Nigel’s voice was lower and more sunken than usual. The gaze that had been loosened as if drunk until just moments ago pierced straight through Eden’s eyes.
“…!”
Seeing Eden’s expression harden, Nigel smiled weakly once more and said.
“A truth serum? How did you get your hands on it? It must have been quite difficult to bring it into the academy.”
Nigel’s fingers dug into Eden’s nape with force. Even while intoxicated by the effects of the truth serum, he was tearing through Eden’s lies with his characteristic strength.
“……Pardon? A truth serum?”
Seeing Eden’s eyes waver, Nigel sneered at him while letting out a staggering breath.
But Eden Lake wasn’t an easy opponent after all. He smoothly composed his stiffened facial muscles and rather placed his own hand over Nigel’s cold hand that was gripping him.
“How would I dare give such a thing to you? Your Highness is being too sensitive……”
That’s when it happened.
BANG—!
Before the answer could even finish, the Student Council room’s heavy door was roughly thrown open. Along with the sound of hinges screaming, the outside air rushed in, cutting through the greenhouse’s humid air.
“Nigel!”
The footsteps of Veil Khalid, who had been entering with an irritated voice, stopped abruptly.
His gaze landed on Nigel, who was half-collapsed on the sofa gripping Eden’s nape, and Eden, who was kneeling below him with Nigel’s hand clasped.
It was a strangely meaningful composition with their chests blatantly touching.
“……What are you doing right now?”
Veil’s voice sank low. With keen senses, he immediately caught the foreign tea scent filling the Student Council room and Nigel’s unfocused eyes.
As Veil strode closer, Eden reluctantly released Nigel’s hand and stood up from his seat.
“Senior.”
“…Senior, my ass.”
At the title Eden called him, Veil Khalid snapped coldly. Then with a thud, Veil roughly shoved Eden aside, telling him to move, and grabbed Nigel’s shoulder.
“Nigel, snap out of it. Hey. What’s wrong with your eyes?”
Nigel tilted his head as if responding to Veil’s voice, but his focus was still wavering at some point in the air.
“…Who….. What……?”
His hazy violet eyes wandered before turning toward the face of the person gripping his shoulder. His vision was dizzy, as if a transparent film had been placed in front of his eyes.
In the midst of that, what he could barely recognize was color rather than form. Bright red hair and golden eyes. Nigel called out a name that came to mind from that familiar color combination.
“…Veil…… Veil Khalid?”
“…….”
Even while his consciousness was going in and out, Veil Khalid’s sharp eyes stiffened at him calling out his name. He couldn’t gauge whether he should consider this admirable or praise the fact that even a little consciousness remained.
“You again……”
Nigel muttered like that. His voice was cold and hard as usual, but conversely, the corners of his mouth were loosely relaxed.
Like someone dreaming a very pleasant dream, or like someone terribly drunk. At that loose smile of Nigel’s that he would never show even if he died and woke up, Veil froze for a moment, even forgetting how to breathe. His heart beat crazily.
But soon Veil Khalid shook his head slightly to shake off the reverie, then asked Nigel’s junior standing beside him again.
“Why is this guy in this state?”
When he’d opened the door and entered, that guy had been too close to Nigel, so he’d been somewhat excited. Nigel’s junior answered Veil’s question politely while making an extremely troubled expression. If that was acting, it was top-notch.
“He asked for tea, so I happened to brew the tea leaves that came in today, but it seems they didn’t agree with his body and he’s dizzy. It’s my oversight for not checking the ingredients.”
Eden, who had briefly distanced himself, approached again like a shadow and tried to grab Nigel’s other arm.
“Tea?”
Veil’s eyes lengthened sharply.
“A person became like this from just a scrap of grass? That doesn’t make sense. What were the tea leaves?”
“These were them.”
Immediately, Eden Lake held out the box that had been next to the teapot on the side table. Inside were appropriately dried tea leaves piled up.
“…….”
