Comrade
I'd mooched a lunch off the Saintess and parted ways with her.
It wasn't anything expensive. We picked out just enough at a nearby restaurant to fill our stomachs, and though the Saintess kept insisting I order more, I had no intention of doing so.
When you're eating on someone else's dime, filling your belly is enough. Piling up pricey dishes on another person's coin never sat right with me.
Still, the Saintess seemed genuinely pleased to share a meal with me after so long — she was in a good mood right up until we said goodbye.
She even told me we should eat together again sometime. I watched her back as she walked away for a moment, then set off on my own way.
Not that I was pressed for time. The only classes I was responsible for were three morning sessions a week, so my schedule didn't just have room to spare — it was drowning in it.
So there I was, walking along without a thought in my head, when someone spotted me from a distance and started making their way over.
What now?
Nobody had any business with me inside the Academy. I hadn't stolen anything from anybody.
I stopped where I stood just to see who it was, and before long, a familiar ugly mug came into view.
"Captain? Captain, it is you!"
One look at that bandit-looking bastard's face and I knew — one of the men who'd served under me in the Vanguard.
Back during the rescue of the Hero's Party, he was one of the ones who'd gambled his life on the belief that the Guide would carve us a path. Seeing him again like this, I had to admit I was glad.
"What's a bastard like you doing at the Academy?"
"Fair point, sir, but they pay well, hand you a house, and there's barely any work. Can't beat a job like this."
It made sense, really. I'd heard that anyone with frontline experience — Vanguard experience especially — got scouted by the Imperial Knights no matter how rough around the edges they were. Even a scoundrel like this.
With the war over, there was no reason for him to sign up with the Knights again and swing a sword around, and if they paid well, gave him a house, and asked little in return, it might have been the perfect job for the likes of him.
"Was a shame when you vanished the moment the war ended, sir."
"Yeah, well. It wasn't a shame for me."
"Rude as ever. That's the Captain alright. Since we've run into each other, how about a drink tonight?"
"You paying?"
"I owe you my life. Least I can do is buy the drinks."
"Then let's drink."
There was no reason to turn down free booze.
After that I killed time however I could, and when evening came, I headed for the tavern he'd suggested.
I pushed open the door and stepped inside, and the bandit, already settled at a table, spotted me and waved me over.
"Over here, sir."
"Yeah."
I sat down across from him and ordered some decent food and drinks, and the bandit, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this, started right in.
"So where have you been all this time, Captain?"
"Just traveled around a bit."
"Huh. You, fighting like a madman one day and touring the countryside the next? That's up there with dogs flying."
I ignored the garbage talk and took a swig of my drink.
"So what brings you to the Academy anyway? You're hardly here to cram knowledge into that head at your age."
"I'm a professor now, you little shit."
"Huh... I guess the Academy really is doomed. And here I thought jobs like that were hard to come by."
"Bullshit."
And so we drank, trading nonsense the whole while.
Nothing of substance passed between us. We just emptied a few rounds over small talk — what we'd each been doing since the war ended, where the men we'd fought alongside had scattered to.
That was when a vaguely familiar figure started approaching our table.
"Guide? Long time no see."
I looked at the tiny person greeting me by my old nickname.
Brown hair, orange eyes — the mage of the Hero's Party.
What is she doing here?
While I was still processing that, the mage paid our reactions no mind whatsoever, pulled out an empty chair, and settled into it like she owned the place.
"One large beer."
She even ordered.
I stared at her, dumbfounded, but the mage acted as if nothing in the world were amiss, picked up a dish from the spread on the table, and popped it into her mouth.
Watching this, the bandit seemed to get some strange idea in his head. His eyes darted between me and the mage, and a look of bizarre understanding spread across his face.
"Well, I knew the Captain was a ladies' man, but after the Saintess too... I'll be taking my leave."
"What?"
Before I could even ask what the hell he was talking about, the bandit was up and out the door.
What kind of cock-sucking nonsense was that?
