An Apology From The Protagonist

Officially joining the party was easy—at least on my side of things. We went to the receptionist and let her do the rest of her work.

I really got to tip her one day. Hm. Once I get my first check, I’ll give her some gold.

When we were done, Mia turned and pointed right at me.

“Just so you know, Tai, I’m not some simple girl you can snag just because we’re in a party together.”

“That’s fair.”

It really was. Sure, she was pretty, but she was doing me more than a favor by letting me join her party. I don’t want to ruin it over lust and weird advances towards her.

That wasn’t how I rolled either way.

Just being friends is all I wanted.

Mia tilted her head and smiled, satisfied with my answer.

“Good,” she said, “as long as you understand, we’ll have no problems~.”

***

Staring at a window from a distance, I didn’t realize it until now, but it was still early in the afternoon.

“Come on, Tai,” Mia waved for me to follow. “Let me introduce you to the rest of the party.”

We went over to the table where the two other female leads—the short and shy mage and the tall, stoic knight—sat.

“Ladies, this is Tai,” Mia said, pointing at me.

The knight lowered her head.

“Greetings,” she said, her voice smooth yet stern.

Meanwhile, the mage was fidgeting with her staff.

“G-good morning,” she managed to say.

Mia waved her hand towards the stoic knight.

“This scary lady over here is Augustina.”

Once she said that, Augustina slowly turned to her with mild annoyance. Her scrunched lips and brows made that mighty clear.

“Please, Mia. Enough with the jokes. You always make me look bad.”

The blonde knight then turned to me and extended her hand.

“I promise I’m not scary,” she said. “And I’d prefer if you called me by my nickname, August.”

“August, huh? Got it. It’s nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.”

I shook August’s hand. Man, she was strong. But during our brief shake, I was playing up this relaxed facade, when in reality, I was teeth-clatteringly nervous around her and well…the rest of the party if I’m being honest.

“Now over here,” Mia said, sliding her hand towards the shy mage with pink hair, “is Ophelia.”

The mage took multiple glances at me, locking eyes for about a nanosecond before retreating her gaze back to her staff.

“I-it’s nice to meet you…”

She said, fidgeting with her fingers.

Her voice was frail. Weak. She reminded me of many people back at school. It was quite comforting. Of the three girls, she seemed to be the one person I could see myself quickly getting along with.

Mia heaved a sad sigh and placed a hand over her eyes, as if she were covering her grief.

“I’m sorry if you can’t understand her, Tai. See, Ophelia is new to speaking, so please be patient with her.”

“T-that's not true!” Ophelia squeaked, unleashing her quiet fury as she flailed her slender arms towards Mia. “Stop spreading these silly little lies about me!”

Mia giggled, sticking her tongue out while gently knocking the side of her head.

Guess out of everyone here, she was the jokester.

I laughed along with her. Well, ‘laugh’ seems harsh. It was a chuckle, at most.

“Hmph!”

The red-faced Ophelia turned to me with trembling lips—taking a second to compose herself—before sitting back down and staring at me with her round emerald eyes.

“What Mia just said…it’s not true, okay~?”

“Of course! I believe you. You are speaking with me after all.”

The mage focused back on her fidgety fingers.

“T-thank you,” she said.

“So,” August, the knight, chimed in. “What business do you have with us, Tai?”

“Oh, well—”

“He’s gonna be joining our party as a healer!” Mia swooped in, stealing the spotlight from me. Though I was grateful for it. I didn’t want to break the news myself.

“Is that so?” August asked.

I nodded, and from that, August smiled ever so slightly. She had a mature aura about her, as if she were always calm, collected, and reasonable.

“That’s wonderful,” she went on to say. “It’s hard to come across any healers nowadays.”

“Really?”

August nodded.

“Many people don’t have the mana or the affinity towards magic to perform healing. Not to mention all the monsters that will target healers the moment they recognize them.”

Woah, woah, woah. Targeting?

It made sense from the monster’s perspective. If you were facing a party of adventurers, the major priority would be to take out their healer.

So if I’m out on the battlefield, not only would I need to be cautious at all times, learn how to dodge, and be ready to run at a moment’s notice, but I also need to be aware of my teammates well being and heal them before it’s too late?