Veil stared intently at the tea leaves inside the box Eden held out. They looked like ordinary tea leaves on the surface.
Unfortunately, because he was ordinarily dedicated to one field of study, Veil Khalid couldn’t immediately identify the type of tea leaves just by looking at them.
He readily showed the tea leaves right away, and a teacup with the same scent was also placed where that guy had been sitting. If he knew it was poisonous grass, he wouldn’t try to drink it together. After finishing that thought, Veil asked again.
“Tea leaves that came in today?”
“Yes.”
“From whom?”
“…….”
The junior’s face showed an expression of ‘Is that important?’, but only after seeing Veil Khalid’s face that he would check no matter what did he carefully examine the tea box. However, no matter where he looked on the box, he couldn’t find any signature.
“…This can’t be right.”
He too showed obvious signs of confusion. The junior quickly began checking the gifts brought by VIP guests scattered on the Student Council room table.
“It must have been one of the gifts on the list. The card with the sender’s name has disappeared.”
He was flustered at realizing he was the one who made Nigel, whom he believed in and followed, like that.
Leaving that commotion behind, Veil dipped his finger in the tea water remaining in Nigel’s teacup and brought it to his lips.
If what he was looking for wasn’t the name of a medicinal herb but confirmation of the fact of whether it was poison or not, it wasn’t as if there was no method at all.
“Dangerous……!”
Eden reached out in confusion, but Veil had already felt the lingering scent of the tea water on his tongue.
“……!”
Instantly, one peculiar taste swept through Veil’s mouth. Fortunately, it was a type of taste he knew. Who would have thought the Brion royal family’s poison education would be this helpful?
This wasn’t simple poison. It was a high-grade reagent that loosened and unraveled thoughts, paralyzed suppressed reason, and drew out truths from deep within.
A truth serum.
Veil’s eyes sank coolly as they turned toward Eden Lake. Eden was still standing in place with a shocked expression.
…Why?
Veil was puzzled. If it was a reagent powerful enough that Nigel couldn’t come to his senses to this degree, that junior who drank the same tea beside him should also normally be crawling on the floor confessing something.
But Eden Lake was excessively calm.
Ah, was that guy Sihari?
One hypothesis flashed through Veil’s mind. He’d heard that the people of the Kingdom of Sihar who survived in the barren desert and grasslands teeming with poisonous insects were born with a strange resistance to various poisons from birth.
Veil’s homeland, the Kingdom of Brion, was a neighboring country bordering the Kingdom of Sihar.
The Brion royalty, who had experienced border disputes with the Sihari who developed extraordinary poisons and medicines to survive in the barren desert region for centuries, thoroughly received education on methods of identifying and building resistance to Sihari-style drugs from childhood.
For Veil Khalid, the taste of this tea water wasn’t unfamiliar. It was natural that Nigel drank it without noticing.
Most truth serums like this would have been burned before even crossing the border into the Empire’s capital, and especially, he couldn’t have imagined that it would be circulating inside this academy.
Fortunately, perhaps because he’d immediately noticed, Nigel’s teacup still had quite a lot of tea water remaining.
“Eden Lake.”
Come to think of it, he’d heard that guy’s name before. The Sihari who entered the Student Council with Nigel’s direct endorsement. That rumored freshman cherished by the Crown Prince—there was only one such guy in the academy.
At Veil’s low voice, Eden turned his head.
“Did you drink this tea too?”
“Yes. But why……ah.”
Could it be, hearing Veil’s question, Eden Lake also now tilted his head, realizing the ethnic characteristics of the now-vanished Kingdom of Sihar. He checked the tea water in his teacup again with a noticeably flustered face.
Having heard Veil’s words, he seemed to feel that it was somehow different from ordinary tea smell.
“…Come to think of it, Nigel also said this tea contained a truth serum.”
Did he really not know? Veil Khalid stared piercingly at Eden Lake like that.
That’s when it happened.
“……Eden.”
