For Eliza a story of lies of p again!
This tine this is a medicine seller reader, which has the title of kusuriuri!
No warning this is fluff and crack!
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The room was quiet save for the sound of cloth being unrolled and water dripping gently into a stone basin. The air was heavy with incense—something floral, but faint, meant to lull the mind and keep spirits at bay.
Carlo winced as pale, elegant hands wrapped gauze around his forearm with precise care.
“You should stop flinching,” the Kusuriuri said, voice smooth and detached like rain falling on porcelain. “You’re going to wrinkle the bandage.”
Carlo was watching her like she might suddenly unhinge her jaw and swallow him whole.
The Kusuriuri sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, a small lacquered box open beside her, filled with glass vials, strange herbs, powders in colors that didn’t belong in this world, and tiny wooden tools that clicked and scraped like bones in motion.
He flinched every time something tapped or scraped.
“Can you not… do that?” he muttered through clenched teeth, as her needle-thin fingers stirred a glowing ointment in a mother-of-pearl bowl.
She didn’t look up. “Do what?”
“That.” He waved vaguely at everything she was. “The… scraping. The dripping. The weird smells. The glowing.”
“Because you’re being paid.”
She paused, then tilted her head in mock thought. “Payment is useful.”
Romeo sat perched on a chair nearby, legs swinging like a child’s. He had been given one job—one job—by Carlo: “If she does anything shady, slice her neck open.”
So naturally, Romeo was currently eating a popsicle.
“Where’d you even get that?” Carlo growled.
“She gave it to me.” Romeo smiled, proudly brandishing the half-melted thing. “Said it would keep me quiet.”
Carlo turned slowly to glare at her.
She had the nerve to smile faintly.
Her appearance didn’t help anything. Pale skin that shimmered oddly under the lamplight, long sleeves that hid too much movement, red markings that swirled across her face in delicate patterns that made it hard to tell where her expression ended and magic began. Her lips were the color of pressed plum, and her eyes—gods, her eyes—were too gold. Not “sunshine gold.” More like “ancient-coins-in-a-crypt” gold.
And she smelled like dried sakura petals, vinegar, and a hint of fox fur.
She moved closer, silently, and lifted Carlo’s arm with fingers that were cold and strangely soft. He tensed. She began to bandage his wound with an ointment that made his skin fizz and hiss like it was frying in lemon juice.
“I’m just saying,” Romeo said around the stick of his popsicle, “if she is half-fox or some shit—and I’m not saying she is—but if she is…”
Carlo exhaled heavily, trying not to yelp at the sting. “Romeo, shut up.”
“…do they like, give birth to a full litter of kits? Like six? Seven? Is that a thing?”
The Kusuriuri paused mid-wrap. Her head turned very slowly toward Romeo.
Carlo turned at the exact same time.
Romeo blinked between the two of them, wide-eyed, the popsicle stick still in his mouth.
Then, the Kusuriuri’s painted lips curled into a smile—one of those amused, I’m-not-going-to-kill-you-but-I’ll-think-about-it smiles.
“I suppose,” she said smoothly, “that depends on the father’s stamina. You seem confident—do you volunteer?”
Romeo made a sound like a squeaking duck and nearly fell off the chair.
Carlo pinched the bridge of his nose, voice low and full of pure exhaustion. “She was hired. By. My father.”
“You’re the one who’s letting her rub green fire on your arm,” Romeo muttered.
“I’m going to get tetanus,” Carlo muttered back.
“Not from me,” the Kusuriuri said cheerfully. “I clean my needles. Mostly.”
Carlo stared at her in horror.
She leaned in, golden eyes gleaming. “Mostly.”
The ointment began to cool on Carlo’s arm, taking the pain with it. The bandage was tight, but perfectly wrapped. She stood, sleeves swishing silently, and began repacking her box of oddities.
Romeo whispered, “Do you think she sleeps hanging upside down?”
She raised one brow without looking up.
Carlo grunted, flexing his healing hand. “What is she, anyway?”
“Whatever she wants,” Romeo whispered.
The change came slow—like spring thawing through frost. Day by day, the petrification that had gripped Carlo’s limbs receded, like stone unlearning how to be flesh.
First it was his fingers—once stiff and gray, they now flexed, tinged with life. Then his forearms, his chest, his throat. Color returned in shy patches, his skin no longer cold as marble but faintly warm, like sunlight trying to be brave.
