The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 101: Post-bath Drinks Are Something Special

The bathwater was set to the perfect temperature.

I put up my hair with a towel. Apparently that was what girls with long hair tended to do when they went in for a wash.

So I tried copying them and.... hm, it wasn’t bad.

My body was a complete mess upon coming back to the County due to spending two weeks in a cramped and musty space with the Youko. There were more than a couple areas that felt gross.

A bath was obviously a must. This itself wasn’t an issue.

The problem lay elsewhere.

“You can come in.”

My body was covered in only a single towel. When I saw Lotte sitting on the bathroom floor, I felt conflicted. I spoke with a bit of petulance like a kid complaining about their food.

“Do we really have to wash together?”

“It’s to save water.”

Lotte quirked her lips. Such a frugal mindset.

“And I also want to take my time talking with you. It’s been a while, right? The earlier we start catching up, the better.”

Speaking boldly, Lotte slipped her feet into the tub. I followed her in slowly with a sigh.

“So why were you in the Count’s office before coming here?”

“Ah, I had something to briefly discuss with my father.”

“Hmm.”

We sat facing each other a short distance apart. When I glanced over at the other side, I could see a faint silhouette below the steaming surface. Even the water wasn’t enough to hide my friend’s smooth curves.

I pulled down the towel on my head and blocked my own vision.

“What are you doing?”

“Eliminating agony1.”

What was my purpose in doing this?

It was a poor excuse to say that it was because I had the mind of a man. I had been in this body for how many years now? I wasn’t that naive to be flustered by the sight of a woman’s nakedness.

We were all adults, anyway, old enough to know better. So this was simply courtesy, manners.

Hence, this behavior was coming from a more primal emotion. I had never bathed with anyone in my life–no experience of having bathed with family, let alone in a public bath house.

As such, I was uncomfortable with showing my body to others. If I had to be specific, then, yeah, it was because of awkwardness.

Anyway, I borrowed a long towel from a maid and covered myself to minimize this discomfort.

By wrapping this white towel around and covering the top of my breasts down to the adductors, I was able to have a sense of peace. I stuck my mouth below the water and blew bubbles.

Trickle, trickle, trickle.

Hot water poured out from the mouth of a statue shaped like a lion. It was probably because this was a noble’s residence, but their bathroom was on another scale. The width was a different level from the regular ones seen in normal houses.

As I stared blankly into space, Lotte took out some bath salts from a basket and mixed it into the water.

“We made it. If you take an unwooded rosemary sprig and soak it well in vinegar, it makes for a decent scent.”

“It’s nice.”

A subtle, refreshing scent wafted up my nose. It seemed to be mixed with other ingredients like mint or jasmine as well.

Once she finished putting in the salts, Lotte brushed her hair aside and stretched out her leg. It was an indication that she wanted to have a ‘serious conversation’ with me.

She started to speak earnestly.

“How have you been when you were away in beastkin country?”

“Mm, alright, I guess.”

“What were you doing there that took so long?”

It wasn’t a question I could answer truthfully, but I wasn’t comfortable with lying to such an honest friend, either.

In such cases, this was the approach to take. It was called the ‘do not lie’ strategy.

“There’s an old friend I know who lives there. I was going to see how they were doing.”

It was a secret that the friend was referring to Freyr. The number of people who knew her identity needed to be kept to a minimum.

“I was going to meet up with that friend and go shopping around that area before coming back. You know, that well-known brand of mana grass that they sell?”

“I see. Then what about your hometown that you mentioned before?”

“Huh?”

“You said that the place you were born was beyond the Pitchblende Mountains. I thought you were going there since it’s the break.”

Ah, yeah, I did say that.

It was that first day we arrived here. I’d unconsciously blurted out the word ‘hometown’ while gazing at the mountains.

That my hometown was beyond them.

Of course, it wasn’t my actual hometown. It had only been a metaphor for getting one step closer to returning to Earth by meeting Jǫrmungandr at Pitchblende Mountain and fulfilling her request of helping the beastkin.

I readily had an excuse for this as well.. I answered her right away.

“I live even further past it. You’d at least have to cross the ocean.”

The Ahrens continent looked like Pangaea–a single large continent for the whole planet. There were few other places besides it that people could actually walk on.

“I was born on a remote island way out there.”

This, too, wasn’t wrong. Our country was basically an archipelago in its separated state.

“Then were you lying about growing up in the Elankayas?”

“It’s not a lie, technically. There was a period in which I lived there, too.”

The place that the Goddess dropped me was the northern Elankaya Cordillera. I had spawned in some tiny, wasted village, and as I’d looked around wondering where I was, I had been caught by a slaver who’d come hunting for Golden-Eyeds.

Lotte nodded at my unhesitant response in a sign that she’d roughly understood.

There was a bit of guilt, but this was better for both me and Lotte. What difference would it make to confess that I wasn’t from this world? It would only add to the confusion.

But this felt like I was defending my thesis.

“Okay. Then moving on. This was my biggest question.... That girl who was here until earlier, Akasha, is she really your younger twin?”

This was the hardest thing to make her accept.

I didn’t know Akasha, didn’t hear anything about her from Vermel, even. Yet some kid who looked exactly like me suddenly showed up and called me her sister.... so I could only be baffled.

Nothing came to mind regarding this.

“I think she is.”

“You knew her name. What happened?”

Lotte asked for an explanation.

Last time, I had answered Lotte that I had ‘just one older sister’ when she asked about my family. But to say now that I had a younger twin sister?

That would make me the only liar here. It could be something trivial at the moment, but it was going to hurt my credibility later on.

“I’m sorry.”

