The Herb Warehouse Incident (1)
Hello! I'm Frey! No last name, but for now it's Katram! Seventeen years old! Currently a first-year in the Academy's magic division!
Family-wise, I've only got my mother! She's currently enjoying a peaceful retirement in the house His Grace the Duke bestowed upon us!
I'm attending the Academy under Duke Katram's orders to become a better person! Character development remains to be seen, but I'm learning a ton of magic here, so the sense of fulfillment is overflowing!
I was enjoying a rewarding school life—save for one person who stresses me out nonstop! And then, out of nowhere, a crisis comes knocking?
"—is about how badly I want to narrate right now. What exactly are you doing?"
"Hah… hah. Just hold on a little longer."
Aylin looked up at me, her face flushed a deep red. Her eyes trembled with every ragged breath.
"It'll be over soon."
I squeezed my eyes shut. Please. Don't do this.
How did Imperial Princess Aylin and I end up like this? For that, we have to go back two hours.
That day, too, I should have ridden the carriage to school as usual, sat beside Aylin, and listened to the lecture without incident.
But somehow, the herbology professor announced that he'd forgotten to bring the herbs needed for class.
I was thinking, This place really has a lot of screw-loose professors, when Aylin suddenly raised her hand.
"Professor. I'll go fetch them in your place."
"Your Highness? There's no need. This is my mistake."
"Not at all. Rather than the professor who teaches us leaving his seat, it makes far more sense for a student who's here to learn to go retrieve them."
"Your Highness…!"
The professor covered his mouth with both hands, visibly moved. As for the surrounding students—
"As expected of Her Highness. Not just her magic—her character is outstanding too."
"She only harasses Young Master Katram because he spouts nonsense."
"Your Highness, let me go with you!"
The usual nonsense. Ugh. Looking at Aylin, where do they even get those ideas?
In truth, just as she claimed, Aylin possessed a keen political instinct. An overbearing attitude becomes grounds for rejection when it goes too far—but in skilled hands, it turns into charisma. Aylin was no exception.
Even though she seemed to do nothing but mess with me day to day, she was steadily building solid relationships with her peers. Among them were even young masters and ladies who said—jokingly, one hoped—that they'd love to see Aylin become the Crown Princess someday.
Maybe that was why. The sincerely hopeless side of her that I saw appeared distorted through their eyes: the magnificent princess who had a member of House Katram wrapped around her finger… that sort of thing.
At any rate, the professor nodded with tears welling in his eyes.
"Then I'll leave it to you."
"Yes. But it may be difficult alone. May I take Frey with me?"
"Of course."
"I'd rather not."
"He says he understands. We'll be back!"
"Take care."
"No, I said I don't want to—gack."
Aylin grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and hauled me straight out of the classroom.
"In situations like that, you say, 'Thank you for choosing me, Your Highness.'"
"Gack—kuhk."
"I taught you that you need to bow when the moment calls for it, didn't I? Frey, you really need to develop some social awareness."
"No—gack—I'm—dying—"
"Where was the herb room again? Frey?"
"……"
"Oh my."
Aylin looked down at me hanging limp in her grip. She laid me on the ground and leaned in, lips approaching mine.
"Hwaaak! What are you doing?!"
"What. You were alive?"
"What were you about to do just now?!"
"Mouth-to-mouth. Don't you know first aid?"
"I know that! But chest compressions usually come first!"
"How dense. Supplying the missing air takes priority. The rule that chest compressions come first was established because of commoners too embarrassed to do mouth-to-mouth."
I shut my mouth. The statement itself was true. But still.
"Even so, you're the Imperial Princess! You can't just give your lips to anyone!"
"I like you. Is that a problem?"
"Yes. Because I don't like you, Aylin."
"Hmph. You talk a good game. Hurry up. You made us late by pretending to faint for no reason."
"Haa… fine."
I went with Aylin to the herb warehouse.
Befitting the Academy's herb storage, it looked less like a warehouse and more like a living space where about ten people could reside in comfort.
"What the professor asked us to bring was mandragora seeds, lily of the valley, violet stamens, and… what else was it?"
"Hyacinth's Tears."
"Right. There seemed to be quite a few more besides those."
Gathering materials across the vast herb warehouse took time. I realized something. At this rate, we wouldn't make it back even by the end of the lecture.
"Aylin. We haven't even found half yet, and a lot of time has already passed."
"I know. But we still have to find all the herbs."
"Missing the lecture is a bigger loss, isn't it?"
"In exchange, we can earn points with the professor. Why do you think he was crying earlier?"
"Huh? Don't tell me—"
"That's right. Professor Colton knew we wouldn't make it back on time. And yet he was moved because we offered to go get the herbs anyway."
"Normally I'd call that foolish."
"Remember this, Frey. Professors are all people who pursue romance."
I wondered what that was supposed to mean—then recalled the professors' various antics.
