Chapter 237: 237 While you sleep…

Dense, boiling steam obscured her vision.

Rin, who had been testing the stinging hot water with her fingertips, took a cautious step forward. Soon, her body was completely submerged in the heat.

“Haa…”

A bathhouse tucked away in a corner of the street.

Deeply immersed in the tub of a place where she had now become a regular, Rin let out a weary breath.

Expensive inns supposedly had private bathing facilities, but she couldn’t expect such things from the ordinary inn where she stayed. No matter how bothersome, she always had to stop by here.

The inn she stayed in was quite nice in many ways, but its distance from the bathhouse was a significant inconvenience, as it required a long walk after every mission.

’A lodging with its own bath… I’ve certainly started having some luxurious worries.’

Rin smiled slightly as she looked up at the ceiling, blurred by the rising steam.

As she sat quietly lost in thought in the hot water, someone approached and spoke to her.

“Hey there, Rin.”

“Oh. Hi, Luna.”

Rin waved to the short-haired silver mercenary who had greeted her first.

She was an E-rank mercenary Rin had run into a few times at similar hours. After chatting for a bit, they had eventually exchanged names.

Luna sat down limply beside Rin, letting her fatigue-laden body go slack in the water.

“Sigh… Today was a total bust.”

“What did you do today?”

“Went out looking for goblins… Our captain bragged about being a former hunter, but we didn’t even see a single rabbit.”

A fellow E-rank mercenary.

Since they met in the evening after returning from work, the conversation between Rin and Luna always revolved around the day’s mission.

“It’s been days since we’ve caught anything… At this rate, I’ll only get the base pay this week.”

Listening to Luna’s dissatisfied story, Rin wore a slightly awkward smile.

Rin was also a rookie with a short career, but listening to other mercenaries… she realized once again that her mercenary group was a bit different from the rest.

Whether it was from Luna or other mercenaries, stories of coming home empty-handed or fleeing from monsters that were too strong were incredibly common.

For an E-rank group, both the mercenaries and the captain were beginners, so such trial and error was only natural.

However, when Rin went out on missions with Ian, there was no such failure.

Far from trial and error, it felt like everything proceeded smoothly exactly according to plan.

“What did you do today, Rin?”

“Uh… I hunted wolves.”

“Really?”

Luna’s expression turned to one of surprise, her eyes filled with envy.

Even if she had never seen a wolf herself, she remembered seeing how much wolf-hunting requests paid on the mission board.

Hearing Rin’s mission story, which stood in stark contrast to her own, Luna sighed.

“I wish I could fight as well as you, Rin… Then I could have joined a better mercenary group.”

“Ahaha…”

Unable to look Luna in the eye—since Luna clearly assumed Rin had taken the wolves down through her own strength—Rin awkwardly averted her gaze.

Luna, seeing Rin’s habitual lack of confidence despite such achievements, wondered if she was perhaps being deceived by her captain.

However, because Rin knew exactly how much money was spent per day for her to fight, her conscience wouldn’t let her boast about her prowess.

It felt as though any E-rank mercenary could have done the same if placed in her position.

Once they ran out of mission talk, the conversation between the two women in the tub shifted toward the trivialities of daily life.

“So, I’m sure that kid used my stuff, but they kept denying it…”

“Ah… really?”

Luna went on to vent about her roommates and her captain, but for Rin, who lived with only one other person—her captain—it was a difficult topic to relate to.

In the end, Rin just nodded silently and listened to Luna’s complaints.

It was hard for total strangers to live together without any friction, after all.

Thinking that way, Rin privately felt that she was quite lucky with her mercenary group as she thought of her captain.

Through the small window in the bathhouse ceiling, the sound of a bell tolling the hour echoed from afar.

“I should get going.”

“Ah. Me too.”

Rin and Luna stood up together, waving goodbye and promising to meet again.

* * *

“Phew…”

When Rin returned to the inn after her bath and cautiously opened the door, Ian, who had returned earlier, glanced over at her.

