Dorothy and Oz
"Rank 3! Rank 3! Don't just stand there gawking—register them first!"
Still flat on the floor, the Guild Master bellowed, and the clerk scrambled back to the counter. He rummaged underneath, pulled out a sheet of paper, drew a long breath, and managed to set a smile on his flustered face.
"This guild is only a branch in a small village, so the highest rank we can issue is Rank 3. Anything above that has to be done in a large city, or in the Royal Capital."
He launched into an explanation that one ordinarily registered at Rank 6 and climbed the ranks little by little from there.
"But with healing this strong, you could start at Rank 2 this very moment. A mage of two attributes is exceedingly rare. Of course, a magical beast that listens to a child is rare as well—no, a child who can give orders to a magical beast is the rare thing. The basic nature of those creatures is that they do not listen."
He seemed to think it was less that the child had tamed the beast than that the beast itself was clever. Juhwan thought so too.
The clerk smiled, drawing the corners of his mouth up as far as they would go.
"If you register as Rank 3 here for now, we'll send the paperwork straight to the main branch. Then, whenever you reach a large city later, you can become Rank 2 at any time."
He had just opened his mouth to explain something further when a huge face rose abruptly over the counter.
"Register them first."
The Master. He still looked as if he were in pain. He set his chin on the counter and seized the clerk's wrist.
"Save the talk. Register."
Only then did it occur to Juhwan that the bite Oz had given him was still untreated. The man's head catching fire had been the greater crisis, and his attention had never reached so far. Blood was running from the back of the Master's neck, soaking his clothes red. The bite had been thorough.
Juhwan quietly laid a hand against the Master's neck and sent mana into it. Dorothy stole a glance at them and asked in a small voice.
"Dad, did Oz do a bad thing?"
"..."
Hard to say. The Master had meant no harm, but the chances were high that someone else would.
The Master drew his mouth into a small smile and answered in Juhwan's place.
"No, little one. The beast did well. That fellow protected his master. You mustn't scold him. And the moment you told him to stop, he stopped, didn't he? That magical beast is an outstanding one. And you—you are a growing sprout-tree!"
Dorothy's face lit up.
"Yeah! Dorothy is a sprout-tree."
No. There was no such thing as a sprout-tree in this world. Probably. He could not be certain, this being a world other than Earth, but a sprout was a sprout and a tree was a tree. Even so, it changed Dorothy's whole air. The face that had been anxious only a moment before brightened.
However strong Juhwan was, and however little anyone dared come at him, the mood of the place had clearly unsettled the child. He did not think Dorothy had done anything wrong, yet she must have felt guilt under all those eyes. The Master had swept that feeling away in a breath. When the person who had actually been hurt laughed it off, everyone standing beside him felt forgiven too.
Juhwan met the Master's eyes and dipped his head. Thank you, he said without a sound, and the Master grinned.
By then the clerk seemed to have finished filling in the paper. He thrust a sheet out in front of Juhwan.
"Write the party members' names here, and each of you let fall a single drop of blood. Rank 6 uses ordinary paper, but Rank 3 uses paper with magic on it. Ah—you draw the blood by pricking with this. We keep them ready because some people slash themselves with a knife and end up covered in blood. Adventurers do tend to have rough hands."
What he held out was a short needle fixed to a bit of wood.
They certainly haven't sterilized it.
Juhwan brought a little fire to his fingertip and lightly scorched the needle. Tetanus was hardly impossible, and it struck him that everyone here already lived with their lives staked.
Rank 3 was written at the top of the paper, and beneath it were spaces for the party name and its members. Below those were the rules a member joining the guild had to keep. There were not many. They were simple enough. Every line had been written by the clerk's own hand. It would have been easier to prepare the forms in advance—or perhaps they did, for Rank 6, while Rank 3 came along so rarely that nothing had been filled in ahead of time. That might well be it. All Juhwan had to do was write the party name and the members. And for some reason he could not guess, a small 3 had been written in the corner as well.
"If you don't know your letters, please say so. There's no need to be ashamed. Most of the adventurers who come here can't read. Of course we write it for them, and there are people who will read things aloud and write for you separately. Those ones charge, naturally."
"I'm clumsy at it, but I can read and write."
"Ehh!"
The clerk started at Juhwan's answer.
"You really are different from what I expected, in all sorts of ways."
"..."
"Our Master is still clumsy at reading and writing. He's studying, of course. Haah. Which is why I do every bit of the Master's paperwork. It's driving me mad."
At that the Master laughed, kah-kah.
"Which is why you take extra pay, isn't it. And I've left that talkative mouth of yours right where it is."
