The Genius Perfumer of the Fallen Cult - Chapter 90
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
The Genius Perfumer of the Fallen Religious Order Episode 90
“Are those children her orphanage companions? Their eyes are practically blazing. They must get along well.”
“They’re good children.”
The Marseria Priest, Bianna, and Rozien were standing a little distance away, watching this way with serious expressions. Among them, Prim could see Rozien’s lips moving.
‘If you want to go back, just say so!’
Prim barely held back her laughter.
If she had said she didn’t want to talk to Vittorio, Rozien would have immediately picked her up and run away with her. Without caring in the least who the other person was.
“Hmm! Our little perfumer doesn’t seem very surprised to see me? Did you know I was coming? Or does it not matter to you either way?”
It was all of the above, but she knew she shouldn’t say that. Prim cleared her throat.
Since it had been a long time since they’d met, it would be a lie to say she wasn’t happy to see him at all, but her feelings were a bit complicated since she now intended to walk a different path from his.
“No… I was surprised. How did you come to be here…?”
“My disciple sent me a letter. He was making such a fuss about this truly genius little perfumer! That fellow isn’t one to act so frivolously, so I thought I should come see for myself.”
“I see.”
When Prim nodded and responded appropriately, Vittorio stood there looking somewhat dumbfounded before bursting into loud laughter.
Prim just quietly left him alone to laugh. In her past life too, he would often laugh loudly by himself while talking with her.
Even when she asked why he was laughing, he never gave her a proper answer, so now Prim didn’t even bother asking why. She just thought to herself that she must be quite an amusing person.
Having finally composed his laughter, he looked Prim up and down and said,
“Hmm, I heard you couldn’t walk, but that’s not the case?”
“I can’t walk for long periods, not right now.”
Since being cursed, she had rarely walked on her own except in emergencies, so her leg muscles were infinitely weak.
“I see. Ah! Given my age, it would be fine to speak casually, wouldn’t it? Little perfumer.”
“Do as you please.”
Prim nodded. Vittorio’s smile deepened.
“Right, I heard you couldn’t walk, but seeing you manage to walk somehow now, you must have broken the curse in the meantime? By offering fragrance to Curresen?”
“Yes.”
“That was ‘Festival’s Last Day’? I heard its pain relief effect was quite useful in this recent battle. And the fragrance our little perfumer offered to Levitia too – did you hear what the knights on the field were saying? Little one, all that’s left now is for you to become filthy rich!”
“Yes.”
She planned to use that money to develop the villa in the Silver Aspen Forest and the Temple of Varin, and to make Rozien a knight.
“Little one, did you know that Curresen, god of destruction and restoration, likes sweet things when you made that?”
“…”
Prim closed her mouth for a moment.
When dealing with fools like Baron Corvus, she could say anything carelessly, but facing Vittorio made her a bit more cautious.
Though he created perfumes very intuitively, fundamentally he never neglected to gather and absorb all information. So there would be no fragrance in this world he hadn’t smelled, and no perfumer in this world he didn’t know about.
And as a result of such thoroughness, he wanted to eliminate perfumers who weren’t sufficiently qualified from this world of fragrance. The Prim of her past life had agreed with that thinking to some extent, but now it wasn’t her concern.
Vittorio stroked his chin and bent down to meet Prim’s eyes. His pupils moved quickly, scanning over Prim. Prim unconsciously hesitated under that gaze that seemed to be confirming something.
However, even when Prim stopped answering, Vittorio moved on to the next topic without further pressing.
“Little one, I saw your perfumer exam answer sheet. It was quite interesting. Do you know that Mennellik had quite a hard time giving that test paper a perfect score?”
The cold winter air swirled between the old gentleman and the small girl. From a distance, they might have looked like a grandfather and granddaughter, but up close, one would find it strange that their conversation showed neither the consideration an elder gives to a child’s immaturity, nor the respect a young person shows for an elder’s experience.
“…I only wrote correct answers, so was there some problem?”
Why would effort be needed to give that answer sheet a perfect score?
It was just an answer sheet where everything was correct, wasn’t it?
“Hahaha!”
Vittorio burst into laughter again. He was clearly genuinely amused. He stared down at Prim intently. Then he suddenly brought up a different topic.
“Correct answers… Yes, that’s what they were. Little perfumer miss, do you sense any fragrance from me?”
‘He’s not even a cat, so why does his conversation jump around like this?’
Prim frowned at Vittorio’s scattered attention but answered.
“…Yes, I can smell the perfume you’re wearing.”
“You can also distinguish the fragrance materials in it?”
“Yes.”
“Would you recite them?”
“Bergamot, lemon, orange, grapefruit, lavender, rosemary, neroli, musk, and petitgrain.”
Though he was the one who asked her to say it, he seemed not to have imagined that Prim would actually list everything, as he froze for a moment before straightening up.
“…This is truly amazing, what fantastic olfactory sense. No wonder my disciple was so shocked he frantically wrote a letter.”
“Thank you.”
Having heard this story dozens and hundreds of times, Prim calmly nodded.
Vittorio chuckled and said,
“I blended this fragrance myself. How is it, do you like it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“In what way?”
“The technique is so refined that it appears to use no technique at all.”
At first glance, this fragrance seemed simple and therefore very easy. Wasn’t it just a slight modification of a well-known common combination?
But in fact, that wasn’t the case. Think of the effort painters put into painting white cloth white. How much anguish goes into depicting the obvious as obvious.
Vittorio looked dumbfounded and then laughed again.
“Yes, exactly. It’s vulgar when the artifice shows too much. Don’t you agree?”
“There are also things that are more beautiful when that feeling itself is revealed.”
“Do you have principles or not? This is good and that is good too? Then what does our little perfumer think about the bergamot in this?”
Prim closed her mouth.
She thought it was really good bergamot. It was definitely made using the same method as the answer she had written for the perfumer qualification exam – a truly good fragrance.
And Mennellik had responded to that as if he had never seen such an extraction method before. It was also clear that it was a method not yet widely spread in the world.
But the bergamot in the perfume he was wearing now was a fragrance extracted exactly according to the method she had written.
Had Mennellik secretly told him the extraction method she wrote to create this fragrance material? Was that why he mentioned seeing the exam answer sheet?
Or else…
When Prim remained silent after pondering, he smiled deeply and changed the subject.
“Hmm, little one, I heard you took the third practical exam in an interesting way. You divided it into ten bottles, mixed them separately, then combined them all?”
“Yes.”
“And then when mixing the alcohol, you started from a very high concentration?”
“Um, yes.”
“Hmm.”
When Prim fell silent after that brief answer, he straightened up and smiled deeply.
“I thought ‘surely not,’ but surely not wasn’t the case, little one. No, no. This wouldn’t be a little one, would it?”
“What?”
Prim’s eyes widened as she looked up at him.
He grinned.
“You’ve come back through time, haven’t you?”
“…”
Prim unconsciously opened her mouth, then closed it, then tried to say she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Uhahahahahaha!”
But laughter burst from Vittorio, who had been meeting her eyes, came first. Everyone around glanced over at that loud laughter, but didn’t dare come closer.
Only Prim wore a bewildered expression.
Vittorio, who had been laughing so hard he nearly rolled on the ground, finally straightened up.
“How could you not know! Uhahahahaha! Hahahaha!”
Prim now looked at him with an dumbfounded face, at a loss for words.
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————