TCMED 08

Chapter 08

I corrected what I was going to say. Jun had a somewhat slippery side to him, so if I didn’t ask directly, I knew I’d never get a straight answer.

He chewed his food very slowly, and only opened his mouth right before I felt like I was going to pass out from holding my breath.

“Would you like to guess which branch I work at?”

But even that was a counter-question.

What I wanted was a statement that ended with a period, not a game of twenty questions. A hint of displeasure flickered across my face.

Jun’s lips curved up widely.

“I’ll give you a hint: I belong to the Eschet branch.”

My eyes widened at the familiar word.

Eschet was the county where Oligo was located. It was a quiet rural territory, rarely mentioned by outsiders, so I was a bit surprised.

“Deo?”

The Filia Trading Post mainly dealt with daily necessities. So it was safe to say they were present in every town with a market.

I named a relatively well-known town, but Jun shook his head.

“Yudea, Dunbar, Rohed?”

I blurted out every town name I could think of, but they were all wrong.

I wasn’t very familiar with geography outside the Oligo area. I’d said everything I could remember off the top of my head, but the right answer didn’t come up.

When I looked perplexed, Jun finally stopped joking.

“I work at the Risis branch.”

Ah, Risis.

People from other regions might not know it, but it’s a town well-known to those living in Eschet.

That is, it’s the town closest to the cursed city of Mapel.

My palms grew a little damp. When meeting someone from Risis, the average reaction of an Eschet resident from another town was…

‘Oh dear…’

…and all sorts of other unsolicited comments.

The perception of the people here about Mapel and my own perception, shaped by future morality, clashed dozens of times in a single second. My conscience from the 21st century was back on the chopping block.

Damn it.

“I’ve met quite a few people from my hometown here. I’m from Oligo. It’s a village where we grow mushrooms in the forest, so you probably don’t know it. Even in Eschet, people mostly only know the towns right around them.”

After a moment of intense deliberation, I chose the strategy of ‘being so excited to meet someone from the same region that I ramble on about myself.’

I didn’t want to agree with the perception of Mapel, so I figured it was better to come across as a bit of a fool.

“Oligo… I’ve truly never heard of it.”

After that, Jun repeated the word ‘Oligo’ a few times. As if he wanted to commit that name to memory.

Perhaps he was just surprised to hear a name he’d never heard before, even though it was a neighboring town, but for some reason, it felt to me like there was another reason.

He truly was a person I couldn’t get a grasp on the more I learned about him.

As I was rolling my eyes, unsure of how to react, a breeze blew from Jun’s direction.

His ordinary, well-fitting shirt billowed, and his hair softly tousled—the scene was just like an oil painting filled with an artist’s affection.

The scent of the forest, similar yet different from my own, wafted to the tip of my nose. It was a distinctive fragrance that only came from people who had lived in the forest for a long time.

Did Risis have a forest too?

Just as the wind died down, Jun’s low voice fell.

“Working in Risis, I often have to go to Rohed.”

Rohed’s market was the very place Uncle Pel and I visited every time we went out.

It seemed this time he would give me a proper answer. Instead of expressing surprise, I quietly waited for him to continue.

“I saw you often while coming and going from there. My job requires me to remember faces well, so I remembered you. Seeing you here, I felt strangely glad.”

“Ah…”

“As you said, we’re from the same hometown, so I wanted to help a little more and have a conversation with you. For all my mysterious behavior, the truth is there’s no grand story behind it.”

He shrugged once and smiled, with a hint of embarrassment.

Considering how he had treated me, ‘a little more’ seemed like an understatement, but it was still within the realm of understanding.

As I said before, Eschet is an extremely quiet territory. Meeting someone else from Eschet in this bustling capital, where there’s hardly any room to set foot, was a tremendous coincidence.

Even though I don’t have much attachment to the region, my curiosity now outweighed the suspicions I’d held towards him.

After a moment’s thought, I reached my hand out to him.

“Honestly, at first, you were so overly friendly that I was a little scared, but now I’m incredibly glad to meet you. Truly.”

