Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Green Bottle

For a moment, I wondered if I'd misheard and blinked before asking.

"What? Alcohol?"

"Yes. Alcohol."

Delilah tilted her head innocently, as though wondering what the problem was.

"You don't sell alcohol?"

"Of course I do... but don't you have classes to teach?"

"Ah, it's fine. I'm done with all my lectures for today."

I looked at her shamelessly waving it off, then turned to glance out the window.

"But it's still the middle of the day..."

"Day drinking is the best kind of drinking!"

She's hopeless.

This woman is a complete nutcase.

'Is she really a professor? She's not impersonating one, is she?'

I couldn't help wondering.

I'll admit I was overwhelmed by her enthusiasm.

"...What would you like? I have most things—wine, beer, soju, and so on."

Oh, I also have makgeolli─

"Soju? What's soju?"

Delilah immediately latched onto the one thing I hadn't expected.

"Uh..."

I gathered my thoughts for a moment before answering.

"It's an alcoholic drink people enjoy back in my homeland."

By soju, I didn't mean traditional distilled soju, but the diluted kind.

The stuff that comes in green bottles.

"Wow, now I'm curious!"

She really was the curious type.

The way she immediately took interest in a liquor she'd never heard of proved it.

'Hmm...'

Still, I didn't particularly want to recommend soju.

Its infamous reputation was reason enough.

'And it doesn't even taste good.'

Objectively speaking, you didn't even need to compare it to whiskey or vodka. Even against sake or baijiu, it came up short.

And yet, ironically enough, Koreans went absolutely crazy for soju.

Honestly, I enjoyed drinking it too, but if someone asked why, I couldn't give them a convincing reason.

"Wow..."

Sure enough, when I showed her a bottle because she was curious, her mouth fell open.

Admittedly, it does look a little sinister.

Anyone might wonder what possessed someone to make the entire bottle green.

That's why transparent soju bottles have become more common these days...

'Still, the classic is definitely green.'

I'd heard that green had historically been associated with death in the West, so I wondered whether that was true here too.

But then.

"Wow, the bottle looks just like an emerald!"

Now that's a fresh reaction.

"It's not actually emerald, is it?"

"Of course not. It's just a glass bottle."

I answered while looking at the bottle that had somehow already left my hand.

Still, emerald?

I suppose someone really could look at that crude bottle and think that.

Preconceptions really were fascinating.

"Really? That's a shame."

Delilah said as she turned the label this way and that.

"It's only sixteen percent?"

'Only sixteen percent'?

Wasn't that high compared to wine, never mind beer?

"...What do you normally drink?"

"Vodka or gin."

"Even then, if you mix them─"

"What are you talking about? Of course I drink them straight."

What a dangerous woman.

But I couldn't forget that she was still a prospective customer.

"We have vodka and gin too."

"No, I'll take this. I fell in love with the color the moment I saw it."

I clicked my tongue as she casually said something that would have horrified any Korean.

Well, if that's what she wanted, who was I to argue?

"Twenty silver."

"Wow, it's cheap too. I'll give you one gold, so give me five bottles."

Whatever.

If she got completely wasted and caused trouble, she'd have to deal with it herself.

'She's an adult, after all.'

All I did was sell her what she asked for.

Besides, when someone commits murder with a gun or a sword, you don't blame the seller or manufacturer, do you?

Then this woman surprised me yet again.

"I can drink over there, right?"

What?

I nearly laughed out loud as Delilah shamelessly pointed toward the tables.

"This is a store, not a bar..."

"Oh, come on. You don't have any customers anyway."

Ow.

She went straight for the sore spot.

'Sigh.'

I sighed inwardly and considered it.

People sometimes drank alcohol inside convenience stores, but strictly speaking, it was illegal.

The bullshit part was that the owner got punished instead of the person drinking.

So we'd tell people they couldn't drink inside, but we usually didn't stop the ones drinking outside.

Even putting tables outside could be legally problematic in many cases.

So everyone just quietly looked the other way...

'It's not like this world has laws like that.'

If we argued over it, I'd only lose one of my few customers, which was far too risky for me.

'But seriously, this woman...'

Ha.

I hadn't even answered yet, but Delilah was already trotting toward a table with her bottles, making me genuinely chuckle this time.

Then she said,

"What are you doing? Hurry up and pull down the shutters!"

...There was nothing I could do.

Customers were too precious right now, so I was ultimately the desperate one.

'Business is dead anyway. Might as well close early today.'

Muttering helplessly, I finally hung the CLOSED sign on the door.

*

Wasn't there a saying that fortune and misfortune were always changing places?

