Chapter 4: The Witch and the Promised Love Potion
Chapter 4: The Witch and the Promised Love Potion
“I apologize for the long wait. I have finished the potion you requested,” Rose said with a clerical tone and expression, head bowed deeply to the open door.
Harij froze on the threshold with his hand on the doorknob.
“This is the love potion you ordered. Please confirm the contents.” Rose retrieved a small vial from within her robe. She held it out to him on top of her snow-white palms. “In accordance with traditional methods, it has been specially formulated and infused with highly accurate magic. It will greatly stimulate the mind and body, thus increasing sexual desire.”
Harij put one hand behind his back to shut the door and watched her with his eyebrows raised.
“Naturally, the aphrodisiac is only a side effect,” she continued. “The person made to drink the love potion will believe they are in love with the person who gave it to them. This effect lasts half a day. The illusion of true, deep love will permeate the heart, the marrow, and the roots of the soul, resulting in an unrestrained sex drive—”
“All right. I get it. I don’t need to hear anymore.”
Though he probably wasn’t a stranger to such talks, Harij impatiently snatched the potion from Rose’s hands as if he was in a hurry to quiet her. He scrutinized the vial as he took his usual seat at the table. Then he placed the goodies he brought for her on the table without a second thought.
“You said it lasts half a day, right? Is it supposed to be that short?”
Harij didn’t look all too happy to have obtained the potion he’d been waiting for.
Is he displeased with its efficacy? That’s his fault for requesting such a costly potion without confirming the effects first. Rose silently became cross.
“As I already mentioned, for half a day, the person the potion is used on will love the giver more than anyone else in the whole wide world. More than the person they have pined after for years, more than their marriage partner of many years, their blood siblings, the teacher they begged night and day to take them on as an apprentice, or even their own children. While the immediate effects will only last for half a day, the memory will remain for eternity. It will forever be etched in their mind, body, and soul—it’ll exist and continue to grow.”
“I see…,” Harij said, then more quietly muttered, “Sounds like a curse.” Rose pretended not to hear him. “How does it work?”
“The intended target needs to consume the love potion along with the body fluid of the giver. It’s common to put the potion in a glass you have previously drunk from and let the target drink it.”
“Duly noted. I’ll never accept a drink from someone in the future,” Harij joked with a laugh. It was his first smile of the day, which filled Rose with such delight, she completely forgot about her annoyance with him.
After all, today was the last day she would see Harij.
Over the last four years, she never crossed paths with him even once in the city. Her luck would surely be the same in the future. Rose stood there with the firm resolution to bid him farewell for good.
Pressing her lips together until the pain gave her courage, Rose fished something out of the cabinet.
“If you are worried about the potency, I have a test sample. The effect will only last one turn of an hourglass…”
“Oh, are you going to test it for me?”
“Wha?! You want me to drink it?!”
Too surprised, Rose stepped on her robe and almost fell flat on her face. She held on tight to the tiny vial.
“No point in me drinking it,” Harij said, stating the obvious.
It certainly would be strange for someone who was about to use a love potion on someone else to test it on themselves.
Obviously, this was the first time a client had asked her to be the guinea pig for a potion that affected the heart and mind. In their minds, she might lie to make a sale, and thus, the potion’s efficacy couldn’t be confirmed.
Harij knew Rose couldn’t lie; hence, this was the best method to verify it.
“Well, I don’t mind, though it’s a strange choice…”
Rose knew the love potion wouldn’t have a negative effect on her since she was already in love with Harij. She was more worried about falsely advertising the affects it had on her versus how it might affect someone who wasn’t already in love with the giver.
“The change might not be as visible in me. Are you sure you want me to be the tester?”
“Yeah. Do potions made by witches not have the same effect on them?”
That’s not really the case.
Instead of answering, Rose pretended to prep the potion. Harij watched her hands with great interest as she readied a cup. Nerves nearly made her mess up the mixture she was an expert at.
When she finally finished making tea, she handed the cup to Harij. He stared at it as if he didn’t know what she wanted from him.
“What?”
What does he mean, what? I went through great lengths to explain the process to him already.
