Act 1: The Research Institute of Medicinal Flora

Act 1:
The Research Institute of Medicinal Flora

 

IT HAD BEEN A MONTH since my summoning. The warmth of spring was close at hand, and I was sowing herbs in the royal palace’s garden.

Why was this my responsibility? Because I now worked at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, which was located right next to this garden. In fact, I slept there, too.

Yup, that’s right. I no longer resided in the royal palace. I lived in a research institute.

 

***

 

The day I, Sei Takanashi, was summoned to another world by the “Saint Summoning Ritual,” I learned it had been passed down since antiquity here in the Kingdom of Salutania.

I also learned that something called “miasma” was manifesting all across the kingdom. It always appeared relatively close to where people lived and had a detrimental effect on humans. Furthermore, though the reasons were yet unclear, when the miasma reached a certain density, it churned out monsters. The more concentrated the miasma, the stronger the monsters. In turn, defeating monsters dissipated the miasma. As such, it was necessary to hunt and kill the unholy beasts to stop their source from gaining strength.

However, every few generations, the growing density of the miasma far exceeded the speed at which the monsters could be slain. Fortunately, during these eras, a maiden who would become the Saint always appeared in the kingdom.

The Saint’s magic was so powerful, she could annihilate the miasma’s monsters in the blink of an eye. In so doing, her magic instantly balanced the rate at which monsters were slain versus the rate at which the miasma condensed.

According to one theory, once the Saint had appeared, the miasma could no longer condense at all, at least in her divine presence.

Incredible, right?

The Saint was generally supposed to manifest all on her own, but at one point in ages past, despite the rapid growth of miasma, she had failed to appear. The sages of that time desperately experimented with all types of magic until they devised a ritual for summoning the maiden who would become the Saint from a faraway land.

And so, most annoyingly, the sages of the present era summoned me.

The ritual itself had only been performed that one time long ago; the current sages hadn’t known whether it would work until they actually tried it. Luckily for them, those sages of the past were as clever and powerful as they seemed, because the ritual did indeed manage to summon the Saint—two of them, in fact.

Up until now, there had only ever been one Saint at a time. “How did we wind up summoning two of them?” the sages asked. “Maybe it’s because the present state of the miasma is so exceptionally dire, we require another Saint to drive it back?”

The mystery remains…unsolved.

Anyway, that was all anyone had told me in the month since I had been brought by the Saint Summoning Ritual.

As for how I wound up living at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, well…

After the ceremony, that red-haired lordling who swept into the room was unmistakably the crown prince of the kingdom. He didn’t spare even a glance for me; his sole focus was the other girl, Aira Misono. It wasn’t long before he swept out again, this time with Aira.

Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised. I was in my twenties, while dear Aira was in her late teens—she was obviously closer in age to the prince than I was. Not to mention, she had fluffy brown hair, perfect skin, rosy cheeks, doe eyes, and a certain soft sweetness that just made you want to protect her.

Whereas I, who had just come off of multiple rounds of late-night overtime, had my hair up in a messy ponytail, unhealthy skin, thick glasses, and permanent dark circles under my eyes. Compared to Aira, I looked ridiculous.

So, you know, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand why the prince only had eyes for Aira. But it was still pretty rude of him to summon someone without their permission and then just completely ignore their entire existence!

On the other hand, the other people in the room were equally taken aback by how the prince blithely dismissed me. They were even more alarmed when they realized I was going to be left behind. They had no idea what to do with me.

Really, I was even more bewildered, but it was pointless to just sit there. So, I smiled at one of the robed guys—then I grabbed him by the collar and began to interrogate him. “I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

“Wh-what would you like to know?” he croaked.

Since I was taller than him, his wary grimace and panicked look made me feel like I was actually bullying him. Normally, I would have felt bad, but considering the situation, I couldn’t be bothered with shame.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“This is the royal palace of the Kingdom of Salutania.”