That’s too much work! I want to change classes! I don’t want to be a healer anymore!

I must’ve had a look of worry on my face because Mia leaned in with a reassuring smile.

“You don’t have to worry about all of that though, Tai. Augustina here is level 9. She’s freakishly strong. She’ll be able to take the heat off you!”

August nodded.

“Or at the very least, I’ll try my best.”

“Thanks,” I said, trying my best to show how grateful I was. “I’d really appreciate it.”

I was calming down a bit.

But now, there was this moment of silence. Awkward silence.

Oh, man.

Should I change the topic and talk about something else? Or…ugh! I don’t know!

Now, I’m not bad when it comes to socializing. I’m not the greatest at it, but I’m definitely not bad at it.

It’s just that socializing at school and, well, anywhere on Earth that spoke English was my forte. I don’t have any clue about what I should say here. What in the world do people talk about in fantasy worlds, anyway?

I was going to open my mouth and say something random, and most likely stupid, just so I could get a conversation rolling, ‌until someone from the other side of the tavern slammed their hands against the table.

He was one of the drunk guys from earlier. If I remember correctly, he was pushing me while trying to invite me to their party at the same time, and wait…was he pointing a chicken wing at Mia?

“You—!” he yelled, almost slurring his words. It couldn’t have been any later than 2 in the afternoon, but he was already this hammered. “I thought you wanted us to leave that healer alone out of the goodness of your heart…but you only did that to snag him for yourself!”

“Huh?! Is that true?!‌”

“It is, I heard it!” someone yelled from the table beside us. “She said he was joining their party as their healer!”

“Seriously?!”

From all over the tavern, adventurers who tried recruiting me had their fiery gazes towards our table.

“Mia,” August asked. “What are they talking about?”

“Nothing! These men are just jealous of our newfound camaraderie,” Mia said, though from the way she forced her smile, it was clear that she was a tad bit nervous about the number of guys glaring at us.

She went over to Ophelia and Augustina, pushing them out of their seats.

“So ladies, and Tai too, how about we go on a kill quest and get the chemistry going~?”

Mia’s voice went up an octave, and she was speaking in an abrupt, yet sped up manner.

“R-right now?” Ophelia asked. Her shoulders shot up to her ears when she heard the words ‘kill quest.’

“Yup! Right now,” Mia said, glancing over her shoulder to see if the guys were still glaring at her—which they were—before pushing Ophelia and me towards the front doors of the Guild Tavern.

“But a kill quest at this time is way too sudden,” Augustina added. “We shouldn’t be rushing these sorts of things.”

That was fair and reasonable.

From her friends’ perspective, Mia must’ve been acting strange. After all, she wasn’t telling them the whole truth.

“August is right. We are jumping the gun quite a bit.”

“Gun? What does that mean?” Augustina asked.

I froze.

Oh shoot. I’m pretty sure they don’t have those in this world.

“It’s a sort of weapon, but nevermind that. Can we talk outside, please? I feel like I’m about to be swarmed ‌all over again.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to comfort myself from a ton of eyes stalking my every move.

“Tai’s right,” Mia said. “Can we please take this outside?”

I guess the glares were getting to her too.

***

The moment we left the Guild Tavern and took shade under a nice tree from somewhere that was decently far from the Tavern, Augustina demanded to know what was going on.

“Okay,” Mia said, with her arms crossed and her lips pursed, but her sight was on the bark of the tree and not towards Augustina. “I’ll tell you everything.”

The story wasn’t anything crazy. Sure, Mia admitted she got the swarm of guys off me to have me join their party instead, but I was the one who agreed to join in an instant.

She didn’t force me to join or anything. I did that ‌of my own free will.

“So that’s what happened,” Augustina said, stroking the bottom of her chin as she took the situation in.

“H-how awful,” Ophelia said to me with an emphatic gaze. “Getting swarmed like that. I saw it as it went down, but I didn’t think it was you that got swarmed.”

“Yeah, it was pretty brutal,” I said, chuckling.

Ophelia nodded with a surprising amount of strength.

“If I was in your position, I think I would’ve fainted.”

