“Huh, what?” I look at Camilla with the intensity of a thousand suns.

“Amelia and Clodia have some unresolved issues,” her voice was strained by the effort needed to restrain her older sister. “So, why don’t we take a third-party individual and use him as an arbiter of sorts?”

“I don’t need no arbiter! Flaminia, let me go! I’m killing that tramp!”

“I think it’s a good idea.”

I shiver before I turn and look at the schadenfreude on Lucinda’s face.

“You do?”

“Oh, yes. Let’s see how you deal with relationships when things get serious and messy, shall we?”

For God’s sake. Wasn’t she supposed to still be awkward around me? What’s this ambush, now? Is this a bad joke?

Camilla whispers in Amelia’s hear while Flaminia is doing the same with Clodia. They both straighten up and dust off their clothes right away.

“Well, tramp, are you ready to have a civil discussion with Joey?”

Oh, man, I’m so dead.

I am so dead.

Amelia stares daggers at her ex.

“Okay, let’s go sit inside. Lucinda, I’m so sorry about this. Do you mind waiting for a bit while we solve this? You are obviously invited to spectate,” Camilla says to my quarry.

“I’d love to, Camilla. Take all the time you need. I want to see how my client untangles this huge mess,” Lucinda strides toward the entrance of Happy Bakery.

I turn to Lucillus, who immediately puts his hands up in a sign of surrender.

…

“So, wait, this is a thing you Elves do?” I ask with wide eyes.

“The Arbiter of the Forest was sort of a magical judge who had the [Arbiter of Forest] class. He decided about feuds, problems, fights, and even crimes. Only much later did we develop a proper code of law. But we still keep this tradition now. When there’s an irreconcilable dispute between two parties, it’s pretty common to nominate an arbiter. Such a person will try and reconcile the opposing positions without being swayed by nothing but justice.”

Camilla is explaining to me that this is not a bad joke, apparently.

Nope, it’s just my death sentence.

Clodia will literally kill me if I say anything against her. Amelia will poison me and make a bag out of my cat, or whatever it is that she does.

Lucinda’s stare is penetrating my flesh, waiting to know more about how I’ll act when stuff gets tough.

As a general rule, when stuff gets tough, I’m not there. I work really hard to avoid having any tough stuff in my life. I always pick the path of minor resistance and minimum annoyance. I’m the type to always pick the highway instead of the way, you know.

I mean, why would you put yourself in trouble? What’s the point?

There are some people who seriously go nuts about justice, about always doing the right thing and so on.

The ‘I want to feel like the hero of my story, not the villain’ types.

Well, while they want to go around and slay dragons and whatnot, I want to be the NPC that gives out the most useless third-rated quests in the entire game. It’s a quest on which you would have to spend more money than what you’d get out of it; that’s because no one would come bother me.

I don’t want to be a protagonist or an antagonist. Or worse, an anti-hero.

Man, I really don’t understand this thing about people wanting to be anti-heroes as of lately. At first, everyone wanted to be your standard hero, right? White stallion, shiny armor, hot princess. I dig some of that, and you can guess which part. But, but, but now, there’s a new current of people wanting to be anti-heroes: edgy, morally gray, and probably without the hot princess.

I mean, what’s the point?

You tell me, ok?

Why do you want to be edgy and smarter than others?

Did you get dropped on your head when you were a kid?

‘Oh, look at me, I’m so dark and mysterious.’

Are you, really?

What’s mysterious about you? You buy ragged clothes on Etsy and look up YouTube videos on how to make your voice huskier?

I despise a whole host of people, true. I try to be kind, too, obviously. But on top of my very populated hate-list, there are those who push the wrong boundaries.

You want to push the boundaries of science? You are welcome to do that. By all means, go build rockets and do mad science research. We need those people. But you want to only buy dark clothes and dye your hair and paint your nails? I don’t know, man, I think it’s silly.

People now build their personalities around the weirdest things. It can be about clothes, or trying to look alternative, or music, and even politics.

Oof, entering a room and saying that I’ve never voted once in my entire life is the best conversation starter. It immediately filters out the non-chill people. In fact, when you enter a room and you want to instantly know what people not to hang out with, just say ‘I’ve never voted in my entire life’. That’s it. It’s like magical words.

There will be eyes popping, screaming, insults, swearing.

Mind you, when you ask what these people contribute to society, they will, eight out of ten times, tell you that they never did anything outside of casting their votes. Well, that’s how you catch them off-guard. It’s also a great lady-catching-story: you say you never voted but that you like volunteering and stuff. I honestly do because you can meet very interesting women volunteers in homeless shelters, and because I can cook. Feeding people is the one thing I don’t mind doing even in my free time.

“He’s been staring into the wall and chuckling for the past two minutes,” I hear Camilla’s voice.

“Wake him up so we can start,” Clodia growls.

Right, the arbiter stuff.