Edit: Self edited for now.

Not so long after I finished my smoke Fran finally woke up. She sighed a few times, stood up, took potions I prepared, gulped them in one go and suddenly threw them on the ground so hard that they shattered with half of the shards flying towards me.

 

“Da fuck ya doin?” I asked angrily after I covered my face.

 

“Da f… The hell are YOU doing?” she suddenly retorted to me. “After I thought that finally everything would be calm you suddenly appeared and flew out of the city! And every damn time every time whenever something goes okay you appear and make things go wrong in at least three different ways!”

“Well i…”

“Don’t you interrupt me right now!” she started to shout at me. “Every bloody time whatever I try to say things you just interrupt me. At least now let me finish because I need to say it. You know what? Just from the time I meet you everything in my life has gone wrong. Yes, you know, yes, I’m very grateful for you saving my life one that time and I even no said ‘thank you’ properly up to this time so yes, thank you for saving me that time. But. BUT! All other things are just a bloody mess with your attitude with what you do with how you drink and everything else is just pissing me off without me actually having a chance to say that it pisses me off. You just destroy everything starting from this goddamn katana and ending with you picking me up while deciding to just bloody fly out of town! Why?”

 

“Uuh…” I tried to answer but got bombarded with tons of complaints yet again. Starting from my eating habits and ending with my fighting style - everything seems rather wrong. Well, yeah, I guess. But she doesn’t seem like stopping even after some time so in the end I raised my hand to interrupt her.

 

“Wait, ok, i got dis. Im sorry, like, really. Its not da first time im having dis kind of conversation so i umm...kinda understand. Can ya calm...uuh…”

 

I was going to ask her to calm down but in the end I could only frown while looking at her being startled by me raising my hand. Did I scare her that much? Why? How? But after a few seconds Fran regained her calm.

 

“Tch, whatever.” And she turned away and started walking.

 

“Wait a sec…”

 

“No.” I tried to stop her but got an immediate reply. Still - she stopped. I could feel a bunch of random expressions she made even if I can’t see her face right now. And after a few moments she talked again.

“Right now I am planning to go to the main Guild’s brunch. It is right on the border so our goals are kind of similar. You can tag along but...please, do not bother me.”

 

And with these words she continued her way. Well I had nothing to do but to follow her.

 

Honestly, it's not really my style to deal with this kind of thing. I’m kinda selfish and stuff and prefer to do things my way than others. But at the same time I might live my life as a delinquent but I still have friends and family whose opinion I might put more than mine in one way or another. And right now in this world Fran is the only one I could consider a friend. Or a companion. Party members or whatever else I do not want to somehow end our relations on bad terms.

 

And so our little silent journey to the border begins. We almost never talked besides times when some random monsters attacked or when it was time to make a little camp to have a rest or to sleep. And night duty of course. At least we did some quests in our time in Braensburg to get enough of understanding of each other to not hindren each other with Fran’s silent attitude and mine trying to be considerate.

 

That continued for almost a week. It was a few weeks travel to the main Guild brunch but as we had less time resting, walked right through the forest and had a boost due to my crazy jump we should already get to our destination in a day or two.

 

At that time while having an evening rest with eating and preparing to sleep Fran suddenly decided to strike a conversation.

“Actually…”

*cough* *cough* *cough* I choked on my soup with this sudden development. Fran looked at me with a bit of annoyance but I coughed up enough to stop and gave her a nod to continue.

 

“*sigh* Actually I thought that you will be… less calm after I blow up at you. In a way I was prepared to have some consequences but on the other hand I’m glad that it turned out peaceful…” she said with a bit of sadness in her voice. Maybe she actually was concerned about our little…’fight’. Well, it would be surprising if she was not.

 

“Well...as i said dat was not da first time i have dat kind ofa conversation. I, well, had some friends i could fight with and i listened some rant about me tons of time from my sister so it wasnt new for me...kinda. So i could understand ur upset and deal with it. In a way.” I awkwardly answered her while scratching my head.

 

Fran gave me a kinda surprised look and then asked.

“So you have a sister?”

“Well...yeah. Have or maybe had...for now im not really sure. We got kinda...uu...separated. For some strange reasons and after that i was left alone without a slightest understanding of where go and what do so i just gone where i could and ended up in Braensburg. The rest you know yourself.”

After that there were a few minutes of silence. I guess it is not the best topic for a conversation, but as we finally started to break some ice between us I tried to ask some stuff.

 

“So, what r ya planin to do next, after we come to the main guild stuff?”

Fran looked at me with a strange look but then answered.

“I am going to find some long term work. Maybe some escorts or guard-like duty. The main brunch manages lots of stuff and it is actually a place I started with. At that time nobody was interested in a low rank samurai but I was lucky to find a party. But this time my rank is high enough to find something and do solo work.”

