Chapter 78.5 – Waiting? Maidenmen? (Rion)
Rion lay on his bed, stared at the ceiling, and groaned.
"Why does he get a training arc," he muttered, "and I get… vibes."
He rolled over, face mashed into the pillow.
"I am not a waiting maiden," he told the pillow. "I refuse. Absolutely not."
The pillow, traitor that it was, did not argue.
He sat up eventually, hair sticking everywhere, uniform shirt half-buttoned.
Everyone was talking about Erynd.
Tamara did it loudly. Lyra did it with that smile that made people move out of her way. Noelle did it with prayers and soft hands and the kind of faith that made the Goddess actually answer.
Rion?
He… thought about him.
A lot.
Too much.
Not in the swoon and write his name in notebooks way.
More in the my best friend walked out of the Academy with a sword, a plan, and exactly zero survival instinct and I might never see him again way.
Which, apparently, is not enough to get a dramatic chapter title.
He'd heard the rumours:
"Chapter 76 – Waiting Maidens (Tamara)."
"Chapter 77 – Waiting Maidens (Lyra)."
"Chapter 78 – Waiting Maidens (Noelle)."
And then someone, somewhere, probably whatever gremlin was scribbling their lives onto cosmic parchment, had gone: Ah yes. The guy friend. Give him a decimal place.
"Seventy-eight POINT FIVE," Rion muttered. "I don't even get a whole number. I'm DLC."
He flopped back again.
"If anybody out there is reading this," he said to the empty room, "I'd just like to state for the record that I am not in the heroine harem. I am the emotionally stable best friend. I drink my water, I do my training, I commit only normal amounts of violence, and I do not clutch Erynd's pillow at night. Often."
He paused.
"…Okay, that last one was a lie. But it's because he stole my good pillow when he left, and this one is the same brand. That's all. Emotional imprinting. Not weird."
He scrubbed a hand over his face.
"Gods," he sighed. "Listen to me. I sound like one of those side-story extras. 'Chapter 78.5: The Bro Who Waited.'"
"Man who is going to save private Rion…"
People assumed he was fine.
Rion was good at "fine."
He laughed at the right places. He trained with the Sword campus. He ran drills, corrected footwork, dragged overconfident nobles out of stupid duels before they got killed.
He even survived Lyra's increasing yandere radiation by staying just outside the blast radius.
On bad days, he sat on the Academy wall and looked at the road leading out of the capital.
"Idiot," he said to the horizon. "You better come back taller. If I've spent four years growing and you're still under my chin, I'm going to bully you to death."
He kicked his heels against the stone.
"I'm not 'waiting,'" he told the empty air. "I'm just… preserving your spot. That's all. Someone has to be here when you wander back in with a new scar and a new disaster."
He hesitated.
"And if you bring five more women with you," he added, "I'm going to sit you down and make you draw a chart. With labels. And boundaries. And a schedule. I refuse to be in a story where the protagonist has a harem and doesn't even manage it properly."
He pointed at the sky.
"This is a threat," he informed whatever cosmic author kept dropping Outer gods on them. "Give the idiot some sense or I will start being responsible on-screen, and then you'll really lose readers."
A breeze tugged at his hair.
He sighed.
"Yeah, yeah," he said. "I'll keep the others alive while he's gone. I get it."
Later, in the dining hall, Tamara was complaining about extra drills, Lyra was smiling too sweetly at anyone who stood within three meters of Noelle, and Noelle was quietly moving peas around her plate while pretending not to listen whenever someone mentioned Erynd's name.
Rion sat down with his tray.
"Morning," he said.
Tamara grunted. Lyra hummed. Noelle smiled, small and real.
They talked. About classes. About rumours. About a priest who'd tried to tell Noelle how to dress and then nearly tripped over his own robe when Lyra tilted her head at him. About Tamara racing a carriage on foot and winning.
No one said "I miss him."
They didn't have to.
Rion listened, ate, joked.
And when Tamara snapped that if Erynd didn't come back soon she'd drag him home by the ear, and Lyra muttered something about "branding" under her breath, and Noelle whispered a prayer so quietly only the table heard it, he didn't roll his eyes.
He just nodded.
"Yeah," he said. "He'll come back. Someone has to be around to tell him how stupid he's being. Can't leave that to the three of you; you're biased."
Tamara threw a piece of bread at him. Lyra smirked. Noelle laughed.
For a moment, it felt almost like the early days.
Before duels and gods and cults and Outer things.
Before everyone started getting chapters with their names on them.
Rion smiled to himself.
"I'm not a waiting maiden," he thought. "I'm just a man who refuses to let his protagonist die off-screen."
He raised his cup in a silent, ridiculous toast to nowhere in particular.
"Hurry up, Erynd," he muttered. "Your supporting cast is getting character development without you."