Overtime
I deliberately chose a table tucked into the far corner of the bar.
The reason was obvious: the conversation we were about to have was not one I wanted broadcast across the room. Even at a place like this — a wine bar, where people generally kept to their own tables and their own drinks — a little caution was still in order.
"Hmm... I really don't know the first thing about wine, so I'm not sure what I should order."
"Just get a decent white."
"Shall we go with that, then?"
"Yeah."
I didn't know a thing about this sort of subject anyway, so I decided to follow Saran's lead without argument. After a full day of wandering around, the fatigue had started to catch up with me, and we were only looking for something light. Anything reasonably decent would do just fine.
"How was today, Saran?"
"It was fun."
"Hehe. I'm glad to hear that. I was a little worried I might have made you uncomfortable, since I planned the whole itinerary on my own. Hearing that you enjoyed it is a real relief."
"...Yeah."
The first step toward helping Saran with her troubles could, I thought, be counted as a success. Granted, that was only my own assessment — but her face looked so much brighter than it had on the day we'd first met, and she herself had said today was a good day.
That was enough.
The next step would be getting her to open up about the things that wore her down at work. The exhaustion and isolation she carried felt like the kind of weight that could start to lift if she simply had someone to talk to about it.
Of course, ongoing treatment was still necessary. A person's heart was not something you could fix with a single afternoon of quality time.
"Wow, the cheese aroma. Doesn't it smell amazing? You should try it too, Saran."
"Yeah. It's nice."
The way she flicked her snake's tongue to catch the scent was genuinely fascinating. Honestly, I was starting to get... curious.
A snake. What would that even feel like?
I wanted to touch it, just once — but that felt far too rude. I watched her as I took in the wine's bouquet myself.
Mm. Nice.
I was rather pleased I'd brought Saran somewhere better than expected.
"You drink much?"
"Hmm... I'm not much of a drinker. About one bottle of soju? If I go beyond that, it depends on how I'm feeling, but... more than one bottle is pretty rough."
"I see."
My alcohol tolerance had been about the same in my previous life as it was in this one. Not enough to proudly claim I could hold my liquor, that was for sure. Wine had a lower alcohol content, though, so I could probably handle more than one bottle without much trouble.
"......"
"What is it?"
I'd been pouring myself a glass, trying to get a proper sense of the aroma, when I noticed Saran staring at me intently. I tilted my head and asked.
"It's nothing."
"Huh."
What was that about. Even after spending the whole day together, she was still remarkably hard to read. Then again, with looks like hers, the only impression that really stuck was that she was cool.
"Shall we drink?"
"Ah, shall we? Even if it's wine, this is a pretty expensive bottle. It'd be a shame to just keep smelling it."
"Yeah."
And so we clinked our glasses together — a light, casual toast — and began to drink.
I didn't know much about wine, but the fragrance and flavor were more than enough to tell me this wasn't a bad one. There was nothing harsh about it, whether I held it in my mouth or let it slide down my throat.
It was the kind of taste that people who couldn't hold their liquor would absolutely love.
In other words, a taste I loved.
"This is really delicious, isn't it?"
"It is."
"When I bought wine from a convenience store before, it was so bitter. This doesn't have any of that — it's actually sweet. I like it."
"Yeah. And eating cheese with the wine is pretty... yeah. They go well together."
Saran must have liked the wine too. She was smiling, glass in hand.
It was a good look on her.
From there, we settled into the wine and the snacks, talking over everything that had happened throughout the day. The shopping, the restaurant where we'd had lunch, all the places we'd wandered afterward — there was plenty to discuss. And that was before you even counted the exhibits lining the corridor on the way into the wine bar.
"...You were right."
"Yes?"
"Spending time like this... it feels good. I used to just stay home by myself. Just being out and about like this already feels a little better."
"Hehe. That's wonderful to hear."
And at the end of that conversation, I heard those words from her own lips.
I was, at the end of the day, just someone who worked at the Hero Association with an office worker's mindset. And yet every time I heard something like this, I felt a little spark of accomplishment — of joy. It made me glad I'd chosen this job.
I'd ended up in the Welfare Bureau more or less by accident. But I'd been working there for over a year now, so maybe it had all worked out for the best.
"I never spent time with anyone like this after I started hero work."
"...Not since your debut?"
"Yeah."
"...That's six years. No wonder it's been hard."
"I think so."
"That's incredible..."
"...Is it?"
"Yes. I really think you're amazing."
