1. I Will Refrain From the Death Penalty
Episode 5
Trying to persuade him with a good smile, I finally felt the limit of patience. I didn’t raise my voice because my personal affairs were at stake, but I couldn’t hide my eyes.
Leniel’s smile became brighter in my eyes, which were probably full of resentment. It looked like a full carnivore playing with a fluttering herbivore by tapping it with its forelimbs.
In a word, it meant that I was really unlucky.
“Prove another usefulness. More plausible use than getting a bounty on your head.”
I don’t know how to do anything. What use do you want me to prove? As I endured the curse of biting my teeth and running away, I barely clapped my quivering lips.
“I can tell the taste of poison.”
“Poison?”
“Yes.”
“What’s the use of that?”
Raniel looked at me with disappointing eyes. Staring straight at him, I answered each letter clearly.
“Your boss will be poisoned.”
A smile disappeared around Leniel’s mouth.
“And when that happens, the revival of black magic will be in vain.”
The face of the expressionless Leniel was scary. But in it, I saw the way to live. The only way I can survive in this world.
“I can be your poison detector.”
Looking into the darkened eyes of Leniel, I thought.
…Oh, I survived.
***
Of course, the ‘Giselle Roycevin’ I possessed was an experienced worker, but there was nothing much to do because I was new.
I’ve secretly thrown coffee cans on the street, but I’ve never assaulted anyone. There was no way I could kill and stab someone right away just because my body changed.
So at first I was really worried when Laniel pushed me into this gloomy, dark general store. It was so gloomy that I thought it was a prison disguised as a general store.
If it weren’t for that, I was very nervous because I was afraid that he would push me on the back telling me to recreate a career like murder or arson.
“My distrust of you is still valid, so you’ll have to prove your abilities first.”
Leniel said so and sat me down at the general store checkout counter.
“Now, you work here.”
I broke out of the prison and didn’t even leave the city. It meant that there was still a prison within walking distance. Here it’s dark, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hide in a place like this and wait for the situation to calm down and then figure it out.
“…At this general store? Are you saying you want me to be the owner of this store?”
Wizards have a wide distribution.
“Of course you are a temporary employee. I am the owner.”
That’s right.
Wanting to become a self-employed person at least in a place like this in my heart, I looked around the store with a blank expression on my face. Different types of items were displayed to the point where I did not know what the main product was.
What is that scary looking doll? No, are those eyeballs in that glass jar? Maybe it’s not real? Besides, is that a flowerpot? Aren’t those clothes bulky? Is there mold growing in the box next to me?
“This is a general store that sells cursed goods.”
I was about to touch an object on the shelf, but I immediately withdrew my hand. I almost would have been cursed, my god!
“Are you going to put a curse on me because I don’t die from poison?”
“I said it was a place that sold cursed goods, I didn’t say it was a place where curses were placed.”
I couldn’t hear Leniel. Instead, I glanced anxiously at the doll that kept making eye contact with me from before. As I keep looking at it, I think it looks a little like the doll in a horror movie.
“Your job is to sort out all the poisons that will be delivered here. I will deal with a few guests at the same time.”
Leniel opened a drawer close to the checkout counter. There were several bottles of the same size inside.
“Once we do this, suppliers will bring additional poison.”
“Are you telling me to label it and organize it?”
“You said you can poison”.
Leniel looked at me with that bright and pretty smile.
“It means to try it every day and distinguish the taste.”
This is how I am stuck in this boring place right now. There is also a small room in the general store that is designed for accommodation and meals, so I was forced to sit here as if I were actually detained.
I yawned and stretched over the counter. It’s been 10 days since I became a temporary employee at a general store. Leniel, who stuck me here, seemed to be watching from the side, but suddenly, he hasn’t shown his face for three days.
I secretly named the doll Isabel because I’ve had an internal intimacy since we kept making eye contact. This miscellaneous store was so boring that I had to look at Isabel. I was a prisoner on death row who escaped from prison, and I wondered if it was okay to treat me like this.
In addition, it is a miscellaneous store, but no one comes to buy things, and they all just leave things. I would think that if I left the goods and borrowed money, I would also serve in a pawnshop, but they only left the goods.
Still, rather than killing someone, I can try the poison that comes in from time to time while protecting the store, so the burden on my mind was much less. In addition, the fact that all the visitors are villains made me feel at ease.
