Ah, This Won't Do (6)
The Adventurer's Guild was, at its heart, a facility that existed for adventurers.
It was a place built to gather every request — large and small — from the surrounding villages and the city itself, and to offer them all under one roof for the sake of convenience.
Which made the sight of a noble house's knights, dressed in immaculate uniforms, standing guard at the entrance of such a place a thoroughly unwelcome one.
They were not royal knights, so they held no honorary rank of their own — but men wearing a noble crest and blocking the door were more than enough to set every adventurer coming and going on edge. Guild staff, unable to stand it any longer, had asked them to move elsewhere. The knights had not so much as twitched. Only when they confirmed that one particular person had stepped inside did those heavy footsteps finally stir.
Shimmering gold hair. Green eyes like emeralds set into a crown.
A beauty who could brighten any room around her walked into the guild with a face so rigidly set it stripped that beauty of all its warmth.
She was none other than Er, returned from a completed request.
Er swept a glance over the knights posted at the guild doors, then turned her head and walked straight to the reception desk.
"Lize. I've brought the Grizzly Bear's gallbladder. You'll find it in one of the carcasses loaded on the cart outside — just have it extracted."
"Yes. I'll send for a butcher. And…"
"Those people outside. I'll handle them."
Er had caught the way Lize's gaze kept drifting toward the guild entrance. The words had barely left her mouth when one of the knights stepped forward.
"You are the Silver-rank adventurer, Lady Er, is that correct?"
"Would you come with us for a moment? There is someone who wishes to see you."
"…You already knew who I was, and you still came out with that?"
They were faces she had never seen before in her life. But the fact that they had recognized her at a glance and spoken up meant her description had already been confirmed and passed along. The unpleasant feeling in her gut, it seemed, had not been wrong. Her voice came out hard.
"I'll go in two hours."
"That would be…"
"Or were you planning to drag me out of here by force?"
The corner of Er's mouth curled as she looked the knights over with open contempt.
"Do you even have the skill to pull that off?"
"…We will return in two hours to escort you."
"See that you do."
For all of Er's high-handed, thoroughly insolent tone, the knights offered no reply. They bowed their heads, turned on their heels, and filed out of the guild.
The other adventurers who had watched the exchange put their heads together and started murmuring. Someone stepped up beside Er.
"…You sure it's okay to treat them like that?"
"It doesn't matter. They're nothing but hollow husks with a pretty shine on the outside."
Er answered Jina as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, then went on.
"In the meantime, we have work to do. Dispose of the Grizzly Bears, maintain our gear, report the request results, and get some rest."
"And you think two hours is enough for all that?"
"It'll take about five, I'd say."
"…You're doing this to screw with them on purpose."
Jina, who had been listening, let out a snort of laughter before she could stop herself.
"But are you sure you're okay with this?"
"I already told you it doesn't matter. And… there's something I've been wanting to tell all of you."
Er looked around at her companions as she said it.
Jina, wearing an expression faintly mixed with dismay, but making no move to leave. Haru, who always looked as though she weren't thinking about anything at all — except that today, a rare gleam of sharpness sat in those sky-blue eyes. And then—
"Ain. You'll hear me out, won't you?"
Ain, who said nothing at all. Who simply looked at her.
When they nodded in silence, Er let out a small breath.
"Lize, I'm sorry — could we borrow a meeting room?"
"Of course. And…"
"…The guild will need to know if it's going to be able to respond. You can sit in too. It'll come out soon enough anyway."
With that, she turned and headed for the meeting room deeper inside the guild.
The rightful daughter of House Arkhansiel, one of the three pillars of the kingdom. A child born under the blessing of the stars.
She had inherited her father's gold hair and her mother's green eyes in full, and from her earliest years she had been a bright child who could light up any room she entered.
Her world had always been warm and full of joy. Every place she set her feet was touched by gentle sunlight, and every patch of shade where she paused to rest was stirred by a kind wind, as though someone were softly fanning her.
And then, in a single instant, all of it vanished.
She had gone from a child to a girl, and was not far from becoming a woman, when her father — his face set in an expression of startling hardness — spoke to his daughter.
What reached the child after that was news of her father's death.
Treason, they said. The rumor that rang through the streets was that Duke Arkhansiel had tried to pull down the current Crown Prince and take the throne for himself — and that the traitor duke had been executed for it.
Soldiers with the royal crest stamped across their chests kicked in the doors. The people who had smiled so kindly at the child were bound and dragged away, or hauled out as corpses. And her mother was no exception.