“Kingdom of Salutania?” I had never heard of such a place. Given how many countries there are, it could have slipped through the cracks of my education, but a part of me knew that such rationalizations were just attempts to escape my unnerving new reality. “I see. So, why am I here?”

“Well… Um…” The robed guy hesitated, but a stern look from me squeezed a frantic answer out of him. “W-we called you here using the Saint Summoning Ritual!”

“The Saint Summoning what?”

That was when they told me about this Saint Summoning Ritual, which I previously described.

“So…this is actually a different world…from the one I was in before,” I murmured.

“Yes, I believe that’s likely the case…”

Stuff like miasma and monsters simply weren’t a thing in the world I came from. Although, perhaps they actually were in my world, and I just never found out about them? A small part of me hoped that was true. But the robed fellow quickly dispelled those hopes; he talked about these horrors as if they were a common, inescapable fact of reality here in the Kingdom of Salutania.

No matter how much I didn’t want to admit it, I had definitely been summoned to another world.

“Okay.” I breathed in and out. “I get that I was brought here by this Saint Summoning Ritual, but how do I get back to my world?”

My thinking was, if the Saint appeared in order to balance the density of the miasma, maybe once everything was back to normal, the Saint would no longer be needed. Then I could go home.

But in a small, regretful voice, the man in robes simply said, “You cannot.”

With that, my hopes were extinguished.

He explained that this was only the second time the Saint had been summoned from another world and that the previous Saint lived out the rest of her days in the kingdom. As of this moment, no one knew a way to return the Saint to the world she came from.

I could never go home. That realization shocked me to my core. As if scrabbling for a distraction, my mind fixed on the red-haired prince’s utterly tactless behavior. I decided then and there that I knew all I needed to know about this Saint-summoning and miasma-monster business, and that I was going to get the heck out of this kingdom.

First, I’d get out of this room—then the palace, then the capital, and then I’d make my way to whatever country was neighboring this one!

Thinking back on it, I realize this plan was rather boneheaded, but at that moment, I couldn’t stand to be with these people a second longer. I released the robed man and marched out of the room. Everyone—from the robed guys to the knights—came chasing after me in a panic.

“Lady Saint! Where are you going?”

“I’m leaving.”

“You mustn’t! Please, wait!”

For some reason, I thought I’d be able to just see my way out, but I quickly realized I was in a true palace. The hallways seemed endless, and I had absolutely no idea which way to go. I was pretty worked up at this point, so I just kept bulling down the halls, no matter where they led. Eventually, though, a knight caught up to me and blocked my path.

I glared at him, immediately peeved that someone was trying to stop me. The knight grimaced in the same way the robed man had when I menaced him. He said, “Please, wait a moment.”

“I’m pretty sure I already spent plenty of moments in that room, especially if you factor in the moments I wasted talking with one of your robed guys.”

“I realize that, but please. Just one moment more.”

The knight was crouching and using his massive body as a wall, as if trying to keep me in the palace no matter what it cost him. For some reason, his desperation made me calm down a bit. I nodded reluctantly. The knight melted in relief.

“This way, please.” To my chagrin, he led me away, back into the depths of the palace. Then he left me in a room somewhere in that labyrinth, but not before saying, “Someone will be with you shortly.”

Once he was gone, a maid entered, pushing a tea cart complete with a tea set. Despite my misgivings, the warm tea she poured soothed my irritation. For one, it was absolutely delicious, as I supposed you would expect from a place like this. With my newly clear head, I tried once more to process everything I had been through.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite concentrate. After the maid poured my tea, she didn’t really talk to me or anything; she just stood close to the wall, though it seemed she was standing at the ready to attend my needs. Maybe she assumed she was doing me a favor by leaving me to my thoughts. However, with nothing to do but spin my mental wheels, I wound up feeling wildly uncomfortable.

Just like that, an hour went by. Back home in Japan, leaving an angry client stewing on their own for a whole hour would absolutely lead to a severed contract.

Right as I was starting to fume again, someone finally knocked on the door.