I meant every word. Saran was far more remarkable than I'd given her credit for, and that was why I said it.
"Your work is quite specialized, after all. You couldn't easily talk to anyone about it, and that must have been incredibly frustrating. If I were in your position — unable to talk to anyone about my job for six years — I definitely would have gone crazy and quit."
"Is that so..."
"Yes, of course."
"I never thought about it that way. It was just the job. Not being able to talk about it publicly was part of the job. That was all."
"That doesn't mean your effort and all that hard time amounted to nothing, does it?"
"...No. It doesn't."
It wasn't that Saran had simply not wanted to connect with anyone. She'd happened to take on specialized work even among heroes — work that could never be made public — and she couldn't talk about it with a soul.
That isolation had only deepened over time, locking her into a space and a life that belonged to her alone.
So I praised her, sincerely.
And perhaps my praise and comfort had landed. Saran's eyes curved into a smile.
"...Honestly. I thought about it a lot before I contacted the Welfare Bureau team leader."
"What kind of thoughts?"
"I'd heard somewhere that there was a hypnotist in the Welfare Bureau. So I spent a lot of time wondering if they could just fix my problems with hypnosis."
"Ah..."
...That was honestly a little unfair.
I understood where it came from, but I still felt wronged. Yes, I had a hypnosis ability, but it wasn't nearly as powerful as people seemed to think. And I didn't actually help heroes with hypnosis alone — I mostly introduced them to programs and recommended solutions through counseling.
Times I'd actually used hypnosis to solve a problem, the way I had with Batori, were vanishingly rare.
And yet, somehow, I was increasingly becoming known as the person who fixed things with hypnosis. It meant I'd been helpful, sure — but the rumor had gotten so distorted that I didn't know how to respond.
"I was pretty skeptical, but I never expected you'd help me like this."
"Haha. I'm glad."
"Yeah."
"Hypnosis has a lot of advantages, but it's not a fundamental solution. A person's heart is a lot more resilient than you'd think — you can't just overwrite it completely with an ability."
I offered that while taking a sip of wine. Talking about Saran's situation might have been a little awkward from her perspective, but I wasn't spilling any individual hero's secrets. I was just a counselor doing my job.
"...So, about that. Could we keep meeting up like this on a regular basis?"
"Of course. That's what today was meant to be — a first step. Though... I might not be able to plan a full day of activities every time we meet. I'm a working professional too, and I have other heroes I need to see as well."
"Yeah, that's fine. As long as we meet once a week."
"Hehe. Shall we do that, then?"
The wine was starting to warm me up, so I gathered my platinum-blonde hair and tied it neatly behind my head as I answered.
Once a week.
Borrowing a day on the weekend to spend time with her wouldn't be a problem. Or we could just meet after work on a weekday for a light dinner — even that would help her a great deal.
In the end, it wasn't regular work so much as overtime — weekends and late nights. But being able to help someone who needed it was a good thing.
And in Saran's case, getting this kind of help from anyone other than me would have been... a little difficult.
"Ah. By the way, about what you mentioned when we first met."
"Hm?"
"Your tongue — could you stick it out for me? Just once, nice and looong...? Hehe, I've been so curious ever since we first met."
"......"
"Ah, is that not okay...?"
The mood was good, and I'd helped her, after all. So I figured I'd ask.
The curiosity had been building all day as we walked around together. Truthfully, I didn't just want to look — I wanted to touch her tongue, feel its temperature.
But that would have been way too perverted.
Yes, yes. This counted as me exercising restraint.
"...Fine. I'll show you. I still don't get why you're that curious about it, though..."
"Hah!"
The result was a complete, total victory.
Saran looked faintly incredulous and a little embarrassed as she took a sip of wine to rinse her mouth.
"Ssssss......"
With a distinctive snake-like hiss, a pretty pink tongue emerged.
The tip was clearly forked — a snake's tongue. And it was unmistakably thinner than a normal tongue, which was so fascinating I couldn't take my eyes off it.
I stayed locked on Saran's tongue until she remarked that my staring was getting weird and pulled it back in.
...Though honestly, the fact that she could pronounce things normally with a tongue like that was pretty amazing in itself.
No.
More precisely, it was her voice — the way air seemed to catch in it, giving it that hollow quality — that might have been the tongue's influence. And that only made it more fascinating.
"...That was a little perverted."
"Eh? Why...?!"
...It wasn't like I'd freely touched it the way I had with Batori.
I felt considerably wronged.