#066
“What about you? You should eat too.”
Eira requested as she sat down. I shook my head.
“I ate something else earlier. You can eat all of this by yourself.”
It wasn’t a lie. Eira wasn’t my child or parent, so there was no reason for me to refuse while going hungry. Eira seemed to think the same and silently began eating. Then she suddenly spoke.
“Thank you.”
“For what? It’s not even mine.”
“Still.”
“…We’re friends.”
“…Right.”
Eira stayed still with her head lowered for a moment. She seemed choked up.
This atmosphere was too awkward for me, so I left Eira to eat comfortably and looked around the room. I could see Eira’s makeshift workstation set up in the inner space meant for changing clothes.
When you think of a Potionist’s workshop, you’d usually imagine something like a medieval fantasy witch’s workshop or a mad scientist’s laboratory, but Eira’s makeshift workshop looked like a combination of a campsite and laboratory.
There were experimental tools like various flasks, mortars, and pipettes, but there were also camping equipment like mess kits, burners, and lighting lamps. Counting the medicinal ingredients, quite a lot of things were scattered around – anyway, for all that to fit inside, Eira’s bag that had looked like an ordinary eco-bag must be quite a good inventory item.
“Did you start working?”
On the workstation, various miscellaneous materials were scattered about, cut, ground, and burned. A sky-blue liquid that seemed to have been boiled once already by mixing those medicinal ingredients was cooling in a triangular flask, and the sand strawberries had been transformed into pink juice and filtered pulp chunks, stored separately.
Eira nodded.
“Yeah, once that base potion finishes cooling, I’ll mix the sand strawberry juice and pulp in the exact ratio and boil it once more. When that cools, it’s complete. Simple.”
I was impressed. Easy to say, but it couldn’t really be that simple. If it were truly that easy and simple, anyone could set up equipment at home and make potions.
Anyway, given the situation, I was glad it wasn’t medicine that would take all day or several days. Things had gotten a bit bumpy, but if it was this much, it was going smoothly…
Knock knock.
I shouldn’t have thought it was going smoothly. Both Eira and I froze at the sudden knocking sound.
Knock knock knock knock.
The knocking became longer and louder. I exchanged glances with Eira. Should we pretend not to be here?
“Raon, it’s me, Tommy. Are you in there?”
The voice that came through was the guild staff’s. Pretending not to be here wasn’t an option. Since there’s a master key at the counter, if there’s no answer, Tommy would use the master key to open and enter. Maybe an inquiry came in that there were signs of people in what they thought was an empty room after I left.
“Uh, just a moment.”
It was a bit troublesome, but it was better than Tommy opening the door and coming face to face with Eira. Eira quickly covered the workstation with a screen and hid on the bed. After confirming that both the bed curtains and workstation screen were thoroughly closed, I slowly approached the door while raising my voice.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need to check something briefly. Could you open the door?”
I sighed. Hoping I wasn’t getting caught up in some troublesome affair (since there are so many minor incidents at the guild), I opened the door just enough for my face to show.
“What on earth is the matter… Huh.”
What I saw first through the door crack was definitely Tommy, but in an instant Tommy was pushed aside and someone else filled my entire field of vision.
“How unexpected to see you in a place like this, Raon. I thought you were sleeping at home.”
Carlisle Lightinger, with his head tilted sideways, was looking down at me with a withering gaze.
“……”
I was stunned. My mouth fell open.
“May I come in for a moment?”
Carlisle politely asked for my consent, but he didn’t seem to intend to listen to my answer. He pushed the door open as he asked the question and entered, while I was helplessly pushed back as if swept by a strong wind. Tommy’s figure wasn’t even visible, hidden behind Carlisle’s bulk. Carlisle closed the door behind him as he brought his body into the room, and I felt like the space had suddenly become much smaller.
“Ca, Carlisle. Why are you here…”
“That’s what I want to ask. Weren’t you supposed to stay at my house until our debt relationship is settled?”
Carlisle, asking this, sharply scanned the room instead of meeting my eyes. When I confirmed his gaze stopped at the table, my heart sank again. On the table, the food Eira had been eating was spread out intact.
