The Porter Has No Interest in the Hero’s Party

It wasn’t surprising. It was something that happened occasionally when sharing brief comfort with widows. Just as mushroom experts frequently get poisoned while picking mushrooms, I had simply been caught by poison. Among genuinely lonely widows, poisonous mushrooms always hide.

Shameless poisonous mushrooms with not a shred of love for their husbands, obsessed only with lust.

Today, I nearly got into big trouble for failing to detect that poison. As a member of the hero’s party, I couldn’t handle the consequences if an accident occurred from getting involved with a married woman. I wiped the sweat flowing from my head and sighed in relief.

My appearance, carrying clothes and dressed sloppily, seemed to provoke unsavory thoughts in people. A farmer sitting on a calf snickered and mocked me, and women drawing water at the well whispered as they saw me. I pretended nothing was wrong, properly dressed myself, then left with my head tucked inside my clothes.

Moving along the main road would make my flustered appearance suspicious, so I needed to move through places with minimal human presence. With this in mind, I turned toward the back alley. The plan was to pass through secluded areas and emerge in another direction of the busy district, pretending to be normal.

Like an animal mimicking its surroundings. By disguising myself as ordinary, I could escape the jokes and interest of passersby, return to my room, change clothes, and go back to being the great porter.

The plan was perfect.

“So, huh? It’s better not to make such nonsensical proposals, okay? Why are you being so irritating between us.”

Until I heard a voice when turning the corner that made my body freeze and killed any noise I might make.

It was clearly Lena there. Orange short hair and emerald eyes sparkling like jewels. And an iron needle clenched between her lips. She rolled the needle around her mouth like a toothpick, then tucked it back at her waist.

In front of her stood a man with a huge build; his back muscles resembled a painting of a great mountain, and his posture as he looked down at Lena while bending his head was like a wild bear rampaging. He was moving his shoulders while breathing heavily matching his enormous size, but strangely, not a sound of breath could be heard.

“Are you betraying us, Lena.”

He threatened Lena with choppy speech, but she raised the corner of her mouth and imitated his speech pattern.

“Who, betraying whom?”

It was quite a provocative response, but the man maintained his composure. His massive fist was tightly clenched as if ready to break Lena’s neck at any moment, and his other hand was gripping something at his waist.

His voice had a strange resonance, as if his vocal cords were being beaten with a threshing machine.

“Lena. Opportunities. Don’t come easily. We raised you. From a back-alley urchin. Into a proper thief. Keep your loyalty. Lena. Betrayal. Cannot be tolerated.”

Lena opened her drowsy eyes, glanced at the ground briefly, then raised her head again. She carefully stroked the rough part of the needle and began filing her nails. Actions that ignored the other person. Actions meant to insult.

Lena seemed to be waiting for him to get angry, but the man remained unshaken, his mental strength as solid as his mountain-like physique. Lena examined her smoothed nail edges, blew on them, and said:

“I’ve forgotten all that. Loyalty. Betrayal. Were we even the kind of people who talked about such things in the first place? The Black Society wasn’t like that.”

“Lena. Don’t change the subject. We are Black Society, you are Black Society. You are strong enough. And useful. Become a team with us.”

Lena smiled and moved her eyebrows around. Her rolling eyes seemed both calculating and mischievous, like a prankster about to pull a trick. After rolling her eyes around in thought for a while, she stuck out her tongue and said:

“No.”

Killing intent and intuition.

These words refer to the survival instincts humans possess from birth. By detecting killing intent, one avoids dangerous individuals, and through intuition, one avoids dangerous places. Those who have trained these abilities to the extreme can sense sharp energy not yet revealed, and their bodies react first.

For instance, like now. As Lena dodged the man’s heavy extended fist, I simultaneously grabbed the man’s waist.

“What, what…”

I could see the man’s expression changing very slowly. He tried to turn his waist to deliver a follow-up attack, but was flustered by his heavy body not moving as intended.

He also couldn’t pull out whatever he was gripping at his waist. That’s because I was holding his left arm with my free hand.

In that split second.

In that brief moment when the man pondered how to respond to me.

“Ahaha!”

With Lena’s cheerful laughter, a metal needle penetrated the man’s temple. The man opened his eyes wide, shuddered, then collapsed face-first onto the ground with his mouth gaping open like a puppet with a loose jaw.

