A Small Commotion
“The weather’s really nice, isn’t it?”
Only a few weeks ago, Journey would have said something like, “Sun, good.” Now she was capable of putting together a perfectly natural sentence.
Maybe there was truth to the saying that everyone had something they were good at.
Still… was the weather really nice?
I looked up at the sky for a moment.
“…”
A ceiling of clouds greeted me, packed so thickly overhead it looked like the sky had been stuffed full.
The sunlight that should have been glaring down on the earth had been blocked by the clouds and couldn’t properly do its job.
Not bad weather, exactly, but not what I’d call good either—just one of those annoyingly vague days in between.
“No rain, clean air, and the sun isn’t scorching us. It’s perfect weather for a picnic!”
If the eternal optimist Journey said so, then I supposed that was that.
I didn’t exactly feel like pouring cold water on her cheerful declaration.
A positive person was a lot better than someone who only ever said negative things, after all.
“How is it? Tasty?”
“Yeah.”
I even tried the chocolate Journey had been bragging about so much.
“This one and this one. Which should I buy?”
“Both are ugly.”
I helped her choose weapons.
“Kana! Try this on, okay?”
“...No.”
“Aww, come on~!”
“…”
“...Oh, all right.”
And I watched as Journey, her face bright with excitement, picked up some clothes—only to put them back down again, looking dejected.
Journey dragged me all over Liberi.
We’d go one way, then the other, then back again, and just when it seemed like we were headed somewhere, we’d turn around and go somewhere else. At one point, we even passed through the same alley more than three times.
For all the good it did, it didn’t look like Journey had much of a plan either.
“This one’s cute, and that one’s cute too…. Which would suit me better? Why don’t I just buy both? You’re thinking, if it’s not your money, who cares what I say, right? That’s why you all don’t have girlfriends. ...Though I probably shouldn’t say that out loud, huh?”
I stood in front of a display of accessories and watched Journey, who was frowning in earnest as she deliberated.
Then, just as she happened to lift her head, our eyes met.
“…”
“…”
“Hmm…”
“?”
Journey, who had been staring at me intently, shifted her gaze from the necklace she’d been studying to the bracelet beside it.
...What was that about?
As I tilted my head at her inexplicable behavior, a gust of wind carried a smell straight into my nose.
“Achoo…!”
The tickle at the tip of my nose was enough to make me sneeze before I could stop it.
This smell is...
It was unfamiliar, and yet somehow familiar too.
I reflexively looked around for the source of the scent, and soon found a restaurant with a blazing red sign.
“That’s Burning Phoenix. Remember the spicy fried rice you had last time? They sell that here.”
Journey had come up beside me without my noticing and said, “The one we got then was from a branch, but this is the main store. Since we’ve got some room in our stomachs now, how about lunch here?”
I shook my head.
I had no desire to experience a burning tongue twice.
“You didn’t like it?”
“Not at all.”
“Aww… I was thinking we could eat it again after so long-”
“...Kehk, khehk! What is this?! You’re serving this and calling it food?! Cough!”
A rough shout suddenly cut Journey off.
The disturbance had erupted at the place called Burning Phoenix.
There was a man with a face as red as the sign above the store, hacking up a storm, a flustered employee stamping their feet helplessly beside him, and a crowd of customers and passersby watching the whole thing unfold.
The man, still clutching at his throat, roughly shoved the employee’s hand away.
“I came because this place was supposed to be famous, and you serve me this garbage. You’ve ruined my whole mood!”
“Sir, you still have to pay before you go…!”
“You’ve got the nerve to tell me to pay after eating this crap? I’m not paying! No, I won’t!”
“Ah, no, please! If you ate it, you have to pay!”
“I was already being generous by not demanding compensation from you, but if you want to act like this, then I won’t hold back either! I’m going to have to see a priest, so hand over my treatment fee!”
So even in Liberi, home of the mercenaries, there were customers like that.
Whether to call it courage or sheer reckless audacity, I wasn’t sure.
