Reunion
It was common, so common as to be expected, but the Master seemed thoroughly sulking.
By the very nature of an adventurer's work, people drift through all sorts of guilds. But here was the Master, with eyes only for this one. Would it really be all right?
"Eira, are you abandoning me? Even if you go, leave the Fixer behind."
"Who's abandoning you? And Ahjussi is one of our party!"
"Oh, the sorrow. ...I suppose I'd better take good care of the little ones, then, Ahjussi."
So now even the Master was calling me 'Ahjussi.' I wondered how many people would go on remembering my name at all.
Lily raised her staff high and held her head stiffly upright.
"Lily is the only one you can trust, Master!"
"You're the one I'm worried about most, squirt."
The Master pinched Lily's soft, white cheeks.
"Master, you're mean."
"Well, I like squirts."
"Lily likes Master too."
The conversation was veering wildly off course — I couldn't begin to guess what the two of them were actually talking about — but they looked happy, so I supposed it was fine. Even a casual remark tossed off in passing brimmed with contentment.
Watching the scene, I decided I didn't quite belong in that place, gave a single small bow, and slipped outside.
I hope everyone's doing well.
Thinking of my old comrades, I let my eyes rest on the sky. Among all the time I'd spent with them, hadn't there been happy days too? Though I doubted there was any meaning in that now.
Having no place to lie down at ease is a wretched thing. Still, having even a momentary seat to sit in was something.
As it had always been, I could live contentedly only so that it would hurt a little less later.
With the Master's hearty farewell seeing us off, we set out down the road.
It wasn't that we lacked the coin to pay a driver — we simply couldn't catch a carriage. Carriages rarely ran all the way to this territory; the ones we did see were reserved for the high and mighty, or the private property of some individual.
"It'd be so nice if we could fly with magic!"
"That's beyond Lily."
Just as Eira said — how wonderful would it be to soar freely? But as far as I knew, flight was only possible for those whose mana rivaled mine at full strength, and who possessed an affinity for wind magic besides.
Cale had specialized in wind magic, if I recalled. Not that I ever saw him fly.
Only after walking for more than three hours did we finally begin to see signs of a place fit for people to live.
"Whoa... so this is the difference? Ahjussi, have you ever been somewhere like this before?"
I nodded at Eira's question. The size of a territory didn't necessarily translate to its residents' standard of living, but a few ostentatiously luxurious buildings standing among the rest gave the place a distinctly different feel.
Cerise, quietly surveying our surroundings, and Eira, marveling at everything — both of them walked with their attention caught by the unfamiliar scenery, awkward in their movements, their eyes looking somehow a little sorrowful.
Lily was as she always was — perhaps because the landscape felt familiar, or perhaps because she was simply the type who rarely startled.
"It's sooo big."
A flicker of curiosity showed in the short remark, but that was all.
And so, as we wandered the land steeped in unfamiliar air while Eira made her inquiries, at last—
"There really is a blue flag hanging there?"
It was Cerise who spotted it: the blue flag I'd heard marked every adventurer's guild in this region.
"Lily likes the red one better."
Given how she'd dressed for the trip, that figured.
When Eira, walking at the very front, pushed open the guild's door and stepped inside—
"...There's no comparison."
The interior of a building that had looked spacious from outside was even more cavernous within, with a bright, cheerful air about it besides. No wonder she was stunned.
I was a little startled too. Because I'd caught sight of familiar black hair.
In truth, I was startled a great deal. I tried not to let it show. There was no longer any reason for our paths to intertwine.
I felt her glance my way as well, and just as surely, neither of us pretended to recognize the other.
Whatever feelings wavered at the sound of Eira's passionate voice simply sank beneath it.
I fixed my eyes on my present companions.
"There certainly are a lot of requests. I'd like something like the orc — dangerous, but not too dangerous."
Cerise said it in a gentle voice tinged with worry. Wasn't an orc plenty dangerous on its own, though? Given her personality, the fact that she could classify one as "not threatening" meant she wasn't being reckless — she simply saw things objectively.
"Got it, Cerise. I'll look for the slowest, laziest beasts we can find...!"
Ogres and bears — not to mention elephants and trolls — were faster than you'd expect. How many genuinely slow beasts could there be out there?
"Goblins? Coming all this way just for goblins would be a bit... Wolves, then... no, those are scary. And not slow, either."
As Eira muttered to herself and scanned the request board, a man who looked to be a guild employee came up behind her.
"E-excuse me, could you step aside for a moment?"
In his hand — not many sheets, just exactly one — was a request form.
"Hm? Oh, yes... sorry about that."
Eira stepped aside, and the man pinned the request to the board.
...A lion?
An unusual request. It didn't involve traveling far — apparently somewhere nearby. But how had a lion gotten all the way out here? It wasn't exactly a creature you saw every day.
