CH 8

“Sumire! We didn’t gather any scales!”

“Aah~ The dragon was so scary that we forgot. What should we do?”

“Well, there’s one thing…” 

Marth turned his gaze to the himekoryuu, who seemed to have recovered and began shuffling around. Its eyes shone, asking play? play? with a determination to not be caught. Marth gave up with a sigh.

“Um… time to search again, then.”

“It’s Fikar’s fault. Even though there were so many scales on the ground…”

Apologizing to the children who were going “boo~ boo~”, Fikar stripped some of Su’s scales off. Su, who was suddenly being yanked on, cried out with an astonished “Pigyo~!” Ludo-san looked surprised and muttered something like “Even against a dragon…”, while the children were enthralled by the scales given to them.

“Sooo big!!”

“I like the bright colors here~”

After being scrutinized here and there and being mercilessly stripped of her scales, Su was exhausted and in tears. When I went up to her and murmured “Thanks…”, she responded with a soft “Guu~”. If she didn’t act so wild, maybe she’d be quite cute.

“Back to the guild, then. Mission complete!”

“Yay!!”

“We did it~!”

“What’s a ‘mishon’?”

As we neared the edge of the forest, we saw adventurers gathered in a gloomy atmosphere. At first, everyone was nervous about the dragon following Fikar, but when the situation was explained, their jaws dropped. Incidentally, Fikar refused to let Su follow him any further since he had nowhere to keep her, so she trudged back into the forest with the himekoryuu, who seemed to have grown attached to her. What a sad sight…

“Welcome back, brave adventurers. Can you lend me the scales you brought?”

Each of the children handed their scales over to Kontos-san, who was waiting in the guild office. Through some magical process, he turned three scales into one rectangular card — an ‘egg card’ — with only a name and the guild’s seal on it.

“To have a card made from benihiryuu1 scales right from the start, you guys have promising futures.”

“Right?! It was quite the adventure!”

“Pretty~ A red card!”

“Here’s the pink himekoryuu scale that I picked up…”

The little adventurers, born today, stared at their uniquely colored cards with sparkling eyes. Behind them, parents and guardians had tears of joy in their eyes, and surrounding them, other children were bustling around, comparing cards with each other and the adult adventurers. It was a very amusing scene.

“See you, Sumire! You were a good leader!!”

“Let’s play together again~”

“See you soon.”

Walking out of the guild with Fikar and watching the children go off with their parents, I felt drained. The director, Gartis-san, called out to us from among the adventurers chatting about the dragon.

“Sumire, you did great! You can take the rest of the day off! We won’t be coming to a conclusion about Fikar today, so you can go home!”

“Thanks~ See you tomorrow.”

In a guild with more people coming and going than usual, if you stayed for too long, you’d fall into a cycle of competitions and drinking parties. I was thinking about saying goodbye to Fikar and heading upstairs to eat and rest early when Fikar put his hand on my shoulder.

“Hm? What’s up?”

*shake* *shake*

Although he shook his head, he kept his hand on my shoulder. Then, he pointed at my nose, then to the house diagonally across the road. It was the house where Fikar and I used to live.

“Hmm~? Didn’t I already say that I’m staying here now…”

*shake* *shake*

“No, no, not like that. I haven’t even cleaned what used to be my room.”

“Done. Morning.”

“You did? That was fast… I mean, I’ll be working tomorrow and I would have to carry my luggage back and forth…”

I had only been here for a short time, so the only luggage I had were clothes, but with all the moving I did today, I definitely needed to change. The guild had a big bath, so I planned on sweating myself out over there. 

Then, I felt a heavy shock on my back. It was Mesil-san, the mother of the guild. In her hands was a package of cloth with a familiar pattern… Seems like my change of clothes.

“You’re going back now that Fikar is back, right?”

“Eh? That’s not–”

“It’s not much, but here’s a little food.”

“Wait–”

“We’ll take care of your night shift. Take it easy tonight.”

While I was at a loss, Fikar sighed a wonderful sigh as his eyes followed Mesil-san, who had just said what he wanted and left. It was the kind of sigh that said “It can’t be helped”, so he put his hands on my sides and lifted me up, walking ‘with’ me in his signature style. Over his head, I saw the adventurers gathered at the front of the guild waving. Ludo-san was also smiling. Waving back, I let out a sigh in resignation.

“Alright, I’ll go back, but I’ll walk there myself.”

Fikar, who didn’t seem the slightest bit tired after having played with the dragon, nodded in satisfaction and rubbed his cheek against me.

In the end, he still carried me home.