How do I get this thing off of me?

I consider forcefully removing it, but that option doesn’t seem to fit my current situation. Plus, we have a spectator, who actually hasn’t said anything since I got here. With that thought in mind, I’m fairly surprised Lillia hasn’t commented on my somewhat embarrassing position yet, considering her impish nature. I return my attention to the human attached to me.

My hands in the air and Anya still clutching my chest, I decide to wait for her to let go.

By no means should her reaction have been this extreme, but I consider the possibility that it was justified. Maybe she was in dire straits too, and deliberately watered down her situation during her explanation. I wouldn’t put it past her.

Her hair is tied up in a ponytail today, I notice, now that I have the closest view I could to it. The string holding her hair up has a floral design made of a colored metal. Its petals are white, just like her robes, with a fade to yellow in the center. I wonder what type of flower it is, just for a moment.

Anya lifts her head up and backs away from me, wearing a smile mirroring the one I first ever witnessed from her. I can’t help but think that she had this planned the whole time.

I guess even if that were true, it’s still convenient for me, all things considered. I put that thought aside and ask an actually important question.

“So, when do we start?”

I assume that we are going to be doing the same escort missions that Anya had talked about last night. If there was anything else that she did when asking help from people in the guild, she hadn’t let me know. My question is immediately answered by Anya already starting to shoulder her pack. It seems as though I got up at just the right time to be of use.

“Right now! Let's go, or we’ll be late! Skyler will be super upset if we don’t get there on time”, Anya states as she shifts the bag’s weight into a comfortable spot on her back. She starts out the door, and Lillia finishes her drink. She puts down her mug and waves to us wordlessly. Perhaps she’s not a morning person.

I don’t question her, and follow Anya out the door, although I’m a bit apprehensive.

I was under the impression that most adventurer-related requests were at the adventurer’s discretion.

When one saw a listing on the board that was to their liking, generally they were supposed to pick it up, complete the task assigned, and then return to the guild for a reward.

That was standard protocol in Kralbed, and what I assumed to be the standard at every other guild as well. What Anya is doing sounds more like a day job than anything, especially considering there was a designated time that we were supposed to arrive for the task.

Maybe it was because I had never picked up anything except kill quests that I was unfamiliar with any other sort of mission.

That was very likely.

I decide to observe rather than question, this time. I don’t think anything will come out of me rattling off inquiries when we're already so close to starting the job.

I follow Anya down the narrow cobblestone path from the inn to the main road. After walking southward for a while, we make a left onto one of the lowest paths in the town, extremely close to the southern gate.

__________________

“It’s really easy to remember where the alchemy building is, since it’s all the way at the end of the road. I was concerned my first time coming here that I might miss it, but it was actually super easy to find.”

I try to make small-talk with Sun in an attempt to cover up what was silence up until this point.

I’m sure he doesn’t mind. He's looked disinterested ever since I met him, sure, but that doesn't mean it doesn't bother me.

It's disheartening, but I still have a chance, and I won’t stop until I’ve succeeded.

Or realized it’s completely hopeless.

For the sake of my sanity, I pray to Gaia that it’s the first one.

It’s sort of embarrassing, so I didn’t think it was worth mentioning to Sun, but I’ve always thought that a party would only work if you were able to converse with the other as if they were a close friend. This was mostly due to the parties I’ve had in the past, but also stemmed from an ideal that I’ve held onto for a long time now.

To me, adventuring wasn’t an experience meant to be carried out solo. It was something to be shared with others.

To travel the world with no one by your side while everyone else has someone to trust and rely on was too depressing an idea for me to bear.

For this reason, I have never left my home town, although I have tried many times.

I have yet to find anyone that would even remotely accept my kindness towards monsters, so I've instead chosen to hide it from any new party members until they just happened to find out. It wasn’t the perfect plan, but in my mind, it was the one that had the highest chance of success.

