It was daybreak when they arrived, with the sun slowly rising over the horizon and the people of Fortuna waking up, yawning and stretching, to meet the day. Ren and his party led the group of thirteen through the city as an escort. There were high, solid walls encompassing the entire city of Fortuna that seemed to stretch out several square miles. The cobblestone streets twisted and turned, and some of the houses and buildings were made of stone and others of wood.
It was a pleasant change in scenery, to say the least. On their way to the city, they’d mostly found nothing but empty fields and forests. There was a rise in farmsteads and small houses once they got closer, and they would spot large stone structures in the distance. Ren explained that those were holdfasts and forts and that some had been abandoned, claimed by either nature or other beasts. Other than that, the surrounding land was barren.
They’d entered the city through a large black gate where a handful of men in steel armour stood sentry beneath, leaning on their spears. When Mahiro asked someone from Ren's party about them, he confirmed that they were the City Watchmen, responsible for keeping order in Fortuna.
A foul stench had begun to hang over the air like a damp blanket when they got closer to Fortuna. It was likely the smell of excrement, and now that they’d entered the city, they were deep in the stink of it. Keisuke had to stop himself from gagging every so often.
“You’ll get used to it,” Lian had told them.
I’m not sure I want to, thought Keisuke, covering his nose with his forearm.
The deeper they travelled into the city, the more foot traffic they encountered. In the shadows of the walls, farmers and merchants were setting up stalls. One of them, an old man in rustic clothing, had one of the wheels of his cart break off. Apples, melons, oranges, and other fruits spilled onto the street, ripe for the taking for any who dared. A group of barefoot boys did in fact dare, leaping at the opportunity and getting their hands on whatever they could before running off, laughing and hooting.
“Get back here, you miscreants!” yelled one of the guardsmen, attempting to give chase, but could scarcely keep up in his heavy suit of armour.
Makoto managed to grab one of the little thieves by the wrist, stopping him in his tracks. “Stealing is wrong. Return what you took and apologise. Now.”
The boy must’ve been frightened stiff because he did as he was told with little fuss. The rest of his friends, however, had scampered off somewhere.
“So, uh, is it just me or does this place feel...off, somehow?” Noburu was glancing about as they passed through the streets.
That would be putting it lightly, Keisuke thought inwardly. This entire setting feels out of the norm, somehow.
“I have a similar feeling.” Mahiro shared the angst. “Like, I should be surprised by all of this. It's weird, isn’t it?”
They had been the centre of attention the moment they stepped through the gates. People were sparing them glances as if they were something they had never seen before. To be fair, Keisuke and the others were doing the exact same to them. The people of the city all stood out as peculiar to Keisuke. They were dressed in plain and simple clothing, unlike himself and the rest of the group who looked overdressed in comparison.
Hold on. They’re the ones who are peculiar? Compared to them, we stand out the most here, if anything. It’s not even just how they’re dressed, either, but how they all look.
Most of the people in the city’s hair and eye colours were unique, standout colours, and their facial features were also distinct. The difference between them was so glaring it was almost as if Keisuke had just stepped into another world entirely.
Alice asked, “What is this place, exactly?”
“Another nation, I’m assuming?” Glassed turned his head to assimilate his surroundings. “Come to think of it, I don’t even remember my own nationality.”
“My nationality, huh...?” Noburu looked down at the ground and clawed at his chest, thinking. He frowned when he couldn’t seem to remember. “Nah, it's no use. I still can’t remember anything. What about you guys? Any ideas?”
Keisuke shook his head. Everyone else was on the same boat as well, it seemed. “Nothing is coming to me but my name, even now. My mind feels completely blank.”
“Our names…” Noburu looked around the group. “Come to think of it, not all of us introduced ourselves earlier. Like you, tall guy! Hey! I’m talking to you!”
The boy Noburu was referring to was indeed a giant of a man with buzz-cut hair and dark skin. “Me?” His voice was deep. It matched the cool and composed look he had.
“Yeah, you. You’re the tallest one here. It should’ve been obvious who I was referring to, right?”
“If you say so.”
“If I say so? What’s up with that response?”
The boy remained silent for a moment. “My name is Pinto,” he said after a while.
“Pinto? The hell kind of name is that? And what was with that dramatic pause? Were you trying to be cool or something?”
“Pinto is my name. And I was deciding whether I wanted to tell you or not. I might regret it now.”
