I Became a Plague Doctor in a Romance Fantasy Novel

Episode 74. Summer Retreat, and the Conference (4)

74. Summer Retreat, and the Conference (4)

Mint was lying on a sunbed, gazing out at the sea. Sunlight danced on the blue water.

The sun didn’t seem all that bright to me, but it seemed like the people of the Empire considered it dazzling enough.

Mint reached a hand out towards me.

“Lemonade.”

“Lemonade… So what?”

“Get me more.”

I looked down at Mint.

“I refuse.”

“Hmph.”

Mint slowly got up from the sunbed.

The empty glass was tossed next to the sunbed. It landed with a soft thud, the sand cushioning the fall. It didn’t break.

“Teacher. You look good in sunglasses.”

“Really?”

Mint wore a white cardigan over her black swimsuit. A straw hat sat atop her head. She immediately handed me her parasol.

Mint had joked about me holding her parasol last time… And today she’s putting that joke into practice. I took the parasol, tilting it so the shade fell over her.

Ugh, if I keep indulging her like this, she’ll get spoiled. But she looks happy, so.

The beach was more peaceful than I expected.

“Let’s walk a bit. I thought there’d be tons of people at the beach. But now that I’m here, there’s barely anyone?”

“We did come to the less populated side.”

Well, this isn’t exactly a modern tourist spot. With no decent transport, it’d be tough for a bustling beach to even exist, wouldn’t it?

Anyway.

It wasn’t a day with strong winds. The waves weren’t slamming the shore either, just sending enough water to wet your feet trickling onto the sand.

“It’s my first time touching seawater.”

“That’s a shame, it’s not that far from the capital.”

“I’ve been to the beach before. But they wouldn’t let me touch the seawater? Said if I touched the water, I’d catch a cold, and with my weak body…”

“It doesn’t matter much now, right?”

“Yeah.”

For just a moment, a touch of melancholy mixed into Mint’s voice as she spoke of the past. A moment later, Mint turned her head toward me.

“Give me those sunglasses. I wanna try them on.”

“Yes.”

I lowered my head slightly, and Mint took the sunglasses off my face and put them on.

“How did the conference go?”

“I turned it upside down.”

“Sounds like the reaction was good.”

“It really did flip over. What was it, people got up, shouted, everything went crazy.”

“Is it always like that?”

“From what I’ve seen, it’s often like that.”

The reaction was explosive, wasn’t it? Every time I went to a conference, it turned into chaos, so it was a bit tiring.

“I wish the Imperial Family would support my research more fully.”

“Here we go with work talk.”

“Just sayin’.”

“Of course *you’d* think that, Teacher.”

*Splish, splash.* Mint kicked at the seawater with her bare feet. Small sprays of water went everywhere.

“How was the Magick Seminar?”

“Just so-so? Not any better than what we usually do at the Academy. Though, there’s no reason it *would* be any better, I guess?”

*I wouldn’t know about that.*

“Still, it’s nice being out and about… Oh, right. Teacher, can we have dinner together later?”

“Yes.”

“I saw a place a little earlier -“

Mint linked her arm through mine, continuing to talk about something. She’d seen something on the way, that you could feed the gulls crackers, that she’d scouted places for dinner—that sort of thing.

I took the hat from above Mint’s head. Mint looked up at me again.

“Don’t you feel like swimming?”

“The weather’s the kind that’d make you cold as soon as you got in.”

The sun wasn’t blazing enough to make you want to swim. It even felt like it might cloud over if it wasn’t careful. Not yet, though.

More than that, the sun had already passed its zenith.

“Don’t you feel like swimmi-” Ah!”

Mint tripped my feet. I went face first into the seawater. Looking up, Mint’s face was actually beaming.

“No… please help me up.”

Mint, grinning brightly, reached out her hand to me. And I, without hesitation, pulled her into the water. Maybe someone with more grace wouldn’t have done that, but I’m not wired that way, I’m petty.

Mint sat there, in the shallows. Her white cardigan was soaked and drooping, and her princess hair wasn’t faring much better.

“Heh. I didn’t actually think you’d do it.”

“Heh what? *You* started it, Your Highness.”

Mint was trying not to laugh.

“Sorry.”

Though, she didn’t look sorry in the slightest.

That silly princess. I brushed the sand off myself and stood up, then offered my hand to Mint again. She stared at it for a long moment.

“Teacher. You’re not going to pull me back in, right?”

“No.”

Mint took my hand and stood, then shook out the useless, soaked cardigan and put it on. Seawater dripped from the wet fabric.

“You were right, Teacher.”

“About what?”

