Partners (4)
Many people began their day with the morning sun.
The place where one of them had agreed to meet was in front of a cheap inn, and Er was standing there kicking at the pebbles on the ground with a troubled expression.
She had been replaying the scene from the afternoon of the previous day, the awkward verbal clash with someone she had never met before.
It had all been her fault.
After all, she had never intended to bring along Ahin, the partner she had recruited.
She had thought that after two quests together they would at least have a rough idea of each other’s strengths and weaknesses, but now it was too late to back out.
In that case, they still hadn’t even split the reward for the underground mausoleum request, had they? There was still a lot more they would be doing together.
So there was no selfish motive behind this at all.
It was pure goodwill—teaching a junior adventurer the ropes and showing her what life on the road was really like, a way to repay someone who had shown her kindness, and nothing more than the loyalty that was only right between comrades.
There was not the slightest personal feeling involved.
Yesterday’s argument had simply been… well, she had been annoyed by how smug the other person was acting and had blurted out her objections without thinking.
There was nothing special about Ahin or any lingering emotion toward him—
“Step back a bit, will you!”
“Why are you being so shy? We’re already—”
Er’s idle thought shattered the moment she stepped out of the inn and saw the pair of a man and a woman walking together.
The two of them had emerged from the same inn.
The woman with black hair was holding the arm of the blond-haired man, clinging to him like a lover—
“Ah, Ah, Ahin!! What kind of… what kind of shameless act is this?!”
Her reaction had been far too over-the-top, but the moment she realized she had spoken aloud the words had already spilled out.
It was not only Er who had heard Ahin’s voice breaking the morning silence.
The black-haired woman who had been glued to his arm—the one he had been holding—spoke up with a scowl.
“What is it? Stop interfering.”
“Interfere? Don’t you see something Ahin hates?!”
“Hates? He was happily munching on the bread I gave him right before we left.”
“What? Ahin, that’s real?!”
“Insane woman, I tied you up and forced you to eat!”
Luckily the bread on sale in the inn was cheap black bread, but even if it lacked flavor, it was far better than Jina’s homemade cooking, which always had some strange aftertaste.
Ahin had bolted out of the inn the moment he finished eating, and Jina had followed right after.
“Heh heh, Ahin. Last night was fun, wasn’t it?”
“…Yeah, so fun I couldn’t sleep at all. Every five minutes someone would try to open my door.”
“You’re just too shy to admit it. I totally get it.”
“Insane woman…”
Seeing Ahin mutter that with a disgusted look on his face, Er crossed her arms with a sigh.
“So how long are you planning to stay glued together?”
“Heh, until the end—”
“Enough already. This is getting uncomfortable.”
Ahin’s voice had grown sharp and hard, as if he had finally reached his limit, even though he had been put through the wringer all day yesterday.
Jina would never have listened to him even if he said something like that.
The relationship between Jina and Ahin, as Er had observed it throughout the previous day, had clearly been one of his weaknesses.
Yet even as that thought crossed her mind, Er’s head began to spin.
After all, Jina had simply dropped his arm and stepped back the moment he spoke.
“…Eh?”
“Er, why are you acting like that?”
“Why did you step back?”
“Sudden change of heart?”
“You don’t even seem to know what’s going on.”
Er tilted her head, unable to understand the sudden shift.
Jina simply smiled faintly in reply.
It was one of her skills—never crossing a line.
She knew exactly how far Ahin could be pushed, thanks to hard-earned experience.
She had held a clear advantage over their competition through years of interaction, and she had no problem flaunting it with a confident voice.
“Well then, let’s go get our quest already! We need to settle this quick so we can take Ahin home!”
“Ahin won’t go back with you…”
Ahin muttered under his breath, then lowered his head and turned on his heel.
To make things even a little easier, he needed to wrap this up as soon as possible.
If Er won, that troublesome woman would finally shut up. He believed in her.
How long had they walked like that before they reached the door of the Adventurer Guild?
The pair stepped inside and immediately made their way to the large bulletin board covered in request notices.
“What rank should we take?”
“Hmm… Bronze would be fine since I can do it alone. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”
“The pay isn’t great, but that’s not the important part. We’d have three people anyway. It’ll be all right.”
Even though Jina was a complete outsider and had no business joining the conversation, the two of them still finished talking and started browsing the board.