“Yeah, you probably would if I’m being honest. I was getting pretty close to puking and passing out myself.”

Ophelia’s legs started wobbling when I mentioned that.

“I’m glad I never had to deal with something like that.”

“Seriously?”

Ophelia nodded.

“Same here,” Augustina added.

Wow. Never would’ve suspected that coming from these two, considering how pretty they are.

“Oh, come on,” Mia said. “Being swarmed isn’t that bad. The attention is nice.”

Ophelia shook her head, disagreeing with the idea, while Augustina was indifferent.

To each their own, I guess.

“But going back to the kill quest,” Augustina said. “I know I said we were rushing things, but taking on a quest like that isn’t a bad idea. We’ll have to take on a quest, eventually.”

“I agree,” I said, raising my hand as Ophelia quietly nodded.

I’d have to get money somehow, and I didn’t have any valuable skills in this world since I was planning to pursue a computer-science degree when I was out of high school.

Plus, I don’t know if that angel person was going to let me quit being an adventurer to work at some restaurant here in the city.

She was pretty adamant about me preventing the Lich Queen from being resurrected and all.

Speaking about the Lich Queen…

I should ask these girls if they know anything about her, but now might not be the best time. Plus, I’m only level 6. I’m sure someone’s level in the Lich Queen’s army is at least 10 times higher than mine.

I should focus on the basics, like leveling up and getting gear.

Sorry to say this, angel, but the Lich Queen isn’t gonna be my top priority for a while…

“So,” Augustina went on with the quest talk, “how about we use today to get to know each other and our skills, make a fighting plan off of that, and take on a kill quest tomorrow? Does that sound reasonable?”

My eyes lit up.

“Absolutely! I’m all for it.”

I just got dropped into this fantasy world after all. I don’t want to fight against monsters and go through a potential near-death experience all in the same day.

“M-me too!” Ophelia said, raising her hand. “I think it’s a good idea.”

That meant that 2 out of the 3 people here agreed with Augustina’s plan.

Which left us with one person to check on to see if they had any objections with the plan.

Slowly, yet altogether, the three of us turned to Mia, who was scratching her cheek and staring at the leaves with an odd expression.

“You’re hiding something from us, aren’t you?” Augustina asked.

Mia lowered her head, caught and defeated.

“I am. I'm sorry,” she said.

“Spill it,” Augustina said, her voice ice cold.

“Come on, August. You don’t need to be so harsh on her,” Ophelia said, her voice filled with warmth and compassion as she inched closer to Mia. “But I want to know too. What are you hiding, Mia?”

I took a step back.

These two would be insanely good when it comes to a good cop/bad cop interrogation.

“Okay~” Mia sighed, giving in to Ophelia’s sweet talk.

She took out her adventurer’s card and flipped it to the back.

“Hm? What’s that?” I asked.

Augustina and Ophelia stood as stiff as boards when they read the card.

I was standing in front of Mia while Ophelia and Augustina were at her side, so the words were upside down.

“What does it say?”

Augustina spoke, though her voice was weak.

“It says that we have a quest in progress…”

“…What?”

I got a good look at Ophelia and Mia’s faces to see if it was true. To my horror, it was.

“Before I overheard you were a healer, Tai, I signed me and the girls up for a kill quest…” Mia said as Ophelia rained her fiery fists (that dealt no damage) upon Mia’s arm. “But now that you’re in the party, it applies to you too.”

I took out my adventurer’s card and flipped to the back. Sure enough, there was a quest.

<Eliminate The Gremlins In The Crystal Caverns>

“…”

The reward was 1,000 gold. That was nothing to scoff at. Money was money, and I was fine with the amount, even if we had to split it 4 ways.

The only bad part was that we had until the end of the day to finish this quest.

“You imbecile!” Augustina yelled. “Why did you do this without consulting us?! Now that I think about it, you let Tai join the party without talking to us either!”

“I'm sorry! I'm sorry! But the other day, we were talking about finding another party member because of how much we were struggling against boars, and then out of nowhere, there was a healer conveniently at the guild, so I thought, ‘Hey! Why not get him to join our party?’”

“That doesn’t explain why you took the quest!” Augustina said.

Mia slumped her shoulders.

