“Lady Sei!”
Two days after I gave Zara her gift and visited the annex garden, I heard someone call my name as I was heading off to check on a certain herb. I recognized the woman’s voice and looked back to find, just as I’d expected, Zara walking over to me with a soft smile on her face.
I had only just arrived at the annex. Daily business at the palace had started about an hour ago, so you could have said that it was still first thing in the morning. Although the annex was located outside the capital, I assumed that work there started at the same time as it did for us at the institute.
I normally talked to Zara during breaks. She had never approached me at this hour before. While I thought it odd, I smiled back at her. “Good morning, Zara.”
“Good morning. Thank you so much for the cream you gave me the other day!” The first words out of her mouth were words of gratitude.
In other words, the special gift I’d devised as thanks of my own for her superlative tea-making skills. Judging by her appearance, it had worked wonders.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Your skin didn’t have any bad reactions, did it?”
“Not at all! If anything, my skin has been in splendid condition since I started using it.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
I was pleased to see her delight. As I smiled back at her, her gaze filled with hope as she said, “That cream you gave me is sold at your store, right?”
“No, I actually made that one special.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. The recipe is a bit different from the ones on the market.”
I had expected this question. I’d only ever wound up selling cosmetics in my shop after I once gave some to Liz. Once her friends got wind of it, I’d been hounded by a horde of young ladies from well-to-do families asking to buy more from me. I received the same requests from noble ladies whenever I socialized. I’d therefore had a feeling Zara would ask the same, if she liked the cream. However, this time I wouldn’t be able to tell her where she could get more. At any rate, the ingredients were far more expensive than the ones for rose-oil cream, which was our most popular product.
At first I had made this new cream just for myself, since it was so expensive, but I had, ah, accidentally become a bit excited. Now I’d made something even more expensive than the rose cream. I could thankfully conceal the effects of my fifty-percent-bonus curse, but I couldn’t deny that I had probably overdone it.
“So this won’t be sold in your store?”
“No. It’s made using special ingredients.”
The cream I had given Zara used lavender, which was in some of my commercial products, but it also had all sorts of other ingredients that were considered good for your skin in my original world. The most standout of these was frankincense, a resin incense that had been considered precious since ancient times. You could extract oils from the resin just like you could with lavender.
The tree from which you got frankincense was susceptible to the cold, so it didn’t grow naturally in Salutania. However, I had happened to notice that tree several months ago in the palace’s greenhouse. Since finding it there, I had asked the palace to let me use its resin. But I obviously couldn’t use trees from the palace greenhouse for products I intended to sell. There weren’t enough trees to manufacture a meaningful amount of cream either.
I’d also added some herbs that were used as ingredients in superior-grade HP potions. I figured they might be good for revitalizing skin. I summed all this up by calling them “special ingredients,” but I suddenly worried that Zara might think I’d added something kinda weird to the recipe.
“Oh! Of course, I didn’t add anything that would be detrimental to your skin,” I assured her. “I tested it myself before I gave it to you too.”
“I know you wouldn’t. I tried it on my arm first to make sure I didn’t have any reactions, just like you told me to.” Zara nodded.
Whew, what a relief.
Just like I had instructed her to do, I had tested the cream on myself first. This was called a patch test; you smeared a bit on the inner part of your arm and let it sit for a little while to make sure your skin didn’t tingle or turn red.
I had warned Zara to do the same on her skin, because everyone’s complexion is different, and that she should do it on a part of her body where people wouldn’t notice. She had done just as I asked.
“You must have used precious ingredients, then. To think I received such a gift…” Zara had interpreted “special ingredients” as meaning “precious,” and her expression clouded with guilt.
It’s not your fault, Zara. It’s mine! I had been having so much fun while I made the cream that I went a bit overboard with the extra ingredients. I really hoped she wouldn’t overthink it. “I wouldn’t say that. They’re more ingredients you don’t usually see used. Don’t worry about it.”
