“Y’ever drank before?” Jessica asked.

  “My ma’ says I oughta stay away from drink ‘cept on the holidays,” John said.

  She thrust the bottle of rye vodka she picked up at the Traehagen store toward him. “She ain’t here, is she?”

  John looked aghast and held up his hands. “No thank you. I don’t think you oughta be drinking either, truth be told.”

  “Oh I think I do. And I’m older and smarter than you are,” Jessica said, her face already beginning to glow after her first two shots. The combination of being rail-thin and half-Korean was not doing her any favors. Or maybe it was. At least it was cheaper.

  “Well… Alright then. I trust you,” he said.

  The trusting look on his face made her feel guilty so she looked out the window instead. Mountain cliffs loomed like icebergs just past the village lanterns and made her claustrophobic. The vodka wasn’t even making her feel good either, just hot and dizzy.

  “Forget about drinking, your mom’s probably right. Let’s just go for a walk,” Jessica said as she dug through her bags for a cloak.

  “I’ll stay here and—”

  “Yer comin’ with me,” she said. “Grab a cloak.”

  John spread his arms wide, wool tunic flaring. “I-I don’t have a cloak. I only brought my usual clothes.”

  She gestured at the bed. “Grab the blanket.”

  “But that ain’t it mine, it’s the inn’s!”

  Jessica ripped the blanket from the bed and moved around behind John who stood like a surprised deer. She leaned into his back to wrap the blanket around him and tied two ends over his chest like a poncho.

  Uncomfortably close to his ear she said, “Get your shoes on and let’s go.”

  They left the inn just shy of midnight and Jessica took them along a circular route around the little village, across the foot of the wall, then out toward the copse of trees abutting the cliffs. Her head felt clearer in the cool mountain air so she took another pull from the vodka and then coughed and sputtered.

  “Are you alright?” John asked.

  “People keep askin’ that,” she mumbled. “M’Better off than Riza and Naga.”

  “What’s wrong with them? They’re just under arrest, right?”

  Anger flared in Jessica at his teasing until she remembered she hadn’t told him about Mystiferia yet. She debated how much to tell. Her main fear was that he might panic when she explained how much danger she’d pulled him into.

  “I can’t help much, but I wanna help as much as I can. I can’t do that unless you tell me what’s happening,” John said.

  His plea might have had more impact if he didn’t look like a kid in a lazy ghost costume. Instead it just strengthened her conviction that she had to shield him from danger.

  “Riza and Naga are… in a bit of trouble. Nothing major, but I have an agreement with the king that we’re going to— to—-” she felt a deeper wave of inebriation hit and all of a sudden couldn’t remember what she was talking about. “We’ve gotta negotiate with terrorists.”

  “What!?”

  “Uh-huh. Do you know what terrorists are, little John?”

  “N-No… But I don’t like terror and that’s in their name,” he said, staring at her with a look of deep concern.

  “That’s good. You should be—hic—scared of ‘em,” Jessica said, and then remembering her goal was not to scare John, added, “But not these ones. Don’t worry. They’re shitty terrorists. And they got an adventurer leadin’ ‘em so we’re gonna talk this one out, me and he.”

  “I guess this is like an adventure, then?”

  “More’r less. Ya saidja wanna go on an adventure, right? Now y’are. Shame ya got such a shitty adventurer for your first.”

  Someone like Min-woo would’ve done a better job protecting their adventuring party. If she only had magic and a job class she could’ve skipped all this and killed Mystiferia right off for messing with her. If she still had her Alchemist job that cotton-candy bitch would be dyeing a vat of acid pink right now.

  “Does that make me your harem member?” John asked.

  “Nope. No. Nuh-uh. I don’t have a harem, I have an adventuring party,” Jessica said, her face burning like a coal engine against the chilly mountain wind.

  “I ain’t ever been a party member before, but I’ll give it my best.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “How about when you turned that halfling girl into a toad?”

  “Er… do you s’pose that counts?”

  “Yeah, that counts,” Jessica said, tousling his hair. “Yer a real adventurer, John. Y’know that? And y’don’t even have any powers. How about that?”

  Even in the half-moon she could see him blush. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to understand the importance of adventurers to Tushitans. Someone like Min-woo or Akuhara or even Mercy just looked like an unstable teenager with magic, but people from Tushita looked at them and saw real life demi-gods here to deliver them from monsters and evil.

  “Who’s your favorite adventurer?” she asked abruptly.

  “My favorite adventurer?”

  “Yeah. Like, whose stories did you—hic—like the most when you were growing up? I assume if ya wanted to be an adventurer y’musta heard some?”

  John hummed in thought, his shoes scuffing the dirt trail.

  “It’s… kind of a bland answer, but I guess I thought Magnus was the coolest.”

  Jessica looked up at the stars. “That so? And what’s his deal? His gimmick?”

  “What’d’ya mean?”

