Surviving as a Plagiarist in Another World

A witch cannot love.

“One thousand years… is far too much time to waste on trial and error… The Potion of Longing, the Potion of Excitement, the Potion of Gaze… Ironically, the more potions I created, the further I felt from my goal of crafting a ‘Potion of Love’… Can you imagine it? A sculptor chipping away only at the unnecessary parts of a sculpture to complete it… Or a modeler endlessly adding to what seems lacking… An artist who achieves no balance, only to strip everything away or leave behind a grotesque amalgamation of costly materials… What I was doing was no different.”

However, witches, being a race unchanging even after a thousand years, remained endlessly diligent.

Because they could not love, they could only be blindly obsessed with love.

“Unable to feel loneliness or sorrow in the absence of the one I loved, I wondered if that was love and so created the Potion of Longing.”

When the one you love is far away, you cannot miss them.

When you wander far away like a vagabond, you cannot regret being unable to return to your hometown.

Thus, she created the Potion of Longing.

A potion that could draw up deeply pooled memories.

When you accidentally run into the one you love, your heart does not race.

You cannot let yourself be carried away by the exhilaration and joy of sharing breaths with them.

So, she created the Potion of Excitement.

A potion that made your heart race as though it would burst.

“They said love is wanting to possess all of someone, so I created a Potion of Jealousy. They said love is gazing only at one person, so I created a Potion of Gaze.”

“……”

“I believed that if I gradually filled in the lacking emotions, they would intertwine and create love. I believed that even a witch’s empty soul could be imbued with love… because that’s what I had to believe. I grew up hearing that story over and over from a young age… That the ultimate goal of a witch was to complete the Potion of Love.”

A witch cannot love.

‘Eternity’ is synonymous with ‘Unchanging.’

K2hjWHNPUHQ0V094TWhGSVh6QmUyb0c1bm9LNWxEUWc3ZE1sakt1Y0dEZktQVlpwcDkxbUpPZnR5UkhEMzFGRg

Born with the promise of ‘eternal youth,’ witches were beings forbidden the ever-changing, ever-fluctuating heart of a human.

Some witches gave up remaining ‘human’ altogether and chose to transform into ‘beasts’ in their pursuit of emotion.

Thus, the beastmen were born.

And Mary Jane still stayed in her cabin, trying to create the ‘Potion of Love.’

“Though my faith in it remains unchanged… I feel I’ve already had more than enough trial and error… I can’t think of any more potions to create. So, I wanted to ask for your opinion, Mr. Homer.” Ṝ𝙖ΝO͍𝐛Еŝ

“My opinion…?”

“Yes. I thought perhaps, as Mr. Homer, you could tell me what emotion I lack.”

“Hmm.”

Love, huh.

There are countless works of literature about love.

Stories of passionate love, first love sparked by a glance, love that fades and is replaced by new love—all of these abound in literature.

To the extreme, there are even writers who argue that every story is, at its core, a ‘love story.’

But, hmm.

I’m not exactly an expert on love, but…

It didn’t seem to me that what she needed was a ‘Potion of Love.’

Because she was the Tin Man.

As with all the characters in The Wizard of Oz, everything she needed, she already had within her.

One cannot say that the blind devotion of spending a thousand years for the sake of loving one person is not ‘love.’

She was already in love with someone.

And.

It wasn’t hard to guess who that ‘someone’ was.

“…The Alchemist.”

“Yes! Why do you ask?”

The Alchemist.

The transcendent alchemist who created the Elixir of Immortality.

The man who, as always, smiled cheerfully—the man who was clearly ‘loved’ by this witch.

The Alchemist showed no signs of awareness, whether out of obliviousness or sheer ignorance.

In any case, if this was a matter of love between the two of them, then the solution would also already exist between them.

“Gallen. Do you have a Hyde Potion, the one that reveals a person’s true essence without concealing anything?”

“Of course!”

The Alchemist pulled a small potion from his bag.

It was the ‘Hyde Potion,’ a concoction I’d already relied on a few times before, which revealed one’s essence.

Taking the potion from the Alchemist, I handed it to the witch.

“I think this might be of help to you, Mary Jane.”

“…Huh?”

The witch alternated her gaze between the Alchemist and me before finally drinking the potion.

And so, after waiting for a few minutes.

“…Nothing happened.”