The Kusuriuri remained unbothered by the transformation. She continued her work with the same calm, clinical grace, murmuring to her strange powders, counting herbs that whispered when crushed, never hurrying. It was never dramatic. Just quiet, eerie progress.
Romeo, of course, ruined the silence.
He leaned over Carlo’s recovering form one evening as the Kusuriuri reapplied a salve that smelled like mint and nightmares, and whispered way too loudly:
“I remember back at the orphanage, some of the older boys said they overheard the principal mumbling something about wanting the ‘hot nurse treatment.’” He wiggled his eyebrows. “I think your dad got mixed up. Instead of hot and crazy nurse, he just sent you crazy.”
The Kusuriuri, kneeling by his side, slowly turned her head toward Romeo, a single brow rising so high it might’ve floated off her face.
Romeo grinned like a goblin. “No offense.”
“Offense taken,” she replied sweetly, grinding something in a stone bowl with the exact same energy as someone planning to poison soup.
“Romeo,” Carlo said in a voice that sounded like dry gravel, “if you don’t shut up, I’m going to rub this mystery paste directly into your gums.”
“I’m just saying!” Romeo backed up with his hands in the air. “You’re lying there, she’s rubbing you with oils, whispering spells—if this were a romance novel, you’d be shirtless and blushing by now.”
“I’m already shirtless,” Carlo growled.
“And you did blush earlier when she touched your collarbone,” Romeo sang.
“I wasn’t blushing. I was flinching.”
“I can’t believe she’s not charging us extra for the fantasy experience.”
The Kusuriuri calmly reached into her sleeve and pulled out a wooden clacker, the kind used to summon attention. She clacked it once. A spark of pink mist exploded next to Romeo’s ear. He squawked.
“Correction,” she said, now stirring something glowing blue, “I gently redirected your chaotic energy.”
“I think I peed a little.”
“I told you not to eat that second popsicle,” she muttered.
Carlo, meanwhile, let out a long exhale. He glanced down at his now fully mobile arm, turning it, watching the light hit skin that looked human again, not carved.
“It's working,” he muttered. “Gods, it’s actually working.”
“You doubted me,” the Kusuriuri said absently, now sorting bone pins into a pouch.
“I still do,” Carlo replied. “You boiled something inside my boot.”
“That was a diagnostic spell.”
“You could’ve just asked me to take it off.”
She gave a beatific smile. “Where’s the fun in that?”
Romeo was still patting his singed ear when he looked between the two of them. “So uh... we keeping her?”
Carlo didn’t answer. He looked down at his hand again, flexing his fingers—alive, healthy. Then he glanced up at her, the shimmer of her tattoos catching candlelight, that strange fox-like calm in her gaze.
“Stalking Is a Delicate Artform”
Carlo was back on his feet.
The stiffness lingered in his joints like an awkward houseguest, but his strength was returning. Slowly. Too slowly, by his standards.
Which was why he had decided, without consulting anyone, that today was the perfect day to “resume training.”
The Kusuriuri had told him, in a voice as patient as a haunted clock, to rest. Romeo, in a rare flash of common sense, had offered to spar instead, “just to keep your pride alive.” But Carlo was determined.
“I’m not just going to sit around while my tendons grow moss,” he muttered, pulling on a shirt like it was made of sandpaper. “I’m a stalker.”
“Yes,” the Kusuriuri said from her corner, sipping tea and not looking up from her alchemical notes. “That much is painfully clear.”
“I was feared across five provinces.”
“For your attitude, probably.”
Romeo, who was already in the courtyard doing half-hearted stretches, yelled over his shoulder, “Are we pretending this is a serious training montage? Because I brought my imaginary flute soundtrack!”
“Shut up,” Carlo hissed as he limped past him. “This is serious.”
“Everything you do is serious,” Romeo muttered. “That’s why I’m here to add comedy.”
It was going well. For five seconds.
Carlo went for a pivot-slide and immediately overextended, landing face-first in the grass with the grace of a collapsing bookshelf.
Romeo rushed to help him up, only to trip on his own coat tail and crash on top of him.
The Kusuriuri didn’t look up. “Ah. The power of coordinated failure.”
Carlo sat up, breath wheezing, grass in his hair. “I meant to do that.”
