WE HELPED THE WITCH
And so we identified the fake as a witch named Eno.
We also revealed that I was actually Azusa, Witch of the Highlands…
That day we listened to Eno’s story at the community tavern, and it was an intense one. I started to sympathize with her a little.
“I’m a witch, but no one knows who I am… I don’t have any friends, either… I don’t have any hobbies, and I always think about how empty existence is living as a witch…”
“Aah, that’s what happens when you’re immortal with no friends…”
In my past life, I had read plenty of books where an immortal character couldn’t bear the loneliness anymore. That was truth, in a way.
“But, Lady Azusa, why have you been fine on your own for three hundred years?” Laika instead directed the question to me.
“Hmm, now that you mention it… Well, I had contact with the people of Flatta, and they started to admire me during the three hundred years I sold them potions, and my desire to be recognized was fulfilled.”
“I knew it; your humility truly is marvelous! It would not even be impudent of you to call yourself the strongest in the world with your power! I have rediscovered how wonderful you are, Lady Azusa!”
“Laika, you’re getting something wrong here! I only recently realized my stats were so high!”
There wasn’t a single person out there who aimed to be the strongest by killing a few slimes every day.
“Sigh… If I had any interests that I really wanted to succeed in, then I probably wouldn’t have acted as a fake… Hic…”
Eno looked like the sad-drunk type, and she was constantly looking down.
“You have to have one or two points of pride, right? You’re a hundred and fifty. I bet there are people out there who think you’re great at something.”
“No, you’re too optimistic. I’m really just a nobody… I’m a totally nameless witch… I’m not involved with the witching industry or anything like that.”
Well, I don’t know anything about a witching industry.
But the thought of neglecting her gave me a twinge of unease.
When I was in college, I’d listened to the troubles of one of my junior members in our club but couldn’t give any good answers, so she ended up leaving.
*Which, by the way, was really just a club for fun. All we did was play Ping-Pong at hot springs (and not even at hot springs).
Of course, there were some troubles that only the troubled one themselves could fix. That being said, I felt like this would’ve gone better if I had been more amiable toward her.
“Then, Eno, take me to your witch’s workshop. I’ll find something you’re amazing at there.”
“Wait, you’re coming to mine, great Witch of the Highlands?”
“Yes. People often can’t identify the great things about themselves unless someone on the outside points it out to them. If I find something wonderful about you, then you can let that be your driving force in life.”
In short, I figured I could just search for Eno’s good points. Hopefully she’d take pride in whatever it was. If she could stay motivated, then her long life would become more enjoyable.
“Very well… I doubt you’ll find anything interesting about my life, but if you say so…”
“Then it’s settled. I look forward to it.”
We were going to visit the house—well, workshop—of my junior witch.
The next day, we flew on Laika in her dragon form to the land where Eno lived.
“There isn’t enough space for a dragon to land, so I hope you don’t mind landing a little early and walking the rest of the way.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll leave that to you.”
My house, which sat right in the middle of the highlands, was special. That turned out to be a good thing, since two dragons ended up living with me. It would be a pain to walk fifteen minutes just so they could turn into dragons.
“Go straight here, then once you see the road, turn right. Then turn left at the next junction.” Eno directed us as we headed to our destination.
It was a spot pretty deep in the mountains, one where a dragon could touch down only after a great deal of trouble.
“We’ll walk from here. Follow me.”
We entered the forest after Eno. It was rather gloomy.
“This place is a little uncanny. In a way, it’s the environment you’d expect for a witch.”
“Yes, I chose it because I thought a proper witch should live in a witchy sort of place.”
We followed the red ribbons tied to the trees along a path that could barely even be called a path.
I would have no idea where we were supposed to go if it wasn’t for these markers.
“I should’ve worn more comfortable clothes. These are going to get dirty…”
“We’ve been walking around in the woods and mountains a lot lately, haven’t we…?”
Laika wore Gothic Lolita–style clothing, so I bet she was having a rough time.
And the path was long. There weren’t any sudden uphill slopes or anything, but the woods were getting thicker, and it was getting darker. I could hear the ominous kee-aw, kee-aw of a bird echoing around us.