“Come in,” I replied.

At my invitation, the official-looking blue-haired man I had seen with the prince entered.

While the tea was still quite good, and I was thankful to have had the time to compose my thoughts, the hour-long wait had pushed me right back to my limits. So, of course, I wound up glaring at him without even thinking.

The guy flinched in surprise and wiped sweat from his brow, but he nevertheless dedicated himself to telling me even more about the kingdom and the circumstances I had found myself in.

According to the blue-haired man, the capital was surrounded by grasslands through which monsters freely roamed. Furthermore, it took no less than a week by coach to reach the neighboring kingdom, and there was a good chance of being assaulted by bandits along the way. For someone like me, who knew nothing about this world, it would be pretty much like trying to beat an impossibly difficult video game.

Given all that, I was suddenly grateful for the knight who stopped me from leaving.

“I have heard that you expressed the desire to depart, but you cannot, realistically, live outside the royal palace.”

After everything this milquetoast official described, I was forced to agree.

While I was pretty sure that I could eke out some kind of living in the royal capital, I doubted I’d ever recover the same sense of security that I had back in modern Japan. At the very least, so long as I was in the kingdom, I needed to maintain the same kind of vigilance I relied on when traveling abroad.

If I’m going to be stuck in this world, I suppose I’ll live in the royal palace for now. I’ll get my bearings here first, and then, when I’m ready, I’ll get out! I thought as I relented. I would follow this official’s advice and live in the palace. For now.

 

***

 

After the official took his leave, the maid who had served me tea brought me to the chambers where I was to stay from now on.

My new home was far bigger than my one-bedroom apartment back in Japan—it was more like a suite in a hotel, since it had a living room connected to two bedrooms. The interior design was done up in an extravagant Rococo style. It reminded me of those outlandishly expensive hotels in Europe that advertise themselves all over the internet.

I collapsed on the sofa in the living room, thoroughly exhausted. The yellow light streaming through the window told me it was afternoon, but when I was summoned from Japan, it had been the dead of night. Not to mention, I had only just gotten home from work. I supposed there was a time difference between the Kingdom of Salutania and Japan.

Seeing as I was running on empty from all those days in a row of killer overtime, not to mention the abrupt change in my entire world, I don’t remember what happened after I collapsed. I assume that I fell asleep.

When I woke, I found myself on a luxurious bed. Someone must have carried me to it. By then, it was the following morning. I had also been stripped of my coat and business suit, and stuffed into a white dressing gown.

Eep! Who the heck changed my clothes?

I assumed (hoped) the culprit was the maid who brought me to this room, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit, you know, alarmed.

I thought about putting on something else, but I was unsure if I had license to hunt around for more clothes without permission. I figured there might be someone in the living room, so I made my way there.

When I opened the door, I found the same maid from yesterday waiting for me. Tentatively, I told her I wanted to put some more substantial clothes on. She guided me right back into the bedroom, where various kinds of dresses hung in a closet. They were all way too gaudy for me, though. Not to mention, they looked incredibly expensive—the type of clothes I’d be afraid to move in because I’d definitely get them dirty.

Because I had no plans for going anywhere or doing anything, I asked for something modest and comfortable. The maid could only find one dress that matched my description, though you could probably still call it fancy.

While I was changing, I nervously asked the maid if she’d been the one to change me out of my clothes the night before. She confirmed, so I thanked her sincerely. She responded, “It was my pleasure, milady.”

Honestly, I felt like she was being overly attentive. But I suspected pointing it out would only make her offer more profusely humble protestations, so I tried to stop worrying about it so much. I had already put up with quite enough of that fluff.

 

And then, somehow, two weeks had gone by. All in all, I had way too much time on my hands.

The first three days weren’t so bad, since I was still freaking out about this whole summoned-to-a-new-world thing. But the lack of anything productive to do quickly started getting to me. I had all the necessities of life, such as food, clothing, and shelter, but otherwise, I was largely ignored.

