Ephedrine
I'd been so busy selling drugs that I'd forgotten, but this was a romance-fantasy world.
The main stage was the Academy. The main couple and every side couple were students there, all of them. That was also why I had been able to live as if the original story no longer existed. Unless they dropped out and came charging out the way Anais had, I had figured I was unlikely to run into them, or get tangled up with them, at all.
If I had followed Sienna's orders right after taking over this body and gone around selling opium tincture to Academy students, the protagonist would have done me in. Fortunately, I had sidestepped that future a long time ago. The price was only that I had become a dealer on a far larger scale.
I had lived so long with the plot forgotten that coming across a familiar incident now felt almost refreshing.
The radical clan... their name was Woodrina, if I remember right.
Elven society was led by five clans born to noble blood. The one stirring up trouble now was one of them: the Woodrina clan. For reasons no one could quite name, they were a group that loathed the Empire. They had argued for war in order to drive the imperial army completely out of elven territory, and when the other clans opposed them and the motion failed, they were the ones who turned to guerrilla war. Jab at the imperial forces posted along the border often enough, and they believed they could stage the situation they wanted. Their numbers were not large, but they were skilled fighters, and the damage was said to be severe.
In a sense, it's only natural that Victoria is taking this so seriously.
Even now she was listing the reasons the imperial army needed a medicine of courage, in the manner of someone cataloguing the elves' outrages.
"More and more soldiers are falling to traps the elves have laid."
"Traps, Your Highness?"
"Traps that cleverly aim for nothing but the ankle. They must have judged it more efficient to leave a man unfit for combat than to kill him. ...And for several days now, the soldiers escorting the wounded have been ambushed with growing frequency."
"The men must be afraid."
"They are. To the point of shirking even ordinary reconnaissance. That, too, is the effect those people were after—planting fear in the imperial army and making it shrink. The dead are few, but the terror has spread wide."
"Your Highness, even so—"
"We cannot leave things as they are...!"
Victoria laid her hatred of the elves bare without softening a single edge. If she could have, she looked ready to set fire to the World Tree that very moment. I didn't go so far as to find it surprising. It was true that, unlike her younger siblings, Victoria fell within the bounds of a sensible person. But she was a soldier through and through. Troops were being sacrificed, and morale was collapsing on top of it; a trifling matter of side effects hardly signified.
So in the end, the elves are the decisive motive.
I decided to ask again, just to be sure—whether the reason she wanted the drug was the elves.
"First Imperial Princess. Had the conflict with the elves not grown this sharp, I do not believe you would have demanded a stimulant that burdens the body. Ephedrine. That is the name of the drug possessing the effect you desire. Am I correct?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Please answer me."
"I probably would not have. If I can help it, I don't want to depend on drugs either."
She didn't seem to be lying. More precisely, she must have seen no need to lie. In the end, the elves were the cause of everything. If that was so, Victoria's problem stood a good chance of being solved without a stim pack. Soon this world's protagonist would step forward and settle the conflict with the elves.
Of course, I can't be certain.
Through no intention of my own, I had already operated on one of the heroines. With Anais locked away in a monastery for selling drugs, there was no guarantee the male lead would move according to the original story. Even so, as I saw it, he was likely to get involved whether he wished to or not. Because—
"Sir Allan? Why are you hesitating?"
I looked up to find Victoria's blue eyes fixed squarely on me.
I can't very well tell her it'll be resolved soon, so she ought to relax.
That the Saintess of the Celestial Church would soon be dispatched to mediate the conflict between the elves and the Empire; that a clergyman anxious for the Saintess's safety—a professor of the faculty of theology—would ask the protagonist, who combined overwhelming swordsmanship with sound character, to disguise himself as a deacon and guard her off the books; that the protagonist, having accepted, would go with the Saintess into the Great Forest, bumble his way along, crush the radical elves' plot, and help bring both sides to terms—none of that could I tell Victoria. She would certainly take me for a madman.
Until the elves quiet down, she'll keep demanding a stimulant. What am I supposed to do about that.
Should I simply make it for her? That, too, felt risky. Once the affair resolved itself too neatly, I would be left with the problem of disposing of a vast quantity of ephedrine that no longer had a use. In a case like this, it was better to withhold a firm answer and buy time.
Thankfully, someone stepped forward in my place.
"Sister. What are you doing here?"
It was Sienna, arrived with a whole retinue of attendants in tow. She stared flatly at her older sister, who had come all the way out to the mushroom greenhouse to speak with me. Since things had turned out this way, making use of Sienna wouldn't be a bad idea. I immediately put on a troubled act and avoided her eyes, the better to look as if I had been caught scheming in secret with Victoria.
"As you can see, I came because I had business with Sir Allan."
