Chapter 18
Shiro woke up, partially, at least, to the realization that his bed was uncomfortable.
It wasn't quite floor-level uncomfortable, but wasn't far off either.
The only thing keeping it from qualifying outright was the fabric he could feel pressing against his skin.
He opened his eyes slowly and found that fabric to be a carpet, laid exactly where carpets were typically laid: on the floor.
"Whaaaat?"
He frowned, pushing himself upright, glancing toward the bed off to his left. Must've fallen out, he thought, which seemed reasonable enough right up until he looked down at himself and found the actual circumstances a lot more questionable than that.
He was naked. Not half-clothed. Thoroughly, completely naked.
Looking around, he found his clothes scattered across the bed and floor in equal measure.
The sight of himself like this, particularly one detail down below that he clocked immediately, raised a question he hadn't thought to ask yet: where was he?
He was in his bed. The one in his room at the Bower's Nest, which was strange, because the last thing he could actually remember was parting ways with the priest. In his memory, the very next scene was this one, waking up on the floor, naked, confused.
Come on, me, he thought. Don't tell me something happened that wiped my memory again, the same way whatever happened before I woke up in that other place did. Come on. Come on!
It hit him the moment the smell of his own breath reached his nose. He was reeking of alcohol. "I remember now. I was lost, looking for the Bower. Then I found a tavern."
What he'd actually done at that tavern remained as blank and unreachable as everything from before he woke up in the dungeon.
But he knew, with total certainty, that he'd been drinking there.
The clothes scattered on the floor made him consider the possibility that a lot more than drinking had happened.
Could it be? Could drinking not have been the only thing that happened last night? He couldn't remember a thing, but he distinctly remembered being hard the entire time he'd wandered the city lost, and still hard when he walked into that tavern.
He looked down.
It was soft. The aphrodisiac had apparently worn off. A relief, honestly. A permanent erection would've been a problem. Then again, permanently flaccid didn't sound much better either, and he wasn't sure which fate he'd have picked if ever given the choice.
Still, that wasn't actually the question he cared about.
What he wanted to know was whether any of this meant he'd managed to bring a girl back to his room.
He hoped so. And as he hoped, he started wondering, who?
He was alone in the room. Curious, and a little anxious now, he started putting his clothes back on, his heart skipping when he couldn't immediately find his Vanguard, until he located it tucked under a pillow.
As he did, he also spotted the bag from the priest, the one full of potions, still there.
Whatever kind of night he'd had, at least it hadn't ended with him getting mugged of everything valuable.
That was what he thought, right up until he realized his coin purse was missing. Both of them.
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
He'd half hoped for a repeat of the gun's happy ending. No such luck. And now that he was thinking about it, where were his magazines? They'd been in the small case beside the compact case holding all his ammunition.
"Shit, who the fuck did I sleep with," he muttered, storming out of the room. Something about it struck him as faintly wrong on the way out, some detail he didn't have time to place, too focused on getting downstairs, where he found Headbird behind the counter as usual.
"Morning, Master Shiro."
"Yester—morning," Shiro corrected himself, despite the rush.
"Whoa, still reeking of last night, aren't we? Rough one, was it? Want something for it? We've got a few house remedies."
"I think I'll be fine."
"You sure? Don't be shy."
"Yeah, don't worry, I'm completely—Actually, that doesn’t matter. Last night. You saw me come back, didn't you?"
"Yeah, I did."
"Perfect." Relief, briefly, before the concern crept back in. "Do you know who I came back with? Because I definitely didn't come back on my own."
"Erm. Yeah, you didn't."
Yes, Shiro thought, allowing himself one full second of relief before asking, "Do you know what she looks like? Where I can find her?"
Headbird gave him a look that suggested the question itself was strange, then answered anyway, motioning toward the seating area behind him.
Shiro turned to find a handful of customers scattered among the tables, and exactly one woman among them, seated, staring at him with an intensity that, if a gaze alone could generate heat, would have melted him where he stood.
"...Chaska?"
"Yeah. She's the one who brought you back."
He blinked. Hold on. She was the one who'd dragged his drunk ass home.
