Bonus Chapter:
Remembering Names Is Surprisingly Difficult
THE MINUTE Filia and I opened the doors to the guild, we heard a young boy’s voice.
“Please!” he shouted. The boy looked young and pretty innocent, aimlessly roaming around the guild while clutching a request form. He kept going up to different people and bowing his head, begging them for help, but no one was accepting his request.
“Hey, Filia, whaddya think?”
“Why don’t we at least go hear him out?”
We didn’t know what the boy—and dang, he was so young—was doing, but his desperation was plain to see. Most of the adventurers seemed to turn him down apologetically, so at least he wasn’t being shunned or anything. Our minds made up, Filia and I approached him.
“You want to go into the Boon Forest and pick some flowers?”
“Mmhm! My mom’s birthday is the day after tomorrow, and I wanted to give her a flower called a Sun Flower. My mom gave me one a long time ago, so now I wanna give her one, along with a letter. But my mom’s always telling me that it’s dangerous to go into the forest, so I came to the guild, and…”
A waste of effort. He’d been rejected by everyone, huh?
“Please. I’ll give you all my allowance!” The boy banged his head against the desk, pleading with us. He clutched some coins in his hand. Putting out a request was by no means cheap, but the boy seemed to have enough money to pay for it. Considering the amount, he must have been saving for months. What a good kid, thinking so much about his parents.
“Hmm…” In terms of rank, this wasn’t really a problematic request, but. Hm. I couldn’t really see why anyone would refuse this kid’s request, which made it weird that so many had. Ehh, it didn’t matter.
“Sure. We’ll accept.”
The young boy’s eyes lit up. “Y-you’re sure?!”
“Yeah. Let me and Filia handle it.”
“Th-thank you very much! I…well, thank you so, so much!” The boy stammered, overcome with joy.
“Are you sure about this?” Filia whispered during our short walk to the guild counter. “We don’t even know why everyone else turned him down.”
“I don’t think I could say I’m moved or anything, and maybe that’s ’cause I don’t have a family myself, but I kind of admire people who do stuff for their folks, somehow. Maybe that’s it.”
At that, Filia smiled kindly. “I see. My own relationship with my family is somewhat, you know, complicated after everything that’s happened… But that’s exactly why I love seeing a family doing well.”
As we talked, Filia and I submitted the request to the girl at the counter. She looked up from the form to stare at each of us intently, one at a time. “Are you really going to accept this request?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“Several people have issued reports of a gigantic monster appearing within Boon Forest for about a week now. After reviewing their testimonies, the guild has concluded it’s most likely a mid-to-low A-Rank monster, a gagagastripe. It is quite the dangerous request. Are you sure you’d like to accept?”
Ah, so that was why everyone else had turned this one down. Well, a small fry like that wasn’t much of an obstacle for us. If anything, the chance to fight a powerful monster was a bonus. I was dynamite, and just hearing this lit my fuse. “Not a problem. Right, Filia?”
“Well, yeah, I can handle it.”
Heh, good to hear. We accepted the request like we’d planned and made our way to Boon Forest.
✦ ✦ ✦
When we arrived, we got to work on the request right away. Of course, I’d already unleashed my muscles in preparation to fight a powerful enemy. (They were looking as wonderful as ever, thanks for asking!)
“All right. Let’s find some Sun Flowers. And uh, maybe that gargleblaster-whatever…seeing one of ’em would be nice too.”
“It’s obviously better if we don’t run into one, though. Also, ‘gargleblaster-whatever’? It’s a gagagaspike. For goodness’ sake, Yuri, you just forget things right away. You’d be completely hopeless without me,” teased Filia, poking my cheek with her finger.
Ah, yeah, yeah, I see. It was called a gagagaspike, huh?
A, uh…gagagaspike?
“Hey, Filia. Wasn’t it called ‘gagagastripe’?”
Filia’s face stiffened. She turned away, almost creaking as she did so, kinda like a magic soldier that had run out of magical energy.
“Y-yes, of course, that’s what I said. That’s right.”
Uh, nope, Filia, you hadn’t. It was called a gagagastripe. Sure, Filia was always pretty useful to me, but, uh…
I wasn’t sure what to say, so instead went with: “You’re always so dependable, Filia.”
“What was that? Was that sarcasm?! Are you sarcasticking me?!”
“It wasn’t sarcasm. It was muscle,” I replied, giving a little flex to prove it.
“Ugh. It makes me sad to the point of tears when someone like you points out my mistakes…” Wow, so impressed by my muscles that she was moved to tears…almost embarrassing.
Anyway, as we chatted back and forth, we continued on through Boon Forest. The monsters there weren’t very dangerous, by and large; if we ran into any monster other than the gagagastripe, I could win with my eyes closed.
The, uh, or no, was it gagagaspike?
“Just forget about it already…” said Filia, replying to my thoughts in a voice so quiet it was almost silent.
“Why? You yourself said it was gagagaspike, didn’t you? And I’m incredibly grateful to you, Filia, since you’re always so dependable. What else could I expect from the transcendentally beautiful elf girl Filia?”
“Waahh, Yuri, stop picking on me!”
✦ ✦ ✦
We continued our search for a while, our conversation pretty much continuing like that, until I felt some kind of presence up ahead. It radiated strength.
“There’s something here after all.”
Filia and I quieted our footsteps and approached cautiously. What we saw was a huge monster, about fifteen feet tall, glaring at us with a scowl. It was a four-legged monster, with some kind of magnificent yellow-and-green-striped pattern on its body. Man, it was like, the most striped monster I’d ever seen. But unfortunately—or maybe naturally—there wasn’t hint of spike on the stripey, stripey pattern of the—
Then again, it was Filia who’d said it was called a gagagaspike. Surely the transcendentally beautiful elf girl Filia was right.
“Yo, gagagaspike!” I said, greeting the monster before us.
“Stripe! Gagagastripe! Look, I’m sorry, I was wrong, so can you please drop it already?!” shouted Filia in a voice that might’ve been a little more on the angry side than the annoyed one. Maybe I’d teased her a little too much? Something to think on.
“Gagagaaa!” The formerly-called-gagagaspike-but-actually-called-gagagastripe threatened us with its rather unusual cry.
“Hooah!” I slammed my fist into the gagagastripe’s torso.
It let out a “Gaga?!” and staggered. Even after taking a hit from me, his body remained intact. Whew, what a monster. Definitely Rank A.
“Yuri, I’ll handle the rest,” said Filia. When I turned, I saw she was clad in her wind giant. Wow, she was going so far as to use her Wind God ability. She meant business.
“Man, you’re really motivated today, huh?”
“I’ve built up a lot of frustration, Yuri…” Filia growled as she approached the gagagastripe. The creature was still going strong, even if it was wounded.
“Gagagaaa!” The monster let out a snarl and rushed Filia, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye.
She didn’t seem worried.
“It’s your fault that Yuri made fun of me so much! Prepare for death, insect!” shouted Filia, before smashing the gagagastripe with a giant arm of wind.
Whoa. She did all that with pent-up feelings of total resentment. Oof. Made you feel bad for the gagagastripe.
And thus, the poor, unfortunate gagagastripe was defeated at the hands of transcendentally beautiful Filia.