7. Luna Herb (3)

“Rats labor under the delusion that the night will hide them…”

The moment Rel’s voice rang out, Elli threw herself sideways on pure instinct, behind a massive herb shelf where the lantern light couldn’t reach.

“Honestly, you couldn’t be more of a rat. You went and hid quickly enough.”

Thud, thud.

Her heart plummeted to the floor in time with the approaching footsteps. She pictured herself dying cold and alone in the dungeon, and, funnily enough, she pictured the Young Master too, the one who had promised to die there at her side.

If — by some miracle — it really came down to that, what would he say to me?

In her imagination, the Young Master lay in the icy dungeon facing her, and with his usual unreadable expression, he spoke.

— Elli, this absolutely will not happen, but… if anything goes wrong with the plan, head to the back of the storeroom. On the third shelf there, find a knobbly, mottled little mushroom that glows mint-green. Eat it.

…!

Her mind snapped to attention. By sheer luck, the direction she’d been driven toward was the back of the storeroom.

“Rat’s putting up a fight, I see.”

Elli hurled the herb crate stacked beside her at Rel with everything she had. Rel only shook her head and gave it a contemptuous kick. Exactly as Rel had said, the throw was a desperate flail that bought the thinnest sliver of time.

But that sliver was enough.

The Young Master saw all of this coming!

The instant Rel kicked the crate aside, Elli bolted to the back of the storeroom and searched the third shelf for the knobbly, mottled little mushroom that glowed mint-green.

Crash!

Elli tripped over her own feet and went down. Before she could scramble up again, Rel spoke.

“Now then — time to catch the rat.”

There was no time to hesitate. Elli shoved the mint-green mushroom she’d barely found into her mouth and chewed with gritted teeth.

A foul, earthy smell filled her mouth, and a strange sensation rippled through her, as though every bone and muscle in her body were being wrenched out of shape. More than anything, though, it tasted awful.

Bleugh.

She forced it down with a swallow. In the same instant, the lantern light fell across the spot where she stood.

— If by some chance you have to eat the Mimic Mushroom, picture the most terrifying being in this whole manor.

A man more arrogant and more cruel than anyone else in the manor, one before whom no one was permitted a single careless move. That had been the very first warning Elli ever heard from Leo.

But as a lowly maid, she had never once come face-to-face with the manor’s eldest young master, so at first she hadn’t thought he was that frightening. Not, at least, until the day she witnessed that.

“…s-sorry.”

One day, passing through the corridor, Elli happened to see Rel leaving Valerian’s room. The face that was usually so proud and unflinching before anyone had gone deathly white.

Even though this was Rel, the same Rel who tormented her so cruelly, Elli didn’t care about that in the slightest. Worried, she went over to her.

“Are you all right?”

Rel’s head was bowed to the floor, and she was muttering something; the closer Elli got, the clearer the words became.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

In the end, Rel staggered off somewhere and didn’t cross paths with anyone for quite a while. And later, when Leo was dragged off to the dungeon on “Valerian’s orders,” the most terrifying person in the manor became, quite naturally, Valerian.

And now, wearing Valerian’s form, Elli stood face-to-face with Rel, who trembled violently right in front of her.

“Lord Valerian!?”

At Rel’s shock-stricken voice, Elli, still wearing Valerian’s face, hunched her shoulders before she could stop herself. Her heart was hammering.

Did I — did I really change into Lord Valerian?

Only now did Elli grasp the effect of the mushroom she’d eaten.

What am I supposed to do?!

Her mind went blank, and terror rushed in, the desperate sense that she had to offer some clumsy excuse, any excuse, this very instant. Shaking off the urge to say something, anything, she barely managed to open her mouth.

“What brings you here, Rel?”
“I-I… I heard a suspicious sound from inside, so I came to check…”

Rel’s voice shrank to a near-mumble. By any reasonable measure, the genuinely suspicious party here was Valerian, present in the herb storeroom at this late hour without a word to her, its keeper. But to Rel, Valerian was a presence so overwhelmingly terrifying that even forming something like “suspicion” toward him was impossible.

