3 — 2

(Uuuuh… What in the world is going to happen to me now…)

There were no windows. No sunlight shone in. Had she already been locked in this unfamiliar, cold dungeon for about two hours?

Her throat was dry, she was scared, and the arm that had been roughly grabbed by an unfamiliar man throbbed painfully.

She still had absolutely no idea why she was going through something like this.

Her tears had dried up, and as she stiffened her body anxiously in a corner of the cell, she heard a knock from outside on the door leading to the stairs, as if it had only been done out of obligation.

“Ah, Beth, sorry… This is all my fault.”

Creak, the wooden door at the entrance leading to the stairs opened.

The one who showed his face beyond the opened door was Carter, her childhood friend who was supposed to be working as an adventurer in town.

Surprised by the unexpected face, Beth clung to the iron bars.

“Carter? What did you go and do this time?”

Carter was the second son of the village general goods shop, and he had only recently become an adventurer.

He had said that working in a general goods shop was uncool, so he left the village and registered as an adventurer at the town guild. But even though a full year had already passed since he became an adventurer, he was still a low-performing E-class adventurer. In other words, he was the kind of adventurer whose situation spoke for itself, having not risen even one rank since registration.

Carter was truly bad at handling things, and even when he had been in the village, he had always caused nothing but trouble.

However, because of his hard-to-hate personality and his large brown eyes like a puppy’s, everyone in the village, one way or another, would say there was no helping him and look after him.

Beth was also one of the people who, one way or another, looked after him.

Beth sighed and asked Carter with a resigned expression.

“You were involved, weren’t you… Hey, does your mother know about this? So explain properly, in order, what you did and why I’m in a place like this.”

“…I will explain that.”

The one who came out from behind Carter was the magician man with the terrifyingly handsome face, the one who had roughly thrown Beth into the cell earlier.

With an awkward look on his face, the man ruffled his beautiful shoulder-length silver hair roughly and said,

“There was a problem with a potion made from the medicinal herbs you grew, so you were taken away as a suspect under suspicion of being a witch…”

“Medicinal herbs? What do the medicinal herbs in my field have to do with Carter?”

It had been a very long time since she had seen Carter, and the medicinal herbs in Beth’s field were only grown for Beth’s own use.

Beth had no magic power, so she could not make things like potions.

As she wondered about it, Carter suddenly performed a magnificent prostration.

“Beth, I’m sorry! The other day, there was a quest to gather ten medicinal herbs in the forest in one day, but no matter what I did, I could only gather seven that day, so I was in trouble, wondering what to do, and then…”

The magician man looked exasperated and added to Carter’s words.

“He returned to the village, silently dug up three medicinal herbs from your field, made the total ten, and completed the quest.”

“Carter!!!!! You little—!!!”

“Eek, I’m sorry!! But the only house I could think of that grew medicinal herbs was yours, Beth!!”

This childhood friend had always been like this.

Well, it was only petty trouble on the level of stealing pies she had made or getting laundry covered in mud, so no one ever got truly angry. Whether to call him a troublemaker or what, when she was near this problem child, something troublesome always happened, and it was unbearably annoying.

“So, magician-sama, how did that lead to me being treated as a witch and locked up in a place like this? No matter how I think about it, the bad one in this story is Carter, and I’m just a victim whose field was ruined by Carter.”

Beth could not make something as impressive as potions, but in order to make ointments she could use for herself for minor injuries and the like, she also grew medicinal herbs in one corner of her field.

Even if Carter had dug up about three plants, it was not particularly a problem, and if Carter had said he wanted them, she would have gladly shared some. She simply had no idea at all why the medicinal herbs from her field had brought such a disaster.

“…The quality.”

After hesitating slightly, the magician man said that.

“Huh?”

“The medicinal herbs from your field had grown to an impossibly high quality. Potions made from medicinal herbs of this high a quality become too potent and turn into poison instead unless they are properly processed by an advanced magician. But since they had been mixed together with the wild medicinal herbs this adventurer gathered in the forest, he commissioned a town apothecary as usual and had them made into potions.”

“At the site of the recent hunt for remnants of the Demon Race, three soldiers who had been wounded on-site and had taken the potions suddenly began to suffer. Witches who were lending their power to the Demon Race side had just recently been reported, so everyone had been on edge.”

“Thinking it might be the work of a witch, we examined the potions, and the source of the medicinal herbs used as ingredients turned out to be something purchased from that adventurer one week ago. When we interrogated this man, he confessed that seven plants came from the forest and the remaining three came from you. And so, we thought that you, who had handed those plants to the adventurer, might be, well, one of the witch’s, accomplices…”

The magician mumbled the latter part vaguely.

Beth looked at the magician with half-lidded eyes.

“…In short, without properly investigating, you mistook me, the victim of a thief, for an accomplice of a witch.”

“…I have no excuse.”

Apparently, she had hit the mark. The magician scratched his cheek, looked off in a completely different direction, and refused to meet Beth’s eyes.

“Beth isn’t a witch or anything, and it’s just that she’s really good at handling plants and can grow any plant in amazing condition, I explained that a lot, but no one would listen. Everyone insisted that an accomplice of a witch must have infused the medicinal herbs with magic power to the limit and made them top-class, then mixed them in with the other herbs. So I hurried to Beth’s house, tore off some Hundred-Year Grass, brought it over, and finally got this person to believe me! Good for you!”

Carter, the root of all evil, was truly satisfied that his quick thinking had cleared up the misunderstanding about Beth, even though his own actions had caused tremendous trouble everywhere.

At that, Beth’s thoughts stopped for a moment.

“Huh? W-wait a second, Carter. You tore off some Hundred-Year Grass and brought it over?”

Carter apparently misunderstood that he was being praised.

“Yeah, you were carefully growing it by the attic window, weren’t you? I’d heard that thing was extremely hard to cultivate, so when I tore it off and brought it, this person finally believed me.”

“Gyaaaaaaa!!!!!!”

Beth nearly fainted at Carter’s words.

Yes, Hundred-Year Grass was truly difficult to grow. Unlike plants of the kind whose condition could be improved with magic power like ordinary plants, it was an ancient type of plant that did not accept magic power. It was called Hundred-Year Grass because it was so difficult to cultivate that it might or might not bloom once in a hundred years.

However, good snow had fallen that winter, and wonderfully mild temperatures had continued in spring, so with this year’s weather, she might be able to make it bloom. Beth had resolved herself to that and had raised it with great care.

If it bloomed successfully, it would produce a beautiful orange flower, and it was said that a maiden who saw that flower in bloom would have a wonderful love that came only once in a hundred years, so she had been raising it with all her might while carrying all the expectations of the village girls.

“You!!! Do you have any idea how hard I worked to raise that grass?!”

“I’m sorry! This person really wouldn’t listen to anything I said, and this was the only way to get you out of jail, Beth.”

“…It is true that being able to grow Hundred-Year Grass, which is unaffected by magic power, so large and splendid is no ordinary skill. As this fool said, it was quickly determined that you merely possessed outstanding skill in cultivating plants, and that the medicinal herbs had simply been grown well by you. …Even so, if this flower had bloomed safely, it would have produced a beautiful flower. What a truly regrettable thing we did.”

Looking extremely awkward, the magician returned to Beth the object that had once been Hundred-Year Grass, with a wilted bud that had just begun to show a little orange petal.

(My wonderful once-in-a-hundred-years love… Everyone in the village’s expectations…)

Remembering all the effort she had put in so far, Beth felt dizzy.

“Carter!!!!!!!!!!!!”