Two alchemists spent their lives pursuing a shared dream: creating a homunculus capable of living outside a flask, a companion that would bring happiness to people everywhere. When they succeeded, one of them immediately proposed to the king that the homunculi be deployed as weapons. The king agreed. The other alchemist, feeling betrayed and horrified, appealed directly to the throne to prevent it — and was stripped of his position and banished from the capital. Years later, still carrying the wound of that betrayal, he walks to a dumping ground in the forest and finds an abandoned sack containing a girl.