After our visit to the doctor confirmed that we were both fine, Shizu and I went to the local Adventurers' Guild at Lunaris to check-in. Apparently, each Adventurers' Guild in different cities provided free accommodation for adventurers if requested. It was a work perk since the job required a lot of traveling to complete quests. Although I had no idea how the guild could afford it, I wasn't complaining.

The Adventurers’ Guild at Lunaris was a lot different to the one back at our village. For one thing, it was packed to the brim with people. For another, it was much more modern and well-equipped than our small village guild. There were multiple floors, with the ground floor being dedicated to the reception area and various shops, selling everything from potions and weapons to maps and equipment, then there was a library in the second floor, a training area in the third floor, and so on and so forth.

After queuing up for ages, we finally reached the reception desk where we had to give our details. Then we waited for the clerk at the desk to process our check-in. 

"I can't believe we're official adventurers now!" I exclaimed to Shizu, who stood beside me. "Look at the jobs board over there! It's filled with tasks!"

"You're right, Ryuji!" Shizu exclaimed, matching my excitement. "The one in our village was practically empty!"

"We'll finally have the chance to take on real quests that match our skill level," I laughed happily. "And to top it off, we get a free place to stay! How generous of the guild!"

"It's wonderful!" Shizu cheered. "Finally, we'll have a place to sleep together!"

"Here you go," the clerk said with a polite smile, having finished some paperwork and now handing us our guild badges. "Thank you for waiting. Your accommodation is ready, sir and madam."

"No problem at all," I replied with a smile back. "Where will we be staying?"

"As Iron-ranked adventurers, here is the accommodation that the guild can provide for you free of charge."

~x~

We stood outside a shabby-looking tavern situated on the edge of a muddy road on the outskirts of the city. The musty scent of stale beer and unwashed bodies wafted from the place, and I had to resist the urge to gag. The thatched roof of the tavern sagged in the middle, and the wooden walls looked as though they were rotting and decaying. The windows were grimy and cracked, letting in only a feeble light that did little to dispel the gloom inside.

“Is this… it?” Shizu said, standing next to me.

I glanced down at the address that the clerk had wrote down on a piece of paper for us and back up at the tavern, praying that I had read the address wrong. Alas, that was not so. “Yep, this is the place…” I said, "No mistaking it."

“Hm,” Shizu contemplated for a second, “Let me go back and re-confirm with the clerk very quickly.”

I grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could walk off, “Shizu, you can’t just threaten people with violence to get what you want. That’s not how life works, you know?”

Shizu smiled back at me, “I wasn’t planning to threaten them.”

“Attacking people is not okay either,” I said, reading her mind. "Just put up with it for one night. Once we complete a job or two tomorrow, they'll promote us from Iron-ranked adventurers in no time. Or even if they don't, we will earn money from the jobs we complete, so we can rent a better place ourselves."

“I’m not concerned about me having to stay in a place like this,” Shizu frowned, “It’s just that I don’t want you to live in this horrible place, Ryuji.”

“Shizu…”

“I promise I won’t hurt the clerk too much, Ryuji! She will barely feel a thing!”

“No!”

With that settled, we walked up to the front door of the tavern together. The door was crooked on its hinges, and it took a firm shove for me to get it open. Inside, the air was thick with smoke from the hearth, and the dim light from a few flickering candles did little to illuminate the room.

The tables were crude and stained with years of spilled food and drink. The benches were equally rough-hewn, with splinters and rough edges that threatened to tear at our clothes.

In the corner of the room, a group of rough-looking men huddled around a table, their laughter raucous and their language peppered with obscenities. At the bar, a grizzled old bartender scowled at us as we entered, wiping down the chipped and stained tankards with a rag that looked just as dirty.

An air of neglect and disrepair hung about the place, as if it had seen better days long ago and was now resigned to a slow decline into obscurity. I hesitated for a second, wondering if I had made the wrong decision by stopping Shizu outside, but we were already here, and I was too fatigued to consider an alternative. I approached the bartender at the bar, and greeted him.

“Hi there,” I said. “We're adventurers, and we were sent here by the Adventu—"

“Badges?” The bartender grunted a in rough voice, continuing to wipe at the tankards without looking at me.

“Ah yes, here you go…” I said, reaching into my belt for our guild badges and holding them out in front of me.

The bartender snatched the badges from my hand, inspected them, and even hit them against the bar table to check whether they were genuinely made out of Iron.

“Alright,” he grumbled, chucking the badges back to me in disappointment. “They're real. Goddam adventurers and their freeloading…”

He then strode off to the corner of the tavern, barking over his shoulder at us, “What are youse standing around for? Follow me!”

We trailed the bartender down a set of stairs to the basement of the tavern. Truthfully speaking, it looked more like a prison or some sort of underground torture chamber from the medieval days. The bartender hastily led us to a small room at the side and kicked the door open with one foot.

“Here's ya room,” he declared.

I glanced around the room, one hand covering onto my nose to avoid having to breathe in the musty, damp air that secluded the place. The room was cramped with low ceilings, no light, no windows and rough stone walls that appeared thick with moisture or slime or whatever the hell it was.

