At the guild’s reception, Flores was (un)surprisingly not very busy; even after taking over his coworkers’ paperwork and processing it for them, there were many times where he was simply waiting for something to do.

During these lulls, he often found himself listening in on various tidbits of gossip floating through the guild—however, it seemed that there were a few troubling rumors in the air.

“A party came back badly injured…”

“The kobolds have been getting more active…”

“That pigkin is so focused on his work that it's hard to approach him… Let's just go to a different line…”

Flores’s face suddenly contorted into a terrible grimace, causing the people nearby to flinch.

‘... Is that the reason why people have been avoiding me?!’ He held his head in shock.

He’d been unpopular since the very start of his career at the guild, so he always ended up taking on the other receptionists’ work, like he was doing now. Over time, Flores became faster and faster at paperwork, but even less popular than before; unbeknownst to Flores, his already-villainous face became even more frightening when he was focusing on his work. Never before had he suspected this correlation between his working speed and his unpopularity.

“Flores, is something the matter~?” Menez asked, noticing him slumping despondently.

“No… Well—yes, but it's just the usual…”

“Ah~” Menez nodded in understanding. “The usual, huh~”

Quietly, she turned to her coworker on her other side.

“... What’s ‘the usual’ ?” she whispered.

“Flores gets depressed easily because people are scared of his face,” they whispered back.

“Ehh~ But he’s not scary at all~”

“...”

Flores could totally hear them. He was a bit happy that Menez wasn't scared of him, though.

‘... Speaking of which, I wonder how those four are doing…’

Normally, people left the guild in the morning and returned either in the afternoon or the evening. Although Louis and his friends had left relatively early, Flores hadn't seen them return yet. Given the rumors of adventurers coming back injured, he was worried that something had happened in the field.

… ‘Was’ being the operative word.

As the sound of murmuring filled the guild, Flores looked up to see that party strolling up to the reception desk, very visibly battered.

“Yo, Flores!” Louis called out to him, giving a tired wave.

“Didn't I tell you folks not to push yourselves earlier--" Giving a scowl in return, Flores started scolding them, but was quickly stopped by Louis.

“Yeah, hold that thought—” He turned to Lily (still sleepy) and Fenris (still covered in blood) and stuck out his hand. “Give it here.”

Fenris put his hand on top of Louis’s and Lily, not sure what was happening, copied him without thinking too much about it. Gen, sensing an opportunity, stuck her own hand in and gave a countdown.

“3, 2, 1— Go team!”

““Yaaay.”” 

The three of them—excluding Louis—simultaneously raised their hands and cheered. Flores seemed baffled.

“... Did they rehearse that beforehand?” he asked Louis.

“I hope not,” Louis scratched his head. “If they did, that would mean they’re doing that to spite me.”

… For better or worse, Louis was reasonably confident that Gen was the only one intentionally trying to annoy him.

Regardless, he eventually managed to get the herbs from the others and turned them in along with the request sheet. However, after seeing the familiar details, Flores’s entire face scrunched into a deep, furious grimace.

“You idiots…!” He growled under his breath, hastily scribbling something onto a slip of paper and passing it to Menez. “... Bring these four to the guildmaster.”

“Yessir!” Snapping at the opportunity to leave reception duty, Menez immediately hopped to her feet and enthusiastically herded the party deeper into the guild; the adventurers waiting in her line started grumbling just as quickly, but were silenced by the aura that Flores was emitting.

“Now then…”

Naturally, while Menez was gone, it was Flores’s job to take over the line; he rarely got to actually do this part of his job, so he started getting fired up.

‘If I can show these adventurers how quickly I can work, then they’ll start lining up for me!’

… Unfortunately, his fighting spirit ended up scaring the fainter-hearted adventurers and ultimately worsened his reputation.

———

(EXTRA: Other rumors…)

Rumor: “The Bucket Brigade is a hivemind.”

Truth: They share one collective brain cell.

Rumor: “Every 1,000 protein shakes chugged, a new buckethead gains their muscles.”

Truth: Unconfirmed, and will likely stay that way.

Rumor: “Mechkin can take off their own heads and walk around with them.”

Truth: They cannot. Please do not attempt to decapitate the mechkin.

Rumor: “Elves can reproduce asexually.”

Truth: … No?

Rumor: “Humans can reproduce sexually.”

Truth: That's not even a rumor. That's just human biology.