Oren’s face twitched, and there was the quiet sound of something cracking underfoot.

“Why, my brother?” he asked. “What prevents you from making the noble choice?”

Oren’s words were effective at making Jamie wince, and I immediately wanted to jump in to defend him, but Jamie spoke before I could.

“I just can’t, okay?” he said. “What does giving up on my dream even mean? That’s way too vague. It’s not like I can just decide to think a certain way.”

Oren frowned. “Why wouldn’t you be able to?” he asked.

Jamie simply fixed Oren with a blank stare. “People don’t work like that, Oren,” he said.

There was a long stretch of silence as Oren scowled at Jamie.

“Be that as it may,” Oren said, powering through the awkward silence. “If your problem lies with the vagueness of your task, it can easily be defined and clarified. Are you struggling with the definition of being an adventurer?”

Jamie frowned. “No.”

“What are you struggling with, then?”

“I-” Jamie paused to look at me, as if silently asking for help.

“He’s not struggling with anything,” I said. “He’s not going to kill himself, Oren. That’s all.”

“This doesn’t involve you, civilian,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on Jamie, as if not wanting to acknowledge me.

“Jamie’s my friend.”

For some reason, that was enough to make him turn to me, scowling even harder than he already was.

“He is not,” he said. “You have been lying to him ever since you’ve met him, and in turn, the Otherworlder has killed you. You cannot possibly be friends.”

“Well, we are,” I said.

“No. You are not,” Oren replied.

“We are.”

“You are not.”

I frowned, suddenly realising I had somehow gotten into the equivalent of a playground argument of shouting “Are not!” and “Are too!” with a Mediator. I stared at Oren, who had his fists clenched by his sides, and looked like he would go into a shouting tantrum at the slightest push. As morbidly funny as it might have been to see, I was too tired to deal with it.

Instead I sighed.

“Jamie,” I said instead. “I think we’re done here. Could you please deal with Oren, please?”

“Deal with him?” Jamie repeated, an anxious look appearing on his face.

I winced at my choice of words, and quickly shook my head. “No, I didn’t mean to kill him. Gods. I meant that you could do something to put him to sleep, or teleport him away, or anything to stop him from trying to talk you into killing yourself.”

Oren let out an angry cry and in an instant, Jamie appeared in front of me, catching another knife before it stabbed me in between the eyes.

“Oren,” Jamie said, letting the knife drop from between his fingers. “Could you… stop that?”

“You’re being completely idiotic! All of you!” Oren shouted. “This is completely irrational behaviour! Do you want the blood of innocents on your hands?!”

Jamie frowned at the accusation, but he raised his hand and closed his eyes. A dull pulse of white light emanated from his hand, and he rushed over to Oren to catch him before his unconscious body fell onto the floor. Scooping him up gently, Jamie laid the man on the lone bed in the room.

There was a long stretch of silence, as Jamie stared down at Oren’s unmoving body.

“I’ll assume you don't want me around either.”

I looked up at Sera, who still refused to look me in the eyes, choosing to look at an empty corner of the room instead. In all honesty, I’d almost forgotten that she was still here, with how quiet she’d been.

“Yeah,” I said, knowing that the comment was directed more at me than at Jamie. “I don’t.”

Sera winced and turned to Jamie.

“Hey, Jamie,” she said.

“Yeah?” he asked.

Though Sera glanced in my direction, she still refused to meet my eyes, her gaze focused somewhere around my knees instead.

She sighed and turned around.

“Sorry,” she said, before walking out of the room through the large hole in the wall, into the rainy outdoors.

Jamie and I watched her leave, neither of us willing or wanting to stop her. In her absence, silence quickly returned, filled only by the steady sound of pounding rain above.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Though I had my gaze fixed on the hole in the wall that Sera had left through, I could see Jamie turning to me out of the corner of my eye.

“Huh?” he asked. “What for?”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Oren was right,” I said. “I’ve been lying to you since we met. I knew that the Mediators wanted to kill you since we met them. I probably could’ve prevented all of this from happening if I were more honest with you.”

Jamie stared at me for a few more seconds before turning away, directing his gaze to the outdoors as well.

When he refused to say anything for the next few seconds, I sighed.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’ll leave you be.”

“What?” Jamie said, turning back to me. “Why?”

“Aren’t you upset with me?”

“Well,” Jamie said, scratching his head awkwardly. “I guess a little bit. But I did kill you, so I think we can call it even.”

He let out a single dry bark of a laugh before his face fell into a frown.

“Sorry,” I said.

“What are you apologising for?” he fired back. “You keep telling me that I shouldn’t apologise for things that aren’t my fault, but I guess that rule doesn’t apply to you, you bitch.”

The casual insult was so out of character that I couldn’t help myself from whipping my head around to face him. I didn’t know exactly what my expression looked like, but if I had to guess, it might have looked similar to the one that Jamie wore. His eyebrows had shot up in surprise, as if it wasn’t him that called me a bitch, but someone who could impersonate him perfectly and throw their voice.

I actually considered the idea for a split second before I saw Jamie wince, regret and shame clear on his face.

“What did you call me?” I asked, just to make sure I’d heard correctly.

“I-I’m sorry,” Jamie stammered out, looking down at the floor. “I just- I mean- Y’know.”

I couldn’t say I did. I didn’t say that out loud, but I think my dumbfounded expression managed to convey the message to Jamie better than words could.

Jamie groaned as he pulled his hoodie tight over his head and turned away.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just thought since, y’know. You said we were friends, right? And friends insult each other? Like, they banter? Like you said? Like you did with Bran? I think?”

