I Formed a Party with a Girl via an Adventurer Matching App - Chapter 18

 Flowers That Bloom and Fade in a Communal Bunk

"Right. That should just about do it."

As I threw the last of my personal belongings into a large burlap duffel bag, the hallway outside began buzzing with a rowdy, chaotic clamor.

A second later, the poorly fitted sliding door was forcefully pried open with a loud groan, and a group of guys with familiarly pale, exhausted faces tumbled into the room.

"Man, we drank a ridiculous amount!" 

"Nothing beats drinking from dusk till dawn right after a long crawl!" 

"Seriously, thank god this is an adventurer town. There are so many places open through the night!" 

"Ain't no way we're heading out on a quest today! We are officially closed for business!" 

"Let's hit up a shop, grab some hangover cures, and then buy more booze to get wasted all over again!"

The guys flooding into the room while spouting these thoroughly brainless plans were all fellow adventurers. Having apparently spent the entire night drinking away their successful crawl, they proceeded to collapse one by one onto the futons left permanently sprawled across the floor.

This was a single room inside the ultra-cheap boarding house where I had been lodging. And these guys were my roommates.

To be clear, our connection was strictly as roommates; we didn't actually form a party together. However, we were definitely close friends who could speak without reservation, and when the mood struck us, we would occasionally head out into a dungeon together. Since I had been out of commission yesterday, the remaining five had likely gone on a crawl without me.

The single-room interior was cramped, to say the least, and it didn't even remotely have the capacity to comfortably fit six guys sleeping haphazardly together. If you tried to stand up too quickly, a piece of random laundry hung up by God-knows-who would inevitably slap you across the face. The edges of our futons overlapped in a tangled mess, making the boundaries of whose personal territory started where completely ambiguous.

Watching the guys who had just walked in immediately begin snoring like chainsaws, I continued packing my things.

Noticing my unusual behavior, one of them rolled over and called out to me.

"Yo, Kent. What are you doing? You barely have any belongings to begin with, so why are you packing them all up? Don't tell me you're moving out?" 

"Yeah, that's exactly it."

When I nodded, he simply let out a dry, indifferent, "Oh, I see."

At its core, this roommate situation was just a temporary collective of drifting wanderers. There were a million reasons why someone might leave this place behind—whether it was relocating to a different city, retiring from the adventuring business entirely, or something else. In fact, the six of us currently sharing this floor space had all arrived through a revolving door of previous occupants. Since I had joined somewhere in the middle myself, I didn't even know who among us had been here the longest.

For all I knew, the original six guys who had turned this cheap room into a crowded bunkhouse had all cleared out a long time ago.

"Man, it's gonna get lonely around here," the guy muttered, looking entirely un-lonely.

"But seriously, man. You're leaving this place, but do you actually have another gig lined up? It's not like you have any money."

Grunting a heavy "Heave-ho," he pushed himself up from his futon and shot me a skeptical, condescending look.

"You've always been a reckless idiot. You're probably just sick and tired of this crowded bunk life and decided to bounce on a whim, but you can't go making major life choices based on pure impulse, you know?" 

"I didn't decide this on a whim."

Before I could even formulate a proper counterargument, the rest of the guys in the room suddenly woke up just enough to chime in, gleefully barking out whatever random thoughts crossed their minds.

"Even when we give you advice out of the pure kindness of our hearts, you immediately try to argue back. You're completely unteachable." 

"And whenever we invite you out on a crawl, you always say you're 'not in the mood' and blow us off." 

"I've definitely treated you to drinks before, but I don't think you've ever bought me a single round." 

"Also, you look surprisingly put-together today, but until literally yesterday, weren't you wearing that dangerously tacky piece of body armor?" 

"Oh, I thought the exact same thing!" 

"Wow, we were actually allowed to say that out loud?!" 

"That thing went way past 'tacky' and crossed straight into visually grotesque!" 

"Pretty sure the last guy who moved out only left because he couldn't cope with the reality of living under the same roof as that armor." 

"You bastards..."

Faced with a firing squad of roommates utterly tearing my existence to shreds, I opened my mouth to finally lay into them—but I was cut off.

CRASH!!!!

The entrance door to our cramped, communal room was violently blown clean off its hinges, flying straight inward and slamming into the floor.

"""""W-What the hell?!"""""

A chorus of panicked screams from five terrified adventurers echoed through the dim room. A perfect rectangle had been violently cut out of our wall, revealing the bright, sunlit world outside.

And standing framed in that glorious morning light, looking down upon our stagnant, foul-smelling swamp of a room like a tyrannical empress, was a lone woman.

"Honestly, Kent. You are so slow. How much longer did you plan on wasting your precious time in a literal cesspool like this?"

She flipped her brilliant blonde twin-tails behind her shoulder and spoke with supreme authority.

Our glorious Lady Cordelia had officially arrived.

Leaving my five former roommates completely paralyzed in utter shock, I tightly pulled the drawstring of my duffel bag closed and stood up.

"Sorry about that. These guys were apparently feeling so lonely about me leaving that they just wouldn't let me go." 

"Don't lie to me. I could hear them tearing you a new one from all the way down the street. Your walls are paper-thin, and their voices are obnoxious." 

"Ah, is that so..."

This bunkhouse wasn't exactly a place where you could store personal property. Having barely any actual worldly possessions to my name, I slung my lightweight duffel bag over one shoulder, walked out of the ruined doorway, and took my place right next to Cordelia.

"By the way, why did you just pulverize the door?"

 "The alignment looked terrible, and prying it open manually seemed like an unnecessary chore." 

"Did it ever cross your mind that someone is going to have to fix that?" 

"Huh? Why should I care? Of course not. Isn't fixing it the job of these peasants living inside?" 

"You really do live your life entirely for yourself, don't you..."

Witnessing our suspiciously intimate (?) back-and-forth, my former roommates finally managed to snap out of their stupor and stammered out a question.

"H-Hey. What's the meaning of this, Kent? Who in the world is that ridiculously, insanely gorgeous chick...?" 

"And you said you're moving out... don't tell me..."

The guys were staring at us with absolute bewilderment, their jaws practically unhinged. I felt a slight twinge of guilt for subjecting their already fried brains to even more confusion... but since it was the objective reality, I had no choice but to say it.

"Oh, yeah. The truth is, I'm moving into a place to live together with this woman."

 """""HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH?!?!?!?!?!"""""

The sheer force of their collective shock was staggering. A roar so loud it threatened to shatter the glass windows echoed violently through the neighborhood.

Cordelia, however, merely furrowed her brows in deep annoyance at the racket. But even as she scowled, her flawless, aristocratic beauty was so breathtaking I found myself completely starstruck all over again.

"This place is loud and disgusting. Plus, it's dark and damp. Let's get out of here immediately, Kent."

With total nonchalance, she wrapped her arms around mine, pulling her body flush against my side. Because she wasn't wearing her armor, the voluptuous softness of her breasts—separated from me by only a thin shirt—pressed with a delicious squish right against my arm.

Witnessing this cataclysmic spectacle, the guys let out one final, agonizing shriek:

""""WHY THE HELL WOULD THAT HAPPEN?!?!?!?!?!"""""

……And so it was. Starting today, I was officially leaving that six-man, single-room breeding ground for foot fungus behind.

From here on out, I was beginning a brand-new life of cohabitation with Cordelia—my elite party member, and the partner who boasted the absolute greatest sexual compatibility in human history.

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