“You’re back early.”

“Yeah. I don’t really like staying in the water for too long…”

Ian was in the middle of calculating something with papers spread out across his bed.

At first, Rin had been curious and watched with his permission, but since it was just a sequence of incomprehensible numbers, she had given up on trying to understand it by now.

’Is that what you have to do when you become a captain?’

Rin once had dreams of succeeding as a mercenary and eventually establishing her own independent group… but looking at the paperwork in front of Ian made that thought vanish instantly.

Perhaps sensing Rin’s lingering gaze, Ian looked up and their eyes met.

“Sorry. Should I turn off the light?”

“No, it’s okay! I can sleep even with the light on.”

“Alright. I’m almost done too, so go ahead and sleep first.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Captain.”

Rin lay down on her now-familiar bed.

The scratching sound of the pen flowed into her ears like a faint tickle.

Although her eyes were closed, sleep didn’t come easily, and she slowly drifted into various thoughts.

Quite some time had passed since she joined Ian’s mercenary group.

It wasn’t long, but it wasn’t exactly short either.

Ian was still an enigma.

When she first received the offer to join, she had accepted immediately without even having the luxury to wonder what kind of person he was.

As a rookie with zero days of experience, she was just grateful to be chosen; wondering about her partner’s character was a concern for later.

There were so many people in this city wanting to be mercenaries, and there was always a shortage of places for inexperienced rookies to work.

Rin had seen people who couldn’t join a group and spent months wandering the recruitment centers, working odd jobs just to earn a living.

Fearing she might end up like them, she had accepted the offer the moment it came without looking back, and that was how she ended up in the Ian Mercenary Group.

’…At least I know I didn’t pick a dud.’

She still wasn’t sure if he was someone she could trust her future to indefinitely.

It was undeniable that he was strange, but since he didn’t seem like a bad person, her final judgment remained on hold.

A moment later, she heard Ian stand up, and soon the light in the room went out.

There was a bit of noise as Ian tossed and turned to get settled, but the sound soon faded, replaced by the soft rhythm of his breathing.

Rin tried to sleep seeing that Ian, who lay down later, had fallen asleep first, but the thoughts in her head kept spiraling, making it impossible to drift off.

“…”

Rin, who had been lying still, eventually opened her eyes.

When she first started this mercenary life, she was so exhausted she would fall asleep the moment she hit the bed. But as she grew accustomed to the lifestyle, her old habit of staying up late began to return.

Rin turned her head to the side and stole a glance at Ian.

In the dark room, his silhouette under the blankets was faintly visible.

At first, sharing a room with a man had been incredibly uncomfortable, but now, falling asleep in the same room had become a natural part of her routine.

It was something her self from just a month ago would have called impossible.

Perhaps because the monster hunting she had dreaded was going so smoothly, and her fear of the unknown mercenary life had vanished…

As she lay there as comfortably as if she were in her own room, a certain thought suddenly crossed Rin’s mind.

’Come to think of it… it’s been a while since I’ve masturbated.’

When you can’t sleep late at night in a room without light, the ways to pass the time are limited.

Relieving her desires alone was a hobby of sorts for those sleepless nights.

However, she hadn’t done it once since she decided to become a mercenary, left her village, and arrived in this city.

Between surviving each intense day and collapsing from exhaustion every night, she had completely forgotten about it.

The moment she realized that, the desires that had been lying dormant within her body began to surge forth like a tidal wave.

The long-forgotten craving hadn’t disappeared; it had merely been quietly accumulating.

Once acknowledged, the urge showed no sign of fading, only growing larger within her.

Previously, she had neither the peace of mind nor the energy to even think about it.

And in a place like the lodging houses, where people were packed together, such a thing was out of the question to begin with.

But now…

“…Captain?”

Rin called out to Ian in a very tiny voice.

There was no answer.

The only thing that returned was the soft, rhythmic breathing of a man in deep sleep.

Rin was the only one awake in this room.

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