Meeting Is Always Sudden
"Uuugh...."
Daeun let out a half-dead groan.
"My, my ears won't stop ringing.... Cana, am I even speaking properly?"
My ears felt so stuffed up I couldn't tell whether I was speaking properly either.
Daeun, her cheeks flushed red, rubbed at her ears while she talked.
I beckoned to her.
She looked at me in confusion, then finally caught on after I gestured again and bent her knees.
Yeah. There we go. Now we matched.
I leaned in and whispered into her ear, now perfectly lowered to my height.
"Since you couldn't train today, how about twice as much tomorrow?"
"?! H-Hey, I already did, didn't I!"
"Sounds like your hearing's fine."
Diagnosis: no abnormalities.
Still, I couldn't say I didn't understand Daeun's theatrics.
When you listened to the hammering of iron under the heat pouring out of a furnace, it did feel as if you yourself had become the lump of metal sitting on the anvil.
"Aren't you being a little too much, Cana? How can you say something that terrifying without even changing expression?"
Daeun muttered as she straightened her knees back up.
"So, you still haven't found a place you like?"
"Mm-hm."
"...Are they really that bad at it?"
"N-no.... It's not that."
I lightly denied her question, which she had lowered her voice to ask in case anyone overheard.
If the blacksmiths in Valtora were actually bad at their jobs, most of the blacksmiths across the continent ought to retire on the spot.
It was just that the conditions hadn't matched what I needed.
Some places only handled weapons. Others only made armor. And when I finally found a workshop that made magic tools, the partnered mage had apparently gone off on vacation.
There were even places that said they didn't have the right materials, or that their schedule was backed up so far they couldn't even begin work for another month.
I could wait a week or so, but a month was a little....
It had seemed like a good shop, but I couldn't afford to wait that long, so I left the workshop behind with a touch of regret.
If I had been planning to grab something already made, I wouldn't have had to go through all this trouble, but that wasn't the issue here. I needed a custom-made magic tool.
Such a hassle.... no, wait. Not really. Mm.
This was what you called a necessary investment.
"Should we rest a bit?"
"Yes. Please."
At Daeun's desperate plea, we sat down by a fountain at the edge of the workshop district and took a break.
As expected of a city of dwarves, there were structures like this fountain scattered throughout the streets, each one a testament to their craftsmanship.
Daeun played with the water spraying from the fountain, and at last she looked like she could breathe again.
"No way I could ever work in a smithy."
Like they'd ever hire you.
That was what I thought, but I quietly let a candy roll around in my mouth.
I had been looking forward to it because it was shaped like a mug of beer, but the shape was the only thing beer-like about it. The taste was no different from a regular candy.
"Just tastes like candy."
Daeun, who had put one in her own mouth, shared the same opinion.
"You know those cheap snacks that were shaped like beer mugs? I thought it'd taste something like that, but it's a little disappointing. I mean, like you said, that stuff wasn't exactly delicious either, but it still had the whole nostalgia factor, so I was expecting a bit more."
As an aside, Daeun had originally tried to stop me from buying the candy.
Apparently, children weren't supposed to drink alcohol.
She had firmly blocked me from buying anything she thought might contain liquor, insisting that no matter how much it looked like candy, she couldn't give me something with alcohol in it. Only after the vendor assured her it contained no alcohol at all did she hand one to me.
Even if dwarves were a race obsessed with beer, they wouldn't actually put liquor in candy and make people eat it....
...No, come to think of it, if they were dwarves, maybe they absolutely would.
As I seriously considered that, Daeun gently rested her hand on my head.
"Were you that curious about the taste of beer?"
"Not really...."
"A few years from now, Cana can have it too. By then, you might even regret wanting to eat something this bland."
"I said I wasn't curious."
I denied it again, but Daeun didn't look like she believed me at all.
Sigh. What was the point?
Knowing that any explanation would only earn me a "there, there" sort of reaction, I gave up on the unproductive back-and-forth and chose to savor the candy's sweetness instead.
Even after learning my age and realizing I wasn't actually a child, Daeun still treated me like one.
Just like a little while ago.
She claimed it was because she was older than me, but the bigger reason was probably my appearance.
So even if years passed, her attitude probably wouldn't change.
My body was highly likely to stay stuck in this tiny form and never grow much bigger.
And even if it did grow, it would probably take far longer than it should.
"E-even if you make that pitiful face, things that aren't allowed are still not allowed! Cana is still a child, so she can't drink alcohol and things like that!"
"...?"
Daeun babbled nonsense to herself for a while.
"Instead, I'll buy you more beer candy, so just bear with it, okay?"
"No, I don't need it."
Why would I, when it wasn't special and didn't even taste that good?
I said I didn't need it, but Daeun still went and bought a handful of candy from the merchant anyway.
It wasn't like she was spending my money, so what was I supposed to say?
I shook my head.
Crash! Clatter!
"?"
As I sat on the fountain, lightly rocking my body and enjoying the peace, I heard a commotion nearby.
Wondering what was going on, I craned my neck and looked around for the source of the noise.
The center of the disturbance was one workshop.
Like the others, it leaked a faint warmth, but unlike the rest, no customers came and went and no hammer strikes sounded from within. Instead, a series of noisy crashes kept erupting from the quiet shop.
Was something getting broken?
It was so loud I almost thought that was the case, but just as the racket died down for a moment—
Bang!
Crash!
"It's gone! It's gone!"