I rolled to the side to avoid being crushed by the man’s body and barely escaped.

Dust rose, and the man’s massive body fell to the ground. Lena held a dagger in her hand and observed the man’s movements. His arms trembled, his feet twisted uncontrollably, and he died like a broken wooden puppet.

Lena tapped the needle stuck in his head with her toe, then firmly pushed it deeper into his head. Whether it was striking nerves while piercing the brain, the man’s body scattered nearby objects as it flapped around like a chicken with a knife to its neck.

The fully inserted needle protruded from the other side, and drops of blood fell. The sound like dripping rainwater echoing in the back alley created an eerie atmosphere in the quiet alley.

I was facing the back of the man’s head and his eyes, and Lena, with her hands in her pockets, looked down at me and said:

“Mister. What’s going on? Did you come looking for me because you were worried?”

I shook my head as I got up.

“I seduced someone I thought was a widow, but she turned out to be a married woman. I almost got into big trouble.”

“You philanderer.”

There was no change in Lena’s face. She was smiling as usual and exuding her typically cheerful atmosphere. But the corpse on the ground and the conversation they had just had made it impossible to see her the same as usual.

Even the same expression changes depending on the background. To me now, she seemed like someone forcing a smile to hide something.

“Who was that guy? He looked like a real nasty piece of work.”

There was a black toad drawn on the man’s back. Due to the depiction of his lumpy back, it also looked like the man had a boil on his neck. I rubbed my neck once and looked at Lena’s neck again. The black spider tattoo on her neck.

And the toad tattoo on the man’s neck.

Lena looked at me smiling. I exhaled and stood up. Lena’s fingers moved slowly, and she pursed her lips and said:

“Se-cret.”

I was curious about what kind of trouble she was involved in, but I didn’t ask. Since she had said she didn’t want to answer right now. Instead, I decided to discuss something more practical.

For example, about the giant corpse lying on the ground right now. This body, which would be discovered soon, would cause trouble for the guards. I tapped the giant’s stomach and asked:

“What are you going to do with him?”

“Hm? Want to make him a grave? It’s okay. He wasn’t that good of a person.”

And she started walking ahead, whistling as if nothing had happened. I looked at the fallen corpse once more and moved out of the alley following Lena. Lena said:

“Mister. Were you worried about me and helped because of that?”

She was talking about how I had thrown myself in to help her just now. If I hadn’t grabbed his waist, the fight would have lasted longer. Lena’s eyes sparkled, and the scent of blood came from her body as she approached. I nodded and said:

“Because we’re comrades.”

“Ahahaha!”

A laugh higher and more cheerful than usual rang out. After laughing so loudly that all passersby turned to look, Lena turned around and walked ahead again. Then she tilted her head, pointed at my pocket, and asked:

“Mister. What’s that?”

“It’s liquor. A liquor called ‘Dogref.’ Have you heard of it?”

“Ah, ‘Dogref,’ I’ve heard of it. Isn’t it quite expensive? What are you going to use it for?”

“As you get older, you want to enjoy romance. Think about it, Lena. After defeating the Demon King, we sit on the ramparts of the Imperial capital watching the setting sun. There, we have a drink with some snacks. Wouldn’t that feel amazing? We’ll drink this expensive liquor as the finishing touch to our mission.”

Lena’s eyes sparkled as she listened to my story. She lightly reached toward my pocket, stroked the bottle, and said:

“Me too.”

I met her green eyes looking up at me. With sparkling eyes and a strange smile, she said:

“I’ll be there beside you then. Let’s have a drink together.”

I nodded. Seeing me nod, Lena smiled more brightly and widened the distance between us. Then she began to mix in her own dreams.

“Since it’s the Imperial capital, there’ll be even more expensive liquor than ‘Dogref.’ Let’s steal it all and throw a party. Keep drinking until we’re completely drunk and fall asleep. We’ll sleep with just one rag covering us and both catch colds. Then find an inn in a half-awake state, fall asleep again mindlessly, and laugh at each other’s terrible appearances when we wake up.”

It was a wonderful story. When I once had family and friends, similar things happened occasionally. I said:

“And then we joke about how foolish we both are and go drinking again.”

“Ahaha…”

Lena extended her fist at my words. Dream stories that never end always concluded with laughter. I bumped my fist against hers and we began walking side by side.