Uncomfortable Cohabitation (11)
Maximilian had tried to apologize, but I refused to open my door.
I didn't even understand why I was acting this way. Were my emotions just all over the place? It wasn't even that time of the month, so why… it was genuinely difficult. For a long while I could sense him lingering outside the door, murmuring something, but I ignored him as best I could.
A part of me felt sorry for him and wondered if this had gone far enough — but I held firm.
Eventually he muttered something in a dejected voice and left the manor.
He was probably heading off to some banquet or tea party.
I hadn't quite caught what he'd said at the end, though, and it kept nagging at me.
"Ugh… maybe I'm the one in the wrong…"
But I'd only spoken the truth, hadn't I? If it was a party hosted by nobles, plenty of young ladies would be there, right? And they'd approach him in the most shameless ways…
My lips pushed out in a pout before I even realized it.
Besides, I still couldn't make sense of my own feelings…
That was a problem. A mage who couldn't control herself? That was just incompetence — pure incompetence.
"So, what did you call us for?"
I had summoned my older sister, Sister Mary, and Priest Daniel to my room, and the four of us sat around the table.
"I-I, um, I have a problem I need advice on."
Right. A problem!
All three of them were older than this body of mine, so calling them over under the pretext of seeking counsel wasn't strange at all.
My mental age, counting my previous life, might actually be higher… but age wasn't really the point when it came to advice, was it…
"Julian? Perhaps you should collect yourself first instead of rambling?"
Sister Mary held out a cup of tea.
"I-I'll drink it carefully."
I had no idea what I'd been babbling about. I'd been turning over a completely different worry inside my head, so what had actually come out of my mouth?
The tea settled my stomach and began to calm me down. It must have had a soothing effect.
"So, what about Maximilian is troubling you?"
Sister Mary cut straight to the heart of the matter.
How had she been so certain it was about him? Had my rambling actually been about that?!
"W-well, lately, whenever I'm near Maximilian, I start feeling… strange."
"Strange how?"
"I don't know…"
Happy and uneasy at the same time… and lonely when he wasn't there. And the thought of him meeting other young ladies put me in a foul mood.
"A severe case…"
"Quite severe, yes…"
Priest Daniel and Sister Mary looked at me with pitying eyes.
What? I was a little off, sure, but was it bad enough to warrant that look? Was it really that serious?
"Do you know, Sister?"
Daniel and Mary seemed to understand, yet they weren't telling me. I asked my older sister, but she shook her head.
"No idea."
"Moments like this really drive home how young the two of you still are."
Sister Mary spoke with a faintly bitter expression. She was the oldest among us, after all.
"Come on, Mary, you're still young yourself."
For some reason, that only seemed to hit her harder.
"You needn't say such things."
I got the feeling I'd put my foot in it. And when were they going to listen to my actual problem…?
"Julian, you said you were seventeen, correct?"
"Yes, I think so."
"So you won't be of age until next year."
Commoners were usually recognized as adults at fifteen… but eighteen was the more standard threshold for adulthood.
It was written that way in the doctrine of various churches, and some kingdoms even codified it into law.
"That doesn't matter right now."
I was far more curious about my current condition.
"What Julian is experiencing is—"
Just as Sister Mary was about to explain, Priest Daniel clapped a hand over her mouth.
"What is the meaning of this?"
Sister Mary looked thoroughly displeased, her face darkening with rising anger as she glared at him.
"A moment. We need to talk."
Daniel led Mary off to a corner and began whispering something. I strained my ears in their direction, but I couldn't catch a single word.
They must have used some kind of silence magic or holy spell.
I couldn't hear them, but I could still watch their faces, so I studied them intently.
I had no idea what they were discussing…
Sister Mary's brow furrowed. Then it smoothed out into a look of troubled contemplation — but that was as far as I got.
The two of them returned to the table.
"We could tell you, but this seems to be something you need to realize for yourself."
"What?"
Daniel's words left me briefly speechless.
Are you kidding me? Are they trying to make me angry? Why won't they just tell me!
"There's no need to overthink it. It's a perfectly natural thing. It may be difficult, but continuing to wrestle with it yourself seems to be the right approach."
Anger boiled up inside me.
Sister Mary smiled gently, brewed a fresh cup of tea, and set it in front of me.
"Why won't you just tell me?"
"We could tell you, of course, but we believe it's better for you to come to the understanding on your own. It isn't that we don't want to share it with you — not at all."
She spoke in that soft, coaxing tone one uses with a child.
Being treated like a kid left a slightly sour taste in my mouth.
I sipped my tea and sank into thought. These feelings, this mood — they were completely new to me. That was why they were so difficult, so complicated, so desperately something I wanted to understand… and so confusing.
"Haa…"
Looks like I'd have to figure this out alone.
The counseling session ended on a hollow note. Priest Daniel and my older sister went off to train, while Sister Mary and I headed off to work on alchemy.
Recently, the alchemical combination had yielded yet another successful recipe.
"What should I try today…"
The recipe I'd cracked was for tobacco. Stuck in the manor after the underground waterway incident with nothing else to do, I'd thrown myself into alchemy and stumbled into success by pure chance.
