Don't Touch That, You'll Go Blind

My voice, sharpened to a fine edge, dropped straight down into the narrow, shadowy alley.

"What are you looking at?"

At that, one of the man's eyebrows shot up.

Everything but his eyes was covered, so I couldn't read his expression, but the look he gave me was unmistakably one of pure bafflement.

Sweat seeped slowly from the palm gripping the tree branch, soaking into my glove.

A thought struck me.

What if he was one of the guild guys sent by whoever was after me?

What if he'd followed me here to make sure I couldn't run?

But then.

"……"

The man looking up at me let out a short, awkward laugh, turned around, and simply walked off into the alley.

Huh?

"……What was that?"

I rolled my eyes blankly from my perch in the tree.

So he wasn't with the guild after all?

Come to think of it, if they really were after me, they'd never show themselves out in the open like that.

He'd been sneaking potions into the Grand Duke's residence without a sound, without a trace — clearly someone who had no intention of ever showing his face.

Phew. I scared myself over nothing.

Letting out a relieved sigh, I slid smoothly down the trunk of the tree.

Alright, I just need to buy what I came for and get back.

I had no desire to get my poor innocent guard knights punished or scolded on my account. As committed as I was to the deranged-princess act, I wasn't about to be that much of a nuisance.

Today truly couldn't be helped. If I couldn't make the coagulant salve, a lot of people could get hurt…….

I quickened my steps toward the heart of the alley.

Thankfully, my memory was accurate. Before leaving the Grand Duke's residence, I had steered Celine into telling me the exact location of every shop in the area, all under the pretense of asking about a jeweler.

Goodness, how did such a little thing explain things so crisply — like she was unrolling a map right in front of me?

What a clever girl. I should buy her a present on the way back.

Jingle—.

Recalling Celine's directions, I pushed open the door of an herb shop painted in green.

Wow.

The moment I stepped inside, every cell in my body cheered in unison. That faintly bitter, fragrant scent sweeping up into my nose — it was exactly the smell that had always filled my little cottage back in the south.

Ah, this is exciting.

This was it. This was exactly it.

Glass bottles and wooden drawers lined the shop walls from floor to ceiling. Each bottle held leaves, roots, petals, and powders of a different color, and bunches of dried herbs hung in heavy clusters from the rafters. A small scale, a mortar and pestle, metal tongs, even sealed boxes to keep the aromas from escaping.

Lord, I could have played in this shop all day if I set my mind to it.

To think there was a little gem of a shop tucked away in a corner of the duchy.

I pulled the list I'd written in advance from my coat and headed for the counter.

"Could you help me find the herbs on this list?"

The owner, who had been sorting through a fresh shipment of herb pouches, took the paper from me. His fingertips were stained an herbal green, the backs of his hands rough and cracked — hands that had handled herbs for decades, anyone could see. He ran his eyes down the list, then gave a low, thoughtful hmm.

"The others I can manage, but I'll have to check whether we have any Crobein. One moment, please."

"Of course, take your time! Please look carefully — it's really, really important to me!"

"Will do."

The owner gave a warm chuckle and climbed the stairs to the second floor.

The moment he was out of sight, I began casually browsing the herb pouches laid out beside the counter. Judging by the way they'd been spread open, these had just come in — he'd been in the middle of sorting them.

And that was when it happened.

Creak.

Someone was coming down the stairs. Figuring it was the owner already, I turned my head without thinking — and froze solid.

Uh……?

A deep-blue hood. A black mask covering more than half his face beneath it. And black eyes.

It was the exact man who'd been staring up at me from beneath that tree in the alley just moments ago.

I looked back and forth between the man and the staircase.

Oh. Wait. So he wasn't following me — he's just another customer at this herb shop?

Well, of course he'd been startled. Imagine being on your way to buy herbs and watching a random woman climb a tree.

Only now did I understand why he'd been gawking up at me like that.

Feeling absurdly sheepish, I dropped my gaze before our eyes could meet.

Just then, as the man walked toward the counter, he reached out toward one of the herb pouches the owner had been sorting.

The moment his large hand plucked a single red leaf from the pouch—

Hey.

You can't touch that with your bare hands!

I lunged on pure reflex and smack! — brought my palm down hard across the back of his enormous hand.

"Hey! Touch that carelessly and you'll go blind!"

"……"

The leaf slipped from the man's fingers and dropped back into the pouch. And then, very slowly, his head turned toward me.

He stared at me with a look that said he had no idea what had just happened to him, then tilted his head slightly.

"……I'll go blind?"

"Yes! That hasn't been refined yet, so it's still toxic."

At that, the man asked, "You know this herb well?"

"Of course I know it very we—"

Midway through my confident reply, I looked up at him and said, "Wait, how long have you known me? Why do you keep talking down to me?"

The man answered with a flat, dry look. "You were the one speaking informally first."

"Oh."

Right.

Lately I'd been so deep into playing the deranged princess that I'd slipped without even noticing…….

Ahem. I cleared my throat and hurriedly settled my voice into something calm and demure.

"I'm sorry. It's a habit."

"Speaking informally?"

"Er, something like that."

"……"

Once I'd fudged my way through it, the man didn't press any further. And I, eager to change the subject, returned to the topic of herbs.

"This is Redott. The red leaves are so bright and eye-catching that people touch it without a shred of suspicion. But pretty things are always poisonous, aren't they? Same deal here."

It had been ages since I'd gotten to talk about my actual field of expertise, and I chattered away with genuine enthusiasm.

The man didn't cut me off. Instead, he asked quietly, with what sounded like genuine interest, "So is it an herb, or a poisonous plant?"

When I spoke politely, he naturally matched my register.

"Hmm, that's a bit of a gray area."

I pointed at the Redott leaves.