“I need you to add your saliva…,” Rose uncomfortably informed him.
That was enough for him to finally catch on. It apparently hadn’t crossed his mind that Rose would be testing the potion with him as the person she would fall in love with.
“All right.”
Harij accepted the cup and took a sip without a moment’s hesitation. Making young girls fall for him must have been an everyday affair for this handsome nobleman. He was the enemy of all women.
Meanwhile, it was Rose who felt shy about it. Into her hand returned the cup kissed by the man she loved.
She needed to do this fast—otherwise her calm facade would surely come crashing down.
Rose dripped two drops of the love potion into the cup. She aggressively flipped the hourglass over, stopped herself from thinking further, and drained the tea dry.
She only realized the horrible mistake she’d made after seeing the bottom of the cup.
“Lady Witch?”
She heard Harij’s voice. A low and sweet voice that made even the thinnest hair on her body tingle.
She never underestimated her skill or the witches’ secret potions. She simply hadn’t anticipated how much more she could love someone she was already in love with.
He’s such a wonderful man. All her suppressed feelings overflowed. He’s always so considerate of a witch like me.
Rose always kept these feelings sealed deep within her heart. In front of Harij, she pretended not to be looking at him, and once she was alone, she thought back on their time together and was wholly satisfied by this fleeting, one-sided crush. Every feeling she kept under wraps was being unveiled by the love potion.
“What’s wrong?”
Harij sounded suspicious because he perceived no change in Rose. But even his suspicious voice melted her into a sappy puddle of desire. She couldn’t stop her cheeks from dimpling with a loving smile.
Rose didn’t mind if he didn’t buy the potion—she just didn’t want to be branded as a worthless witch. She didn’t want him to lose faith in her abilities.
“Look at me.”
No way was she going to look at him, for if she did, she wouldn’t be able to hide it.
She needed to show him that the potion worked, but she couldn’t look at his face. Rose hid deeper under the hood and pulled the sides together until they blocked out the light.
I absolutely don’t want to say I love him.
Rose was neither dumb nor young enough to confess unwanted feelings. All she could do was desperately protect herself from getting hurt. She could escape this misery if she just blamed it on the potion, but she lacked the courage.
After all, she truly did love him.
“I told you to look at me. Don’t hide.”
“I don’t want to.” Her voice cracked and trembled to the point of being pathetic.
The sound of her voice was as much of a shock to him as it was to her. Harij dropped the hand that was about to forcefully turn her head toward him.
“Oh…is that it?”
The silence between them was horrible. Time cruelly flowed by. It was so quiet she could even hear the subtle shifting of sand within the hourglass.
The heat burning through her body informed Rose that she was bright red from her toes to her ears. She was perspiring. Just moving ever so slightly caused her skin to tingle.
“Should I assume that you are, well, in love with me right now, Lady Witch?”
How could he ask such a thing?
She couldn’t believe it. Was he stupid? Dumber than a box of rocks? No, he was being such a horrible bastard that it would be rude to the boxes and rocks of the world to compare them. That wasn’t a nice question to ask a lady who had fallen in love, even if only temporarily. Especially so in Rose’s case, as he had been the object of her unreturned affections for many years.
What a son of a bitch without any delicacy! No matter how many curse words she applied to him in her thoughts, her answer was only one word long.
“…Yes.”
Such a pathetic response unworthy of representing four years’ worth of her feelings. Her weak voice seemed to dissipate in the silence.
However, it seemed that the answer she’d barely mustered while suppressing all her love and regret had reached Harij.
She heard him gasp. Maybe he was out of sorts himself, since he did ask such a ridiculous question of her.
No, it wasn’t that. It was important for him to know how potent the potion was, which was probably why he wanted to figure out if she had fallen in love with him or not, whatever it took.
She understood the reason, but Rose still wanted to shout that he really was a scummy jerk.
After a moment of silence, Harij softly called out, “Can I touch you?”
This wasn’t a question she could answer out loud, so she gave her head a big nod. Just thinking he was going to touch her made her skin tingle in anticipation.
After receiving her consent, Harij touched Rose’s arm as carefully as he might a princess. He gently led Rose to the chair and helped her sit.