Several of them would be a genuine threat, but a single one. Perhaps I should offer to take it.
While I was weighing the thought, a familiar voice drifted over from behind me.
"What are you doing here."
Cale — leader of the party I'd once belonged to. Behind him trailed Mary and Daisy, and Sasha, who had been sitting in the corner just moments ago.
At Cale's reaction — outwardly indifferent, but with a faint sliver of displeasure bleeding through — Eira asked me,
"...Are those people you know?"
I gave a quiet nod. If it were up to me, I'd have said no.
Before long, Daisy walked out past Mary, whose face had twisted into something like a sneer.
"I didn't expect to run into you again so soon. So you've managed to keep living until now, have you? And what is that shield supposed to be."
Was running into me by chance really so unpleasant?
What, exactly, was I to these people — how did they see me? I was holding back a sigh that threatened to burst out of me when—
Cerise drew me back behind her, positioning herself between Daisy and me like a wall.
"Pardon me, but is something the matter? If it's something important, perhaps you'd care to make proper arrangements first and discuss it then?"
Daisy's face warped with displeasure—
"He's got nothing to do with us anymore. So drop it."
Sasha, who had been watching silently, cut her off.
"Hmph. What would I care about someone like that. Daisy, go see if there are any decent requests."
"Come look yourself. Do I have no hands, no feet?"
Daisy stalked straight out of the building, and Cale, treating me as if I'd never existed in the first place, went to browse the request board.
"Oh, a lion? This one's good. Let's go."
Not long after, having torn the lion-slaying request off the board, he turned and said,
"Freak."
Mary hurried after Cale at once. Sasha's gaze lingered on me for a moment.
Then she turned away, and one remark followed.
"...Take care of yourself."
I couldn't quite parse the meaning. Some kind of threat, perhaps.
Only after they had vanished from sight did our own party begin to liven up again.
"Those were strange people. Right, Ahjussi?"
"Next time, Lily will scold them for you."
With those words of comfort from the two girls, Cerise quietly took my hand and said,
"It's all right now."
I hoped that was true.
The reunion with the odd-jobs man they'd cast out could not have gone worse.
I figured he'd barely be scraping by.
That was what Cale believed, as he deliberately turned his back on the man and forced himself to look relaxed while taking a request.
How did this happen? The guy's wrapped head to toe in bandages, and women are flocking to him.
He didn't like the situation at all, so naturally, he rationalized it away.
They're probably total amateurs. Like he could ever join a proper party.
He was half right — but the thought had been born purely of spite, nothing more.
Aside from Mary, the purple-haired mage, none of the others were at peace either.
Is that healer the woman who used to act so prim and proper all on her own? ...I'm far better than her.
I'm glad he seems to be doing well, but it still worries me. Let him go. What right do I have, after all?
Not a single one of them was in any mood to laugh at the sight of Felix — the man in the bandages — settling into a new life.
It was Mary, the only one keeping any composure, who finally broke the long silence.
"Should've been carrying a shield all along. Would've been nice if you'd done that when you were with us. Still don't like you, by the way."
At her mockery, Cale burst out laughing and clapped along.
"Kghahaha! Exactly right. A nobody like him, talking about swords and magic. Now then — let's go find ourselves a lion."
And so, ringing the bell that marked the start of the hunt in earnest, his party began sweeping the area.
"A-hem... please don't stray too far from each other. If the lion were to lunge at someone all of a sudden..."
"Yeah, yeah. We keep a reasonable distance, we don't wander off. Got it."
Cale had just brushed off Daisy's worries and was checking behind a tree—
—when a sound like a tremendous gust of wind tore through from the direction of the party.
"Look out!"
"Kyaaah! Cale, Cale!"
Along with the screams of Daisy and Mary — who had been keeping to the middle distance between the two swordsmen.
"Wh-what? What's going on?!"
Cale whirled around in alarm, and there it was: the lion.
A massive shadow that had been flying toward them from the grass on the far side, ever since the two mages first began to scream.
Beneath the paws of the great beast, his comrade Sasha was struggling desperately, resisting the jaws that tried to close around her neck—
"Kkh...!"
A crisis sparked with terrifying suddenness. Had she faced it head-on, alert and without the ambush, Sasha would never have been overwhelmed.
But with the fight begun from a position of disadvantage like this, she couldn't hold on for more than a few seconds.
Blood began to run down her cheek, raked by the lion's sharp, heavy claws.
He couldn't use magic carelessly — his comrade was in the beast's grasp. Forgetting that, realizing it too late, Cale fumbled.
Two seconds — maybe not even one. In that sliver of an instant, drool ran from the fangs of the lion as its jaws stretched wide.
And the beast's head drew closer and closer, trying to wedge Sasha's slender neck between its teeth.