In the far corner of the room, a stained and tattered mattress lay on the ground, pushed up against the wall like a sad lonely reminder that a human being was once forced to inhabit this place.

“Uh…” I said, glancing around, “Where are the showers… toilets…?”

“Use the public toilets upstairs,” The bartender growled, turned then stomped away back upstairs, “Or the bucket in the room. Fuck if I know.”

The door to the basement slammed shut, leaving Shizu and me alone inside the room.

“Well…” I said, struggling to find anything positive about the situation.

Shizu dropped her bags on the ground, then jumped onto the bed, causing the bed to squeak loudly, a high-pitched whine that echoed throughout the room as if the old metal springs were about to collapse underneath Shizu’s weight at any second.

“Ryuji, we finally have a room to ourselves!” Shizu exclaimed joyfully. “Now we can finally consummate our love for each other! Should I start undressing now, or would you prefer—”

“Uh, no,” I interrupted, cutting her off. “Let me go upstairs and ask the bartender if he has a spare mattress we could use. There's no way we can both fit on that bed.”

Shizu rolled over on the bed, facing me, and frowned. “It's okay, Ryuji. You can just sleep on top of me, or I can sleep on the floor after you're done with m—”

I shut the door to the room, then ascended the stairs to the tavern with a sigh. As if I would be foolish enough to engage in sexual activity with someone as unhinged as Shizu. That's rule number one when dealing with a yandere — never stick your dick in crazy. What I really needed to do was to quickly find a way to fake my death during a quest and escape from Shizu so that I can live out a peaceful isekai life. Alternatively, I could find someone strong enough to handle her, or train myself to that level. It was a pity that I couldn't persuade Innis to join our party.

Somewhere deep inside me that I didn’t want to admit, I was still holding onto the very slim hope that Shizu wasn’t as crazy as I thought, or that I could somehow train her to act like a normal human being. Apart from her craziness, Shizu would have been exactly my type.

What a waste.

~x~

“Hey, Shizu, it took a while but I managed to convince the bartender to give us another be—”

I stopped in front of the door to our room, holding with both hands onto a small spare mattress covered in dirt and dust that I had so strenuously scored from the bartender, and seeing that our room was now in a much better state than before.

The rough stone walls were still there, but they appeared to have undergone a thorough scrubbing, ridding them of years of accumulated grime and dirt. The floor, too, had been swept clean, revealing a smooth surface underneath. In the far corner, the bed that had once seemed abandoned and left to decay in a dungeon was now in a state where one could actually sleep on it. It was evident that someone had put in a lot of hard work to clean the mattress.

Obviously, the room was still mediocre and cramped, but compared to before, it was like night and day.

“Oh!” Shizu turned to face me, holding a broomstick in her hands, her rosy cheeks tainted with dust and dirt. “You managed to find a spare mattress?” Shizu tried to force a smile on her face, but her voice wavered at the ends in subtle disappointment. “That’s great, Ryuji!”

“Where did you find all the cleaning equipment…?” I asked, stepping into the room and glancing around in surprise. I had only been gone for a short while, but the amount that she had managed to clean up was astonishing.

“I carried some in my bag,” Shizu replied. “I thought we might need it so that I can do some cleaning up on our journey…” Shizu hesitated. “Do you not like it…?”

“No, it’s good!“ I laughed, trying to ease the scared look on her face. “I just didn’t know you had all that on you.”

No wonder she had carried so many bags from our village over. I wondered what else she brought over with her.

“Listen, Shizu, about food, uh…” I said, rubbing the back of my head uncomfortably, “We don’t have much money, but I talked to the bartender and apparently they provide food as well for us alongside our free accommodation… but it’s probably going to be bad… um… I just thought you should know beforehand…”

Dammit, I hated this. I felt pathetic for not being able to provide Shizu with anything better. I knew we were both starving since we hadn’t eaten anything for days ever since we left the village, but we had no money and no other choice. I really thought the Adventurers’ Guild would provide for us better than this, but this was our reality.

Maybe back then I should had taken up the knight captain’s offer to join the army instead of becoming an adventurer… no, to be honest, I doubt our situation would be any better in the army. It might even be worse.

I braced myself for Shizu to get angry at me, but it didn’t happen.

“That’s okay, Ryuji,” Shizu smiled buoyantly at me, “I can cook better food for you once we earn some money from quests and can buy ingredients!”

“R-really?” I breathed out in relief, “You’re not mad at me?”

Shizu blinked at me, “Why would I be mad?”

Shizu shook her head firmly, “No, you didn’t force me to come, Ryuji; I chose to follow you. I wanted to come because, well…” Shizu blushed and averted her gaze downwards. “I… I love you…”

I didn't know how to respond, but I have to admit, it made my heart skip a beat.

“And I wouldn’t ever blame you, Ryuji,” Shizu said, glancing up at me with a red face. “No matter what.”

An awkward silence followed for a moment, before I quickly coughed and changed the topic. 

“Well… um, thanks anyways for cleaning up our room, Shizu." I said. "Let's go eat, shall we?"

“Yes, let’s go!”

~x~