He continued to mumble, but as he quickly lost confidence in his words, they grew too quiet to be comprehensible. It took me a moment to process what he’d said, and even longer to realise why he’d said that, but when I did, I felt myself break out into a smile.

“Wait,” I said, before I let out an involuntary giggle. I tried to stifle it, but when I opened my mouth to try and speak, I almost choked on the gasping laugh I tried and failed to hold back.

I doubled over, clutching at my stomach, sinking to my knees as I gasped for air. I kept choking and sputtering as my lungs kept forcing me to expel more air than I was taking in, but I didn’t care. Losing strength in my limbs, I let myself fall to the floor, as I continued to laugh.

I don’t know how long I stayed like that, laughing almost maniacally as I drowned in mirth, but when I regained my senses, Jamie was crouched over me, glaring down at me. Though he still had his hood drawn tight over his head, the angle that I was at gave me a clear view of his face, crimson with annoyance and embarrassment.

“It’s not that funny,” he said.

I actually happened to agree with him, not understanding why I was even laughing so hard in the first place, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Sure,” I said, through my giggles. “You keep telling yourself that, you big idiot.”

Jamie tried to look annoyed at me, but like always, he was a terrible actor and failed to keep the smile from creeping onto his face.

He let out an exaggerated sigh and sat down on the floor, next to my head.

He didn’t say anything, so I took my time. Once I managed to recover from my laughter I pulled myself into a sitting position next to him.

Though neither of us talked for a while, there was no silence between us, the air being occupied by my stray giggles and the steady beat of the rain overhead.

It was only once I managed to calm down completely that Jamie talked.

“My dad hated me.”

His words clashed heavily against my mood, but the way that Jamie talked was so casual that I couldn’t help but answer back in the same way.

“That must’ve been terrible,” I said.

“It was. My mom died during childbirth, and he never let me forget it,” he said, laughing a little. “Honestly, in hindsight, it seems pretty silly. How are you going to yell at your own son for fifteen years for something that he didn’t mean to do? Sometimes, I dreamed about what would’ve happened if my mom hadn’t died, and maybe if my dad would’ve been nicer to me if that hadn’t happened, but honestly, I’ve never even seen him be nice in the first place, so it was always difficult to imagine. In my fantasies, I would always picture him as being someone completely different. Most of the time, I would picture him with Tom Hanks’s face, or something like that. Someone who could actually say, ‘Good morning,’ to me without attaching, ‘you murderer,’ to the end of the sentence. So I guess it could’ve really been anyone. Not sure why I always pictured Tom Hanks. I never even liked him much anyways. Not that I disliked him or anything, I just didn’t really have an opinion on him. I think I’ve watched maybe one movie with him in it, but I guess he just gave off some dad vibes or something.”

Jamie laughed and sighed.

I waited for a few seconds for him to continue, but he didn’t, simply blankly into space, with a slight smile on his face. I didn’t know whether he wanted me to chime in, or if he simply ran out of steam, but I decided to say something.

“Your dad sounds like an asshole.”

Jamie nodded.

“Oh yeah. He definitely was. But worse than that, he was my dad. Y’know. The guy who was specifically supposed to not be an asshole to me. My dad. Y’know?”

I could tell the question wasn’t for me. I stayed silent as Jamie sighed.

“But I guess he was right. I am a murderer.”

“You’re not. I’m alive aren’t I?”

Jamie gave me a sad smile, but quickly turned away to watch the rain falling, with the smile still on his face.

“I think I might be a bad person,” he said. “I used to think that I would rather be dead than actually be a murderer, but when I actually ended up killing someone, I ended up pretending like it never happened in the first place. Even after I killed you, I couldn’t muster up the courage to die.”

“Being suicidal has nothing to do with courage, idiot,” I said, punching Jamie in the shoulder as hard as I could.

Jamie rocked to the side from the impact of the blow and gave an exaggerated wince and rubbed at the spot that I’d punched him. The effect was ruined by the slight grin he had on his face.

“What about doing the right thing?” he asked. “Is that courage?”

I raised my fist up at him. “Don’t make me hit you again.”

Jamie let out a quiet chuckle and raised his hands in surrender.

“Okay, okay, sheesh,” he said.

I kept my fist raised for a few more seconds before I lowered it to my side. Jamie was looking out the hole in the wall again, so I decided to join him, letting the pattering of the rain lull me into a sense of calm.

“I don’t want to kill more people.”

“You won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just do.”

“That’s convenient.”

“You’re a good person, Jamie.”

“Agree to disagr-”

“Jamie.”

“Okay fine, sheesh. Let’s say I’m a good person-”

“Which you are.”

“I still have OP isekai protagonist powers. What’s stopping me from getting corrupted by my power, like Oren said.”

“You won’t.”

“Really? That’s your entire argument?”

I sighed and shrugged as I scooted over sideways a bit. I could feel Jamie tense up slightly when I leaned my head against his shoulder, and a part of me wondered if he would interpret the casual touch as me leading him on, but I couldn’t help but think it was worth the risk. He seemed like he needed this.

“I believe in you,” I said.

“Oh.”

Jamie’s shoulders slumped downwards as some of the tension left his body.

“Thanks.”

We stayed like that for a while.

“My dream isn’t actually to become an adventurer or anything like that, by the way.”

“Oh? Really? You always seemed so excited by the idea.”

“I mean, I guess you could say that it’s always been a dream of mine, but it’s not like it’s my dream, y’know?”

“I can’t say I do.”

Jamie didn’t reply for a few seconds. I looked up at him to see that the smile had vanished from his face. He noticed me staring and tried to smile again, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“My dream is to experience love. It’s been my dream ever since I was a kid.”

As he started to sob quietly, I pulled his head to my chest and hugged him as tight as I could.