Fleeting Comfort
Three demons came crashing through the tavern door. Their skin was a livid, bruised blue so deep you could no longer tell bruise from flesh, and their scrawny limbs jutted out at grotesque angles, bent in directions no living body should allow — a sight built to inspire pure terror.
The waitress, a widow with a young child, took one look at those savage, nightmarish faces and collapsed onto the floor, screaming.
"Kyaaaaaaah!"
"Uoooooooh!"
"Kiaaaaaaah!"
The monsters raised their own voices to match hers, shrieking as if they were the living embodiment of Hell's torment, tears streaming down their faces as they kicked over chairs and howled.
"Fear not! The Hero's Party has arrived!"
I rolled between the monsters and the waitress in a single fluid motion. Vaulting across a round table like an acrobat, I landed cleanly in front of them and fixed them with a razor-sharp glare. The demons shrank back like puppies cornered by a dogcatcher, legs tucked tight, tears pouring down their cheeks.
"Uuuuh...! Aaaah!"
"P-please spare us...! We beg...! You...!"
"We did... everything we were... told...!"
I stepped forward and drove a knife-hand strike into the throat of the one still babbling nonsense. The monster took the blow clean across the neck, slammed into the floorboards, and went silent. The remaining two exchanged a frantic look, then bolted without waiting for the other to move first.
"Gueeeeeek!"
"Kieeeeeek!"
"Stop right there, you bastards!"
One of them, fleeing toward the street, flung a broken arm outward as he ran. His guard was wide open, so I drove a shattered glass bottle straight into his side. Crimson blood surged up around the glass and poured down the bottle in a thick stream. In seconds the life drained out of him; his blue body went white as he crumpled.
The last one saw his companion die and curled into a ball on the floor, palms spread wide in a desperate plea, wailing in a voice as pitiful as a child's.
"Kieeeeeeeee!"
But I had no reason to show him mercy. As a member of the Hero's Party, I was bound to slaughter every last demon and reclaim the lands where people had once lived in peace. And right now, I had an obligation to put the trembling widow in front of me at ease.
My steel-toed work boot punched through his guard and smashed into the soft flesh beneath his nose. Soft tissue pulped under the impact; my toe struck the wooden wall behind him with a satisfying crack. The monster's body convulsed as if electrocuted, then went limp. I shook the blood from my boot and turned to the widow.
"Are you all right, ma'am?"
"Ah... aah...!"
She was still shaking too hard to make sense of anything. I pulled her into a firm embrace and stroked her back as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The rough texture of the brassiere straining over her full breasts; the faint scent of barley clinging to her skin. I buried my face in her hair and spoke softly.
"It's all right now."
"Aah...! I-I was so scared!"
She sobbed and pressed herself against me. I held her close and kissed her. Tongue sliding past her lips, hands gripping her hips, I guided us upstairs in a slow, wordless waltz. Comforting the living, in the end, was nothing more than giving free rein to the most primal of desires.
There may be no single right answer to anything in this world — but the two of us, in that moment, moved as if we had found the only one that mattered, advancing down a single path. I pressed forward; she received me; our bodies ground together in a ripe, wordless exchange.
A passionate stretch of time filled with nothing but the language of beasts — not a single word of love spoken between us.
When that fever finally burned itself out, two people sat in a steam-choked room looking like spent logs after a fire. The widow clutched the blanket tight around herself, her face flushed red.
Drink and sex are the same in this respect: after the heat of pleasure burns through the hours, you come back to reality with an ache and a hollow emptiness settling in behind it. A brief, scorching comfort, followed by the void that fills its place — surprisingly fair terms of trade.
Wrapped in a single layer of blanket, bare beneath it, the widow flushed and asked,
"...Will you... come again?"
She already knew full well that I would not.
"I won't be able to return. The road ahead is too dangerous."
The Hero's Party's ultimate goal was to breach the Demon King's castle and defeat him in battle. How far a mere porter like me would make it was anyone's guess — but putting my life on the line and walking into a death trap was a certainty either way.
She hugged the blanket tighter around her body and spoke in a low, melancholy voice.
"It'd be nice if things like the Demon King just... disappeared."
"I wish the same. Hunting a Demon King isn't work fit for people. I'd rather a light fell from the sky and put everything back the way it was."
"Are you leaving?"
"Yes. I have to. Even a nobody like me has his place in the Hero's Party. Without me, things don't run properly."
"...Take care of yourself."
She bowed her head and let me go.
I cleaned myself up and rose. Having brought down a Demon Army officer that morning, I figured I could afford at least a day of rest. In the end, she never said she would wait for me. She never tried to hold me back as I left, and I never asked her to wait either.
