Chocolate Sales with Lily (3)
People who believed in superstitions weren't hard to find even in the modern world.
So how much worse would it be in an era like this one — an age where saints actually existed and religion held real power?
The world was overflowing with people who worshipped superstition like gospel.
From one angle, it seemed absurd that anyone could be that ignorant — but then again, this was a world with magic, so what had once looked like nonsense turned out to be true, and believable, after all.
Anyway.
Here was my point.
Even if a ridiculous rumor spread that there existed a snack which boosted one's odds of a successful confession, the chances of Academy students believing it were high.
Of course, selling it off a rumor wasn't exactly honest business.
But you know how it is — they say alcohol changes how a person's face looks.
Spending a night with someone because they seemed handsome and beautiful in the moment, only to wake up the next morning and feel thoroughly disappointed by the person lying beside you — that's a tale as old as time.
Chocolate worked much the same way. As the body absorbed it and the excitement kicked in, people looked different for a little while.
If things went sour afterward and the relationship fell apart?
Well, that was none of my business.
I'd only claimed the confession would succeed. I never promised to take responsibility for what happened after the drug wore off — so it wasn't my fault.
"Chocolate? I heard someone's selling that stuff around here."
Right on cue, prospective customers were already milling about, reeled in by the rumor Luke had spread.
I was just about to call the customers over and tell them this was the place when—
"But is the effect actually legit? I heard it's some crazy mage selling it. It's not some weird drug, is it?"
A student standing beside the prospect clicked his tongue.
The memory of Luke's smug face — the very bastard who'd spread the rumor in the first place — flickered through my mind, and my smile nearly cracked.
"Oh, that's probably it. Let's go check it out."
Thankfully, the two students found their way over without getting lost.
They were dressed in clothes so obviously expensive they practically radiated entitlement, the pair of them oozing look at me, I'm a noble from every pore as they pointed at the chocolate.
"So this is the snack from the rumor?"
"Looks like it. Give us one each."
"Right away, sirs."
Two chocolates sold.
Frankly, while I was setting the prices, I'd worried they might be a bit steep — but this was Trinity Academy, I suppose.
With the sons and daughters of every noble house in the Empire gathered in one place, nobody balked at the cost.
"......"
And so, as the chocolate sold like hotcakes, Lily quietly slipped in to join me.
She'd apparently barely slept — her eyes were bleary — and she sat down beside me, sneaking glances at me, stamping her feet in little circles, then clenching her fists and trembling.
It was the behavior of a female friend who'd crossed the line with you while drunk and somehow still had her memories intact.
The reason was pretty easy to guess.
All those things she'd blurted out yesterday, loose and giggly after eating the chocolate — now that she was sober, looking back on them made her want to die of embarrassment.
I grinned and called out to her.
"Huh, eating it doesn't bother you at all? And here I thought you were in pretty bad shape."
Lily's ears turned the deep red of a well-ripened tomato.
"It does make my heart race a little......"
"Kyaaaaah! Kyaaa!"
Unable to bear another word, Lily kicked her chair back and sprang up, clapping both hands over my mouth.
Her face was flushed so crimson that tears were actually welling up in her eyes — the expression of someone who simply couldn't overcome her own mortification.
"Y-you're the one who said it! It was the caffeine, that's what you said......!"
I spoke right through her hands.
"I was just repeating the things you said?"
"Stoooop...... I was not in my right mind back then......"
Curse her past self, Lily muttered as she sank into the seat beside me.
Even just sitting there, she more than pulled her weight as the face of the operation — a few students wandered over purely to see her, rumor or no rumor.
"Anyway, it's selling well. Well, I guess if it's that tasty, it'd be stranger if it didn't."
"Right? It's selling so well my heart's pounding."
"Hey......!"
Still seated, Lily gave my shoulder a few light thumps.
Whether she was buying me a meal, showing off her body, or getting teased, this girl was always a treat to watch react.
"A love potion. Possibly."
The rumor about the chocolate spread across the entire Academy, each retelling adding fresh layers of embellishment courtesy of students who'd personally benefited from its very real effects.
Naturally, the same was true of the Academy's governing body — the student council.
"A love potion?"
The student council president, tapping a stack of papers neatly into alignment on her desk, tilted her head at the vice president's words.
"That's right. Apparently there's a chocolate going around the Academy lately that's supposed to raise your odds of a successful confession."
"You don't think it's just superstition?"
"Too many students are reporting that it actually worked for it to be dismissed as mere superstition."
The vice president handed the president a report filled with the details.
Taking it, the president leaned back in her chair and skimmed its contents.
No matter how I think about it, there is no way Laniel would ever date someone as ugly as this. He must have used a vile love potion to beguile her. What is this thing?
Love potions made from the bodily fluids of succubi or incubi were strictly controlled substances within the Empire.
The president had been reading the report with grave concern — the possibility of the Academy being exposed to something so dangerous — when her brow furrowed.