Romeo, still face-down, mumbled, “I think I’ve dislocated my self-esteem.”
Undeterred (and deeply humiliated), Carlo got back up. “I used to be able to scale a wall in five seconds.”
“That’s adorable,” Romeo wheezed. “Should I grab the ladder now?”
“I don’t need a ladder,” Carlo barked.
He marched toward the wall.
The Kusuriuri finally looked up, raising one perfectly tattooed brow. “Do you require a hex to enhance your delusion?”
“No,” Carlo grunted, already grabbing onto a ledge. “Just silence.”
Three seconds later, a thud. Then a curse. Then Romeo again, yelling, “You landed on my leg!”
“You’re under the climbing wall?”
“I was observing artistically!”
The Kusuriuri blinked, then calmly scribbled something in her notebook: “Symptoms of post-petrification delusion include: denial, unnecessary acrobatics, and shared idiocy.”
Eventually, they both hobbled back into the house, sweaty, scratched, and ego-bruised.
The Kusuriuri handed Carlo a cooling cloth and Romeo another popsicle.
Carlo collapsed into a chair with a groan. “I’ll try again tomorrow.”
She patted his shoulder once with a gloved hand. “Good. Just wait until your soul reattaches to your knees.”
Romeo, licking the popsicle and kicking his feet up, grinned. “Next time, let’s skip the training and just wrestle in the dirt from the start.”
The next morning, the courtyard was eerily quiet.
Carlo was resting (mostly pouting) in a shaded corner with his arm propped up on a cushion and his pride tucked somewhere beneath yesterday’s failed training montage. The Kusuriuri was perched cross-legged on a mat, surrounded by a small constellation of ornate boxes, scrolls, and paper charms. She was grinding herbs with the care of a calligrapher and humming a tune that sounded like a lullaby being played backward.
Romeo, naturally, was circling like a moth around a forbidden lantern.
“What’s this one?” he asked, pointing to a small purple vial.
“Hallucinogenic powder extracted from regret and nightmares,” the Kusuriuri said, not even glancing up.
Romeo blinked. “That’s... so specific.”
Carlo didn’t even look. “Don’t touch anything.”
But Romeo did touch something. Of course he did.
It wasn’t the vial he went for though—it was a tiny lacquered box with a silvery mark on the lid. The second his fingers brushed it, a puff of green smoke exploded in his face.
He staggered back, blinking furiously. “I didn’t open it! I breathed near it!”
Carlo groaned, already standing (with mild effort). “If you turn into a frog again, I’m not helping.”
“I wasn’t a frog, I was an emotionally confused toad,” Romeo argued, swatting at imaginary fireflies. “Wait. Am I... seeing my memories? Is that me crying over burnt soup in the orphanage kitchen?”
The Kusuriuri finally turned her head, resting her chin on her palm, watching him as one might a mildly cursed puppet parade.
“That powder reacts to repressed emotional failure,” she said simply.
Carlo covered his face. “He’s going to be useless all day.”
“I’m reliving puberty,” Romeo wailed. “And it’s louder this time!”
Carlo turned to her, trying not to look amused. “Is there an antidote?”
The Kusuriuri shrugged one shoulder. “Time. Or an embarrassing story louder than his own memories.”
Romeo, now dramatically laying on the grass, moaned, “Tell her about the wall incident.”
Carlo pointed at him. “You already told her.”
Romeo rolled over. “Then admit she’s a little terrifying in a hot fox-witch kind of way.”
There was silence. The Kusuriuri didn’t react, continuing her work calmly. But the edges of her mouth twitched—barely.
Carlo crossed his arms, trying to fight the warmth creeping to his cheeks. “You're high. Go sleep it off.”
Romeo gave a thumbs-up from the grass. “I’ll be here. Dying of secondhand shame.”
The Kusuriuri finally stood, dusting her hands. “Good. He’ll be quieter unconscious.”
She walked past Carlo, brushing close—just enough to leave the scent of crushed herbs and rain-drenched leaves in her wake.
Carlo blinked after her, heart doing a strange, traitorous lurch.
“…She scares me,” Romeo mumbled into the dirt.
“Yeah,” Carlo muttered, watching her vanish into the hall.
“But she’s got cool socks.”
He was already wondering what exactly the smell of her was made from… and why it was starting to feel oddly comforting.