An absurdly lucky coincidence, really…
"First, I should make a few of these cigarettes."
"Do you really need to make those?"
"I need to know what the effects are."
These weren't ordinary cigarettes — they were something special — which made them one of the things I was most looking forward to.
The ingredients were four: well-dried tobacco leaves, evening primrose, water, and medicinal herbs.
The ratio was tobacco leaves five parts, evening primrose two, water one, and herbs two. The primrose and herbs were nearly as important as the tobacco leaves themselves.
I put in the tobacco leaves I'd prepared in advance, then added the evening primrose and herbs according to the ratio. Finally, I added the water that would serve as the medium — and the preparation was done.
The pot was packed full of plant matter, and the water looked sparse. But that was the correct method.
That was exactly what had made finding the formula so hard…
I'd never imagined the medium would go in such a small amount. As my knowledge of tobacco grew, I'd started to wonder if the medium was the real problem.
Tobacco, after all, is premised on drying the leaves over and over and then burning them. So water goes in? Alchemy combinations need a medium, but I'd decided to account for tobacco's need to be dried. So I'd reduced the water and hunted for the formula… and another stroke of coincidence had stacked on top of that to produce success.
What coincidence? Priest Daniel, fussing about wanting to help, had knocked over the ingredients and spilled them into the pot.
And it wasn't just Daniel — Maximilian had done something similar.
Daniel, sorting and carrying herbs, had dumped a load of them into the pot. Maximilian, who'd come over proudly showing off the expensive evening primrose he'd brought, had caught the stumbling Daniel and reached out to shield me — and dropped the flowers in the process.
The two ingredients had floated through the air and plopped straight into the pot mid-combination.
I'd been dumbfounded and exasperated, and seriously considered abandoning the batch. But the ingredients were too precious to waste, so I'd kept stirring until it failed…
And it had succeeded.
"Done."
The result sitting in the pot now was a cigar.
Something that looked exactly like the cigars from my previous life's memories had been created. I had no idea by what mechanism… but that was just how alchemy worked.
I carefully transferred the finished tobacco.
"I'd really like to try smoking one myself."
Tobacco already existed and was used in this world. Properly dried leaves were chopped and packed into a pipe, then lit and smoked. People smoked for a mild lift in mood and a reduction in stress, or so they said. Digging through my past-life memories only turned up the bad side of tobacco, so I wasn't sure how true that was.
Well, beyond that reason, it also just looked cool.
In this world, pipes seemed to be the default. People used pipes almost like a fashion accessory while smoking? Something like that. Side effects were somewhat known, but nothing on the level of my previous life.
The price was high enough that it had mainly spread among the wealthy and the nobility — though even among commoners, some people used it as a personal indulgence.
"Absolutely not. You know tobacco must be handled with care."
"Tch."
"I will take these to the temple and have them tested."
Sister Mary gathered up every last cigarette I'd made.
"So mean…"
Truth be told, I'd hidden one cigarette without her noticing. I'd try it later in my room!
I'd been a man once, after all, and smoking held a certain romantic appeal. In movies and the like, people looked so cool when they smoked, right?
Seeing that naturally made you want to try it yourself.
That impulse had been mixed into my reasons for experimenting with tobacco in alchemy, too.
Sister Mary left the manor, saying she was heading to the temple for a bit, and Priest Daniel came over.
"Did your training go well?"
"I kept it simple."
Daniel and I had started off on the worst possible terms… but he wasn't a bad person. After I'd thoroughly chewed him out, he didn't even seem to look at women anymore…
"Daniel, have you ever smoked?"
"Tobacco, you mean?"
"Yeah. Pipes look so cool."
At that, Daniel smiled faintly.
"Hahaha, they do, don't they?"
He laughed and pulled a pipe from his pocket.
"Oh, you have one?"
"I haven't used it recently, though."
According to Daniel, smoking made your worries vanish for a little while, which was nice. When priests had a lot on their minds or faced something difficult, it wasn't uncommon for them to light up and sink into thought.
"I see. That makes sense."
"Well, five years ago a scholarly conference publicized the harmful effects of tobacco, so its popularity dropped."
The so-called harm amounted to little more than its addictive nature and the danger of using too much at once.
That part was probably unavoidable, but once the research came out at the conference, the Metis Church had developed an atmosphere of restraint around tobacco use.
"What about the nobles?"
"I don't know the details myself, but it's a luxury item to begin with, isn't it? Nobles have plenty of other diversions, so they rarely overindulge. From what I've heard, they still use it much as before."
"Hmm…"
I see……
Well, since it doubled as a fashion accessory, there would be some differences.
"Have you tried the tobacco I made?"
Daniel shook his head.
"Sister Mary forbade it. She said that if I had any, I'd obviously give it to you, so she wouldn't hand any over."
Seeing the disappointed look on his face, I couldn't help a small smile.
Is that so?
Wasn't this an opportunity?
Sister Mary conveniently out of the way, and Daniel right here with a pipe.
Heh. Heheheh.