"This is just jealousy, plain and simple — some guy who lost the girl he was pining after, spewing bitterness onto paper. Is this for real? Did you even check it properly, Vice President? Being on the student council must be so easy for you."
The president rapped the rolled-up report against the head of the vice president standing at her side.
The vice president, who had been bowing obediently and taking the blows to the crown of his skull, answered.
"......That particular report is unusually heavy on personal agenda. There are others. Read them."
"Hand them over."
Ignoring the president's hand outstretched toward her chair, the vice president dropped the whole bundle of reports onto the desk with a thud.
The president shot him a glare, eyes gone sharp.
"What's that supposed to be? Are you protesting because I hit your head a little?"
"Just read them."
"Hmph. Let's see here. 'A few days ago, I ate a snack a male student gave me. After eating it, I suddenly felt lightheaded and my head began to ache. I am worried he may have given me some strange drug. Please investigate.' Hmm. This one's a bit better."
The president turned the page of the report.
There was a drawing on it.
Presumably the face of the male student who'd fed the chocolate to the informant.
It was drawn with clumsy skill — not nearly good enough to identify anyone — but the defining features were unmistakable.
Flesh drooping all over the face.
Skin an absolute wreck of pimples and blemishes.
The eyes squeezed small by the surrounding fat, the lumpy, sagging cheeks — every detail radiated just how much malice the informant bore toward that male student.
The president held the report aloft and declared.
"He certainly has the face of a man who'd do something lecherous!"
"Judging people by their looks is a bad habit."
At the vice president's reprimand, the president slapped the desk and fired back.
"You can read a person's habits from their appearance. From that complete lack of self-care, I can tell this male student is lazy, keeps an irregular life, and has terrible eating habits."
"That tells you nothing about his character."
"Live with a face like that and the people around you don't look at you kindly. All that hostility piles up inside you without your even noticing, and it warps a person's character for the worse. So there's no way his character is good. That's my point."
"......"
"Think about it. If he were tall and handsome, would he have pulled a stunt like this? If a man doesn't need a love potion in the first place, he'd never sneakily feed one to someone. He'd win fair and square with his face. So judging by appearance is more than enough. Am I wrong?"
The vice president's tongue stilled.
There wasn't a shred of sound logic in it, yet somehow it had a strangely convincing ring.
"......Huh. Now that I hear it out loud, I suppose that does make sense."
"Well then, we'd better look into this ourselves."
The president rose from her seat, patting the chair she'd been sitting on twice with her hand.
"Up."
At her command, the student council member who had until that moment been serving as her 'chair' straightened his prostrate body.
As the president draped her coat from the rack over her shoulders, the student playing the 'coat rack' lowered the arms he'd been holding out horizontally, and the various objects that made up the council room stirred to life one by one, snapping out of their attention poses as if waking from sleep.
"Did you find out where it's being sold?"
"They say it's the main hall of the Academy."
"Not far at all. Let's go."
And with that, a great many male students followed after the president.
The chocolate business was sailing along smoothly.
Only five days had passed, and yet the first batch of chocolate had long since sold out, with every new batch moving out the door at a daily sellout pace.
At this level of popularity, mass production would rake in a serious profit.
But I couldn't be the one hand-making and selling chocolate forever.
Once I finished this round of performance reports, my plan was to sell the recipe to Morne and collect royalties instead.
So there I was, about to start selling the day's fresh batch, when—
"Mage......!"
A male student came sprinting toward me in a panic.
These days, chocolate sold out almost the moment it went on sale, so I assumed he was just another student rushing to grab some before it vanished — until I recognized the face.
Luke, the young lord of a Count's house.
The very wretch who'd slandered me as a mad mage, a lunatic of a mage, and God knew what else.
The bastard ran up and grabbed me by the collar.
Not even pausing to catch his breath, he rasped out his plea in a hoarse voice.
"Stop selling the Paternity Test Kits......! Please......!"
?
Why on earth is he only now begging me to stop selling them?
Don't tell me—
I shook off the hand of this barely-human creature with a grimace of disgust.
"You have got to be......"
"It was that chocolate you gave me......! I shared it with my mother, and...... damn it all!"
The boy dropped to his knees before me and bowed his head.
"I beg you like this! If Father catches me again, I'm a dead man — I'll actually die......!"
I rested a hand on the shoulder of this thing pretending to be human.
He raised his ashen face.
And I delivered the sentence to the boy clutching at false hope.
"Young master, you have ten months left to live. I do hope you enjoy the time that remains."
A terminal diagnosis, handed down on the spot.
"You may go now. Customers are coming soon."
"W-wait. Just think it over one more time......"
I needed to get ready for business, and this pseudo-human was making my head spin — when the customers arrived.
"Excuse me."
A wave of them, right on schedule.
"I heard there's a stall here selling something called chocolate. Would you happen to know where it is?"
Customers?
This was far too many to call customers.
A single woman at the head of the column, and a few dozen male students trailing behind her.
Were these actually customers?