Three weeks into operating as a registered party, the guild branch master called us in to discuss the formal name issue.

  Branch Master Kelvin was a wide man in his late fifties with the manner of someone who had seen every possible kind of adventurer and had opinions about all of them. He looked at our party across his desk with the expression of a man doing inventory on something he wasn't sure about.

  "Standard parties register a name within thirty days of formation," he said. "You're at twenty-four."

  "We're aware," I said.

  "The system needs something to put in the record."

  "I know."

  "So."

  I looked at the group. Rena had her arms folded and was looking at the ceiling. Torvin was fully prepared to suggest something terrible. Sera had her notebook open to a page I could see had several options listed, none of which I'd approved. Yua was looking at me with calm expectant eyes.

  Fine, I thought. Fine, it needs a name, I've been avoiding this for three weeks because naming it makes it real, but it's already real, it's been real since the ink-covered healer and the half-orc outside and the mage who followed me for three days, it's real and I can either name it or let Torvin name it and I have heard Torvin's suggestions.

  "Pale Coin," I said.

  Silence.

  "Pale Coin?" Kelvin repeated.

  "Fifty gold coins. That's what the king thought I was worth when he threw me out. Pale, old coin. Not worth a hero's attention." I shrugged. "Seems appropriate."

  Another silence, different in texture.

  Rena unfolded her arms. "I like it."

  Torvin nodded slowly with the expression of someone who would have preferred The Iron Brotherhood but could respect this.

  Yua smiled. Sera wrote it down.

  "Pale Coin," Kelvin said, writing it in the register. He looked up once, briefly. "Heard about the outer ring clear. And the shaman you took down."

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

  "Routine."

  "Not for an F-rank party."

  Good, I thought, and said nothing.

  Two days after the registration, someone knocked on my room door at the inn at seven in the morning.

  I opened it still half asleep, one hand on the dagger out of reflex I'd apparently developed, and found Kim Soobin standing in the hallway in plain clothes with his hood up and looking like he hadn't slept.

  Of course, I thought. My chest did something complicated that I chose not to examine. Of course it's him. Three weeks out and here he is. Seven in the morning.

  "I found out where you were from the guild registry," he said.

  "That information is supposed to be private."

  "I asked nicely."

  "You can't just ask—"

  "I'm the Chosen Hero, Junho. People give me things when I ask for them." He looked exhausted saying it. "Can I come in?"

  I stepped aside.

  He sat on the room's one chair. I sat on the bed. We looked at each other in the way of two people who have known each other long enough to have an entire argument without starting it.

  "You didn't say anything," I said, eventually.

  "I know."

  "Two words. You said two words on my way out."

  "Good luck. I know."

  "Not even a full sentence, Soobin. You couldn't manage a full sentence."

  He put his face in his hands. He had the look of someone who had been arguing with himself about this for three weeks and hadn't been winning. "I didn't know what to say. Everything happened so fast and the king was right there and everyone was watching and—"

  "You could have said anything," I said. "Not to the king. Just to me. After. You had time to say good luck, you had time to say one actual thing."

  "I know." He lifted his head. "I know, Junho. I'm sorry."

  I looked at him. He meant it. He meant it completely, and he'd been carrying it for three weeks, and I knew him well enough to know that. It didn't fix it. It was real.

  This is not resolved, I thought carefully. An apology at seven in the morning three weeks later is not the end of this conversation. But it's the beginning of one. And he came here. He found out where I was and he came here and he's in plain clothes with his hood up because he's not supposed to fraternize with 'rejected candidates' and he came anyway.

  "How's the training?" I said.

  He blinked. "What?"

  "The hero training. How is it."

  He let out a breath that sounded like three weeks of something releasing slightly. "Hard. The court wizard runs drills at six in the morning. Mirae is already outperforming everyone on the practical work. Hyunwoo tripped over his own Blazing Fist yesterday and singed the sparring room floor."

  I couldn't entirely suppress the small noise I made at that.

  "He's fine," Soobin said. "Embarrassed, but fine."

  "Good," I said. Not meaning fine. Meaning embarrassed.

  He almost smiled. It was our oldest shorthand.

  We talked for an hour. Nothing resolved. Everything still complicated. But when he left — hood back up, checking the hall first — he looked like someone carrying slightly less weight than he'd arrived with, and I sat with my back against the headboard and thought that was probably the most I was willing to give right now, and that it was also probably enough for right now, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that so I got dressed and went downstairs to work on the scroll stock.