Ain hummed to himself as he walked. He’d been in a wonderful mood lately. And why was that...
Because he got to see Dojin every single day!
Was this what people meant when they said they felt full without eating? He still didn’t really understand it, but when he looked at Dojin he felt like he was close to figuring it out. It probably meant that thinking about Dojin kept food from crossing his mind.
Chewing that over, Ain stepped into the office. Jihan and the rest of his coworkers were already there.
“Oh, you’re here?”
His roommate Jihan greeted him first. Ain nodded and went to sit beside him.
“What were you doing?”
“This.”
Jihan showed him his phone. Dojin was on the screen.
“What is this?”
When he asked, startled, Jihan answered.
“Guilds are in the fan business these days too. They edit the training footage to look as cool as possible, put it out there, and watch how people react.”
Sure enough, the comments under Dojin’s video ran past a thousand. It was a staggering number, but Ain didn’t see a single one of them. All he could see was...
Dojin’s fighting!
Dojin was squared off against an enormous monster. It wasn’t quite on the scale of the Imugi he’d seen in the dungeon, but its body was so huge that it made Dojin look small by comparison. And Dojin wasn’t in a dungeon right now, he was in that training room...!
Ain shot to his feet, alarmed, his face settling into grim resolve. Jihan called after him a beat too late.
“Huh? Where are you going?”
“I have to save Dojin.”
Ain said it in a low voice and bolted out of the office. “Uh, hey!” He heard Jihan’s voice behind him, but he didn’t look back.
Shutting Dojin up in a place like that all alone and making him fight a monster. He’d had no idea that was what training meant. When he’d asked Jihan, he’d said it was about conditioning your body and preparing for danger ahead of time. Awful humans. How could they do something so cruel?
Muttering curses at no one in particular, he ran faster than he ever had, straight for the training rooms. Dojin was in room five again today. Ain threw the door open and shouted.
“Dojin!”
“...?”
Dojin, in the thick of a standoff with a monster, turned to look his way. It was a different one from the monster in the video. Ain balled his hands into fists and charged into the training ground where Dojin stood.
Tap-tap.
Ain jumped high. The huge monster had its webbed hands spread wide, menacing Dojin. He couldn’t let it hurt Dojin, so he launched himself with everything he had.
Tik.
Huh?
Something had gone wrong, though. Ain felt it in his gut. His body tipped, lurching sideways all at once. Dojin’s startled face turning toward him came to him very, very slowly.
Why did my jump fail? The thought arrived at the same moment Ain sailed through the air like a flying squirrel and went down gloriously, flat on top of Dojin.
“Whoops!”
“...!”
He flailed his hands to keep from falling, caught hold of something, and pitched forward anyway. Ain scrunched up his face and squirmed where he lay.
“Ugh...”
So this was what pain was. A stinging ache came rolling up from his arm, his body, the bridge of his nose. It didn’t hurt that much, though. Because something soft had cushioned him underneath. ...Hm? Something soft?
Puzzled, Ain shifted his face a little. He could feel a big object pressed against his cheek. The texture through the fabric was bizarre. Kind of squishy, kind of a bit firm... he had no idea what it was, but one thing he could tell for certain.
It’s really, really long and thick.
Just then, a chilly voice came from above his head.
“Off.”
“...?”
When he peeked up with only his eyes, Dojin, his face gone dark, said it again.
“I said get off.”
“...Ah!”
Ain jolted upright in a hurry. And then he realized. Exactly where he’d had his face buried.
Gah. That was Dojin’s stick.
Ain’s mouth and eyes flew wide open. He was shocked at himself. Rubbing his cheek all over Dojin’s stick, of all things. That was the one place he’d never been allowed to touch even back when he was a slime, the place Dojin had guarded so preciously.
Still flustered by the unexpected turn, Ain watched Dojin get up with his face screwed into a deep scowl, and only then remembered why he’d shoved Dojin down in the first place. Come to think of it, the monster...
He whipped around, and the monster had vanished without a trace. He wondered about that for a second, then decided all’s well that ends well. He’d come flying in out of nowhere, so it had probably gotten spooked and run off.