So she is still gonna work alone. Not like i can judge her and well I got some plans myself, if it could be called a plan.

“And what about you?” she suddenly asked.

 

“Mm…well, i had a plan to just go to a so called ‘demon’ territory and check it out i guess.”

“To find your sister?”

 

This question suddenly struck me. Well, of course I would be happy to meet my sis again but I know that it is not impossible. But the question itself that assumes a possibility of it just makes me angry for some reason.

 

“Nah, why would you think so?” I asked a bit annoyed.

 

“Well…” Fran was taken aback from my reaction but still answered. “You are a White Fox. A race I actually never met. But still if you want to find a tree it would be better to search in the forest. As you said that you got separated I just thought you would like to find your sister and to do so it is better to search in a place where lots of demi-humans live…”

Oh well, it makes sense. She doesn't know about my circumstances and stuff so she might think so.

 

“Ah, so dats hows it. Sadly no, so happens dat i know dat im most likely cant find her i i wont search. Dere ar reasons but mostly is just im literally unable to do so. If opportunity will come i might as well try but for now nah. I just cant.” I answered with a bit of a tired expression. Just remembering my sis makes me sad after all.

“As for my reason, well, dats pretty simple. I just want to be in a place where people wont hate me just for my looks, I guess. It's not uncommon for me to be hated but mostly for me being me and not for my look so...yeah. Something like that.”

 

It actually was pretty annoying while in Braensburg. Yeah, some rumors about me sure were faster than my deeds but still while most of people were just avoiding me, the same people also gave me lots of glares filled with pure hate for now reason. I don’t really care but I actually care. This kind of thing. Well, it was a city with low tolerance to demi-human after all and I should be happy to be strong enough so random people won't pick a fight with me. Not like it worked on people with other types of power. But in the end violence won, even if it left me with some problems.

 

But anyway it was already late so we decided to get some rest. After another calm night we continued our trawel, but not long after midday Fran suddenly stopped.

“Wait, did you hear something?”

“Uuh….no?”

This surprised me a bit. If it was a monster then Fran usually just goes into battle stance and informs about what's happening. But this time she actually heard ‘something” and that means it is not a monster but something else.

 

After looking around a bit while cutely twitching her ears she goes to the edge of a hill we were walking one a tried to look fat near the bottom. With some curiosity I also joined here and tried to look as far as I could while grabbing some tree branch above me. I couldn’t see anything but also couldn’t realize that grabbing a brunch of a rather old tree was a mistake until I heard some crunch sounds.

Well, yeah.

Brunch got broken.

 

And so me, who was hanging on it while trying to look down…got down myself and started rolling from the hill.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…….!!”

Goddammit! It's some random painful falling again. Well rolling this time but it’s not important! Important is that I'm rolling down while having my face and all other parts of my body meet all the rocks, bumps and other branches on my way without pleasant feelings.

 

And in the end I also jumped on some kind on a natural springboard-like bump and continued to roll in mid-air.

 

All I could think about is to try to actually lend on my legs and not on my back or face or anything else. It wasn't a clever and good idea but as I felt the ground being too close to me I tried to bulge my left leg and do the landing.

What met me was a strange metallic sound with some squishing after landing, but I was able to actually successfully land in my legs!.....NOT. I slipped on something and continued to roll on the ground until I met some random rock that was sturdy enough to receive my face into it.

 

“...uuuuuk.”

 

Goddammit.

 

With some pain all over my body I somehow left the stone embrace of a stone with my face now engraved into it and looked behind me with a shaking vision. It was hard to understand but what I saw overall was a girl being tied with ropes and a bunch of men wearing some armor. And in the middle of it lay another man with the same kind of armor but with his head being smashed all over the ground. One look at my left leg could let me guess what kind of landing I’ve just done.

Oops.

I tried to get up but one of the guys already ran into me with his sword ready to slash me down. I was going to prevent that but dizziness from all the rolling attacked me and in the end I weakly bumped with my head into his chest plate.

“What the….”

“Bueeeeeegh…..”

And puked.

 

Well yeah, I just ate my breakfast literally half an hour ago.

“Sorry dude.” Is what I said before punching him in the face.

 

At least you won't need to tolerate someone's guts on your chest for too long.

 

And so with a bit of a shaking step I walked to stand between the girl and the guys.

“So!” and started to make a speech for some reason. “I Dont know what da fuck is going on here.” and so I gave a look at the guys. “BUT!” Then I gave a look at the girl and tried to give her the best smile I could manage in my current condition. That most likely didn't turn out too well but the girl looked at me with some really funny and astonished expression.

 

Cute.

“BUT! I see a girl in distress.” then I returned my look to the guys who all together already prepared their weapons. “Guess i gotta give her some help.”

With this I also got into some fighting mood with my dizziness almost gone. Well. After our calm little weekly journey this sure seems like a fun random encounter.