It's strange. This is a city I've never been to before, and most of my friends are from my hometown or college. I never expected to hear familiar voices here.
I am quite certain that the male voice calling me was not one of the people I had just seen yesterday—at least not one I knew well enough to recognize just from hearing a call.
Who could be calling me?
With this question in mind, I turned around and saw a shadow looming over us. Startled, I quickly grabbed Hikari and pulled her aside to avoid getting hurt.
A strangely dressed, retro-looking man brushed past me, finally stopping in his tracks. He turned around, revealing a familiar face that looked like it was about to burst into tears: "Yumi, even though we're good brothers, it's really hurtful that you avoid me the moment we meet."
I scrutinized that angular, hard-edged face with its comical expression, pondered for a few seconds, and then remembered: "Hiro? What are you doing here?"
"Isn't it more surprising that I saw you here?"
Hiro yawned, straightened up, and scratched his messy hair with half-closed eyes. His shoulder-length black hair was mostly loosely draped over his shoulders, loosely tied back with a striped headband. His equally loose long robe was adorned with many colorful bird feathers, and what he carried at his waist was not the staff that was stereotypically worn by mages, but a long sword that shimmered with a faint blue light between its lines, resembling a warrior's weapon.
“Didn’t we say we were going to sleep in the house for a whole year, until the end of the school year?” Hiro said. “When I left, I was thinking about whether to invite you to come and play, but then I thought about it and decided not to bother you. I never expected to run into you here like this.”
"There are some things," I tried to gloss over.
But this point was quickly exposed by the brainless person in front of him.
"Ah, I get it, I get it. You must have been dragged out by the [witch] again." Hiro tapped his palm lightly. "But if you ask me, although your mentor is good in every way, he still can't compare to mine. He can finish you off in one go, and you can spend the rest of your time running around wherever you want. If you're unhappy one day, you can go back and beat him up a couple of times."
I have a feeling that this guy has some strange understanding of the definition of a mentor.
The reason why the college pairs each graduating student with a mentor with relevant teaching experience is to prevent them from messing around or going astray, and also to provide necessary mentorship while supervising them.
Especially for combat-oriented characters who are constantly on the front lines and are extremely vulnerable to injury, learning how to minimize damage, how to manage and allocate physical and magical energy, and how to gain an advantage in combat are all essential.
Only in this way can more people be guaranteed to survive multiple consecutive battles or extremely unfavorable conditions and wait for reinforcements. It's not enough to just lie on the ground, fantasizing that someone will pull you up while praying for the enemy's mercy—after all, even the most advanced resurrection spells, while pursuing the golden hour, are extremely dependent on the integrity of the corpse; otherwise, even if the resurrection is successful in the end, it will only be an empty shell that will eventually dissipate.
As a result, they ran into someone who habitually used people as punching bags.
Just to be on the safe side, I tentatively asked, "You didn't do anything to him, did you?"
"What else can happen?" Hiro crossed his arms nonchalantly. "Anyway, I'm not dead. At most, I'll have dark circles under my eyes for a week, and that's only because I only used my fists in the end."
I:"……"
Let's light a candle for this unfortunate, anonymous mentor.
“Oh, right,” I suddenly remembered something, “Hiro, when did you arrive? Where did you start from? Did you encounter anything on your way here?”
"Oh! You mean the recent increase in monsters outside the city?" Hiro knew, but still didn't care, and even had a hint of annoyance on his face. "I came here from the mountains a month and a half ago, to the south, thinking I would train my stamina and look for the secret caves that are said to exist deep in the mountains. But I didn't find anything. It's really boring."
“But you, my good brother…” He looked at me, then turned to look behind me—that silly little Hikari had somehow shrunk behind me. “Oh, and your female companion, when did you arrive? Did you encounter any danger on the way? If I had known you were coming, I should have gone to pick you up.”
I said, "Just these past two days, I've been on the verge of danger, it was incredibly thrilling."
"That sounds so exciting! Damn it, why was it you and not me there back then!"
"I suggest you don't come. You might lose your life."
"...Um, may I ask a question?"
Hikari gripped my sleeve tightly and asked in a low voice. After receiving an encouraging look from me, she hesitated for a few seconds before raising her voice slightly: "Mr. Yumi, why is your friend dressed so strangely?"
"Hmm? Is that strange?"
Hiro's natural response startled Hikari, causing her to shrink back behind me. I couldn't tell if she was just shy or simply timid: "Well, I heard this is the outfit of one of the warriors who participated in the first Black Tide attack. I don't know for sure. I just ran out of money for food on my way here, and I was just about to find work in the city when I ran into a job posting. They saw that my figure was suitable and let me put it on."
"It's that sword fighting tournament over there, you should know about it, right? It's supposed to be a celebration to commemorate the past, with some kind of fighting competition... Ah, of course, if you guys are new here, you might not know. There are also a lot of people over there wearing weird clothes like me."
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