“What, you got a problem with me or something?” Noburu eyed Pinto up and down, stretching his neck to do so. “How tall are you? You’re, like, competing with the trees out here, man...”
Pinto took a second to think about it. “I think I'm one-hundred ninety-six centimetres. More or less.”
One-ninety-six... That was over twenty centimetres taller than Keisuke. He doubted Pinto was the same age as everyone else based on that but, facial appearance-wise, he didn’t seem that old at all.
“Almost two-hundred...?!” Noburu made a show of tripping over himself, like a pratfall. “The hell? Isn’t that too tall? Aren’t you overdoing it? Just a bit?”
“Maybe. Or maybe you should just get taller.”
“Excuuuse me?! Get a load of this beanpole, belittling me when he barely knows me. The audacity! For your information, one hundred and sixty-nine centimetres is average, Beanpole. Average! You’re just built like a damn streetlamp, is all. That’s right, you’re the abnormality here!”
“One-sixty-nine isn’t really average, though...” Keisuke found himself commenting despite himself.
With a sigh, Noburu suddenly placed a hand over Keisuke’s shoulder and shook his head, no, repeatedly. “Hey, man, listen. If you want to be the straight-man then you have to do it with more zest. Like, more energy. We’re not going to impress anyone if you don’t put in the effort.”
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“Straight-man...” Keisuke was confused. “What are you talking about? Who are we trying to impress?”
“All I’m saying is that you need to work on your delivery. If you don’t, it’ll make things harder for me as the guy who decided to play the fool for you.”
“Are you sure that’s something you decided to do?” Mahiro asked with just a hint of a smile.
“Huh? What are you implying, bucko?! Say it with your chest! Come on, out with it!”
“Nothing, nothing. Forget I said anything.”
Alice somehow giggled at this embarrassingly poor attempt at comedy. “You guys are pretty funny.”
Upon hearing that, Noburu's face brightened, and he puffed his chest out proudly as if it was all according to plan. Keisuke shook his head. What a clown.
Pinto seemed to be a man of few words, whereas Noburu was full of them. Keisuke looked over at Delinquent who was walking behind Ren. He was curious what his name was but was too intimidated by the man to ask. Instead, Keisuke turned to Timid beside him as an alternative.
“How about you? What’s your name?”
“H-huh?” The girl seemed taken aback by his sudden inquiry. “Oh...um, my name is F-Fumiko...I think... Sorry, my head is still a bit fluffy.”
“Do you mean fuzzy?”
Fumiko’s face turned a bright shade of red and she shrunk into herself. “R-right...! Sorry...”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to apologise, so you can take it easy, okay?”
She nodded, but the action itself was tiny and it was obvious that “taking it easy” was not something she could simply do.
This girl is way too shy, Keisuke thought to himself. He didn’t mind the shy types, but girls like that were often easy to take advantage of. He couldn’t help but worry for her. She was the type of girl he instinctively wanted to protect.
Excluding Fumiko and Pinto, there were five others whom Keisuke didn’t know the names of. That was Delinquent, the Twins, Glasses, and the Mysterious Beauty.
He glanced at the Twins. They were walking furthermost away from the rest of the group. Almost everything was similar about the pair, even down to the way they were dressed. They were both in all-black nylon outfits, almost like tactical gear specially designed for combat. Even their faces were pretty much copy and paste save for a few features. As if to help tell them apart, they wore single matching earrings on opposite ears. The boy wore his on his right ear and the girl wore hers on her left.
Despite their uncanny similarities, there was a glaring difference in how they both carried themselves. The boy looked more carefree, whereas the girl was practically impassive. Keisuke found himself staring at her out of pure curiosity. Out of everyone in the group, she was the one he found the most unsettling. Even more than Delinquent. He thought back to earlier when they were ambushed by the gnolls and something didn’t sit right with him about the entire incident, particularly how she had carried herself throughout it. No matter how you looked at it, that was a terrifying situation to be in. Any normal person would have been startled by that. And yet that girl was totally unbothered. She acted as naturally as she breathed and even challenged one of the beasts to a fight, knowing the stakes involved. There was no way she was like the rest of them.
Something about those two made Keisuke want to stay as far away from them as possible. They were both trouble.
Nearest to them was the girl named Alice. She was flaxen-haired with ocean-blue eyes and small facial features. She even spoke with an accent, so Keisuke thought that if anyone amongst them was a foreigner then it must have been her.