"Well, that's true enough. I was driven out of my last workplace for talking too much."
Leaving the two of them to their bickering, Juhwan looked at Lizzie and Dorothy.
"We have to decide on a party name. What would be good?"
Lizzie tilted her head, then smiled.
"Dorothy and Oz. How does that sound?"
Ah. That was good.
Dorothy's face lit bright, and she pushed her own face in against Oz, whom she was holding in her arms.
"It's Dorothy and Oz! Got it? It's 'cause we're sprout-trees."
What Dorothy said often made no sense from one end to the other. He could not begin to see how she had arrived at that conclusion.
Juhwan wrote the party name and the three names, drew blood from his finger, and let a drop fall onto the paper. It was supposed to be magic paper, so there ought to have been a light, but nothing showed yet.
Lizzie came to his side, her face slightly tight, and held out a finger. Being stuck with the pin seemed to frighten her a little. She hesitated again and again, squeezed her eyes shut, and at last pressed down. She could chop blood-soaked rabbit hides and carcasses apart without a flinch, and yet this tiny needle scared her. Somehow it was absurd, and dear.
And then, last of all, it was Dorothy's turn.
"...Nnh... ah... no... Dorothy doesn't have blood... there's no blood in Dorothy's finger... really... Dorothy doesn't have blood...."
The needle seemed to terrify her. The child's face had gone a pale blue.
"Dorothy, it's only a moment. It doesn't hurt one bit."
Lizzie, who only moments ago had hesitated over and over before pricking her own finger, was now the one coaxing Dorothy. The clerk caught Juhwan's eye, lifted the needle, and mimed drawing the child's hand over.
Haah. Nothing for it. Juhwan let out a small sigh and took Dorothy's hand.
"...Waaah... Dorothy doesn't have blood... not even one blood... waaaaah...."
The child began to cry in earnest, shaking her head hard and trying any way she could to pull her hand free. Juhwan held it out a little toward the clerk and, together with Lizzie, soothed her—it's all right, it doesn't hurt at all—trying one gentle thing after another. Even so, Dorothy's wailing did not stop. She was thoroughly frightened.
"There. It's all done."
While the child went on crying, the clerk had pricked her and drawn a single drop. Dorothy did not even seem to know she had been stuck. Still wailing, she stared at her finger as if something about it were strange.
The moment Dorothy's blood tapped the paper and spread, the sheet that had shown no reaction at all began to glow with a soft light.
"Wah... eh... uh...."
The crying dwindled, and before long it stopped.
"...The paper's shining!"
"I've seen it before, but it's wonderful every time."
Dorothy and Lizzie stared at the paper without blinking. The light gathered on the magic paper soon faded.
"Heh heh heh. This one costs a little more than other magic papers. Ordinarily they allow a contract for only one person. This one can bind three. Once the magic activates, it cannot be changed, so it cannot be forged."
So the 3 written in the corner had been the number of people the contract could hold. They seemed to make the magic paper for two, for three, and so on.
"There. With this, the contract is perfectly complete. From this moment, you are adventurers."
Dorothy, tear tracks still on her cheeks, fumbled through her front pocket and drew out the rabbit doll, Toto. Sniffling, she held it out to the clerk.
"Please put Toto in the party too."
"...You mean... the doll?"
"It's Toto. Dorothy and Oz and Toto are one body. Always the same. If we're not, we turn into a lonely acorn."
"..."
The clerk let out a short laugh, made a show of writing something on the paper, and spoke to Dorothy.
"All right. Registered. Toto is in the same party from now on."
Dorothy hung her head as if in sorrow. Clutching Toto tight, she said in a small voice,
"...A lie. That mister lied. He didn't write it. Lying is really bad, Toto."
Dorothy's face was terribly sad. She looked like the unhappiest child in the world. The clerk turned an awkward look on Juhwan and Lizzie.
"I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry."
Juhwan and Lizzie bowed their heads to the clerk almost at the same moment. There had already been a fine uproar, and now the child was saying something absurd on top of it; he felt truly sorry. A working man's life piled the stress high. Earning a living really was not easy. Patting the back of the sorrow-filled child, Juhwan bowed his head once more.
"Thank you for registering the party."
"Not at all."
The clerk set three necklaces on the counter. From each hung a wooden tag with Santa's face on the front and the number 3 on the back. This, it seemed, was the token of an adventurer.
"Wear these at all times. They serve in place of identification."
"Er—what is this old man's face?"
"Ah, you mean Santa? Surely you don't know Santa?"
"..."
The clerk looked mildly troubled.
