Barging through the front door of the mansion, a lady dashed in like she owned the place. She was probably the same age as Maladrain, though she wore tight-fitting purple and black clothes, which were longer than they needed to be so that they’d flutter as she ran. She yelled across the room as Maladrain and I turned our heads in surprise, speaking with assured arrogance, “Yo Maladrain! I’m here, punky!”

Maladrain raised an eyebrow and leaned over the couch, “I noticed, spunky.” Maladrain held out his hand.

She walked across the room, then slapped her hand into Maladrain’s and grasped it. The two then began to...arm wrestle?

Maladrain strained his hand as he tried his best to pull the woman’s arm down to the left and seemed to be gaining a tiny bit of ground on her hand, despite her best efforts. Instead of focusing on the fight, at some point, she moved her eyes onto me, “Eyy, little girl, could you give me some help and cheer my boy Mal on?”

What? Why did she just ask me to cheer her opponent on? Whatever, she was cool so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to do what she asked. I began to cheer Maladrain on with “Mmmmm! KhmKhmKhm!”s and such, cheering to the best of my limited ability.

As soon as I did, she began to gain the edge on Maladrain. Maladrain focused on the match as he addressed me. “No!” he yelled with dramatic flair, “By cheering me on, you’re making Reco’s [into the fray] activate!” I stopped my ‘cheering’, and she began to lose the edge on her competition more, Maladrain taking the lead.

“No...whatever your name is! Don’t you want to see me kick this loser’s ass!”

I began cheering again.

“Betrayal!?” Maladrain exclaimed, still playing with his opponent’s overdramatic talk. Slowly, he lost from my cheering, and the lady suddenly twisted his arm down, making it bend a little too far. “Owowowowowowowoww! Ok, you win, you win, I get it!”

She let go, her smug smile mocking the loser. “I see you’ve gotten a bit stronger, Maladrain. You almost beat me.”

“As if I almost beat you! You cheated and made my friend betray me!”

The woman laughed, “All is fair in love and war, Mally!”

“Who said arm wrestling was war?!” Maldrain pouted.

“Who said it wasn’t?” she stretched her arm, swinging it around in an arc, then looked straight at the two of us and smiled, “So, what did I miss? I thought I’d get back sooner than you, but you’re already here, and you brought back a little girl. What’s the occasion?”

Little girl?! I’m thirteen and three fourths, excuse me!

Maladrain grumbled something, then spoke audibly, “I want to get her recruited.”

“At best, we might recruit her into the junior squad, but we gotta know her level before we recruit.” She looked at me, then spoke sensationally, “Yo, what’s your name!”

I picked my slate back up, {Saya}

“Cool! We gonna get chu’ where you belong! Quick, level and class!”

I scribbled as quick I could, {[apprentice], 9}

“Not a bad level for your age! I guess you’ve also got some benefits since you’re a silent angel?”

I put my chalk to the board, ready to say that I’d lost my qualifications, but I remembered what Maladrain had said.

‘Most people think [oathbreaker]s are untrustworthy.’

{I get 10% wisdom and can cast spells without componenets}

Maladrain walked to the other side of the couch and placed his hand on Reco, “I think we should talk privately about her for a moment...there are some...oddities we encountered...”

Reco’s face turned a bit more serious, “Ahh, I get it. Sorry Saya, looks like we are going to be gone for a few minutes...”

I scowled at her. Oh great, I’m expected not to participate in matters revolving around where my life goes, that’s totally not why I left my village in the first pla-

Maladrain looked to me knowingly, seeing my sour expression, then motioned me to follow them. “No, I think we’re going out to eat.”

Maladrain is really a friend.

Reco glanced at me. “Ok, so then I choose the bar to talk at?”

“If you want to, but aren’t you banned from all the bars at this point?”

“I’m only banned if I say my name!”

“Sure, if you say so.” Maladrain then yelled upstairs, “Hey...Symantha, we are going to explore the city for a bit. Expect us back in an hour or two!”

A bored voice yelled back, “I’ll make sure the vermin know their family is leaving!”

