Pretending Not to Notice
A night had passed since we found the Tower of Time.
Morning came with bright sunlight washing over me.
Woo-hoo.
I started my day gazing at Lucia as she slept.
I'd planned to admire her beautiful face until she woke up.
"Master."
But Lucia's eyes snapped open, and she spoke.
Her expression was as endlessly calm as ever.
[...You were awake before me?]
"Yes. Did I surprise you?"
Don't tell me you were squinting at me the whole time just to pull off a prank?
I saw your entire eyelid-opening process.
The dynamic vision of the Sword Saint Sparrow transcends imagination.
To my eyes, a human blinking looked like slow motion.
[Yeah.]
Out of consideration for her effort, I pretended to be surprised.
The first thing she thinks of upon waking is 'feign sleep, then shock the Master.' How cute is that?
"...I don't mean to doubt your word, Master, but are you sure you were actually surprised?"
Usually people don't announce that they doubt you, do they?
[Well, right after waking up my senses are still dull, so it's hard to tell for certain.]
"I see."
Having received her answer, Lucia rose from bed and headed for the washroom.
She seemed oddly satisfied with herself. I didn't think too hard about it.
Because I need to tell her about that first.
I hadn't yet told her about the Tower of Time.
After Lucia washed up lightly and stepped back out, I sent her a telepathic message.
[Lucia, there's something I need to discuss. Could you listen carefully for a moment?]
"Of course."
While Lucia changed into her uniform, I explained about the Tower of Time.
Seven days of frozen time, and a ten-floor tower where she could accumulate real combat experience.
For now, I only gave her the broad strokes.
"Time simply stops... how remarkable."
She replied in that endlessly even tone of hers.
She did not look surprised in the slightest.
Well. She is Lucia.
I carried on regardless.
[The higher we climb, the better, so let's train right up until the exam, then go in.]
There was no need to scramble to clear the tower within the week.
The reward for Floor 10?
If we couldn't beat it, I'd just speedrun it myself.
What mattered was guiding Lucia to accomplish things on her own.
After all, the whole point of going was her growth.
[Oh, right. And I have those elixir ingredients I mentioned yesterday.]
I opened my subspace pocket and drew out the herbs with telekinesis.
A riot of brilliantly colored plants floated up into the air.
"You gathered all of this overnight?"
[Oh, did I not tell you? There were tons of herbs near the Tower of Time. These are from there.]
"...I see."
Lucia nodded and examined the floating herbs.
"I don't know much about herbs, but they seem to be in excellent condition. I've heard that harvesting normally leaves wounds on them, after all."
[Really?]
It wasn't that the Great Magic Bird had a hidden talent for herb gathering, exactly.
I just dug them up with telekinesis.
Expose the roots, pull, done. What was there to damage?
[Anyway, let's hand the ingredients over the next time you meet her.]
Even with the recipe's ingredients gathered, the only person who could actually brew the elixir was the herb enthusiast.
And since I obviously couldn't carry the herbs in my beak and play delivery sparrow...
Lucia would have to deliver them to her in person.
Sorry about this.
She despised talking to other people.
It was for her own growth, sure, but forcing her to do something she hated left a bad taste in my mouth.
Just in case, I added:
[Lucia, I'm only saying this once— if you ever dislike something, even if it's my request, tell me right away. I have no intention of forcing anything on you.]
"..."
Perhaps the words came out of nowhere, because Lucia simply stared at me in silence.
I could see her eyes. Her eyes were clear and blue like the sea.
Yet no waves of emotion ever stirred in that sea— her face remained eternally impassive.
But then.
"In the entire time I've known you, Master, there has not been a single thing I've done that I hated."
Somehow, just for that one moment, I thought I could feel warmth in her gaze.
[I'm glad to hear it.]
"Yes."
A brief, awkward silence followed.
"...Shall we have breakfast first?"
Lucia extended her hand toward me.
I obliged, lightly hopping onto her palm.
...Perhaps.
This was just one of those perfectly unremarkable mornings.
***
That day, we attended classes as always.
The herb enthusiast didn't visit during breaks— we shared no classes to begin with.
And so came lunchtime.
Lucia was sitting alone at a table when—
"A good afternoon to you, Lady Lucia!"
The herb enthusiast popped up from somewhere and took the seat across from her.
"How has your day been so far? I know it's not even half over, but might you tell me...?"
"Yes."
"Oh! Really?"
Her eyes went wide.
The orange glow flickering in her red irises seemed to burn even brighter.
"I was in a good mood this morning, and the lectures were boring. Break time was fine, I think."
"Oh? Did something happen this morning?"
"Yes. It did."
"I see...!"
The herb enthusiast's eyes grew even wider.
If anyone else had spoken like that, it would mean 'I don't want to talk to you,' but from Lucia, that was her best effort.
Is this really not forcing her, though?
Even after Lucia said the morning had been fine, my conscience still nagged at me.
But watching the two of them talk, it seemed to be going better than I'd feared.
"I ran out of my first lecture today."
"Why?"
"The thought of getting to see you today, Lady Lucia, made it impossible for me to sit still..."
"Ah."
...Is it really fine, though?
Hmm.
Let it slide for now.
"By the way, are you allowed to leave in the middle of a lecture?"
"Uh... you're, not supposed to, I think...?"
Lucia's question, asked without any real intent, flustered the girl.
"Of course, I'm a special-admissions student, so I'm not required to attend every lecture."
