Thankfully Christian wasn’t really angry when he heard they had left the infirmary because James had freaked out being locked in. Or if he was, he wasn’t showing it. James guessed there were perks for being “the most important person in the clearing.” She knew, though, that if anyone had been harmed because of their negligence, most important person or not, there would be no going back. As it was, she was sure that this clarified to him that he couldn’t leave her alone. At least she knew nobody was actually at risk of that, she had left the doors open on purpose and kept an ear out for trouble. She had wonderful hearing.

The rest of the day was uneventful, with James following Christian around as he did his rounds. He was kind enough to answer any of her questions and offered to give her his medicine textbooks the next day if she wanted to learn more. She certainly did and told him as much. She wasn’t really fooled by this “keep James occupied game,” but she did enjoy it well enough. At least as much as she could enjoy anything in this type of people-filled environment. With Christian’s Calming Aura around, though, at least she could stand it, unlike before.

Sometime during their rounds Jean Paul had run off and come back with dinner for the four of them, separate from the meals cooked especially for the patients. Breaking away from the patients, James, Jean Paul, Louis and Christian went to the side to eat together.

Prodding the same meat as before, James made a face when she saw the small shade of purple. She also noted that while it didn’t feel like a headache it had a weird sort of absence, as if it was supposed to have something there. Whether that thing was a headache was something she didn’t know.

“Something the matter?” Christian turned from his conversation with Jean Paul.

“Is this goblin meat?” She hadn’t noticed any of the signs before, too preoccupied with thinking about everything Arthur had told her that she’d practically ignored her meal, but she couldn’t deny it now. She wondered about it, there was something seriously disturbing about eating those creatures. On the other hand, she wasn’t a vegetarian. With a determined look, she took a bite.

“Yes. We need to do something with them, and they taste good enough.” She couldn’t help but agree, they really did. And it wasn’t like she got sick from it earlier. She supposed the goblins deserved the fate since they attacked them. “They’re usually much better fresh, and they even speed up regeneration for a time. It’s really the only reason I let you walk around after your talk with Arthur.”

“Did my health points actually go down? How could you tell?” She looked at Christian, as did both Louis and Sean Paul, but he just shook his head.

“I couldn’t tell, but you’re right, I’ll remember to ask next time. It would be good to know how your health points are impacted in such a situation.” With that the conversation turned to different topics, such as what they would do tomorrow.

“I’d like to train.” James spoke up, feeling anxious about the response but relying on Christian’s advice from earlier. Louis and Jean Paul exchanged another one of their glances and Louis nodded at her.

“That’s a good idea, we’ll try to help.” Jean Paul replied. And that settled it. Tomorrow, she would train. She couldn’t help but feel giddy at the prospect. She’d always wanted to learn self-defense, but nobody was willing to teach it one-on-one for cheap. And she wasn’t swimming in cash, being a self-funded college student on a mission to graduate without outstanding debt.

Soon enough, the shadows grew long enough that Jean Paul and Louis told her they should head back if they still wanted to be able to see the way. She knew that forest daytime wasn’t the same as clearing daytime since the area would already be filled with shadows from the overhanging trees and started to clean up everything.

Leaving Christian behind, he often stayed behind on days the infirmary was fuller, they passed the assembling guard force. Since the infirmary patients couldn’t go back home, they were protected by a rotating group of forty or so guards. Jean Paul happily told her that because they were now on “James duty,” as he had dubbed it, he and Louis were exempt from it entirely.

Unlike her earlier walk through the woods, which she had liked for its meditative silence, the woods were now filled with conversation. James supposed that was fine, she couldn’t really expect people not to talk, but she couldn’t help but get the overbearing notion that the conversations were about her. And she absolutely hated it.

She knew that she was dirty right now, and unkempt, and all sorts of other things. She had spent an entire day with injured people from the fight in the infirmary after all. But she was also fairly sure she wasn’t a zoo animal. She forced herself to ignore the stares, a feat she was extraordinary proud of. Usually, she had to use her tablet to achieve any sort of peace.

The only time Jean Paul and Louis had snapped her out of her silent musings was when they were pointing out their own apartment doors. Increasingly, conversations became more and more muted as people left to their own doors, and by the time they spotted goblins, it was just the three of them around.

It was a group of them chattering up in the trees as they walked across the branches. Jean Paul had immediately nudged Louis and pointed them out and threw her a small hush sign. She wasn’t dumb, but she wasn’t going to point it out. He was just trying to do his job. One of the big ones looked straight at Jean Paul and bared its teeth at him. But apparently it wasn’t in the mood, throwing a glance to Louis before it continued to walk with the group. They stayed still until the group passed them and they could breathe again.

“They didn’t even do anything,” James finally broke the silence as Jean Paul and Louis slowly relaxed five minutes after the goblins left their sights. Jean Paul let out a sigh.

“Yeah, sometimes they do.” And that was that. Declining to comment any further, they walked on, Jean Paul and Louis much more tense than before. Still, James wasn’t convinced. They hadn’t seemed to register her at all. The only person in their group that the goblin had any real reaction to was Jean Paul, who gave her a headache. Maybe the goblins had some way of sensing men. She would have been fine. It was ridiculous that she was assigned bodyguards.

Finally getting to back to her apartment, Jean Paul told her they’d be there at eight and bid her goodnight. Smiling at them in thanks, especially because she wasn’t feeling particularly thankful at the moment, James fished around for her key in her bag, opened the door and promptly shut it behind her. Flinging her bag next to her, James used the door as reinforcement as she slunk down to the floor and put her head in her hands.

The walk back had reminded her how much she hated people. While the goblins were a concern, they did pay her any attention. The other people on the other hand? Upon seeing her with Jean Paul and Louis, they had all seemed to connect her to the earlier commotion that had erupted in the infirmary. Apparently, her screams had only been amplified by the stone building. She was so embarrassed!

Deciding to take a bath, even though she had already showered earlier in the day, she grabbed a change of clothes and went to her bathroom. Never was she so thankful to have a shower-bath combo in her unit as in that moment. Putting in some fragrant bath salts, she waited for the water to fill up before gingerly stepping in. Slowly lowering herself into the bath water, she settled down after a minute of getting used to the temperature. Finally, she could think.

By all accounts, after lunch her day should have been fine. If James was being honest, objectively she should be classifying her day as amazing or even great. She had finally been able to fulfill her dream and work as a doctor. Or at least a doctor-to-be with the way she and Christian had done his rounds. She had a real chance of becoming some version of a doctor once this mess was all over too. Thanks to Christian, whose Calming Aura let her function a bit more normally she could see a future where she was around people. She even had two people around her whose only job seemed to be to keep her safe and happy.

So why was she so miserable? James had always considered myself to be a pragmatic person, and the current arrangement definitely benefited her more than the other people in the clearing. She gained two protectors, and what did they gain? A socially anxious doctor’s assistant? It’s not like she could actually sense the monsters, otherwise she would have known the goblins were around on their walk back. Louis and Jean Paul were essentially wasted resources around her. But with the both of them around her, she drew stares. Maybe partially because they specifically were around her, Louis, at least, was certainly hard to miss.

The worst bit was that she didn’t see any good coming of the current situation. She was getting attention. And once Arthur and Christian realized that she was essentially powerless they’d register how many resources they wasted on her. And then she would be in a dangerous situation. It was simply inevitable.