The two talked up a storm. Reco seemed cool at first, but she hogged attention like a puppy-a very loud one. She never seemed to shut up!

It might be a little selfish to say, but I hate people like that. Even if I weren’t afflicted with a lack of social skills, I can’t get a word in while those people talk because I can’t! They just never stop.

I sighed. It was normally fine, it wasn’t like I cared too much about talking anyway, but the two never seemed to talk about anything I understood!

We were walking in a part of the city I hadn’t seen before, and Reco was still talking as loud as a shrieking [thuncrool], “Yeah, but isn’t Brandier a way better bar?! They’ve always got the best fighters!”

Even the well-natured Maladrain was getting annoyed at the woman’s irrepressible attitude, “I mean, you aren’t wrong, but how does that have anything to do with the bar’s actual quality?”

“What do you mean!? Like, 99% of what a bar’s worth is its customers!”

“That’s totally backward!”

“What, so you’d go to an empty bar?! That’s boooooring!”

“Well, it still matters-”

Reco mocked him, talking like he was a baby, “Tut tut young Mally, you shwould know nwot to gwo back on your wordie-wordies.”

“I never said the type of customers meant nothing! I’m not going to a bar with only goblins in it, for example, but 99% of what a bar’s-”

Reco shrugged. “Naw, you gave me your woooorrrrddd. I win!”

“We were never ‘playing’ in the first place!”

I was walking behind them, minding my own business, being left out, the usual, and began to take a look at the buildings around me. Besides the greater density of passerbys, the architecture in this part of the town was a little...weird. All the buildings were built of a black stone, and were all two stories tall, built as tight-fit houses. There was usually a way inside the top floor from the outside, so most buildings had a set of stairs leading up to them. All the alleyways were simply small sidewalks between houses used to make the housing even more compact. It was frighteningly compact, but although it intimidated me, it was a marvel of architecture compared to my village.

Could they really live when they were so close in proximity to every nearby neighbor? Evidently so. We passed by another small alleyway without paying it any mind. The area could be called lively, depending on how you thought about it, but...

I felt Cobaltio shift on my back. Then, I stopped feeling his weight. I turned around to see him dashing underneath passerby, straight to the alleyway while yapping. I ran after him, expecting to pick him up then return to Reco and Maladrain quickly. I ran into the alley, only to stop as I saw what was in it.

A corpse.

Cobaltio trod down the pavement, then raised its snout to the air, and screeched loudly, piercing the air with an unnatural cross between a draconic roar and human squeal, “Raaaaayyeeee!”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I hadn’t seen many corpses before, but...if nobody had noticed it, surely the man died recently...I looked for the cause of death from a distance while tugging Cobaltio back with my [life coushion]. It was a middle-aged man, maybe thirty, dressed similarly to the average inhabitant. It looked like he’d just fallen dead on the spot. No knife wounds, no signs of sickness, nothing. I looked back, expecting to see a crowd drawn in by Cobaltio’s shriek. There was only one person, though, standing just a step out of the street.

He was old, for sure, and didn’t stand out much, but something about how he walked and stood was...unsettling? He looked at the corpse with apathy. My eyes widened. He seemed entirely uncaring, like the death of a neighbor didn’t affect him at all! Was he...the one who-

“Who’re you?” he said with casual curiosity.

I unsheathed my sword, my hands shaking. A killer in broad daylight? If someone were that audacious, they couldn’t be anything less than an idiot or a master class. I tried to gage his class but...he was normal, with no weapon on his side.

“Woah, woah! Why’re you pointing that thing at me!?”

I let my guard down for a second. Was he an idiot? Maybe he was nearsighted? I halfway expected him to be halfway to killing me when I remembered to keep my guard up, but he stood still.

“No need to be on edge, girl! I’m just walking by.”

Unlikely...?

“I came because of the scream and thought something was happening. Is that your [drake]? I suggest you get ‘em away from that guy, I don’t know if th’ east town plague workies’ on yer monster.”

East town plague? I quickly ran to Cobaltio, scooped him up, and made space between me and the corpse.

