The Green Bottle
For a moment I wondered if I'd misheard. I blinked and asked again.
"Excuse me… alcohol?"
"That's right. Alcohol."
Delilah tilted her head with perfect composure, as if wondering what the problem could possibly be.
"You don't sell it here?"
"Of course I do, but… shouldn't you be heading to class?"
"Oh, no worries. I finished all my lectures for the day."
I glanced once at her shamelessly waving hand, then once out the window.
"It's still the middle of the day, though…."
"Daytime drinking is the BEST drinking!"
Wrong.
This woman was a complete degenerate.
'Is she actually a professor? She's not impersonating one, right?'
The question was only natural.
I'll admit, honestly, that her momentum had steamrolled me.
"…What will you have? I carry wine, beer, soju — most things, really."
Oh, and makgeolli too—
"Soju? What's soju?"
Caught off guard by the unexpected question, Delilah blurted it out before I could finish.
"Uh…."
I took a moment to gather my thoughts.
"It's a drink from my homeland."
What I meant, of course, was the diluted kind of soju, not the distilled sort.
The kind that comes in a green bottle.
"Ooh, now I'm curious!"
She really was an insatiably curious one.
Showing interest in a drink she'd never even heard of — that much was obvious.
'Hmm….'
That said, I wasn't exactly keen on recommending soju.
Considering its notorious reputation, it was hard to defend.
'Tastes like nothing, for one.'
To be coldly honest, its finish falls short — you don't even need to compare it to whiskey or vodka; stacked against sake or baijiu, it loses.
And yet, paradoxically, Koreans remain madly devoted to the stuff.
I drink it regularly myself, but if you asked me why, I couldn't give you a proper answer.
"Whoa…."
Sure enough, when I showed her the bottle out of curiosity, her jaw dropped.
Honestly, the visual is a bit menacing.
A bottle that is green and nothing but green — anyone would wonder what on earth the designer was thinking.
These days plenty of clear-bottle soju has hit the market for exactly that reason… but.
'The original is still this green one, though.'
I'd heard that in Western lands, green had long been regarded as the color of death. I found myself curious whether that held true here.
And then.
"Wow, the bottle looks just like an emerald!"
What kind of fresh reaction was that supposed to be?
"It's not a real emerald, is it?"
"Of course not. It's just a glass bottle."
I answered, watching the bottle glide out of my hand at some point without my noticing.
Still, an emerald, huh.
So someone could look at that crude, cheap thing and think of emeralds.
Prejudice really was a fascinating thing.
"Really? What a shame."
Saying so, Delilah turned the label this way and that, studying it.
"It's only sixteen percent?"
'Only sixteen percent.'
Beer aside, wasn't that higher than wine?
"…What do you usually drink?"
"Vodka or gin."
"Even so, if you mix them—"
"What are you talking about? Straight shots, obviously."
This young lady had a dangerous worldview.
But I mustn't forget that she was a prospective customer.
"I do carry vodka and gin."
"No, I'll just take this. The moment I saw the color, it clicked."
I clicked my tongue as I watched her say, without a flicker of hesitation, words that would have made any Korean person gasp.
Well, if that's what she wants, who am I to argue?
"That'll be twenty silver."
"Oh, that's cheap too? I'll pay one gold — give me five bottles."
Eh, whatever.
Even if she drank herself into a disaster, she'd clean up her own mess.
'She's an adult, after all.'
I had merely sold the goods she asked for.
I mean, if someone commits murder with a sword or a gun, nobody holds the seller or the manufacturer responsible, right?
And then this young lady startled me yet again.
"Can I drink it right here?"
I'm sorry, what?
I nearly burst out laughing as I watched her casually gesture at the table, so I plastered on a straight face instead.
"This is a convenience store, not a tavern…."
"Come on, you don't have any customers anyway."
Ouch. Right where it hurts. Repeatedly.
'Haa.'
I sighed inwardly and weighed my options.
Some people do drink inside convenience stores back home, and strictly speaking, it's illegal.
The real kicker is that it's not the drinker who gets punished — it's the poor shop owner.
So while I'd say no to drinking inside, I wouldn't necessarily stop someone from drinking outside.
In fact, setting up outdoor tables is legally fraught in many places anyway.
Hence the mutual, unspoken conspiracy of silence.
'Not that any such law exists here.'
Getting into a huffy argument over nothing would just cost me a customer — a risk far too steep for my ledger.
'I mean, this girl, though—'
Ha.
Before I could even answer, Delilah had already gathered up the bottles and was toddling toward the table. This time I genuinely did laugh out loud.
And she had the nerve to say:
"What are you doing? Hurry up and lower the shutter!"
…Fine. Have it your way.
With customers this scarce, the one losing out in the end was me.
'Business isn't exactly booming anyway. Might as well close early today.'
Murmuring helplessly to myself, I finally hung the CLOSED sign on the door handle.
They say life is full of twists and turns — a blessing here, a disaster there.
When I first opened shop at the Academy, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd end up holding a drinking party here.
"It's so nice to have a drinking buddy!"