But the requests that would suit their current situation wouldn’t be easy to find.
From Bronze rank onward, requests aimed specifically at them had been scarce.
The guild had classified them as “useful” adventurers, so the rewards were higher and gathering a full party was harder.
A request that was just right in difficulty and offered a fair share of the contribution wouldn’t be easy to come by.
“Ugh…”
“Not much here, is there.”
The two of them stared at the board for a long while until—
“Hey, how about that one?”
Jina pointed at a single request notice with her finger.
“It came in last night. The location is a half-day ride by carriage, and the details are to find the missing hunters…”
“You don’t need to pretend you don’t know what it means when hunters go missing in the mountains, right?”
“I know. Probably… they’re not alive.”
Any profession that took another person’s life could lose its own at any moment.
It didn’t matter whether you were a hunter or an adventurer.
Losing one’s life on the job was more common than people realized.
“So it sounds better. I want to give their spirits some peace.”
“…Why are you suddenly acting like such a pious priest?”
“I’m not pretending. I’m a real priest. See? I have the Rosario.”
She held up the silver cross necklace around her neck as she spoke.
The Rosario given only to those who had completed their official priestly ordination was both proof of her faith and a sacred duty.
“How about it, Ahin? This one isn’t bad, is it?”
“…Finding the bodies of the dead as my personal trophy would weigh on my conscience and humanity, no matter what I say.”
“You shouldn’t use the deceased as your target. Instead… what about finding the one who’s responsible?”
Ahin thought for a moment after hearing Jina’s suggestion, then nodded.
“Yeah, that’s fine. It’s something we can evaluate from every angle. What do you think, Er?”
“As long as Ahin is okay with it, I don’t mind.”
“Great, then it’s settled.”
Ahin tore down the request notice and spoke as he held it.
“Let’s report to the guild and head out right away.”
“But what about external adventurers like us joining the guild’s request?”
“It’s fine. On paper we’re hired as external mercenaries, but that doesn’t really matter, right?”
“Much better than letting five silver coins get stolen.”
Ahin told the story as he recalled the day he had first visited the Adventurer Guild.
“Those insane con men… they took five silver coins for that trash…”
“It’s a little unfair, but I get it.”
The way the two of them were chatting about things only adventurers would understand had been far from pleasant for Jina, who was forced to watch.
Because they had been so close in their shared topic, the jealousy boiling inside her made her voice sound gruff.
“We should stop talking and just leave already. It’s going to get dark.”
“Ah, right. Just a second. I’ll go report to the guild!”
Er took the request notice Ahin had torn down and hurried to the reception desk of the guild.
It was then that Ahin heard Jina’s low voice behind him as he watched Er’s retreating back.
“…Ahin.”
“What, again?”
Ahin had answered irritably, but the words that followed left him with no choice but to stay silent.
“Er looks just like you.”
“Jina.”
“Her.”
At those words Ahin froze mid-breath.
Jina was the first person to look straight into his golden eyes and speak.
“If you’re still dwelling on what happened that day, you don’t have to. It wasn’t your fault. It was all those damn old bastards…”
“Not that. Just stop.”
“Not that? Before that day you weren’t like this, were you? You said you wanted to leave, you wanted to run away, but when it came to it…”
“Am I wrong to say something?”
Ahin’s golden eyes met hers.
Those eyes that had always looked so beautiful and mysterious were suddenly looking so sad today.
“Don’t talk to Er about that.”
“Ahin.”
“It’s not what you think. So let’s end it here.”
“…Ahin, please.”
“I won’t hate you too.”
What could Ahin possibly say in response to those words?
That was why Jina finally closed her mouth.
But Ahin, having already turned his back, didn’t care.
He simply stared blankly at the board, trying to calm the turmoil inside him.
For a moment a short silence fell between the two of them.
“We’re done now, right? Let’s go!”
Only after Er returned did they feel they could look at the same place again.
“…What? Why do both of you look so down?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Were you arguing?”
“It’s not that.”
Er had picked up on the awkward tension between them, and Ahin spoke in a stammer.
“Let’s hurry and drag this crazy woman apart!”
“…!”
Unlike his usual self, Ahin looked strangely subdued as he said that.
Er had no choice but to tilt her head.
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