"I wonder. I can't see any reason you'd need a private meeting with Allan."
Thankfully, Sienna reacted at once.
Victoria was unabashed even in front of her younger sister. More than that, she proposed cooperation to Sienna as if the interruption had actually worked out well. She wanted a military contract for ephedrine to follow the one for morphine; she would pay handsomely, she said, so it would be no bad thing for Sienna either.
"I trust you will cooperate, Sienna."
At those words, Sienna looked to me instead of her sister. I only smiled. The Sienna I knew would not welcome a discussion that left her out of it. And in fact, she moved exactly as I wanted.
"So ephedrine can be used for something like that. Allan never explained it, so I didn't know. ...Still, I understand why you made this proposal, Sister."
"Good. Then, for now, the raw materials—"
"But, Sister. Have you thought about public opinion?"
"What?"
Sienna let out a dry little laugh, as if to say of course she hadn't. She had always possessed a rare talent for getting under people's skin.
"Ephedrine is a drug made from ephedra in the end, isn't it? Anais was confined to the monastery because of a health syrup that contained ephedra. If you announce that you're going to use that for military purposes, what do you suppose people will think?"
"It is different from the health syrup, Sienna. You know that better than I—"
"Of course I know. I believe you won't mix it with opium, and that you'll use it under controlled conditions. But will other people see it that way? ...If the rumor spreads the wrong way, the authority of the imperial house will collapse in no time. And the grounds for punishing Anais will be rendered meaningless."
"..."
"Are you still all right with that?"
Sienna had begun to tear into her sister in the open. It was an interesting scene. The very fact that Sienna was lecturing Victoria about drugs was bizarre in itself. And the logic she advanced had nothing one could really call a flaw. Even Victoria could only stammer, unable to refute her. Only after a long pause did Victoria slowly open her mouth.
"I intend to bear that burden myself, Sienna."
"You can't bear it."
"What?"
"In the end, the one manufacturing that drug is Madoff Pharmaceuticals, isn't it? And the one making the money is Madoff Pharmaceuticals. ...If a bad rumor spreads through the Imperial Capital, it won't end with nothing but your reputation damaged. I'll take a blow as well. Allan goes without saying."
"..."
"How many people do you mean to burden with your greed? And I don't much like you threatening Allan this way, either."
Greed. A nuisance. A threat.
Before more than twenty palace attendants looking on, Sienna condemned her sister in inflammatory words. Victoria's face had already grown grave. Insulted out of nowhere, anger would have been the normal response. If the two of them fought, Sienna was bound to lose. Victoria was the one of whom it was said that, had she devoted herself to the sword, even Expert would have been well within her reach. But Sienna, knowing no fear, kept her head high.
She must know Victoria's temperament.
And indeed, after a pause, Victoria nodded, the faintest smile on her lips.
"You're right, Sienna. I was hasty."
"I'm glad you understand."
"With His Majesty sunk in despair, I think I felt a compulsion to accomplish something—anything. Without realizing that the very thing might become a burden on the imperial house. The dispute with the elves is hardly the only affair of state that matters. There are more than one or two."
"You don't have to take it so seriously..."
"No. You said what was right."
Truly, I was grateful.
Victoria looked at Sienna as if she found her commendable, and gave her shoulder a light pat. By that point even Sienna, who had been criticizing her sister so caustically, could no longer keep her edge. Had Victoria hit back hard, Sienna might well have blown the matter up; with her sister quietly conceding, the fight simply went out of her. You can't very well fight alone.
Having settled Sienna, Victoria turned to me at once.
"Sir Allan. I'm sorry. I committed a discourtesy by presuming on your goodwill."
"There is no need to apologize."
"This is a necessary undertaking, and I intend to push it forward before long. But... it would also be acceptable to begin once the health syrup has faded from notice. Until then, I will consider some other way to support the two brigades facing the elves."
Victoria departed, leaving the door ajar. Sienna saw her off with a sunny smile, as if to ask when they had ever quarreled—but the look she shot me the moment the farewell was over was none too kind.
"Allan. This is how you wanted me to act, isn't it? I'm interested in the new drug as well, so we'll talk later."
Well, of course you would.
In the end, it seemed I would be manufacturing ephedrine no matter what. If I didn't want to find myself working fifteen hours a day later on, I would need to prepare this and that in advance. For the moment, though, having bought time was enough.
Soon the Church would dispatch the Saintess, declaring that it would mediate between the two sides, and ask the protagonist to serve as an unofficial escort against dangers unknown. The protagonist, who had liked helping others ever since his days as a hopeless dunce, would accept gladly.
Then the notion of putting the soldiers on the drug ought to be withdrawn as well.
Of course, that was only possible if events followed the original. I decided to look into the recent circumstances of this world's protagonist, Leon Lauderdale.