“Are you new in these parts? Hmm, maybe...Ahh, I see why you aren’t talking! Yer one of those mute north church girls. Why’re you down ere’ in the boonies alone?”

I took out my slate, {I’m not exactly affil}-wipe-{I’m with a friend.}

I saw someone walk behind the old man, glance at the alley, then keep walking like they’d seen nothing.

I shivered.

The old man followed my gaze, then looked back to me, “Not used to the apathy, huh? I get it. About fifty years ago, back when East City was still being reconstructed, the first person fell to the plague. One second they’re fine, then they get suicidal, and not soon after, they just fall dead. I don’t think young ladies like you, strong or not, should be in these parts. You never know what luck has in store for you down here!” He laughed with a grimace. “I’ll be seeing you, girl.” Then, he walked away, mixing with the apathetic crowd again.

I’ve seen a few people die before. When I was one, my half-brother died to the [cobold]s. I never knew him, and although he was a ridiculed bastard, he was grieved nonetheless.

When I was six, my eldest brother died in combat, drafted for some war.

When I was seven, a mother in the village had her third child, and I helped the [herbalist] gather herbs for her. She died in childbirth. Her husband grew cruel afterward and once punched me when he saw me spying on the guards’ practice. Hurting the village’s precious silent angel was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, and he was essentially exiled by the other villagers.

And when I was eight, my fifteen-year-old brother, Islaw, was drafted as well. We were told he was missing in action a year later.

Not once had people failed to grieve, though.

Who was this man in front of me? Who was his family? Would they ever know what happened to him? What class was he? Did he have regrets? What secrets did he know? What world would he want to reincarnate into, a world before gods, a world where fear was a thing of the past, or the same one?

My half-brother was named Scold. He loved to run about the village, yelling foul-mouthed words for fun. Once, when a rock was thrown at him by the village elder’s son, he caught it midair, then threw it back after saying, “If you wanted to be beaten, you should have just said so!”

The eldest of my family was the strongest person his age and did everything he could to outdo anyone older than him. He practiced each day, hoping that he’d be strong enough to protect the village on his lonesome if he tried hard enough. When I was bored, he’d show me the ropes of swordplay. He thought everyone should know what it felt like to swing a sword and once argued with my parents over his involvement in my growing tomboyish tendencies. Although he stopped talking with me the year before he left to go to war, he promised to bring me the dagger of one of his foes a few days before he did. His name was Elatian.

That mother had been my mother’s best friend, and before she died, our two families shared anything and everything we could. She was a level 16 [groundlayer], and had the highest dexterity of anyone in the village, at 21 Dex, before she died. When I helped her work on her crops, she told me ‘the key to working hard is method’. I never learned what that was supposed to mean. When she died, my mother didn’t want to leave the house for three days, and for some reason, she began only drinking mule’s milk. Whenever I asked why she did, she snapped at me.

Islaw, like many of my brothers, rarely spoke to me. As he said himself, ‘it just isn’t worth the trouble’. I was fine with that. When he was drafted, just like Elatian, he told me ‘sorry’ and hugged me before he left. I never cared much for him before then, but after he died, I grew sentimental. When I asked my father about him, he told me that Islaw was the rowdiest of my siblings and got into fights all the time. I realized that he never really disliked me but instead wanted to distance himself from me. My dad said that when a girl had spread nasty rumors about me, Islaw went out of his way to figure out who had spread them and punched her straight in the gut for it. He was ganged up on later by her two brothers afterward and came back home battered. It was normal for him to get into trouble like that, so Islaw tried to distance me from it. I almost wished he would’ve dragged me straight down with him(you know me), but men have principles of pride, and keeping me safe was important to those principles.

It was a nice sentiment, at least.

A man laid dead on the ground, and no one would stop for a prayer. No one might shed a tear. No one would try to learn his name. I was the only person who’d stopped to acknowledge the loss of his life.

Did my concern matter? Did the countless people that pass me in this strange place each have a life beyond their passing steps?

Was I just as important as that man, as the person who passed by him with nothing more than a glance, as Maladrain, and as my late brothers?

And...if so, what could I make of that?