"Officially, it counts as an herb. But that's only after it's been refined."

Redott was normally sold in its refined state. Unrefined red leaves circulating on the market, raw as they were today, was exceedingly rare.

"Once it's refined, the toxicity disappears — but the painkilling effect drops to a tenth of what it was. At that point it's reduced to nothing more than an overpriced painkiller for nobles with headaches."

"……"

A subtle spark kindled in the man's pitch-black eyes as he listened. Apparently the story was quite interesting to him.

"Most people don't know. What kind of poison is actually in those unrefined red leaves. So if you forced me to classify it, I'd call it a poisonous plant. Though it's not as if there's no refining method at all that removes the toxicity while preserving the strong analgesic effect……"

Halfway through the sentence, something more urgent suddenly surfaced in my mind.

"Oh! Wait just a moment! None of this is what matters!"

I pulled a handkerchief from inside my cloak and grabbed the man's wrist without warning. I felt his calloused, solid hand flinch and go rigid for an instant.

"Hold on—."

Paying no mind to his attempt to stop me, I began meticulously rubbing the handkerchief over his palm.

"There's an invisible powder on the leaves, you see? Washing with water is best, but this can't wait."

"……"

The man stayed silent for a while — perhaps tense at the idea of having poison wiped away for him.

Between every finger, along every line of his palm, I scrubbed until it was spotless, then lifted my head and beamed at him.

"All clean!"

Hehe. I said it looking straight into his black eyes. Honestly, apart from his enormous frame, his eyes were the only thing visible on the man anyway.

"Still, just in case, don't rub your eyes or put your hands anywhere near your mouth for a while. Got it? It's poison. Poison!"

I also added that one shouldn't go around touching things carelessly in an herb shop like this.

The man, who had listened quietly to my whirlwind lecture, eventually answered in a slow, unhurried voice.

"……I'll bear it in mind."

"Oh, it hardly needed bearing in mind."

I gave a small pfft of a laugh.

Just then, the shop owner, who had finally come down from the second floor, returned to the counter and announced, "I have what you were looking for, customer!"

"Oh, really?"

I rushed to the counter.

The owner set down several small bundles and said, "There's only a very small amount of Crobein left. How much would you like?"

"All of it, please!"

For fear that someone might snatch it up before me, I answered instantly.

Blissfully forgetting the man standing behind me — and the handkerchief I'd left wiped across his palm.

Jingle—.

The shop door chimed open, and a tiny woman, her face wrapped snugly in a scarf, darted out like the wind with the pouches of herbs hugged precious and tight to her chest.

The door closed, and stillness settled over the shop once more.

Then a man who had been standing in the shadows at the foot of the second-floor staircase silently approached Varkan's back.

His aide-de-camp, Roan Meyer.

Adjusting his glasses with a smooth flick, Roan addressed him.

"An acquaintance of yours, Your Highness? You did seem to have quite a long conversation. You even took her hand, so tenderly, at that."

Varkan answered shortly. "……I've never seen her before."

No — was that twice, then?

Once in the tree, and once here.

When she'd scaled the tree with practiced ease, gripped a slender branch, and giggled — she had looked, beyond any doubt, like a madwoman.

But just now had been different.

She had recognized Redott on sight, and she had even known about the toxic dust on its surface.

An apothecary?

Varkan glanced down at the handkerchief the woman had left on his palm, then folded it and slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat.

"She seemed to know poisonous plants extremely well."

"Poisonous plants? You mean the woman who just left?"

"Yes."

Interest flickered in Roan's eyes as they followed the shop's closed door.

"Judging by her clothing, she appeared to be a commoner."

Roan remarked this with a note of puzzlement. In truth, receiving any formal education on herbs or toxic plants in the Castillo Empire required either attendance at a specialized institution or the acquisition of prohibitively expensive volumes on the subject.

For someone of common birth, it was all but impossible.

Across the entire empire, those who fully understood and could handle the properties of poisonous plants were vanishingly few. And precisely because of that, for the Grand Ducal knights — perpetually exposed to the venom attacks of monsters — and for Varkan himself, such a person was more desperately needed than anything else.

"If Your Highness speaks of her so, she must possess knowledge of considerable use……. Shall we follow her?"

"No."

Varkan answered decisively.

"This is more important right now."

And with that, he held out toward the owner the pouch of Redott — the very plant the woman had scolded him not to touch.

"Is this all of it?"

At Varkan's question, the owner bowed his head.

"Yes, Your Highness. That is the entirety of the Redott currently in stock. I had been keeping an eye out, as I expected you would come looking for it today."

"I'll take all of it."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Redott. Varkan, too, knew exactly what kind of plant it was, and what toxins its unrefined leaves carried.

The reason he sought it anyway, accepting the risk, was simple: nothing else matched it as a painkiller.

For knights writhing in agony from the venom of variant monsters in particular, enduring the poison of unrefined Redott to claim its analgesic effect whole was essential.

As Varkan gathered the herbs and moved to leave the shop, the owner called after him.

"The moment more of the herbs you mentioned come in, I'll send word straight away! Travel safely, Your Highness."

"I'm counting on you."

"Yes, sir!"

Outside the herb shop, Varkan swung himself onto his warhorse and tossed the pouch of Redott to Roan standing beside him.

"Deliver this to Sylvière. Tell her to use it on the knights immediately."

"Yes, Your Highness."

Sylvière was the Grand Ducal physician stationed at the forward camp for the monster subjugation, tending to the wounded knights. Receiving the pouch with careful hands, Roan asked, "Where will you be headed? Back to the encampment?"

Reins in hand, Varkan gazed for a moment at the tree at the mouth of the alley — the one the woman had been clinging to just moments ago.

After a brief silence, he turned his horse's head and said,

"……I'm going to the Grand Duke's residence."