The next morning, Ava and I both ended up sleeping in until noon.

  Ava was the one who woke up first, and she clearly didn’t waste any time at all before she made her way over to my bed and woke me up; at least, that’s what I thought with the way her eyes were straining themselves just to keep themselves open.

  The two of us washed up and got changed surprisingly quickly, mainly spurred on by Ava’s worry that the streets outside would be too crowded if we didn’t hurry. She said that it was almost time for lunch, and if we got out even a little too te, we’d be swept away in a wave of hungry workers.

  Because of that, we ended up skipping breakfast and just made our way outside. It was only when we were standing in front of the inn that I finally felt like I had woken up fully.

  “Alright, I say that our first course of action for today is to get you sat down in front of Elenia,” Ava said.

  “What?” I responded immediately.

  Already? I-I just got up…

  I haven’t had time to pn!

  I-I need time! I don’t know what to say!

  “What do you mean ‘what’? You were given a task to go and talk to her, and I was asked to help you with it. I saw how you were getting cold feet about all this yesterday, and the best way to deal with that is just to go and get it over with as quickly as possible,” Ava expined as she grabbed my hand, “Now… where exactly are we supposed to find her?”

  …

  I knew that I wouldn’t be able to win an argument against Ava, so I decided to just tell her what she told me the day before.

  “… She just said that we’d know where to find her,” I whispered under my breath, still not feeling ready to go see her yet.

  “Oh, that’s right…” Ava thought for a moment before continuing, “If she was that confident that we’d be able to find the pce, it’s gotta be pretty obvious, right?… I remember that they called her guild master… I guess the first pce we should look is where most of the guilds are based, and lucky for us, I already have a good idea of where that is.”

  Before I had the chance to respond to her, Ava immediately started walking, dragging me through the streets while constantly looking back to check up on me. Thankfully, this didn’t st too long, as we arrived at the pce Ava had mentioned after only a few minutes of walking.

  The street itself didn’t look all too different to the shopping street we went through yesterday. By and rge, it was just more of the same wooden buildings; there was still a seemingly impossible number of people walking up and down the street, and there was still a ck of signage; the only real difference would be that there were even fewer dispys.

  “I guess we just need to start looking then,” Ava said as she gnced up and down the street, “I’m hoping that the pce really just jumps out at us… otherwise, we might be here a while… checking each building one by one.”

  …

  I don’t know what the better option is…

  …

  I wouldn’t mind the extra time.

  …

  Despite my thoughts, I did help to look around. Unfortunately, in doing so, my eyes were immediately drawn over to one building in particur.

  Out of all the wooden buildings along the street, this one was an outlier; not only was it much rger than those around it, but the building itself was mostly made from brick and decorated with intricately crafted white accents. It just seemed so out of pce in this town, as if someone had taken a building from somewhere else entirely and transported it to that spot. From what I could see, there were four floors, as well as a semi-exposed spiral staircase going up one corner of the building. On that staircase, I could see people racing up and down with stacks of paper in their hands, somehow managing not to bump into anyone else while also not missing any steps.

  However, even amongst all that, there was one thing in particur that stood out like a sore thumb. A rge emblem hung over the front door, a red fox, not unlike the one adorning the ring Elenia gave me.

  “Hmm? Did you find-?” Ava stopped herself as she looked over at where I was facing, “Ah… I… can see why she was so confident that we’d be able to find her…”

  “…”

  I pulled on the sleeve of Ava’s cloak, still not sure if going and seeing Elenia right now was a good idea.

  “Well, come on then,” Ava freed her cloak from my grip before wrapping her arm around my shoulder, “I’ll do all the talking just until you’re sitting in front of Elenia. Then it’s all you. Is that alright?”

  It doesn’t matter what I say… I know you’ll take me with you anyway.

  “Mm.”

  “Great! Then let’s head on in,” She said as she guided me towards the front door.

  As easy as Ava made it sound, we almost immediately came across some difficulty. Right as we approached the door, a swarm of people started filtering out with desperate looks pstered on each of their faces.

  “Guess it’s time for their lunch,” Ava said without batting an eye, “At least we found the right pce before it happened. Can you imagine having to walk through all that?”

  The two of us stood there for what felt like a few minutes before the crowd had thinned enough for us to actually be able to step foot in the building.

  As soon as we did, however, I was stunned. Every inch of the building had been decorated in some way. From an intricately crafted tile floor to the many sculptures adorning the desks and railings. Each wall even had its own selection of paintings in many different styles, yet each was obviously an exceptional piece in its own right. It was truly as if we had somehow stepped into a completely different world.

  Ava quickly guided me over to the front counter, even as I was still busy looking around the pce.