That was the sheer presence of the man called Valerian Arne.

And then there was thick-headed Elli, currently wearing Valerian’s form.

…huh?

Looking at Rel trembling before her, Elli felt a strange feeling rise unbidden inside her.

— You stupid little bitch.

The very same Rel who had always looked at her like a bug.

— Die together with your beloved Young Master.

The very same Rel who had forced death upon her.

“…”

That same Rel now bowed her head to the floor before her, unable even to meet her eyes.

Oh my…

The steady, calm beat of her own heart sounded in her ears. This was not the pounding that fear brought, nor the racing she had known from any joy or anger or sorrow or pleasure life had handed her before.

This feeling is a first.

A thrilling exhilaration she had never felt in her entire life surged through her. Casting off every trace of the clumsy fumbling from moments before, Elli spoke in a low, oppressive voice.

“…You dare.”

Elli let the phrase break off on purpose and advanced on Rel, slow and deliberate. Rel’s body shuddered with fear, but she couldn’t manage even a single step back.

“You — a maid, nothing more — dared to find suspicious the eldest son of House Arne, the one who shall succeed our esteemed lord and lead this family? You?”

Rel scraped together the last of her courage and opened her mouth to offer an excuse.

“N-no! Lord Valerian! I would never even think of such—!”
“Silence.”

Elli seized Rel’s jaw roughly.

“Khk—!”

Eating the Mimic Mushroom changed only your outward appearance. However hard the hand on Rel’s jaw squeezed, the strength behind it was still Elli’s own. In other words, with the smallest effort of her own, Rel could have wrenched herself free of that grip.

“I-I’m so sorry!”

Of course, she wouldn’t have dared.

“Do you know why I, of all people, came in person to a foul-smelling storeroom like this?”

Without releasing Rel’s jaw, Elli pressed on.

“Because of two useless sisters and a pack of dimwit little brothers who only barely keep breathing! I — the only one in this family Father deigns to summon and speak with alone — must personally see to filthy cleanup like this! And yet a lowly maid dares to question my movements?”

The real Valerian might have been speaking through her. The words poured out of her, smooth as water running downstream.

At Elli’s roar, the strength drained from Rel’s legs. And since Elli didn’t have the muscle to bear the woman’s weight, Rel simply slipped free of her grip on her own. And yet.

“…Tch.”

The trousers of the slumped Rel were darkening to yellow. The one small mercy was that this was a herb storeroom, where the smell wouldn’t carry too badly.

Elli scooped up the pouch of Luna Herb that had fallen to the floor. Then she turned to Rel, who was drenched in fear and shame, the focus gone from her eyes, and delivered one final warning.

“Do not provoke me again with this kind of pointless stunt. And as for what happens to you if you breathe a single word of tonight’s events to anyone — I trust you understand?”

Rel came back to her senses with a jolt and nodded. Elli turned her back and started for the storeroom exit, speaking over her shoulder as she went.

“Clean up your own filth.”

The instant Elli vanished into the darkness, only then did Rel burst into the sobs she had been holding back.

Pop!

The moment she stepped out of the herb storeroom, Elli returned to her original form.

“Whew.”

The strength had gone from her legs too, and she wanted to crumple to the floor, but having just witnessed that scene, she somehow held herself together. In the end, the memory of it set off a fit of laughter, and once she’d laughed her fill, Elli headed back the way she’d come with light steps.

“…I should’ve grabbed more of those mushrooms.”

That night, the innocent country girl named Elli awakened to a side of herself she had never known existed.

A faint herbal fragrance drifted through the room.

“Young Master, your Luna Herb tea.”

Without the slightest tremor in her hand, Elli held the deep-blue-tinted tea out to me. Her face was as bright and guileless as ever, not a trace of last night’s commotion left on it, as if the whole thing had been a dream. She wore the look of someone who had conquered her fear.

I took the teacup and asked, my voice low.

“Report.”

At that, Elli opened her mouth as if she’d been waiting for the cue.

“Just as you predicted, Young Master, Senior Rel had set a trap and was lying in wait. Right down to the maid patrols and the Dreamveil at the storeroom entrance. Every single bit of it was exactly as you said!”
“As I expected.”