Professor Violet had created a beach with illusion magic and dove right into it. Professor Colton had once demonstrated the absolute peak of inefficiency by making it rain inside the classroom using nothing but herbs.
Professor Sadram had shown a spell that spun through twenty-four hundred degrees before striking the target, then exploded like fireworks. And Professor Athena, despite creating a pseudo Ego Sword, had a track record of declaring she'd make it sing lullabies.
They taught properly enough—but the professors' foolishness defied imagination. Why was that?
"What's the reason?"
"I'll give you a hint. Every one of the professors once held a key position in the Empire."
Aylin's hints tended to be direct. Hearing that, I understood immediately.
"People who got sick of seeing the dirty side of politics?"
"Exactly. So they enjoy doing foolish things. Elite people doing foolish things, of course."
"Isn't that a terrible hobby?"
"It's fine as long as they enjoy themselves without harming the students. So all we need to do is find every last herb and bring them to Professor Colton. It's not a complete waste of effort."
Aylin smiled faintly.
"At the very least, he'll be able to use them for the next lecture."
"Ah…"
She had a point. Even if not for our class, he could use them when teaching other sections.
The mature side she occasionally showed was something I genuinely needed to learn from. Moments like these made me glad she'd dragged me along.
"Ah, I think the Golden Balls Flower is over there."
"……Take back what I just thought about you."
"Hm? What?"
"Even if it's a herb name, please rephrase the lewd ones somehow!"
"Is Frey my dad now?"
"If you say things like that, my neck will be on the line, so stop!"
"Ahaha! Fine. Anyway, let's go find the Golden Balls Flower."
I gave up on correcting Aylin's vocabulary. Her followers clearly only followed her because they'd never heard her talk like that.
"It's high up, too."
"It's a rare material. High places have less chance of field mice sneaking in."
The Golden… Flower sat on a shelf above a wardrobe on the upper level. Specifically, the setup required climbing a ladder attached to the wardrobe to reach the shelf.
I had no idea why it was structured this way, but I was going to have to climb.
"I'll go up."
"Alright. Please do."
"Surprisingly, you're not volunteering yourself?"
"Did you want to look up my skirt? Then I'll go up."
"I'll go up."
I pushed the dizzyingly blunt Aylin aside and climbed the ladder. Since climbing ladders was routine butler work, I scaled it easily enough.
The problem was that even after reaching the top, my arm still couldn't reach the Golden Flower. No—if I stood on tiptoe, maybe? My height wasn't short, but not being able to reach like this was a bit much.
"Frey, is it hard? Should I go up?"
"Aylin, you'd reach even less, so stay quiet."
"Is it okay to call the Imperial Princess a shorty?"
"Don't fabricate my words! Ah—I reached—"
Slip. The moment my hand touched the flower, my foot slid out from under me. Unluckily, the ladder toppled sideways, and I plummeted toward the floor below the wardrobe.
"Frey!"
"Aaaaaaah!"
The damn wardrobe was a full ten meters tall—falling from that height would be fatal. If you already have a ten-meter wardrobe, why not just store the herbs inside it? Between this and the library, why was nothing at the Academy normal?! Moreover, magic was completely disabled here to prevent herb terrorism.
"Hup!"
Thud! Just before I fell free, I managed to grab the edge of the wardrobe. The impact swung the wardrobe doors wide open.
"Hah… hah…"
"Frey!"
"The ladder! Get me the ladder!"
"Ah—okay!"
The moment Aylin answered—
Creeeak~ The wardrobe began tipping forward. Insane. A ten-meter wardrobe was toppling just because I was hanging off it?
"……!"
"Huh?"
Aylin went wide-eyed and stared blankly at the wardrobe falling along with me. This idiot! Dodge—what are you doing just standing there?!
"Aaaaah! Aylin!"
At this rate, she'd end up flattened like a hammered nail. I had to decide. The moment the wardrobe got close enough to the ground, I launched myself at her.
"Kyaa!"
"Kugh!"
I shoved Aylin over and wrapped my arms around her. Immediately after, the wardrobe crashed down on top of us.
BOOM!
My head spun from the impact of the fall and the wardrobe's shockwave. Fortunately, the interior was deep enough that we weren't crushed to death beneath it. Instead, the fallen wardrobe covered us like a coffin.
"Ugh… Aylin. Are you okay?"
"Y-yeah. I'm fine. Frey, you?"
"I think I overdid it a bit on the way down. But nothing seems broken."
"What a rare experience. Getting trapped under a fallen wardrobe."
"That's not funny. I'll push it off right now."
I released the arms wrapped around Aylin and shoved hard against the wardrobe with my back.
I pushed.
I pushed?
"Huh."
"What is it, Frey?"
"It won't… push."
"What?"
"It won't move at all—not even a little!"
This damn wardrobe was enormously heavy, befitting its massive size. But then it shouldn't have fallen in the first place!
"What do we do about this?"
"……"
Aylin looked at me without a word. It was truly strange.
Why, in a situation like this, was her face turning red?