  “Hello there, we’re here to see Elenia… oh, um, the Guild Master?” Ava corrected herself in the middle of her question.

  The dy standing behind the desk turned to face us, adjusting her gsses before speaking, “Oh, you’re here to meet Elenia? I didn’t know she was expecting such adorable guests.”

  What? Adorable?

  “Well, if you’re wanting to see her, you’ll need to talk to someone else,” She set her papers down, “If you wait here for just a moment, I’ll bring him out for you. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Thank you,” Ava replied.

  The receptionist smiled again before quickly disappearing through the door behind the desk, although, thanks to my ears, I could still hear her perfectly clearly.

  “We have some guests asking for the Guild master,” She said.

  “Ahhhhhh… During my lunch break? Really?” A strangely familiar voice responded.

  “You’re the one who wanted to personally manage each and every one of her visitors.”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. It’s probably just some nobodies trying their luck anyway. This happens all the time.”

  After that comment, I could hear footsteps approaching. Shortly followed by a man coming out from the door the receptionist had just gone through.

  His appearance, much like his voice, was both familiar yet not. He was a tall, slender man with short pitch-bck hair and tired green eyes. Two rge rabbit ears hung down the sides of his face and draped over his shoulders.

  “What? Are these the two asking for her?” He asked out loud.

  “If it’s the two adorable guests at the desk, then that’s them,” The receptionist from before shouted back.

  “Adorable?” He said, sounding surprised, “What do you mean adorable? I just see some troublemakers standing in our lobby. Why else would they come in here looking like that? This one hasn’t even taken their hood off.”

  There was no reply to the man’s compints.

  “Whatever, look, this isn’t the pce to py your pranks. Can you just move on?” The man said with a heavy sigh.

  “Now wait a minute,” Ava pced her hand firmly on my shoulder, squeezing it just a bit, “You can’t just throw us out for no reason like that. Elenia told us to come and meet her here.”

  “Oh, I very much can, and I very much will.”

  If Ava hadn’t held me in pce, I would have already run out the door. Even though the man wasn’t shouting at us, there was something about his tone of voice that made me feel even smaller than I already was.

  Why are we doing this?

  She clearly doesn’t want to meet us if this is the person she left to greet us.

  M-Maybe she was just being polite when she said she wanted to continue our conversation.

  Maybe she didn’t mean it.

  Ava then nudged me before whispering, “You have the ring she gave you, right?”

  Ah…

  …

  While still panicking, I reluctantly held my hand up and showed off the ring that Elenia had given me. The man leaned in closer to have a look at it but only took a second before standing up straight and scoffing.

  “Well, I must admit, that’s a pretty well-made fake… Unfortunately, you clearly didn’t do enough research on us,” He said, “Only the Guild Master wears a golden ring, and I’m afraid neither of you looks like her.”

  He held up his own hand, showing off an almost identical ring to the one I was given, but instead of gold, it was silver.

  “It’s not our fault that this is the ring she gave to us,” Ava retorted, “You can go and ask her yourself.”

  “Oh no, I’m not going to waste the Guild Master’s time over the two of you,” He then lifted up a bnk piece of paper from behind the desk, “If you really want to waste someone’s time, I can test if that ring is real right now in front of you. Hold your hand out; it’ll only take a second.”

  I did as he told me to, not wanting him to get any more annoyed with us than he already was. However, as soon as I did, Ava clicked her tongue, showing just how annoyed she herself was getting.

  If he sends us away… then i-it isn’t my fault I couldn’t meet Elenia…

  …

  The man then id the piece of paper on top of the fox emblem on the ring before saying, “If this is real, which we all know it isn’t, we’ll see-”

  The man froze up as he watched the piece of paper. Where it had made contact with the ring, there was a scorched imprint of the same fox emblem.

  After a moment of silence, the man quickly scrunched up the piece of paper and dropped it to the floor behind the desk in a single motion. Then, without missing a beat, he came out from behind the desk with his hands folded neatly in front of him.

  “I’m terribly sorry about all that. Right this way,” He gestured towards a set of rge double doors, “I hope you will let me guide you to the best of my ability, however unsatisfactory that may be.”

  The abrupt change in his demeanour caught me completely off guard. If anything, it made me want to leave this pce more than when he was annoyed with us.

  “There we go, that’s a much better look for you,” Ava teased.

  “Yes, I very much agree,” The man immediately responded.

  “Well, let’s go then,” Ava extended her hand out towards me with a smile on her face, “It finally looks like we’re getting the treatment we deserve.”

  I instinctually grabbed onto her hand, but in doing so, I realised just how sweaty my palms had gotten from that short exchange. Not that I had long to linger on that thought as we were quickly led further into the building.

  swil_