While Rose was still too baffled to do anything, he gently touched her hands, which were still gripping her hood to hide her red face. Starting with her pinkie finger, he gently unfurled her death grip. The muscles in her hand trembled from how tightly she had been clutching the material.
Everywhere he touched throbbed as if it had gone numb. Her throat was strangely parched, and she unconsciously licked her lips with the tip of her tongue.
“Forgive me. Does taking this potion cause a burden on your body?”
Rose finally realized she was in a horrible state of tension after seeing her hands turn cold and white from squeezing them too hard. Harij showing concern for it only added to the realization.
“…It doesn’t. It just hurts emotionally.”
“It hurts?” he asked in the gentlest voice she had ever heard from him. He spoke in the same loving tone he might to console a crying child or to appease a troublesome little sister.
Her spine trembled. Sweet pleasure flowed into her. Heartache on the same level as her joy pierced Rose, and the impact caused her to shed a tear.
“Because you love someone else,” Rose whispered in a trembling voice.
The truth she had been enduring all along spilled out with her tears. Once the dam was broken, there was no stopping it.
Ahhh. I love him. I love him. I love him. I love him so much.
The love she had been holding back rushed forward and hitched a ride with her stream of tears.
Harij rushed to pull out his handkerchief.
“What made you think that?”
“Isn’t that why you requested the love potion?”
She strained her eyes to look up at him through the tears. Her tone sounded like a lover’s simper because of the nasal effect crying gave it.
Rose never wanted to show him this side of herself. She bit down hard on her lower lip. Sobs slipped from the gap between her lips.
Baffled, Harij wiped her tears with the handkerchief.
I want to cling to your gentle arms. I just want to surrender to my instincts and hug you, filling the small gap between us. I want you to touch me. To embrace me. To kiss me.
But she could never say what she truly wanted. Mustering every ounce of self-control she could manage, Rose shook her head like her life depended on it.
“No. Stop it. Don’t be nice to me. Stop giving me false hope!”
“What…?! Just so you know, this potion is for—” Harij abruptly stopped and clenched his teeth. He balled his fist, as if enduring something, and stared at Rose with sincerity. “I want you to understand this: I am not the one who’ll use this potion.”
Thunderstruck, Rose lifted her face.
Her redder-than-an-apple cheeks were fully exposed to him. Passion burned in her watery eyes. Harij’s breath was taken away by the scorching-hot affection in the gaze trained on him.
“R-Really?”
Crystalline teardrops rolled from her rounded eyes. Reflected in those watery depths, Harij smiled wryly.
“Really.”
He gave a strong nod to reassure Rose, who was coming apart at the seams.
Before she knew it, Harij was caressing Rose’s cheek with the hand that wasn’t holding the handkerchief. Heat transferred to the place where his palm touched. His unfamiliar scent tickled the inside of her nose.
The deepest part of Rose’s heart ached. His thick and supple thumb wiped away her tears. Indescribable joy washed over Rose like a wave.
“…I’m so glad.” Rose smiled up at Harij with her whole face. An unconstrained and true smile.
Reddish cheeks changed her image. She leaned her face into his palm, then grabbed his hand and kissed it. Her overabundance of joy caused her to gently suck on it. Her lips weren’t just soft and warm, but also moist with tears. Entertained by the way her tongue slipped along his skin, she savored his hand with the soft part of her inner lip.
Then she lightly grazed the back of Harij’s hand with her teeth. Something inside her trembled with satisfaction. Finished toying with his hand, she pulled her face away. She gazed up at him with misty eyes as she lovingly stroked his hand with her fingertips.
Harij was looking at her, somewhat in a stupor.
“Sir Harij.”
All the muscles in his body tensed.
“Please, just once, call me Rose.”
She loved the coarseness of his palm, the proof of his many years of training. Rose pleaded with him to call her name as she rubbed the side of her face against his hand.
Her voice was so incredibly sweet and seductive, even she was taken by surprise. In the back of her mind, she knew she was being immodest, but she couldn’t keep her desires in check a moment longer.
“…Can I call you that?”