When I first entered the Academy, I'd never dreamed I'd end up having a drinking party here.

"I'm so happy I finally have a drinking buddy!"

Ah, is that so?

Delilah apparently drank often, because her tolerance was quite impressive.

Even after her second bottle, her face was only flushed. Other than that, she seemed completely fine.

"The Academy professors are all stuffy and rigid, so they're no fun. But I can't exactly drag students over and make them drink with me."

At least she has that much common sense.

"By the way, this soju stuff is fascinating. It tastes absolutely awful, so why does it keep going down so easily?"

Delilah tapped her disposable shot glass on the table and grinned.

She looked rather cute doing it.

It probably wasn't the alcohol making her look that way.

Delilah really was an attractive woman.

Aside from seeming like she had a few screws loose.

"Back home, there's a saying that if soju tastes bitter, your life still isn't bitter enough."

"Ugh, you sound like an old man."

What?

"Weren't you from the Pluto School, Mr. Shopkeeper? You sound like someone from the Kratos School."

I had no idea what she was talking about.

"What's that?"

"Huh?"

When I asked what she meant, Delilah tilted her head instead.

"You didn't graduate from the Academy?"

"...No."

"Huh, that's unusual. I just assumed you did."

"I heard my predecessor was an Academy graduate."

"Not just your predecessor. They always were."

That's strange, Delilah muttered softly.

I thought it was strange too.

What whim had possessed the principal this time?

Naturally, I didn't bother saying that aloud.

"Then I guess you don't know much about the schools either."

Schools or whatever, I didn't even know the first thing about the Academy.

'...Now that I think about it, I really did come here completely unprepared.'

Well.

I'd just assumed the Academy was basically a school.

"There are four schools within the Academy. For reference, I'm from the Minerva School."

To summarize Delilah's explanation:

When students entered the Academy, they were assigned to one of four schools based on their personality, talents, and so on.

For example, Delilah's Minerva School specialized in academics, research, and theology.

Considering she'd majored in alchemy and become a professor at such a young age, it suited her perfectly.

In any case, after graduation, students from each school went on to become key figures in their respective fields.

There was a reason the Academy's official name included the words military academy.

"But what did you mean when you said I sounded like someone from the Kratos School...?"

"There are lots of old fogeys there."

Urgh.

That one actually stung a little.

"Hehe, you know I'm joking, right?"

"Who knows? I'm a narrow-minded old fogey, so I'm not sure."

I answered dryly and put a potato chip into my mouth.

She had bought the alcohol, so the snacks were my treat.

"Ahaha. You're really funny. How old are you?"

"Twenty-six."

"Oh, same as me!"

She'd looked about my age, but I hadn't expected us to actually be the same age.

"Let's just be friends! Friends!"

Delilah excitedly declared before popping another potato chip into her mouth.

Crunch, crunch.

"Wow, these taste good every time."

Unlike the soju she called disgusting, the potato chips fortunately received high marks.

Thanks to that, my spirits recovered somewhat after Yekaterina's indifferent reaction.

'Though she sure is drinking a lot of that supposedly disgusting soju.'

Still, drinking with someone she'd just met and suddenly suggesting we become friends definitely made her anything but ordinary.

The more I saw of her, the less she matched my image of a professor.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Ask anything. We're friends."

I still hadn't agreed to that.

But she clearly did whatever she wanted, so I let it slide.

"You said earlier that the color of the soju bottle really caught your eye. Why?"

"Ah."

Delilah's eyes widened before she smiled brightly.

"That wasn't the question I expected, but that's a very good question too!"

After hearing the explanation that followed, I regretted asking.

And so I had to sit there and hear everything, starting with who founded alchemy─

Then about how the fifth and most important stage of the 'Magnum Opus,' the process used to create the Philosopher's Stone—the Holy Grail of alchemists—was the stage in which matter was transformed into emerald─

And finally about the mysterious disappearance of a jeweled tablet called the 'Emerald Tablet,' on which the first alchemist supposedly recorded the entire process.

Of course.

During all that, we somehow emptied two more bottles of soju.

* * *

「Establish a rendezvous point within the Academy.」

The man burned the orders as soon as he finished reading them, leaving no trace behind.

'A rendezvous point... Looks like we're finally beginning operations in earnest.'

As the Empire's premier educational institution, the Academy maintained extremely tight security.

Furthermore, eyes and ears existed everywhere across its vast grounds.

So the man decided to change his approach.

'They say the darkest place is beneath the lamp.'

A place crowded with people might actually make it easier to avoid suspicion.

But the dormitories and lecture halls were out of the question.

In that case...

'There's one place that would be perfect.'