"Hey, you guys."
"Huh?"
When Rest called out to them, the men — faces flushed red with anger — turned around.
Holding back the urge to shout right back at them, Rest spoke in as calm a tone as he could manage.
"This bottle came flying from your direction! It could've hit someone and caused an injury!"
He stated the plain facts and asked for an apology, but... the response he got from the men was nothing but rough, bellowing roars.
"Shut up! We've got more important things to deal with right now!"
"Stay out of this, brat! Don't stick your nose into grown-up business!"
"...If you consider yourselves adults, then how about acting like it? If you're going to fight, do it somewhere that won't cause trouble for the people around you."
He laid out more reasonable words, but... the men only got more worked up, screaming at the top of their lungs.
"Shut up, shut up! If you've got a problem, then *you* get out of here!"
"We're having an important conversation! Keep getting in our way and I'll kill you!"
"Noo, stop it~ Don't fight over me, you three~ Staaahp it~"
While the men hurled angry words, the woman was carrying on with completely irrelevant nonsense.
The arguing men were irritating enough, but for some reason, this woman was the most infuriating of them all.
"...Bow your heads and apologize. Then we'll call it even."
Rest narrowed his eyes and delivered his final ultimatum.
The men's answer came not in words, but in clenched fists.
"Oraaah!"
One of the men lunged at him with a punch.
He was drunk, his footing unsteady, but the strike was surprisingly sharp.
"[Tenacious]"
Rest made no attempt to dodge, catching the fist square on his forehead.
He did, however, reinforce his defenses with magic.
"Guge…"
A sharp clang rang out, like metal being struck.
The instant after, the man who had thrown the punch raised his right hand and howled in agony.
"GUWEEEEEEEEEEEEH—IT'S SO HAAARRRRDDDD!"
The man's fist was badly swollen, his fingers bent grotesquely in the wrong direction.
It was clearly broken. The sight alone was enough to make onlookers wince.
"Th-This brat… what kind of stone head does he have…?!"
"You bastard! You actually got me!"
The other man grabbed a sake bottle and swung it overhead, aiming straight at Rest.
Wait — they had been fighting each other a moment ago, so why were they ganging up on him now? Were they enemies or allies?
"I'd rather not get my clothes dirty with sake."
He probably wouldn't have been hurt even if the bottle connected, but Rest dodged the downward swing all the same.
And as they brushed past each other, he drove a backfist straight into the man's face.
"Guheh…!"
The man's nose shattered, and he collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap.
"Clean hit. That ought to keep them down for a while."
"Ngh... Dammit..."
"Agugugu..."
"Let this be a lesson. Pick your fights somewhere you won't bother anyone else."
Having tossed those parting words at the men, Rest turned to head back to his table.
But just then—the woman who'd been trapped between the two men suddenly let out a shrill cry.
"Thank you sooo much, you saved meeee!"
"Huh...?"
"I was being harassed by these men and didn't know what to do! Thank you sooo much!"
A woman in her mid-twenties, wearing a dress with an absurdly low neckline, came running straight toward Rest.
She held both hands up slightly and came barreling over, swaying her body left and right to bounce her breasts, trying to throw herself into his arms.
"My name is Meliana, and—hyaahhhhhh!?"
"[Fireball]"
She was just about to lunge at him chest-first... when a fireball launched from across the room struck her square in the head.
Her hair burst into flames with a whoosh. She rolled across the floor in a panic, trying to beat out the fire.
"That was a close one, Rest."
"...Viola."
It was Viola who had unleashed the flames.
Still wearing a look of relief, she walked over and came to stand beside Rest.
"Another second and you'd have had a nasty pest latching onto you. Good thing I was able to stop it before it happened."
"………"
He understood what Viola was after.
An unsavory woman had latched onto Rest, so she'd simply gotten rid of her.
(Still… setting someone on fire? Is that normal?)
No matter how you looked at it, wasn't this going too far?
He didn't care about the woman rolling around on the floor, but a twinge of fear crept through him nonetheless.
"If it were a proper concubine or mistress, I wouldn't mind. But… having an affair is absolutely unacceptable! It would bring chaos to the household!"
"…Is that so."
What exactly was the difference?
Even as the question lingered in his mind, Rest leaned close to Viola and gazed down at the woman being doused with buckets of water by the staff.