  “Like is he always getting into funny situations? Is he a pervert who wants to date every girl he meets? Does he have the one weird class everyone overlooked that’s secretly OP? Or… y’know, what’s his deal?”

  The blanket around John’s shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. “Dunno. I don’t think he’s got one. I mean, I heard he’s got a big harem, and a bunch of concubines and stuff, but I haven’t heard anyone say he’s a— a pervert or anything.”

  Jessica had. It was that asshole’s fault King Capra insisted on maid outfits. But that was also par for the course for horny teenage protagonists. It wasn’t like he was notorious for only going after dark elves or animalar or something.

  “So he’s just the guy, huh? The Guy. Capital T, capital G. The archetype. Doesn’t need a gimmick cuz he was the first?” she asked.

  “Jessica, sometimes I got no idea what yer sayin’. Adventurers understand things on a level no one else does, but I wish sometimes you’d explain things clearer,” John said.

  Jessica took another pull from the vodka bottle. “Know anything about story-tellin’?”

  “Not more’n tellin’ tales about what I saw up in the forests or what happened to somebody or some such. Not a proper story like when you make somethin’ up.”

  “But you’ve heard ‘em before,” Jessica said, her words starting to slur. “Stories? Ya like hearin’ stories?”

  “I-I think we oughta skedaddle back to the inn.”

  She slapped him on the back. “Jus’ answer the question.”

  “Yes. I’ve— I’ve heard stories. Around the campfire and all…”

  “How many different stories are there, ya s’pose? Are ya gonna be happy with fif—hic—ty stories about some guy killin’ a dragon?” Jessica said, swinging her legs in a cowboy walk for some reason.

  John shifted to the right to avoid her. “I guess I’d get bored of that story…”

  “Now!” Jessica held a finger up and then paused to choke down some reflux. “Now! S’pose someone had a story but this time it’s’bout the dragon! Ain’t that different? You’d like that one now, huh?”

  “M-Maybe?”

  “But then ya got 50 more of them stories and they’re all the same too and now what? Now ya gotta make the guy beatin’ the dragon a— a baker or somethin’. A cozy lil’ baker. N’ he saves the world by bakin’. Or— Or readin’ books or fuckin’ I dunno. You’d read that one, wouldn’tcha?”

  “I can’t read…” John said, getting quieter as though her attention was a limbo bar he could slip under.

  “Then you’d listen to it, right?”

  “Sure. I’d listen to that one.”

  Jessica stopped and pivoted on our foot, tottering for a second before grabbing both of John’s shoulders and leaning in. She shook him back and forth to really drive the point home.

  “So someone gets to be first! And then everyone who comes after’s gotta deal with dinimishing— dimishining— diminimum returns! Your boy Magnus, he’s the ur—urp—adventurer. The original. N’ everyone else’s gotta do somethin’ different. But now everyone’s claimed somethin’ already. Can’t have another f-fuckin’ blacksmith in another world, can we? Where’m I in that, huh? My gimmick’s that I’m fuckin’ useless cuz this whole world’s outta ideas n’ that’s why it’s draggin’ in old, sad hags like me!”

  “You’re not old, Miss Jessica,” John said.

  Jessica started bawling. “I’m 25! I’m practically dead! I wasted my life on grad school!”

  John took her arm and steered toward the inn. In the process he bumped the bottle out of her hand where it shattered on a rock.

  Jessica’s throat choked into a whine. “And I can’t even hold a bottle right!”

  “No, no, it was my fault! Let’s just… leave it be and go to bed,” John said.

  Stuck in her own head and circling her inability to protect Riza and Naga, Jessica turned into an NPC escort with an awful pathing algorithm. Only John’s careful supervision kept her from crashing through a private garden. The inn stairs proved too great a challenge for him, however, and he was forced to wake the innkeeper and recruit his help in carrying Jessica up the stairs.

  Once they had her inside the room, Jessica faceplanted into the bed and then started kicking off everything she was wearing starting with her boots. Around the time she was working on her riding breeches, John had the good sense to flee the room.

  When the sound of clothing hitting the floor ceased John raised his blanket cloak high to block his view and gingerly opened the door. Getting as close to the bed as he dared, he tossed the blanket over Jessica then lay down on the floor by the window. With one of Jessica’s bags as a pillow and her traveling cloak as a blanket he slept no worse than he had for most of his life.

  As he lay there, John felt he ought to be thinking of home and family and the land he grew up on that was now a burnt field. But however much he tried, he kept coming back to Jessica’s drunken declaration that he was a real adventurer.

  He was a party member, right? That was how that worked? But that didn’t help the thoughts go away. If anything, it made him more excited and more awake. It convinced him there was something right in front of him he was too dumb to see and this bothered him more and more until hours passed and it didn’t seem like he’d ever get to sleep.

  Right as he felt like he would go insane if he didn’t unravel this knot in his chest, glowing lights coalesced on his closed eyelids and formed words that, despite his illiteracy, he could read as clear as the morning sky:

  Job Selection