Good Friends (1)

The hero’s blush didn’t subside even after several days. She would talk to me as if nothing was wrong, but at some point when she became conscious, her ears would turn red. Lena jokingly made a fuss, saying the hero had fallen ill, while Ashuria chided Lena, asking if she didn’t believe Mille.

“Hero! Are you really sick? Huh?”

Mille, naively believing Lena’s joke completely, stamped her feet and whimpered. My role was to explain to Mille that the hero wasn’t sick while Lena and Ashuria bickered.

“No, Miss Mille. The hero isn’t sick.”

“Then why does her face turn red?”

I was in a position to make bold ideas and welcome women, but I wasn’t foolish enough to open my mouth glibly even in this situation. The hero’s scandal was a problem in itself. If the porter was at the center of the scandal, that fact would also be a problem.

I needed to join this party and go to the Demon King’s castle. I didn’t want the variable of me leaving the party due to noisy rumors circulating. So I pretended to know nothing and said:

“It seems there’s a side effect to the medicine the hero recently took. That’s why her face turns red like that.”

In the meantime, the hero had composed herself again and cleared her throat. Then she gestured to Ashuria and Lena, who were still chatting, to settle down and spread a paper on the table. It was an order directly given by the king this time.

“The order we received this time is related to Lena.”

At the mention of being related to Lena, Lena, who had been sitting askew, straightened her back and focused on the order. When the hero pointed to the location marked on the map, I immediately remembered that place. It was a cave. It was a fairly deep and wide cave, and because it was difficult for anyone to approach, it was once used by the Empire as an outpost.

“I know that place. I’m not sure if the terrain there is still the same though.”

As the demon realm’s magic eroded, the Empire’s terrain was gradually changing. Trees were withering and dying, and the demon realm’s tree roots were newly encroaching on the land, changing the shape of valleys or creating hills where there were none before.

“In the past, the dense forest obscured the terrain, but as the demons’ power grew stronger, all the trees died and became bare. Because of that, the cave’s appearance seems to have been fully revealed. According to the scouts’ confirmation, they saw individuals who appeared to be Black Society members there.”

“Then there must be a lot of traps.”

I nodded at Lena’s words, but the hero said:

“But we have no choice. It seems that while we were in the royal palace, there were several places where commanders were assassinated by assassins. Ah… His Majesty and others must think they can no longer leave this assassination organization alone. I think we need to somehow break through there and subdue them.”

There were no options. Waiting and eliminating the assassins one by one as they came and went would take too long, and we didn’t have enough people to surround them. Patience and stealth are the assassins’ specialties. If we challenged an area we couldn’t excel in, it was inevitable that we would suffer losses.

Lena seemed to agree on this point, nodding and continuing:

“…Well, we can’t just wait and eliminate them one by one as they come out. As the hero said, we have no choice but to just break through.”

“Then I’ll set our next deployment area to this place according to this plan.”

Everyone nodded, but Lena’s face looked darker than usual that day. The last night in the royal palace passed very quietly so as not to let on that we were deploying. Mille, who had apparently expected a farewell party, headed to bed with slumped shoulders.

---

When everyone had gone to bed.

I lay in bed with my eyes wide open, unable to fall asleep. The second hand of the clock moved in a nervous and rapid pattern, and the stars and moon in the night sky were frozen in place as if nailed there, shining down on me.

The stars are so pretty.

Let’s play together.

It was as if such voices were coming from the sky, and I rubbed my head and got up. As we got closer to the center of the Empire, my heart kept pounding and excitement welled up. Like when I took the knight exam for the first time, like when I first received teachings from the commander.

Even measuring the distance to the Empire span by span on the map didn’t make me sleepy.

In the end, I decided to take a walk since it was late at night anyway. I put on the clothes I had carelessly taken off and opened the door, and a creaking sound that seemed to announce my departure echoed throughout the corridor. The sound chased away my fatigue once again, and the quiet corridor created a pattern of faint contrasts of starlight.

Navy and black colors, exactly mimicking the shape of the windows, came and went, and between them, star shadows were faintly embedded like carpet patterns. As my figure walking on it stretched out long, I was strolling through the corridor of the shadow kingdom like the protagonist of a shadow play.

