NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 2 Part 3
Fine Cavendish.
A student living in the provincial city of Lapis, one year younger than me.
She’s been my best friend for over ten years now.
I wonder when we first met.
It was back when a massive disaster caused Fine’s house to collapse. My master and I helped her out—that was the start of it all.
Since then, we’ve kept in touch, and here we are today.
“What kind of nonsense were you up to this time?”
“Oh ho ho, just a small, trivial, insignificant little thing.”
To put her off guard, I plastered on a thin smile while cleaning up the mess with my familiars and pouring her some tea.
The tea, of course, contained the test formula I had just concocted.
My two familiars shot me wide-eyed stares.
“I made you a delicious cup of tea. Please, drink up, Fine.”
She glanced at the teacup set down with a soft clink, then shot me a suspicious look.
“…You put something weird in this, didn’t you?”
“Wha—wha-wha-whaaat are you talking about? How dare you insult my hospitality? I’ll kill you.”
Fine turned to my familiars, who gave her a solemn nod.
“You traitors… I’ll barbecue you later.”
“So you DID put something weird in it!”
“Sacrifices must be made for the progress of humanity! Just accept it!”
“Like hell I will! Who in their right mind would drink this?! Ughhh—”
As Fine and I wrestled, at some point, my familiars had taken it upon themselves to dump the tea down the drain.
Thus, the battle came to an end.
Panting, the two of us collapsed onto the table, gasping for breath.
“That was… a good fight.”
“In what world?!”
Fine shouted, exasperated, before heaving a long sigh.
“So? Why were you trying to make me drink that?”
“Because I don’t have any other options anymore… I’m at my limit…!”
I spilled everything.
How I only had a year left to live. How I needed to collect a thousand tears of joy.
“A curse?”
“More like a congenital illness.”
“Huh, so witches get those too?”
“‘Huh’ my ass. It’s my first time hearing about it too. That’s why I’m stuck here.”
“But yeah, collecting tears of joy sounds ridiculously hard.”
“It is! Look at this! Two whole tears in a week. And not even tears of joy! That damn magic flask screwed up and collected some worthless, pitiful parent-child drama tears instead.”
“Jeez, watch your mouth…”
I showed Fine the bottle, and she peered inside with interest.
“I don’t know much about magic, but… these tears look kind of beautiful, don’t they?”
“You can tell? Or are you just acting like you know something?”
“I mean, they seem… pure? Unclouded, almost.”
“Pure, huh…”
I shook the bottle, the liquid sloshing against the glass with a wet sound.
“To me, it’s just a disgusting bodily fluid.”
“That’s because your soul is filthy.”
My master told me to collect ‘fragments of emotion.’
If that’s the case, then these tears must be emotions too.
As I glared at the contents of the bottle, Fine suddenly spoke.
“But you know, even if you managed to force people to cry tears of joy with your drug, you wouldn’t be satisfied, would you?”
“Don’t act like you know me.”
“Well, we have been friends for over ten years now.”
Honestly, I’m amazed by how kind she is.
This is the same person I literally just tried to use as a test subject.
For the record, if she had actually drunk it, I would have given her an antidote or made her throw up with a solid punch to the gut.
But if I said that out loud, I’d probably lose a friend.
Besides…
Somehow, I already knew this wasn’t the right way.
A tear born from drugs or trickery probably wouldn’t count as a ‘fragment of emotion.’
It wouldn’t create a seed.
And using something like that to sustain my own life… it just felt wrong.
Not that I’d ever admit it after going this far.
Fine watched me, then smiled as if she found something amusing.
“What’s so funny?”
“You’re actually a really kind person. Maybe stop spewing venom all the time and just be honest for once.”
“Don’t go assigning weird virtues to me.”