Also around us were several types of valuable-looking mushrooms that would make Halkara happy.
After walking for twenty minutes, Eno announced, “We’re here.”
It was just an empty wood.
“Sorry. If this is a joke, I don’t get it; there’s no building here.”
“We go down into the grotto from here.”
On closer inspection, there was a tunnel that we could probably squeeze through if we crouched down.
“Seriously…?”
“Oh, no need to worry; I’ll use some Light magic.”
That wasn’t really the problem.
Laika and I squatted and made our way through the tunnel. After about five minutes of wriggling like caterpillars, we found a small rope ladder.
“And now we go down.”
“…Okay, sure.”
And after climbing down the ladder for several minutes, we arrived at Eno’s secret base–like workshop.
There was also a double lock on a metal door, which made it look especially like a secret base.
TRESPASSERS SHALL BE CURSED was written there.
That probably loosely meant, “No solicitors.” I highly doubted anyone would come all the way out here just to make sales, though.
“I’ve stayed in here for over a hundred years, but my name hasn’t spread at all…”
“Well, duh!”
No one would ever find this!
Some shops were like hideouts, but you could take it too far.
“And are you going to town to sell your potions?”
“No, I make them as a hobby, but involving all my time in business activities doesn’t strike me as very witchlike, so I don’t. I figured if I made something good, word would spread quickly…”
“That’s not gonna make you famous!!!”
This girl’s desire for attention really did not match up with her work ethic!
We entered her workshop. It was a dreadful place, one that practically screamed out Witch.
Bottles with lizard tails and scorpions dipped in mysterious liquid lined the shelves. And various animal bone specimens hung on the walls.
“This is an eerie place…”
Laika was shrinking away, apparently not fond of places like this. I felt like some people would be more afraid of dragons than this stuff, but that was a different source of fear.
“Oh, please, have a seat.”
There was a set of table and chairs, but the chairs were also made of bone.
It doesn’t look very nice to sit on, so I think I’ll pass…
“Don’t you find it weird that you want to be like me? I think our styles of witchcraft are way too different…”
“No, because I’m making medicine, too. Like, for example…this one.”
She took a bottle down from the shelf. Instead of liquid, it contained a few small pellets.
“These are pills made from dried Mandragoras. They’re effective in relieving fatigue. They also do wonders for the eyes and settle the stomach!”
“Hey, that’s not a bad thing you’ve made there.”
Afterward, Eno talked at length about how she made the pills and showed us a dried Mandragora.
“All these Mandragoras have been aged three years, and I use ones that have been carefully grown. I can make the medicine from younger versions, but then the components aren’t at their fullest potential. And so as a potion-making professional, I can make it without any compromises!”
I was also somewhat of a witch, so once I heard how she made it, I could at least tell that it was a well-made concoction.
Thinking about it rationally, if she was immortal, she was among the exceptional witches. She couldn’t be just some unremarkable girl.
“This is pretty good. I bet it’d be a big hit if you called it the Mandragora pill and sold it. Or wait, are you selling it already?”
“No. I believe a proper witch shouldn’t carelessly allow herself to be known, so I do not put things on public sale.”
“What a waste…”
“W-well… It’s not like I haven’t thought of it. If someone recognized how good these pills were and asked to turn them into product…” Eno bashfully fidgeted and looked down. “See, if a witch comes out and announces she’s selling something, that would be too merchantlike, too out of line for a witch’s way of life… I’ve always wanted to be, like, a genius for those in the know, you know…?”
Oh. I think I’ve mostly figured out how she’s making things more complicated for herself.
“You want to be in a position where only the top witches of the world would recognize your work, if you could, right?”
“Yes. I would love to be someone who only sells medicine to people I acknowledge and to turn away witches who come to me without referral!”
Eno’s eyes seemed to shine a bit.
“And so, as the very stubborn craftsman you are, you want to be more well-known by the world, right?”
“Yes, right—that’s right!”
