Mango Pudding Is Human Propaganda

- Did I really make a decision that changed my life?

 I eat a tangerine leaf to kill time until the next hour of the training starts.

- Yeah. You picked mango pudding instead of chocolate. And you know, it’s not exactly that far-fetched, because, tell me, who the hell prefers mango over chocolate? It’s so weirdly boring that you basically changed your whole life.

Yeah, I guess that was the moment. I picked up the mango pudding from the supermarket fridge, and when I tapped my phone against the card reader, something popped up on my screen telling me I had seventy-three cents left on my card.

And since it was only the thirteenth of the month, and yours truly had gotten paid on the eleventh, I stood outside the supermarket, staring at the paper bag in my hand, filled with discounted candles from the shop next to my workplace. Something wet started boiling behind my eyes. I imagined that if I let it come any farther, my eyeball would be some giant, slimy frog egg, and just like that it stopped right there.

I made my decision. I can’t live like this.

I don’t know if, as it said, picking the chocolate pudding that day would have made any difference to my decision. I think it would have. Because I would’ve eaten it in front of my favorite crime show and then fallen asleep. But mango... mango things kind of keep me awake. Once, I opened the fridge sixteen times until morning just to sneak bites of the mango cheesecake Mom had made.

For the thousandth time, I switch back and forth between my calculator and my banking app, doing the math with the rent sitting in my account waiting to be automatically taken out on the fifth of next month, I have nothing I can actually touch except these seventy-three cents and the spider that’s been living in the corner of my room for sixteen days. 

The spider raises one of its delicate legs and says, “I’m very sorry, good sir, but can you actually sell me? Why have you counted me among your assets?”

I silence him with a wave of my hand and bite my lip again.

Yeah. This isn’t going to work. I take another spoonful of my pudding and rock back and forth on my feet. Yeah. This isn’t going to work. One whole month. Seventy-three cents.

I make up my mind. I arrange the discounted candles I bought across the floor.

The first thing he says is not what I expect to hear.

“Tell me that’s not the smell of raspberry jam.”

I look at the nearest candle in front of the foot -or at least the closest thing to a foot that the summoned little demon has- which is actually a muscular tail and try to read its label in the dim lighting.

In a faint voice, I say, “French toast with raspberry jam.”

“You’re kidding, right?” he says. He doesn’t have eyebrows, but if he did, I’m pretty sure they would’ve sunk all the way to the center of the Earth.

I point out, “Vanilla is over there. Orange is the one behind you. And the cinnamon bun is the candle on the right.”

He disappears for a moment and comes back when I blink.

“I checked with my boss. There’s no rule against summoning us with weird scented candles, but did’t it occur to you it’s a pretty sick way to do it?”

I mutter, “Unscented, hypoallergenic candles were more expensive.”

His eyes roll back into their sockets and gurgle audibly. (He later told me this is the equivalent of them dragging a hand across their forehead in exasperation.)

“What do you want?”

I don’t wait in case I miss my chance.

“A thousand... no, forty thousand in cash.”

His eyes gurgle again.

“Has no one ever taught you to be specific when you summon a little demon? You don’t even specify the currency. Should I give you forty thousand newly hatched dragonflies? And no, before you continue, I can’t hand you physical money. Sorry.”

I panic irritably. “What do you mean?”

He explains that the money they can give me has a different seal on it, and it’s clearly not from human society, so it’s useless. Apparently, just recently, some politician made a deal with a human politician, and they promised they wouldn’t invent new printers designed to fool humans anymore.

“What about my job? Can you change that?”

He whispers from the tip of his finger, “That was part of the transformation restrictions too, wasn’t it?”

He turns back to me. “No. Because even if I changed your job, since I can’t change your essence, it wouldn’t do you any good. The moment they saw you, everything would fall apart.”

“Can’t you use illusion?”

“That would require me to walk around with you the entire time, keeping everyone under a spell, and this is a one-time summoning.”

“Then what the hell can you do?” I yell. “I need money, and I can’t wait till the next payday”

He circles around within the circle of the candles. He looks at the fridge door. The three picture frames beside my bed. The pile of dirty laundry on the other side of my room.

“Hmmm. Maybe something can be done. They said initiative is important in this job.”

When my alarm goes off in the morning, I’m lying on the floor beside the extinguished candles.

There are two new messages on my phone.

One is from Alice, my sister:

dreamed about your demonling last night if you told me you needed money, you wouldn’t have had to get yourself into the mess of summoning demons i transferred some money into your account

just hoping you don’t end up doing the internship during exam seasomore

And the second one says:

Your lifetime summoning quota has expired.

You have now been selected from among the eligible candidates to serve as an Apprentice Demon for a period of three months, as part of the program of the CSSO (Cosmic Supernatural Services Organization), newly established Digital Division.

Anyone who uses these services is required to subsequently complete a three-month internship within the same system. This principle aims to replace the mindset of “This system should do this for me” with empathy and understanding:“Ahaaa, so that’s why this is taking so long. This requires so much fresh apprentice labor. What’s going wrong here...?”

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I fight the urge to roll my eyes back into their sockets and let them gurgle.