"And then she stripped her clothes off forcefully."

Raph spat out his chai. Most of it came out of his mouth, but some liquid, unfortunately, went up to his nose, and he had to spend the next five minutes coughing and wheezing into the napkin Millie handed to him.

"What?" he demanded after he was finally able to speak again.

"Yeah, that's what Irene told me, and she said she heard that directly from Lyn."

Raph gawked at the olive-skinned woman. He had chai spilled all over his clothes and Millie had been helping him wipe them off, but that was the least of his problems right now.

"Should we... Should we be calling the police?"

"Should we?" Millie cocked her head to the side. Her brown hair curled up even more as it pushed down onto her protruding collarbones. This was a signature Millie quirk; her head always tilted like this whenever she was thinking, and Raph had always found it oddly charming.

When her head bobbed back in place, she gave Raph a reassuring smile. "Nah, don't worry, Raph, Lyn apologized and they're made up. In fact, they're dating now."

"They are?" Raph was not sure if that was a good thing. "I don't know, I still feel iffy about this. Maybe we need an HR department like in all the bigger guilds."

Millie chuckled. "That won't happen with this team. I mean, wasn't the HR department essentially what drove Lyn and Irene out of Dawn Avengers?"

Recalling Irene's heated complaints, Raph nodded. He shifted his focus back to his poor shirt. The brown of the chai was going to be difficult to remove. He uncapped his water bottle and drew the water back and forth over the stain, but that didn't seem to help much beyond a certain point. Maybe he needed something stronger for this...

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

As if reading his mind, Millie conjured a small tube from the air and tossed it to Raph. "Rub this stain remover in for a while, it should help."

"Thank you." Raph smiled, before casting her an uneasy glance. "Hey, you should stop using quester-level magic in public."

Millie shrugged. "It's okay, Raph, people won't care. I'm just a conjurer, after all, not a fighter or an elemental mage. No one is going to report quester-level conjurer magic." She leaned forward and rested her head on her hands. "But, you know, maybe we should consider appointing you as the HR person of the team."

Raph had been applying the stain remover on his shirt, but he stopped what he was doing to stare at his friend. "What? Why?"

"'Cause you're good with people."

Raph almost dropped the tube of stain removal into his cup of chai. "Me? Good with people? Are you kidding? I don't do well with people at all."

Millie let out a playful laugh and took Raph's drink away. "Well, I'm a people," she teased, before finishing the rest of his chai.

"You're different," he mumbled. I'm comfortable being around you. "Anyway, if anything, you're more of a people person than I am, you should be appointed instead."

The wide grin on Millie's face subsided a little. "I don't know. I won't want to deal with all that; I don't like being angry." She forced her usual smile back on before adding, "It's bad for your skin, you know?"

Raph blinked. Millie? Angry? He had known her for almost all her life, so he knew how difficult it was to get on her nerves. Had she been angry at Lyn? Did Lyn actually break her?

How he wished he had the courage to stand up to his boss. Or maybe even give her a smack, Irene-style.

He grimaced at the thought and concentrated on his shirt instead. The stain was fully gone now. With one last flick of his fingers, he dried his clothes by pulling out every last drop of water and splashing them on the ground.

"I knew it was a bad idea letting Cydney into the team," Raph grumbled. "Lyn is too blinded by her love."

"Don't say that, Raph, I love Cyd." Millie stuck her lips out into a feigned pout. "I'm sure everything will be alright. Maybe Lyn will chill out a lot more now that she finally got what she wanted."

Raph had to stop himself from rolling his eyes. "Yeah, maybe."

"Anyway, I heard there's a fire-eating performance going on in Boston common, do you want to check it out?"

"Sure," Raph said with a smile. He gave his shirt one last pat before following the excited Millie out of the restaurant.