“Isn’t that a little contradictory?” Laika interjected from beside us. “You only want to be recognized by people in the know yet want to be acknowledged by the whole world—I don’t think you can accomplish both. Is this something only alchemical philosophy can solve? I am uneducated, so I don’t quite understand.”
Laika’s voice was like sharp thorns.
If I could hear what her heart was saying, I’d probably hear it whispering, You idiot.
And it seemed like those words reached Eno.
“Well… It’s just as you say, but… But you know… What I mean is—”
“What you mean is what?” Laika quickly closed the distance between the two. “Your behavior has been completely inconsistent this entire time. What is it you hope to accomplish? What do you wish to do? Will you please explain so that fools like myself might understand?”
I thought I saw Eno hunching over. She seemed pretty defeated.
I clapped my hands.
“That’s enough, Laika. I’ll explain in Eno’s place.”
“You can make sense of such difficult logic, Lady Azusa? Brilliant!”
Well, I wasn’t genius enough to “make sense” of it; I think we just need to assume that humans are inconsistent beings to begin with…
“Hey, Laika? Humans have appearances to keep up.”
“Vanity, you mean?”
Well, don’t just say it. Then it gets a little too real…
“In Eno’s case, she wants to come across as a cool witch. To be more specific, a genius witch available only to those in the know, without any sort of commercial flair.”
Eno nodded slightly. I guess she was embarrassed about admitting it.
“On the other hand, she wants to be known throughout the world as a great witch. But in order to do that, she needs to make good potions and advertise them for sale, and even though she lives in this kind of hidden workshop, no one is coming out here to find her.”
If only she’d be active a little closer to places where people actually lived…
Not even her fellow witches would be able to find her in a hideout like this. And if other witches couldn’t find her, then word of her work wouldn’t spread throughout the trade.
I thought she was too thorough when she decided to start with appearances.
“That is a mystery. I can only see it as a contradiction.”
“No, she definitely is contradicting herself. Actually, you could even say that someone whose words and actions did match up was peculiar. And since you’re never too unsure about anything, Laika, it’s probably harder for you to understand.”
Eno silently listened in to our conversation the entire time, her eyes trained on the ground.
“This is just my opinion, so if you have any counterarguments, speak up, okay? What I just told Laika was a generalization.”
“Th-that’s not wrong, though… I’m sorry…”
If the girl herself was aware of it, then the rest was easy.
“So basically, you just want people to fawn over you, right?”
“Yes, I do!”
“And what do you think you should do to accomplish that?”
“My only choice is to do things that will make me famous!”
Right, well put.
“Then we’ll get to doing those things.”
Eno seemed a bit frightened by what I said. “Um… When you say do things… What exactly should we do…?”
“Sell potions. Sell them and put your name out there.”
“Th-that’s… Well, I get terrible social anxiety with strangers, and even though I’m fine when I’m disguised as someone else, I am so nervous and completely useless when I’m not…”
So that was why she’d seemed fine when she was disguised as the “Witch of the Highlands.” Plenty of people become outgoing once they start acting, so I understood somewhat.
“We’ll get used to that, too, as we go along. Doesn’t it suck living in such a lonely place, hidden away from other people?”
“Yes… It does… I want more attention, and I want everyone to gaze at me in admiration! And if possible, I also want a bronze statue of myself! I want to be named an honored citizen in my hometown!”
And now she’s a fountain of worldly desires!
“But now that I think about it… I should have put my workshop closer to a city. If only I was in a place with easy access to the kingdom capital…”
“Lady Azusa, this girl is suddenly starting to change her approach… Are we sure she hasn’t summoned an evil spirit and let it possess her?”
Laika was surprised about it, but in a way, this was the result of Eno being honest with herself, so I wanted to praise her.
“No, this is fine. It’s perfectly fine that she feels this way. All right, let’s get selling!”
We went to the nearby village and bought the rights to open a stall at the big market they held there once every two weeks.
Opening up her own store right away was too big a hurdle for her, but preparations for appearing at the market were comparatively few. And even if she got tired, she could go home and just sleep until the following day.
And so our table number was A-23b.
“Yay, a wall!”