“Old man.”

And at the end of it was Lena, who was enjoying the night view, plunged into the shadow kingdom like me. She was fiddling with a needle while looking at the view of the town. The city spread out too vast to simply call it a town, and brilliant lights stretched from the pleasure district to the bustling areas. And in the center dividing this, a large church boasted its presence by emitting light as bright as day from its multicolored stained glass even at night.

I approached her side and said:

“It’s a beautiful night view, isn’t it?”

“It is. It’s beautiful.”

Lena’s tone was indifferent. Her complex expression showed that she was in a bad mood. I pondered how to comfort her and then asked another question.

“Why are you up instead of sleeping?”

“Can’t sleep.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know how to interpret her answer. Lena turned her head like a doll, looked at me with a grin, then lightly hit my shoulder and said:

“I’m kidding. Just… Just thinking about the old days.”

“Were you thinking about the Black Society?”

Lena is from the Black Society. And most of the Black Society, except for Lena, was currently betraying the kingdom and playing a big role on the demon side. Lena furrowed her brow at the name of the organization that came from my mouth, then pursed her lips and relaxed her expression at the same time.

“Yeah. I was bouncing around back alleys from a very young age, then the Black Society raised me. I don’t even know how my parents died.”

I nodded at her words. When I didn’t know how to respond, it was good to nod and listen. She didn’t seem to expect a wise answer from me either, and continued speaking:

“So… It feels really strange. The Black Society uncle who raised a girl who couldn’t do anything but beg into an assassin, and the fact that I got in here thanks to my Black Society experience, but now I’m going to annihilate that Black Society.”

“I understand.”

Lena’s eyes widened at my words. Then she raised the corners of her mouth and said:

“Right? Doesn’t it seem like it would be really sad?”

“It’s hard to express that emotion in words. In my case, it just feels strange and curious even now.”

Lena laughed at those words. Whether she found it funny that I said I understood, or if she found my expression of emotions funny, I couldn’t tell.

“Ahahahaha! What’s that? Strange, you say.”

Lena’s laughter echoed through the corridor. It seemed the others had been asleep for a long time. We were talking quite loudly, but not a single person looked out. Lena looked at me and bent her body. Our silhouettes buried in the shadows overlapped with the railing.

“You know, old man. I’m not sad at all. Look. I’m smiling.”

Lena said that while showing her teeth in a big smile. Like a comical clown doll, she turned her head this way and that, then closed her mouth again and continued speaking. She seemed intent on convincing me that she wasn’t sad until I was convinced.

“Old man. Those people were really weird to begin with. When I was about 10? I didn’t even know when my birthday was because my parents died early, but suddenly they said they wanted to throw me a birthday party. They suddenly decided and were trying to buy a cake, but it must have been some kind of anniversary that day. All the cakes were sold out, so they decided to make one themselves, you know? But assassins might be good at killing people, but would there be someone good at baking cakes? The cream was sloppily applied. The bread was a mess. So they tried to give it to me to eat, but I thought it was something weird and said I wouldn’t eat it, and then…”

Lena stopped talking. She moved her gaze back and forth, let out a dejected laugh, then forced a smile and said:

“So… So then another kid who brought fireworks said they prepared it to celebrate my birthday and… The uncle even put a gift in a box… Ah… This is weird… Wait a moment, old man… Just a moment…”

Lena turned her head and her shoulders shook. I silently watched her like that. Her trembling shoulders wouldn’t stop, and I hugged her tightly and said:

“It’s okay to cry. If you don’t cry at times like this, you’ll become a strange person like me.”

Her breathing stopped. Lena slowly turned her body and hugged me tightly. With trembling hands, she grasped my back and began to cry with her face buried in my chest.

“Really…! How much they wanted me to eat well…! And live well… Really… Really… What, what am I supposed to do…”

I stroked her head and sighed.

The sound of crying quietly echoed through the corridor.

Lena muffled her mouth in my collar, afraid others might hear, and I hugged her head more tightly.

Along with the sobbing, my shirt became wet.

It seemed I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight after all.