So, when the serious business of eating was done, Noburu led the party of three through the city.

The three had been, to say the least, taken aback once they realised that they had to take care of their own sleeping arrangements as well. None of them had given it any thought. After all, since arriving in Fortuna Keisuke had been given a place to sleep by his union for free. It wasn’t something he had to worry about, so he had neglected it up until now.

That ignorance would have cost them dearly. When were they going to realise this? If they hadn’t, where would they even sleep? The streets weren’t exactly safe, but if push came to shove, they would have had no choice. There were a fair amount of homeless people nestled in the dark alleyways and corners of Fortuna, so it wasn’t unheard of. But they had Fumiko to think about.

If it was just Keisuke and Mahiro, he was sure they could manage a day or two in the streets if they absolutely had to. Of course, it wouldn’t be ideal, but if it came to it Keisuke would hold his tongue and do his best not to complain. They had a girl with them, though. Sleeping in the streets, completely unprotected, was just out of the question.

Thankfully, it wasn’t expected of them.

To the west of the city, right beside the western gate called the River Gate, there was a stablehouse. Noburu had befriended the person in charge, a middle-aged man with coarse black hair and a musty stench that clung onto him like death. Noburu had come here earlier in the day looking to buy a horse, but the price was so out of his budget that he and the head groom had a long laugh about it. Keisuke admired the blissful foolishness it took to befriend someone that easily.

“My friends here need a place to stay for a while,” he had introduced them. “You said you had something?"

The man seemed to mull it over as he looked at the three of them. “Hmm. Yes, well, I suppose I could put you with the horses. There’s stacks of straw there, you can make yourself beds for the night.”

And so the matter of where they would sleep was decided.

The stablekeep assigned them two empty stalls for their use. Keisuke and Mahiro decided that they would share one and give Fumiko the other to herself. Keisuke didn’t mind this arrangement. In fact, he would’ve been very worried if they had to share rooms with Fumiko. They were also given a couple of blankets to cover themselves at night. They were old and tattered in some places, and smelled of sweat and use, but that smell paled in comparison to the stable itself. The mingled smells of hay, manure, and horse hung over the stable like a damp blanket, thick and musty. It had been hard to breathe at first, the stench nauseating and threatening to release the venison stew in Keisuke’s belly. After a while, though, he began to ignore it.

Keisuke was now laying down in his stack of hay, staring up at the wooden ceiling. Their first day as rookie scouts had come to an end, and they had just barely managed to scrape by. If it wasn’t for Noburu, they would’ve been left to starve and sleep god-knows-where. Keisuke didn’t even want to imagine what they would have had to resort to if the stables weren’t made available for them. Noburu had really done them a great service, despite hardly knowing each other.

Then there was the matter with the wolf. In just a single day, we were almost killed, starved, or left with no place to sleep. Seriously…

Their first fight had ended in failure. Keisuke flexed his right arm, remembering. Training and actual battle were completely different. Nothing Koto-sensei taught him could’ve fully prepared him for that glaring gap in difference.

Maybe they’d underestimated the intensity of an actual battle? Keisuke wondered if they were ill-prepared from the beginning, both mentally and physically. They’d taken a quest and hurried off to do it without much thought or planning

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

Well, it’s not like I’d even know what kind of planning would go into something like that. Traps, maybe… No, that’s pointless. I don’t even know how to make anything like that.

As he stared upwards, thinking, Keisuke realised that there was one thing he did know for sure. And that was that they needed money. Without it, they wouldn’t be able to eat or afford a place of lodging. Luckily the price of sleeping in the stables was simply cleaning after yourself and not making a noise, but obviously they couldn’t stay there forever. It was probably unhealthy in some way to sleep here with all of the dust and the horses. The haystacks weren’t exactly comfortable to lay on, either, and since they were quite a ways from the public lavatories, if they needed to relieve themselves urgently they had to use a bucket, which they then had to haul and throw the contents of in a cesspit or the river. It was disgusting to even think about but what could you do? Unless Keisuke had suddenly evolved as a species and relinquished himself of the need to pee and poop, there was little he could do when nature came calling. He just hoped that he wouldn’t ever resort to squatting over a bucket.

Needless to say, money was important.

Even if Keisuke understood that, acquiring money wasn’t as simple as he made it sound. The only way they knew how to was by completing quests, and if their first quest was anything to go buy then that would not be so easy.

We really might be in trouble, Keisuke thought to himself. If we don’t get used to fighting soon, then we’re pretty much done for. We don’t have much of a choice…

Just as he thought that, Keisuke heard the hay beside him rustle. “Hey, Keisuke-kun? Are you awake?” It was Mahiro.

“Yeah, I’m awake. What’s up?”

“I wanted to ask what you thought about today. About what happened.”

What Keisuke thought… “I think,” Keisuke began, thinking, “I think we have to get used to this quest stuff. Somehow, we have to do it. If we don’t, I get the feeling that we won’t survive very long…”

Keisuke sensed Mahiro nodding beside him. “Yeah, I thought the same. We have to do better. No matter how you look at it, today was a complete failure and a repeat of these results would be a catastrophe. We need money.”

Mahiro had taken the words right from Keisuke’s thoughts. Apparently, they had both been thinking the same thing as they laid on this hay. It wasn’t like it was a huge revelation, it was fact.

“I think we should go back to that farm tomorrow,” Mahiro said, catching Keisuke by surprise.

The farm? He wanted to go back there? Keisuke wasn’t sure why, and he voiced those thoughts.

“We didn’t kill the wolf, did we?” Mahiro explained. “I kind of want to, like, finish what we started, I guess? I feel like we won’t be able to move forward otherwise.”

Oh, I get it.

In a way, that wolf was like a proving for their party now. It was their first ever quest and it had ended in failure. Mahiro must’ve felt like if they couldn’t clear it, then they would struggle with other quests they picked up.

What's the saying, someone who wishes to climb must start at the bottom of the ladder? Or something like that.

For Keisuke, Mahiro, and Fumiko, that was their first step, one they had to overcome no matter what.

“Yeah, I understand,” Keisuke said.

“Well, I’m not even sure if we’ll be able to find the wolf again,” Mahiro laughed sheepishly. “...But, I’d like to try, at least. I have a plan. Whether it will work or not, I don’t know, so don’t expect too much from me, okay?”

Keisuke ultimately agreed with Mahiro’s opinion. If they could finish what they started, then maybe they'd really get going. He wondered if it mattered if they found the same wolf or not, though, or if any wolf would do the trick and it was the metaphor that mattered.

For now, though, Keisuke decided that he would trust in Mahiro.