The column of Haij’s throat moved. Rose gave small nod, granting permission to do as he pleased. Her confirmation was conveyed through the hand she clung to.
“…Rose.”
“Yes.”
“Rose.”
“Mm-hm.”
Her smile was breathtaking. Passion flared to life in her glimmering eyes.
As Rose, full of ecstasy, gazed up at him, Harij suddenly moved. With the hand that once was in her firm grasp, he lifted her face. He stroked her cheek again, drawing a delighted shiver and heady sigh from her.
Surrendering to the sweet moment, Harij slowly brought his face closer to hers. Their breath overlapped. Just as their lips were about to touch—
“Are you satisfied with the results?”
Rose blocked Harij’s lips with her palm.
Rose’s composed voice, accompanied by her usual poker face, reverberated through the hermitage. The last remaining grain in the hourglass softly fell.
∴ ∵ ∴
ROSE handed over the potion. Harij accepted it and paid in full.
“Thank you very much for your patronage. Goodbye.”
∴ ∵ ∴
ROSE only returned to her senses a while after Harij departed the hermitage. She had shoved back the raging tumult of emotion inside and plastered on a calm facade to see him off.
It was only now that she noticed how feverish and drenched in sweat her whole body felt. She slid down to her knees and pressed a hand against her chest. Her hammering heart raced at a terrifying speed.
“My heart…aches…”
She couldn’t keep herself sitting up and flopped down on her back. Dust kicked up in a cloud and dissipated into the faint rays of sunlight filtering through the window. It felt as if someone were tearing her heart to pieces on the inside. Pain squeezed at her chest, and she had this horrible aching sensation she desperately needed to scratch.
The flame of love that had grown into a relentless, all-consuming fire continued to scorch her from the inside, never going out. Now she clearly saw how foolish she had been to carelessly offer to become a test subject.
Obviously, her love wasn’t as indistinguishable and illogical as it had been under the influence of the potion, but she now yearned for him even more than ever.
Not too long ago, they had been close enough to say they had embraced. The heat that nearly turned Rose into a puddle at his feet still burned at her core. And then there was also that moment.
Rose touched her lips—the lips that he surely would have taken if the potion only waited a moment longer to wear off.
She buried her face in her hands.
“Uwaaaaaaaah!”
She rolled around on the messy hermitage floor, squishing the clutter beneath her and sending her robe flying this way and that.
They had been like a couple in a romantic story, sweetly flirting. Remembering herself acting coquettishly was quite the mental blow to Rose.
“Cough! Koff! Koff! Koff!”
She accidentally inhaled some dust and broke down in a coughing fit. She was acting stupid, but it finally felt like she was being herself again, and that relieved her somewhat.
“Haa…”
She sprawled out on the floor with her arms wide-open.
“Rose.”
Recalling the husky timber of his voice as he uttered her name sent a shiver through her. She scrunched up her face and bit the inside of her lip.
“Ugggh…”
That was the last thing she wanted him to call her and also the name she wished he would call her more than anything else in the world. Harij, the person she wanted to say her name more than anyone, had said it.
Replaying the way she’d begged him to say her name filled Rose with the desire to die with each utterance. There was a secret witch’s potion for causing partial memory loss, but Rose would never use such an expensive product on herself. Instead, she banged her head against the floorboards, choosing to rid the memory through blunt force.
It goes without saying that it didn’t go away even after she repeatedly slammed her head into the floor. On the bright side, the pain helped distract her. She quietly closed her eyes.
“He won’t be using the love potion…”
Rose had never considered that possibility.
She never expected him to come to such a shady place for someone else.
Her chest constricted again. What good was it to rejoice? Her ties with him had been severed.
They weren’t going to meet again.
Should I have charged more? Then would I have become even more ingrained in his memory as ‘that one greedy witch I knew’? Or will he look back once every blue moon on the ‘troublesome witch who made me bring her food every day’?
What is he thinking about right now? How will he remember me in the future? Will he think of me even once? Will he? Will he? Will he? Will he?
Her thoughts were filled with nothing but him.
“Time to clean up.”
There was no end to this line of thought. And what good would it do even if she kept coming up with questions to which she didn’t have the answer? She rolled to her feet and slapped her cheeks, encouraging herself to move on.
