The Scent of Regret
And so several weeks passed, and the Hero's party arrived at a nearby city.
"Then let us disband here. Everyone — thank you for all your hard work on this journey."
"Separate from your hiring fees, anyone with claims for injury compensation or additional expenses, please report them to your guild."
"Once again, my sincere thanks to all of you who journeyed with me this far."
When the Hero finished speaking — gazing over the companions who had shared the road in that soft, even voice of his — sighs at last burst out from every corner.
"Haah... finally over."
"That was a goddamn grind."
"I'm never volunteering for this kind of work again."
"There's always a reason the pay's that high, huh."
"First thing I do back at the guild is scrub myself raw."
"It's all because of that—"
"Shh. He can still hear us."
"Tch. Anyone care to join me for a drink at the inn~"
"Maybe I'll pay a visit to the brothel nearby."
"Gonna ache all over tomorrow, damn it."
Voices seeped out from here and there, as if venting the feelings and fatigue they had bottled up the whole way, and one by one they soon took their leave.
"Um...."
One mercenary started toward the Hero, then stopped. The moment their eyes met, he managed nothing but an awkward bow of his head before falling in with the others.
In the end, nothing had changed at all. And the Hero, for his part, simply stood there in silence and listened as they departed — no matter what complaints, backbiting, or curses they left in their wake.
Perhaps that, too, was only natural. Even after the truth had come out, nothing changed. Those who had blamed the Hero now avoided his eyes — because the moment they apologized first, they would have to admit that they had hounded a man who had done nothing wrong.
Incited by the Saintess and the Bard, they had pinned every problem and every ounce of the journey's stress on the Hero; and though the Saintess's confession had since cleared up the misunderstanding, there was not the slightest chance any of them would truly repent.
It was easier to go on believing that the Hero was the one who had made their lives miserable. That way, all the venom they had spat at him could remain unwrong.
After all, not one of them had joined this venture out of genuine conviction. It had been nothing more than a contract for coin.
"Shall we be going, then."
"....Yes, Hero."
Leaving behind the party as they scattered without a shred of regret, the Hero walked on with the Saintess.
Ever since that night, the Saintess had trailed him at a distance of a few steps, her posture so rigid it was as if she believed she must not so much as step on his shadow.
On the march she flinched at the smallest stirrings around her. When anyone was wounded she poured out far more divine power than the injury called for, and when battle ended she swallowed her nausea while disposing of the monsters' corpses. At mealtimes she trimmed her own portion and pushed it toward the Hero.
But after several days, the Saintess's hands had begun to tremble, visibly.
She had even knelt down in person and begged forgiveness for the strife her whispering had sown — yet those whose anger had not cooled still hated, not her, but the Hero.
Her companions accepted her apology, grudgingly — and even that was possible only because she bore the title of Saintess and a beautiful face.
But the Saintess herself knew better. None of what she was doing now had begun because she had understood, on her own, what was right. It was all nothing more than a faithful imitation of the way the Hero had once treated her.
And yet, ironically, one thing consoled her: that she was not, at least, doing something entirely wrong. Even if it was only mimicry of the Hero, barely that. Even if it all sprang from a revolting kind of self-satisfaction.
Once inside the city proper, the Hero and the Saintess made straight for the administrative office, where the city's chief officer kept his seat.
The Hero's next stop and his expected hour of arrival, relayed by the state, were treated as classified — known only to the city's representative, the sole recipient of the telegram. The support funds levied from each nation were likewise entrusted to that representative, to be spent on whatever equipment the Hero's party required, or on guild hiring fees, once they arrived.
A short while later, after asking their way of passersby, they arrived at a building standing at the very heart of the commercial district. Even from the street it was plain that no small sum had gone into the place; braced across the arched entrance at its front stood a massive iron gate, towering well over the height of three men.
"Halt. State your identity and your business."
The heavy armor of the guards posted at the gate was, in its own way, just as far from ornament. Their breastplates — leather crudely layered with plate — carried countless sword scars and dents exactly as they had been earned, and the spearpoints they gripped were honed to a wicked edge, as though they had come straight off blood-soaked fields. Whatever peace the commercial district wore on its surface, these men were veterans of a war that was still very much underway.
"I have come to see the City Administrator."
The Hero quietly drew from his coat a seal certifying his identity, and before long one of the guards took it and answered, equally quietly.