Eno was happy. A wall? What did that have to do with anything?
Now that we knew where she was going to be, we started making our setup for the products and advertisements.
It was a little embarrassing, but we made a flag that said, MANDRAGORA PILLS—THE WITCH OF THE HIGHLANDS’S CHOICE! I really did think they were good, so it wasn’t a lie.
Laika prepared the change and other smaller details.
It was at times like this that I saw how considerate she was. In the future, I knew she’d make a good wif— Actually, I’d want her to be one of my little sisters.
“Lady Azusa, I have a sign that says, FIRST OPENING! and a banner that says, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF EFFECTIVENESS. Shall we use either of these?”
“Laika, you never do anything by halves…”
But all three of us worked together to finish the initial preparations.
“I think most everything should be ready by now. We’re going to go home for a bit, and we’ll be back on the day of the market.”
“Okay, thank you so much! I will aim to be the number one in pill shares!”
I feel like she’s leaning too much toward the commercial side, but whatever…
Then, the day of the market arrived.
Laika and I came to attend.
The spot was facing the wall of a big building, and since there were no other tables behind hers, she had plenty of extra space. So that was what she’d meant by wall. Well, she wasn’t wrong.
We went and saw that Eno was already there constructing her spot like a pro.
It was a much more serious affair than when we had been helping her. It practically looked like a permanent store.
But there was something else that stood out way more than her construction.
Eno herself—and her really gaudy outfit.
She wasn’t wearing witch clothes but something more like a baby witch. No, wait. A magical girl. The witchlike black motif was nowhere to be found, and her main colors were more pink and white. She even had a staff— No, a magic wand.
“Hmm… This is a new sort of heresy…”
As a resident of a fantasy world, Laika’s worldview was making her cautious.
“Eno, I’m not in a position to pretend like I don’t know you, so let me ask—what is all this?” From the perspective of an ex-Japanese person, this looked 100 percent like cosplay.
“See, I told you I was socially anxious, right?” Her voice was very crisp and high-pitched, like an anime character. “So by taking on the role of a completely different character, I have conquered my embarrassment!”
“I see. I don’t really know if this is right or wrong anymore, but if it satisfies you, then that’s perfectly fine!”
“And this outfit is based on fairies. This land’s tales of fairies date back centuries.”
So it was cosplay.
In front of her shop was a sign I didn’t remember us making that said, FIRST BOTTLE HALF OFF—TODAY ONLY!
That’s fine. You do you!
“I prepared five hundred bottles for this day. I hope to sell out.”
Behind her was a stack of boxes that probably had the bottles in them.
It would be terrible if she was left with excess stock…
“Isn’t five hundred right off the bat a little overconfident…?”
“I can do it; I can do it! I almost considered making a thousand.”
Eno spoke with sparkling eyes, but I thought, This kid’s gonna end up disappointed…
If she couldn’t sell out, then it’d all end up in storage… And it’d just be a manifestation of the truth that they couldn’t sell, plain as day to the exhibitor herself…
No, I shouldn’t be thinking about failure right from the start.
Then, it was ten o’clock. The market was open.
“Welcome! We have Mandragora pills from the Witch of the Deep Mountains! Mandragora pills, they’re good for your body! They’re the Witch of the Highlands’s choice! Yes, today your first bottle is half off! You can buy them at half price! Come one, come all!”
Her advertising voice was loud.
“Lady Azusa, I don’t think we need to be here… She is doing this all on her own…”
“You’re probably right.”
The pills stood out from the wares of the other shops around her, so they were garnering some attention, but would they sell…? However, when I saw how serious Eno’s expression was, I knew this had been the right choice.
“Laika, look how hard this self-effacing and shy human is working. I think we could call this a success at this point, right?”
Someone who had spent all her time waiting for someone to notice her was moving more and more into the spotlight.
“And even supposing this is a failure, she can use this as a spring to keep moving forward. So I know she’ll succeed someday.”
Laika seemed to understand what I was saying and nodded slightly, but—
“So does that mean you are expecting her to fail this time around?”