I saw neither hide nor hair of that blue-haired official after the first time he came to see me, even though I kept waiting for him to contact me. Whenever the maid was with me, we chatted a bit, but it was hard to keep a constant conversation going, and she seemed to have other duties to attend to, so she didn’t stay with me all day. Whenever she left, it was just me all alone in the room, and without a TV or a smartphone to keep me preoccupied, I was bored out of my mind.

But it’s not good to stay cooped up in your room all day! Unable to take it any longer, I made up my mind to go for a walk. I told the maid as much, and she insisted that she would accompany me. However, I would have felt bad making her come with me when I knew she had other responsibilities. Ultimately, I forced my way out on my own, saying that I was just going to wander about in the garden directly in front of my chambers. She was still pretty reluctant to let me go.

I started with nosing around the aforementioned garden, but gradually, day by day, I expanded the scope of my explorations. During my wanderings, I came across an herb garden.

Back in Japan, I had been really into herbs and aromatherapy as a way to burn stress from work, so I was instantly intrigued by the garden. Some of the herbs looked similar to those that could be grown back home, which gave me hope that perhaps the plants weren’t all that different in this world.

That was when I heard a voice. I turned to find a handsome young man with an amiable smile. He had piercing emerald eyes and forest-green hair to match. He introduced himself as one of the researchers at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora located next to the garden.

“Do you have some business at the institute today?” he asked me.

“Oh, not in particular. I was just taking a walk when this garden caught my eye. I thought it looked interesting, so I came over.”

Upon hearing that, he seemed to take interest in me in turn, and he proceeded to tell me about the herbs they were growing. Lavender, rosemary, angelica—the names were all the same as in Japan, and when I pressed further, I learned they had more or less the same effects as well.

“We use these herbs to make HP potions,” he explained.

“Did you just say HP potions?!” I was shocked to hear him say the name of a game-type item like it was a real thing.

“These herbs have their own individual effects when dried and made into salves, or when boiled and drunk, but they’re even more effective when used in potions.”

“Huh. Is that so?”

At his research institute, they studied medicinal herbs, but it seemed his main focus was making potions, as he proved to be a veritable expert. While I listened to his descriptions of different kinds of potions, I found an intriguing parallel: the same herbs used in salves a long time ago in my world were being used as the ingredients for HP potions in this one. What’s more, the effectiveness of potions was linked to the effects of the herbs used as ingredients.

As I listened to this researcher’s explanations, time passed without my noticing. Suddenly, it was almost evening, and I knew I had to return to the palace.

“Thank you very much,” I said. “I truly enjoyed learning with you today.”

“Thank you for being a great listener. I do hope you’ll stop by again sometime.”

Obviously, I took him up on his kind offer and made my way back to the herb garden the very next day. As I meandered, the researcher spotted me and once again joined me on my walk, telling me about the uses of the herbs growing in the immediate vicinity, as well as the effects of the potions that could be made from them.

The third day I visited, we once more toured the herb garden, but on the fourth day, he took me into the research institute itself, and I got to meet the other researchers. I enjoyed hearing everything they had to say as well. We mainly discussed medicinal plants and potions, but soon enough they started telling me about the latest trends in the capital and about the people working in the palace.

It wasn’t long before I found myself hanging around the institute every day, and it got to the point that traveling there and back to the palace was starting to become a real hassle. I mean, it took a half hour each way on foot to reach it. The palace’s gardens were truly vast. According to my maid, everything in sight was part of the palace grounds.

If only I didn’t have to spend that whole hour traveling back and forth every day, I’d have even more time to spend with the researchers.

“I’m starting to think I’d rather just live here,” I said one day.

“I think that’s a great idea,” said Jude. He was the researcher I had first met in the herb garden. We had grown quite friendly since my discovery of him and his research institute. He readily agreed with me when I admitted my thoughts. “Actually, a bunch of the other researchers live here at the institute—as do I.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Though some of us have estates in the capital as well. Even so, our institute is on one side of the palace, and the capital is on the other. Not to mention, we’re so far away from the palace itself. Given all that distance, since the first person decided to just up and live here, more and more people have followed suit.”