"Santa is the guardian deity of our Adventurer's Guild. You might call him the guardian deity of every adventurer. In truth he sits somewhere between a god and a magical beast, so there are people who dislike him—but you didn't come from a region that hates Santa, did you? Ah. If you had, you probably wouldn't have come in at all after seeing the sign."
"..."
From the way he spoke, Santa was a guardian deity. Could it be that Santa was not human? Then again, no human could send a person from one world into another. And yet he seemed to be treated as a magical beast at the same time, and Juhwan could make no sense of any of it.
While he was still lost, the clerk from the buying counter came over. The appraisal of the rabbit pelts seemed to be finished. Smiling broadly, the buying clerk held out the money on a flat square tray.
"Seven rabbit pelts in all. The going rate for fine ones these days is six silver a piece, but the condition was excellent, so I reckoned them at seven silver. That comes to forty-nine silver. How shall I pay you? I can give you two gold and nine silver, all in silver, or mixed with rina."
The clerk who had handled the registration cut in from beside him.
"Opening an account with the guild is perfectly fine as well. If you carry a certificate marked with the balance, we'll pay you even at another branch. Plenty of people carry the coin itself, but that's dangerous, isn't it? Ah—forging a certificate is a grave crime. You must never do it."
So they served as a bank, too. The word he hadn't caught probably meant an account. Juhwan nodded and looked at the clerk.
"Are the account records shared with the other branches? If so, about how long does that take? Ah, and I'm curious how you confirm that someone is the account holder."
"You're the first person to ask that. For most people, knowing they can exchange the certificate for money is the end of it. You really do defy expectations in all sorts of ways."
The clerk's eyes went round. But how could anyone open an account without knowing even that much? In any case, from the explanation, it seemed much like a bank, only a little slower. Because the lists traveled back and forth on a regular schedule, matters concerning adventurers and the balances of their accounts were shared across every branch after a delay. Identity was confirmed by a necklace imbued with magic when the account was opened. Lose it, and you generally had to return to the branch where the account had been opened and have a new one made.
The clerk explained that the branch where one joined recorded nearly every circumstance in detail. The adventurer's appearance, their weapons, the look of the account holder—such things were written down, and if trouble arose later, those papers were checked against the person.
"Our Adventurer's Guild has a long history. We can answer all sorts of situations. You may set your worries aside."
Put the other way, it meant there had been that many accidents. Juhwan thought so, but he said nothing.
He opened an account in the party's name and left thirty silver with the guild. That meant one more necklace, for the account. Only the leader's blood had to go on it.
Thank goodness.
The thought of Dorothy wailing over blood all over again drew a sigh out of him on its own. Seeing his tired face, the clerk chuckled.
"Ah, and please come back tomorrow—no, the day after tomorrow. Normally, when someone first registers, an adventurer one rank above, a Rank 5, works with them for about a month. In that time you learn the basics an adventurer ought to know. Not weapons. Daily life. You've gone straight to Rank 3, but you still ought to pick up the fundamentals."
"Understood."
Juhwan answered and looked at Lizzie. She had seemed a little strange for some time. Her face was pale, and her movements and expression were so stiff she might have been a robot. Was it fatigue? He was worried. They needed to get out, find lodging, and let her rest; otherwise she might collapse.
As he turned to leave, the clerk held out a small necklace meant for an animal.
"This one's on the house. A magical beast under training has to wear a collar. Otherwise, if it's culled, you'll have nothing to say about it. Please be sure to put it on."
He fastened it around Oz's neck right there. Dorothy, sunk in sorrow because Toto could not be registered in the party, came vividly back to life.
"Oz, you look amazing! I want a necklace too. Not this kind—a cool one like that!"
She seemed to like the leather collar for a magical beast better than the Santa necklace.
After promising to return to the guild the day after tomorrow, Juhwan put an arm around Lizzie's shoulders and turned. The adventurers who had been watching them from inside the guild all looked away at once. He heard someone whisper to a companion.
"Hey, don't meet his eyes. Fire'll come flying."
I do not do that. I'm not some madman.
Juhwan sighed softly and left the guild with his family.
On the way back to the wagon, Lizzie did not say a word. He was truly worried. Had something been weighing on her? He stopped and looked into her face. She blinked slowly, and then, all at once, she murmured.
"Good heavens, Juhwan! We've become rich."
"..."
What? She had only been stunned because they had money? A laugh broke out of him.
"Lizzie, from now on we're going to earn even more."
"...Good heavens."
Lizzie blinked and looked up at him. Very slowly, expression returned to her face. And at last, her cheeks gone red, she murmured once more.
"We've become rich. Good heavens."