“…W-well… It looks like she’s getting some attention, though…”
It was time for the day’s market to close.
Eno sold seventy-three bottles of Mandragora pills.
I didn’t really know the rates for stuff like this, but I thought she put up a good fight for her first time.
Still, Eno was staring blankly at the remaining four-hundred-plus bottles.
“Where should I put these…?”
“We’ll have to put them in storage somewhere.”
“How odd… I did so much advertising, though…”
I thought she did too much advertising, which made it hard for people to stick around. I even heard people say, “Why’s she dressed like that…?”
“I’d say you did well enough. You had newsworthiness, and you had some customers who like bizarre foods come just for that. I’d say it was much better than not advertising at all.”
Laika gave her objective comments.
Right, if Eno was going to fail, then it was better she did so after doing something rather than failing by not doing anything at all. The experience would lead to the next opportunity.
“First, I need to think of what I’m going to do with my excess stock… Maybe I should dig another cellar…”
“I can help you with any hard labor. I dug a cellar next to my house in the highlands, after all.”
Eno looked defeated for a while, but by the time we were done dismantling and packing things away, she seemed cheerful.
“It’s fun standing in front of people and selling them things. Whenever I received money, I was glad that I was doing this.”
“Eno, that means you’re fulfilling your desire to be recognized in a respectable way.”
“Huh?”
“People giving you money to get something you made yourself means that they’ve acknowledged you. All you have to do is keep on keeping on.”
“Y-yes, okay! I will keep going!”
Eno’s eyes glittered. Yes, devote yourself, young witch.
“Next time, I’ll join the fight with an even higher-quality outfit!”
“Wait. That’s not the point of this.”
Since she had also been acting as a fake Witch of the Highlands, I would call this girl a costume enthusiast.
There were probably plenty of ancient festivals all around the world that involved dressing up, all of which probably appealed to humans’ instinctive idea of fun.
We managed to fit the remaining bottles in an extra room and didn’t have to make an extra cellar.
“I want to go into town more without staying cooped up in my workshop.”
“Yeah, that’s a good start.”
“And when I have the chance, maybe ask people if they’ll buy my Mandragora pills…”
Yeah, the excess stock would get in the way after a while…
“You just need to think about this positively. Imagine how rough it would have been if you made a thousand bottles.”
As I listened to Laika’s comment, I thought, Let’s not make product in the four digits right off the bat. She should see how things work out with three hundred at most.
“I’ll buy one of your extras. How much are they?”
“Oh, no, I’ll gift it to you! Or, actually, please, take one! It’s free!”
I ended up taking two bottles for the house. As a witch, I could give its effectiveness my seal of approval.
“We’ll come to see you again.”
“Yes, I’ll be waiting!”
My protégée energetically waved her hand.
“Please don’t pretend to be the Witch of the Highlands anymore, okay?”
“Yes, from now on, I will be the Witch of the Grotto! I will be participating in the market for a little while, so feel free to stop by!”
And so, we peacefully solved the issue with my fake, but there was a little more to the story.
One day, a little over two weeks later, a letter came to the house in the highlands.
The sender was Eno, so I opened it, expecting a report on how she was doing.
What, the pills were a hit?!
I went to Eno’s to hear what she had to say.
Someone who bought the pills last time used them and felt much better. This spread by word of mouth, and apparently, many others vowed to buy some, too.
In the end, all the leftover stock she’d brought because she had nothing to lose sold out at the next market in the first two hours, then soon after that, she was swarmed with orders. Now pill production was bearing down on her.
“I need to harvest good-quality Mandragoras, but I have no time to go out…”
“This is a matter for Halkara. I’ll have to ask her.”
I sent Halkara out, and we explored the possibility of mass-producing it, but since making the pills required a special technique, there were limits to that.
Eno, having given up on that avenue, made the medicine made-to-order and sold only as much as she could make. She was apparently known as the “medicine-making artisan” for about three months after they sold.
Since I’d managed to extract the hidden talent inside her, I thought I had done well.
Now the Mandragora pills made by the Witch of the Grotto sat in my room as my household medicine.
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