Rose took down the cowbell before she could change her mind. For many years, the sound had been a familiar friend, but now it only made her heart jump.
She put away the tablecloth, too. Surely, he wouldn’t go out of his way to retrieve it. She folded it into a tight ball and jammed it into the bulging closet.
The plates and cups she’d taken down for him needed to go as well. She put all of it away except for her own set. As long as no one brought her sweets in the future, she wouldn’t be serving anyone tea.
She would get her hopes up if she didn’t put everything away. In the back of her mind would always be the hopeful thought that a certain someone might come with delicious food again, even though he had no reason to.
Everything she’d shared with him would remind her. Remind her of the time when the sweet scent of apple filled a hovel stuffed with nothing but herbs and potions.
Rose looked at the basket Harij had left in return for the cloak he had lent her. Peeking inside, she found cookies with dried apples baked into them. She brought one to her mouth—the cookie crumbled.
“…I can’t taste it.”
The delicacy she had eagerly anticipated had less flavor than the bland lettuce she ate alone.
∴ ∵ ∴
“…WELCOME?” Rose greeted in a stupor, astonished by the guest who entered her house without knocking. Of course, she knew she had a visitor because the bell informed her whenever someone entered the forest and approached the dock.
She also had confirmed who it was through the window.
It was she who refused to believe it until he finished rowing the boat, docked, and entered the hermitage. After all, reality was hard to accept when this was someone she was positive would never set foot inside her hovel again.
“I’m seeing myself in.”
Harij casually let himself in as if nothing had changed. She couldn’t detect anything different from his expression.
“…Uh, okay?” she dumbly responded.
Rose had given him the completed love potion and was paid for it. Put another way, Rose and Harij were no longer witch and client. In that case, what matter of business could have brought him to her humble abode?
Doubts creeping in, Rose blanched at the possibilities.
“Did you perhaps run into some sort of issue with the potion?”
“It’s quite the opposite. The potion’s efficacy is undeniable. Besides, it’s no longer in my possession. When or where it will be used is no longer my concern.” Harij shook his head, squashing her newfound worries. “That said, I thoroughly warned the person three whole times about how to properly use it… and about how whoever drinks it will behave.”
Rose shrunk deep within her baggy robe to escape his piercing look.
He isn’t possibly planning to make me relive what happened, is he?
The intimate gaze they’d shared, the way they’d said each other’s names, the breathy sighs—Rose remembered it all as if it’d happened only moments ago. Not only had she planned to forget it ever happened, she intended to never see Harij again.
What was the point of winding up a music box that didn’t produce sound? Rose wasn’t the type to have false hope. In other words, she didn’t anticipate him showing up again.
Sure, she hoped he would look back on his life and think of her just once—that would have been enough to keep her going, but absolutely not if that memory was of her making a fool of herself.
“Please do me the great service of forgetting all about what happened with the test sample. The potion’s effects have long since worn off,” Rose insisted definitively.
The aftereffects still lingered in her system, but what she said didn’t count as a lie. Lingering affections for him still held sway over her, but she schooled her features into such indifference, it looked as if even the slightest emotion toward him had been scrubbed clean.
The whole thing felt like one big bad dream. She never wanted it to come up in conversation again.
“That reminds me. Before you sampled it, you said the potion wouldn’t have the same effect on a witch, right?”
That was not what she had said, but Rose wasn’t going to correct him. He might worry about the love potion she already sold him if she led him to believe the effects immediately wear off on normal people.
Discerning that the situation wasn’t going in a favorable direction, Rose ignored his query and turned her back to him.
“What are you here for?”
The first time Harij had visited the hermitage, he’d been in a foul mood. Some of his suspicions seemed to have waned as of late, but she knew he had no personal desire to frequent this shady piece of the woods. As proved by the fact that he still concealed his identity under a traveler’s cloak. There was no doubt in her mind that he came to handle some other form of business. Her question came from that conviction, so when she didn’t receive an immediate answer, she grew suspicious and glanced back at Harij.
He wasn’t even looking at her.
