Afterglow (6)
I’d thought the stronghold would be some impressive place, but when I pushed the door open, all that waited for me was an ordinary neighborhood tavern.
Oil lamps hanging from the walls, a damp wooden floor, the cheap stink of liquor you could find anywhere.
I moved slowly, looking the place over as I went.
Not a single man in the room looked like an adventurer.
Hands roughened by hoe-work, backs bent as if they were trying to drown the day’s labor in alcohol… Most of them seemed to be locals from the area.
Not one of them even glanced at me.
Their faces looked as though they’d already sold off every scrap of attention they had left to drink.
Only the second floor was unusually loud.
So the real bastards must be up there.
I took a seat at the counter.
I ordered a drink that seemed decent enough, wet my throat, then took a cigarette from my pocket and lit it.
Only after the smoke filled my lungs did it feel as if something clenched all day inside me had eased, just a little.
The liquor slid down my throat and warmed my insides.
It had been the same on the front lines.
No matter how the day had gone, the moment my throat went hot, I felt a little more certain that I was alive.
It wasn’t a feeling I’d ever particularly welcomed, though.
I casually spoke to the bartender, who was wiping down a glass.
"Business seems good. If it’s this packed at this hour."
"People come because they’ve got nowhere else to go. That’s not quite the same as doing well."
"For a place like this, the liquor isn’t bad."
"It’s not not bad. It’s good. For the price."
He acted curt, but he answered every question I threw at him.
I kept drinking whatever he poured without complaint, nodding along here and there, and by the time my glass was half empty, I’d even learned useless things like how lazy the neighborhood watch was and why the bakery in the alley next door had shut down last week.
I crushed out my cigarette in the ashtray and asked, "What’s on the second floor, anyway? It’s pretty loud up there."
"What, came looking because you’re interested in Bruno’s raid team? You look pretty high-and-mighty—why don’t you give up now?"
"A young master like me won’t be welcomed?"
"I’d say it’s more that the work’s pretty rough. That’s why they only take skilled people."
"Doesn’t look like they’re very skilled to me."
"Well… that’s because they’re clean-cut. No scars, either."
"Still, I’d like to meet them once."
I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket and set it on the counter.
The bartender stared at it for a moment, then tossed the cloth he’d been using over his shoulder and took the money.
After that, he set a fresh drink in front of me in a glass much larger than the last.
"Keep drinking."
The bartender called over one of the servers inside and whispered something in his ear before sending him up to the second floor.
"I don’t know if they’ll let you in, but if they do, go up and say hello. They’ll probably be in the innermost room, swilling drinks with their buddies."
Not long after, the server who’d gone upstairs came back down.
He whispered into the bartender’s ear, and the man gestured for me to go up.
I half-finished the new glass and stood.
The stairs were tucked inside the tavern.
With every step, the old wood creaked, but the noise spilling down from above drowned it out completely.
Laughter.
Glasses clinking.
Someone slamming a hand against a table.
As I reached the landing, the noise came pouring over me.
And as soon as I got to the second floor, I could even hear a woman’s moans leaking from the room beside me.
So Arin was in a place like this.
During the day, in front of that sordid guild reception desk; at night, right in the middle of this noise and the stink of flesh.
I couldn’t even picture what kind of face she’d worn walking through this hallway.
And the fact that I couldn’t picture it hurt.
There was too much time I didn’t know about.
I stopped in front of the innermost room.
What kind of scene would be waiting behind that door?
What sort of fucked-up sight was I going to have to see?
I took a cigarette from my pocket and stuck it between my teeth.
My fingertips were trembling faintly.
Under the bandage on my left arm, the wound Lione had left behind throbbed.
The priest had even prayed over it, so it would probably close up in a day…but even here, even now, that thought came to me.
That there was no woman in my life more useless than Lione, that fucking bitch…
I lit the cigarette, drew in a deep breath of smoke, then let it out.
And opened the door.
What spilled out from inside was smell before sound.
The sweet, sickly reek of alcohol, sweat, and perfume all tangled together.
On the largest, and most comfortable-looking sofa sat a huge, muscular man.
Beside him sat Arin, her face flushed as if she were already drunk out of her mind.
The man’s thick hand rested on Arin’s shoulder.
And Arin’s clothes… covered very little of her body.
The women seated in the other chairs were much the same, though hers seemed especially skimpy, maybe because her chest was so large the fabric over it looked like nothing more than a scrap of cloth.
I doubt even prostitutes would wear something like that.
And Arin wasn’t keeping her distance, either.