Hearing this made Zara smile at me with a powerful emotion in her eyes. That expression was…kind of familiar.
Oh, I know what it is. It’s the same look that the Knights of the Second Order wear. Why is Zara looking at me with that same kind of reverence? Did the cream I gave her work that well? I didn’t think it was that effective when I tried it on myself, but maybe it actually is?
I got a bit of a bad feeling as I squirmed under Zara’s gaze.
Thankfully, someone came to my rescue as he called out, “Excuse me.”
“Oh, Paul! Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
Paul was the head gardener; he had hired the other gardeners at the annex. He was in the prime of his life and had dark-brown hair and eyes, as did many Salutanian people. However, his eyes were sharp, and he had a solid build, so he was one of those folks who gave off an oddly intimidating air even when they were silent. He was a man of few words, which only served to intensify that impression.
Paul rarely spoke to me, so I assumed he had some business he wished to discuss. I swiveled to face him, and it turned out that he wanted to ask me about taking care of some herbs. I figured that it would be easier to show him than to explain, so we decided to head over to the herb plots together.
We happened to be heading in the same direction as the magistrate’s hall, so Zara accompanied us as she went to return to her own duties. She was walking behind Paul and me, which was when I realized that Paul seemed to be acting kind of strangely. He was dragging his left leg a bit.
Does he always walk that way? I was a bit curious, so I glanced at him. “Say, Paul?”
Paul stopped to look at me. “Yes?”
“Did you hurt your foot?” I asked as I nodded toward it.
“Yes,” he replied. “It’s an old injury.”
It had happened a long time again and was pretty much healed, but sometimes it hurt when the weather turned foul. I looked up at the sky, and indeed, it was overcast.
I see. So we’ll have some rain or something. But it’s an old injury, is it? It must bother him when it hurts just because it gets cloudy. And it’s not like that’ll go away someday. Wouldn’t it be better to heal it, if possible?
Luckily for Paul, I was highly proficient with Healing Magic. I could easily take care of even old injuries that hadn’t fully healed on their own. Furthermore, unlike my potion-brewing and cooking skills, this wasn’t a secret. There would likely be a bit of an uproar if I offered to heal any and everyone, but Paul had done a lot for us with the annex garden. I had a feeling it would be okay to help him out—he was a colleague. I had similarly healed my coworkers at the institute when necessary, after all.
Yeah. Okay. I’ll do it! I had made up my mind, so all there was left to do was take action. I faced Paul right away. “May I heal you?”
We heard a, “Huh?” from a surprised Zara, who had been listening to our conversation. It was no surprise that she was taken aback, since ordinarily potions and Healing Magic couldn’t do anything about old injuries. Or perhaps she didn’t know that I could also cast healing spells.
Just in case, I clarified, “I’m very proficient in Healing Magic.”
“I thought old injuries were impervious to that.”
Healing Magic was tied to one’s skill with Holy Magic. It was said that Level 10 was typically the limit, but my skill level was the absurd “Level ∞,” so I usually coasted by simply claiming that I was especially skilled. However, I didn’t know if everyone who was good with Holy Magic could actually help with scars and the like, so it was awkward to have that pointed out.
Zara was peering at me with a dubious expression, so I merely nodded at her to try and dodge any more questions before looking to Paul again.
Paul’s expression had remained unchanged during our exchange, as if it had nothing to do with him. Nevertheless, he replied, “Please do.”
So, I went ahead and cast Heal on him.
The ever-expressionless Paul’s eyes widened slightly the second after I cast the spell. After the light of magic abated, Paul tested the effectiveness of my spell by stomping on the ground.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“It…doesn’t hurt anymore.”
“Please let me know if it flares up. I’ll cast the spell again.”
I was pretty sure Paul was fully healed now, but follow-ups are important!
“Thank you. I shall.” Paul bowed deeply to me.
It wasn’t until much later that I learned the effects of the cream I had given Zara were, in short, miraculous—and that my number of devotees had secretly increased.