"The Administrator is away at the moment. He is expected back by sundown; return then, and I will see that your message reaches him."
The coldness in the man's voice had not thawed, but it was courtesy enough; the Hero nodded and turned to go. And that was when it came. The conversation drifting up from behind them was not a kind one.
"That's the Hero from all the rumors? Why in the world does something like that get treated like precious treasure?"
"Shh. He'll hear you."
"Honestly, though, I get where you're coming from."
"Every nation on the map is pouring money down a hole for that one man."
"So that's where our taxes go — into that guy's belly."
"Word is he's some royal blood or other. Feels like one big show for the galleries."
"Ah, must be nice. Wish I could go traveling with a pretty thing like that. I'd be holding her close every single night."
"Keh. And why would she ever pick a loser like you?"
"Aw, you never know till you try, do you? Honestly, with a dud like that, anything's an upgrade."
"Wouldn't any of us be better than him?"
.....
Something clicked in her jaw, and the Saintess's face began to curdle. Not because of the scoundrels spewing their filth about her.
It was the sight of them casually gift-wrapping roads she had traveled through battle after battle with her life on the line — that was what sickened her past all bearing. How much she had poured into this journey; those creatures simply presumed, and spat out whatever suited them.
"You—!!"
"There is no need to let every word from them trouble you."
But at the Hero's soft voice that followed, the Saintess shut her mouth. He said it as though it were an old, familiar thing — as though the words of strangers could not stir so much as a ripple in him.
"They know nothing, after all."
It was the correct thing to say. And that was precisely why it cut so deep. Those who knew nothing — and the Saintess, who had known, and looked away. Which of them was the more hideous creature?
"..........Yes. Hero."
Ahead of her she could see the Hero's back, trudging on at the front of the way. The same footsteps as always. The same expression as always. The same voice as always. Unchanged, even as he endured the atrocity she had once committed under the crushing weight of her own duty.
".....Huh?"
And then, unbidden, a single question settled into the Saintess's mind.
'Why did the Hero become the Hero?'
Had he begun this journey because he wanted to? Had he become the Hero because he wished to be one? She honestly did not know. No — perhaps she had heard the answer once and let it run out the other ear. She had always been like that.
Only now, far too late, was she coming to understand how the Hero had been treated all along. Little by little. Very, very little by little, the Saintess is beginning to face the abyss she has spent so long turning away from.
While they waited for the Administrator's return, the two of them took their rest at a nearby inn.
"Then I will return to see you in about an hour."
No sooner had he secured two single rooms than the Hero left those words behind and vanished up the stairs to the second floor. Like the disbanded party members, they too had worn-out bodies and minds to mend, and travel-stained equipment to see to.
The Saintess watched his back in silence for a moment, then set her own feet moving.
Click.
The key from the innkeeper turned in the lock, and the room beyond opened up, thick with the particular scent of old wood. She walked slowly to the middle of it, took in its shape and its sparse furnishings, and set her pack down on the bed.
".....Haah."
Only then, as though some knot inside her had finally come loose, did the Saintess let out a long breath. She undid the clasps and opened her pack; inside were the provisions gathered over the long road, and among them, one thing caught her eye.
Perfume.
A gift from the Bard, long ago — given, he'd said, to commemorate their first meeting. From the day she first received it, she had kept it the way one keeps a talisman.
A few times she had worn it to look lovely for the Bard, only for the monsters nearby to catch the scent and come snapping at them. No one had caught on then — but she had quietly worked the others up, whispering that the fault lay not with her but with the Hero's failure to scout properly, and after that she never touched it once.
She lifted it out and twisted the cap, and a faint sweetness seeped up to tickle her nose. It seemed a thing far too fine for someone who reeked of blood and sweat and road dust.
["Saintess, I am not a fool."]
Crack!
"!"
In an instant the scent carried it all back — the Hero's words surfacing in her mind, and with them the sound of branches bursting apart — and she flinched hard.
Crash!
The perfume bottle slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor.
The spilled perfume spread across the boards, and its thick fragrance went past tickling her nose — it set her head swimming. That a scent she had once loved could turn her stomach so violently felt like something from another world.
"........Ah."
She knelt and gathered up the broken glass, piece by piece, and her face grew darker with every shard. Then, all at once, she saw her own face reflected in the liquid pooled on the floor. Her face, warped into something strange. It seemed to be smiling — the way it had back then.