That, in fairness, actually tracked. He'd been lost in this city stone sober, and the odds of finding his way back drunk on his own sat somewhere between slim and none.
His best guess had been that he'd remembered the inn's name, someone local had recognized it, and pointed him the right way.
Except.
That wasn't what had happened.
"You look disappointed," Headbird observed. "Wanted someone else walking you home, did you?"
"That's..." Some part of him knew this was, objectively, the better outcome.
Another part, the part thrilled to have gotten even a partial fix for his problem, had been hoping he'd had a good time with someone, even one he couldn't remember.
But could he honestly say the odds of that were zero?
Glancing at the girl, he gathered his courage and left the counter to join her, apparently halfway through breakfast.
"Hi," he greeted her. She just stared back. "Can I sit?"
She ignored him again.
"I'll take that as a yes," he said, lowering himself into the chair across from her with the grace of a man bracing for impact.
"So, I heard from the owner it was you who brought me back from wherever I was.
Thanks for that. I, uh, noticed something's missing with my stuff.
Just in case, you wouldn't happen to have my pur—"
She tossed both purses onto the table without a word.
"Oh, thank god," he said, snatching them up, relief flooding his face. He'd genuinely expected the worst. "Thought I'd lost these."
"You're not going to check what's left in there?" she asked, watching him ready himself to just holster them back.
"Is there a reason I should?" he asked, before noticing how much lighter one felt than it should. It didn't take long to figure out why. "I’m missing a good chunk of my Baelor."
The second pouch, the smaller one he'd set aside originally for the brothel, was down by at least half its silver coins. He looked up at her for an explanation, and it was only then, actually looking at her properly for the first time since sitting down, that he noticed something.
She wasn't wearing the sling anymore. More than that, she'd been breaking her bread with her left hand without so much as a wince.
Shiro instinctively checked his pockets, already half certain what he'd find. Nothing. The little jar Antonein had given him was gone. Where had it gone? Well apparently, even blackout drunk, he'd still managed to deliver it to the right person.
"What happened?" he asked.
"What happened? You happened."
"What?"
"You did that. That's why I took your purses off you. You'd have thrown all of it at the tavern girls otherwise."
"I..." Shiro didn't remember doing anything close to what she was describing, but found, uncomfortably, that he couldn't muster the conviction to deny it either.
"What did I actually do? Besides that?" She gave him a look of genuine confusion, so he clarified.
"I can't remember anything between finding the tavern and waking up just now. So genuinely, what did I do?"
Her expression shifted as he spoke, and he thought, woah, what the fuck did I do. But the dread he'd braced for turned out to be nothing compared to what surfaced a moment later, when a separate realization clicked into place, the wrongness he'd noticed upstairs and hadn't had time to name.
The room he'd woken up in wasn't his room. It was hers. Which also explained why his traveler's case and magazines hadn't been there. They were almost certainly still sitting untouched in his own room.
"What did I do," he asked again, slower this time. "Did I do something... weird. To you."
"No!"
Holy fucking shit. That "no" had landed with the unmistakable weight of an obvious yes.
"What did I do?" he asked, half horrified.
"I said nothing," she barked, loud enough that every head in the room turned toward them. An uncomfortable silence settled in, broken only by two new arrivals stepping through the door mid-conversation.
"I was already in bed when it happened. I thought it was thunder," one man said.
"That sounds nothing like thunder," responded the other.
"It sounded exactly like thunder to me. Except there was no rain. No lightning. Wasn't until morning I found out the noise was a bar fight that turned into a shootout."
"What's that? A shootout?"
"It's when people fight with guns. Like a skirmish, but both sides have guns."
"Oh, I see. Then it wasn't really a shootout, was it. I heard it was one lunatic against an entire unarmed group. Shot two of them clean, had them sent straight to the nearest temple."
Shiro turned to Chaska, hoping for some absolution, some confirmation this had nothing to do with him. Because he had a feeling it did. Big city or not, there weren't exactly a lot of people wandering around armed with guns.
He got his confirmation, unfortunately, and it wasn't the kind he'd wanted.
"So they didn't die?" one of the men behind him asked.