I stared after him, speechless, then turned back to the table. The mage, unbothered, was casually dragging the dish the bandit had been eating from over to her side.
"......"
What is wrong with this woman?
We'd crossed paths plenty of times on the frontlines.
The Hero's Party and the Vanguard had shared battlefields often enough, and whenever I carved open a path, she was the one raining magic down behind me. It wasn't as if we couldn't recognize each other's faces.
But I had no memory of ever actually talking with her.
And now this person was suddenly acting all chummy, calling it been a long time, planting herself at my drinking table uninvited, and helping herself to my food.
By the time the beer she'd ordered arrived, the mage had it in hand and downed nearly half of it in one go.
"So what do you want?"
"Want?"
"Why'd you come over here?"
The mage picked up a sausage, chewed on it, and looked at me.
"We're comrades."
"...What?"
"Comrades buy each other meals and stuff, don't they?"
Only then did I understand why she was sitting in front of me.
"Don't tell me you came here to mooch."
"Yep."
No hesitation at all.
I stared at her for a moment, then let out an incredulous laugh.
"Seriously? A Hero's Party member, flat broke?"
"Had some."
"Then buy food with that."
"Gone now."
"Where'd it go?"
"Gambling."
"......"
The mage took another swig of beer, perfectly at ease.
"Lost it all."
I set down my glass and stared at her in silence for a good while.
I hadn't known the mage of the party that slew the Demon King could announce, this proudly, that she'd gambled away every coin she earned when the war ended.
"Why are you saying that like it's something to brag about?"
"Not bragging."
"Your face says otherwise."
"What's done is done."
Not wrong, exactly, but not right either. The mage, entirely indifferent to my stare, picked up another sausage and ate it.
Anyone watching might have blown up at me — that's how you talk to the mage who saved the world, you slob?
But so what?
Without me, this entire party would've died back then, every last one of them, and the Demon King's head would still be on his shoulders. Not that I expected some grand treatment for it. But neither was I about to bow my head and grovel at the feet of the "Hero's Party" at this late date.
The truth was, of everyone in that party, the only ones I'd ever really spoken with were the Great Chieftain and the Saintess.
The Great Chieftain looked like a man who could tear a person apart bare-handed, but he was surprisingly courteous, and the Saintess was a good person, no question. So naturally, I spoke to both of them with respect.
But this woman — what was her deal?
She pops up out of nowhere, acts friendly, plops herself down at my table, drains my wallet because she's broke, and has been talking down to me this whole time like it's the most natural thing in the world.
The more I thought about it, the more it grated on me.
"Hold on. Have you been eating half a loaf your whole life or something?"
"What?"
"Why are you talking down to me?"
"You don't like it?"
"No, I mean..."
Come to think of it, there wasn't any real reason I needed her speaking formally to me.
I had no idea if she was older or younger, but we'd rolled through a war together, that much was true. And above all, if she'd been casual from the very start, it would've been weirder for me alone to keep talking up at her.
"Fine. I'll drop the politeness too, then."
"Okay."
"You really are a piece of work."
"So are you."
"......"
Well... she wasn't wrong.
I took another sip of my drink, and then a question occurred to me. I looked at the mage.
Come to think of it, the fact that this woman was here at all was strange.
"Are you a professor here too?"
"Nope."
"Then why are you at the Academy?"
"Old man's favorite disciple."
"Old man?"
"The Headmaster."
"Ah."
That old man. That explained it.
I'd known from the first time I met him that he was no ordinary geezer, and if he'd taken the Hero's Party's mage as his personal disciple, well — that tracked.
"So what do you actually do here?"
"Freeload."
"......"
I stared at the mage in silence yet again.
"You can just... say that out loud?"
"Why not?"
"Never mind."
What could I possibly say to someone who announced, that proudly, that she'd gambled away all her money, was freeloading off the Academy where her master worked, and was now mooching drinks at my table?
Giving up was faster.
"Hey, can I order more food?"
"...With your own money."
"Broke."
"Ugh... fine, just order it."