She must’ve still been shaken by what the gnolls had attempted to do to her. She was stripped naked and almost defiled, after all. Even now she had a cloak wrapped around her to make up for the tatters her clothes were left in. But you would not think that if you looked at her. She was smiling and giggling along with Noburu and Mahiro. She's tough, Keisuke thought to himself. Anyone who could laugh so soon after such an experience had to be.
“H-hey...” Noburu suddenly cleared his throat and spoke up. “Not that it matters, but…w-what’s your name...? It would make it easier to talk to you, I mean. Y-you don’t have to tell me, of course. Ha-ha. Ha…” Apparently, he was trying to talk to the Mysterious Beauty. And was failing miserably.
“Excuse me? Do you mind speaking clearly? I couldn't understand you through all of your stammering.”
“R-right!” Noburu straightened his back and gulped so loudly that Keisuke was sure everybody had heard it. “...What's your name?”
“Oh. It's Akame.”
Akame?
The moment Keisuke heard that, he felt a tight knot inside his chest.
He didn’t think he recognised that name. He didn’t think that he did. But he'd been having a hard time thinking about anything lately. Keisuke had heard the others' names, but for some reason that one stood out the most to him. He didn’t even know this girl, and yet…
The more Keisuke tried to remember, the less he seemed to know. His head felt like it was swimming in a dense cloud of fog. He couldn’t make heads or tails of anything that was happening or being relayed to him at this point, never mind fish for a specific memory.
Noburu's shoulders loosened as he let out a deep breath of relief, almost as if he hadn’t been breathing at all up until then.
“Don’t forget to breathe in.” Mahiro teasingly placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Oh, shut it!” Noburu shrugged him off. “That kind of thing is difficult, you know? Girls like that are scary. You never know what they’re thinking. They could be judging you and telling you to go and die in a ditch somewhere, all behind a sweet and innocent smile. I’m telling you, I know these things from experience. You can take my word for it!”
Somehow, Keisuke had his doubts. “From experience, you say?”
“That’s right! Where I’m from, I’m a bona-fide ladies’ man. They call me a young Casanova! I’ve had over one hundred girlfriends. That’s the truth, okay? No one knows more about women than me.”
“Where you’re from? And where’s that exactly?”
“Huh? Obviously, it’s...well...oh, right, I can’t remember anything. I forgot about that.”
This guy’s really just a bonafide idiot, Keisuke decided.
“It’s no use. I still don’t know any of you,” Makoto said suddenly, sighing and clicking her tongue. “I don’t recognise this damn city, either.”
Mahiro turned to her. “Sorry?”
She shook her head. “I thought that I would at least recognise one of you if I knew all of your names. Or I would know where we were once I saw this Fortuna. But nothing. It’s honestly infuriating. None of us know anything? Really?”
“Well, I’m not hiding anything,” Noburu shrugged.
“Neither am I,” added Mahiro. “I don't think anyone is. I trust everyone is telling the truth. I mean, there’s no reason to lie, is there?”
“Then your trust is cheap.” Glasses removed his spectacles and began cleaning them.
Makoto looked over her shoulder. “Can you say the same for everyone?” she asked. She was looking at the Twins, clearly referring to them.
One of the Twins, the boy, noticed this and understood her implication. He raised both of his hands up placidly, smiling. “We know nothing, either. You have my word.”
“The word of a complete stranger who's barely said a thing and hasn't yet introduced himself.” Makoto retaliated. “Sorry if I'm just a tad bit suspicious.”
“Well, I don't think knowing my name will solve anything. But if you really would like to know, then all you have to do is ask. I'll happily tell a pretty girl like you.”
Makoto snorted and said nothing else to him after that.
“There’s no use scrambling your brains about it,” Ren interjected, “it's something that happens when you arrive here. For now, try not to let it bother you too much.
“...Something that happens when we arrive?” Makoto's eyes narrowed dubiously. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience. Is there something you aren’t telling us?”
Ren shook his head. “I'm sorry, but I really have no answers for you. Not right now, at least.”
Not right now. Keisuke picked up on that. Did that mean he had an idea of what was going on but, for whatever reason, could not disclose anything? It certainly implied that. It seemed like Keisuke was not the only one who thought that, either. Delinquent was watching Ren closely, and Makoto looked like she still had some questions of her own. For now, though, none of them said anything. They must’ve decided to keep following him.