“It’s cold. Definitely not swimming weather.”

Mint looped her arm through mine again, and I hesitated for a second. Was pulling her in a bad idea…? Even though *she* started it.

“Let’s head back. I packed a… whatchamacallit, a bathrobe in the luggage, you can put that on.”

“Okay.”

Mint sneezed a couple of times next to me. Making me feel unnecessarily guilty. I walked slowly with Mint towards the sunbeds we’d been at earlier.

Anyway.

Mint joined me after an hour, having changed clothes. She didn’t seem cold anymore. Though, her energy level was a little lower than before.

“Oh, Teacher. You’re here.”

“Isn’t it a bit late to eat?”

“I was hoping we might see the stars.”

Well, it wasn’t really the time to be seeing stars while eating. It was summer. The latitude here was higher than I thought, so the sun was setting later too.

Unless we were going to eat for hours.

“We can just wait until they appear, right?”

“Wow… You’re right. I was overthinking it.”

The sun still hadn’t gone down.

“You said you had a place in mind?”

“Yeah. It was nearby…”

The streets were more pleasant than I’d expected. We hadn’t been walking long before we arrived at the place Mint had scoped out. Just an ordinary restaurant.

The only special thing was. You could eat on the roof. We found a suitable spot and sat down. Mint looked up at the sky.

“But. Can we really just sit here until sunset? The restaurant might not like it.”

“Oh…”

It was only a few weeks ago that I’d tipped the restaurant staff who couldn’t close up because of Mint. She’s grown again since then.

Or maybe it’s just a simple mood swing. Either way, she was definitely better than back then.

“Just give them a generous tip. I don’t think they’ll care if we stay until sunset.”

“Probably.”

Mint propped her chin up in her hand.

This time she was looking out at the sea.

“Peaceful and nice, coming to a resort.”

“It’ll be worth seeing when the stars come out later.”

Meanwhile. Professor Wolfram’s lab.

‘Ah, I’m gonna die.’

The professor’s coming back soon, I should ask him when he does. Luciana closed the book she was reading.

After a few days of absence, Professor Wolfram finally came to his lab. Luciana was thrilled, ready to brag about getting that assignment.

“Hello, Professor.”

“Nothing particularly strange happened while I was gone, right?”

Luciana shook her head.

“Actually, there was. A professor from the Healing Department came by and asked if I could extract a specific substance from this solution using alchemy.”

Professor Wolfram dismissed it casually.

“We can probably figure it out. It’s just extracting one substance… does alchemy look that easy?”

“Right.”

“What are they trying to extract?”

“Something to kill some kind of bacteria, I didn’t hear exactly. Apparently, you can’t boil it.”

Luciana rummaged around, pulling out the problematic bottle and placing it on the professor’s desk. The professor looked at the solution. A dark green liquid.

“How much are they offering?”

“They said if it works, the Imperial Family would fund the research? Though I’d have to double-check.”

“The Imperial Family funding? Really?”

“Professor Asterix was a Royal Healer, wasn’t he. I thought that might be the case.”

Professor Wolfram, whose expression had been gentle, slightly frowned upon hearing who was in charge of the experiment. Luciana paused mid-explanation.

“Ah. It was him.”

“Do you know him?”

“Isn’t he the one who made the centrifuge? I heard he has a bit of an odd personality, you know.”

“Is that so?”

Professor Wolfram nodded.

“There are professors like that sometimes. They’ve been treated like royalty since they were kids, so they have no sense of reality, and they’ve barely ever seen someone smarter than them. Their talent outshines their experience, so they can’t really teach others.”

Genius comes with a price, or at least that’s how Professor Wolfram saw it.

“Uh, I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“I’m saying this because I heard he’s crashed a couple of academic conferences. Do you have a plan?”

Luciana cleared her throat and then consulted her notes a bit.

“According to the plan Professor Asterix set up, we adjust it with a slightly acidic solution, then use the centrifuge to separate the solution into layers, and once the layers are separated, we check which layer contains the most of the target component. He said to go through this process.”

“You’ll need something more.”

“The target substance is what the mold secretes, so if we remove non-water-soluble substances and mold structures using the centrifuge. He said that will leave the target medicinal component, sugar, and other substances in the remaining liquid. He said if we solidify that, it’s a success for now.”

“Well… I guess you can figure it out as you go. Go ahead and try it. Did he say he’d put you as a co-author on the paper?”

“Of course, I’ll have to demand that.”

“You’ll get backstabbed. Get that promise in writing, quick.”

Luciana nodded. Why hadn’t she thought about getting backstabbed? It didn’t seem likely, but you never know with people.