After the eventful night finally came to an end, I returned home and hid what had happened the day before.
My parents had lived their whole lives far removed from fighting.
They were the sort to faint if I told them their son had fought a battle where he killed and could be killed, so I had no choice.
Thanks to the priests treating me well, even my wounds were gone. I could return home without arousing suspicion as “the son who slept over at the Adventurer Guild.”
Of course, that did not mean there were no problems.
The next day, when I went to the Adventurer Guild, it was fine at first.
The guild members swarmed over to praise me.
I was scolded for doing something dangerous and asked why I had not called them, but even that was fine.
I could feel that everyone was worried about me.
The problem came after that.
“So, are you going to take responsibility for these kids?”
“Uh... Well. I don’t think I can.”
“Sigh... Did you bring them here without thinking at all?”
“No, I didn’t even have time to think. If I’d stopped to weigh this and that, they all would’ve died.”
The issue was what to do with the children.
At Uncle Aldo’s brusque question, I dejectedly shook my head.
Emilio and the other children who had followed me shrank back as well.
“That may be so, but you must’ve thought of something after you went home yesterday.”
“I just fell asleep.”
Uncle Aldo immediately gave me a look as though I were hopeless, and I pouted.
Honestly, I was completely exhausted.
I had risked my life in a fight for the first time. If I had time to think about things like that, I would have been superhuman.
Fortunately, Grandma Sujin burst through the door and came to my rescue.
“You do not need to worry so much. Gyeongsan Monastery has agreed to take them in.”
“What? Gyeongsan Monastery?”
I was startled by Grandma’s words.
A monastery in the eastern outskirts of Raechia, where outsiders were restricted from entering.
Did that not naturally make one think of confinement?
I flared up and was about to protest, but Grandma Sujin calmed me down.
Uncle Aldo helped explain from beside her.
“They are children from Subura, so they need to be socialized to some extent first. Until then, they need to keep their distance from other people as well.”
“Kid, do not think of it as locking them up. Think of it as teaching them. I went through the same process myself.”
“You too, Uncle?”
“I hate to say it, but people from Subura have a warped sense of common decency from the ground up. Should we simply let a bunch of beastly brats loose? People like us have to go through this process if we are to live in Raechia. Understand?”
Uncle Aldo addressed those final words not to me, but to Emilio.
Emilio’s expression was not as bad as I had expected. He nodded, walked over, and took my hand.
“Big Brother, I’m okay.”
“You mean that?”
“Yeah. Seeing you taught me something. People outside and people like us think differently at our core.”
He swallowed hard and gathered his thoughts.
I silently waited for him to continue, and before long, he gave me an answer.
“Honestly, when you first said you’d help me, I thought you were deceiving me. That was normal for us.”
“Mm... I figured as much.”
“It was the same when I came looking for you because Luca looked like he was going to die. I thought you’d turn me down.”
“That stings a little.”
“Haha, we’d only met once at that point, you know?”
Even now, I have not spent much time with Emilio.
But the affection between people was not proportional to the time they had spent together.
Sometimes, a single day was more precious than ten years spent with someone you did not connect with.
The day I had risked my life to save him was like that for me.
And it seemed to be like that for him as well.
“Thank you. Because of that one time, I think I... might be able to be reborn.”
“You’re still awkward with polite speech, huh?”
“Wouldn’t it be strange if I were used to it? I’ve used casual speech my whole life.”
Neither of us started it, but we burst into laughter.
It was not even particularly funny. The laughter simply came out.
Perhaps laughter really was contagious.
In the end, the guild members joined in, and after we all had a good laugh, Emilio raised his fist.
I bumped my fist against his.
“Next time, I’ll help you too, Big Brother.”
“I think you’re about ten years too early for that.”
“What does it matter whether it’s ten years or twenty? Whenever you need help, come find me.”
I was about to wave it off and laugh, but I stopped when I saw his eyes.
Those utterly serious eyes were filled with the resolve not to let the kindness I had shown him simply wash away.
I did not want to dismiss that resolve as mere childish bravado.
“Okay.”
With that clear promise, the spring of my fifteenth year gave way to summer.
Leaving another bond behind.
***
After one major incident came to an end, I became even busier.
The guild members had learned that their youngest member had nearly met a violent death, and they raised an uproar.
As a result, my schedule is filled with even more lessons, learning all sorts of things from all sorts of people.
“Concealment is, at its core, about understanding how the person searching for you thinks.”
“Uh, yes. But what does a searcher think?”
“There are many ways. For example, someone enters a room. Where do you think that person will check first?”
“The front?”
“Wrong, you idiot! A fool checks the front first, while an experienced person checks the sides first! Blind spots are dangerous!”
“Ow! You didn’t have to hit me!”
“Your life is on the line! Anyway, if you hang above the door—not to the side or in front—you can kill them without fail.”
“Um... I get the concealment part, but why are we killing them?”
“Would you keep them alive, then?”
I learned concealment and cover from a man who claimed to have been the bodyguard of some powerful person, though no matter how I looked at him, he seemed more like a former assassin.
“Now, what is a relic?”
“Um, an old object?”
“That is not wrong, but it is a little different for adventurers. A relic is something that makes money.”
“M-Money...”
“To determine whether it is valuable, you must know the story behind a relic, as well as its value and function. Let us study hard, shall we?”
I also learned relic appraisal and history from a woman who claimed to be an archaeologist, though she looked more like a grave robber.
“The most important thing for survival is will. The will to survive.”
