A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation

“How is it?!”

With a “ta-dah,” Eleven spread his arms wide and posed in front of Lizel and Gill.

The equipment he’d ordered had finally been completed after a week. It was scheduled to be done today, and apparently he’d gone to pick it up first thing in the morning.

Weapons could be prepared on the same day, but armor took time after handing over the materials—especially when they were all rare substances that were hard to work.

On top of that, he had been extremely picky about the design at the armor shop, so Lizel and Gill, figuring it would take a while, had gone back to the inn ahead of him. This was the first time they were seeing it.

He was spreading his coat and striking a pose, and for the record, this was the dining hall of Lizel and Gill’s inn. It was early morning and quite crowded, so he was drawing tons of attention, but the man himself was delighted; he wanted nothing more than to show off his new gear.

Lizel and Gill looked up at Eleven, who was standing beside their table, while they ate breakfast.

“Yeah, now you finally look like an adventurer.”

“Hearing that from the leader is… nah, nothing. I mean, I’ve been an adventurer all along, you know?”

“Up until now you were dressed no differently from some random delinquent.”

Lizel nodded as he recalled Eleven’s former attire. Eleven pouted.

Lizel wasn’t wrong, though. For an adventurer, Eleven had been way too lightly dressed before. Lizel and Gill didn’t wear metal armor either, so at a glance they looked light-equipped, but their actual defenses far outstripped appearances.

Eleven had only covered vital points and was otherwise practically unarmored. Whether that had been the composure of someone strong or him just chasing thrills, to others it could only be seen as insanity.

Compared to Lizel and Gill he was still lightly armored, but it was clearly the result of prioritizing freedom of movement.

“Flashy.”

“It’s just the lining and small parts that’re flashy, yeah？ Way better than bein’ all black—gk.”

He snatched the fork that had flown at him out of the air and grimaced.

Gill actually wanted to stop wearing all black, but the problem was he couldn’t think of any other color he liked.

He also had no particular wishes about design, yet he absolutely did not intend to leave that to Lizel or Eleven. In the end, if he just threw it all at the craftsman, the result would probably be similar to his current gear anyway, so he’d already mostly given up.

He still didn’t like being picked on for it though, hence the fork.

“Your accessories and that outer layer are already this flashy. If your clothes weren’t too, you’d stand out for the wrong reasons.”

“Leader, you really get it!”

“To be honest I thought you’d end up even gaudier.”

“If the colors are too bright I can’t move around at night, right？ With this I just zip it up in front and I’m good.”

He said it so casually that Lizel, listening, remembered: right, this guy had been a thief.

Because Eleven was so clingy to him it was easy to forget, but his years of experience as the head of a band of thieves weren’t for show.

He might have calmed down a little, but when he wasn’t with their party he was apparently still rotten to the core.

“Since we finally got you new gear, let’s go somewhere tough today.”

“Then let’s do that. We’ll check requests at the guild, and if nothing looks good we’ll just dive some random labyrinth.”

“For real？ Ah, gimme a bite.”

Eleven, dropping into the seat next to Lizel, sounded genuinely surprised.

Lizel always picked their requests; Eleven hadn’t expected his suggestion to be accepted so easily.

As Lizel turned toward him and held out the dessert fruit to his open mouth, he chuckled.

“Gill never says what he wants to do. He doesn’t say ‘I want to take this request’ or anything, so I just choose on my own.”

“Huh. Then if I say ‘I wanna do this one,’ you’ll do it with me？”

“We’re a party. Of course.”