Chapter 21: She Clings to Me by Day, and Monitors Me by Night

Early afternoon at the Adventurer’s Guild.

While I was buried in paperwork, something soft and fluffy was pressed against my right arm.

“Nagi-onii-san, good work~!”

With her flaxen hair swaying, the thief girl Roux peered at me with a friendly smile.

She leaned over from the side of the counter and clung tightly to my arm. The physical distance was zero.

“Roux. This is the guild’s reception desk. Please let go of my arm.”

“Ehh, come on, it’s fine! Thanks to the schedule you made for me, Onii-san, my work this morning finished super smoothly! This is a hug of gratitude for that!”

“I will sufficiently accept your gratitude with words alone.”

Even when I tried to peel her off, Roux laughed with an ehehe~ and leaned even more of her body weight onto me.

Terrified of taking responsibility herself, she had felt an intense sense of security in the fact that “Nagi decides her schedule,” and as a result, her physical contact with me had explosively increased.

However, that peaceful (?) time froze in an instant due to the bloodlust coming from behind.

“…Why are you clinging to him?”

A low voice that seemed to crawl along the ground flew over from a forty-five-degree angle to the counter.

It was the A-Rank swordswoman, Lise. She was gripping the hilt of her wooden sword tightly and glaring at Roux as if looking at her parents’ sworn enemy.

“I’m in charge of Nagi. Let go.”

“Ehh? But Nagi-onii-san manages my schedule every single day! I’m way more intimate with Onii-san, you know?”

“Intimate…?! That’s not fair! I was here first!”

Lise kicked the floor with a bam! and charged at the counter. As if to shove Roux aside, she firmly wrapped her arms around my left arm.

“Lise?!”

“Nagi is supposed to be equal to everyone in the guild! If she gets to cling to you, I have the right to cling to you too!”

“What kind of right is that! Let go!”

A thief on my right arm, the strongest swordswoman on my left.

Held from both sides and unable to move, a voice as cold as ice rained down on me from the front this time.

“An extremely inappropriate sense of distance for business.”

It was the genius mage clad in her dark blue robe, Fran.

She tapped her staff against the floor with a clack and began to logically condemn the two of them.

“Excessive physical contact with the receptionist significantly impairs the fairness of the consultation desk. A thief who just popped out of nowhere and a stray dog stealing his time is a grave infringement upon my rest protocol.”

“Whoa, it’s nothing but difficult words so I don’t get it! Onii-san, squeeze~!”

“I won’t lose! Nagi, look at me!”

Roux and Lise put even more strength into pressing against me.

Seeing this, Fran let out a sigh and deliberately set her staff down.

“…That being said. An unequal bias in the distribution of the ‘resource’ known as the operations manager will also have an adverse effect on the stability of the system known as myself. In order to maintain fairness, it is necessary to attempt an equalization of the distribution.”

“Fran? What are you talking about?”

“Excuse me.”

With a completely serious face, Fran walked around to the back of the counter. To my shock, she wrapped both her arms around me from behind and clung neatly to my neck.

A soft sensation and her slightly cool body temperature transmitted through my back.

“F-Fran, what are you doing too!!”

“It is a fair redistribution of resources through physical contact.”

“Don’t justify clinging to me with logic!!”

Roux on the right, Lise on the left, and Fran from behind.

Having completely lost any route of escape, I bathed in the lukewarm gazes of the surrounding adventurers as I blew the provided whistle with all my might.

“Pweeeeeet!! This is neither the venue for a group session nor a petting zoo! Everyone, disengage immediately!!”

My shout echoed in vain against the ceiling of the guild.

　　　　　＊　＊　＊

Then, night.

With my mental resources completely drained from dealing with the three of them, I finished locking up and was heading home with heavy steps.

“…I’m exhausted.”

Walking down the dim night street, I was just thinking about how I wanted to collapse into bed as soon as possible when it happened.

“Weren’t you going to stop by the bakery on the West Street before going home?”

A voice suddenly came from the darkness behind me.