Well, that was anticlimactic. She felt as though she could breathe easy again. Curious what had captured his attention, she followed his gaze down to the table set next to the window.
Sensing her attention, Harij turned just his eyes toward her. Cold blue pierced her.
“Rose.”
Heat rushed through her at the sound of her name on his lips. Her heart painfully lurched after it.
She never even dreamed he would utter her name again.
How could such a simple thing literally cause her heart to move? Surprise, joy, and regret stirred together and threatened to explode.
“I asked that of you because of the potion—!”
So please don’t say my name ever again, Rose nearly pleaded, but she instinctively shut her mouth. Calm doused her burning heart.
The frigid stare cutting into Rose glinted with reproach.
“You put away the tablecloth?”
Rose edged back a step. For some reason, she felt like an herbivore being cornered by a carnivore.
“…I had no idea it was important to you. I will return it at once.”
“I don’t want it back.”
Clutched in the scowling man’s hand was the same big basket he always brought. Taking a second to calm herself, Rose noticed a rich, savory aroma wafting from within it.
He went out and bought food again. For Rose.
“…I thought you wouldn’t…be visiting me again, so I judged it an unnecessary accessory…”
“Take care to eat, not for my sake, but for your own.”
Harij sighed loudly and thrust out the basket. Rose took a huge step backward and bowed lower than the table to him.
“I have already received payment for your order. I cannot accept more from you…”
Please spare me this pain. The feeling she couldn’t put into words came out in a raspy sigh. She earnestly prayed to the point of tearing up within her robe that the unspoken meaning would reach him.
Accepting it once would make her hope for a next time.
It would set off a horrible habit of her waiting day in and day out, looking through the window hoping he would come today, and if not today, tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, the next day.
Just imagining herself like that caused her to recoil. What a dreadful future that would be!
Finishing off his order had been a blessing in disguise. It marked a clear end to this sweet and enjoyable unrequited love.
Doing so allowed her to swiftly put an end to the crush she arbitrarily started. A love that involved only her heart.
But to accept this basket? That would take what was a simplistic crush she could look on fondly without involving the other person and turn it into something more. Something worse.
Unrequited feelings without an end in sight are terrifying.
“…In that case…,” Harij started after silently watching Rose on the verge of uncontrollably shaking. His tone started out calm but had a hint of tension, like walking a tightrope made of only a thin thread. “I want to request another potion.”
“…Pardon?” Rose tilted her head, the unasked question of “What potion?” hanging in the air.
With more wrinkles forming on his face than in her crumpled-up blankets, Harij answered, “…Another love potion.”
Surprise beat out every other emotion warring for her attention. With her eyes, mouth, and nose gaping as wide as possible, Rose stared at Harij.
He turned his head away, as if trying to escape her penetrating gaze.
“…For your own use this time?”
“Do witches make it a habit to pry into their client’s privacy? Rose.”
Rose forced her lips downward to conceal how shaken up she was by his saying her name. Witches did not pry into their clients’ private matters. That was a fact. Asking him was entirely a blunder on her part. But he certainly had a cruel streak to him, requesting another love potion after seeing what shameful effect it had on Rose.
It stands to be said that as a witch, Rose had no qualms about using the witches’ secret potions. There was but one reason why she didn’t pour a love potion over Harij’s head.
Nothing but despair remained when one failed to obtain what they wanted even after using a witch’s secret potion.
“…Very well. I accept your…request. You will have to wait a long time again,” she reluctantly informed him.
“Just how I want it.” Harij flashed a brilliant smile, for reasons beyond her.
∴ ∵ ∴
ROSE.
That was the Witch’s name Harij wasn’t allowed to say.
He had never particularly cared one way or another about calling women by their given names. Then again, it was unusual enough for him to take an interest in a specific woman aside from Princess Billaura.
Being told not to say her name annoyed him, but hers was a witch’s appellation. He had reasoned with himself that there might be some secret rule forbidding it. That theory was shattered when the Witch fell in love with him after drinking the love potion and instantly gave him permission. She had begged him to call her by what she forbade him to say before the love potion.
By no means had he wanted to say it even once. But he couldn’t coldly reject Rose, who had nestled up to him like a trembling kitten.
