Taking Over the Potion Shop
On the evening of the day after Melo unveiled Red and Yellow to everyone, in the communications office of Caypol Municipal Magic School, Butler Alfred was in the midst of a communication with his master, Slot Deblique.
"Alfred. Make your report."
"I examined matters thoroughly. The young master is coming along remarkably well."
"Truly?"
At the faint lift of excitement in Slot's voice upon hearing news of Blow, a thin smile touched the corner of Alfred's mouth.
"Yes. There is no mistake. He has already used up every potato he brought from Blanya, and he says that whatever he needs at once he means to procure here in Caipol."
"He used them all in a week? More than six sacks of them?"
"Yes, my lord. Afterward he asked me to settle on a potato supplier in Blanya and inform him of it."
"Blow said that?"
"Yes. And more than that, he told me to pay a higher price for the potatoes he purchases than the rate to which they have currently collapsed."
"What?"
To his master, who asked again in genuine astonishment, Alfred answered in a purely businesslike tone.
"When I inquired as to the reason, he said that, at least in what he himself buys, he hopes to be of some help to the farming households."
"Ha."
At that, Slot was very nearly driven to an empty laugh. Blow had been the aching finger of his hand, the son who had never spared the people of the domain so much as a glance, looking on them as one might cows or chickens—and now that same Blow was thinking of those people. The feeling was too great for words.
Even so, the change had come so suddenly that Slot could not help suspecting some incurable illness, and he asked Alfred with care.
"Did he seem to be in good health?"
"Yes. He has put on weight quite plainly since he first awoke, and the Mana Pond that governs his mana appeared sound as well. He also said he has taken Melo on as head chef."
"Nothing but astonishing news. But Romang would never have allowed it."
"To give you only the conclusion, Romang did permit it in the end. I will make a full report of the details once I reach the estate."
"What on earth happened, for it to come to this..."
"The young master prepared the terms of his contract with Melo with great care. And, decisively, Melo seems to follow him well."
Surprise, by this point, had reached a lethal dose, and Slot Deblique was left with nothing to say.
A long silence passed. Then Alfred spoke in a pleased voice.
"In my view, it should be quite all right to proceed."
"Ah. You mean the matter you and I discussed before?"
"If you will only give the word, I shall deliver it to the young master first thing tomorrow."
"If you say so, it must be right. See that it goes forward at once."
"Yes, my lord. I shall see you in Blanya."
With that, the communication ended.
Alone in his office, Slot turned their conversation over and over—and then burst into a great laugh.
"Please take this."
It was the morning of the day Luce was to depart. Alfred, having stopped by the inn ahead of her, thrust a slip of paper at Blow without preamble.
Blow was in the thick of preparing for the morning trade and did not, at first, know what he was looking at. Then his eyes flew wide.
"That's a promissory note, isn't it?"
"Yes. You may exchange it at a bank nearby."
Seven hundred gold.
Alfred added an explanation after that, but Blow was so stunned by the figure written on the note that the words never reached his ears.
"It is the young master's tuition for next year, together with a portion of the living allowance that was originally to have been paid."
"That's an enormous sum. The house has been struggling lately..."
"We did not sell land in the domain. The money was raised by cutting expenditures and disposing of luxuries, so it is not the difficulty you imagine."
"Even so."
"Young Master Blow."
Alfred stroked his handsome mustache, a gentle smile resting on his face.
"Neither the Baron nor the Madam took it greatly to heart. As you know, the reason they did not give it to you at the first was worry."
"I thought it would be something like that."
"To speak plainly, I was opposed as well. I told the lord that if matters did not look right, he ought to have you brought back by force."
"...That's rather frightening."
Remembering those fierce eyes he had, at one point, been unable to meet, Blow swallowed dryly.
"But having come up and seen for myself, I find it was an unfounded fear—mine, and the lord's."
"Thank you for seeing the good in it."
"And I hear you saw Medea's Raft in Splas."
The painting he had seen in Splas when he came to bring Jane back. Blow's fist clenched of its own accord.
"This money is a portion of what remained after that painting was sold."
"......"
"Precisely because of that, it is my wish that you put it to truly good use."
"I meant to, even if you hadn't said so."
"A very pleasant thing to hear. Young Master—may I offer one word, not as a butler, but as the man Alfred?"
"Go on. I'll carve it into my heart."
At that, Alfred closed his eyes once, slowly, then opened them and bent at the waist.
"Thanks to you, the Baron and the Madam have found their laughter again. Truly, thank you, Young Master."
"I'm the one who ought to be sorry."
"Haha. The past is the past. I shall take my leave now, Young Master."
"Right. I'll see you at lunch."
Alfred had already offered his farewell and started out when his steps stopped.
"Ah—and he said that if you should ever wish to attend school, you need only say so. The tuition will be quite all right whenever you like."
"I'll return as soon as I can."
And with that, Alfred went out.
Afterward Blow carefully slipped the note he had received between the pages of a notebook, and his thoughts began to turn at speed.
I could move the plan up by a whole year.
