11 — 4

“Hey, country girl, did you transplant that petrification medicinal herb and this soup herb next to each other?”

Ever since they had met face-to-face for the first time in a month, Noel had begun dropping by the greenhouse now and then.

Whenever they met, Noel did nothing but one-sidedly push tasks onto her and quickly leave, but according to Naranda, he was apparently quite busy day after day. Even his grand misunderstanding about Beth at the start was something caused by a fairly desperate situation.

(I wonder if he isn’t going back yet today.)

That was Noel, but perhaps because of some strange whim today, he had been behind Beth the whole time as she tended to the plants in the flowerbed, throwing question after question at her and peering down at her hands.

“When this medicinal herb for petrification is planted next to that herb, both of them somehow seem happy. So I tried transplanting them.”

“I do not know why, but ever since you transplanted them, their magic power has been resonating with each other. It is as though they are enhancing one another. Wonderful.”

“Oh. People with magic power can tell things like that. How convenient. Yes, I’m sure that herb would taste really good if you stewed it together with chicken.”

Usually, around this point at the latest, Noel would snort, turn his back on her, leave the greenhouse, and return to his laboratory, but today, for some reason, he showed no sign of leaving at all.

Noel seemed to want to say something, wandering behind Beth as he watched her work, but finally, as though he had made up his mind, he spoke.

“…Thank you.”

“Huh?”

Beth was so surprised that she accidentally dropped the potted plant in her hands!

“The mold.”

Beth’s potted plant floated in the air before it touched the ground.

It was Noel’s magic. This man truly used splendid magic as naturally as breathing. Beth looked at the face of the magic user in admiration.

Noel drew the potted plant into his hands and said,

“Thanks to the mold you grew, I succeeded in creating a potion for terminal lung disease. By giving that potion, one child with lung disease, whose flame of life had nearly gone out, was saved. It was a miracle.”

“Huh, really? I mean, Noel-sama, you were doing something like that?”

This was the first she had heard of it.

Then Noel put down the potted plant and deeply lowered his head.

“I want to thank you. Even with my ability, I had managed to determine that creating blue mold on Sleep Mushrooms and refining that blue mold into a potion was effective. But to use blue mold in a potion, it needed to be refined to S-class. You prepared such a large amount of S-class blue mold in only three days. I never imagined you could do something like that. It was the life of a child whom every doctor in this country had given up on. But with the materials you prepared, I was able to create the potion.”

“No, Noel-sama, please raise your head! I only did what I could!”

(This is what Naranda-sama was talking about.)

Vaguely, she recalled Naranda’s words when he had given the mold an S-class appraisal.

“…How should I repay you for your work? You saved a person’s life.”

Noel looked straight into Beth’s eyes.

(…He has had nothing but a nasty attitude, but he was desperately running around to save someone’s life, wasn’t he, Noel-sama?)

The image of Noel inside Beth looked just a little different now.

“No, um, really, you don’t need to thank me, and I’m receiving wages, so that’s fine, but, um, if possible, from now on…”

Looking a little embarrassed, Beth asked Noel for just one thing.

“…Please don’t call me country girl. Call me Beth. From now on, I want you to call me by my name.”

Noel looked startled, then awkwardly scratched his head, and said,

“…I’m sorry, Beth.”