Painful sunlight filtered through the window onto Exill’s face, causing him to wince when the crimes of the night before caught up with him. There was a splitting headache, not quite as bad as the one caused by mana abuse, but it was painful enough to make him want to vomit. Together with the feeling of the dry tongue scraping around in his mouth, it was possibly the worst morning he had experienced since coming to this world.
He sat up, feeling the urgent need to relieve himself, but the chamber pot was nowhere to be seen.
“Where did I-” he began to ask, then groaned as memories of yesterday night came trickling back. These were fragmented visions, blurred behind the haze of alcohol.
> Iris’s normally kind grey eyes were fixed on his while brushing a stray strand of her dark hair from her lips. There was a slight frown on her face as she struggled to remain balanced while bent over, her dress riding up to the hips.
>
> She spread her legs, exposing her pale inner thighs as Envy held her steady, rubbing a leaf against her exposed cotton underwear in a downward motion.
>
> “I-it is important to... wipe down.” She wavered, standing back up to hitch her dress down. The Guild clerk drunkenly finished her demonstration.
‘Oh yeah… she was teaching Envy how to use the chamber pot.’ Exill blushed furiously while trying to expunge the memory. At least now he remembered where the chamber pot was. There were two of them in the house, and since Envy had no use for one, the one in her room had been donated to Tsarra when she moved in.
His was currently in a private corner of the kitchen, available for anyone upstairs to use.
Struggling to find his pants, Exill threw on his tunic from yesterday night, tiptoeing past Envy’s open bedroom door.
Iris and Envy were entangled on the bed, still sound asleep. It was a jumble of bare flesh and he quickly moved on, already struggling with his morning wood which would be an obstacle to relieving himself.
He crouched on top of the half-full chamber pot, then switched to a kneeling position as his erection refused to die down. Closing his eyes, he recited complex mathematical theorems and soon felt it subside enough for a thin stream to painfully emerge.
Exhaling softly, he opened his eyes to find Iris frozen, the whites of her eyes visible while peering through her fingers.
“Haah!”
He panicked, struggling to cut off mid-stream but it was no use, and several seconds trickled by until he was completely empty. Only then did she seem to snap out of it, turning her back as he hurriedly stood up.
He wordlessly moved past her, and shamefully returned to his room, closing the door with a loud slam. He stood for a long minute, feeling the urge to crawl under the bed and die in embarrassment. The headache came back, stronger than ever as his blood pressure returned to normal.
‘Ah... the hangover cure is outside in the living room.’ He grimaced in pain, reluctant to face Iris so soon after their encounter. However the thundering headache, turning into a migraine convinced him otherwise.
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“Hey” he awkwardly said, eventually taking the seat diagonally across from Iris. He was determined to act like nothing had happened.
“Hi… um, is this the one I’m supposed to take?” she similarly frowned in pain, unable to meet his eyes while holding aloft a lightly glowing vial that Exill recognised as the 40% concentrate.
“Yeah, that will do.” Exill replied, making a note on the clay tablet. He himself took the 25% concentrate and immediately began to feel the throbbing in his head dissipate.
“Wow, I didn’t expect this to work so fast! How much are you planning to sell this for?”
“Five to six Denars each.” He replied, noting the wonder in her eyes.
“That is amazing! This would be incredibly popular if we stocked it in the Guild.”
Exill nodded in agreement while examining Iris. She was the one who had made the push for handbooks to be institutionalised for all new recruits. If she was on his team, there was no doubt the product would capture the market.
Iris noticed Exill’s calculating gaze, mistaking it for something else and suddenly remembered the lewd tutorial she had given Envy when the fog shrouding her mind slowly receded. ‘Oh merciful heavens… what did I do?’ she lamented softly.
“I will forget what I saw, if you never mention again what happened last night.” Iris refused to meet his eyes, her voice barely above a whisper.
“You mean teaching Envy how to-”
“Yes, that’s the one!” She cut him off, covering her face in both hands.
He didn’t fully understand why he didn’t let it go at that; it may have been because the 25% detox concentrate wasn’t enough to fully cure his hangover, or he was naturally vindictive. Either way, he clamped down on her apparent weakness.
“It hardly seems fair considering you caught a full ten seconds of my exposed member, and don’t you dare pretend otherwise, because I saw you peeking through your fingers.”
“Hyah!?” she exclaimed, vividly remembering the young man knelt before the chamber pot.
“-So you still owe me big time.” Exill finished, fully intending to leverage the incident into a favourable agreement to stock the Guild with his Detox potions.
He excused himself and climbed down the stairs to find Tsarra who had woken up from the hubbub upstairs. She was an important component of his experiment as he needed to test if the other races reacted differently to detox.
“Hey sleepyhead, take this and you should feel better.” Brushing the stray strands from her lips, he raised the vial of glowing detox to her mouth and coaxed her to drink it all.
“On a scale of one to ten, how would you describe the hangover before and after drinking the concoction?”
“Um… seven, then one?” she blinked carefully, feeling her aversion to sunlight disappear.
“Fantastic, come upstairs for a cup of tea when you are ready.” He patted her soft head, remembering to grab a spare vial from the cupboard then climbed back upstairs.
He filled the empty vial with plain water from the kitchen and infused it with mana to make it glow. Knocking on Envy’s door, he entered after hearing no response to find the Vampire covering her face with a pillow.
It wasn’t by chance that he had chosen her as the control for the experiment. It had nothing to do with the residual irritation he felt from her unwitting manipulation.
“Good morning princess, it’s time for your medication to make all the pain go away.” His voice dripped with false affection while uncorking the glowing placebo in front of her eyes. “On a scale of one to ten, how would you describe the hangover before and after drinking the concoction?” he asked after a full minute had passed.
“I don’t feel any better” she croaked, recoiling away from the loud sunlight.
“That’s strange…” He enjoyed her pain for a full minute, “Then try this.” He uncorked the 30% concentrate and poured it directly into her mouth.
“Mn… I can feel it working” she breathed a sigh of relief, feeling her body slowly return to normal.
Exill remained beside her for a while longer then asked again how she felt, feeling a surge of satisfaction at the results.
‘If I can sell the 30% concentrate in a small cask, I could save on packaging for a margin of two to three Denars per dose’ he thought. This meant after sharing fees with the vendor, he would likely be bringing in an operating profit of 200 Denars per cask.
He shot Iris a bright smile as he passed her, thinking of the ingredients and barrels he would need to order to craft a steady supply.