Winter comes, and snow falls. Rain falls, and the ground turns wet. That was the level of self-evidence we were talking about, as far as I was concerned.

I cannot be wrong, after all.

What I was actually curious about was something else entirely, so I set the teacup down and looked Elli straight in the eye.

“That isn’t the end of it, though, is it?”

Elli’s eyes widened into perfect circles.

“How did you know?”
“I can know anything.”

Elli was lost for words a moment, then sighed in admiration.

“Wow, Young Master — you truly do know everything.”

From scaling the vines to slip past the patrol all the way to being cornered by Rel inside the storeroom, the scenes spilling from Elli’s mouth painted themselves vividly in my head.

“And then you ate the Mimic Mushroom, didn’t you? And turned into Big Brother Valerian, I bet.”

Elli was now past admiration and well into outright shock.

“Young Master — are you a prophet? Or do you see the past?”

I answered with a smile.

“Something like that, sure.”

The events that came after, though, I genuinely hadn’t predicted, even if I didn’t let it show. They were a real surprise.

Watching Eve’s reaction as Elli launched into her Valerian impression settled the matter: the girl really had nailed him. She’d caught Valerian’s signature intonation and his thunderous, booming cadence down to the last note.

“And? How was it?”
“Hm?”
“Being Big Brother Valerian for a while — how did it feel?”

Elli looked taken aback by the unexpected question. She hesitated a moment, then mumbled,

“…It was fun.”
“Then that’s that.”
“…But pretending to be someone else is a bad thing to do.”

Simple, innocent Elli needed a taste of the world’s grime. She needed to learn that it was not such a generous place.

“Humans are like that. Tell them not to do something, and they want to do it more. Make a rule, and they try to escape it. Make a promise, and the first thing they think about is how to break it.”

Elli hadn’t survived.

She had never made it as far as my world. But thanks to taking over Arden’s body, I’d been able to meet her. The Arden world I’d fallen into ran at least five years behind the game world I knew, which was the only reason our paths could cross at all.

And yet, unless she changed of her own will, she would meet her death in the end.

I won’t let her die.

But Elli was one of the important cards in my hand. An NPC with a DV stat of just 2 was more precious than any item could ever be. Which was why I intended to keep showing Elli, whose line between good and evil was drawn so sharply, that the world had no intention of going easy on her from here on out. The road I would walk was paved with chaos, after all.

I looked at Elli, who couldn’t lift her head under the weight of her guilt over the night before. Dulling that guilt of hers was where it all began.

“Sneaking into the herb storeroom was already a bad action to begin with. To turn around now and beat yourself up over playing Big Brother Valerian on top of that is a contradiction. By your logic, are you saying theft is fine, but bad acting is not?”

“…”

I watched Elli sink into thought. Make her think more, weigh it longer, wrestle with the question without end. That was the whole point.

“People often say you should be generous to others and strict with yourself… but you need to be a little more generous to yourself.”

I picked up the herbal tea I’d set down and brought it to my lips.

“The tea’s cooled off a bit — gone lukewarm, in fact.”
“Should I fetch you fresh hot water?”
“No.”

I tipped the lukewarm tea down my throat in one swallow, something possible only because it was neither hot nor cold.

“I like lukewarm, myself.”

At my words, Elli tilted her head. For most people, who take their bearings from the sharp line between hot and cold, lukewarm is nothing but an unpleasant in-between, neither one thing nor the other.

“People usually prefer things hot or cold. Lukewarm feels half-baked, doesn’t it?”

I set the teacup down and smiled faintly.

“Maybe a great many things in this world are like this lukewarm herb tea. Not piping hot, not ice cold either. We’re all too quick to sort the world into black and white, success and failure, good and evil. But the truth, most of the time, lives in the countless shades of gray in between.”

Whether my point had landed exactly as I meant it, I couldn’t say, but for now the sight of Elli lost in thought was satisfaction enough.

Ah, right. There was one more simple, innocent girl here.

“…I have a long road ahead of me.”