Now there were my wanted flyers circulating on the street, and it’s funny that the villains have sympathy for me because of it. Besides, they were even more surprised to hear that I was a temporary employee of this store and encouraged my viciousness.
…Lenial’s notoriety seems to be higher than I thought.
So, I decided not to give up and to do my best to adapt to what happened to me.
Until yesterday.
However, since Leniel hasn’t been here for three days, I’m slowly thinking that now is an opportunity to escape from this place.
I recalled the original work that I had thought hard about every day. I could be caught for nothing if I left a trace, so I looked back on the original work all day long from the beginning to the end. I don’t remember the details exactly, but the big storyline was roughly organized.
In the original work, about a year after Giselle died was omitted. As far as I remember, this period was spent by the main characters in the territory. In the meantime, the two built love, and the villain conspired.
Right now, Leniel thought I wasn’t Giselle, but he didn’t seem willing to study anything about it.
But how do I know if it will change suddenly later? While I was worried that I would be on the operating table after being pointed out as a successful case of gold, I would be in trouble if I were entangled with the main characters with the body of “Giselle Roycevin.”
‘I think it’s the right time to hide or run away anywhere.’
I was thinking while rubbing my chin, but the sound of a bell hanging on the door of a general store rang loudly.
“I’m here, crazy Giselle!”
That apprentice black wizard, who vigorously stormed into the miscellaneous store, was Ten, a handyman who carried goods here.
It is said that he is working hard to carry curse items to become a formal black wizard, but no matter how much I look at it, carrying things seems to have nothing to do with being a formal black wizard.
Ten describes all these processes as training, but I guarantee that Ten’s teacher, a black wizard, just needed an errand runner.
“I’m not crazy.”
“People who are crazy don’t know that they’re crazy!”
“Wow, how could every single person I meet be so hard to understand.”
“It’s okay, Giselle. Because you’re crazy!”
Here, I am known as the Crazy Giselle. The reason was that the evilness of the original Giselle was lost. After Giselle collapsed and was locked in prison for a few days, the villains who visited said she was out of her mind and that she must be crazy.
I was treated as a crazy person by soldiers, but it’s a little unfair to be treated as a crazy person by villains. Does it make sense to describe a calm person as crazy?
“Okay, this one today.”
As soon as I started working, unidentified suppliers gathered all the poisons from all over the country and brought it here. Perhaps it seemed that Leniel had given a separate word. It’s a shame that there are no customers, but if it was a crowded general store, I would have to drink poison all night without having time to sleep.
I accepted Ten’s bottle. The lid was closed, but it smelled bad.
This is what I learned after drinking poison for 10 days here, and more than half of the poison I am eating was based on “colorless, odorless, and tasteless.” It meant that I was the only one who could feel the unique scent or taste of poison.
The same was true of the poison I ate in prison. To me, their taste and aroma are clearly different, and Leniel affirmed that no one can distinguish them from five senses.
Like a silver spoon, I wasn’t only able to find out the presence or absence of poison, but also distinguish the smell and taste of poison.
At this point, I don’t think I need to work under the villain, but shouldn’t I use this opportunity to escape?
“Hurry up and give me the certificate of delivery.”
“Oh, yes.”
At Ten’s words, I quickly took out the documents. Anyway, everyone follows the procedure unnecessarily on the subject of a villain.
Signing the document, I spoke to Ten in a passing tone.
“Do you know what a durian is?”
“What’s that?”
“A fruit that smells the same as the poison.”
“A fruit? Not trash?”
“…Did you bring poison that smells like garbage?”
“But this is hard to get.”
This poison wasn’t odorless. Then, it may be noticeable if I carry it out.
I quickly handed over the delivery certificate to Ten. After he left, I put the poison I received in a storage box and instead took out another poison bottle that was odorless and put it in my pocket. Then conscientiously, I quickly collected only the amount of money that was likely to be worth just 10 days.
I tried to rationalize that I could not help it because I had to survive in this lawless area, where it was a daily routine to kill and die.
“Okay, then…”
After taking a deep breath in front of the door, I opened it slightly and looked outside through the gap. There was a narrow, dark, and empty street. I couldn’t feel any presence. After a few days of examination, there were no magicians around.