We smile at each other. Isn’t life awfully simple sometimes?

“But, before that,” he says, as though a thought hit him only now, “have you signed up for the tournament yet?”

“The tutournament?” I parrot. “No. I only got here just now, and then I saw you being harassed… Um, talking with your friends, and after that…” I give a self-deprecating chuckle. “You know the rest.”

He nods at me thoughtfully. “In that case,” he says, standing up, “we’d better get you signed up before the preliminaries reach floor eighteen. Would be a shame if you missed the group tournament, I’d say.”

Following suit, I stand up as well. A thought suddenly hits me, making me pause mid-rise. “Wait. Don’t you need to be in a group to fight in a group tournament?”

He snaps his fingers. “You do. However…” he grins. “I think I can help you with that.”

Not explaining himself in the least, he pulls me back to the vomitorium, not pausing at all to look at the single random saddled sprint-drake tethered outside, dragging me all the way inside it, into a pretty large hall. There are people, doing the usual bustling and hustling. Some enter into a hall that seems to lead to the various bleachers, while others head into some kind of back room. The room as a whole is quite large, the walls and the receptionist area hogging most of the human attention.

Moleman guides me to the receptionist area, or, rather, to the line heading to it. There are about two dozen people ahead of us.

“So, uh,” I say, grabbing his attention. “Why did you—”

Interrupting me fully, he grabs my shoulders and pulls me up, bringing me from his chest level to his eye level. I blink at him and he smiles sheepishly. “Slouch all you want, but you can at least try to walk upright, okay?”

I look down at the floor, at my now-straightened knees. “Oh, uh, yeah. Of course.” It seems I have acquired an unfortunate habit of not merely slouching, but actually falling into an instinctual crouch, no matter where or when or why. Extreme cases can even have me assume Gollum position without a single thought. A few people who were glancing at me from across the room look away now that I’m standing normally. Hm. Nevertheless, I turn back to Moleman, a hint of suspicion shining through my voice as I say, “If you already knew everything that happened… everything I did on floor fifteen, why did you ask me to explain?” And why did you listen?

I almost expect him to maybe shrug and explain it dismissively with something like ‘Oh haha I could tell you needed to talk it out’ but I don’t get that. His expression turns somber. And after only a moment’s pause, he says, as plainly as the weather, “I had to know whether you regretted it or not.”

For several seconds, I simply stare at him, lips sealed tightly. The line moves a step and we move along with it. I avert my eyes from his face and look down at the floor, at my blueish, reddened feet, and his well-made, well-worn boots. In a whisper, I ask, “Did I pass the test…?”

“Yes,” he says, and a warm hand falls on my shoulder and my eyes snap up to him, to find him smiling broadly. “With flying colors.” He chuckles. “If you hadn’t, I would probably have had to trick you into coming down to the courthouse.” My heart plummets and he must have been able to see it on my face, because he quickly adds, “Though, I didn’t have a doubt in my mind that you’d pass it. That’s just what Bach told me to do in the infinitely small chance you didn’t. Heck, she actually wanted to keep a circle of guards around you at all times to ensure you could be captured in case you tried to escape. But I talked her out of that, alongside all her other insane contingency plans.”

I look around at the other people in the room. “So, we aren’t being followed?”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Nope.”

“If I suddenly went out of control and began biting everyone like a printer chewing through paper, there wouldn’t suddenly appear a bunch of guards to chop my head off and hammer a stake into my heart?”

“Funny way of putting it, but no, that wouldn’t happen.”

I can feel my brows furrow. “So, what you’re saying is…” The thought is too unreal to think, so I have to say it. “...You trust me?”

Smile not wavering for a moment, he nods. “I trust you, and the leadership trusts me enough for that to transfer.” As we move further up the line, he actually giggles at the mere thought. “I mean, can you imagine if the leadership tried to treat you like some sort of beast that had to be put down? Put you in a cage, wind you up with chains… Like a medieval animal court?” He sighs. “No, we’re more civilized than that.” A frown suddenly slips its way onto his face. “Apparently, not civilized enough to fully condemn the death penalty, but all governments have their cracks, I suppose.”

