I Never Said to Come to My House - 3
Ten gold coins and a host of other support had been deposited into my account, leaving me with no choice but to fall in line without a word of protest. There was no helping it—I could hardly pull a dine-and-dash on the Crown Prince. Try something like that and not even a foreign country would grant me asylum.
The thought did cross my mind that the happiest course might simply be to accept nothing and do nothing at all. But—
It was work I was going to have to do anyway.
From the moment the money hit, I began brainwashing myself. As long as I held the title of advisor, this was the kind of dirty work that would get dumped on me. If I was going to end up doing it either way, better to get something for it than move for free, right? For the sake of my mental health, I decided to see it that way.
Besides, the person whose mental health truly needed worrying about right now was not me.
“Master. Have you been well?”
The middle-aged man visible through the communication orb bowed politely the instant he confirmed my face.
The butler who managed a mansion where the master was absent more often than present. Put another way, the man responsible for an estate that would soon house one imperial, two royals, and a saint candidate.
“Same as always. How have you been, butler?”
“Thanks to Master’s grace, I have been spending my days in joy.”
Watching him laugh heartily in reply made my chest ache a little. Sorry. Starting today, those days are over.
“I’ll be returning to the mansion in a few days.”
“Glad tidings indeed. I shall prepare to receive Master this very day.”
“And a few guests will be coming with me.”
Explaining the lineup of those guests required more courage to be hated than I had expected.
“...I shall prepare in a manner worthy of Master’s name.”
After a brief silence, the butler who had just heard the chest-tightening roster bowed his head. A moving display of absolute obedience to his master’s command—except even through the orb I could see the corner of his eye twitching. For a man who was always so composed to react like that, the shock must have been severe.
“Right. See you at the mansion.”
Anything more would only pile on the pressure, so I cut the connection in a hurry. Sorry, butler. Just know I’m a victim here too. The Crown Prince is a real bastard, got it?
After finishing a call that had probably stacked one full point of resentment against me, I went to the Magic Tower and sat there blankly. I still hadn’t secured a mage who could teleport me back to the Academy. With no idea when the meeting would end, making a reservation had been impossible.
These days the Tower had a little more breathing room, though; wait a short while and I could snag at least one mage. Back when things were truly busy, the schedule stayed booked solid for three full days with no hope in sight.
So I sat in the lobby studying the patterns on the floor while I waited. A shadow fell across me. I lifted my head slightly and found the Demon Duke staring straight down at me.
Shit.
I had planned to grab any mage I could, but even I had never been bold enough to think of dragging the Tower Master herself away.
“My child? What brings you here?”
The Demon Duke’s ears twitched as she settled naturally into the seat beside me. Elder, why are you doing this to me?
“It’s all right. Stay seated.”
When I tried to rise in a hurry she pressed my shoulder back down. No, the one who isn’t all right is me.
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“What kind of host makes a guest stand?”
Saying it outright would only sour an elder’s mood, so I forced the words down. The Demon Duke had a surprising habit of taking offense at the smallest things; I had to be careful. Maybe it was the age.
While I wrestled with the itch to speak, she finished arranging the long hair that had been trailing on the floor and asked again.
“When did you come up to the Imperial Capital?”
“His Highness the Crown Prince convened a meeting, so I arrived today. I have to return to the Academy afterward.”
“A meeting?”
From her reaction it was clear the Demon Duke had no idea what was going on. Fair enough—the Magic Tower had little to do with the administrative branch, so news of this sort rarely reached her.
“The club under my charge will be coming to the Capital.”
“Oh dear.”
She looked genuinely sorry for me. That single word was enough; everyone already knew what kind of work I did at the Academy and exactly which lunatics belonged to the Baking Club. The news had spread that far.
“The Academy and the Capital are hardly next door. Coming and going will be hard on you.”
“It’s fine. They’ll be staying at my mansion over the break, so all I have to do is get them here.”
The fresh catastrophe that followed left even the Demon Duke speechless.
“Hang in there.”
Then she carefully rested a hand on my head and began to stroke it. If it felt like the hand that pets a freezing stray dog, that was probably just my imagination.
Mother…
It also felt strangely like my mother’s touch, and my heart grew warm. After a day of being speed-dumped on by the Crown Prince and the ministers, the wounded places inside me seemed to heal. Maybe what I had wanted all along was not cold material support but a warm “hang in there.”
