“You two...” I had to take several breaths before I could continue. “You’re just sitting there, laughing at people and drinking your drinks. Maybe that’s fine for you...” I couldn’t raise my voice. I didn’t feel like I had the right to yell or throw a fit. Still, my voice trembled. I couldn’t lift my head, so all I could glare at was the grain of the wooden table. But I still had to say something—anything—to the two people sitting across from me. “You’re the ones who offered to listen. So if we ask something, you should at least answer us seriously.”
“We are serious,” the warrior said.
At that moment, I seriously considered firing off a magic blast. I honestly felt like I could blow a hole right through that idiotic face of his. “If you want to say you’re taking this seriously, then put down the drinks. It’s insulting to treat us like this just because we’re new.”
“Hey, look at you, you’re getting your fire back,” he said, grinning. “But sorry, no can do. To me, your little disaster sounds like a good old-fashioned rookie screwup. And when rookies screw up, the best way to handle it is to laugh it off over drinks. That’s how adventurers do it.”
“That’s absurd!” I’d had enough. I felt fury burn in my throat and reached for my wand.
“You all came back alive, didn’t you?” he asked.
That single rhetorical question stopped me. A chill ran down my spine, and my blood went cold. In that moment, I finally understood where we were—what kind of place this truly was.
“Nobody died, nobody lost a limb or suffered a life-changing injury. All of you came back in one piece. Congrats! That’s a win. Our party would be throwing a party about now, saying, ‘Whew, that sucked, but we made it!’ Though, with that kind of reward, maybe we’d just get a nicer meal than usual.” The warrior scratched his cheek, glancing at the coins sitting on the table.
“Reflection is important. Regret is optional,” the mage added, sipping her drink as calmly as ever.
Adventuring meant risking your life, and death was inevitable sometimes. These two had accepted that as if it were as natural as breathing. Even though I had nearly died, I still hadn’t fully grasped that reality. But the adventurer’s guild was the kind of place where people really, truly understood this way of living.
“Honestly, watching you all mope around like this is a drag. You’re alive. Being alive means you can make up for anything. Figure out what you did wrong, reflect on it, then hurry up and decide what to do next.”
The warrior was gruff and blunt, like someone who had long since abandoned the idea of acting like a “normal” person. But everything he said made a cruel kind of sense.
“Save the real breakdown for when something happens you can’t fix. You’re adventurers now. There’ll be times when something hurts so bad you can’t breathe, when you can’t move forward no matter what. When that happens, fine. Drink yourself stupid, curl up somewhere, and cry like the world’s ending. You’ll be just one of many in this place.”
Kiri had once said that all adventurers were screwups. If that were true... If everyone who became an adventurer—who was still an adventurer—ended up with that kind of mindset, then they clearly lived by values that set them apart from ordinary people. To outsiders, those values might even seem downright heartless.
But adventurers had simply stopped living normal lives. Everyone here had been through experiences so harrowing, so punishing, that no one with a typical mindset could have endured it. The place was full of people that society might label “damaged.”
“Exactly,” the mage said softly. “Like, say, someone whose crush married another party member and retired, leaving him all alone and heartbroken.”
The warrior banged his forehead into the table, hard. The thunk of the collision was even louder than when I had slammed the table with my fists earlier. He raised his head with a slow, creaking motion like a rusty door and glared at the woman beside him with a look of pure betrayal. “You asshole. I was finally starting to forget that.”
“You’ve never lost a comrade on a mission, so don’t act all high and mighty, Waine.”
“You haven’t either, you lazy, good-for-nothing loner drunk!”
“Alcohol is meant to be enjoyed.” Sheya took a serene sip from her mug.
A man howling like a stray dog and a woman drinking like his tantrum didn’t exist—I supposed not everyone drank to forget their sorrows. The sight of these two filled me with a deep, overwhelming sense of secondhand embarrassment. No matter how I looked at them, they really did seem like just plain old screwups.
I sank back down into my seat with a dazed look on my face and stared blankly across the table at the adventurers in front of me. In the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the coins Kiri had left behind. I turned my head a little, and the rest of the tavern came into view.
Despite how noisy we had been, not a single person was looking in our direction. Other tables were even louder than us, and there were groups deep in conversation too. Near the requests wall, people were lined up reading job postings. The usual bustle of the adventurer’s guild surrounded us, and we were just one part of it.
Ah... I let out a soft sigh. Isn’t this what it means to be free? I inhaled, slow and deep, and exhaled like I was trying to clear out the fog in my chest.
I felt a sense of conviction in my heart, like I had come to a decision, and I put that feeling into words. “When I become an adult,” I announced, “I will not be anything like the two of you.”
“Yeah, don’t do that,” said the warrior.
“Please don’t,” said the mage.
Their perfectly synchronized reply brought a wry smile to my lips.