The door flew open, and along with all sorts of junk, a dwarf tumbled out as if he had been thrown.
He didn't seem to care about the scattered debris at all and kept whipping his head around frantically, searching for something.
After circling the workshop several times, he finally collapsed in front of it, panting hard.
He looked as devastated as a gambler who had lost everything at the table.
...Did he lose his wedding ring or something?
There had been someone I once saw whose wedding ring went missing, and he looked exactly like this.
He searched until late at night, never found it, and then dragged his feet back home in a miserable trudge.
The next day, he came to the knights' order looking more haggard than he had after fighting monsters for days on end.
What made it even more pitiful was that he found the ring that same evening.
That utterly blank expression had been so memorable that it made me decide, right then and there, never to lose my wedding ring.
And then I immediately erased the thought from my head after realizing that if I ever got married, I'd be the bride anyway.
Anyway, the dwarf I was looking at now seemed to have lost something important enough to rank right alongside a wedding ring, if not be one.
One by one, other dwarves gathered around the one who had slumped down in despair.
"I wonder what happened?"
"Who knows. Maybe he got robbed."
Unlike Daeun, whose voice was full of curiosity, my own came out flat and indifferent.
If that really was the case, then, well.
"How unfortunate."
"...Huh? That's it?"
"What else do you need?"
"Like helping find the lost item, or catching the thief....?"
"I'm not a guard."
I wasn't a detective, and I certainly wasn't some mercenary who took contracts and went running off to do them.
Besides, if I stepped in here, would that dwarf even welcome it?
Some total stranger from outside, and a child at that, offering to help?
They'd be lucky if he simply threw us out. It wouldn't be strange at all if he grew suspicious instead.
"Is that so? I feel like if a kid like Cana offered to help, I'd look on with a warm smile."
Daeun seemed to think differently, but in any case, I had no intention of jumping in.
"Let's get moving."
Loitering around here could get us dragged into the mess.
We'd rested enough by now, and I thought Daeun must have recovered some of her stamina, so I told her to get up.
"Eeeeh, can't we rest a little longer? I'm still tired."
"No."
You just want to watch, don't you?
I firmly put an end to her whining and held out my hand.
Though she kept grumbling, she took it obediently.
Seeing that, I couldn't help wondering if the one who ought to be treated like a child wasn't me but Daeun.
Hand in hand, we set off toward the next workshop.
"My Dragon Orb that cost me my entire fortune....!"
"...!"
That is, if not for the words I heard from behind a moment later.
I didn't need to understand Arkish to recognize the one term buried in that cry.
"Dragon Orb" was called the same thing in Granic and Arkish.
Dragon Orb...?
From how desperately he was searching, I could tell he'd lost something terribly important, but who would've thought it was a Dragon Orb?
I understood the dwarf's desperation, and yet at the same time I couldn't help wondering how he'd managed to lose something that precious in the first place.
Most people would probably sleep with it clutched to their chest just to keep from getting anxious.
Unless they had money spilling out of their ears, I couldn't imagine anyone treating it lightly, and the fact that he looked utterly wrecked after losing it suggested he didn't have money like that to spare.
"Hm...."
That was... a little interesting.
"Huh? Cana, where are you going?"
"Over there."
"You just said you weren't interested."
"I'm interested now."
How could I not be interested when someone had lost a Dragon Orb?
I pushed my way through the crowd, dragging Daeun along with me.
Most of the crowd was made up of dwarves, so squeezing through wasn't all that hard, but....
...Being at eye level with the dwarves, whose defining trait was being short, was not exactly pleasant.
"Waaahhh....! I'm finished now!"
The dwarf at the center of the crowd had gone beyond despair and was now pounding the ground while wailing at the top of his lungs.
I took one step closer to him, tears streaming down his face so hard they soaked his proud beard.
"Ghhhk.... Hic! Hm? Sniff! Who are you?"
The dwarf stopped crying and scrutinized me with reddened eyes.
He looked at me as though he could see right through my hood, and that gaze landed on the arm exposed outside my cape because I was holding hands with Daeun.
Then his face twisted into a grimace stained with tears.
"Judging by your build, you look like one of us, hic! But a dwarf with arms like that—sniff—aren't you ashamed?"
"Pfft!"
"...."
Daeun hastily clapped a hand over her mouth after hearing the dwarf's words.
Too late, though—she'd already heard enough.
Judging by her reaction, I could roughly guess what he'd said.
...Let's endure it.
Suppressing the anger boiling up inside me, I gave Daeun's hand a hard tug.
"I'll help you."
The dwarf, having heard my words through Daeun's translation, twitched his brows.
"What? Help me?"
"Yes."
"You're a face I've never seen before. Why should I trust you with this?"
I had already braced myself to be distrusted on the spot, so this was actually a fairly mild response.
He was probably speaking from sheer despair.
Either way, that worked out in my favor.
"Here. Look at this."
"...A ring? Why are you suddenly—"
Careful not to show it to anyone else, I held out my ringed hand in front of him.
At first he reacted with mild indifference, but once he confirmed the ring, his mouth slowly fell open.
The dwarf's eyes looked ready to pop out of his skull as he reached out with trembling hands, trying to touch my hand—more precisely, the ring.
But I pulled my hand back, and his fingers cut helplessly through empty air.
"That's enough of a demonstration."
"J-Just a little more, let me see it!"
"Nope."
If you want more, you know what to do.
The dwarf nodded furiously.