The Sap That Talks Too Much
Whether my plea for my life had actually worked or not, the Count pulled a priest aside and the two of them exchanged words in hushed tones.
What on earth are they talking about?
Don't tell me they're haggling over my price while I sit right here?
I settled onto the sofa and studied the pair, doing my best to hide my nerves. Every so often, one of them would glance my way with a grave expression — and whenever the Count looked at me in particular, I felt like an item laid out on a market stall.
I'm over here dying of anxiety, and what is the Grand Duke's problem?
The Grand Duke sat on the sofa across the table, staring holes through me. His gaze was astonishingly hot and searing — I didn't have the courage to meet it head-on. There was a table between us, but it might as well not have existed. It was like that moment on the battlefield when our breaths had tangled across a single thin blade.
Debating how many gold coins to sell me for, are you, Grand Duke?
Just then, the priest slid a hand into the inner pocket of his cloak and spoke.
"The sap you requested."
Sap? What sap?
My eyes drifted, naturally enough, toward the glass bottle. What the priest produced was a small wooden box, and when he lifted the lid, a glass vial emerged from within. Inside it glowed a liquid radiating a soft, faint light — unmistakably the sap he'd spoken of.
"At His Highness the Grand Duke's request, the High Priest retrieved it personally. However……"
The priest handed the box to the Count, casting a sideways glance at the Grand Duke on the sofa.
"As you are no doubt aware, this is the sap of the World Tree, of which very little remains — its removal from the Temple is strictly forbidden. Which is why I must say……"
When the priest voiced his concern, the Count nodded readily.
"I understand. Not a word of today's events will ever leave this room."
Only then did the priest relax into a smile of relief.
"That would put my heart at ease. Ah — and one more thing. You may ask only three questions. Beyond that, the body cannot withstand the World Tree's power, and the drinker will lose consciousness."
"Three, hm……"
The Count's face clouded with displeasure. It was the Grand Duke who answered in his place, his eyes still pinned on me the entire time.
"Three will be enough."
Hold on. What……?
I'd been eavesdropping on the whole conversation, and I couldn't help but be stunned.
The World Tree sap……?
World Tree sap was no ordinary liquid. The World Tree was a being as mighty as its name suggested, and its sap was famous for one particular property: it forced the truth out of anyone who drank it.
So they intend to wring the truth out of me.
I looked up at the Count as he strode right up to me. He held out the bottle.
"Drink."
I fixed him with the most poisonous glare I could muster.
"Do you know what this is?"
I knew perfectly well what that sap was — but I had to play ignorant. Few people knew much about it, and drawing extra suspicion here would do me no favors.
This time, it was the Grand Duke who spoke.
"……Do you believe you have a choice?"
I turned my gaze to him and met eyes that were flat and cold as ice. The Grand Duke tilted his head slowly to one side.
"Ah — there is, of course, the option of dying on the spot instead of drinking it."
Y-you devil of a man.
Gritting my teeth, I took the bottle and pried the stopper loose. Pop — a cool, crisp fragrance bloomed up from the narrow mouth of the vial, like stepping into a forest clearing.
Fine. I'll drink it, then…….
The Grand Duke was right. It wasn't as if I had options.
Without further hesitation, I pressed my lips to the bottle's mouth and tipped my head back. The sap rushed out of the upended glass.
Gulp.
Well, it was the tree they called divine — the World Tree, no less — and the coolness going down my throat was exquisite. My thirst vanished in an instant. I felt almost healthier, somehow.
Smack, smack. I smacked my lips, lingering over the taste.
Nothing in my body felt different, but the sap's true effect would show itself soon enough.
The moment the Grand Duke asks his first question, that is.
The truth was, I had drunk World Tree sap once before, long ago.
The day I first met Serhin.
Back then, I had lost every memory of my childhood and lay abandoned in the ashes of a ruin. It so happened that Serhin, Crown Prince of the Tenasis Empire, was passing through the area after suppressing a rebellion — and he saved me.
I couldn't remember my birth, my status — I didn't even know my own age.
"You remember nothing?"
"No, Your Highness."
"Not your name, not your age, not even the name of your family or where you lived?"
The Crown Prince's questions were relentless, but I truly remembered nothing, so that was the answer I gave. The name Sia was one Serhin coined for me on the spot.
"Then from this moment, your name is 'Sia.' You will guard my side as my shadow and my sword."
And so I began learning the sword.
The truth, though, was that I remembered my real name perfectly well. The reason I never told Serhin was my own cold judgment: my true identity could very well be my death.
An empire thrown into chaos by rebellion. A child abandoned alone in the ruins.
Anyone who looked at me would find my existence suspicious. Exactly like right now.
Say I had revealed my real name — and say that name had even the slightest thread connecting it to the rebels?
I might have been killed on the spot.
So that day, the day I first met Serhin, he made me drink World Tree sap.
The World Tree was the guardian of the Cadea Empire, but one day it had begun to wither without explanation. In the chaos that gripped Cadea as the great tree faded, its sap had been peddled in secret — no doubt that was how Serhin had gotten his hands on it.
Looking back, it did gall me that he'd force-fed me the stuff to dig out the truth.
But he had no other way to bring someone of unknown origin into the imperial palace, I suppose.
And yet, somehow, the sap Serhin gave me had no effect on me at all. Whether his sap was a counterfeit or whether I possessed some peculiar immunity, I couldn't say.
Thanks to that, I'd been able to lie to Serhin's face even after drinking it. And so my real name had never been exposed.