"Ow—!"
She jerked back from the sight, and a shard of glass bit into her hand. A bead of bright red welled up at her fingertip and fell into the perfume below. Something fishy threaded through the sweetness, and the clear liquid bloomed red.
".........Hahaha."
Cradling her cut hand, staring down at the spreading stain, the Saintess found laughter rising out of her. Her divine power moved on its own, plugging the punctured vessels and sealing the split skin — and when it was done, not even a scar remained.
But it was pathetic. So pathetic that the laughter came.
"Just because the wound is gone doesn't mean it never hurt."
Who those words were meant for, not even the Saintess herself knew.
By the time the Saintess came back down in her plain clothes, the Hero was already waiting, seated at a corner table as though it were the most natural thing in the world. Unlike the Saintess, who had always tossed her duties aside, the Hero had never once been idle — recruiting at the guild, checking on his companions' condition, always something. Seeing him simply at rest like this felt strangely novel.
"You've come."
Somehow he had marked her approach without so much as a glance, greeting the Saintess as she came in from the edge of his vision in exactly his usual voice. In place of any pleasantries, he ordered a simple meal, and with a faint bitterness settled in her chest, the Saintess followed suit and ordered her own.
Out of habit she asked for a meat pie, a chilled fruit juice, and a few slices of cheese — and only when her order was done did she actually look at the food set before the Hero. A single loaf of bread. A stew of unidentifiable meat. Shredded cabbage. After everything the journey had put him through, the amount was meager to the point of being abnormal.
The instant she realized — sitting across from him, with what she had ordered — the Saintess lost her appetite entirely.
"It's quite all right."
But the Hero never spared her food so much as a glance. He simply went on in silence — lifting his own to his mouth, chewing, swallowing. The Saintess soon gave up on anything else and, head bowed, chewed along with him. The picture they made was less two companions sharing a table than a judge and the condemned.
And then, without warning, the bomb falls.
"It appears we will need to begin looking for new companions."
Thump. The meat pie in the Saintess's hand dropped back onto her plate.
".......I'm sorry?"
Her throat closes up. The juice she meant to drink is sitting right in front of her, and still her hand slips beneath the table — she cannot let him see it shaking. The lurching in her chest will not be pressed down.
Has he changed his mind out of nowhere? Does he mean to replace her with someone else? Is everything she has struggled for these past weeks about to dissolve into foam?
Just as the anxiety and the dark thoughts threaten to spiral on—
"Saintess."
".....Yes."
"I am not saying that you will be dismissed."
Only then did the Saintess remember how to breathe.
"I had simply come to think that assembling and disbanding temporary parties through the guild, over and over as we have, is far too inefficient."
"The more members we carry, the greater the expense; and while our safety may improve, our travel time doubles."
"Above all, there is security, there are endless small troubles, and there is the labor of mediating every quarrel that breaks out between companions."
"So even if it means greater risk, I intend to keep our number small and select — to find permanent members whose backs I could truly entrust my own to. That is what I meant."
"Not companions hired like mercenaries, as until now, but those who choose it of their own will — steadfast enough to walk beside me to the very end of this journey, with firm resolve and reasons of their own."
Ideal words. Wise words. A party that would not gather and scatter over coin and convenience, but be filled with those who genuinely meant to change the world — it was so perfectly, so painfully, like the Hero.
But out of all of it, only one phrase surfaced in the Saintess's mind.
'It's because of me, isn't it.'
Because of her, members had walked out midway again and again — and she had disappointed him deeply. And now, terrified that refusing at this late hour would set him against her, she nods along without a whisper of protest.
"H-having companions you can trust your back to... is a good thing...."
Beneath the table her laced fingers tighten until they crush each other. Pressing down what she feels with pain — how pathetic is that? But what standing does she have to offer an opinion? That she resents losing her place? That she wants to ask whether she alone is not enough? All of it would be nothing but foolish noise — petty self-satisfaction dressed up in a moment's shallow thought.
"Then I will take that as your agreement."
Her noncommittal answer was, in the end, taken as yes; the Hero gave a single nod and turned back to his meal. As though a wall had been raised between the two of them, the conversation seemed about to close there for good.
"E-excuse me....! P-pardon me. H-Hero....!"
But at that moment, someone with halting words caught the two of them and held on.