Ah. Is that so.
Apparently Delilah drank often in her daily life, because she could hold her liquor remarkably well.
Two bottles in, and her face was merely flushed; beyond that, she showed no signs of trouble at all.
"Academy professors are all so stiff and dull — no fun at all. And it's not like I can grab a student and drag them off for a drink."
So she does have at least that much shame.
"By the way, this soju stuff is fascinating. It tastes like absolute garbage, so why do I keep reaching for it?"
Delilah tapped her disposable cup with a lazy grin.
The look suited her surprisingly well.
No — it wasn't the alcohol making me think that.
She was, undeniably, an attractive woman.
Apart from seeming to have a few screws loose, that is.
"In my homeland, they say if soju tastes bitter to you, it means your life hasn't been all that bitter yet."
"Ugh, so preachy."
Huh?
"Storekeeper, you weren't from the Pluto School, were you? You talk just like a Kratos School graduate."
I had absolutely no idea what she meant.
"What's that supposed to be?"
"Huh?"
When I asked what she meant, it was Delilah's turn to tilt her head in confusion.
"You're not an Academy alumnus, storekeeper?"
"…No, I'm not."
"Aha, well, I'll be. I just assumed you were, what with everything."
"I heard the previous owner was."
"It wasn't just the previous owner — it's always been like that."
"That's strange," Delilah murmured quietly.
Strange was right. Even to me.
What on earth had possessed the Headmistress, I wondered.
Naturally, I kept that thought to myself.
"Then I suppose you don't know much about the Schools either."
Schools, schmools — I didn't know the first letter of the word 'Academy.'
'…Putting it that way, I really did wander in here with zero preparation.'
Well, you know.
I'd just assumed the Academy was, well, a school.
"The Academy has four Schools. For the record, I'm a Minerva School woman, if you please."
That was the gist of what Delilah told me.
Applicants to the Academy were sorted into one of four Schools upon admission, based on their aptitudes and nature.
The Minerva School, to which Delilah belonged, apparently specialized in academics, research, and theology.
Given that she'd majored in alchemy and risen to a professorship at a remarkably young age, it seemed like a perfect fit.
In any case, students of each School would go on, after graduation, to serve as central figures in their respective fields.
It was no accident, then, that the Academy's official name included the words 'military academy.'
"But you said I sounded like I was from the Kratos School…?"
"There are so many stuffy old fuddies over there."
Guh.
That one stung a little.
"Heehee, you know I'm joking, right?"
"Hard to say. Being a narrow-minded fuddy-duddy myself, I wouldn't know."
I replied with listless indifference and popped a potato chip into my mouth.
She had bought the drinks, so the snacks were my treat.
"Hahaha. You really are a fun one. How old are you, anyway?"
"Twenty-eight."
"Oh! Same as me?"
She'd looked about my age, but to think we were actually the same.
"Let's just be friends, then — friends!"
Delilah declared in a thoroughly excited voice, popping a potato chip into her mouth.
Crunch crunch.
"Mmm, every time I eat these, they're delicious."
Unlike the soju she'd dismissed, the potato chips were, thankfully, getting high marks.
Thanks to that, my spirits — which had been dampened by Ekaterina's indifferent reaction — lifted a little.
'Though she's drinking the "tastes like nothing" soju just fine, I notice.'
Still, proposing friendship to a total stranger over drinks — she really was no ordinary woman.
The more I looked at her, the less she matched any image of the word "professor."
"May I ask you something? Just one thing?"
"Anything you like. We're friends, aren't we?"
You never actually said yes to that.
Well, she was the kind of woman who did whatever she pleased, so I let it slide.
"You said the color of the soju bottle caught your eye. Why is that?"
"Ah."
Delilah's eyes went wide, and then she broke into a sly smile.
"Not the question I expected — but what a wonderful question!"
Listening to the explanation that followed, I deeply regretted asking.
And so, starting from the question of who had founded alchemy—
to the fact that the final and most crucial of the five stages of the Magnum Opus — the Great Work by which alchemists produced the Philosopher's Stone, their holy grail — was the transmutation of the material into emerald—
to the tale that the whereabouts of the Emerald Tablet, on which the first alchemist had supposedly recorded every step of that Work, remained shrouded in mystery—
I was forced to absorb all of it, right there in my own seats, from beginning to end.
And of course.
Along the way, I had to drain two more bottles of soju.
— Remain undetected at all costs.
The moment the man finished reading the directive, he burned it to ash, erasing every trace.
'A meeting point, is it. So we're finally beginning operations in earnest.'
As the Empire's premier educational institution, the Academy's security was airtight.
Moreover, as far as he knew, there was no secluded, out-of-the-way spot suitable for a rendezvous anywhere on its grounds.
And so, he decided to change his thinking.
'Isn't it said that the darkest place is directly beneath the lamp?'
His judgment: a spot teeming with crowds would, paradoxically, be far easier to hide in.
The only problem was that dormitories and lecture halls might draw suspicion.
'In that case….'
The moment the perfect location surfaced in his mind, the man set his plan into motion at once.