Sasaki and Peeps - Volume 8 - Chapter 4.5

A moment later, her behavior changed.

“…Huh?!”

“Are you yourself again, Ms. Futarishizuka?” I asked.

Her reaction seemed almost faked. Maybe she was just that embarrassed over what she’d done. And now that I had confirmation, I used a healing spell on myself, too. The excitement I’d been feeling since this morning immediately disappeared. My heart, which had been pounding so fiercely I’d been worried I was developing arrhythmia, calmed down in an instant, too.

“Could this have been due to the food my guest served?” she wondered aloud.

“I think so,” I said.

“I’m curious why our esteemed senior and the others weren’t affected, then.”

“Well, not only did we eat her food for dinner the last two nights, but we also had it for breakfast and lunch today.”

“Yes. I was feeling it this morning, but once this afternoon hit, I was basically going nuts.”

“And as a result, we’re no longer on good terms with Magical Pink.”

“That’s over and done with now. Little point in crying over it. And we would have clashed eventually anyway.”

We were still lying on the ground, our faces millimeters apart, as we spoke. It seemed we were in agreement on the matter, which made me increasingly confident we were right.

“Hey, Sasaki,” said our senior colleague. “Mind filling the rest of us in on what’s going on here?”

“I don’t know the details,” interjected my neighbor, “but if you’re back to normal, could you get off of him?”

The two of them were right; Ms. Futarishizuka and I got to our feet.

“It should all be clear soon enough,” I said. “I’m sure you’re all confused, but we aren’t entirely sure of the cause, either. Could you wait until dinner tonight for an explanation? In the meantime, I’ll verify my hypothesis.”

“Are you sure you two aren’t just going to find somewhere to hide and h-have, uh, s-sex?”

“If you’re too embarrassed to say it, girlie, then you shouldn’t even ask.”

Miss Hoshizaki’s face was bright red. I felt embarrassed just listening to her.

That evening, Ms. Futarishizuka and I discovered the root cause of our strange impulses.

Just as we’d guessed, the ingredients Lady Elsa brought from the otherworld had been messing with our heads.

“This is lumoné grass. It’s sometimes used as a tonic or an aphrodisiac.”

We were inside the house set up in the UFO, holding a little meeting in the kitchen. All of us stared at the leaves piled on the counter. They were cute-looking plants shaped like Japanese wild parsley.

The only ones in the kitchen were Ms. Futarishizuka, myself, Lady Elsa, and Peeps. Since we were hiding the otherworld’s existence from everyone else, we had to verify the ingredients in secret. None of them existed on Earth, after all.

I was sure Type Twelve, with her superior analytical technology, knew something of what we were up to already just from seeing Lady Elsa’s clothing and accessories, not to mention the food she’d now eaten. However, she hadn’t made any move to pursue the topic yet.

“In small quantities, it only boosts your mood somewhat,” explained Peeps. “While it is sometimes used in food, ingesting too much in a short time can dull your reason and cause you to act on instinct. It’s active in much smaller quantities than alcohol, which has led to its usage as a base ingredient in truth serums.”

Peeps poked the bundle of leaves on the counter with his foot. What an adorable sight.

“I thought this was fingerpeal, little bird.”

“It is quite similar to fingerpeal but a different plant entirely. Your supplier likely mistook the two.”

“I…I’m so sorry! I’ve caused no end of trouble for you both…”

The otherworld’s ethics must be pretty lax if the ingredients to make truth serum are in regular circulation. That said, any Japanese person could have gone to a pharmacy and bought stimulants just as powerful up until only a hundred years ago, and marijuana was steadily being legalized all over the world. For herbs like these, it was simply a matter of dosage and administration.

“Please don’t let this get you down, Lady Elsa,” I said.

“That’s right,” added Ms. Futarishizuka. “It’s your supplier’s fault for messing up, right?”

“Which dish did you add these herbs to?” I asked.

“Um, the soup. And you two seemed to like it so much that I put more of it in your breakfast and lunch today than yesterday. That was probably what did it, huh? I’m really sorry. I had no idea this would happen.”

“I apologize as well,” said Peeps. “Had I partaken of the soup, I would have noticed before this happened.”

“No, no, I couldn’t possibly expect you to do that.”

My pet sparrow was a meat-lover through and through. Thinking back, he hadn’t even spared a glance at the soup before digging into the wyvern meat.

We would have to tell Miss Hoshizaki and the others that it was normal to use ingredients containing the same components as narcotics in Lady Elsa’s culture. In fact, we could use our location in Karuizawa to our advantage and claim Ms. Futarishizuka was picking mushrooms and made a mistake.

Even magic mushrooms, which were legally restricted, grew naturally all over the world. Something like a Psilocybin mushroom might even pop up in partial sunlight in someone’s backyard—I remembered chancing upon an internet article like that during my days as a corporate drone. Just to be clear, I definitely wasn’t looking for an escape from my unpaid overtime-induced exhaustion or anything. And anyway, you never knew what might come in handy later.

“Now that we know what’s going on, I don’t think it will be a problem,” said Ms. Futarishizuka.

“You’re right. And the effects seem to dissipate over time.”

I stowed the remaining herbs away in the back of the cabinet. Peeps and I could take them back with us the next time we went to the otherworld. They could still be used for medicinal purposes; I’d feel bad getting rid of them because of one bad experience.

Just as I was feeling relieved that we’d solved the issue, my neighbor appeared in the kitchen with Abaddon. Type Twelve was a little ways behind them.

“We wanted to talk to you about something, mister,” said my neighbor. “Do you have time?”

“Oh. Um, what is it?” I asked.

“Father,” said Type Twelve. “School will be holding an ‘off-campus class’ starting tomorrow. Because Kurosu and I are facilitating communication between Ivy and the other students, I believe we should be in the same group.”

“If you can’t do anything, I understand,” added my neighbor, “but she was very adamant about it…”

Oh. That’s right. An event like that was about to happen. A teacher’s life was full of toil, indeed.