“That sounds like martial arts.”
“They are similar, yet different. In martial arts, you can at least kill your opponent, but survival is about living through something you can never defeat.”
“Something you can’t defeat?”
“Nature. The world itself, which no single person can ever defeat.”
“COO, COO, COO, COO!”
“CAW!”
“SQUEAK, SQUEAK!”
And I learned survival skills from an old man who claimed to be a hunter, yet carried around mice, a cat, a crow, and even pigeons like some sort of druid.
Looking at it this way, it almost felt as though they had flocked in because they were bored and thought this would be fun.
In any case, as all that instruction became focused on me, the people who accompanied me were caught up in the disaster as well.
“Aaargh! It feels like my head’s going to burst!”
“How uncultured. You’d be fine if you kept up with your studies properly like I do.”
“What are you talking about when your dark circles reach all the way to your jaw?”
“Huh? Ah! My beautiful face!”
On our way back after morning swordsmanship lessons and afternoon Adventurer Guild classes, Andrea clutched his head and whined, while Anna pulled out a hand mirror and looked stricken.
I awkwardly smiled at their complaints and tried to soothe them.
“Still, you can’t learn this sort of knowledge anywhere but the Adventurer Guild.”
Knowledge was a treasure and a weapon in itself.
Naturally, everyone kept it tightly guarded. They did not teach it easily.
That made Master, who taught swordsmanship for a few coins, an incredible eccentric.
“Since when did you care about your skin? It’s just as hard for me.”
“You think I’m as simple-minded and ignorant as you? Your looks are an advantage once you enter society too—an advantage!”
“A Martial Artist only needs to be strong. You worry about the strangest things.”
Was it because they were tired?
The two, who had only been bickering verbally for a while, were already about to return to their old ways.
The days when they would cheerfully beat each other with actual wooden swords.
I tried to stop them, but they looked ready to grab each other by the collar.
It did not seem as though this would end well, so I stepped between them with a scrunched-up face and took drastic measures.
“Both of you, stop!”
They did not seem likely to stop otherwise, so I shouted first.
Was it because I had even slipped on the Sword Saint’s Mask?
At my unusual demeanor, the two stopped and pouted.
“This won’t do.”
“What won’t?”
“I think studying continuously without even a single day off is too much for me too.”
The moment I quietly showed my sympathy, the two of them leaped up as though they had been waiting for it.
“Right? This is seriously too much, isn’t it? I appreciate how enthusiastically they teach us, but this is too much!”
“Learning twelve hours a day, seven days a week is not something a person should be made to do.”
Had wearing the Sword Saint’s Mask so often caused its personality to rub off on me?
The thought that they did not know how fortunate they were suddenly crossed my mind, and I was startled.
Would that not make me just a stodgy old man?
I quickly took off the Sword Saint’s Mask, returned to normal, and sighed.
Honestly, it had not been easy for me either.
Perhaps necessity really did breed invention.
A good idea suddenly came to me.
We clearly needed rest, and tomorrow was Sunday.
It was the perfect day to have fun.
“So tomorrow, let’s all go out and have fun!”
“Huh? What about classes?”
“Sometimes we need a day off too! Don’t you think?”
“That’s a great idea! I’m in! It’d be even better if we left this wild little fussbudget behind, since she seems to want to study tomorrow too!”
“Hey! Why are you trying to leave only me out? I have to come too, if only to stop you from skipping around by yourself and doing something stupid!”
There was no question Andrea would agree, and even Anna, who was remarkably diligent, had ended up like this despite seeming opposed at first.
I awkwardly mediated between the two as they started fighting again, and Saturday evening passed that way.
***
Even though my body was tired from the forced march of lessons, I tossed and turned in anticipation of tomorrow.
Still, my friends and I somehow met on time and headed for our destination.
It was a place the gondoliere who had once given me a ride had told me about.
It was a resort hidden between islands, known only to a few boatmen.
“Wooooow! I can’t believe Raechia has a place like this too!”
“The sea! The white sand! The wind! Everything’s perfect!”
The moment we arrived, the two cheered, jumped from the boat, and ran off, splashing through the water.
Embarrassed by their childish behavior, I greeted the gondoliere.
“Um, I’m sorry. I think they’ve been having a hard time studying lately.”
“Hoho, not at all. It is lovely to see. It makes me think of youth.”
Fortunately, the woman who had told us about the island accepted my apology with a smile.
As if that were not enough, she even gave me a tip.
“No one has ever found it, but there is a legend that a flower with starlight flowing through it grows here. They say that anyone who finds that flower will become happy.”
At the words “a flower with starlight flowing through it,” I remembered something I had seen in the Sword Saint’s memories, but I quickly dismissed the thought.
There was no way a flower that only grew in the Great Forest, where the climate and vegetation were completely different, could exist here.
To begin with, the idea that it would make someone happy without any particular condition was absurd.
After thinking that far, I reflected on how overly critical I had been.
It was only a pleasant story. I could have simply heard it and let it pass.
“Haha, I hope I can find it too.”
“The flower is not something you find. It comes to those it is fated to meet. Who knows? It may come to you.”
“If I find it, I’ll show it to you too. Thank you for bringing us all the way here!”
With a word of thanks, I saw the gondoliere off and jumped down from the boat.
The dazzling sun, the pure-white beach, the gently rippling sea, and even the strange creatures.
I headed toward the friends waiting for me, toward a joyful weekend adventure.
Without knowing what was waiting for me.