Maybe if I stayed with them long enough, they would care about me enough to not just overlook, but accept my love for living things.

In return, I’d accept their beliefs as well. Whether or not they killed was not my decision, after all.

That thinking was a result of my inexperience, I now understand.

Many of the parties I’ve been in have been business-only, mainly aiming to get the most reward out of their work. Not helping them to actually kill the monsters was in direct contrast with how they had planned to go about their work, so none of the groups ever thought twice about kicking me. So I decided to be upfront about it this time, because I wasn't going to change anyone's answer anyway.

The most "valid" way of living just wasn’t mine.

I knew that if I kept asking the same people in town, it wouldn’t work. Only an idiot would think otherwise, after experiencing the rejection I have.

But I still kept trying. I had to.

They were the only people I had access to, and I was going to escape these black walls if it killed me.

I’m so tired of staring at the inside of this city that I could go insane. Richie’s armory. Lillia’s inn. The four floors of Ochseid Guild. The inside of my dad’s flower shop. The magic store. The grocery store. The church, the garden, the rows and rows and rows and rows of residential area, the delis, the pubs, the little cracks on the cobblestone roads that I’ve counted, all one-thousand and twenty-eight of them.

The library. Its molding framework. Its elderly librarian. The smell of books long left unattended.

Twenty-two long years of Ochseid.

Twenty-two long years of prison.

I still remember when I started thinking of my home like this. It was the first time I ever had a taste of what the outside world might look like. It only took a small amount, but I was enamored immediately with the possibilities.

I was six years old, and I started taking trips to the library near my house. Papa taught me how to read growing up, (which was a luxury most children didn't have, since we don't have a school in Ochseid) and then encouraged me to check it out when he thought I was old enough. I'm sure it was to get me out of his hair while he was dealing with customers.

I remember originally being tentative about it, but I ended up going anyway due to sheer boredom.

It was one of the older buildings in the city, and looked the part as well. It’s still just as crusty and antiquated as it was sixteen years ago, but it will forever hold a place in my heart. My dad was always working, and I never knew my mother, so I didn’t have much else to do. There have never been many kids in Ochseid, so I didn’t have many friends either.

At most, I had faded words on dilapidated books, but that was more than enough for me at the time.

That library was where I read stories of grand adventures, tales of epic proportions, and myths that completely blew me away. In this isolated place that no one else visited, I could experience stories that really made life worth living.

Knowing that adventuring was just a common job as any, I planned my whole life to become one. Exploring the world, helping people, and generally having a good time with my companions sounded like the only path I’d ever take.

Perhaps that definition of adventuring was just as antiquated as the library was.

Adventuring was more of a job than it was considered an experience anymore. It’s been like this ever since the church started summoning heroes. They generally take on the bigger tasks like slaying powerful beasts, assisting doomed towns, and taking on the necrotics; in other words, the jobs that take the most traveling.

Because of them, most of the duties left were menial work and town security. If it were hard to find anyone that wanted to party with me, it was impossible to find anyone that wanted to leave the town their family belonged to as well.

But Sun was different.

He’s from out of town, so he’s obviously already a traveler. He’s likely only doing this for money, and then moving onto the next part of his journey.

I’ve already seen his kindness. He tries to pretend it isn’t there, but when those men insulted his mother, anyone could see how much he cared. He has room in his heart to spare for the people he holds dear.

Most of all, he seemed surprised at my attitude towards all living things, but not… repelled by it. In fact, his reaction almost seemed positive.

That was a first.

I absolutely cannot let him get away, I just know he’s my last chance to get out of this place on my own terms. I won’t stay trapped here forever.

I refuse to end up like one of those wilted flowers.

If I fail here, life will finally have forced my hand. I'll have to kill just like everyone else. I don't want it to come to that. Please Sun, you have to be the one. You just have to be.

Sun speaks up, breaking my train of thought.

“Anya, you spaced out. We’re here.”