“I have no excuse for that one,” she said, sounding defeated. “I just wanted money.”

“Y-you idiot!” Ophelia yelled, banging on her shoulders some more. “We can’t take on gremlins! We’re gonna have to abandon the quest and take the penalty!”

Penalty? That was news to me.

Watching this all go down, I gotta say; I felt bad for Mia, but I can't say it wasn’t undeserved.

Mia was in the wrong. She needed to own up to that.

“Signing your friends up for a death battle against gremlins? That’s messed up,” I said.

I didn’t want to sugarcoat it. What she did was wrong.

Maybe it was harsh coming from a lazy-bone like me, who spent his days putting in little to no effort in anything worthwhile.

Still, I felt like I had to be honest with situations like these.

Sure, in the novel, this would’ve been a gag, but to me, Ophelia, and Augustina—this was real.

This was scary.

“We’re all low-level adventurers after all, and I’ve never fought alongside you guys before. We have no synergy, no strategy, and I have no clue what I’m going to do fighting-wise. I’ve never even been in a fight before. So if I’m feeling this stressed, I can’t imagine how Augustina or Ophelia would feel about this.”

So, the last thing I want is for this to be laughed off as if it were no big deal.

Mia gazed at Augustina and Ophelia, taking in their worried faces and fearful body language. Her expression darkened at the sight, and she lowered her head.

“You’re right. And I’m sorry I did that to you all.”

She wasn’t playing anything up for jokes anymore. She was serious and apologetic. Now, I’m sure her pride must’ve taken a hit, but I’m sure it’ll all be for the better.

Ophelia stopped her parade of punches and stood a few steps away from Mia while she fidgeted with her fingers.

“Thank you,” she said.

Maybe she couldn’t forgive Mia at the moment, but at least she acknowledged the apology. That was something to be happy about.

Augustina raised her armored arm and scratched the back of her head before sighing.

“You don’t need to be so sad. I forgive you.”

Guess she wasn’t comfortable when things got mushy like this. I don’t blame her though; talks like these don’t happen often, and when they do, it’s never a fun time.

Mia bowed to Augustina.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Then she turned to me.

Was she waiting for my response?

I turned from her gaze and bashfully scratched my cheek under the shade of this giant tree.

Guess August wasn’t the only one who struggled to stay composed at times like this.

“I forgive you too,” I told her in the end. “I mean, we don’t have to go on the quest, so the damage isn’t so severe. Plus, I feel like I should be the one apologizing to you as well. After all, I just met you like what, maybe 30 minutes ago? And already I’m out here doing this mean lecture. It’s absurd! I feel like I went too far with that, so I’m sorry…”

Agh, can I stop moving my mouth already! I’m talking way too much!

I was in my head again, freaking out just a tiny bit. With emphasis on the word tiny.

I scratched the top of my head and managed to keep my mouth shut.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mia smile a bit.

Then…

“Pfft!”

Mia laughed. I don’t know if it was from what I said or how fidgety I was, but she laughed.

Augustina and Ophelia laughed along with her. It was like a domino effect.

My face heated up.

“What’s so funny?”

“N-nothing,” Ophelia said.

“That’s right. It’s nothing,” Augustina joined in.

“No, you guys are definitely laughing at something. And that something is me. So spill the beans.”

The two girls turned their heads.

“Hey, are you guys seriously not gonna tell me? I swear I can take it.”

The two girls didn’t say a thing, while Mia waved for me to come closer.

“I don’t know about these two, but I’ll tell you why I’m laughing at you.”

“Okay…”

I leaned closer to Mia, lending my ear to her.

Her breath tickled the edge of my ear as she spoke with such a heartwarming and sweet voice.

“I’m laughing because you look so cute and silly when you’re embarrassed.”

“Huh?!”

My face was pretty much boiling after hearing those words.

Mia pulled away, her cheeks a bit flushed, but her mischievous smile was white and dazzling.

“What did she tell you?” Augustina asked.

“Just that he looks silly and stupid when he’s embarrassed,” Mia said on my behalf.

Augustina raised her brow.

“Is that true?”

I nodded. My face must’ve been as red as the wine they served at the tavern.

Because how was I supposed to respond to that?!