Which means — listen here.
I looked the Grand Duke dead in the eye.
If it's the same World Tree sap, you'll have a hard time wringing the truth out of me, Grand Duke.
Then the Grand Duke finally fired off his first question.
"Is it true that you lost your memories?"
A smile of quiet triumph bloomed inside me. Maybe he intended to start light with question one, but as questions went, this one favored me enormously.
If you wanted a clean answer, you should have crafted something finer — more precise, more airtight.
The truth was, his question was riddled with escape routes. Both my childhood memories from my old body and my memories of this new body were gone — that much was simply true. And he hadn't specified when I'd lost my memories, so I had even less reason to hedge.
Yes! I did lose my memories!
"One could say I lost them — but one could equally say I didn't!"
Silence.
……Huh?
Wh-what did I just say?
An answer entirely at odds with my own thoughts had come pouring out of my mouth. Something was wrong. This was nothing like when Serhin had given me the sap.
Is the sap the Grand Duke prepared somehow different……?
No — wait. Maybe it was Serhin's sap that had been the fake all along.
Either way.
This situation,…… I think it's toast?
Then my mouth started moving again. Once more, without a shred of my consent.
"The truth is, I."
"……"
"Am an extraordinarily complicated person, Grand Duke."
"……"
"So the question itself was flawed from the start, is what I'm saying. Do you follow, Grand Duke?"
The Grand Duke's eyes went glacial.
Oh……
I marveled inwardly. It wasn't an answer reckless enough to expose me as a knight of a hostile nation, but it was, technically, faithfully answering his question.
Then why am I so talkative?
Under the effects of World Tree sap, a person is supposed to answer only yes or no.
And in banmal, no less.
Long-winded where it didn't matter, terse where it did. Typical.
Then the Grand Duke, who had been watching me in silence, turned his head toward the priest.
"Has liquor been mixed into this?"
The priest jolted and waved both hands in frantic denial.
"N-never, Your Highness!"
……Hmm. Slightly humiliating.
I'd had exactly the same thought. What I'd drunk was, undeniably, sap from a tree — yet from the outside, my behavior looked like nothing so much as a drunk making a scene.
Me. Drunk.
In front of him, no less……!
I bit down hard on my lower lip.
From this moment on, I am sealing this mouth — with physical force if I have to.
No more spouting nonsense.
The Grand Duke's gaze returned to me, sharper than before.
My identity wasn't exposed — but that answer will only deepen his suspicion.
After a moment's thought, the Grand Duke abruptly ordered the Count and the priest out.
"Wait outside."
"But Your Highness——"
"Count. See that the tribute for the Temple is properly handed over to the priest."
"……Yes, Your Highness."
The Count shot an anxious look between me and the Grand Duke, then left the study wearing the expression of a man who had decided it wasn't his problem to solve. Soon, only the two of us remained.
The big one is coming.
From my answer to the first question, the Grand Duke would have easily deduced that I hadn't lost all of my memories.
The second question will be designed to confirm it.
Now it got serious. I looked up at him, tense, my bitten lip trembling. A brief silence stretched between us — and then the Grand Duke spoke.
"I'll ask my second question."
I glared at him, lips pressed into a tight line.
Bring it, then. Come at me, Grand Duke.
The question came.
"Do you."
"……"
"……Remember me?"
……Pardon?
I'd braced for a killing blow, but this was, in its own way, an even more unexpected question.
My head's already a mess — what is that supposed to mean?
Could it be,…… he's recognized me?
No. Impossible. This body was wearing a completely different shell, and we'd hardly exchanged enough conversation for him to deduce my identity.
Then what on earth is this question——
That was when it struck me. A single thought flashed through my mind like lightning.
Oh……
That question isn't meant for me.
Right now, the Grand Duke was asking the original owner of this body.
Don't tell me — Grand Duke.
Does he know who this body belongs to? Is that why he looked at me with that shocked expression when I walked into the study?! Is that it, Grand Duke?!
I wanted to demand answers on the spot — but then my tightly bitten lips began to twitch.
Ha!
It was time to answer the question.
Ah, no. No no no.
If you're going to babble on your own again, just don't open your mouth at all!
That question wasn't for me, I said!
But my lips had apparently sprouted a brain of their own, and they began answering without me.
"I remember. ……Very well, in fact."
"……"
Damn it all.
"The heartless…… the merciless slaughterer. The demon starved for blood, the murderer of the century, the madman of the battlefield, the cruel and vicious——"
"Stop. ……Enough."
The Grand Duke pinched the bridge of his nose to cut me off, but my mouth did not stop.
"And."
"I said enough."
"Hear me to the end. This is the most important part."
"……"
Ah…… this sap really does work wonders.
I marveled at the sap's potency yet again. Even with the Grand Duke begging me to stop, my energized mouth looked ready to keep chattering away with delight.
Go on, then. Rampage to your heart's content.
As long as it didn't end with I am a knight of the enemy nation! — the rest hardly mattered.
With something close to surrender, I left my lips to their own devices. And they curled into a sly smile, one corner tugging upward as they gazed at the Grand Duke.
"The only person."
"……"
The Grand Duke's eyes narrowed as he stared at my mouth. And emboldened by that gaze, my lips spat out the rest.
"……I have ever acknowledged."
"……"
Whoa……
I marveled yet again — I'd probably gasped more times at this table today than in my entire life combined.
Tell it to do as it pleases, and it truly does whatever it pleases.
Isn't this practically a love confession at this point?
Please. For the love of everything — just shut up already……