She had no talent for magic or swordplay alike, yet she'd been admitted to the Academy purely on the strength of being an elixirist.
The only elixirist in the entire Empire.
For the Academy, simply having her enrolled was a net gain.
"But to skip a lecture, you have to notify them a week in advance. If you don't say anything ahead of time..."
"Then what?"
Lucia tilted her head and asked.
"The head maid might kill me...!"
The herb enthusiast clutched her head in both hands and writhed in anguish.
Hmm. It's that serious, huh.
In any case, the conversation carried on in that vein for a while.
"Rei."
Lucia called the herb enthusiast by name.
"Ah! Yes!"
"I have the ingredients for the elixir you mentioned yesterday."
"...I'm sorry?"
The girl who always beamed at everything Lucia said could only gape at those words.
"You already gathered them? Could it be that you, Lady Lucia, have a blessing as well?"
"No."
Lucia turned her head toward me and called my name.
"Jjaekjjaegi."
At the same moment, she opened my subspace over the table.
Is this allowed in a dining hall?
No idea, but the elixir ingredients tumbled out of the violet subspace.
The herb enthusiast picked up the herbs one by one, then voiced her puzzlement.
"...How on earth did you store these in this condition? Even accounting for a familiar's subspace, the quality is inexplicably good...?"
Her expression as she inspected the ingredients was something else entirely.
"I'm not exaggerating— your harvesting skill puts professional gatherers to shame. Gathering this much in a single day, too... Lady Lucia truly is on another level."
At that, Lucia glanced sidelong at me and spoke.
"Thank you for the compliment."
She was not, by any stretch, thanking her on her own behalf.
Naturally, the herb enthusiast had zero chance of catching that.
"N-no, Lady Lucia! I should be thanking you! It's been ages since I got to work with ingredients of this caliber..."
She transferred all the ingredients into her own subspace ring.
"Once they're finished, I'll deliver them to your dormitory personally. Which room are you in?"
"Room 503, Hall 2."
"Understood...!"
Rei lingered a while longer chatting with Lucia, then rose from her seat.
Lucia posed one final question.
"How long do you think the elixir crafting will take?"
"I'm not entirely sure. But I'll make them as quickly as I can!"
She'd requested a full six elixirs.
Intermediate-grade ones, at that.
In the original story, each intermediate-grade elixir took a full day to brew.
Four days at the absolute shortest, or a little over a week if it ran long, I figured.
"Lady Lucia! Today was wonderful as well. Then, farewell for now. Until next time...!"
"Yes."
A bright smile was painted across her departing face.
...She does seem like a nice girl.
But something about her was oddly unsettling.
Eh, as long as she's good to Lucia, that's all that matters.
***
The rest of the day passed without anything special.
We attended every lecture, then headed straight for the forest.
We did combat training, I helped build up her spell proficiency, and we got back to the dormitory around ten o'clock, give or take.
The assignment was due tomorrow, after all.
Today is Friday.
I offered my silent condolences to the TA who'd be grinding away through the weekend too.
His complexion had improved considerably since the red-haired villain Velli got expelled, but come the weekend, he'd transform into a corpse all the same.
Truly, a TA's lot is not fit for human beings.
Anyway.
Thanks to yours truly—possessing Sparrow AI and diligently powering through the assignment—Lucia managed to fall asleep around midnight.
-Phwooo...
I surrendered my body to the bed.
The sensation of being swallowed into the mattress washed over me.
Man, I'm tired.
We hadn't even done that much today, yet it had been chaos from start to finish.
My psyche felt strangely frayed.
Just sleep, then.
Lucia, lying right in front of me, had already closed her eyes.
I drifted off as I was.
...
In the hazy darkness of unconsciousness.
-...Tap.
A faint sound reached me, like something being tapped.
-Tap... tap...
That faint rhythm repeated itself, over and over.
-Tap tap.
By the time it grew distinct, I realized it was knocking at the door.
...
In the blink of an eye, it was morning.
I studied Lucia closely, still asleep beside me. Trying to prank me again like yesterday... no, that wasn't it.
Today she was genuinely, unmistakably asleep.
Still, though.
What was with that knocking just now?
I cast透视— no, I cast my see-through magic at once.
"Haaah..."
A blonde woman was slumped against the door, forehead pressed to it, half asleep.
"Lady Lucia... I, I'm here..."
Wondering what on earth she was doing here, I first scrutinized her appearance.
Dark circles were carved deep beneath her eyes.
The irises that flickered into view now and then were bloodshot red.
Don't tell me—
Had she stayed up all night brewing the elixirs?
I peered into her subspace ring.
Being a magically constructed space, it took considerable concentration to pierce.
But in the end, I saw through it.
Glass vials filled with elixirs glittered like jewels in every color imaginable.
Six in total. Perhaps twenty milliliters each.
If I'd stopped looking there, I might have simply thought, wow, she worked hard.
...What is this?
The insides of the elixirs sparkled like stars.
These were not intermediate-grade elixirs. Nor were they high-grade, for that matter.
Epic-grade?
The kind of terminal elixir that, past the midpoint of the original story, could only be obtained by scraping through a hidden dungeon by the skin of your teeth.
Performance that made intermediate and high-grade look like toys— and on top of that—
In the original story, crafting them had been outright impossible.
She can make that?
I marveled at her ability.
And then.
...She made SIX of them in ONE night?
Suddenly, she struck me as deeply suspicious.