Night Walk
After walking the Saintess back to the chapel and stepping outside, I found that darkness had settled over everything around me before I even realized it.
Thanks to the streetlamps lit across the Academy and the light spilling from the buildings, it wasn't so dark that I couldn't see, but the paths that had bustled with students during the day were now nearly deserted.
I turned and looked back at the chapel I'd just come out of.
Merien.
We'd known each other for no short stretch of time, and yet I'd only just now learned her name.
We'd crossed paths plenty on the battlefield, she'd treated me every time I dragged myself in wounded, and after the war ended we'd met again like this, shared meals, even drunk together — and the whole time, I hadn't known a single name. Looking back on it, it was a little funny.
Was that just how the title of Saintess worked?
Well, now I knew, so that was that.
I was in the middle of turning my steps back toward the dormitory with that thought when it happened.
"Drinking?"
"Gah."
A voice shot out from right beside me, and I whipped my head around on reflex.
Dorothy was standing next to me. I had no idea how long she'd been there.
"You scared me."
"Mm."
"What kind of answer is 'mm'?"
Dorothy looked at me like nothing in the world had happened.
For a moment, I remembered how the old man — the Headmaster — had popped up beside me out of nowhere a few days back with zero warning.
Oh, come on.
Did she learn this by watching him?
Master and apprentice alike, they were identical right down to how they startled people.
"So."
"What."
"You drinking with the Saintess?"
"Yeah. Had a few."
Dorothy glanced once at the chapel, then back at me.
"Why not me?"
She didn't seem sulky about it in the least. Her expression was as flat as ever, and there was nothing in her voice you could call a complaint. It genuinely sounded like she was just curious.
"That place is expensive."
"So?"
"If I took you along, the bar tab would be astronomical."
"………"
"You hit someone else's liquor like it was a declared war last time, too."
Dorothy stared at me for a moment.
"Didn't happen."
"What do you mean it didn't happen. I personally hauled you out of there unconscious after you drank yourself under the table."
"Don't remember."
"Must be nice having a head like a sieve."
I snorted and started walking again.
"Next round's on me, so we'll drink then."
"Mm."
And that was the end of the conversation.
But a few steps later, I noticed Dorothy had fallen in beside me, keeping pace as naturally as anything.
"Where exactly are you going that you're following me?"
"Night walk."
"To where?"
"Wherever."
"………"
She really was wandering around with no thought in her head at all.
Looking at her, she was a stray cat, plain and simple. And it got worse when you considered how, if you fed her, she'd latch onto your side for a while, then vanish without a ceremony the moment she had her own business to attend to.
So the two of us walked side by side with no particular destination.
The night was late and everything around us was quiet. Aside from the occasional murmur of voices drifting from somewhere far off, there was hardly a sound. Dorothy didn't bother making conversation, and I didn't have anything to say either, so we walked in silence for a while.
Then, out of nowhere, Dorothy spoke first.
"Hey."
"What."
"Why are you nice to me?"
I looked over at her.
She was walking with her eyes fixed ahead. The same blank expression as always, the same flat voice — there was nothing to hint at what she was really asking.
"Where's this coming from all of a sudden?"
"Just curious."
"………"
Did I need some grand reason?
I gave it a moment's thought, but no matter how I turned it over, there wasn't much to it.
"Nothing special. We were comrades in arms."
Dorothy turned to look at me.
"If I owed anyone my life, I owed it to you, so I'm just paying it back."
That was all there was to it.
If the Hero's party died, the war's end died with it — back then, keeping her alive was simply what had to be done. And since we'd all come back alive in the end, there was no reason to go around now acting like I'd done something heroic.
Dorothy said nothing for a while.
Then she murmured, barely audibly.
"Debt……"
"What was that?"
"Nothing."
She shook her head immediately.
"If you owe me, then buy me a drink."
"……hold on."
I stopped mid-stride, and the more I thought about it, the stranger it got.
"Wait, no. Come to think of it, I was the one who joined the rescue force to save your hide."
"………"
"So shouldn't you be the one buying the drinks?"
Dorothy's footsteps stopped.
"Hey."
"………"
"Why aren't you answering?"
Dorothy stared at me for a moment.
And then—
"Going."
"Going where—"
Without so much as a backward glance, she suddenly broke into a brisk pace and started pulling away.
"Hey. Where are you going?"
Her steps got faster.
"I said I'd buy you drinks?"
This time she outright ran.
"Goddammit."