With that thought, the sound of his heartbeat grew louder.
"S-seven hundred gold!"
Surprise rang in the cry—Jane's eyes blown huge, her mouth fallen open, and Hans's voice as he narrowed his eyes to confirm the sum.
"And there's still what I made selling things off in Blanya."
"How much?"
"About three hundred?"
"Three hundred gold? Then why on earth have we been staying here all this time?!"
Even taking the entire floor, the crumbling inn cost a little over eight silver a day, and Jane, unable to swallow the injustice of it, burst out in complaint. Blow, rather sorry, scratched his cheek and muttered.
"Well... because it might have failed?"
"That is seriously too much!"
Jane's mouth flattened into a hard line. She was sick to death of waging war on the bugs every night. Blow, who on second thought had a grievance of his own, tilted his head.
"Jane. When you first came up here, did you have any faith in me?"
"Well—no, I didn't, but—"
She stopped and looked away from his eyes. This time he turned to Hans, who sat blankly beside her.
"Hans. You?"
"I—I did, sir."
"The rotten reek of a lie just drifted past my nose."
"Ack—did it show?"
"I'm saying that's how it sounds, you brat."
Blow fixed Hans with a menacing look, and Jane smoothly steered the talk elsewhere.
"So... what are you planning to do with the money?"
"Nice pivot. Like I said, we start by looking at buildings."
"Are we buying one and moving in?"
"Will this cover it?"
His eyes and Jane's turned to Hans, who had run himself ragged hunting for a house on the first day.
"Yes! With a thousand gold, something like one small three-story house, at least...! You'd have to go deeper into the alleys, of course."
"If we take a monthly lease near this inn, couldn't we run two places?"
"The usual monthly rent sits between ten and twenty gold, so it should be possible."
Hans answered from what he had learned roaming Caipol. While Blow hammered at the figures in his head, Jane, who had been quietly watching the two of them, spoke to him in a careful voice.
"Are you going to do it the way you said back then?"
"Yes. One of them I'll use as a potion shop up through the second floor. The other gets a restaurant on the first floor, same as now. The rooms that are left, we live in ourselves—or we rent them out."
"Aha! But will a potion shop do well? I mean, I'd be happy either way."
To Jane's puzzled face, Blow offered a bright smile.
"It will. No question."
"Potion shops are all more or less the same, though..."
"Then we make people come. The best way is to take a potion shop over as it stands. Stock and all."
"That would be easier, I suppose."
"And if we take over a potion shop, you'll have to take the lead there."
Jane pointed at herself, startled.
"Me?"
"Who else? Me, with a D in every subject on the magic-research track?"
"No."
"Then Melo? Or Hans?"
Having heard that much, Jane scratched her cheek as if embarrassed.
"I'm sorry."
"I'll handle the initial setup of the stock and the interior. Your real work will be potion research—developing potions that will actually sell."
"I've wanted to try it for a long time. Thank you for thinking of me."
Graduating from a magic school did not make everyone a mage. Not everyone could become a great mage. Most of those whose paths did not open stayed on at the academy to research, or gave private lessons to the children of nobles, or became teachers at magic schools and ordinary schools alike. A very few among them opened potion shops—and that had been Jane's dream for a long time. Even if she became a mage, she had always wanted, someday, to develop a potion that bore her name. A dream she had tucked into a drawer ages ago, and now the chance to reach it had come sooner than she ever expected. She could feel her heart fluttering.
"Do you think I can do it well?"
"Don't worry. You will."
While Jane failed to hide her excitement, Blow spoke to the two of them.
"Tomorrow, the moment the morning trade is done, we go straight to city hall."
"Yes."
They were going to city hall because, in a city like Caipol, real-estate brokerage was managed by the municipality. Nobles and everyone else came and went without end, and so the Housing Management Bureau that oversaw property was famed as the sharpest in the Empire. It handled every listing, which made the search an easy one.
"After tomorrow's morning trade I'm going to the library, so if you need me, come to our school library."
"What? The library? Whatever for?"
Jane asked again, astonished, as if she simply could not believe it.
"To go and get some wisdom."
"......"
Remembering how he used to fly into a fit if he so much as went near a library, Jane tilted her head in pure disbelief. Pretending not to notice the look, Blow clapped his hands once.
"Good work today! See you tomorrow."
"Thank you for your hard work, Young Master!"
"Thank you for your hard work."
Looking up from below, the second floor seemed endlessly far, and Jane's face stiffened at the thought of climbing it. But when she remembered that this life would not last much longer, she smiled and took the stairs far more lightly.
Already the fifth house.
From the next day Jane had been looking over listings with her master, and now the strength had gone out of her legs as she watched him. He was inspecting the properties with a thoroughness that bordered on excessive, and beside him a city employee in a perfectly fitted suit was explaining with all his heart.
"This one won't do either."
"Aha! Is it the location?"
"Too far from the school's rear gate, and it isn't on the main street. Not suitable."
The employee, having heard Blow out, rubbed his hands together and carefully opened his mouth.
