Наталка Груздова, бізнес відьма VS Zyhun Raveneye

The air above the market was thick and stagnant, like an unventilated exchange floor before closing. Natalka Hruzdiva stood on the edge of a stone terrace, her red dress absorbing the gray light of the gloomy morning like a balanced ledger in which all expenses had been accounted for in advance. In her right hand, the Magic Business Smartphone glowed—the screen breathed with a pink-gold hue, and every pixel pulsed in rhythm with her heart, beating as steadily as a line in an accounting book.

Opposite her, just a dozen paces away, Zyhun Raveneye stood remarkably calm. A wide pink hat with a floral pattern cast jagged shadows across his face, but it did not hide his eyes: they were sharp as blades still sheathed. His white waji, adorned with red characters on the sleeves, stirred in the wind—just as lightly as the fabric of his pink long vest. He was in no hurry. He breathed as if the square before him were not a battlefield, but an old training wall he knew by heart.

“You have come for interest,” Natalka said, her voice sounding almost friendly, like an accountant warning a client about late fees. “But I do not lend to those who lack collateral.”

“I do not lend,” he replied, low and even. “I collect debts from the past.”

And he took the first step. His rubber sneakers, patterned in gray, white, and red, left almost no trace on the stone—the movement was so light. The blue multi-pocketed fabric of his trousers stretched over his knees, and his pink quilted knee pad flashed in the light. In an instant, Zyhun was where Natalka had stood a moment before.

She did not retreat; she accounted. Her thumb slid across the screen, and light erupted from the smartphone, unfolding in the air like the pages of an invisible book. An accounting barrier—thin yet strong, woven from numbers and glyphs into a grid—materialized. Each blow that struck it did not rebound with force; it was written off. Zyhun’s blade, delivered with the edge of his palm in a sidestroke, touched the grid. It did not ring; it scratched, like a pen on paper.

“The position is debited,” Natalka whispered, a joy flickering in her voice that she refused to show on her face.

The force of the strike flowed upward along the luminous lines, and a new row lit up on the smartphone screen: profit. She absorbed it and grew heavier—not in body, but in presence. Her next step was short, but the ground beneath the heels of her red boots responded with a dull hum.

But Zyhun did not strike again. He stopped so abruptly that it seemed he had run into his own reflection. His shoulders dropped, his breathing slowed. He looked not at her, but through her—at something behind her back, into the void where, perhaps, a wall of fresh paint once stood. His pink hat tilted, and in his hand appeared not a sword, but merely an empty gesture—as if he were raising a blade over an opponent who was not really there.

“I trained against a wall,” he said quietly. “For years. And each time the paint was fresh, and each time I made the same mistake with the same movement.”

Natalka sensed this before she could articulate it: an invisible connection, a psychological leash pulling him backward—not toward her, but toward his own failures. He was not fighting her. His precision was flawless only in a world where the opponent repeated his errors. But she did not repeat them.

Then she did what a good businessperson does with a bad debtor: she transferred his obligation onto herself.

“You borrowed from your own past,” Natalka said, raising the smartphone to eye level. “But it has already been written off. Your account is empty, Zyhun. And I am charging the interest.”

The screen flared. The accounting barrier parted and transformed into long lines that slithered across the stone, wrapping around his steps like red ropes around his own shins—but now they held not him, but that empty, imaginary fight in which he lived. Each of his strikes aimed at the phantom of the past was written off as debt, and each debt became her profit. The force did not dissipate; it accumulated in the pink glow of the screen, and Natalka became increasingly undeniable, increasingly present, increasingly real.

Zyhun felt the ground slipping from beneath his feet. He finally drew his sword from its pink scabbard—a genuine, honest motion—but the lines had already entangled the space so tightly that the blade stuck in the air, as if caught in thick syrup. Every movement cost him more than it should have. He breathed heavily, his white waji clinging to his body, and his pink hat flew off and rolled across the stone.

“You were precise,” Natalka said, her voice devoid of triumph, stating only a fact. “But precision without a target is a loss.”

She stepped forward, and with a single touch of her finger to the screen, she closed the balance. The light folded into one sharp, pure flash—and the accounting barrier tightened around Zyhun, not injuring him, but stopping him completely. His hands dropped. The sword fell and clattered against the stone. He stood surrounded by luminous numbers, and for the first time throughout the fight, he looked not into the past, but directly at her—and in that gaze was something akin to respect for a final, inexorable sum.

Natalka lowered the smartphone. The screen went dark, and for a few seconds longer, a line lingered on it: transaction closed, profit recorded.

The air above the market finally cleared. The wind caught the pink hat and carried it away, but no one followed it. Natalka Hruzdiva, the business witch, adjusted a strand of black hair that had escaped her bun and looked at the battlefield as one looks at a closed report: everything calculated, everything written off, everything under control.