Watching that small figure vanish around the corner of an alley in the blink of an eye, a helpless laugh escaped me before I knew it.
Fast as hell only when it counts, huh.
What is with this man?
Honestly, when I first ran into him again, all I had in mind was scoring a free drink or two.
Comrades in arms.
That's what I said out loud, but the truth was we'd barely ever actually talked on the battlefield. We'd shared a few of the same frontlines, and between us there was nothing more than the bare facts: I was the Hero Party's mage, and that man was the one they called the Guide.
So I figured I'd wring a drink out of him once and that would be that.
There was no reason to see each other again anyway.
But that man was a little different.
From the very start, I kept my words short on purpose, holding him at arm's length. Answering anyone with only what needed saying, never bothering to keep a conversation going — it was an old, ingrained habit.
Getting close to people turns into a chore.
You have to talk more, start caring about things, and eventually start caring when that person disappears someday.
So keeping my distance from the beginning was simply more comfortable.
And yet this man heard my way of talking, winced once, and then without a word of complaint just started talking down to me right back.
A strange human being.
I knew my own personality was a little off, but that man didn't strike me as what anyone would call normal, either.
So I got a little curious.
That day was the same. Free alcohol, so I drank without much thought, and as I drank the buzz crept up on me, so I pretended to pass out and slumped over.
Of course, I hadn't actually drunk myself senseless.
No matter how much I drank, magic could burn off the tipsiness in an instant. I'd genuinely considered doing exactly that.
But then I got curious.
What would that man do in a situation like this?
Mages, as a breed, like observing the unknown. So I decided this counted as a kind of observation too.
If he tried anything untoward, of course, I'd sit straight up and put a Meteor through him.
But nothing like that happened.
That man looked down at me lying there for a while, then hauled me up onto his back the way you'd carry a piece of luggage.
And he walked for a good long while, and the place we arrived at was the chapel — where he dumped me at the door and left.
He seemed to get along decently with the Saintess even back on the frontlines, so apparently he already knew where she lived.
At the time, I wondered about it a little.
Could he be in love with the Saintess?
I'm no pushover myself, but he showed not a flicker of ulterior motive toward me, while going out of his way to walk all that way and carry me to the Saintess. It seemed possible.
So the next morning, the moment I woke up, I followed the Saintess to the dining hall she was headed for.
Tracking magic is bread-and-butter stuff for any mage, and it wasn't even difficult.
It thought it might be entertaining to watch how the two of them acted around each other.
But when I actually got there, the only one showing an interesting reaction was the Saintess.
The moment I appeared, her expression shifted in some subtle way, and whenever I attached myself to that man's side, she kept fidgeting over it.
That man, on the other hand, didn't seem to notice or care one way or the other.
Hm.
So the Saintess is the only one with feelings in play?
I left it at that for the time being.
Then that afternoon, we crossed paths again up on the city walls.
Nothing much was said that time either. We just sat together, looked at the view, and traded a bit of idle chatter — but strangely, it wasn't uncomfortable.
Normally, having someone lingering beside me for long got on my nerves. It felt like I ought to say something, and when the silence stretched on, I'd start worrying about what the other person was thinking.
But with that man, none of that applied.
If I wanted to talk, I talked; if not, I could just sit there next to him.
Then I heard that the old man had asked him to whip his disciple into shape somehow.
And that this man had refused, saying how could a mere hired mercenary possibly handle the great Hero Party.
A ridiculous thing to say.
I'd watched that man fight on the battlefield more times than I could count. He was the man who slew a Legion Commander alone. He was the captain of the Vanguard, the man who carved a road all the way to the Demon King's feet.
And the Legion Commanders, to begin with, were monsters the Great Chieftain wouldn't care to face single-handedly, and Arien never once did something as insane as taking one on alone while leaving her party behind.
Neither did I.
If that man and I truly fought to kill each other, I couldn't swear I'd win — honestly, I thought the odds were better that I'd lose.
And that man called himself a mere mercenary and claimed he couldn't possibly train me.
No matter how I looked at it, he was a strange person.
And today, when I asked why he was good to me, the entire answer that came back was because we were comrades. He said it so casually — that if you owed someone your life, of course you paid it back.
For that man, it seemed that really was the whole of it.
"……Debt."
I walked through the night, turning the word I'd murmured earlier over and over in my head.
At first, I'd planned to swindle a drink out of him and be done with it.
But now, my thinking had shifted a little.
For the first time.
I'd found someone who seemed like it might actually be fun to get close to.