“Then accept them and throw them away. Just don’t deliver them to me.”
Suddenly stopping her movements, Isabel looked up. A bewitching smile hung at the corner of her lips.
“She earnestly begged me to persuade the Master.”
There was no need to ask who. It would be the servant who came to submit the request.
“Tell them to find meaning in just coming and going.”
“If she ends up crying, will the Master take responsibility? Oh, come to think of it, she’s actually kind of your type.”
“I can’t stand crying people.”
Answering curtly, Roman rose from his seat. As soon as he stood up, he inwardly clicked his tongue at the stiffness he felt.
Just doing it once and the aftereffects remained until the next day. At least they had rolled around on the bed—if they’d done it standing, he wouldn’t have been able to sit comfortably today.
Knock knock—
“It’s Hubert.”
Following the knock, someone opened the door and entered the office. It was Hubert, the guild member in charge of accepting requests.
In his hands were a thick ledger and several parchment scrolls presumed to be request forms. After placing them on Isabel’s desk, who was in charge of classification, he approached Roman and handed him something.
“This came for the Master.”
What Hubert held out were several letter envelopes. Roman, who accepted them without complaint, began opening and reading them one by one.
As expected, most were party invitations or requests for escorts, but there was one that wasn’t. After checking the contents, Roman shifted his gaze back to Hubert.
“Check if Diego has returned, and if he has, tell him to come to the office.”
“Understood.”
True to being someone more faithful to their duties than anyone else, Hubert left a reliable answer and turned around.
***
The moment the break room door opened, the acrid smell of cigarettes wafted out. The guild members who saw Diego entering each offered a greeting.
“You’re here?”
“Long time no see.”
A card game was in full swing at the round table. One of them exhaled cigarette smoke and spoke in a hoarse voice.
“There’s an empty seat, so you can join.”
Realizing they were talking to him, Diego politely declined.
“I’m fine. I’m not good at card games.”
Then another man sitting across from them interjected in a blunt tone.
“Don’t you know this guy has no interest in this kind of thing?”
“I just had a feeling he’d do it today.”
“Your intuition is so bad, that’s why you always lose. Straight flush.”
“No way!”
Leaving the rowdy group behind, Diego moved toward the back of the break room. On the table between the sofas, as always, drinks and snacks were provided for the guild members.
The moment his gaze landed somewhere, a pleased smile crossed Diego’s lips. He could see a fairly large cookie basket sitting empty except for crumbs. Among the various snacks, the cookies Emily made were especially popular.
As he tilted the water bottle over a cup, someone approached with audible footsteps. It was Antonio, who joined the guild at the same time.
“Ah, I’m exhausted.”
He plopped down on the opposite sofa and rubbed the back of his neck. True to his words, the bags under his eyes made him look quite tired.
“Did you come straight back after finishing work?”
“Yeah. I’ve been running around since morning, I feel like I’m going to die.”
Antonio reached his arm across the table, picked up a candy, and pushed it into his mouth. Then he indicated somewhere with his chin.
“Outstanding as always.”
“What is?”
“What do you mean what? Your forearm. Doesn’t it seem to be getting bigger?”
Diego let out a small laugh. From the day they first met at the guild office, Antonio never held back his praise for Diego’s body. He complained unprompted that no matter how much he exercised, he couldn’t build muscle, then arbitrarily stroked Diego’s shoulder while expressing his envy. That wasn’t all. Occasionally, if they happened to run into each other naked in the communal shower room, he would give a thumbs up with an admiring expression.
Still, Diego didn’t feel particularly unpleasant about it. Rather, their personalities matched well, and since they were both Benics, they quickly grew close.
“Are you still on standby?”
“No. I went to Castro this morning.”
“Item delivery?”
“Yeah.”
Hearing the brief answer, Antonio touched his lips and let out a groan. Soon, a rarely serious gaze turned toward Diego.
“…You might think I’m meddling, but…”
“Then don’t say it.”
“I’m just saying, man. Anyway, don’t you think it’s time to ask to be assigned other work too? You said you were in a mercenary company for several years.”
Antonio was speaking quite seriously in his own way.
As rumors spread that the Fohens Guild was one of the best in terms of generous compensation and excellent benefits, applicants flocked like clouds whenever recruitment notices for new guild members were posted. Among them were people who kept trying again after tasting the bitter cup of rejection. Though he was too embarrassed to tell anyone, Antonio had also barely managed to join after three attempts.
On the other hand, the guy sitting across from him now had passed the final exam in one go. Yet with that height and build, all he did was deliver items like letters—it couldn’t be anything but a serious waste of manpower.
Unlike the still-serious Antonio, Diego answered calmly without any change in expression.
“I appreciate the thought, but I’m satisfied with what I’m doing now.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t understand Antonio’s feelings. Item delivery was low-difficulty work, so the compensation was also very modest. Considering his tight financial situation, he should be doing work that included hazard pay or additional allowances, but the reality was that it wasn’t even easy to be away from home for a night.
The reason was his only family member, his younger sister. In fact, Emily had a sharp personality that even he could see, and in just a few more months, she would celebrate her seventeenth birthday when she’d be recognized as an adult. But perhaps because of the significant age gap, Emily still seemed young in Diego’s eyes.
“Oh, did you hear that news?”
Antonio, who had sensed that Diego didn’t want to mention it further, naturally changed the subject. All sorts of trivial stories followed—the sewers in Kiron Street broke and caused a flood, someone fell into the sea while fishing for marlin, and so on—and Diego occasionally chimed in while listening to him.
Then suddenly, Antonio sent a lecherous look.
“Seems you had a good time last night.”
“What?”
Antonio soon indicated with his chin the bandage wrapped around the tip of Diego’s left middle finger. Any adult would know the meaning of a wound in that spot.
“You said you didn’t have a lover?”
“…Right.”
Naturally, one person’s face came to Diego’s mind.
He’d been mixing bodies with Roman, the guild master, for several months now, satisfying each other’s desires during their Bloody Cycles. In fact, Diego wanted to become even closer than that. He wanted to become lovers who shared not just bodies but hearts, but compared to Roman, he himself was lacking in far too many ways.
Even when he called Roman’s name in an anguished voice, even when he poured his hot traces into the deepest part of Roman’s body each time, it was only for that moment. No matter what he did, the kind of relationship he desired could never happen.
“Then you must have gone to Lovers’ Lane.”
“……”
Diego answered with silence instead. If one didn’t have a spouse or lover, it was generally common to go to a place called ‘Lovers’ Lane’ during the Bloody Cycle to look for a one-night partner.
They would tilt their glasses while searching for someone they liked, seduce them and have relations, and if they had good chemistry, it was usual for them to develop into lovers or even get married. Diego had also visited Lovers’ Lane every month until he received the partner proposal from Roman.
“Let’s go together next time. I may not look it, but I have quite a wide network and know a lot of people.”
“Don’t you have someone you’re seeing?”
“Nope. My future is bright, so I don’t want to be tied down to one person already. Unless someone who feels like destiny appears.”
As he listened to the continuing discourse on romance, the break room door opened and senior member Hubert entered.
“So you were here.”
His steps stopped in front of the table by the window. Soon his gaze turned toward Diego.
“The Master is looking for you. Go down quickly.”
“Thank you.”
After giving a brief thanks to Hubert who had come all the way here to find him, Diego hurriedly got up.
Unlike the noisy break room, the corridor was very quiet. He reached his destination in no time. Arriving in front of the Master’s office located deep on the first floor, Diego lightly knocked on the door.
“It’s Diego.”
