm not here to borrow anything," a bright male voice replied. "Actually, I'm here to repay a debt."
The witch froze. It took her a while to lift her head and see a young man in armor standing before her, with a more vigorous build and an even brighter smile than she remembered.
The only thing unchanged was his still-messy wheat-colored short hair.
The witch blinked, then fumbled through the thick stack of contracts in her drawer until she found the one at the very bottom. "Th-then you owe me ten gold coins."
But the young man spread his hands. "I don't have them."
"You..." The witch stared at him, bewildered. "You're the king now. How can you not have ten gold coins?"
"Fighting costs money, and helping people rebuild their lives costs even more." The young man—who'd clearly grown a thicker skin over years of adventuring—shamelessly declared, "Right now the ministers harangue me daily for money for this and that. I didn't even have a budget to come visit Fog Mountain—I had to have a palace guard steal the Grand Steward's horse to get here."
"Th-then..." The witch bit her lip habitually, her face showing the irritation of feeling mocked. "According to the contract, if you can't pay, you owe me a child."
"Oh, all right then." The young man casually stepped around the table and walked up to her. "Then I owe you a child."
The witch's irritation evaporated. She said flatly, "Oh."
"But I don't even have a marriage partner yet," he said, leaning closer. "Where would I get a child?"
"You stop that—you've got more rumored love interests than anyone can count!" The witch pressed herself back against her chair, her voice carrying a hint of hurt and a smidge of wounded pride. "Hurry up and get married and have a baby, then pay off your debt with the kid!"
"Having to sacrifice a marriage and my entire future just to repay a debt? Your interest rates are insane." The young man burst out laughing, then finally composed himself. "How about this, seeing as we're old friends—can I ask you for a favor?"
"What?" The witch eyed him warily.
But he'd stopped teasing, straightened his posture, and his expression turned utterly serious: "Will you marry me?"
The witch went completely blank.
"I really can't produce a child all by myself. If you insist on taking a child as collateral..." He tilted his head slightly, that familiar smile returning. "You'll have to help me make one."
The witch sat frozen, speechless and motionless.
"What? Don't want to? That's a bit of a problem." He said this, but his expression wasn't worried at all. He calmly produced an object from his coat. "Luckily, I came prepared for this scenario."
In his hand was the bottle of good fortune potion—the very same one the young witch had given the shepherd boy all those years ago.
It was still completely full. Not a single drop had been used.
Fairy tale legends were always seven parts fiction and three parts truth, never telling the whole story. In the tale of the fallen prince reclaiming his throne, it was true that the shepherd boy had overcome great hardships to win back his kingdom, and it was also true that much of his success had been aided by good fortune.
But he had never actually used that bottle of good fortune potion.
Because the boy had one most important wish—a wish he could never even bring himself to shout aloud at a shooting star—that he needed the good fortune potion to fulfill.
And now was the time to make that wish come true.
The young man dropped to one knee, looking up at the girl he'd yearned for over so many years. He gently wiped the tears sliding down her cheeks, then placed the bottle of good fortune potion into her hands, clasping her hands tightly in his own: "I offer this entire bottle of good fortune as my pledge. Please help me fulfill my wish—become my most important family."
---
Later, it was said that the Witch Lending Association held a special meeting to debate whether a witch's own child could be counted as loan collateral.
But opinions were so divided that after arguing for a long time with no resolution, the matter was quietly dropped.
Naturally, in fairy tales, no one cared about such technicalities. The public was far more interested in gossip.
Like the fact that the young king married a genuine witch as his queen, and they had several adorable princes and princesses who, thanks to their mother's professional background, were immune from birth to curses, abductions, and all manner of inexplicable disasters—living lives of enviable happiness.
Given how rare this plot development was in traditional fairy tales, it was well worth discussing in streets and alleys for a good long while.
But no matter the plot, fairy tales always tend toward the same ending.
That is: the people who love each other live happily ever after, until the end of time.
END