Even if we’d probably never see each other again after today, I still wanted to properly greet him now that the misunderstanding was cleared up.

Jun’s eyes widened slightly as he blankly stared at my hand for a moment.

Just as it was starting to get awkward, he took my hand with a very careful motion.

“……When your travels here are over, please come visit my hometown sometime. People tend to shy away from it, but it’s a wonderful place.”

I grinned.

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to go, but I’ll look forward to it.”

That day, we didn’t mention our parting that night. Instead, we ordered more tea several times over and talked about many things, just like ordinary friends from the same hometown.

A person’s silhouette is revealed in the things they love. We had grown close enough to just barely catch a glimpse of that silhouette.

Before I knew it, the day had waned. Jun came out of a herbal-smelling pharmacy carrying a palm-sized bundle.

Because I insisted on seeing him off, we walked side-by-side to the entrance of the square.

The street that had felt incredibly long when I first came here alone now felt short.

“Take care.”

Blink, blink.

Jun, slowly opening and closing his eyes a couple of times, extended his hand just as I had done at lunchtime. I took his hand again.

“Tetis.”

“Yes.”

His hand, large enough to completely cover mine, squeezed with just enough pressure not to hurt.

Under the yellow lamplight, he smiled brightly.

“We will meet again soon.”

“…….”

“Definitely.”

Releasing the handshake slowly, Jun walked backwards and waved his hand.

I waved back. Until he disappeared into the path not illuminated by the lamps.

After I could no longer see him, I turned back the way I came. Stars were beginning to appear one by one in the sky.

Among the many stars, I looked for the one that pointed in the direction of Eschet.

I wasn’t sure of the exact timing, but soon the novel I had read would be reenacted in reality.

A rift would open, and a dragon chimera of a danger level never seen before would appear.

Named ‘The End,’ it would trample several cities before heading towards Mapel.

It was then that the protagonist would sever the neck of The End, which no one else could handle, and cross the boundary of Mapel. The novel ‘From the Lowest Place’ began that way.

I thought about the story that would soon begin, and about Jun, who lived in a city adjacent to Mapel. I prayed to the stars that Jun and his younger sibling would survive nonetheless.

After enjoying a pleasant evening stroll, I returned to the inn. The innkeeper at the counter greeted me with a hand gesture, acting familiar.

“You’re back!”

“Hello.”

“I guess Ethan went back?”

“……Pardon?”

Had my hearing gone bad?

“Ethan… you say?”

In context, the name the innkeeper was referring to must have been Jun. Because this morning, I had left with Jun in front of the innkeeper.

But Ethan?

Ethan is….

“Ah, my mistake.”

*The* protagonist’s name?

The innkeeper covered their mouth with their fist. The gesture was quite cute, but that didn’t lessen the shock I’d received.

Ethan.

Black hair, blue eyes, a build larger than average, the guardian of the sick children of Mapel.

And the only recovery mage who can freely come and go both inside and outside of Mapel without covering their respiratory organs.

This combination describes him, the protagonist of the novel.

Of course, black hair and blue eyes were common in this world, making it difficult to identify him by appearance alone.

But today, I had talked with him at length, and looking back, the settings from the novel had definitely come up several times.

So why hadn’t I noticed until now?

‘Because in the novel, Ethan is a madman who only speaks politely on the surface…!’

He is kind to the weak, of course, but he wasn’t the type to act so sweetly.

Truly!

“Honey, I’m sorry, but could you pretend you didn’t hear that? Ethan told me absolutely not to say anything….”

The innkeeper’s tone had completely changed, flustered.

But was that even important right now? Cold water was suddenly thrown on the hazy feeling I had from the mysterious connection I’d met while traveling.

I felt like grabbing him by the collar and shaking him, demanding to know why he’d acted that way, but Ethan was already gone.

Once the shock passed its threshold, laughter bubbled out instead.

“Haha….”

Just in case, I pinched my thigh, but it hurt so much that my eyes just welled up a little.