The man tried to leave the shop, while the employee blocked his way and struggled to stop him.
The man looked like he could easily shake off such a frail employee, but even for a shameless jerk, there were limits to how much brute force he could get away with; he seemed too irritated to do much more than keep tugging the employee off him.
With a sudden whip of motion, the man gave the employee a hard shove.
“Kyaaah!”
“Do you even know who I am? I’m a gold-rank mercenary, and not just that—an upper Expert at that!”
He pulled a badge from his chest with a flourish.
The badge he drew from his coat scattered a faint golden shimmer through the air.
“A gold-rank mercenary…!”
“Upper Expert, too?!”
“Let’s all just calm down. I won’t hold you responsible either, so stop bothering me.”
Seeing the people around him murmuring at the badge, the man wore a smug expression.
Gold-rank…
...Was that supposed to be impressive?
I tilted my head.
Gold rank meant nothing more than Expert, did it? It didn’t seem like something worth bragging about, or for other people to fawn over.
Right next to me, Journey was also gold rank.
That thought made me go, ah, in a small realization.
The standards are different for Apostles.
I’d forgotten that for ordinary mercenaries who weren’t Apostles, even Expert was considered a pretty high level.
In the end, the commotion stirred up by the man brought out someone who looked to be the owner of the shop—and an Apostle at that.
“What seems to be the problem?”
“Ah, boss…”
“You’re the owner? Perfect. I was about to die of frustration. I ate the food you made, and my tongue went numb! How are you going to take responsibility for this?”
“Ah, I see what happened. ...Ms. Susan, I told you to call me right away if something like this happened.”
“S-sorry….”
“No, don’t apologize. Please lift your head. More importantly, you said you want compensation for the damage? Surely I explained everything when you ordered?”
“...So you’re saying I was going to have to pay for medical fees anyway, and you’re just refusing to pay for the food!”
“Hmm…. Understood. You may leave.”
At the owner’s words, the mood split cleanly in two.
“He should’ve said that from the beginning!”
“Boss…!”
The man smiled in victory, while the employee’s face twisted in protest.
That alone was enough to understand what the owner meant.
As expected, there was nothing more entertaining than watching a fight.
“Ah, I get it now.”
Watching the scene with growing interest, I stepped forward.
“...Kana?”
“Wait here.”
His voice and face both had seemed oddly familiar, and now I knew why.
I kept walking until I stood in front of the man, who had just been preparing to leave. He let out an uncertain, “Hm?”
“And who’s this brat?”
“Brat….”
“...Huh? That voice is...”
The man’s eyes widened.
“Your mouth hasn’t changed at all, even after all this time.”
“C-c-c-com—Commander…?!”
“Yeah. The commander, commander, commander.”
The man must have recognized me, because he blurted out the Granic words instinctively.
Even now, he was still saying commander rather than Commander, which told me very well what he’d thought of me all this time.
Not that I didn’t already know.
“You recognized me, but you don’t even salute?”
“Hah! You might have been the commander back then, but you think you’re still my commander now? A ghost from the past suddenly showing up and acting like...”
“Hmm… Well, that part isn’t wrong. But you’re the one who called me commander first. I was just playing along.”
“Shut up!”
Younger people these days. The second they’re poked where it hurts, they start barking.
I clicked my tongue in disapproval.
The man’s name was...
...what was it?
I remembered that he’d been in the same knight order as me—specifically the Red Flame Knights—so I knew the kind of man he was, but his name wouldn’t come to me.
He was a commoner who had cozied up to the noble faction and spent his days licking boots in every direction.
There was nothing wrong with a commoner siding with the nobles, in itself, but the things he did under their protection were so petty, so childish, that I’d never liked him.
“You, what was your name again?”
“...How dare you mock me like that!”
“Yeah… sorry…?”
I wasn’t mocking him; I genuinely didn’t remember.
Forgetting someone’s name was rude, so I apologized honestly, but the man’s face only grew redder and bluer by turns.
