012: UNDER THE RAIN

Satero was a strange man when he was drunk. Corosa had always been under the impression that there were certain types of drunk, and when you fell into one type, you remained that way for life. But Satero seemed able to switch whenever he felt like it, which made Corosa wonder whether he was drunk at all.

Most of the time, though, he was a sort that Corosa had never encountered before.

The man was pleasant enough when he was sober, even if it was a during-morning-hangover sort of sober. It was then that Corosa attempted reasoning with him, trying to explain that using all their zeny to buy wine was not the best idea. And Satero understood that, and even agreed.

But some sort of divine force kept driving him to buy more.

This aspect of Satero's life was not something Corosa had ever seen before. In all the time they'd spent together, the vast majority of it had been spent far away from alcohol. And perhaps that was why Satero was drinking constantly now.

It did not make Corosa's life any better, though now he had pressing reasons to get away from the mastersmith.

Not pressing enough for him to simply walk away from Prontera and keep going. Corosa could almost understand why Satero had insisted on staying with him. It was hard to leave a man who looked like your reflection in the mirror.

Despite that, it was also hard staying with a man who tended to mutter strange, incomprehensible things when he was drunk.

It was as if he were speaking a completely different language. Corosa had tried listening, tried understanding, but no matter how hard or how carefully he listened he could not catch anything that Satero was saying. It was the same every night; the mastersmith sitting by the side of the road, his voice a low murmur in the air that only slowly died away. The only thing that Corosa ever understood was the frustrated, angry undertone to Satero's words. That was why he had never directly asked Satero about what he was saying, not when he was actually speaking. And by the time Satero was sober enough to talk to, he never remembered anything.

But it was beginning to disturb Corosa almost as much as Prontera itself.

He stood up, unable to sleep because of the rain lashing against his face, and the fact that Satero was still talking to himself. Careful to avoid tripping, Corosa made his way over, only stopping when he was in front of the mastersmith.

"Satero," Corosa said, breaking the almost-silence brought on by night, and the almost-silence of all the nights before.

Abruptly, Satero stopped talking to himself. But the mastersmith did not move, or say anything more, not then and not for the rest of the whole night, and the silence made Corosa more nervous than the murmur ever had.

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A/N: See? Disconnected! I TOLD YOU SO. Expect the series to be more like this in the future, just bits and pieces of their time together. One chapter isn't necessarily supposed to flow into the next. Though sometimes that happens, too.

Also, as for all those over-a-thousand-word chapters, they weren't supposed to wind up that long.

...They probably will in the future anyways.

Eh.