"Okay."
The mage nodded, satisfied, and immediately called over the server.
I watched her, then downed what was left of my drink in one go.
I'd come to drink for free, and the guy who was supposed to buy me drinks had bolted. The bill tonight was shaping up to be quite a bit steeper than I'd planned.
By the time more than half the fresh sausages had vanished as well, the mage — beer glass still at her lips — suddenly looked at me.
"Come to think of it, what's your name?"
"......"
I stared at her in silence for a moment.
Did I really need to exchange proper introductions with this rude woman?
We'd known each other's faces for a good while now, fought on the same battlefield any number of times — and yet, thinking about it, we'd never even learned each other's names.
I called her mage, and she called me Guide. There'd never been any particular need for names.
But still. A comrade was a comrade.
"Riven."
The mage paused mid-chew on a sausage, then nodded.
"Wow... what a painfully common name."
"......"
I graciously gave her my name, and that was what I got back.
The mage, utterly indifferent to my reaction, stuffed the rest of the sausage into her mouth and washed it down with beer.
"I'm Dorothy. Looking forward to it."
"...Yeah."
Looking forward to what, exactly?
She wasn't planning to keep mooching drinks off me like this from now on... was she?
Somehow, an ominous feeling crept over me as I watched Dorothy drain her glass.
And that ominous feeling proved right far sooner than I expected.
"Hey."
"Mmmgh..."
"Hey. Wake up."
"Just one more drink..."
"You've had plenty, you pig."
The woman had guzzled down free booze with gusto, and in the end, she'd passed out cold.
Until just moments ago she'd been hoovering up sausages and side dishes like a hamster while pouring beer down her throat, but at some point her head had dropped onto the table and she'd started babbling incoherently.
Now she wouldn't wake up no matter how hard I shook her.
"Hey. Dorothy."
"Mmnh..."
"Where do you live?"
"...Home?"
"Yeah. Where do you live?"
"Old man's..."
"The Headmaster's?"
"Yeah..."
She slurred that much out, then went limp again.
Don't tell me I have to haul this one to the Headmaster.
I considered it briefly, then dropped the idea just as fast. Showing up at some late hour to hand over Your disciple gambled away all her money, mooched booze off a stranger, and passed out was an unseemly picture no matter how I arranged it.
But I couldn't just leave her here either.
She may have been a wreck, but she was still the mage of the Hero's Party. If I dumped her on a tavern floor and something happened to her overnight, that would be a headache I didn't need.
In the end, I sighed, hauled Dorothy up out of her seat, and slung her over my shoulder like a sack of laundry. She was so small that carrying her wasn't the hard part. I stumbled out of the tavern with the babbling Dorothy draped across my shoulders like luggage.
The real question was where to abandon her.
Bringing her to the Headmaster felt wrong, but tossing her onto the street carried its own risk — if this woman woke up tomorrow in a rage, there was no telling whether a meteor might come crashing down on my head.
I stood there with Dorothy on my shoulder, thinking it over, until one place came to mind.
The chapel.
If it was where the Saintess stayed, surely she'd deal with this woman for me.
They'd been in the Hero's Party together, so the Saintess would know where she lived. And worst case, she could put her up for a night.
"Yeah. That's the better option."
"Mmnh..."
Destination decided, I headed for the chapel.
By the time I reached the shabby little chapel tucked into a corner of the Academy, it was already quite late — but a faint glow leaked through the window, so the Saintess was apparently still awake.
I considered knocking for a moment, then thought better of it.
No matter what, I didn't want to bother her with a nuisance this late at night.
I set the Dorothy I'd been carrying down in front of the chapel, propping her against the wall in case she toppled over, and looked down at her for a moment.
The Saintess would find her when she came out in the morning. That'd do.
Or she'd come to on her own before then.
Either way, it was no longer my problem.
"Sleep well."
I tossed out a parting word and turned to go.
And so I abandoned the mage of the Hero's Party at the door of the chapel where the Saintess lived, and headed back to my lodgings.