Ain rose to his feet, proud of himself. And then he figured out why his jump had failed. It was these long legs. He’d thought being human would be convenient, but it was secretly a nuisance. Back when he was a slime he never would have slipped up like that.
Thinking that, he hurried over to Dojin’s side. He checked him over.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere?”
“...”
“The monster’s gone. It’s safe in here now.”
At his soothing words, Dojin raised his eyes to the ceiling for a moment, then fixed his gaze on Ain, right there in front of him.
“What did you come here for?”
“...Hm?”
“I asked why you came in here. Don’t you know I’m training?”
“Ah... I-I did know, but...”
Ain hesitated, then put some steel in his eyes and lifted his chin.
“I can’t leave you alone with a monster. I came to help you.”
Dojin’s brows drew together at that. The fierce look on his face made Ain tremble a little, but he kept going.
“’Course I know you’re strong. But dangerous things can happen, right? Two is better than one.”
Ain said it in a dead-serious tone. Dojin stared at him. Their eyes met, and it made his heart thump a bit. After a moment, Dojin asked again, like it didn’t compute.
“You came to help me?”
“Mm-hm.”
“...”
Dojin said nothing for a long while, then muttered. This one really is short a few screws.
Ain let the muttering go right past him. What mattered was that Dojin wasn’t hurt anywhere, that he was fine, and with that settled he took a step back.
“If something like this happens again, tell me.”
“What good would telling you do?”
“What good? I’d come help you, obviously.”
“...”
“I’ll come anytime, so don’t worry. Okay, I’m going now.”
He said a quick goodbye and turned to leave, and a sting shot through him out of nowhere, dragging a pained little sound out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Ah...”
The pain burned, and when he looked down, there it was, astonishingly: a raw red gash near his wrist. Ain’s eyes went round with shock.
He was bleeding. Bright red human blood.
“...Let me see.”
Dojin let out a small sigh and snatched Ain’s arm. The suddenness of the contact startled him, but Dojin only studied the wound in silence, then opened a locker nearby. He checked inside, came back, took a firm hold of Ain’s forearm and started walking. Hauled along whether he liked it or not, Ain asked,
“Where are we going right now?”
“...”
Dojin said nothing at all. Ain followed after him, feeling every bit of the warmth and the strength in the hand clamped around him.
They came out of the training room and headed for another building. Ain looked around as they went.
I’ve never been over this way before.
Ain’s round cheeks flushed in no time. To think he could walk along a path like this with Dojin, the two of them holding on to each other’s arms. It really was like a dream. Reality was better than anything he’d vaguely imagined back when he only dreamed of becoming human.
Heart fluttering, he trailed after him into the building. Dojin walked on without stopping, as if he had somewhere specific in mind. Before long he halted in front of a brown door and slid it open with a rattle.
He strode straight inside, and Ain hurried in after him.
The room was completely empty, and there was a strangely harsh smell in the air. Ain screwed up his face and clapped a hand over his nose.
It was a weird smell. Different from the smell of cleaning, too.
The first time he’d caught a whiff of detergent it had been so vicious that he’d walked around with his nose pinched shut, but he was used to it now and it didn’t bother him at all. He also had the thing the company had given him, the mask. This place, though, had a different kind of bitter smell. Yes, it was like the smell at the hospital that time.
“Wait here. The doctor should be back soon...”
Dojin’s words trailed off. He looked at Ain with a puzzled eye.
“Why are you holding your nose?”
“’Cause the smell’s weird.”
He said it with his brows pinched together, and Dojin scoffed.
“You smell detergent every single day.”
“That one’s fine now, I’m used to it.”
Halfway through saying it, Ain faltered.
“...Do I smell like detergent?”
It was entirely possible. He always carried his cleaning supplies around with him so he could do the work he’d been given properly, and he swept and scrubbed everything spotless.
He’d noticed it himself: step outside for a little while, then walk back in where the supplies were kept, and the harsh detergent smell hit him. So Dojin must have been catching that same bite off of him.
Dojin openly studied the startled look on Ain’s face, then let his gaze travel slowly downward. And somewhere along the way it stopped. On Ain’s shoes.
“Never mind the smell. Are those shoes really yours?”
