15 — 4

“So, I heard Princess Anne’s potion received praise.”

On the way back from the Magic Institute’s budget meeting for the next fiscal year, Naranda, who had attended with him, said that to Noel. The Magic Institute’s budget came from the royal family.

The royal family’s accounting officer was famous for being extremely meticulous about details, but today, permission to increase the budget had been granted smoothly.

Most likely, one reason was that the potion Noel had supplied had been highly evaluated.

“Yes. Apparently, even Princess Anne, who hates medicine, will drink it if it is my potion. Also, the maid said that since that princess with such severe mood swings calms down after taking the potion, it is very helpful if she drinks it before falling asleep.”

“You changed the potion’s formula… no, you did not.”

“It is a formula you know as well. It was the ingredients.”

Naranda’s eyebrow twitched.

“I switched all of the ingredients to ones grown in Beth’s greenhouse. Violets do have a calming effect, but they were an ingredient I included almost entirely for fragrance and flavor. Yet as a result of growing to S-class, it seems their medicinal effects are activating.”

The medicinal effect of violets was sedation.

Without burdening the body of a small child, they were gentle on the mouth and invited one into the world of sleep.

Naranda had been listening with interest, but then,

“Have you used it yourself, Noel-sama?”

He lowered his voice as though speaking of a secret.

“Yes. But what I need is not an induction agent. It is the purple medicine.”

“If you take such a strong medicine every day, you will eventually damage your health.”

Naranda admonished him in a slightly strong tone.

Noel had suffered from serious insomnia for many years. By taking a potion containing purple medicine with strong magic cast upon it, he forcibly slept for only a few hours, but the side effects were also strong.

Noel did not answer. Then, to change the subject, he suddenly brought the conversation around to Naranda.

“By the way, the sofa in that greenhouse is your sofa, is it not?”

It was the sofa Rodney had been sleeping on.

Naranda confessed with the face of a child whose prank had been exposed.

“Yes. It is my old sofa. That greenhouse was so comfortable that I wanted something that would let me stay there longer, so I had Beth take it. Now I sometimes go there to nap, but even though it is a sofa I provided, there are many people already using it.”

It was easy to imagine that the person already using it was mostly Rodney.

Lately, Rodney had had a truly lively complexion and had regained cheeks like those of a rosy-cheeked child.

“When I take a nap, perhaps because she is matching various things to my physical condition, Beth brings the greenhouse’s potted plants to my feet or beside my head, and their placement is just exquisite. Truly, when I sleep for a while in that greenhouse, I feel as if all sorts of things are forgiven and flow away, and everything recovers, and I feel like I have become a new person from the afternoon onward.”

“…It is like the goddess’s spring from mythology.”

He remembered the goddess’s spring from the creation myth, which was said to heal any wound.

It was a story in which a hero who had suffered a near-fatal wound stopped by the goddess’s spring, recovered, and then defeated his enemy.

Naranda murmured.

“That girl is a mysterious girl. Apparently, every morning, she asks the plants what they want her to do for them that day. And she says she is only doing what she hears. When I sit on the sofa in the greenhouse because I am tired, she says she speaks in the same way to my heart and body. She asks what they want her to do. Then, she says she understands what I need in order to return to my original state. Usually, she says the answer is that I need to sleep slowly and detox with bitter herbal tea.”

Then, as though remembering it, he chuckled and continued.

“When I wake from my nap, I am in a greenhouse overflowing with light and dancing rainbows, and Beth smiles and brews herbal tea for me. If I am lucky, she even serves those country cookies she says she is good at making. I think, so this is what it means to come back to life. It is strange, is it not, Noel-sama? Now I painfully understand why every plant raised by that country girl, who does not even possess magic power, grows into S-class.”

The next day.

Noel went to visit Beth to check on the greenhouse.

He had no particular business in the greenhouse, but his subordinates all said with one voice that Beth’s greenhouse was comfortable and that their hearts and bodies had been put back in order. The secret behind the high quality of the plants Beth raised might be there.

(Shall I go…)

Without sending any notice ahead, Noel decided to visit the greenhouse.

Perhaps Beth had some secret. That was what Noel thought.

Naranda and Rodney were both court magicians, excellent magicians of whom there were only a handful in this country.

(For everyone in that excellent Magic Institute to go there to nap, perhaps some addictive plant is being cultivated there.)

However, contrary to Noel’s expectations, and quite unexpectedly, Beth was not even inside the greenhouse that day.

When Noel approached, Beth was outside the greenhouse, playing with that plump stray cat.

It was not a magical beast. It was a genuine, ordinary stray cat.

Beth seemed to have noticed Noel.

“Ah, Noel-sama. I cannot let you into the greenhouse today.”

“Why not?”

“Mitch the maid is inside right now.”

“And is that a problem?”

Then she lowered her voice.

“That girl only just miscarried. She is trying her hardest to recover. Right now, inside Noel-sama’s greenhouse, she said she wants to face her grieving heart and body by herself, alone.”

Please leave her alone for a little while.

Beth said that.

Noel had also heard a little that Mitch, a royal palace maid, had suddenly collapsed in the queen’s room. Since there had been nothing especially suspicious about it, he had completely forgotten until now.

Mitch was a maid serving the queen, and sometimes came to the Magic Institute as the queen’s messenger to receive potions.

She had likely been invited to this greenhouse by Beth at that time.

“Is it all right to leave a girl in that mental state alone in the greenhouse?”

Noel thought it would be better for her to recover slowly in a place with trustworthy women, such as her mother or older sister, but Beth returned words different from what Noel had thought.

“Even if she is alone, if the plants and animals are close to her, she is not alone. Being with people is actually painful for her right now. She needs things that are not people to stay beside her, and once she is fully prepared, only then can people finally stay beside her. After that, I think a person can finally recover. Today, she should not want anyone to come near her yet.”

But first, she had to grieve as much as she wished, and she had to remain at the bottom of her sorrow until she was sufficiently ready. Once that was over, she could finally move forward.

Beth, who murmured that, looked just like a sage.

The one moving in the shadow of the sofa was probably Mitch. Even from a distance, Noel could see from the silhouette that she was hugging herself and sobbing. His heart ached.

Beth continued.

“I have made Mitch’s husband understand properly. Plants are gentle, Noel-sama. The plants in my greenhouse are all healthy and happy children, so they properly lend their strength to living beings who are carrying pain. There are wounds that heal simply by being near healthy plants.”

Noel remembered a little of what Naranda had said.

“…I see. So when your plants are used, the effects of every potion become tremendously high.”

“Only a happy living being can give generously. When surrounded by happy lives, a wounded living being will eventually remember the shape of the self it was originally meant to have.”

Then Noel smiled a little and asked Beth.

“Are you happy? Is that why you can give so unstintingly?”

Beth gave him a big smile and said without hesitation.

“I am happy. Because…”

She took a deep breath.

“I am alive.”