Jude’s family also resided in the capital, so for a while he commuted from his residence, just like everyone else. However, once he realized a few of the researchers already lived in the institute, he promptly decided to move there as well.

I really sympathized. I guess everyone felt the same about traveling all that way—commuting is such a pain.

“What are you two talking about today?” I heard someone ask behind me.

Jude and I turned to find Johan Valdec, the head researcher at the institute.

“We were just chatting about what a slog it is for me to come here from the palace every day and how nice it would be if I could just live here,” I said.

“Here at the institute?”

“Well, yes. I heard some of the researchers already do… Is that right?”

“They do indeed. Wait, does that mean you want to work here now, too?” Johan grinned.

His words took me by surprise. Work at the institute? I supposed it was true that the people living there were all researchers. It might be weird for someone not similarly employed to take up residence among them.

Not to mention, it was clear to me that if I were to move out of the palace and into the capital, it would be far better to have a job than to remain unemployed. Also, working at the institute would be way more exciting than wasting day after day, bored to tears in the palace. Plus, it would mean working with herbs, which I already had a fascination with. I could study potions, too, which I knew nothing about. I started to feel genuinely enthused by the prospect.

Yeah! Working at the research institute’s a great idea, I thought, and with that, I turned to the head researcher. “That’s right. I want to become a researcher.”

“Oh, really? Then we’ll need to proceed along the formal channels,” Johan said in a somewhat teasing manner. But he still made his way back to his office, albeit somewhat slowly.

Later, once I was formally employed, Jude told me with some surprise that, at the time, he was positive Johan was just joking.

But I had made up my mind. That very day, as soon as I got back to my chambers in the palace, I asked my maid to act as an intermediary. I needed to ask the blue-haired official about my prospective employment. By then it was already evening, so I had to wait until the next day to meet him.

The official stopped by after breakfast while I was taking a tea break. “I heard there was something you wished to discuss?”

“That’s correct. So, you see, I have an interest in herbs and would like to work at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora.”

“Very well, then.”

“Huh? Just like that?”

I thought he was going to need way more convincing to give his consent, but it turned out Johan had already made my case. An agreement had been made that I would move to the institute from the palace.

Up to that point, I was half-convinced Johan’s suggestion was merely in jest, but it seemed like he’d really done the work to get the approval of the blue-haired official guy. Good going, Johan!

I immediately set out making preparations for my move. I didn’t have much—just the business suit, coat, shoes, and a purse I had brought home from work when I was summoned. However, it wasn’t like I could work in a research institute with a single suit. I needed more clothes and other daily necessities. The official said he would arrange for those, though, so I left it to him.

In the end, he prepared a few sets of plain shirts, skirts, and dresses that wouldn’t look out of place in a research institute, as well as a collection of personal items, such as towels and soaps. Included among my new belongings were the dresses and accessories I had taken a liking to during my brief time living in the palace, as well as several new ones with similar designs. The official must have taken my preferences into consideration.

I suspected the official had even prepared the furniture I found already furnishing my new chambers on the third floor of the institute. It all matched and had a bright, welcoming tone. It looked like my new home would be a pleasant place to spend time in; not at all how I’d imagined living in such a place would be.

“Thank you so much for all of your help,” I said to him on the day of my move. His final preparation for me was a carriage that I would ride to the institute.

“Don’t mention it. Please feel free to let me know if there is anything else you need,” he replied, wearing his usual tired, somewhat nervous smile.

“I will. Thank you.” I had absolutely zero intention of ever returning to the palace, so I thought it unlikely I’d be asking him for help ever again. Still, I thanked him again anyway before getting into the carriage.

And so, I was employed as a researcher at the Research Institute of Medicinal Flora, and I even had a room there to call my own.