“Forget it. I’ve got things to do, so move!”
Thud.
Tap.
The man moved with no attempt to hide his impatience.
I followed his motion and shifted one step to the side.
His eyebrows twitched.
“...What? Move already-”
“I don’t feel like being preachy.”
It was a little late for me to play the righteous Apostle anyway; my sins ran a bit too deep for that.
“So this is just payback.”
You got on my nerves quite a bit back then.
I raised the arm hidden beneath my cape.
“Are you crazy?! You’re trying to fight here?!”
“No.”
This wasn’t a fight.
I shook my head.
“I’m just giving a former superior a lesson.”
It might sting a little, but a good medicine was always bitter, wasn’t it?
I was certain this would be a useful experience for him.
Or not. Either way.
“I-if you make trouble here, you won’t get away with it!”
“You’re one to talk, aren’t you?”
“...Fine! I’ll report your whereabouts to the Empire, then! Let’s see if you can stay safe after that!”
“You’re awfully slow on the uptake compared to the Apostles.”
The Empire had known where I was for ages already.
My words failed to get through to him no matter what I said, and in the end the man let out a beastlike cry, drew his sword, and rushed at me.
“Aaaaaah! Die!”
“Kyaaah!”
“C-call the guards!”
In an instant, the surroundings turned into a complete mess.
Like they say, even rotten fish can still be okay to eat; even with his eyes half-rolled back, the man’s sword work was cleaner than most mercenaries’—but...
“Yap.”
The sword of a man who had already lost half his reason wasn’t frightening in the least.
A hand shot out like a streak of light and clamped tightly around the man’s throat.
Then, with one motion, I lifted him up—
Baaang!
Crack!
—and smashed him hard into the ground.
The sound of something breaking and the road shattering rang out together, and the man, slammed face-first into the earth, convulsed before his eyes rolled back.
Silently looking down at him, I brushed my hands off and then snapped my fingers as a memory surfaced all at once.
“Right, James.”
That was his name.
Now I remembered.
For some reason, the unconscious man’s face looked incredibly wronged, but that was probably just my imagination.
* * *
“...Just how long were you out there before you came back and caused trouble?”
“Hmm… about three hours?”
“That wasn’t a real question.”
Aaron sighed and grabbed his head.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
If anything, the real problem was Liberi for accepting James as a mercenary in the first place.
I lifted my chin proudly.
“I understand that you don’t think you did anything wrong. But did you really have to go that far?”
“Wasn’t that pretty gentle, all things considered?”
“...Well, I suppose it was better than before. Back then, you turned him into a pulp.”
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t a compliment, so don’t get proud.”
Aaron sighed again.
“You didn’t know either, Aaron?”
“You mean that the man had joined Liberi? Of course I didn’t. I’m in charge of education, not recruitment.”
“Couldn’t you at least have gotten a heads-up?”
“I don’t know. At least as far as I remember, I never heard anything about it.”
“Hmm.”
Aaron had no reason to lie to me, so if that was what he said, then that was that.
Truthfully, it wasn’t all that strange for there to be a few rotten apples among mercenaries.
There was a reason people said, “Give them money, and they’ll do anything.”
Of course, if they really did anything, they’d never stay safe for long—but that just meant there were people out there low enough to fit the saying.
James had simply been one of them.
“After the nobles disappeared, he must have drifted around until he washed up in Liberi. He hasn’t done anything so terrible that he’d normally be kicked out with more than a warning, but...”
“But?”
“He’s not the sort of man who’d be any good for Liberi even if he stayed, so he should be expelled. I don’t have direct authority over it, but if I say something, they’ll take it seriously.”
“If only you’d been like this back then.”
“You’re telling me.”
We both sighed at once.
Aaron and I were in the same boat, after all—both of us had had to suffer because of James.
They say the water above has to be clear for the water below to be clear, but maybe even if the top is clean, the bottom still gets murky.