Before he knew it, he was going along with her whims. He felt such affection for her in that moment that he wanted to do anything she asked of him.
The way she hid under her hood out of unbearable embarrassment from her love for him was so sweet and precious. The way her fingertips and lips sought to please him was seductively skillful, yet her smile was as innocent as a flower blooming in the shade.
The way she fought against the love potion’s effects reminded him of the Witch’s normally unreadable expression as she filled her cheeks with apple treats.
Did he get caught up in the moment? Before long, Harij could only think about the woman before him. Though he had always been confident in his strong self-control, he very nearly tried to do something to a young, single woman that he shouldn’t.
Rose had even sampled the potion to fulfill his order. Despite knowing that he mustn’t trifle with the love she developed from the potion, Harij found there was something about her he couldn’t resist.
Everything ended all right because the timer ran out, but he’d come close to doing something irredeemable. They made it through the hour without him hurting the Witch, who acted in accord with the potion, not because of any true feelings for Harij. Rose was the epitome of cool after the last grain of sand dropped.
Every sign of love and adoration she’d shown him had been wiped clean from her face. It had disappeared so utterly without a trace, he almost had to laugh at the irony. Where he should have felt relief, he experienced indescribable loneliness upon seeing the icy calm in her eyes.
Leaving Harij in the dust, Rose had quickly finished wrapping up the potion and demanded payment. He handed her the exact amount he always carried to the Witch’s hermitage, and they said their goodbyes.
Harij was baffled when he returned to his mansion.
His heart wouldn’t stop hammering in his chest.
Ironically, it was as if he were the one who took the love potion. Every waking and sleeping moment, he couldn’t forget the sound of Rose’s voice, her body temperature, or her shimmering eyes.
Thinking things might become clear if he met her again, Harij ventured out to the Witch’s hermitage without a second thought, bringing along a basket of sweets as had become his custom. Yet what was he welcomed with?
“Please do me the great service of forgetting all about what happened with the test sample. The potion’s effects have long since worn off.”
Rose insisted that she had completely and entirely forgotten all about her expressions of love. Meanwhile, Harij couldn’t forget no matter how hard he tried.
“What are you here for?”
What awaited Harij was utter rejection.
Not a trace of him remained within her dwelling. Harij had been taken by complete surprise. He believed they had developed some level of acquaintance, even if it didn’t quite reach friendship. He felt betrayed.
After all, he’d expected she would welcome him in as she always did.
Harij fully believed without a doubt that the time he spent sitting at the sunny table sipping tea spicy enough to make him cough would never end.
The petite witch thought she could be rid of him just by removing a tablecloth.
Harij had the irrepressible desire to get revenge on this heartless witch.
“Rose.”
So he called her name—fully aware she wasn’t under the potion’s influence. Horror and regret flashed across her face.
Serves you right.
A dozen invisible spears tore into the corner of his heart that mocked her. That proved it—she was rejecting him.
“Please, just once, call me Rose.”
Turned out those feelings were purely potion induced—they didn’t reflect her true heart at all. Then Rose had to go and sink her boot into him when he had already reached rock bottom emotionally.
“…I thought you wouldn’t…be visiting me again, so I judged it an unnecessary accessory…”
The sweet smell of the cookies Harij had bought for her tickled at his nose.
It wasn’t just the tea he could only drink here, bathed in the light filtering through the small window, that he would miss out on. Realizing he would lose everything about his time with her if he didn’t do anything, Harij said the first thing that came to mind.
“I want to request another potion… Another love potion.”
Indeed, the first thing he thought of was to request that awfully suspicious potion capable of manipulating the mind.
Once the words were out there, he decided he actually wanted to act on this ingenious idea. He had experienced firsthand how tedious the process was. The length of time it took to make was burned into his mind.
But if he spent that much time with her again, Rose probably wouldn’t reject him anymore. Besides, while the huge expense would hurt his wallet, if it eased Rose’s financial situation even a little, it was a worthwhile use of the money he had spent his entire life saving.
Still not understanding why her rejection bothered him so, Harij laughed, for he was immensely satisfied by his own reasoning.