Turning around, I saw the figure of a girl standing as if melting into the shadows of the alleyway.

Flaxen hair and light leather armor. The exact same appearance as the daytime Roux.

However, those cold, sharp eyes were undoubtedly the nighttime her — Luna.

“…Luna. Why do you know that I was planning to go to the bakery? You were supposed to be asleep during the day, weren’t you?”

When I voiced my natural suspicion, Luna snorted with a laugh through her nose and crossed her arms.

“I slip some loose change to the street urchins in the back alleys and have them ‘monitor’ your surroundings during the day.”

“…Excuse me?”

“I received a proper report that just past noon, you were talking with the Guild Master and said, ‘I don’t have breakfast for tomorrow, so I’ll stop by the bakery on the West Street on my way home.'”

A cold shiver ran down my spine.

A human-powered surveillance network using information brokers and street urchins. It was certainly a method typical of a seasoned thief, but the fact that the target was my private life was far too terrifying.

“Have you been monitoring my actions this whole time?”

“Don’t make it sound so scandalous. I am merely ‘protecting’ you.”

Luna approached me without a sound and looked up at me with a damp, heavy gaze.

“You are far too defenseless. Managing that daytime idiot’s schedule, and even getting surrounded by that noisy swordswoman and that overly logical mage. …If you, who holds the foundation of our livelihood, were to collapse from overwork or get ambushed on a night street, the one who would be in the most trouble is me.”

“Even so, using information brokers to tail me is…”

“It’s a guard detail. In fact, I already lured the drunkard who was following behind you just a moment ago into a different alleyway.”

Looking in the direction Luna indicated with her chin, I could indeed hear the sound of a drunkard crashing into some trash cans in the distance.

…I was grateful, but she had completely gone too far.

The daytime Roux depended on the “comfort of having things decided for her” and innocently clung to my arm.

In contrast, the nighttime Luna, driven by a vigilance-laced trust of “If I’m going to leave it to anyone, it’s only this person,” had shifted toward grasping all my actions and monitoring and protecting me from the shadows.

“Those two women… Lise and Fran, was it?”

Luna suddenly spoke in a cold voice.

“I hear they were happily clinging to you. In the end, they are just forcing their own emotions and logic onto you. It’s the pinnacle of inefficiency. …In that regard, I can perfectly secure your safety from the shadows. If you have me, you don’t need any other guards.”

It was a manifestation of the nighttime her’s own clumsy possessiveness.

Luna let out a small sigh, as if throwing in a retort at herself.

“Really, you’re too kind. Just dealing with that daytime idiot is exhausting enough. …Come on, hurry up and go home. Lock your door, and I’ll properly keep watch until I finish setting up traps around your house.”

Faced with an attitude that permitted no argument, I had no choice but to give up on retorting and start walking.

At night, in its own way, my private life and privacy were completely vanishing.

　　　　　＊　＊　＊

The next morning.

Having arrived at work and taken my seat at the counter, I suddenly noticed an unfamiliar stack of parchment placed on the desk.

“What is this…?”

It looked like a torn-out page from the “handover notebook” I had given to Roux and Luna.

However, what was written there was neither their schedule for tomorrow nor a checklist of their belongings.

A table where Roux’s rounded handwriting and Luna’s sharp letters were written in alternating fashion.

There, my twenty-four-hour schedule had been arbitrarily divided, and exactly who would be by my side was densely assigned.

Morning: Roux (I’ll heal Nagi-onii-san while helping out at the guild!) Afternoon: Roux (I’ll eat snacks with Onii-san during his break) Evening: Luna (Securing the safety of his route home / Eliminating suspicious persons in the vicinity) Late Night: Luna (Guarding the perimeter of his home / Confirming his sleeping status)

She clings to me by day, and monitors me by night.

A complete, twenty-four-hour siege network by the exact same person.

I held my head in my hands and stared with hollow eyes at the title written at the very top of that paper.

Watch Duty Roster

…It seems my peace and quiet had finally been snatched away under a twenty-four-hour system.