“Beef stew and pecan pie. Exactly the same as today’s dinner menu that Kipling made for you. Why would this be here? This guild cafeteria wouldn’t happen to serve the exact same ‘real’ food by coincidence.”
Carlisle emphasized the word ‘real’. And rightly so, since the guild serves food processed from monsters. There was no way there would be real food.
“That’s…”
My mind went blank. Was there a plausible excuse? I had to somehow make up a story that made sense.
“I’ve been at the guild since this afternoon. I heard you came and left an hour ago.”
I groaned inwardly. Of all times, he was at the guild. Did Taro see me and go meet Carlisle right away?
“I heard you had dinner at home and went to bed early, but when did you sneak back here again? For what reason?”
He was even getting reports from the butler. Well, yes. I do owe you quite a bit of money. But it’s not like I’m going to run off without paying – why monitor me to that extent? I couldn’t understand it at all. Even if I ran away, everywhere is monster territory, so where could I go with my skills?
Of course, in the end I’m planning to flee to reality, but I was thinking of handing over all my assets here at minimum.
Is he worried I might abandon the hidden quest midway and run off? But even though Carlisle seemed interested in hidden dungeons, he hadn’t been that desperate about them. Wasn’t his attitude more like ‘do it if you want, don’t if you don’t’?
Suddenly I remembered what Taro had said in the desert. Something about having a kind of possessiveness toward me.
Honestly, I don’t really understand possessiveness… but as Taro also said, maybe he has very strong controlling tendencies. You know those psychopaths who can’t stand it when anything or anyone doesn’t go according to their will. When the world was normal, they had to hide it, but after it changed like this, who would say anything about a powerful person’s tendencies?
If that’s really the case, it was honestly a troublesome situation. I held my head and began crafting the most plausible excuse I could think of.
“Um, well, just… yesterday we had that kind of… atmosphere, didn’t we?”
What came to mind first was naturally the most recent incident from last night. I wracked my brain.
“After that, I somehow felt uncomfortable and couldn’t stay at your house anymore. So what I mean is… uh, I became conscious of you again? It’s also burdensome to face you… and somehow I have an ominous feeling that if I keep staying at your house, I might cause an incident someday. We shouldn’t do that, not at this point.”
I spouted nonsense. While choosing my words somewhat considerately, thinking of Eira who would be listening. But as I babbled whatever came out of my mouth, I somehow thought it might be close to my true feelings.
There was also the part of me trying not to recall it, and I had really been busy all day so I’d briefly forgotten, but thinking about it now, didn’t last night really flow in a strange atmosphere?
Of course, our positions would have been completely different.
Carlisle would probably think that since we’re people who once shared lips anyway, it was no big deal, just getting swept up in the moment briefly. Since I also had a history of becoming conscious of my sexual orientation through the game character Carlisle Lightinger, it wouldn’t be strange if I felt sexual emotions toward the realized counterpart while drunk.
But seeing Carlisle’s eyes narrow dangerously at my words, I belatedly wondered if I shouldn’t have brought up this topic. We’d have to keep seeing each other’s faces anyway, so was I making trouble where there was none? Would it have been better to say I came because I wanted to join the mercenaries’ gambling games that supposedly happen every night at the guild?
I glanced toward the back of the bed where Eira was hiding. I was anxious. Rather than thinking about later, it would be better for Eira to drink the stealth potion again first. I have an ominous feeling that if this bastard catches us, we’ll be fucked.
Looking at the current atmosphere, it seems like he’d call the police immediately without even listening to our circumstances. No, rather than that, would he drag both me and Eira out and throw us as food to the monster fields outside the village? (Actually, even if he listened to our circumstances, it doesn’t seem like he’d let it slide.)
‘Drink it first, Eira, hurry.’
Praying inwardly, I tried to buy even a little time by trying to babble about anything.
“So what I mean is, Carlisle, this isn’t something to take so seriously…”
Suddenly Carlisle moved swiftly. It was such quick movement, like when making a surprise attack on a monster, that I momentarily felt like Carlisle had disappeared from before my eyes. My panicked eyes hurriedly followed the direction Carlisle had moved.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