As it turned out, even after drinking the ‘Hyde Potion,’ Witch Mary Jane experienced no change whatsoever.

The unchanging ‘essence’ of a witch was her present self.

Her appearance in the past had been the same, and her future self would also look no different.

The essence of a being unweathered by time was, in the end, that simple.

“Jane. Do you trust Gallen’s potion?”

“Yes. Of course, I do.”

“This potion reveals a person’s essence without hiding or leaving anything out.”

“…Are you saying that my essence is unchangeable for eternity? Because that’s how I was born? That the Potion of Love cannot be completed… is that your opinion, Mr. Homer?”

“Of course not.”

“Pardon?”

And.

If this ‘outward appearance’ truly reflected her essence with no difference at all.

The issue became very simple.

“Miss Jane, you do not need a Potion of Love.”

“What does that mean…?”

“If someone can blindly devote themselves to another, strive to understand them, and spend a thousand years just to face them… If such diligence isn’t called love, then what is it?”

“…I have no emotions. I don’t feel a fluttering heart because of love, nor do I feel warmth from it. Nothing… nothing changes. Not even a smile… it doesn’t naturally come to me, so I have to raise the corners of my mouth myself. Can this really be called love? Is love without emotion still love? If my actions resemble love, can my heart be called love as well? Can a fraud whispering words of love truly be said to love someone…?”

Mary Jane’s voice was as soft and calm as ever, yet her argument somehow felt deeply earnest.

Even after living a thousand years…

It seemed that defining oneself properly was a struggle shared by all humans.

“Of course, there are people whose insides and outsides differ.”

“……”

“But at least for Miss Jane, that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

“Why not…?”

“Because Gallen’s potion is telling us that your inner self and your outward appearance are not different.”

“…Oh.”

I know how precisely Gallen Rennion’s potions work.@@novelbin@@

I know how a prince born with a woman’s soul transformed, and how a plagiarist who lived two lives changed.

Gallen Rennion is a trustworthy alchemist.

And Mary Jane trusted him even more than I did.

“What the Wizard of Oz gave to the Tin Man was just a simple piece of metal.”

“……”

No matter how exceptional the literature I brought, it wouldn’t persuade Mary Jane.

“Do you still need magic?”

“…No.”

But if it were Gallen Rennion’s potion, it might work.

The thousand years of effort she spent looking toward the ‘Alchemist’ convinced her.

The result, however, was not dramatic.

“Perhaps… I was already in love all along….”

.

.

.

[“I can love now….”]

.

.

.

“Eternity is unchanging, huh….”

“Sorry?”

“No, nothing. I just realized I might not be so different from a witch.”

“Are you talking about The Wizard of Oz?”

“Hm, that’s right.”

I, too, had always thought there would never be anything I would place before ‘literature.’

Even if that something was love.

But… I still had the wish for others to love literature as much as I do.

Literature is not simply the sum of literary works.

Literature exists through the readers who read it, the critics who analyze it, and the dynamic interactions shaped by trends and issues.

Without others to discuss the works with, literature is nothing more than an absurd daydream born of idle imagination.

It was for this reason that, during my days on Earth, I ended up dating a junior.

“Senior!”

“Yeah?”

“Why did you accept my confession? You don’t seem interested in anything but books….”

“Hmm. Because our hobbies matched?”

“Wow. Is that it? Not because I’m pretty, kind, or good at cooking…? I think I have a lot of good qualities, you know!”

“You are pretty. You’re kind, too. Cooking… I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, so I don’t know.”

“Pfft… Oh, then why don’t you come over to my place this weekend?”

“Hmm….”

“We have a lot of limited-edition hardcovers and out-of-print books at home, too!”

“I’ll come.”

“…I feel like I just lost to books.”

Someone who could share my hobby with me.

Someone who had hobbies different from mine, like movies or dramas.

Someone whose hobby was their profession, like me.

It is because of such diverse people that literature can be called ‘literature.’

That is why, when I first transcended, I chose the ‘present’ over the ‘Eternal Library.’

Even the most beautiful sentences like an angel’s song or the most fascinating stories that could move mountains are nothing without people.

As always.

What truly matters can only be seen with the heart….

.

.

.

“Greetings. Mr. Homer. I am Anthony, the representative of Duke Kapeter.”

“Ah, you’re the son of Duke Kapeter. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“I heard my father caused you some inconvenience. Sigh….”