I almost want to respond with something, but by the time my brain has shifted into the right gear to formulate coherent thoughts, we’ve abruptly reached the end of the line. Namely, the reception desk.

A conventionally attractive human woman glances at me for a fraction of a second before looking over at Moleman, beaming the moment her eyes fall on him. “Oh, SuperMoleman! It’s so lovely to see you again. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Her voice is pleasant, but it isn’t memorable in the least. It’s not bad to listen to, but I can’t imagine it saying any word she hasn’t already spoken. Her face is the same. Pleasant, but strangely ordinary. Only flawless insofar as there’s nothing unpleasant about it. It’s not a face you’d see on billboards, it’s not something you’d call any extreme like ‘beautiful’ or even ‘pretty.’ Nobody could possibly envy or be disgusted by it.

The only feature of note is that somehow, despite the lack of wrinkles or pimples or any other human flaw, she looks kind.

Moleman smiles back at her. “It’s nice to see you too, Patty. How are things going here? Nobody’s harassed you or anything?”

“Oh, of course not! What a silly joke,” she says in that pleasant, accent-less inflexion. “Now, let’s not hold up the line for the others too much. How may I help you?”

“Well, actually, it’s not me who needs help, but actually my friend, Fennrick. PrissyKittyPrincess.”

She doesn’t even look at me. “A—ah. Yes… PrissyKittyPrincess. Of course. And he wants to sign up for both tournaments?” To avoid looking at her pleasantly nervous face, I glance down at an embroidered patch on the front of her vest. ‘Hi! I’m Compassion 28: Patty. How may I help you?’ The weave shimmers oddly in my sight, and I’ve got a hunch that anybody else reading it would also read the exact same thing I did. Magic.

Moleman looks at her, and then at me. “I don’t know, how about you ask him?”

“Huh?” she says. Her blandly kind smile twitches. “Oh, yes. Of course. You are perfectly correct, SuperMoleman. Forgive my rudeness.”

“I’m sure Kitty will be forgiving if you say so to him,” Moleman counters.

Ah, she froze. Is she even breathing anymore? No, now that I think about it, was she breathing to begin with? Right as I’m starting to consider the possible non-nature of the woman in front of us, she turns towards me. Oh, but only her body does. Her head remains fixed in place, like she’s a chicken or something.

“Forgive me, PrissyKittyPrincess. To repeat my question, are you interested in signing up to both tournaments or just the solo?” And all this said while very clearly looking at Moleman, not me. Speaking of Moleman, he looks like he wants to say something about the status of her head, but he never told her to actually look at me, so… good enough.

“Um, yeah,” I respond. “Also, don’t you mean the tutournament?”

Her customer service ‘I-want-to-die’ smile twitches. “No, that is simply what the God of Pain refers to the Tutorial Tournament as. The Goddess of Compassion is not affiliated with His terms.” I gawk at her. Wait, seriously? That stupid word is just what Pain calls it, and no one else? Did He alter my status screens to add it?!

Ignoring my grand internal conflict, Patty continues. “On the matter of the tutorial tournament, you are most welcome to join the solo tournament. However, as SuperMoleman is on floor sixty-six and you are on floor eighteen, it will be impossible to form a team with him. For a team, you need a minimum of two members and a maximum of seven to join the group tournament. Since you do not have any group to join, I’m afraid that—”

“He’ll be joining floor eighteen’s Team Wu-Li.” Moleman just totally cut her off. Whoa, is that a vein popping on her forehead? I’ve never seen that in real life! Man, this is exactly like my animes.

Her eyes narrow. “...Excuse me?” After a second, she regains enough composure to talk properly. “I’m sorry, but without a representative of Team Wu-Li, PrissyKittyPrincess will unfortunately not be able to—”

Interrupting her again, Moleman slams a parchment down on the receptionist's desk like it’s key evidence in a murder case. “I’ve already received their permission. This written agreement should suffice.”

In keeping with the courtroom analogy, Patty looks down at the parchment like it just sealed her fate on the gallows. Hands moving like that of an animatronic, she picks up the parchment, which I now see does indeed contain a few signatures. Her eyes scan it for any inaccuracies. In the meantime, I throw a sly look at Moleman.

Moleman…

How much did you plan in advance…?