That, in the end, is what it means to comfort each other. Wounded people briefly licking each other's wounds and telling one another it doesn't hurt. Once the harsh wind passes, blood seeps back into the dry cuts, and the pain returns.
But for that single moment of holding each other, it is warmer and safer than anything else in the world — which is why you end up searching, aimlessly, for someone carrying the same wound.
What burns on impulse cools just as fast.
Coming down the stairs, I found the wreckage of the Demon Army scattered across the floor — and Lena, lounging sideways in a tavern chair, idly stroking a dagger. Even her head was tilted at an odd angle, giving her the look of a discarded sandwich-board sign left propped against a wall.
I put on an easy smile and spoke as if nothing had happened.
"Well now. I hear things got lively outside?"
Lena nodded.
"A Demon Army officer walked right down here on his own two feet and got himself caught, if you can believe it."
"What an excellent omen. A sign our Hero will take the Demon King next, no doubt."
Lena looked me up and down, then nodded again and rose from her seat.
"I heard you took those monsters down yourself, Ahjussi. You're pretty good in a fight."
She pointed to the corpses I had left strewn across the floor. They lay there with expressions so wretched and pained it was hard to believe they were the Demon Army's wicked remnants — enough that even the tavern keeper seemed reluctant to clean them up.
"I'm a carefully selected porter, after all. As a member of the Hero's Party, I can hardly lose to trash like that."
"I came running because I was worried about you, and now I find out you handled it fine on your own. Kinda leaves me feeling left out."
As she spoke, Lena scooped up a bottle rolling across the floor. By sheer luck it hadn't broken — a fairly expensive piece of liquor. She gave it a shake and called over to the tavern keeper.
"Hey, boss! We're taking this as payment for watching the place, yeah?"
"Ah — yes! Help yourselves!"
The keeper beamed with a good-natured smile and nodded. I bowed to him in thanks, then stepped outside with Lena. The moment we were out, she tipped the bottle back and drank straight from the neck, then grimaced and laughed.
"Hah! That's the stuff! Nothing beats a drink after killing Demon Army scum, right? Here, Ahjussi — you too!"
She held the bottle out. I followed her lead, downed a long pull in one go, and put on the same look of pure satisfaction.
"Hah! Now that's the taste!"
Lena took one look at my face and burst out laughing, half in disbelief.
"Hahahaha! What the hell was that? Ahjussi, you really do look like an idiot sometimes."
She took the bottle back and kept going.
"Ahjussi. Once you've finished off the Demon Army — what then? Got any plans for the future?"
"I've been thinking I might take up farming. A few coins should fall my way, after all."
The imperial capital where the Demon Army was garrisoned held an immense fortune buried within it. Even a fraction of that treasure would be enough to live out the rest of a life in comfort. Lena herself had joined the journey with her eyes on that fortune, after all.
Her eyes went round.
"Farming? Didn't see that coming."
"Farming's a fine enough hobby for a man like me to spend his remaining years in peace. Give me an address someday — I'll send you a share of the harvest every year."
"I figured you'd bury yourself in booze and women. You're a total degenerate, Ahjussi."
"Not a degenerate. There's a more refined term for it: comfort specialist."
Lena laughed again. She tossed the empty bottle into a trash bin; glass and metal kissed with a soft, distinctive clink. I asked her,
"You joined the Hero's Party for the money, didn't you, Lena?"
"Nope. I came out of a sense of justice — to defeat the Demon King."
She shook her head and delivered the transparent lie with a straight face. I nodded and ignored it entirely.
"So — what will you do with all that money? Once you've got that much, you won't need to commit any more crimes, will you?"
"Good question. Haven't decided what I'll do with myself yet."
In the distance, the rest of the Hero's party came into view. The Hero — blond hair, a bright smile — waved in my direction. The sunlight caught his hair just then and set it glittering; the lines of his face were so fine that, at a glance, you could almost mistake him for a woman.
"Porter Ahjussi! Over here! Over here!"
Ashuria was passing the time filing her nails. Mille was sprawled out, using the Hero's thigh as a pillow, fast asleep. Lena waved back at the Hero, then turned to me.
"Maybe I should try farming too."
"Farming?"
"What? I'd look good at it. A former thief turned farmer. Spider tattoo on the neck as the finishing touch."
She pointed to her own throat as she said it. The vivid spider tattoo gleamed as if it might crawl off her skin at any second, and I looked away. Then I glanced toward the Hero and answered,
"You might, at that."