The answer to this was to grovel.

“I really didn’t remember anything about her. Weird, right? I remembered my home, my old friend, yet had no clue that I had a younger sister.”

Akasha’s existence alone rendered all my previous statements moot. What a troublesome kid.

The only way to avoid it was to apologize. If I explained first that there was a contradiction in what I said and apologized, then.... yeah.

“It isn’t.”

Shaking her head, Lotte smiled. She then folded her legs and took out something from the basket. One was shampoo, and the other was a rounded glass bottle.

“What’s this?”

“Treatment.”

Treatment? I’d heard of it, but I wasn’t sure exactly what it was for.

“Let’s continue this outside. We’ll get light-headed if we stay here too long.”

I nodded and closely looked over the treatment. It was a liquid with a colorless, slippery texture like oil.

Alright, let’s think.

Shampoo was the only thing necessary to wash hair. Then she must have given this to put on my body.

Moreover, treatment in English meant ‘cure’. Seeing how it was viscous, it was probably applied on the body to treat skin conditions.

It was a perfect deduction.

I poured the treatment in the bottle onto my hand and rubbed it on my neck, shoulder, etc. Lotte’s face turned shocked when she saw this.

“Wait, what are you doing?”

What.

“Isn’t this how it’s used?”

“That’s hair treatment, to put on your hair....”

Fucking–

“You should’ve asked if you didn’t know.”

Sighing, Lotte lifted a hand to her forehead.

Both of my cheeks burned. It probably wasn’t because Lotte was coming over here with her milky skin on display.

“See, look. You squeeze it onto your hand and rub it evenly into your hair. Doing this prevents damage to your locks.”

Shfff, shfff.

Lotte sat behind me and rubbed treatment into my hair. I could feel her delicate fingers burrowing in between the long strands. It was like getting a scalp massage from a professional.

I was gradually getting drowsier at Lotte’s touch. It was because I wasn’t fully recovered yet from visiting the Youko village.

“You’re not sleeping, are you?”

I was about to doze off but snapped out of it when Lotte suggested that we get out.

I was feeling a little out of it after washing in warm water. I rubbed my sleepy eyes as I dried off. My hair was longer than Lotte’s so it took that much longer to dry.

While I dried my hair, Lotte took out a bottle of alcohol from the fridge and two glasses.

“What’s that?”

“It’s ice wine, a type of alcohol commonly known as a ‘work drink’2.”

A work drink. Was it something you drank while working?

No, it couldn’t be. What kind of bastard would drink on the job?

And most of all, it was best not to make unnecessary assumptions. Didn’t I just act like a nerd because I couldn’t figure out how to use hair treatment? Uh.... well, I guess I technically was a nerd. I was a bit saddened by the sudden introspection.

Either way, I still had to ask her what it was.

“What’s a ‘work drink’?”

“Huh? You really don’t know?”

Lotte looked at me, her eyes slightly surprised. She then let out a big sigh.

“You almost drank it without knowing. This is something that goes down easy but it’s stronger than expected so you can get drunk rather quickly.”

“Oho.”

“If you’re okay with it, then do you want to drink together?”

The part about it having high alcohol content made me hesitate for a moment.

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I was weak to alcohol. A single one-liter glass of the draft beer that they had at fried chicken places was the perfect amount for me.

I didn’t drink that often in the first place so I’d never even tried soju or hard liquors. I wasn’t sure if it was worth the risk of suddenly trying a strong drink under those circumstances.

“We haven’t seen each other in a while, so I thought we could get drunk together.... A-ah, I mean! You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’ll put it back in the fridge!”

“What are you saying?”

I smiled dryly.

“There’s nothing like alcohol for having deep conversations.”

Alcohol broke down walls between people. It helped them to have serious conversations and brought out difficult words that would normally be too embarrassing to say while sober.

If I drank moderately, then there would be more to gain than lose. With that judgment, I didn’t refuse.

“It’s an expensive wine, no? And a noble lady is offering it to me for free.”

I followed Lotte into her room.

“Alright, raise your glass. As a noble, I will exercise noblesse oblige and do the honors of pouring it for you.”

“Oblige between friends, really?”

A glass of wine after a bath–there was something elegant about it.

I lifted my glass with a smirk.

Trickle.

A pleasant sound filled the short wine glass.

The glass was only about a pinky’s-length tall. It looked so small that I wondered if it was possible to get drunk with this amount, even if the alcohol was strong.

The bright moonlight came spilling through the window just then. A sweet smell wafted from the moon reflected in the glass.

“Is it a grape drink3?”

“Mm. I’m not too sure either but it’s probably similar.”

It wasn’t bad. This didn’t seem like it would cause me to black out.

With a pleased smile, Lotte lifted her wine glass.

The glasses went clink. We took in the aroma of alcohol and knocked back our glasses at the same time.

And.

Tap.

“Ahhhh....”

“Auuu....”

We both got drunk.

1. Referring to 'kleshas' which "are mental states that cloud the mind and manifest in unwholesome actions. Kleshas include states of mind such as anxiety, fear, anger, jealousy, desire, depression, etc."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleshas\_(Buddhism)2. 작업주 - In Korea, the word 'work (작업)' is also used in the context of seducing/putting the moves on someone. 'Work drink' refers to alcohols that taste sweet yet not strong but have high alcohol content, usually enjoyed by women so guys would treat them to it. A very specific equivalent in western society is the Lady Killer cocktail which wasn't used in this case since it wouldn't make sense as to why the MC mistook it for a drink to have while working.3. 포도주 - Apparently podoju doesn't involve a fermenting process like wine and is therefore considered something different