Mother Demon Duke must have sensed the heart I hadn’t even known myself. Of course, if I ever actually called her “Mother” out loud, every kind of magic would come flying from the hand currently petting me, so I kept the word locked safely inside.
“If anything becomes too hard, tell me. When I have the leisure I’ll help.”
“I’m grateful just for the words.”
Asking a duke for support when things got hard would probably only make things harder.
She stroked my head a good while longer, then told me to wait a moment and rose from her seat—
“Drink one a day. Morning is best.”
—and returned with a box full of small glass vials and a single mage in tow.
“Ah, yes.”
“They’re good for the body, so don’t forget—one every day. Understood?”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
Looking satisfied, the Demon Duke finally turned and vanished, leaving only me and the mage sitting awkwardly in the lobby.
“I shall escort you.”
“Ah, right.”
The process had been strange, but at least I had secured a mage. That was what mattered.
Outside the Magic Tower the flow of mana shuddered. He had just used teleportation and left.
How can he be so cold?
No matter how I looked at it, coming all the way to the Tower only to try slipping away without even a greeting was downright rude. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know how specially I regarded him.
Learning that my child had visited not from his own greeting but through the deputy tower master had hurt. I had already told him clearly how upsetting it was when I heard his news through the intelligence chief instead, and yet he had done it twice.
So this time I had meant to scold him properly—until I saw him slumped in the lobby and my resolve melted. How could anyone scold a sight like that?
He shouldn’t have to suffer like this while still so young.
The exhausted face rose again in my mind and worry followed right behind it. Was he eating properly? Sleeping on time? He mustn’t bury himself only in work—was he relieving the stress at all?
At an age when he still had so much growing left to do, that kind of hardship would not do. He still had far more years ahead of him; nothing must go wrong. At least the timing had been fortunate. The potions had just been finished when he visited the Tower.
I had been wondering when to give them to him.
Going to the Academy myself would have been awkward, and entrusting them to someone else was out of the question for something this important. I had been waiting for the day he came up to the Capital, and the moment had been perfect.
What I gave him was a potion made from his blood and mine. Exactly as I told him, it was something good for the body. I had poured my whole soul into making it, and it also carried Mother’s knowledge.
If only it had been finished in Mother’s time.
Remembering her left me unsettled. It was not an easy thing to create. Even I had only managed it because miracle had piled upon miracle. But if Mother could have made it… if it had been completed while Father was still alive…
“Trixie. You must never know the same sorrow I did.”
Unlike Mother, Father had been a pure human and left her side early. Mother herself had wasted away afterward and discarded the lifespan heaven had granted her so she could follow him.
Those had been her final words of admonition to me: never love a partner whose lifespan did not match your own, never suffer the grief of losing them.
So I began research to overcome lifespan itself. Whether I would ever love someone or not, I would honor Mother’s will—and spare others the sorrow she had known.
“I present myself before Your Grace, the honorable Demon Duke.”
I never expected the one I held in my heart to appear before the potions were even finished.
Yet thanks to that very person I had been able to complete them, so it was truly a fated meeting. Yes—my lifespan had clearly been granted by heaven so that I might meet my child.
Of course a single dose would not produce some dramatic effect. But if he drank them steadily and the results accumulated, one day the flower would bloom.
“Several decades…”
I murmured, thinking of the time still left to me. Yes—several decades. Generously speaking, if he drank them for about forty years it would be enough. Then my child would be able to walk forward together with me.
I had already walked alone for more than a hundred years. If I endured only a few more decades I would finally walk with someone. My child was only just twenty-one. A few decades was something I could wait for easily enough.
The potion’s color sat at a subtle midpoint between red and brown. A shade I felt I had seen somewhere before.
Red ginseng?
Receiving it with the words “good for the body” made the visual oddly reminiscent of red-ginseng extract. Even the instruction to drink one a day was identical. Thank you, Mother Demon Duke, for looking after your son like this as well.
Since she had said one a day, I cracked one open right away and drank it. Anything the Demon Duke made would certainly work. A faint strawberry fragrance spread, making it feel more like a beverage than medicine, but I trusted the Demon Duke regardless.
And perhaps because I drank it with such strong faith, the fatigue seemed to melt the moment it went down. The placebo effect was no joke.
I’ll drink one every day.
Whether the effect was truly instant I couldn’t say, but if I felt better, wasn’t that enough? If the Magic Tower ever sold these for money I would keep buying them.