"Hmm. In that case, only one place remains in this Dusk Block that meets the minimum conditions. Shall we go at once?"
"Yes. Best to strike while the iron is hot."
"I'll guide you straight there! This listing's advantage, more than any of the others, is that the first floor is a potion shop!"
"Is that so."
"Truthfully, I wanted to show it to you first. But since you said you would see every listing on the market, I placed it last along the route!"
And so they moved one block farther from the alley of the Nyx Inn, toward the school. A rather familiar building appeared, and Jane sank into recollection.
"That's...!"
Potion Black Cat—the place where Blow, Jane, and Herbena had bought the first things they needed after their admission to Caypol Municipal Magic School was decided. Even then the owner had been well along in years, an old woman who welcomed them from a rocking chair with a black cat in her arms. There was the gentle warmth coming off the fireplace burning against the inner wall of that dim interior; the many objects that smelled a little musty and yet felt dear; the countless things one needed for life at school...
It was so good back then.
She had held Luce's hand and looked slowly around the shop. After exchanging a few words with the old woman, Luce had held out to her a pen made from the feather of a white swan, impossibly elegant.
"It's your first time at magic school. We ought to buy the very best, shouldn't we?"
She had loved it so much that she even finished it with wax so it would not break. She had still had it when she was taken to Splas to be sold, and even now it rested softly on her desk.
While she was traveling through those memories, Blow, who had been examining the place from one end to the other, nodded to the man in charge.
"We'll take this one."
"You've decided? Already?"
"You were spacing out so hard that Hans and I went and looked at the building next door in the meantime."
"I'm sorry."
Jane was embarrassed, but there was something she absolutely had to ask him, so she gathered her courage and barely got her mouth open.
"Y-Young Master, d-do you, um—"
"There's a washroom on the second floor, and it doesn't seem like many bugs come out."
Only then did she sweep a hand across her chest in relief. She picked up a gingerbread doll that had been set nearby and turned sparkling eyes on him.
"Young Master, do you remember this place?"
"Here? I think I might have come once, before we enrolled."
"Yes. We bought a feather pen, and books, and all of that."
"Did we?"
"Yes. I came often when I was a new student, but I don't think I came after I moved up a year."
Jane stroked the potions stacked beside her, and the dolls that girls her age loved, one by one, then spoke in a voice full of fluttering feeling.
"It feels strange, somehow. Hearing that we'll use this place."
"Yeah. Hearing you say it, something about it feels new."
Jane's smile stayed on the whole time. The corner of Blow's mouth had gone a little stiff, and Jane could only find her master's look puzzling.
"When can we start using this building?"
"From a week from now. The owner has already gone down to her hometown."
Hearing that, Jane let out a faint sigh, sorry at the thought of never seeing the ever-kind old woman again.
"I should have come a few more times."
"Awfully sentimental, for you."
"I've always been sentimental."
"Anyway, you'll be the one managing this place, so give some real thought to ideas and the like."
"Yes, Young Master."
This warm, modest little potion shop was going to be her space!
A smile rose on Jane's lips of its own accord, and with a bright face she pored over the interior piece by piece. Blow, watching her, tilted his head as if he simply could not understand.
For about three days after the takeover, Blow had not a moment to think. There was more paperwork than he had expected. Because he could hardly do the work, Rowbedi and Jane begged Linne to watch the hall for just a little while. Fortunately, she nodded and said she would.
Still—if we just get through this!
Her body was tired, but Jane's spirits were high. She was leaving the damp, musty Nyx Inn for a new nest, and she was going to be able to run a potion shop. That meant she could take up again the countless experiments she had pursued in the past. Blow's hand had drawn her into working the restaurant for a time, but when it came down to it, she liked handling potions better. So before she came in and before she left, and at lunch hours like this one, she lingered outside—and she also let herself in with the potion-shop key Blow had given her.
I should bring some of the cute dolls, and stack up more books. And lay a rug, so it feels warmer...
She ran for the potion shop at a dash with those thoughts—and found three men the size of small mountains pacing in front of it.
Hm? Who are they?
They saw Jane, whispered among themselves for a long while, and then cautiously approached.
"Might you be the proprietor here?"
"What? What? Ah... I'm not exactly the owner, but..."
"Then perhaps...?"
"Um... I think I'm something like the manager."
Jane broke into a nervous sweat at the three burly figures. The bearded man who had questioned her spoke again, politely.
"Ah, is that so. We've come to have a look inside the potion shop."
"What? For what?"
She was shuffling backward, step by step, when a welcome voice came from the end of the alley.
"Already here? Oh—Jane's here too?"
Blow stared oddly at her as she slipped, none too subtly, behind his back. The big men came straight to him and bent at the waist.
"Good day, Boss!"
"You got here quickly."
"A promise to a customer is life itself!"
"That's right!"
"It's life!"
Watching them answer with such vigor, Jane asked Blow in a puzzled voice.
"Young Master, who are these people...?"
"They've come to do the construction."
"What? What kind of construction?"
"What kind do you think?"
Blow smiled, then pointed at the potion shop with his index finger.