She had one hand on the man’s thigh and was pressed close beside him, chattering away with a shaky smile she’d forced onto her face.
My vision narrowed.
The noise in the room sank away as if descending beneath the surface of water, and only the smoke from the cigarette clenched in my mouth scraped clearly against my lungs.
Arin’s face, half-hidden beyond the smoke, wavered out of focus.
"You the bastard who said he wanted to join our raid team?"
The man called Bruno set down his glass and looked up at me.
I didn’t answer.
I was staring only at Arin, with bloodshot eyes.
Bruno jerked his chin at one of the adventurers sitting nearby and asked, "Hey, what the hell is that guy?"
One of them got up and walked over to me.
He said something. Then something else. I couldn’t hear a damn thing. Only a buzzing in my ears, a shrill white ringing that swallowed every sound and gave nothing back.
When I gave no reaction, he shoved my shoulder on the third try.
I staggered back and my spine hit the wall.
The impact sent a jolt straight through the wound in my left arm.
I could see thin streaks of blood soaking through the bandage.
I rubbed out the cigarette I’d been smoking against the wall. A sigh slipped out of me.
"Goddammit…"
With a voice that trembled, I looked at Arin and said, "So this is what you wanted, huh? Ha, fuck. So… this is why."
Arin only stared at me, frozen stiff.
She didn’t open her mouth. Or maybe she couldn’t.
Well, she shouldn’t be opening her mouth in a situation like this anyway.
Her eyes, blurred with drink, were shaking.
But her lips were still pressed tightly shut.
I thought it would’ve been better if she’d at least turned her head away.
If she’d turned her face and buried it in the arms of the man beside her, if she’d just pretended not to know me, maybe I could have folded this away in my heart.
"What, you two know each other?"
Bruno asked Arin the question.
Arin silently nodded.
"Hah… I wondered why you wouldn’t spread those legs. Thought you were playing hard to get because you were pretty, but you already had a man?"
Then Bruno’s hand shot out and seized Arin by the hair, yanking her head back.
"You her husband, you little rag fucking whore?"
"P-Please, boss, wait a second…!"
"Don’t call me boss."
With her hair in his fist, Arin struggled and tried to shove Bruno away.
She kicked and twisted, but the size difference was what it was; it didn’t do much good.
As I watched the scene, I could taste blood in my mouth.
I must have been biting the inside of my cheek. I didn’t even know when I’d started.
"Hey, you piece-of-shit maggot bitch, if we sent some worthless thing like you into the academy, you should’ve been spreading your legs and sucking from the start instead of acting coy. I thought you were being stiff because you were some country bumpkin… ha."
Bruno tightened his grip on Arin’s hair.
Then he caught the eyes of the other adventurers and jerked his chin.
"Anyway, if we bury that bastard, then there’s no problem with you opening your legs a little, right? Don’t you think? I’ll even knock down your debt a bit every time I fuck you, so keep that in mind."
At the same time, one by one, the people in the room started picking up their weapons.
They rose from their seats, reaching beneath sofas, lifting weapons from tables, taking up the things they’d leaned against the wall.
"Take that bastard alive. I want to grind him up right in front of this bitch. Then the only place she’ll have left to go is beside me, won’t she?"
The adventurers scratched the backs of their heads, looking reluctant, but since it was the boss giving the order, they seemed to follow for now.
They closed the distance to me one step at a time.
It was a scene I’d seen plenty of times before. If anything, maybe this was the kind of thing I was most used to.
There were seven men armed with weapons.
Since they’d been drinking, their gear was light.
There were six women dressed like Arin, like whores.
Three of them had weapons.
"Don’t take it personally."
The man in front stepped toward me as he spoke.
He spun a chain mace with crude spikes embedded in it.
Then he swung it at my body.
I shifted one step to the right.
The mace smashed into the wall where I’d been standing, tearing straight into it.
Unfortunately for him, once it was lodged in the wall, it didn’t come out.
Chunks of wall and dust scattered through the air.
Wood splinters caught on the spikes and rained to the floor.
I watched him struggle and yank at it for a moment, then stepped in and drew my dagger.
The familiar feel of the hilt in my palm was comforting.
It had been a while since I hadn’t driven this thing into my own head, though.
I slid the blade under his chin and drove it upward, letting it burst out through the top of his skull.
When I raked the blade through his head, he spasmed violently and then went limp.
Only then did the others’ expressions change, just a little.
From eyes looking at an easy idiot to eyes burning with killing intent.
Yeah. This kind of atmosphere was more familiar.