Her mother said those words as she lifted her child into a carriage, then turned away with a face of iron resolve. The child wept and screamed at that retreating back, but it only grew farther and farther away.
And the face of the man who appeared before her mother that day — she remembered it still.
Zamber Arkhansiel.
Her father's younger brother. The man she should have called uncle. Standing in front of her mother with the corner of his mouth curled up in a smile.
The carriage carrying the child tore away at a mad pace. It ran and ran and ran, and then, racing along a cliff road to shake the pursuit, it took a blast of magic in the side and tumbled over the edge.
That the child survived was a miracle. The knight who had stayed at her side took every bit of the impact that should have been hers with his own body, coughed up blood, and died.
What happened after that?
Soldiers found her — not men wearing the royal crest, but men bearing the rainbow emblem of House Arkhansiel. The child who had been dying in the wreckage of the shattered carriage met her uncle once she could hold herself upright.
And then—
He did not even look at her face when he said it. There was nothing she could say to him.
The child was thrown out into the world.
It was the day she came of age.
All she had was a single sword her father had left her, and a quantity of gold coins. Gold pressed into her hands with the words that this was the end — that she should go somewhere else and live. She had gone on living with those things clutched to her chest and dead eyes in her face, until an old acquaintance of her father's found her and told her the truth.
"Zamber — that son of a bitch framed him. Framed your father. All so he could take the house for himself…!!"
Her father had not been a man who would raise a rebellion. He had been a good man, one who had lived his whole life swearing he would walk a just path without a single stain upon it.
She could not forgive the man who had driven a knife into that father's back.
But she had nothing. A single sword and a handful of gold coins were not enough to break the neck of a man who had sold his own brother and become a count for it.
She could not become a knight, either. She was a traitor's daughter, and she was already a dead woman.
Placing herself in someone else's care would not have been such a terrible thing. She had inherited her mother's beauty in full, after all. But she refused. She wanted to break his neck with her own hands, by her own strength. What meaning was there in a revenge carried out with someone else's hands?
And so she chose.
A path where her identity would remain uncertain, but where she could build a reputation beyond any doubt — and where, perhaps, she might become a noble, or win a seat that amounted to the same thing.
She decided to become an adventurer.
She knew well enough that the odds of things going the way she wanted, even as an adventurer, were vanishingly slim. But it was the only way. The only thing she could trust in that moment was herself, and with every other road sealed off, it was the only choice left to her.
He had probably known she had become an adventurer, too. He must have hoped she would wander some far-off land and die there, sooner or later. Or perhaps he had simply hoped she would live out her days as a mediocre adventurer and vanish without a trace.
And so she became an adventurer.
Carrying her father's sword and his convictions in her body. Holding close the love her mother had given her.
That was the moment the child became an adventurer.
"I still keep my father's sword. I treasure it. As for when I'll draw it… I've already decided when that will be."
"…There are way too many pieces of shit in this world."
Ain's face was a mess of irritation and raw anger. He felt a dull, choking tightness settle in his chest, and let out a long breath before he spoke again.
"So. What are you going to do now?"
"You're not going to ask anything else? Why I hid it. What I was thinking…"
"You hid it because it was worth hiding. And I don't think you were thinking anything weird."
Er tilted her head at him, as if she couldn't quite make sense of that.
"Looking at the way you do things, I don't figure you'd have any nasty ideas in your head."
"…And why is that?"
"Because you're a sucker. A total sucker."
Er tipped her head the other way, still not following.
"You go through all that, and then you just quietly back off? If that's not being a sucker, what is?"
"…But I couldn't do anything back then."
"What's that got to do with it? You put a blade in the neck of the bastard standing right in front of you. That's the first thing you do."
Ain's eyes had gone strangely cold. They caught the light as he spoke.
Er closed her mouth for a moment at those thoroughly chilling words. Then—
"…Still. The fact that he came looking for me means something's made him desperate. I do want to meet him."
"Meet him so you can kill him?"
"No. If I kill him now, he just becomes a poor noble who died in an ambush, doesn't he?"
Er said it with a bright little smile.
"Oh…"
"His honor. His fortune. His status… I'll shatter every last one of them. And then, after that…"
Ain saw the deep darkness sitting in those green eyes, and shut his mouth.
"…So you're not going to do anything this time?"
"I do want to hear whatever nonsense he's planning to spout."
Er answered Jina's question with a sweet little smile.
"But if he starts running his mouth with some worthless garbage — plan or no plan, I'll put a sword through him first!"